Former president tells House oversight committee he is cooperating in the Epstein investigation out of love of country and desire for victims to heal
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, said the committee’s list of questions for Bill Clinton grew longer after Hillary Clinton’s deposition yesterday, where she deferred a host of questions to her husband.
“So we already had a big portfolio of questions for him, and that increased yesterday,” Comer said at a press conference outside the building where the closed-door deposition was set to begin shortly.
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RACHEL GEHRMEN
Staff Reporter
Upon returning to the university and facing blistering winds, temperatures in the negatives and frozen snow clumped around each corner of campus, it is easy to forget that we are entering the spring semester. Much of the student body has collectively agreed that the first weeks back at the university have been brutal.
“I’ve been enjoying my classes, but it’s been hard with the weather,” Keira Murphy, a sophomore at the university, said.
Contrasting the idea of spring semester that we like to adopt — warming weather and blossoming nature — the circumstances that welcomed the student body on Feb. 1 were cold, windy and ruthless.
Many students have undergone inconveniences while navigating their first few weeks of class, including rerouting their day to avoid the harsh winds, slipping on icy patches and even changing anticipated move-in dates.
“Being an RA, everyone’s move-in was particularly affected because it got pushed back three or four days,” Kaden Redlus, a junior at the university, said. “And I’m from the south, so that got hit right when I had to leave.”
Due to weather forecasts of snow on Feb. 1, which was the original student move-in date, the university pushed that date forward to Jan. 29 as a precaution. Although Newark did not end up getting hit with this predicted snow, campus was still frosted over when students arrived. The results of the Jan. 26 snowstorm had stuck around, the layer of ice on top making it clear that the frosty conditions were there to stay.
While the university’s Facilities and Grounds crew plowed the snow throughout campus, students still experienced difficulties across certain sidewalks and parking lots.
“I was talking to one of my friends where I work, and she was talking about how the parking lot right behind my dorm was just packed full of ice — and this was right before move-in,” Murphy said.
“On the sidewalk, sometimes there’s not enough room, especially in between classes when people are walking both ways, and it’s kind of tough,” Jacob Weiss, a sophomore at the university, said.
Ice patches and remainders of frozen-over snow have been common sources of annoyance and potentially dangerous situations. Certain sidewalks, such as South College Avenue on the side closest to the Green, already get congested with foot traffic during class-change. That became even worse as the walkway is narrowed due to the shoveled snow lining the sides. Other walking paths across campus have also become difficult to navigate due to the same issue.
Students who rent have stumbled upon another issue — the worry of getting fined for improper clearing of their house’s sidewalk. Many off-campus housing leases include the task of shoveling any snow in front of the property’s walkway. In a lack of compliance, the renters receive a fine.
“We’re worried we’re gonna get fined for not shoveling our sidewalk in front of our house,” Jules Fuchs, a sophomore at the university, said. “But none of us were here for when it actually snowed, and now it’s all ice, so we can’t shovel it.”
This month’s state of snow creates difficulties for students in a situation like this. Others, like Fuchs, who were still enjoying winter break at the time of the snowfall, are now left helpless due to the layer of ice sealing its place on the ground.
The frustrating blanket of ice that covers the snow and pieces of campus sidewalk has also been a reason for embarrassment. Walks to class have become even more tedious with the added caution of paying close attention to one’s step.
“I was coming out of my friend’s apartment and I absolutely ate it on my walk to class,” Reagan Mitchell, a sophomore at the university, said. “Cars, people, everyone saw it.”
Due to not always being visible, ice sprawling across the sidewalks has sent students sprawling themselves. Although, for those who have not slipped yet, the sight of a cartoonish fall can easily be the highlight of their day.
After returning from their 6-week break, most students hoped to leave winter behind with their sights set on spring. However, among the snow and the ice that are practically fused to campus, the cold and the wind are reminders that winter is very much still in session.
“I hate the cold and I hate the wind, and I hate walking 20 minutes to McDowell in the freezing weather,” Ollie Panella, a freshman at the university, said. “And then when I thought it was warm today, I checked the temperature, and it was actually 27 degrees outside, and I didn’t like that at all.”
For spring semester so far, every outing is a brutal trek through nose-numbing temperatures and eye-watering winds. Braving the cold has become part of the student body’s everyday routine.
“The cold is whatever, but the wind, the wind is horrible,” Mitchell said. “I rerouted all of my walks to class so I can go through as many buildings as possible.”
Scarves, hats and gloves are familiar elements to see while walking to class, which is slightly unusual for Newark and especially for the beginning of spring semester.
Having left the comfort of their homes and being thrown back into school, freezing weather conditions are not what students had in mind. Fingers hiding in gloves and mittens are crossed all over campus, holding onto hopes of the real spring greeting us soon.
Green party’s Hannah Spencer secures victory in Gorton and Denton as Reform UK finish second and Labour is pushed into third
Reform activists are “hearing Matt Goodwin has all but conceded defeat to the Greens”, the UK poll aggregator Britain Elects has posted on X.
The Green party has predicted a “seismic moment” in UK politics, with a party source telling the Press Association:
Things are feeling positive. Not wanting to get ahead of ourselves, but everything that we thought that was going to be happening looks like it’s happening … Whatever happens, I think it’s fair to say that Greens are here to stay now as a progressive voice in British politics.
Continue reading...Countdown to May has begun and dejected Labour MPs want to see in that time that PM is capable of change
When Labour’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, urged Keir Starmer to stand down two weeks ago, Starmer’s closest advisers presented him a choice: fight, flight or hand over his destiny to his party by calling a leadership contest.
The prime minister chose the first option and his Downing Street team sprung into action to contain the threat. At the moment of greatest peril for Starmer, MPs peered over the precipice and didn’t like what they saw.
Continue reading...Reports of African men being attracted to Russia by promises of jobs and ending up on Ukraine’s frontlines have become more frequent
At least 55 Ghanaians have been killed in Russia’s war with Ukraine after being “lured into battle”, Ghana’s foreign minister has said after a visit to Kyiv in which officials raised the issue of Russian recruitment of African people.
Reports of African men being attracted to Russia by promises of jobs and ending up on Ukraine’s frontlines have become more frequent in recent months, creating tensions between Moscow and some of the countries involved.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic and the Pentagon: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. If other leading firms like Google follow suit, this could massively complicate the Pentagon's efforts to replace Anthropic's Claude, which was the first model integrated into the military's most sensitive work. It would also be the first time the nation's top AI leaders have taken a collective stand about how the U.S. government can and can't use their technology. Altman made clear he still wants to strike a deal with the Pentagon that would allow ChatGPT to be used for sensitive military contexts. Despite the show of solidarity, such a deal could see OpenAI replace Anthropic if the Pentagon follows through with its plan to declare the latter a "supply chain risk."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In a stunning setback for Labour, the Green party has decisively won the Gorton and Denton byelection, with Reform UK finishing second. Does this result signal the end of Labour’s safe seats? And could it mark the beginning of the end for Keir Starmer? John Harris, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey unpack the fallout – and explore what might happen next
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Trade between the EU and two South American countries may start within two months under a provision application of the Mercosur deal.
“The law allows the provisional application of the deal can happen two months after notification has been exchanged between both sides in the form of a ‘note verbale’ that the deal will enter into provision application.”
“The president reached out to member states and to MEPS, that’s what it means. She reached out to member states and MEPs, and I remind you that the member states as the European Council, endorsed and approved the EU Mercosur agreement and empowered the European Commission to move forward with provisional application.”
Continue reading...Refund amounts for State Farm customers will vary based on their place of residence and insurance premiums.
Newly elected Gorton and Denton MP taps into colour meme of the moment with statement waistcoat
Of course the Green candidate wore green, though the correct term – the 2026 TikTok one – is “gross green”.
Coined by New York magazine, and seen all over the high street as well as on the cover of Caro Claire Burke’s forthcoming satirical novel Yesteryear, it’s actually chartreuse. But where’s the fun in calling it that? And it’s not so much a colour as a mood.
Continue reading...Average life satisfaction still below pre-pandemic peak despite improving economic outlook, reports ONS
The proportion of people in the UK who feel dissatisfied with life has failed to improve since the pandemic despite the economic outlook improving, official figures show.
The Office for National Statistics said its quarterly survey of personal wellbeing in the UK shows that average life satisfaction remains below its pre-pandemic peak, despite the rate of GDP per person rising over the same period.
Continue reading...NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced significant changes to the agency's Artemis program, which aims to land on the moon in 2028.
Deposition comes one day after Hillary Clinton testified and called proceedings ‘partisan political theater’
Former president Bill Clinton is scheduled to give deposition on Friday to a congressional committee investigating his links to Jeffrey Epstein, one day after Hillary Clinton testified before the committee and called the proceedings “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people”.
During remarks before the House oversight committee, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, insisted on Thursday that she had never met Epstein.
Continue reading...President Trump's media company, which is merging with a fusion energy player, is exploring whether to spin off Trump Social as a publicly traded concern.
Bill Clinton's testimony is the first time a former president has been compelled to appear before Congress.
The biggest Pokemon event of the year just wrapped up. Celebrate Pokemon Day with the latest and greatest announcements from the world of pocket monsters.
Police chief accused of caving to Republican demands by reversing decision to fire implicated duo
A Detroit police department decision to reverse course on firing two officers who allegedly violated local law by coordinating an arrest with federal immigration agents has ignited outrage and accusations that the chief caved to Republican demands.
It has also played into a debate in the US around the role of local law enforcement amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown as many police departments – especially in large Democratic-run cities such as Detroit – have a policy of not co-operating with federal immigration operations.
Continue reading...This 12-week training program is the sign you’re looking for to sign up for a Hyrox this year.
Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed a revised bid by Paramount Skydance to be a superior offer. From a report: Earlier this week, Paramount raised its bid to buy the entirety of WBD to $31 per share, up from $30 per share, all cash. It was the latest amendment to Paramount's multiple offers in recent months -- and since moving forward with a hostile bid to buy the company -- and it's now unseated a deal between WBD and Netflix to sell the legacy media company's studio and streaming businesses for $27.75 per share. Last week, Netflix granted WBD a seven-day waiver to reengage with Paramount, resulting in the higher bid. Paramount's offer is for the entirety of WBD, including its pay-TV networks, such as CNN, TBS and TNT. Netflix had four business days to make changes to its own proposal in light of Paramount's superior bid, the WBD board said in a statement Thursday. Instead, the decision by the streaming giant to walk away puts a pin in a drawn-out saga that saw amended offers from both bidders.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
If a disability has made your credit card payments unmanageable, debt forgiveness may be closer than you think.
Some of the changes mirror Scoutig America's suggestions to the Department of Justice, including discontinuing its Citizenship in Society merit badge and introducing a Military Service merit badge.
As Pokémon turns 30, we would like to hear what the franchise means to you
It is 30 years since the game Pocket Monsters was released for the Nintendo Game Boy in Japan. Many more video games, trading cards, toys, an animated series and films followed as the franchise became a worldwide hit. With this in mind, we would like to hear what Pokémon means to you after three decades.
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Continue reading...SAN FRANCISCO and SEATTLE, Feb. 27, 2026 — OpenAI and Amazon today announced a multi-year strategic partnership to accelerate AI innovation for enterprises, startups, and end consumers around the world. Amazon will also invest $50 billion in OpenAI, starting with an initial $15 billion investment and followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met.
Partnering to Bring New Advanced AI Capabilities to Enterprises Worldwide
OpenAI and Amazon are jointly developing a Stateful Runtime Environment powered by OpenAI’s models, which will be available through Amazon Bedrock.
Stateful developer environments are the next generation of how frontier models will be used, seamlessly enabling models to access elements like compute, memory, and identity. A Stateful Runtime Environment allows developers to keep context, remember prior work, work across software tools and data sources, and access compute. They’re designed to handle ongoing projects and workflows.
These stateful developer environments will be trained to run optimally on AWS’s infrastructure and integrated with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and infrastructure services so customers’ AI applications and agents run cohesively with the rest of their infrastructure applications running in AWS. The Stateful Runtime Environment is expected to launch in the next few months.
Bringing OpenAI’s Most Advanced Enterprise Platform to AWS Customers
AWS will serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, expanding access to OpenAI’s most advanced enterprise platform as demand for AI deployment accelerates across industries.
Frontier enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage teams of AI agents that operate across real business systems with shared context, built-in governance, and enterprise-grade security, without managing underlying infrastructure. As companies move from experimentation to production AI, Frontier makes it straightforward to integrate powerful AI into existing workflows quickly, securely, and at global scale.
OpenAI to Use Trainium Compute to Power Growing Amazon Customer Demand
OpenAI and AWS are expanding their existing $38 billion multi-year agreement by $100 billion over 8 years. The expansion includes OpenAI committing to consume approximately 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity through AWS infrastructure, which will support demand for Stateful Runtime, Frontier, and other advanced workloads. This agreement lowers the cost and improves the efficiency of producing intelligence at scale.
Under this structure, OpenAI secures long-term capacity while working with AWS to deploy purpose-built silicon alongside its broader compute ecosystem, enabling enterprises to consume intelligence on demand without managing underlying infrastructure.
This commitment spans both Trainium3 and next-generation Trainium4 chips and will power a broad range of advanced AI workloads. Trainium4, expected to begin delivery in 2027, will provide another major performance gain, including significantly higher FP4 compute performance, expanded memory bandwidth, and increased high-bandwidth memory capacity to support increasingly capable AI systems at scale.
Custom Models Available to Power Amazon’s Customer-Facing Applications
OpenAI and Amazon will collaborate to develop customized models available to Amazon developers to power Amazon’s customer-facing applications. Amazon teams will be able to tailor OpenAI models for use across AI products and agents that serve customers directly. These capabilities will complement the models already available to Amazon developers, including Amazon’s Nova family, offering another tool for teams to build and deliver at scale.
“OpenAI and Amazon share a belief that AI should show up in ways that are practical and genuinely useful for people,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. ”Combining OpenAI’s models with Amazon’s infrastructure and global reach helps us put powerful AI into the hands of businesses and users at real scale.”
“We have lots of developers and companies eager to run services powered by OpenAI models on AWS, and our unique collaboration with OpenAI to provide stateful runtime environments will change what’s possible for customers building AI apps and agents,” said Andy Jassy, President and CEO of Amazon. “We continue to be impressed with what OpenAI is building, and we’re excited not only about their choosing to go big on our custom AI silicon (Trainium), but also our opportunity to invest in the company and partnership over the long-term.”
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon.
About AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is guided by customer obsession, pace of innovation, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. By democratizing technology for nearly two decades and making cloud computing and generative AI accessible to organizations of every size and industry, AWS has built one of the fastest-growing enterprise technology businesses in history. Millions of customers trust AWS to accelerate innovation, transform their businesses, and shape the future. With the most comprehensive AI capabilities and global infrastructure footprint, AWS empowers builders to turn big ideas into reality.
Source: Amazon
The post OpenAI and Amazon Announce Strategic Partnership appeared first on HPCwire.
theodp writes: On Tuesday, Microsoft GM of Education and Workforce Policy (and former Code.org Chief Academic Officer) Pat Yongpradit posted an obituary of sorts for coders. "Computer programmers and software developers are codified differently in the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data," Yongpradit wrote. "The modern AI-infused world needs less computer programmers (coders) and more software developers (more holistic and higher level). So when folks say that there is less hiring of computer programmers, they are right. But there will be more hiring of software developers, especially those who have adopted an AI-forward mindset and skillset. [...] The number of just pure computer programming roles has already been declining due to reasons like outsourcing, AI will just accelerate the decline." On Wednesday, Yongpradit's colleague Allyson Knox, Senior Director of Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft, put another AI nail in the coder coffin, testifying before the House Committee on Education -- the Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education on Building an AI-ready America: Teaching in the Age of AI. "Thank you to Chairman Tim Walberg, Ranking Member Bobby Scott, Chair Kevin Kiley, Ranking Member Suzanne Bonamici and members of the Subcommittee for the opportunity to share Microsoft perspective and that of the educators and parents we hear from every day across the country," Knox wrote in a LinkedIn post. "Three themes continue to emerge throughout these discussions: 1. Educators want support to build AI literacy and critical thinking skills. 2. Schools need guidance and guardrails to ensure student data is protected and adults remain in control. 3. Teachers want classroom-ready tools, and a voice in shaping them. If we focus on these priorities, we can help ensure AI expands opportunity for every student across the United States." Yongpradit and Knox report up to Microsoft President Brad Smith, who last July told Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi it was time for the tech-backed nonprofit to "switch hats" from coding to AI as Microsoft announced a new $4 billion initiative to advance AI education. Smith's thoughts on the extraordinary promise of AI in education were cited by Knox in her 2026 Congressional testimony. Interestingly, Knox argued for the importance of computer programming literacy in her 2013 Congressional testimony at a hearing on Our Nation of Builders: Training the Builders of the Future. "Congress needs to come up with fresh ideas on how we can continue to train the next generation of builders, programmers, manufacturers, technicians and entrepreneurs," said Rep. Lee Terry said to open the discussion. So, are reports of computer programming's imminent death greatly exaggerated?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 27, 2026 – The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) has announced the completion of a research program funded by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to make control electronics for quantum hardware more compact and manufacturable. The work addresses the needs identified by QED-C members in the enabling technology roadmap, Control and Readout Electronics for Quantum Systems.
In 2022, $1.4 million in government matching funds were competitively awarded to QED-C member companies to enhance the control and readout electronics supply chain and its capabilities.
The results achieved by QED-C members Amphenol RF, Maybell Quantum Industries, Rigetti Computing, and XMA, in collaboration with NIST, demonstrate improvements in size and performance of control and readout technologies across several qubit modalities.
Amphenol RF reduced the size, weight, and loss of room-temperature control readout electronics in quantum systems while improving overall performance. This advance will enhance room-temperature control readout electronics in future quantum systems in a manufacturable package designed for production scalability.
Maybell Quantum Industries changed the design of control and readout electronics to tightly integrate passive and active devices with interconnects, shrinking the overall size. This new cable design delivers high performance in a simpler, denser, and more integrated package.
Rigetti Computing created a way to measure temperature directly on the chip alongside the qubit circuitry using nanoscale superconducting structures that are relatively straightforward to fabricate and integrate into existing manufacturing flows. This will make it easier to identify and diagnose heating issues that can degrade qubit performance.
XMA solved three bottlenecks to scaling quantum hardware: cost, footprint, and thermal impact. A new cabling solution increases channel capacity while reducing the cost and shrinking the size of this crucial infrastructure.
Companies had to be members of QED-C to participate in the sponsored R&D program. Participants’ work had to support one of four goals from the roadmap:
QED-C aims to identify gaps in enabling technologies for quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum networking. Learn more about the Control and Readout Electronics program here.
About QED-C
The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) is the world’s premier association of pioneers in the quantum technology marketplace. Members of QED-C enable the real-world application of quantum technology, and, in turn, grow a robust commercial industry and supply chain. Sitting at the intersection of tech, academia, business, entrepreneurship, and policymaking, QED-C is uniquely able to foster the collaborations the industry needs. QED-C is where experts and organizations share knowledge and collectively shape how quantum technology will grow. QED-C is managed by SRI.
Source: QED-C
The post QED-C Details Member Advances in Quantum Control Electronics from NIST-Funded Program appeared first on HPCwire.
When dental records and DNA matches failed, investigators turned to an older technology.
The supreme court has deferred to executive power for decades. Its decision on tariffs is a long-overdue warning
After two decades of deferring to executive authority and eroding anti-bribery laws, the supreme court has suddenly limited presidential power in a way that could make one ugly form of political influence a bit more difficult to pull off. Last week’s ruling did not merely strip one president of his executive power to unilaterally impose levies across broad swaths of the economy – it makes it harder for any president to transform tariffs from a broad economic policy into a personal political cudgel that muzzles criticism and enforces fealty.
“A Supreme Court otherwise inclined to endlessly expand Trump’s authority just restricted his go-to tool, ruling that U.S. presidents do not have the power to unilaterally deploy tariffs and dole out punishment and favor to specific companies and economic sectors, friends and family, and entire countries,” said Lori Wallach of Rethink Trade.
The Washington Post reported that Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, dumped $1m into Trump’s inauguration, cultivated relationships with Trump officials, and “refrained from publicly criticizing the president or his policies on national television” – just before securing tariff exemptions for his company’s products.
ProPublica reported that the administration approved a tariff exemption for a thermoplastic made by a company “owned by a pair of brothers who have donated millions of dollars to Republican causes”.
A tariff exemption for electronics conveniently benefited Tesla and, by extension, its CEO, Elon Musk, who bankrolled a multimillion-dollar campaign to re-elect Trump.
The sugar behemoth Florida Crystals, which has lobbied on tariff policy, gave $2m to the main pro-Trump Super Pac, Maga Inc, ahead of Trump slapping tariffs on imported sugar. Reynolds American likewise delivered $2m to the same Super Pac while successfully pushing Trump to crack down on imports of Chinese tobacco products.
Trump relaxed export controls on the microchip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) after the company gave $1million to Maga Inc.
Trump reduced tariffs on Vietnam and removed that country from the United States’s export controls list after the Hanoi government approved his family business’s $1.5bn golf course and real estate project.
Continue reading...Following the recent release of Pokemon Legends: Z-A, The Pokemon Company announced its first mainline games exclusively for the latest Nintendo console.
Total anonymity online is impossible, and it’s dangerous to claim otherwise.
A look at the features for this week's broadcast of the Emmy-winning program, hosted by Jane Pauley.
Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Neptune and Uranus will all be visible at same time in curved line across sky
Six planets will parade across the sky this weekend in a rare celestial spectacle, experts have said.
For the next few days, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Neptune and Uranus will all be visible at the same time in the night sky – although binoculars or a telescope will be needed to spot the latter two planets.
Continue reading...A surprise collectible on Pokemon Day looks just like a tiny Game Boy and plays music on swappable cartridges. Give us the real Game Boy again, come on.
Bobby J. Brown's breakout role was as a police officer on HBO's "The Wire." He appeared in 12 episodes across four seasons.
Bright Data, a company that operates one of the world's largest residential proxy networks, has been running an SDK inside smart TV apps that turns those devices into nodes for web crawling -- collecting data used by AI companies, among other clients -- and most consumers have had no idea it was happening. The company has published more than 200 first-party apps to LG's app store alone and still lists Samsung's Tizen OS and LG's webOS as supported platforms, though LG says the SDK is "not officially supported" and its operation on webOS "is not guaranteed." Google, Amazon, and Roku have all since adopted policies restricting or banning background proxy SDKs, and Bright Data no longer supports those platforms. Several Roku apps still running the SDK disappeared from the store after a journalist with The Verge behind this reporting contacted the company.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Second time in two weeks military used laser to attack what it mistakenly thought was a threat, disrupting air traffic
Democratic members of Congress have expressed astonishment and anger at what they claim is the incompetence of the Trump administration after the US military used a laser on Thursday to shoot down what it thought was a threatening drone on the US-Mexico border in Texas but later turned out to belong to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The apparent confusion between two entities in the US government led to airspace being closed around Fort Hancock, right along the border. It was the second time in two weeks that air traffic was disrupted in the region as a result of a high-energy laser being deployed against drones.
Continue reading...After training as a monk, he left the monastery to go into journalism, writing a syndicated Post column that made him a prominent voice in the peace movement.
Wave of strikes comes after Taliban forces attack Pakistani border troops following earlier action from Islamabad
Pakistan has bombed major cities in Afghanistan including the capital, Kabul, with Islamabad’s defence minister declaring that the hostile neighbours were in a state of “open war” as a cycle of retaliatory attacks escalated further.
Witnesses in Kabul and Kandahar, the southern Afghan city, reported explosions and jets overhead until dawn, while the Taliban government said later that Pakistani surveillance aircraft were still flying over Afghanistan.
Continue reading...Built with over 1,000 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, LillyPod is now online to power scientific research and supercharge the future of medicine.
Feb. 27, 2026 — Lilly this week launched the most powerful AI factory wholly owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company to help its teams make meaningful medical advancements faster, more accurately and at unprecedented scale. Dubbed LillyPod, it’s the world’s first NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX B300 systems.
LillyPod was inaugurated Wednesday at a ribbon-cutting in Indianapolis.
Powered by a DGX SuperPOD with 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, Lilly’s AI factory delivers more than 9,000 petaflops of AI performance. It was assembled in just four months.
“It’s a big day for us with the supercomputer coming on board, but it’s a day 150 years in the making,” said Diogo Rau, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer at Lilly. “LillyPod is a powerful symbol of who we are and why we do this work: to make life better for people around the world. We are, right here, right now, at the right moment to advance biology in a way that has just never been done before.”
Step Behind the Scenes of the LillyPod
Computational power that once required 7 million Cray supercomputers now fits inside a single NVIDIA GPU — and LillyPod contains more than 1,000 of them. This infrastructure enables Lilly’s genomics team to harness 700 terabytes of data using over 290 terabytes of high-bandwidth GPU memory.
“Computation is at the heart of biology and it is at the heart of science,” said Thomas Fuchs, senior vice president and chief AI officer at Lilly. “Being able to compute at scale is not something optional for a company like ours, it is absolutely necessary. So we are building the computational future of medicine and you see that in all areas along the pharmaceutical value chain.”
Lilly’s AI factory is set to support the large-scale training of protein diffusion models, small-molecule graph neural network models and genomics foundation models.
NVIDIA’s full-stack AI factory architecture offered with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD — including accelerated computing, NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking and optimized AI software — provides a secure, scalable platform for the highly regulated workflows of healthcare and life sciences.
NVIDIA Mission Control software allows Lilly to manage its DGX SuperPOD, orchestrate workloads, monitor performance and automate AI operations securely and efficiently.
The supercomputer’s nearly 5,000 connections are built with more than 1,000 pounds of fiber cables. Lilly aims for its new AI supercomputing infrastructure to run on 100% renewable electricity by 2030, using efficient liquid cooling and minimal incremental energy impact.
Advancing Foundation Models, Physical and Agentic AI
LillyPod is more than a tool — it’s a new scientific instrument that brings together proprietary data and advanced AI models.
With this foundation, Lilly teams can analyze genomes, explore billions of chemical possibilities and apply AI across clinical development and manufacturing to design better trials, optimize production and accelerate decision‑making. Together, these capabilities enable faster, more precise and more scalable creation and delivery of medicines.
“LillyPod will usher in a new era of AI-driven drug discovery,” said Tim Coleman, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Lilly. “We believe that computation is foundational to science and that Lilly patients deserve every advantage that we can give them.”
Select models will be made available through Lilly TuneLab, an AI and machine learning platform that provides biotech companies with access to drug discovery models built on proprietary Lilly data generated at a cost of over $1 billion.
As the first drug discovery platform with plans to offer both Lilly models and NVIDIA BioNeMo open foundation models for healthcare and life sciences, TuneLab uses a federated learning infrastructure built on NVIDIA FLARE, which enables biotech companies to tap into powerful proprietary AI models while keeping their data private and separate from other users. As more companies participate, the models improve, benefitting all users and further expanding AI access for the biotech ecosystem.
Historically, drug discovery has been constrained by the physical limits of the wet lab. Even highly productive teams can typically analyze roughly 2,000 molecular ideas per target per year, because each experiment requires physical synthesis and testing.
“Now the supercomputer center essentially just breaks the physical limit [of the wet lab],” said Yue Wang Webster, vice president of research and development informatics at Lilly. “Now in the dry lab, you can test billions of molecule ideas at your fingertips.”
LillyPod removes this constraint by creating a computational dry lab at massive scale, where scientists can simulate and evaluate billions of molecular hypotheses in parallel before committing to physical experiments.
With its internal AI platforms, Lilly employees can also use LillyPod to build chatbots, agentic workflows and research lab agents without reinventing the wheel.
By combining science, data and compute power, Lilly and NVIDIA are breaking new ground for AI in life sciences.
“This machine is exactly how AI should be used,” said Fuchs. “It should be used for science. It should be used to lessen suffering and improve the human condition.”
More from HPCwire
Source: Rory Kelleher, NVIDIA
The post Lilly Launches LillyPod NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD for Genomics and Drug Discovery AI appeared first on HPCwire.
Department of State authorises non-essential officials to leave, with embassy staff told to book flights to anywhere
The US has authorised the departure of non-essential government workers and their families from Israel as the threat of an American strike on Iran looms.
US citizens should “consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available”, the Department of State advisory added. It also urged against travel to Israel.
Continue reading...IAG reports record operating profits on margins of more than 15% at British Airways and sister airline Iberia
British Airways’ owner, International Airlines Group, has announced a sharp rise in annual profits to almost £4bn despite a slight fall in passenger numbers in 2025.
Pre-tax profits across IAG increased by 20% to €4.5bn (£3.9bn), with record operating profits on margins of more than 15% at BA and its sister airline Iberia.
Continue reading...TORONTO and AMSTERDAM, Feb. 27, 2026 — Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and Equinix, Inc. today announced they have entered into a joint agreement to purchase atNorth—a leading Nordic high-density colocation and built-to-suit data center provider—from Partners Group, one of the largest firms in the global private markets industry.
Photo of one of the atNorth facilities in the Nordics
The US$4 billion enterprise value transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. The agreement between CPP Investments and Equinix will support atNorth in its continued rapid scaling, through capturing opportunities created by rising demand for data center infrastructure. CPP Investments will invest approximately US$1.6 billion, owning an approximate 60% controlling interest, and Equinix will own an approximate 40% stake. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive upon close to Equinix’s adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) per share.
atNorth’s portfolio includes eight operational data centers alongside several sites under development across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, as well as plans for further expansion, with 1 GW of secured power and a considerable amount of additional future capacity planned. Designed to meet increasing demand for AI and high-performance computing, several of the company’s facilities are liquid cooling-enabled to support high-density workloads. Across its portfolio, atNorth integrates renewable energy sourcing, heat reuse initiatives and efficient modular design to advance circular economy principles and minimize environmental impact.
“This acquisition is a powerful validation of atNorth’s journey and its market position as the leading Nordics data center platform,” said Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth. “It further illustrates the strategic importance of the region as Europe’s rising AI powerhouse. I’m extremely proud to announce the next step in our chapter, welcoming this investment from CPP Investments and Equinix, which will enable access to capital, global enterprise, and hyperscale relationships, and supply chain strength required to scale at pace. Our strategy remains firmly rooted in the Nordics, and we will continue to operate independently under the atNorth brand, preserving our dedication to the communities where we operate and the culture and values that have defined our success to date.”
“This transaction builds on our long-standing and highly productive relationship with Equinix,” said Maximilian Biagosch, Senior Managing Director & Global Head of Real Assets, CPP Investments. “It demonstrates our conviction and commitment to the data center sector, where demand continues to accelerate, fueled by continued strong enterprise demand as well as cloud and AI adoption. The Nordics are an attractive market for data center growth and the opportunity to partner with Equinix on this acquisition allows us to deploy capital at scale into a high-quality platform, helping us deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns for CPP contributors and beneficiaries.”
“The scalable sites of atNorth are very complementary to Equinix’s connectivity services and global footprint. Combined with our joint focus on sustainability, this acquisition is expected to enhance our ability to help customers unlock the full potential of the Nordics’ expanding digital landscape,” explained Bruce Owen, President, EMEA, Equinix. “For businesses looking to scale with resilience, Equinix offers a future-ready infrastructure for long-term success, maintaining the jurisdictional and data sovereignty of organizations operating in the region. We are delighted to partner with CPP Investments, whose long-term track record of investing in the sector is highly complementary to Equinix’s connectivity services.”
There are multiple factors contributing to the Nordics’ burgeoning status as a critical hub for the next generation of digital growth. The Nordics region is widely recognized for its strong and resilient economy, supported by a long‑standing emphasis on innovation, research and technical expertise. Renowned worldwide for its leadership in environmentally sustainable projects, the Nordic region provides access to renewable energy sources, bolstered by its naturally cool climates.
Highlights / Key Facts
About atNorth
atNorth is the leading Nordic data center company that offers cost-effective, scalable high-density colocation and built-to-suit services trusted by industry-leading organizations. With sustainability at its core, atNorth’s data centers run on renewable energy resources and support circular economy principles. All atNorth sites leverage innovative design, power efficiency, and intelligent operations to provide long-term infrastructure and flexible colocation deployments. atNorth is headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland and operates eight data centers in strategic locations across the Nordics, as well as a ninth under construction in Kouvola, Finland, a tenth site in Ølgod, Denmark and an eleventh campus in Stockholm, Sweden. The business has also announced a new mega-site development in the Sollefteå Municipality in Sweden.
About CPP Investments
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Canada Pension Plan Fund in the best interest of the more than 22 million contributors and beneficiaries. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, we make investments around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and alternative strategies including in partnership with funds. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York City, São Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm’s length from governments. At December 31, 2025, the Fund totaled C$780.7 billion.
About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) shortens the path to boundless connectivity anywhere in the world. Its digital infrastructure, data center footprint and interconnected ecosystems empower innovations that enhance our work, life and planet. Equinix connects economies, countries, organizations and communities, delivering seamless digital experiences and cutting-edge AI—quickly, efficiently and everywhere.
Source: Equinix
The post CPP Investments and Equinix to Acquire atNorth for $4B appeared first on HPCwire.
EPA rolls back rules as chemical firms claim provisions in RMP protection system too expensive to implement
The Trump administration is slowly dismantling the federal disaster management system that protects the nation from chemical catastrophes, such as fires and explosions at high-risk facilities.
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Response Management Program (RMP) requires more than 12,500 high-risk facilities to develop protocols to prevent catastrophes, or limit fallout, and was largely designed to protect workers, first responders, and fence-line communities.
Continue reading...COLLEGE PARK, Md., Feb. 27, 2026 — IonQ has announced that it has successfully deployed the technology powering the Romanian National Quantum Communication Infrastructure (RoNaQCI). This initiative represents one of the largest and most complex operational quantum key distribution (QKD) networks in Europe and one of the largest of its kind outside of China.
Delivered in partnership with the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest and RoEduNet, Romania’s national research and education network, the project marks a major milestone in Europe’s efforts to protect critical communications against current and future cyber threats. The nationwide network is built exclusively using IonQ’s commercially available QKD technology, demonstrating that quantum-secure communications are scalable and operational for national infrastructure today.
“IonQ is proud to support this large operational quantum-secure communications network deployed in Europe, and to directly contribute to the realization of EuroQCI, which is building Europe’s flagship quantum communication infrastructure,” said Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO of IonQ. “This deployment of QKD at national scale supports critical security initiatives and protects sensitive communications across government, healthcare, research, education, and data center environments.”
Romania’s quantum infrastructure now includes 36 quantum-secured links spanning more than 1,500 kilometers, accounting for more than 20 percent of Europe’s terrestrial quantum communications infrastructure to date. This network connects six major metropolitan areas including Bucharest, Iași, Timișoara, Craiova, Cluj-Napoca, and Constanța, to ensure secure data movement through end-to-end distribution of encryption keys transported in a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) network combined with data traffic in C-band across the metropolitan part of the network.
“Our newly deployed national QKD infrastructure is an important milestone both for Romania and for the EuroQCI effort,” said Prof. Pantelimon George Popescu, Head of the Quantum Computing Laboratory at POLITEHNICA Bucharest. “This network establishes a practical foundation for secure data exchange across Romania and contributes to the broader European effort to build interoperable quantum communications networks.”
All QKD systems deployed across the network were supplied by IonQ’s subsidiary, ID Quantique, ensuring consistent performance, interoperability, and security at a national scale. The project brought together a broad consortium of 12 Romanian universities, seven research institutes, three national agencies, and additional public and private stakeholders.
This news follows IonQ’s continued work to accelerate quantum-secure communications across Europe as part of the European quantum communications infrastructure. Most recently, IonQ announced a partnership with the Slovak Academy of Sciences to deploy Slovakia’s first national quantum communication network and has launched the Geneva Quantum Network in Switzerland. IonQ also joined Q-Alliance with the government of Italy, and designated Oxford, UK as its EMEA headquarters, reinforcing the company’s commitment to supporting Europe’s quantum initiatives.
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the forthcoming IonQ Tempo, will be the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.
Source: IonQ
The post IonQ Delivers One of the Largest Operational Quantum Key Distribution Networks in Europe appeared first on HPCwire.
OpenAI has closed what is now the largest private financing in history -- a $110 billion round at a $730 billion pre-money valuation that more than doubles the $40 billion raise it completed just a year ago, itself a record for a private tech company at the time. Amazon invested $50 billion, SoftBank put in $30 billion, and Nvidia committed $30 billion, and additional investors are expected to join as the round progresses. The valuation is a sharp jump from the $500 billion OpenAI commanded in a secondary financing in October, and the round dwarfs recent raises by rivals Anthropic ($30 billion) and xAI ($20 billion). The company has been telling investors it is now targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, a more measured figure than the $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments CEO Sam Altman had touted months earlier. OpenAI is projecting more than $280 billion in total revenue by 2030, split roughly equally between consumer and enterprise. ChatGPT now has over 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million paying subscribers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This blog is now closed, you can read our full report here
Both sides are reporting they have inflicted heavy casualties on each other, but it is difficult to know the true numbers when they are presenting sharply divergent figures.
Pakistan’s information minister Attaullah Tarar claims 133 Afghan Taliban fighters were killed, with more than 200 injured. Of its own soldiers, Tarar says that two were killed in the cross-border fighting, while three were injured.
The UK is deeply concerned by the significant escalation in tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We urge both sides to take immediate steps toward de‑escalation, avoid further harm to civilians, and re‑engage in mediated dialogue.
Continue reading...Guinness World Records has declared Fancy the world’s oldest horse. She will be 38 in April.
As Trump leaves the threat of war on the table amid nuclear talks with Iran, the State Department urges Americans to "consider leaving Israel" while they can.
A mayor and a federal lawmaker called for an investigation into the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind blind refugee who went missing after being released by Border Patrol.
Escalating tensions between the two nations flared into open conflict, as Pakistan’s defense minister said his country’s patience with the Taliban had run out.
Pakistan bombed major Afghan cities and declared "open war" after Afghanistan's Taliban rulers claimed an unprecedented aerial attack on Islamabad.
The Trump administration is embracing an intimidation strategy to silence critical media coverage. Here’s how it works: A federal agency launches a pretextual investigation into a perceived enemy, keeps the investigation open to coerce compliance, and resists any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions.
There’s no better example than the Federal Trade Commission’s retaliatory investigation of Media Matters for America for its critical coverage of one of the Trump administration’s most powerful allies.
Such investigations aim stifle speech and chill the questioning of those in power. They’re an acute danger to nonprofit organizations that Americans rely on for critical information. That’s why 17 nonprofit organizations, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The brief, authored by Albert Sellars LLP, asks the appellate court to uphold a preliminary injunction to protect Media Matters’ speech rights.
Media Matters is a media watchdog. In 2023, it published an article detailing how advertising from companies like Apple and IBM appeared next to pro-Nazi and other antisemitic content on X. The platform’s owner, Elon Musk, responded with what he called a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters, alleging the nonprofit systematically manipulated X to defame his company.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called on “conservative state Attorneys General” to investigate; Missouri and Texas did just that. Then the FTC followed suit seeking details concerning Media Matters’ reporting, communications with third parties, and six years of its financial information, potentially including donors.
The FTC’s intent was clear. Chair Andrew Ferguson vowed to target “the radical left” and “progressives.” The District of Columbia federal district court concluded that the FTC’s investigation was ““a straightforward First Amendment violation.”
This tactic of retaliatory investigation has been mirrored by other federal agencies, particularly the Department of Justice as it targets hospitals providing gender-affirming care, and the Federal Communications Commission as its tries to quiet media organizations.
And that’s just one way the Trump administration attacks speech rights.
For instance, the Justice Department is trying to use the FACE Act – legislation designed to protect abortion clinics and patents from violent intimidation — to stifle newsgathering. Pointing to a provision referencing places of worship, the DOJ is prosecuting journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for the crime of reporting on a protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The claims are farcical: Lemon stands accused of meeting with activists before a protest, not disclosing the location of the protest until it happened, interviewing protesters and congregants, and getting in the face of the pastor while asking hard questions. The indictment, which was rejected by a magistrate and appellate court, is even less specific on Fort’s alleged crime; the administration seems to contend she violated the law by standing beside Lemon when he was interviewing the pastor.
The same chilling intent is evident in the recent search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home and the seizure of her devices. The warrant greenlighted the search because Natanson’s articles allegedly contained national defense information said to be provided by a government contractor. But the search wasn’t just focused on their alleged conversations; it was all-inclusive. The feds captured an account on the encrypted messaging app Signal with more than 1,000 confidential sources from more than 120 agencies. In a hearing last Friday, a federal judge in Virginia lambasted prosecutors for failing to disclose that news reporters are protected from such searches and seizures by the Privacy Protection Act. And it was revealed that the government had tried multiple times to get a broader warrant, which the court had rejected.
Anyone who works with investigative reporters knows that the seizure of a Signal account effectively halts their ability to do their jobs. And that was the goal: silencing a journalist reporting on how government workers are reacting to the abuses of their employer.
The Trump administration’s anti-speech campaign doesn’t only scare journalists. The Department of Homeland Security has, for instance, deployed administrative subpoenas to unmask anonymous social media accounts critical of the violent activities of immigration agents. From the founding of this country, the right to speak anonymously has been protected under the First Amendment. Federalists Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay signed the Federalist Papers under the “Publius” name; Anti-Federalists also published under pseudonyms. “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” the Supreme Court wrote in the 1995 McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission case. “It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation-and their ideas from suppression-at the hand of an intolerant society.”
None of these Trump administration actions are intended to uphold a legal principle. They are intended to punish and intimidate. In Media Matters’ brief supporting the continued injunction, its attorneys write that the federal investigation “has breathed new life into the ‘culture of fear’ within Media Matters. Employees refrain from investigating ‘even tangentially-related public figures and events because they could be flashpoints for further retaliation.’”
That’s the strategy in the Lemon and Fort prosecutions, Natanson’s search and seizure, and the administrative subpoenas aiming to identify anonymous accounts. The administration seeks to instill fear, but we will not be chilled.
The coalition behind the amicus brief includes the Press Freedom Defense Fund, CalMatters, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, the Dangerous Speech Project, Defending Rights & Dissent, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Lion Publishers, MuckRock Foundation, The National Coalition Against Censorship, Open Vallejo, the Project On Government Oversight, Public Knowledge, and Reporters Without Borders USA.
The post Trump Uses the Courts to Intimidate Critics. The Media Must Fight Back. appeared first on The Intercept.
A minor update, I decided not to correct the angle rates. Main reason is, for the Tilts, where it’s having most impact, more advanced smoothing will be introduced. The change in the rates is an effective speedup and the better smoothing will naturally allow for faster rates, while slowing the transitions down a bit in itself, so in a way they’ll partially cancel each other out. OTOH, the migration would make working with XML backups between versions harder, it doesn’t seem worth it.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ballooning memory prices are forecast to kill off entry-level PCs, leading to a decline in global shipments this year -- and a similar effect is going to hit smartphones. Analyst biz Gartner is projecting a drop in PC shipments of more than 10 percent during 2026, and a decline of around 8 percent for smartphones, all due to the AI-driven memory shortage. Some types of memory have doubled or quadrupled in price since last year, and Gartner believes DRAM and NAND flash used in PCs and phones is set for a further 130 percent rise by the end of 2026. The upshot of this is that the budget PC will disappear, simply because vendors won't be able to build them at a price that will satisfy cost-conscious buyers, according to Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal. "Because the price of memory is increasing so much, vendors lose the ability to provide entry-level PCs -- those below about $500," he told The Register. PC makers could just raise the price of their cheap and cheerful boxes to above that level to compensate for the memory hike, however, price-sensitive buyers simply won't bite, he added. Another factor expected to add to declining fortunes of the PC industry this year is AI devices -- systems equipped with special hardware for accelerating AI tasks, typically via a neural processing unit (NPU) embedded in the CPU. These systems were predicted to take the market by storm, but they require more memory to support AI processing and vendors like to mark them up to a premium price. "Historically, downgrading specifications was the way to go when prices were being squeezed, but that's difficult here," Atwal said. "The thinking was that the average price [of AI PCs] would fall this year, and lead to more adoption," said Atwal, "but that's not happening." The lack of killer applications isn't helping either.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Media Matters over critical coverage. It’s just one example of the administration’s approach
The Trump administration is embracing an intimidation strategy to silence critical media coverage. Here’s how it works: a federal agency launches a pretextual investigation into a perceived enemy, keeps the investigation open to coerce compliance, and resists any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions.
There’s no better example than the Federal Trade Commission’s retaliatory investigation of Media Matters for America for its critical coverage of one of the Trump administration’s most powerful allies.
David Bralow is counsel to the Intercept
Continue reading...As a potential 2027 stoppage looms, MLB owners argue a wage cap is vital for parity. In truth, it’s just another way to boost their assets and fleece fans
Baseball should be on a high. Spring training has begun and a record-breaking winter makes the games especially welcome – baseball means the good weather is coming soon. Injuries marred the NBA playoffs and the Super Bowl was a dud, but no sport settled its championship last year better than baseball, as the Los Angeles Dodgers barely and thrillingly defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in a seven-game epic that ranks among the greatest World Series ever played.
Instead of basking in the afterglow, however, the game is spending this abundance of capital preparing for war: a 2027 work stoppage portends to be the most catastrophic since the summer of 1994, when the players went on strike and the owners responded by cancelling the World Series for the first time in 90 years.
Continue reading...Union-backed pledge urges fast food employers to protect workers’ rights as immigration raids fuel fear and walkouts
Fast food workers in California are demanding employers sign a pledge reaffirming workers’ rights amid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at workplaces across the US.
The California Fast Food Workers Union, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, drafted a Constitutional Pledge to California Workers’ Rights for workplaces to sign that affirms a commitment to protecting workers and “keep ICE from going where they are not allowed”.
Continue reading...Scientists say crackdown on gender-affirming care could have impact on healthcare of all Americans
As more health systems end gender-affirming care for patients amid a crackdown from the Trump administration, scientists and advocates say the science of sex and gender is being misrepresented – and will have major repercussions for the healthcare for all Americans.
Trump officials “don’t actually understand the science at all”, said Jey McCreight, who is the founder of Beyond X&Y and has a doctoral degree in human genomics. McCreight, who uses they/them pronouns, added that using misinformation to limit who can seek healthcare is a warning for all patients.
Continue reading...Commentary: The idea of a touchscreen MacBook doesn't worry me after a recent report on how it could work.
Early tax refund data shows the typical check is so far 14% higher than a year ago. Here's what Americans are planning to do with the money.
The Knight Rider animation is set as default. However, I’m unable to change it to a solid color or any other option in VESC tool. When I attempt to change the color and click and write, nothing happens. Additionally, the headlights are always off, but they are activated in the refloat configuration. What am I doing wrong?
EPA found only 27 of 219 plants needed upgrades; 71 later got exemptions as Donald Trump scrapped mercury limits
Almost all coal-fired power plants in the US had the ability to comply with rules limiting their emission of dangerous pollutants such as mercury that can cause brain damage in children. Despite this, Donald Trump’s administration decided to demolish the standards anyway.
Last week, the Trump administration said it is loosening restrictions on air toxins from mercury, lead and other heavy metals that are released by coal plants. Such pollution is known to be neurotoxic and has been linked to irreversible brain damage in children and infants, as well as heart disease and cancer in adults.
Continue reading...Former secretary of state says hearing is an attempt to deflect attention from Trump. Plus, the textile artist weaving patterns to inspire the labor movement
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Hillary Clinton rebuked a congressional committee investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, accusing its Republican members of embarking on a “fishing expedition” intended to “distract attention from President Trump’s actions”.
How did we get here? The Clintons reluctantly agreed to appear in response to a subpoena from the committee’s Republican chair, James Comer, after being threatened with contempt of Congress charges. Both Clintons have previously complained that they are being singled out unfairly to distract public attention from Trump, who had a long friendship with Epstein before breaking with him.
What happens next? Bill Clinton, a former president, will testify later today, also in a closed-door session.
What stage are the bills at? None have been signed into law, and they may face legal challenges. The bills, nonetheless, underscore the determination by Democratic state lawmakers in New Jersey, California, Maryland and Washington state, to undermine Trump’s hardline immigration policy.
How did immigration enforcement get so many resources? The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, approved by the Republicans along party lines in Congress, allocated nearly $30bn to hire and train new ICE agents. The agency embarked on a hiring spree that often used xenophobic slogans in recruitment ads, as well as incentives such as signing bonuses as high as $50,000.
Continue reading...66-year-old rapper is longtime women’s sports supporter
Team did not attend Trump’s State of the Union address
The rapper Flavor Flav will host a Las Vegas event in July to honour the US women’s ice hockey team’s gold medal at the Milano Cortina Olympics and celebrate other female Olympian and Paralympian achievement.
The Hall of Fame rapper announced on X on Thursday that he will host a She Got Game weekend event from 16-19 July in partnership with MGM Resorts to honor the women’s hockey team as well as other female athletes.
Continue reading...Gorton and Denton byelection shatters Labour strategy of neglecting its core base while focusing on Reform defectors
The Gorton and Denton byelection produced Labour’s most feared outcome – the Greens winning and potentially displacing it as the choice of anti-Reform voters. This risk was signposted for months. It is just the latest of the unintended consequences produced by this government: first, a manifesto commitment to not raise taxes that has led to constant U-turns on spending, then a clampdown on immigration that is creating shortages of medical staff, and now an attempt to stop Andy Burnham from challenging Keir Starmer that has super-charged an insurgent Green party.
Clear though the risk was, Labour simply refused to acknowledge it. Until very recently, No 10 strategy, as defined by Morgan McSweeney, was built around neglecting, even insulting, progressive voters, and seeking to win back defections to Reform. Come the next general election, so the argument went, progressives would sheepishly have to back Labour, just as leftwing voters in France got behind Emmanuel Macron when push came to shove.
Continue reading...State election leaders have been raising concerns about the intent behind Trump’s recent moves on elections
After the FBI seized elections materials from Fulton county last month, Donald Trump returned once again to his false claim that he beat Joe Biden in Georgia in the 2020 election.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump said to Dan Bongino on the former FBI staffer’s podcast earlier this month . “We should take over the voting in at least – many – 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Later that week, it was revealed that the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was present at the Fulton county raid, led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines – taking some machines to examine – last May to identify what her office said were potential vulnerabilities in the island’s electronic voting systems. Taken together, Trump’s comments and actions are pointing toward a possibility Democratic voters have until now only contemplated: the federal government seizing voting machines across the country in a way that disrupts voting in the 2026 midterms.
If the federal government declared some digital voting machines off-limits at the last minute, it would set off a chain of emergency court hearings, leaving elections directors scrambling to find another way to print and count ballots before those cases resolved. Early voting could crater. Election Day voting could be curtailed. And results might not be ready for weeks.
Continue reading...Printers may be on the cheaper side, but the trade-off comes when you run out of ink.
A woman convicted of stowing away on a flight out of JFK Airport in 2024 has allegedly done it again, this time at Newark Airport, sources say.
China is playing the long game over Iran Expert comment thilton.drupal
Beijing’s diplomatic restraint over the US’s standoff with Tehran should not be mistaken for unreliability or indifference.
Despite close ties with Tehran, China has refrained from coming out in strong support of its partner as the US continues its military build-up in the Gulf.
Amid US threats to attack Iran, Beijing has focused on encouraging diplomacy and regional security. On 24 February, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson reiterated this position, saying that ‘We hope various parties will exercise restraint and resolve differences through dialogue.’
For some, China’s ostensibly neutral emphasis on restraint and dialogue in the face of US military threats may seem like it has abandoned Tehran, reinforcing the view that it is an unreliable partner. This follows China’s inaction after the US kidnapped its close partner Nicolás Maduro and established control over Venezuela’s oil sector, in which Beijing had invested billions.
However, this is not new. China has always avoided backing Iran militarily. Beijing criticized the US and Israel’s strikes on Iran during the 12-day war in 2025 but did not provide material support to Tehran. Despite being a comprehensive strategic partner to Iran, Beijing also supported UN-led economic sanctions against Iran before the 2015 nuclear deal and has since procrastinated on injecting investment into the Iranian economy.
Instead, China sees Iran as a long game, which the US’s maximum pressure campaign may inadvertently help it win.
Beijing’s restrained statements have raised questions about China’s reliability in supporting its allies in their hour of need.
For many Western observers, China’s reserved stance on Iran is surprising given close ties. After all, Beijing and Tehran are comprehensive strategic partners, having signed a 25-year strategic agreement in 2021.
China remains a lifeline for the Iranian economy, which has been hit by international sanctions. In 2025, China bought more than 80 per cent of Iran’s shipped oil, at a significant discount, accounting for 13.5 per cent of all the oil China imported by sea.
Beijing also sought to lessen Iran’s international political isolation in recent years by granting it membership in BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
China’s lack of action can also be seen as undermining its advocacy for a multipolar world order and challenge to US world hegemony. Beijing has enshrined this view in the Global Security Initiative and encapsulated it in its slogan, ‘the East is rising and the West is declining.’ Yet, in practice, Beijing seems to be showing little initiative to assert itself in the Middle East or seriously push for a decline in US influence there.
Beijing’s limited response to both the 12-day war and the Trump administration’s current pressure on Tehran undermines previous narratives that China’s influence in the Middle East was rising. Indeed, since October 7, China has largely taken a backseat in the region, taking little concrete action beyond criticizing Israel over Gaza and calling out the US for threatening and using unilateral force against Iran.
This assessment, however, is hasty. It misses the long-term lessons that the 12-day war revealed about China’s position on the nuclear negotiations. It also overlooks Beijing’s main objectives for its future relations with Tehran.
First, Chinese officials publicly oppose Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is not at odds with Beijing’s position of respecting ‘Iran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy as a state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.’ Although China is still officially a member of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal, it supports a new agreement on the issue.
Beijing is concerned that a nuclear Iran may trigger a regional war. Such a war would risk the blocking of vital shipping lanes and obstruct China’s oil imports from the Gulf. It could also lead to Iran targeting the Gulf states, where China’s commercial interests far outweigh its ties with Tehran.
By obtaining nuclear weapons, Iran would shift the balance of power in its favour and set a new deterrence mechanism that may restrain any future US or Israeli military actions. This may destabilize the Middle East for generations by triggering a race towards nuclear weapons. More broadly, it could also encourage China’s regional rivals, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, to also seek to become nuclear powers as a means of deterring Beijing’s assertiveness.
US diplomatic efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear breakout potential in exchange for removing sanctions therefore align with China’s preference for a peaceful solution. Beijing has publicly voiced its opposition to any strikes on Iran or infringement of its sovereignty.
However, Beijing’s has also long been opposed to a nuclear-armed Iran. Given this, it may even be fair to assume that Beijing would tolerate limited US-Israeli strikes on Iran as a negotiating tactic if they could secure a diplomatic breakthrough that resolved the Iranian nuclear issue without triggering an all-out regional war.
Second, China sees a weakened Iranian regime as both a risk and an opportunity. Beijing doesn’t want to see a total regime collapse that would be replaced by a Western-aligned government. At the same time, Beijing can capitalize on Iran’s weakness to increase the regime’s dependence on China.
The importance of relations with China has been strongly emphasized by both supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. During his August visit to Beijing, the president underscored Tehran’s commitment to implement its 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement with China.
Specifically, China may intensify its exports of dual-use technology to Iran, which may help rebuild parts of Tehran’s missile and drone strategy. However, reports about Chinese air defence systems, fighter jets or supersonic anti-ship missiles potentially being sold to Iran should be considered with caution. China has not confirmed the sales, and Iran has a vested interest in exaggerating the depths of bilateral relations to establish deterrence.
A shout of ‘racist’ could also be heard during the segment at France’s version of the Oscars
A tribute to Brigitte Bardot at the Césars, France’s version of the Oscars, on Thursday was greeted with boos. In a video clip posted on social media, boos can clearly be heard among the applause as the tributes, and a shout of “racist!” is also audible.
Bardot, who died in December aged 91, became arguably the most celebrated figure in postwar French cinema for films such as And God Created Woman and Contempt, but after quitting acting in the early 1970s her later years were marred by increasing political activity on the far right, resulting in a string of convictions for inciting racial hatred.
Continue reading...The U. S. is offering $5 million each for information on Rene Arzate Garcia and his brother Alfonso Arzate Garcia.
Streaming service says ‘deal no longer financially attractive’ at price required to match Paramount Skydance offer
Netflix has walked away from its planned takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, declining to raise its offer for the media conglomerate’s storied Hollywood studios and streaming business after it determined a sweetened rival offer from Paramount Skydance to be “superior”.
In a statement on Thursday evening, the Netflix co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said: “At the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive.”
Continue reading...Hannah Spencer elected as party’s first MP in northern England as vote share for Keir Starmer’s party plummets
The Green party has pulled off a landmark victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection in a significant blow to Keir Starmer, who vowed to “keep on fighting” after the humiliating defeat.
Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.
Continue reading...Met arrests man on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage after slogans including ‘Zionist war criminal’ sprayed
A 38-year-old man has been arrested after the statue of Winston Churchill outside the Houses of Parliament was defaced with graffiti calling the former prime minister a “Zionist war criminal”.
The Metropolitan police said the man was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage on Friday morning.
Continue reading...The bright colors of the sponges have a meaning tied to their intended use. Here's a guide to sponge colors and when to use each type.
Despite claims, polls and economists say tariffs and structural pressures keep US households under strain
The affordability crisis is over, Donald Trump told the US on Tuesday. The president’s state of the union address put the blame for soaring prices squarely on the “dirty, rotten” lies of the Democrats and claimed prices were now “plummeting downward”.
“Soon you will see numbers that few people would think were possible to achieve just a short time ago,” Trump said.
Continue reading...The US spent months promoting a false case for the invasion of Iraq. This time, we’re in the dark about Washington’s goals
In October 2002, George W Bush laid out his case for taking the US to war against Iraq in a half-hour speech televised around the world. Bush warned that Saddam Hussein’s regime could attack the US “on any given day” with chemical or biological weapons, including anthrax, mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin. He argued Iraq was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and could develop a bomb in less than a year. And if those warnings weren’t enough to terrify the US public, Bush invoked the ultimate fear of an unprovoked nuclear attack: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
The world soon learned that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was based on manipulated intelligence and outright lies; the Iraqi regime no longer had any weapons of mass destruction and was not developing them. But the administration’s relentless campaign to convince Americans that Saddam was a threat had paid off by generating significant support. As the invasion got under way in March 2003, many polls showed public approval of the war at more than 70%. Bush’s own approval rating hovered around a similar high, underscoring that war can boost the popularity of America’s commander-in-chief as few other things can.
Continue reading...If you want the best picture quality you can buy, you have to go OLED. Here are the best TVs I've tested.
Decision by Netflix to walk away from takeover leaves workers anxious about possible merger of news networks
Netflix’s decision to walk away from its $83bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) has left some staffers working at CBS News and CNN panicking about the future as the two top-tier news operations come under the same roof.
With Paramount Skydance emerging as the winning bidder, a deal that still requires the approval of WBD shareholders and government regulators, they fear the merging of the two networks – and, with it, the potential for a significant amount of job cuts. Some CNN employees are also nervous about Paramount’s Trump-friendly ownership and leadership enacting ideologically driven programming changes at the network, with particular concern about the specter of the CBS News editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, possibly getting a significant role.
Continue reading...The Searching Mothers of Sonora are looking for Nancy Guthrie in Arizona and Mexico. They said officials aren’t doing enough to find the missing 84-year-old.
Novartis has settled a suit by Henrietta Lacks' estate alleging the pharmaceutical giant unjustly profited off cells were taken from her tumor without her knowledge in 1951.
Kazakhstan is rewriting its constitution. Is it an exercise in authoritarian modernisation? 18 March 2026 — 2:00PM TO 3:00PM Anonymous (not verified) Online
This session will ask what a new constitution means for Kazakhstan’s future.
This session will ask what a new constitution means for Kazakhstan’s future.
In late January, Kazakhstan unveiled sweeping constitutional amendments that would reshape the majority of its current constitution, introducing a vice presidency, dissolving the upper chamber of parliament and restoring a fully proportional party list system.
While the government frames these changes as modernisation and a move away from a super presidential model, critics argue they further consolidate executive power and weaken already limited checks and balances. The reforms also foreground questions of succession ahead of presidential elections due to take place in 2029. Can Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev succeed in remaking Kazakhstan’s constitutional order?
This discussion will explore:
• What the reforms reveal about Kazakhstan’s political trajectory.
• The implications for presidential succession and the greater latitude the amendments accord to the executive branch.
• The implications for Nazarbayev-era elites.
• Kazakhstan’s relationship with Russia.
With original dialogue in Turkish, this shuffling of potential partners in a sequence of meaningless encounters ranks with the finest auteur movies
I spent Valentine’s Day not with my wife but with 18 Turkish women. No, wait, I can explain. It’s a new game called Speed Dates – Winter Edition, which I only chanced upon when I searched “Winter Games” on Xbox Live hoping for some Olympics fare. And boy, did I find it!
The game is in Turkish, with English subtitles. It already feels arthouse; like those films Channel 4 used to show with a red triangle in the corner of the screen.
Continue reading...Winter Storm Hernando, which struck north-eastern regions this week, described as a ‘bomb cyclone’
Winter Storm Hernando swept across the north-eastern US on Sunday and into the start of the week, unleashing blizzard conditions across much of the region as heavy snowfall combined with gale-force winds. Blizzard warnings were issued for several cities including New York City, Portland and Boston. More than 10,000 flights were cancelled, and schools closed in many states.
The storm intensified rapidly through Sunday. Coastal areas of Massachusetts and Rhode Island recorded gusts of about 70mph, and Montauk Point in New York reporting stronger gusts of 84mph.
Continue reading...You know what we do here at ProPublica: investigative reporting that sparks change and holds power to account. As we near the end of February, we wanted to share five examples of how our investigations have already done that this year.
From Colorado to Massachusetts to Texas, ProPublica investigations, many of them published in collaboration with local partners, led to proposed changes to laws and practices. And while we report on the details of how these changes happen, we aim to never lose sight of how these changes could affect actual people. This may mean, for example, people under New York’s guardianship system receiving better care, or survivors of rape in Massachusetts being able to pursue justice without a deadline.
Read on to learn more about our recent reporting that’s making an impact.
More than a decade ago, Colorado created the first regulated recreational marijuana market in the nation. Lawmakers promised the state’s voters that the move to legalize marijuana would drive out the black market and create a safer environment through regulation. But, as Denver Gazette reporters Christopher Osher and Evan Wyloge revealed in a January investigation in partnership with ProPublica, hemp derivatives have jeopardized that promise.
For years, hemp, which is a close cousin of marijuana and is cheaper to produce, seeped into the Colorado marijuana market. While Colorado allows the use of hemp in some items such as clothing and rope, the state banned companies from using it to make intoxicating products sold in the state. Our investigation found that despite the ban, the Colorado legislature and regulators failed to adopt critical regulations that other states have employed to keep harmful hemp products off the shelves. One result, some marijuana manufacturers say, is that some companies are sending samples and products that they know will pass mandatory testing to labs; dispensaries, meanwhile, might receive products that could be contaminated with chemical solvents, fungus or pesticides.
But, as Osher and Wyloge reported this month, Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division may now require independent labs or outside vendors to collect product samples for testing before they can be sold. That would remove marijuana manufacturers’ ability to choose which products they send in.
Read the full story.
U.S. senators introduced legislation this month that would require prescription drug labels to identify where the medication was made, adding momentum to a yearslong campaign to bring more transparency to the often elusive generic drug industry.
Current labels often list only a distributor or repackager of a medication and sometimes provide no information at all. The Clear Labels Act, introduced by Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., calls for labels to disclose the original manufacturer as well as the suppliers that produced key ingredients.
A spokesperson for the trade group for brand-name drugmakers told ProPublica that the industry would “welcome conversations about how to strengthen the biopharmaceutical supply chain.” The generic drug lobbying group said that additional labeling requirements would impose “significant costs in exchange for limited returns,” adding that drug manufacturers already disclose country of origin information under U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules.
Our reporters had to file public records requests and sue the FDA in federal court to obtain information about where generic drugs are made and whether government inspectors had flagged those factories for safety or quality concerns. We ultimately created a first-of-its-kind tool that allows consumers to find the information themselves.
Read the full story.
Last year, WBUR and ProPublica told the story of a woman who, according to a police report, had been raped and stabbed after accepting a ride in 2005 from a man who said he recognized her from college. DNA testing later connected a man accused of multiple assaults to her case, but prosecutors had to drop charges under Massachusetts’ statute of limitations.
Under Massachusetts law, prosecutors have only 15 years to file charges after an alleged rape — and it’s nearly impossible to bring charges past that statute of limitations even if new evidence emerges. That places Massachusetts behind almost every other state in the country. Attempts to expand that window have failed every year since 2011 in part because defense attorneys have opposed changes, arguing a longer deadline risks violating the rights of the accused.
WBUR’s Willoughby Mariano reported that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wants to eliminate that deadline for rape cases when DNA evidence exists. The provision, which is included in Healey’s budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year, needs to pass both chambers of the state Legislature. If enacted, it would affect cases where the statute of limitations has not yet expired and future cases, but not older cases.
Read the full story.
Two years after ProPublica’s Jake Pearson first documented New York’s dire shortage of guardians — and the substandard care some provide — state lawmakers introduced legislation to boost spending on the system by $15 million a year. It would be an unprecedented cash infusion for a bureaucracy that has long struggled to care for the tens of thousands of disabled or elderly New Yorkers who cannot care for themselves.
The new bill, called the Good Guardianship Act, aims to help the most vulnerable segment of this population: those who are too poor to pay for a private guardian and who have no family or friends willing to serve. Advocates say the Good Guardianship Act is the most promising step to date in improving the system — if it can get the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The proposal follows a 2024 ProPublica investigation that revealed how the state’s guardianship system was failing this group in particular by conducting little to no oversight of guardians, some of whom provided substandard care and exploited those they were charged with looking after. The stories also prompted the state attorney general to open an investigation into several guardianship providers and spurred the court system to appoint a special counsel to enact reforms.
Read the full story.
For the first time since Texas criminalized abortion, the state’s medical regulator is instructing doctors on when they can legally terminate a pregnancy to protect the life of the patient — guidance physicians have long sought as women died and doctors feared imprisonment for intervening.
The new mandated training for any doctor providing obstetric care goes over nine case studies for physicians where abortion is considered legal to protect the life of the patient. Some of the scenarios in the training are similar to instances ProPublica investigated, such as miscarriages where a patient’s water breaks before term but there is still a fetal heartbeat or when someone is experiencing complications from an incomplete abortion.
ProPublica’s reporting has shown that pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effect: Sepsis rates spiked for women suffering a pregnancy loss, as did emergency room visits in which miscarrying patients needed a blood transfusion; at least four women in the state died after they didn’t receive timely reproductive care. More than a hundred OB-GYNs said the state’s abortion ban was to blame.
Read the full story.
The post 5 Investigations Sparking Change This Month appeared first on ProPublica.
More than three dozen states cover dental services for people on Medicaid, but with about $900 billion in cuts expected to hit states over the next decade, many programs could roll back dental coverage.
sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: For decades, planetary scientists have pored over a mystery hidden within the Moon rocks retrieved by Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and '70s. Minerals in the rocks record the imprint of a magnetic field, nearly as powerful as Earth's, that existed more than 3.5 billion years ago and seemed to persist for millions of years. But generating a magnetic field requires a dynamo -- a churning, molten core -- and most researchers believed the Moon's tiny core would have long since cooled off, 1 billion years after it formed. Corroborating that picture are other ancient Moon rocks of about the same age that suggest the field was weak -- leaving planetary scientists baffled. Now, researchers are proposing a new way to solve the puzzle. A paper published today in Nature Geoscience theorizes that between 3.5 billion and 4 billion years ago, blobs of titanium-rich magma melted episodically just above the core, rising in plumes that drove volcanic eruptions on the surface. By intermittently stirring up the Moon's core, these bouts of melting would have caused the Moon's magnetic field to flicker on in short, powerful bursts. The paper "links a few different concepts that people were thinking about separately, but hadn't actually brought together," says Sonia Tikoo, a planetary geophysicist at Stanford University who was not involved in the study.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The Delmar School District’s middle and high school was built for a capacity of just under 1,200 students. Today, it serves nearly 1,500 students. That has resulted in officials turning common spaces into classrooms, as state officials have deferred funding for a new school to mitigate that strain for two years now.
In the Delmar School District, fifth through 12th grade students share almost everything. They use the same library, they eat lunch in the same cafeteria, and they use the same sports fields.
That is because Delaware’s southernmost school district only has one building, and both its middle and high school students attend classes there.
The school was built in 2000 for a capacity of just under 1,200 students. But more than 25 years later, the community is facing a persistent problem: a growing student population, which has pushed the district over its capacity by nearly 300 students.
Because of the overcrowding, some Delmar students have classes in the school’s media center. Two classes are held at once in the auditorium. Teachers must leave their classroom during planning periods so other classes can use the space.
Delmar Interim Superintendent Michael Bleile said the district must also navigate access times to the shared lunch room and gym. School officials must determine where to move students with their already limited space if a classroom is being used for state or national testing.
Although district officials do not want the overcrowding to be the norm, Delmar Chief Operating Officer Monet Smith said it can no longer be called a “temporary inconvenience.”
“It’s compromising our teaching and learning at this point,” she said.
Overcrowded schools are not unique to Delmar. It is a problem that multiple Sussex County school districts have faced in recent years.
Officials at the Indian River School District have told Spotlight Delaware that they have needed to retrofit existing storage areas into classrooms to meet the needs of their students.
A spokeswoman for the Delaware Department of Education said there are no administrative consequences or warnings for districts whose building capacity exceeds 100%.
Some school districts aim to address overcrowding by building a new school. If districts want to build a new school, add an expansion, or complete a substantial renovation, officials must seek out state funding and get approval from the Department of Education through the Certificate of Necessity (CN) process.
But multiple Certificate of Necessity requests have failed in recent years.
Last fiscal year, the Delmar School District submitted two requests to “address documented patterns of continued student population growth,” which would allow them to purchase land and construct a new school.
If state officials approved the requests, then 80% of the project cost would be funded through state bonds. The district would have also needed to secure a 20% local contribution through a referendum vote.
The requests were ultimately rejected because funding for school districts were maxed out by a handful of large projects, including a new middle and high school in the Appoquinimink School District and two new vocational high schools.
That pattern has held over, as none of the requests made by school districts were included in the governor’s recommended budget for the upcoming fiscal year, according to the Delaware Department of Education.
Among those rejected were two repeated requests from Delmar, which again sought $1.3 million to purchase land and $32 million to construct a new intermediate school for fifth and sixth graders. That school would allow Delmar to relieve pressure on its existing Middle and High School.
Smith said the district will potentially apply for another Certificate of Necessity again in August, but says if it is rejected, it is “only going to exacerbate our issues.”
Without a Certificate of Necessity, the Delmar School District is making adjustments where it can to address its growing student population.
The assistant principal’s office is now a classroom for students using SAT prep. The Board of Education room could soon become another classroom.
Bleile also used grant money to purchase group tables and SMART boards for teachers to hold small groups in the middle school hallways.
“What’s best for the kids is always going to be at the forefront of every decision we make,” Bleile said. “Turning [the Board of Education room] into a classroom, for example, is what’s gonna be best for kids.”
The district has also contemplated going out for an operational referendum in recent months.
In November, then-Superintendent Andrew O’Neal pointed toward overcrowding, teacher and staff salary increases, and inflation-induced cost increases as reasons for needing to increase taxes. Without those funds, O’Neal said the district may have to reduce staff or programs, postpone essential repairs and “accept our students will not have access to safe, modern learning environments that they deserve.”
Delmar received price quotes on portable trailers for classrooms as part of the potential referendum, but the cost to taxpayers was deemed too high, Smith told Spotlight Delaware.
The board announced one month later that it would not hold a referendum until 2027. If passed, the tax increase would only apply toward Delawareans, and the funds raised would only be applied to the district’s middle and high schools.
Delmar Elementary School is located in Delmar, Md., and is part of the Wicomico County (Md.) Public School District.
Students living across the Maryland-Delaware state line can also attend Delaware’s Delmar School District for middle and high school, but only Delawareans are eligible to vote in a district referendum.
Despite both the middle and high school being located in Delaware, O’Neal previously told Spotlight Delaware the financial burden of an education is still fairly distributed between residents of both states. The number of Delaware residents attending the elementary school is “pretty close” to the number of Maryland residents attending the middle and high school, he said.
The last time the Delmar School District held and passed a referendum was in 2015, when the district raised money for both capital improvements to school facilities and for operating expenses.
Until the district obtains a Certificate of Necessity and holds a referendum, it will have to continue making adjustments, like transitioning offices to classrooms, to meet the needs of its growing student population.
Smith called the thought of there being no plan or opportunity to address the overcrowding “kind of scary and overwhelming.”
“Our staff, our families, our taxpayers, our students, again, expect to have an optimal learning environment, a safe learning environment, and to not know how you’re going to ensure that in the years ahead is just really heavy,” she said.
The post Delmar students face overcrowding as district exceeds capacity appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
An anti-panhandling ordinance has embroiled Delaware’s capital city in controversy for months. City Council members ultimately voted on Wednesday against the ordinance, leaving its proponents unsatisfied with the situation of people standing on street medians, and opponents pleased the city will not face potential legal challenges over its adoption.
In a more decisive vote than many anticipated, the Dover City Council voted 6-3 against an ordinance that would have banned panhandling in city road medians — a common sight in heavily traveled corridors.
The Wednesday night vote came nearly five months after City Councilman David Anderson introduced the ordinance, officially called a “Traffic, Vehicles and Pedestrian Safety” measure, which would have prohibited pedestrians from stopping and standing on street medians.
Since Anderson first presented the ordinance in late October, the proposal has faced dozens of hours of debate among council members and city residents, amendments delaying final vote, threats of legal challenge by the ACLU of Delaware, and even calls for Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings to weigh in on the measure.
Debate has gotten so tense at times that councilmembers’ spouses got involved, personal attacks were waged on social media, and residents on opposite sides of the debate hurled insults at each other across the council chamber.
City leaders discussed the proposal for more than an hour and a half on Wednesday, and 23 residents gave one last public comment before council members ultimately cast their final votes after 9 p.m.
The three council members who voted in favor of the measure — Anderson, Council President Fred Neil and Councilwoman Julia Pillsbury — cited serious traffic safety concerns and hearing support for the ordinance from their constituents as their reasons for supporting it.
“It deals with basically keeping the intersections and the medians flowing and free of those who are not using them for their intended purposes,” Anderson said at the meeting.
Anderson did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s requests for comment after the meeting about the outcome of the vote on the ordinance, an effort he has championed since the fall.
Each of the six elected officials who voted against the ordinance provided a lengthy explanation for their thought process in opting to reject the measure.
Councilman Gerald Rocha, who had expressed tentative support for the proposal at previous council meetings, said he ended up being convinced that the possible legal risks of the ordinance are too strong. Rocha also said he put a lot of stock in the opinion of State Rep. Sean Lynn (D-Dover), who wrote a letter to council opposing the ordinance.
“I didn’t hear anything that says this ordinance, if passed, is going to pass the litmus test in a lawsuit,” Rocha said at the meeting.
Councilwoman Donyale Hall, who has said in the past that she considers herself to be a swing vote on the council, said similarly that she voted against the ordinance because it isn’t in the best interest of taxpayer dollars to “welcome more legal challenge.”
A number of the more than 40 residents sitting and standing in the audience clapped and cheered as additional council members voted against the ordinance and the city clerk announced that it had failed.
Many of the same citizens who have previously spoken about the ordinance came out again ahead of Wednesday’s vote.
Speakers in favor of the ordinance characterized it as purely addressing a safety concern they encounter on a daily basis. Those against it, however, said the city is inviting a legal challenge by passing the measure, and deflecting from directing resources toward the root causes of homelessness.
Five residents spoke in favor of Anderson’s ordinance, while 19 made arguments against the proposal.
Katrina Stubbs, who said she has been homeless multiple times over the past 10 years, said she views the ordinance as separate from the homelessness issue in the city.
“Homelessness, panhandling, mental health – totally different,” Stubbs said. “This is something dealing with safety.”
Dover resident Ronald Eads, on the other hand, said he panhandles frequently on one of the road medians along U.S. Route 13 that city council members have described as a hot spot for loitering activity.
Eads, who said he solicits money to afford a motel room and food for himself and his wife, said peoples’ portrayals of panhandlers as careless and aggressive with passing cars is not accurate.
“You see a car, you don’t run out to a car,” Eads said. “We ask when we approach the cars. We’re not that stupid.”
Community activist Chelle Paul handed out to council members and attendees a packet of potential legal challenges that could stem from the ordinance, including that it leaves too much up to individual police officers’ discretion, and is difficult to enforce.
Paul said she interprets the proposed ordinance as strikingly similar to the previous state law on loitering and solicitation, which was struck down by an agreement between the ACLU and the state’s Attorney General in 2024. She questioned why City Solicitor Dan Griffith had allowed the ordinance to move forward.
Griffith responded that Paul’s research looked like she had taken the proposal and ”put it through an AI,” but said he believes the city’s ordinance to be in line with the updated bill that Jennings announced this year, rather than the previously nullified legislation.
Jared Silberglied, a lawyer for the ACLU of Delaware, wrote in a message to Spotlight Delaware that his organization is pleased that the city council “resoundingly defeated this proposed ordinance.”
“We are closely monitoring strikingly similar legislation proposed by the City of Wilmington and the State of Delaware, and we encourage those public bodies to follow Dover’s example,” he added.
While many of the residents who have worked for months to defeat the ordinance left the meeting pleased, council members were left to reckon with the personal insults and flared tensions stemming from the prolonged debate.
Sudler, who has been perhaps the most vocal opponent of the measure, said after the meeting he was “concerned” by how biting the attacks between council members have become. He cited comments on Facebook about legal fees his family has cost the city in a lawsuit over the city unnecessarily taking land from his family.
“I think we need to get back to being respectful of each other’s positions,” Sudler said. “When we are divided, we don’t do our best job.”
While some council members made vague mentions of the city reconsidering the ordinance in the future, Sudler said he cannot imagine that happening while he is still on council, because he has been such a staunch opponent of it.
Councilman Brian Lewis said he does not believe the city will reintroduce the ordinance, unless the Attorney General’s proposed state law is passed, and the city must begin enforcing that legislation.
Lewis agreed with Sudler that the council has escalated to a state of extreme tension over the ordinance, but he said one positive has been the increased resident turnout and engagement at meetings.
“Most council meetings have a very, very low turnout,” he said. “I’m glad people came out and voiced how they felt.”
The post Dover panhandling ordinance fails following months of controversy appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Purbeck Capital Partners seals deal for business and property rights of toy with model railway maker
For almost six decades Hornby has watched Scalextric drive revenues for its hobby business but on Friday the company said it had decided to sell the famous slot car racing brand for £20m to a little-known buyer.
The model railway company, which also sells toy planes and cars under the Airfix and Corgi brands, has sold the Scalextric business and intellectual property rights to Purbeck Capital Partners.
Continue reading...Javier Milei’s boosters say law will revive employment, but critics decry cuts to severance and longer working hours
Argentina’s senate is poised to approve a sweeping overhaul of labour laws aimed at weakening trade unions and lowering labour costs for businesses.
The government of the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president, Javier Milei, says the initiative will help revive formal employment, after 290,600 registered jobs were lost between December 2023, when he took office, and November 2025.
Continue reading...The president and his allies have never been interested in helping or elevating female athletes. His true feelings were exposed on Sunday
This past week Team USA won gold in both the women’s and men’s ice hockey at the Winter Olympics, presenting Donald Trump with a golden opportunity. Instead of seizing the easy political points, he embraced his chance to ingratiate himself with the boys by inviting them to the State of the Union address. He followed up his offer of a military jet shuttle to Washington DC with a lament that he would have to also invite the women’s team. It was a bit that lit up the locker room with laughter.
The women’s gold medal had been a prime opportunity for Trump to live up to his stated commitment to “protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports”, a claim made last February when he sought to position himself as the figure saving women’s sports. Instead, he decided to make a joke at the expense of Olympic champions.
Continue reading...Streaming giant Netflix declined to match Paramount Skydance's $31 per share offer for Warner Bros. Discovery.
World Health Organization report also finds one in seven adolescents across continent use vapes and e-cigarettes
Teenage girls in Europe have the highest rate of tobacco use in their age group around the world, while one in seven adolescents across the continent use vapes and e-cigarettes, figures show.
The data, based on analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO), shows that Europe is on course to maintain its status as the world’s biggest consumer of tobacco up to 2030, and reveals “particularly concerning” trends of tobacco use among women and young people.
Continue reading...
Since late 2024, municipalities across the state have been struggling with how to pass and enforce ordinances related to loitering and panhandling.
The cause of the struggle was an agreement reached between the Delaware Department of Justice and the ACLU directing police in Delaware to no longer enforce current loitering and solicitation laws in public spaces. The agreement was a settlement to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, and was sparked due to constitutional concerns connected to the First and Fourth Amendments.
Wilmington reporter Brianna Hill and Rural Communities reporter Maggie Reynolds join the podcast to discuss how this issue has been showing up in Delaware’s two biggest cities. Although Dover and Wilmington are very different municipalities, there are similarities in how the city councils have been trying to navigate passing new ordinances. The decisions these cities reach could provide a template for how other towns in Delaware try to address the issue.
The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
In many ways, this issue carries on the work you both were part of in Spotlight’s end-of-the-year series on homelessness in Delaware as these loitering and panhandling laws are frequently seen as targeting unhoused populations. Even though you cover very different areas of Delaware, you’re each seeing this as a controversial issue at the moment.
For each of you, how did the topic first come on your radar as a reporter? And how is it playing out in your reporting area? We’ll start with Brianna as you’ve been following this since close to the beginning.
HILL: The topic first came up on my radar in late 2024 when law enforcement removed the bench from in front of the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew in downtown Wilmington. This was after the ACLU of Delaware and the state settled this lawsuit, which banned local police from arresting individuals who were panhandling or lingering in public areas. In the agreement, the attorney general agreed to no longer enforce Delaware’s state panhandling and solicitation laws, as well as Wilmington’s.
So these laws are still in the books, but law enforcement is not supposed to use them. The bench incident happened less than an hour after the settlement agreement came out between the ACLU. So that was my start into the topic of loitering and how it connected very closely to the homeless population in the city.
Wilmington is currently working on a loitering ordinance. As a result of the lawsuit with the ACLU, the attorney general basically said we won’t enforce what’s currently on the books, but we will amend them to make them constitutional.
So recently, I think it was back in November, the newest ordinance proposed by Wilmington City Councilman Chris Johnson was proposed, to update the city’s loitering statute. Not too many people agreed with it, and it was taken off of the agenda. It was supposed to go to committee in February, but it was taken off the agenda to be reworked because the ACLU sent another letter to Wilmington basically saying, “Hey, you can’t put this on the books.”
They are in the process of working on that right now.
And then Maggie, for you, how has this shown up in Kent or Sussex counties?
REYNOLDS: My main focus with this has been in Dover.
Dover has been discussing various forms of an ordinance like this, in my understanding, since 2022 – so before that attorney general ruling in 2024 – like a dawdling ordinance or something else relating to loitering.
The most recent iteration was introduced in October by City Councilman David Anderson. This is an ordinance that focuses on people lingering on street medians or not crossing a roadway when they’re supposed to.
Similar to what Brianna was saying, when Anderson introduced that ordinance, the ACLU responded quickly saying that they would challenge its constitutionality if it wasn’t amended. And so since then it’s been going through various small amendments, I would say, to tweak wording and language and just a lot of debate and pushback from different council members and residents about the ordinance – if it is really focused on traffic safety or if it is trying to curb people’s rights to ask for money, and if it would be subject to legal challenge if passed.
The attorney general and Department of Justice agreement back in 2024 paused these ordinances out of constitutional concerns. Can either one of you clarify how this issue plays out as a constitutional concern?
REYNOLDS: I can talk about the First Amendment concerns. That would be that these ordinances are limiting a person’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech, which would include freedom to ask for money.
The Department of Justice has been talking about this updated ordinance that would be constitutional. In response to that ruling in 2024, Attorney General Jennings promised that they would create an updated ordinance. They say it’s supposed to be more narrowly tailored to just focus on pedestrian safety and not make as much commentary on people’s rights to ask for money.
So that’s kind of where the distinction lies, with these First Amendment concerns. And it’s a little bit of a blurry line of what is preventing people from asking for money and what is focused just on traffic safety.
I know that when the ACLU responded initially to Dover’s drafted ordinance, they said that it wasn’t narrowly tailored enough to just be focused on pedestrian safety and that there could be a burden of proof that Dover would need to show they have really serious pedestrian or traffic safety issues. That could be a way to make it constitutional.
Brianna, in Wilmington is it also First Amendment-related or is it something else?
HILL: I think that it is closer to the Fourth Amendment with Wilmington’s ordinance specifically, because it gives law enforcement so much discretion as it’s currently written on how to enforce loitering.
In one of the clauses, it says if someone is out in a time where a “law abiding citizen” wouldn’t be outside then law enforcement have a right to go up to that person and possibly fine them for loitering.
Many of the complaints that I’ve heard publicly have been against this concept of you can basically look at someone and say that they’re loitering, maybe because of what they look like or because they were sitting on the step too long, but you don’t really know why.
It also gives law enforcement the authority to kind of just go up to someone who they think is loitering and ask for ID and their purpose for being outside. If they can’t provide those things, then they can be fined. So, I think that’s what we’re dealing with in the city.
REYNOLDS: I haven’t heard the Fourth Amendment issues come up directly [in Dover], but related to what Bri was mentioning, I’ve heard concerns that this ordinance would give too much discretion to individual police officers to make those decisions. And I think that relates to both First Amendment and Fourth Amendment concerns.
HILL: Yeah, I think it’s probably the same way over here [in Wilmington]. I haven’t heard anyone cite the First Amendment explicitly, but it kind of falls into this broader scope of telling someone where they can and can’t be in the public and how they asked for money and when they asked for money, I think it’s all related.
Maggie, is any of the physical landscape of Dover and how that differs from Wilmington, do you think that plays into any of these differences in the arguments?
REYNOLDS: Yes, that’s what I was kind of thinking about as we compared notes, I guess, is that Dover doesn’t have as many people really downtown usually.
The area around Loockerman Plaza and Loockerman Street is not super heavily trafficked with pedestrians or cars as well compared to downtown Wilmington. More of where people tend to linger and if they’re asking for money, is usually on Route 13. Saulsbury Road is another one I’ve heard people talk about a lot.
So then those are bigger roads, cars are driving faster and that maybe has lent itself to more of a focus on people standing in the medians and this traffic safety rhetoric because of how Dover is just as different as a city.
I must admit, as I have been reading your various articles about the Dover issue, I was picturing Loockerman Plaza and Loockerman Street as where the issue is. So it’s enlightening me that it’s actually more outside of downtown Dover where this is really being seen as an issue.
REYNOLDS: Yes, I’ve walked down Loockerman Street a lot and never really see that [loitering].
Although you are both looking at very different areas of the state, you both frequently end up reporting on similar issues. In addition to these loitering bills, you both have covered the marijuana industry, both covered police accountability. When these things really reach out to a statewide angle, I’m curious how you all decide who is going to write about it.
A few weeks ago Maggie wrote about Attorney General Kathy Jennings sharing proposed updates to the loitering bill with the Joint Finance Committee. You’re both covering this, how did that become Maggie’s story?
HILL: I think Maggie got the tip.
REYNOLDS: Yes, I think it was because one of our editors – Tim Carlin, he’s the editor I report to directly – was at the Joint Finance Committee hearing and was hearing about this discourse going on about the attorney general’s bill. Then he messaged me saying, “Hey Maggie, you want to hop on this tomorrow?”
So it is kind of just sometimes random with who hears about it and who gets looped in.
In regard to that bill and this updated language that the attorney general is proposing, how do you all see that playing out in Dover and Wilmington? How will that impact these debates that have been ongoing?
HILL: I was told by the attorney general’s office that they sent the bill to the City of Wilmington to the city’s solicitor, as well as Claire DeMatteis, who was the head of the Wilmington’s Homelessness Task Force. There haven’t been any direct conversations between Councilman Johnson and the attorney general’s office as far as I know.
I think that this can be an outline for Wilmington to look at. It’s targeted, I think, a little bit more toward traffic concerns, but it’s a little bit less strict as opposed to what’s currently being discussed in Wilmington. So Chris Johnson may look at it and he may decide to go his own way, but I don’t think there’s been any conversation.
I was talking about the language of the current bill with [the attorney general’s office], and they were like “Well, that’s definitely not what we wrote.” So I think they both have kind of gone in different directions. We may be able to see some collaboration, but we’re not sure as of right now.
REYNOLDS: I would say in Dover there’s been quite a bit of interaction between the two.
Anderson, who introduced the ordinance, has said that he modeled it off of this drafted state bill and so it should provide confidence to people that it’s in line with that bill. But he says that he wants to move ahead with passing it and not wait around for the state because he wants to be a leader and not rely on the confusion in the state and delays.
Another council member, Andre Boggerty, has said that he doesn’t want Dover to pass this until something’s more settled at the state level in case the city could face a lawsuit or it could be rendered moot by the state.
So there’s some disagreement over how to handle that.
I’d like to shift here to process. What have been your biggest challenges as you’ve aimed to accurately report on the controversies around panhandling and loitering ordinances?
HILL: The thing I’ve probably had most trouble with is trying to get both sides of the field when it comes to loitering.
I did make an effort to go out and canvas to try to talk to some business owners who were maybe upset about the current landscape and maybe people sitting outside their stores or just hanging around for a few hours. Most of them didn’t want to comment, but a lot of them said that they didn’t really have any issues with the people who were standing outside their store.
I went to Eastside and downtown Wilmington in particular – and a lot of people didn’t really have much to say. I’m not sure if they were completely opposed to the measure, but in terms of it being this big issue that people aren’t able to run their businesses correctly because there’s people sitting outside and lounging around their storefronts, I haven’t really gotten that response from the community.
I even went to a soul food restaurant that is right in front of SsAM’s church where many unhoused individuals congregate because SsAM’s church offers homelessness services and they work with the Friendship House to do so. Even that business owner spoke to me and said people will linger outside and people will ask for food and money, but she doesn’t have a problem with either helping them when she can or just telling them to move or leave the area. She in particular was a little bit more concerned about those people not really having a place to stay.
So I am still trying to find people who do support the loitering ordinance. There was one gentleman who emailed me shortly after my story went out. I think he was a proponent of the loitering ordinance, but I will reach out to him and see what his thoughts are.
But I haven’t gotten too many responses from people who are having a lot of issues with people standing around or asking for money.
Maggie, what have you struggled with trying to convey this to our readers?
REYNOLDS: I’d say one thing has been this has been discussed [in Dover] repeatedly for quite a while now, like since the end of October. I keep going to meetings thinking maybe this will be the culmination of this debate and then they push it to the future with another amendment or calling someone else in to discuss it. And so trying to find those different angles of how the debate is changing or any new information and also trying to find new voices to include in the story so that I’m not writing the same story over and over. That’s definitely something that comes up in a couple of the towns I cover.
I would also say the debate has gotten very tense and there’s often a lot of shouting between certain members of the public and certain council members or between council members. And some of that I think is about this ordinance, some of it’s about other disagreements they’ve had over the years.
I don’t want to just report on people’s interpersonal issues, but trying to figure out what really the differences are with this specific issue and cut through some of that disagreement.
As you’ve both been following each other’s reporting, have you pulled anything from something the other reporter has reported on with this issue that has helped you or have you ever consulted with each other as you’re working on these articles?
HILL: Maybe a tad with what’s been going on at the state level, because it will funnel down into both Dover and Wilmington as things move along.
I definitely have used Maggie’s stories for context, and they’ve been really helpful in terms of trying to figure out what’s going on at the state level and in other municipalities.
REYNOLDS: I think Bri is always really good at going out, like she was talking about, and canvassing different neighborhoods and different residents. I sometimes use that as kind of a way for me to check myself of what sources I’m using or voices.
Hearing her do that process, I realized that I’ve talked with some residents in Dover who would be impacted, that are homeless or do panhandle, after they’ve given public comment at meetings. But I haven’t gone out directly and canvassed people myself. So that’s a goal or something that I’m going to do before my final story on the ordinance.
I think it’s always helpful to read someone else’s approach to adjust for my own.
Last question here: in your analysis, do these very local city council controversies around panhandling speak to some bigger issue at hand in Delaware and the ties that bind us between counties?
REYNOLDS: You mentioned at the beginning, David, our homelessness series that we worked on in December. I think we found through that series, kind what you were saying, how this is really an issue that’s top of mind for a lot of people up and down the state of Delaware. And I’ve definitely found that in Georgetown a lot or other places in Sussex County as well.
Part of the issue people are having is they don’t like visibly seeing homeless people or people asking for money or being bothered when they’re on the street. They want their local government to address that.
These ordinances – some people have said it’s kind of like a Band-Aid way to get people out of the street, so you don’t see them asking for money, but that maybe it’s not a deeper solution to these issues that would take more time and not be a quick fix.
But yes, maybe just that tension between what some people see as a more surface level solution versus something that would take more time to address the root causes.
HILL: One interesting topic that kept coming up from the [Wilmington] meeting where people were giving public comment about the loitering ordinance was this idea of profiling – which I think is interesting because this ordinance is coming up in Delaware’s biggest city and Delaware’s biggest city is filled with people of color and is majority Black and brown folks. So for that to be a concern, I think is pretty big.
And if the city does plan to pass something that would kind of provide a loophole for law enforcement to profile individuals, it may come up in other municipalities. Wilmington is the biggest city. So if some things are passed in Wilmington, other municipalities may look at that and go, well, Wilmington did it, so why can’t we?
So I think that’s interesting to keep an eye out for as things move along.
REYNOLDS: Definitely. Like you’re saying, I do hear discourse in Dover and Georgetown and places like that of, well look at what Wilmington is doing because Wilmington’s the biggest city. So it’s kind of the model for other places, and especially at Dover, I think, because it is the second biggest city. I think it definitely would be kind of a signal to Dover if Wilmington were to move ahead with this, for how they could approach it too.
Thank you both for sharing your time today and sharing how you are seeing things in Dover, in Wilmington and beyond.
HILL: Thank you.
REYNOLDS: Thank you for having us.
The post Beyond the Headlines: Inside the loitering debate appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Zimbabwe refuses to sign agreement and Kenya faces a court case over data sharing as new aid deals come under scrutiny
A series of bilateral health agreements being negotiated between African countries and the administration of President Donald Trump have been labelled “clearly lop-sided” and “immoral” amid growing outrage at US demands, including countries being forced to share biological resources and data.
It emerged this week that Zimbabwe had halted negotiations with the US for $350m (£258m) of health funding, saying the proposals risked undermining its sovereignty and independence.
Continue reading...  | This is my new internal jewelry for the rest of my life because I didn't put my wrist guards on. They were literally in my backpack. [link] [comments] |
Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from NBC News: NASA revealed that astronaut Mike Fincke was the crew member who suffered a medical incident at the International Space Station in January, which prompted the agency to carry out the first evacuation due to a medical issue in the space station's 25-year history. The rare decision to cut a mission short and bring Fincke and three other crew members home early made for a dramatic week in space early this year. In a statement released by NASA "at the request of Fincke," the veteran astronaut said he experienced a medical event on Jan. 7 "that required immediate attention" from his space station crew members. "Thanks to their quick response and the guidance of our NASA flight surgeons, my status quickly stabilized," Fincke, 58, said in the statement. [...] In his statement, Fincke thanked his Crew-11 colleagues, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who were also aboard the space station at the time and are still in space. Fincke also thanked the teams at NASA, SpaceX and the medical professionals at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla. "Their professionalism and dedication ensured a positive outcome," he said. Fincke ended his statement by saying he is "doing very well" and still actively involved with standard post-flight reconditioning at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Spaceflight is an incredible privilege, and sometimes it reminds us just how human we are," he said. "Thank you for all your support."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Landslide in Niscemi in January tore away entire slope of town and carved 4km chasm
Firefighters in Sicily have rescued about 400 rare books from a library in Niscemi that hangs on the edge of a mudflow, after a devastating landslide in January tore away an entire slope of the town and carved a 4km chasm.
The library stands on the lip of the precipice gouged out by the landslide, with part of the building in effect hanging in mid-air. The recovery operation, which began on Monday, was preceded by a detailed study of floor plans and interior photographs to map the position of the books.
Continue reading...Many observers believe North Korean leader has decided daughter Kim Ju-ae will succeed him, but others say gender politics could block her path to power
When North Korea’s ruling party held a top-level meeting this month there were predictable boasts of unstoppable nuclear development and, more unexpectedly, a suggestion by Kim Jong-un that his country and the US “could get along” – provided that Washington recognised North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power.
But for many North Korea watchers, the Workers’ party congress – held over several days just once every five years – was a rare opportunity to speculate over the identity of the country’s future leader.
Continue reading...TORONTO, Feb. 26, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc., in partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical, has announced the release of a new paper detailing a novel quantum simulation technique for semiconductor chip research and development. The pre-print research paper provides a scalable technique for simulating quantum processes involved in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, a wafer patterning technique critical for developing the most advanced semiconductor chips.
EUV lithography is one of the leading tools used in the manufacturing of advanced semiconductor chips. However, the process is often plagued by a complex phenomenon called radiation-induced blurring that reduces the effectiveness of the resulting chip. Key steps in this phenomenon are highly quantum in nature and are difficult to simulate using existing classical computing approaches. This paper proposes a suite of novel quantum simulation algorithms that could be used to reduce these blurring effects, overcoming difficult barriers for fabricating more advanced chips.
“Precise modeling of materials interacting with EUV light is a formidable challenge for the semiconductor industry,” said Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu. “By simulating EUV sensitivity using quantum algorithms, Xanadu has developed a blueprint for how quantum computers can be used to tackle some of the most relevant problems facing the semiconductor market today.”
This work shows that one of the key methods presented, designed to run on utility-scale fault tolerant quantum computers (FTQCs), predicts critical details of the EUV photoabsorption spectrum. For a target model system, such as 4-Iodo-2-methylphenol, the algorithm demonstrates the potential to meet strict resource requirements, targeting fewer than 500 qubits, which is essential for execution on early FTQC machines, such as those envisioned by Xanadu.
“Accurately modelling the coupled electronic and chemical dynamics that drive EUV-induced blur has been a long-standing challenge for the semiconductor industry. Mitsubishi Chemical is pleased to partner with Xanadu in applying quantum simulation to EUV photoresist design. The results demonstrate promising approaches to modelling the complex radiation-driven processes that limit lithographic resolution,” said Qi Gao, Senior Chief Scientist, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
Through their collaboration, Xanadu and Mitsubishi Chemical have established one of the first concrete industrial use cases for quantum computing for semiconductors. By providing a method to accurately simulate and reduce radiation-induced blurring in EUV lithography, this work paves the way for the development of ever-smaller and more complex semiconductor chips.
More from HPCwire: Xanadu’s PennyLane Integrates with Munich Quantum Toolkit to Advance Quantum Compilation
About Xanadu
Xanadu is a Canadian quantum computing company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Founded in 2016, Xanadu has become one of the world’s leading quantum hardware and software companies. The company also leads the development of PennyLane, an open-source software library for quantum computing and application development.
Source: Xanadu
The post Xanadu and Mitsubishi Chemical Detail Quantum Algorithms for EUV Semiconductor Research appeared first on HPCwire.
A photo released last month as part of the Epstein files that showed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Epstein's island was removed from the DOJ's website before being restored Thursday night.
The Defense Department on Wednesday shot down a U.S. Customs and Border Protection drone in southwest Texas, federal officials confirmed to CBS News.
Exhibits pay homage to Ukrainians’ resilience and bring home the reality that war is going on in Europe
Descending into the windowless basement of a second world war air-raid bunker built for civilians in central Berlin is arguably an eerie enough evocation of what it means to endure life in a conflict.
But in a modern twist, before they have even walked into the first room of the city’s new Ukraine Museum inside the bunker, visitors are “targeted” by a Russian drone just before its operator prepares to release the lethal shot, and see themselves in the firing line on the screen of the weapon’s camera.
Continue reading...How Beijing turns predictability into power.
How his popularity among Jewish Israelis can boost the prospects for peace.
The U.S. military must go big—and then let Iranians do the rest.
Preseason game was rescheduled due to a Messi injury
Messi entered in second half and scored winning PK
Inter Miami visits Orlando City in MLS play on Sunday
Lionel Messi was briefly tackled to the ground by a pitch invader and a security guard in a midweek, early-season friendly on Thursday evening in Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
Inter Miami were fulfilling a make-up date for a postponed friendly against Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle, originally slated for 13 February. The initial date was scrapped after Messi had felt discomfort in his hamstring during the preceding tune-up exhibition at Ecuadorian side Barcelona SC. Inter Miami cited coordination with “the event promoter and the government of Puerto Rico” in determining the makeup date of 26 February – five days after Miami opened the 2026 MLS season in Los Angeles, losing 3-0 to Son Heung-min’s LAFC.
Continue reading...The Pentagon's top technology official told CBS News the military has offered compromises to Anthropic, amid a feud over whether its powerful AI technology will be restricted — but Anthropic called the offer inadequate.
 | So I’ve recently noticed my wheel getting much louder while riding, was wondering if y’all could tell me if this is normal or if it sounds like bearings are bad, or what it may be? Will probably need volume up or headphones to hear, sorry about wind noise. [link] [comments] |
The Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents detained Elmina "Ellie" Aghayeva at Columbia University Thursday, saying her student visa was revoked in 2016. She was later released.
Business optimism is returning for small and midsize business leaders at the start of 2026, fueling confidence and plans for growth.
The 2026 Business Leaders Outlook survey, released in January by JPMorganChase, reveals a turnaround from last June, when economic headwinds and uncertainty about shifting policies and tariffs caused some leaders to put their business plans on hold.
Midsize companies, which often find themselves more exposed to geopolitical shifts and policy changes, experienced a significant dip in business and economic confidence in June of 2025. As they have become more comfortable with the complexities of today’s environment, we are seeing optimism rebounding in the middle market nationwide — an encouraging sign for growth, hiring, and innovation. Small businesses, meanwhile, maintained steady optimism throughout 2025, but they aren’t shielded from domestic concerns. Many cited inflation and wage pressures as the top challenges for 2026 and are taking steps to ensure their businesses are prepared for what’s ahead.
“In the Northeast, optimism among leaders about their companies’ performance for the year ahead is slightly higher than the national average,” said Rob Melchionni, Region Manager for Commercial Banking in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Southern New Jersey at J.P. Morgan. “Overall, we’re seeing middle market clients exercise cautious optimism; a willingness to expand into new markets, introduce new products and services, yet still conscious about economic uncertainty.”
Overall, both small and midsize business leaders are feeling more confident to pursue growth opportunities, embrace emerging technologies and, in some cases, forge new strategic partnerships. That bodes well for entrepreneurs in Delaware. Here are a few other key findings from the Business Leaders Outlook about trends expected to drive activity in Delaware this year:
Rebounding optimism among U.S. business leaders at the start of the year is setting the stage for an active 2026. With business leaders looking to implement ambitious growth plans that position themselves for the future, momentum in Delaware could be beneficial future goals for leaders looking to launch, grow or scale their business this year.
The post Rising optimism among region’s business leaders suggests growth for Delaware appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Hey y'all!
I ride home from work at night sometimes and wish I had a little more light to spot potholes or broken sidewalks on darker streets. I've already got a great LED helmet, but that's mainly to avoid getting hit by cars.
I'm hoping to find some LED wrist guards. If anyone can point me to some I'd be mighty appreciative.
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday the artificial intelligence company "cannot in good conscience accede" to the Pentagon's demands to allow wider use of its technology. The maker of the AI chatbot Claude said in a statement that it's not walking away from negotiations, but that new contract language received from the Defense Department "made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons." The Pentagon's top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a Friday deadline to agree to its demands. Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon "has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement." Anthropic's policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It's the last of its peers -- the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI -- to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network. Parnell said the Pentagon wants to "use Anthropic's model for all lawful purposes" but didn't offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from "jeopardizing critical military operations." "We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions," he said. In a post on X, Parnell said Anthropic will "have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide. Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk for DOW."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Escalation of violence between the volatile neighbours makes a Qatar-mediated ceasefire appear increasingly shaky
Pakistan bombed Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul and two other provinces on Friday, hours after a cross-border attack, the latest escalation of deadly violence between the volatile neighbours who signed a Qatar-mediated ceasefire in 2025.
Following months of tit-for-tat clashes, Afghan forces attacked Pakistani border troops on Thursday night in what the Taliban government said was retaliation for earlier deadly airstrikes.
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Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 27.
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Trump news at a glance: No deal reached in Iran talks as potential for US attack looms
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Cindy McCain announced today that she will step down from her role as executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme to focus on her health.
McCain, the widow of the late US senator John McCain, suffered a mild stroke last October and had returned to Italy to resume her work after that, but the demands of the job were affecting her recovery, the organization said. She started the role in April 2023. She will step down in three months.
Continue reading...The Federal Reserve has been mounting a closed-door effort to block the Justice Department's subpoenas for chairman Jerome Powell, CBS News has learned.
The former US secretary of state urged Republicans to question Donald Trump ‘directly under oath’ about his ties with the convicted sex offender
Hillary Clinton appeared before a congressional committee investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein – and accused its Republican members of targeting her in a bid to distract from Donald Trump’s involvement with the convicted sex offender.
The former US secretary of state answered questions for hours during a closed-door session on Thursday, a day before her husband, the former US president Bill Clinton, was also due to appear.
Continue reading...Federal agents said they were looking for a missing person to gain entry to university housing, according to a lawsuit filed by the student’s lawyer. Homeland Security deny agents hid their identities.
Iranian foreign minister claimed ‘good progress’ made and further talks expected – key US politics stories from Thursday, 26 February at a glance
High-stakes talks between the US and Iran over the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme ended on Thursday without a deal, as the White House weighs a military operation that would mark its largest intervention in the Middle East in decades.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claimed “good progress” had been made at the talks and Omani mediators predicted negotiations would reconvene at a technical level next week in Vienna. Araghchi later confirmed that further contacts would take place in less than a week.
Continue reading...A federal judge is weighing whether to dismiss the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia on the grounds the prosecution is vindictive.
AI-fueled memory scarcity is hitting the phone market hard this year, particularly for inexpensive, low-end devices.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Feb. 27, No. 1,714.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 27, No. 726.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 27 #992.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 27, No. 522.
At least one U.S. citizen was also among the six who were wounded and arrested by Cuban authorities, a U.S. official said.
At least 10 FBI employees were fired Wednesday, after FBI Director Kash Patel alleged former special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed his phone records.
Family members described the men as poorly trained activists who hoped to make a statement. Cuban forces opened fire on the boat, killing four and wounding six.
Modern single-cell measurement technologies can now capture multiple layers of cellular information from the same cell, measuring aspects like gene expression, chromatin accessibility, and protein abundance. Each modality offers a different view of cellular state, producing high-dimensional datasets that must be integrated into a shared representation.
Many multimodal machine learning methods compress these inputs into a single latent space. This improves clustering and prediction, but it can make it difficult to tell which data are shared across modalities and which are specific to a particular assay. In a paper published in Nature Computational Science, researchers at MIT, the Broad Institute, and ETH Zurich have introduced a new AI framework to address this problem: APOLLO, short for Autoencoder with a Partially Overlapping Latent space learned through Latent Optimization. Instead of forcing all modalities into a single unified embedding, the framework allocates separate regions in latent space, with one shared across modalities and others reserved for modality-specific information. The idea resembles overlapping sets (or a Venn diagram, as an MIT News report noted). Some aspects of cell state should appear in more than one dataset, while others remain unique to a particular measurement technology.
APOLLO learns three latent spaces to disentangle information captured by each modality using a two-step training procedure (Credit: Paper Authors)
APOLLO encodes that idea directly into the architecture, translating partial overlap into explicit structure in latent space. To implement this design, the system trains one autoencoder per modality but constrains them to share only part of their latent representation. During an initial training phase, the model directly optimizes latent variables alongside modality-specific decoders, learning which dimensions represent shared versus modality-specific information. In a second phase, encoders are trained to map new data into this structured latent space, enabling generalization and cross-modality prediction.
When applied to real datasets, the distinction between shared and modality-specific information becomes clearer. In paired RNA and chromatin accessibility data, the framework automatically distinguished gene activity captured jointly by both assays from signals that appeared in only one. Instead of flattening measurements into a single embedding, the model separated them according to how they relate to the underlying cell state.
The researchers also extended the method to paired RNA-protein datasets and multiplexed imaging experiments. In one case, the model identified which measurement modality captured γH2AX, a protein marker associated with DNA damage in cancer cells. Tracing a disease-relevant signal to a specific assay like this can help researchers decide which measurements are essential and which may be predicted computationally.
(Collagery/Shutterstock)
That same ability to trace signals to specific modalities also enables something more ambitious: predicting measurements that were never taken. APOLLO can infer unmeasured modalities because the shared latent space captures information common to multiple assays. In imaging experiments, for example, APOLLO was able to predict protein localization patterns from chromatin images alone. For large-scale studies, this could reduce experimental burden by predicting certain measurements rather than collecting them directly.
As multimodal assays continue to expand in scope and resolution, the computational challenge is shifting from collecting data to integrating it in an organized way. Researchers must understand how measurements relate, where data comes from, and which assays are truly necessary. By separating shared biological structure from modality-specific information, APOLLO enhances multimodal analysis from simple integration into structured representation learning. In scientific computing workflows, frameworks that explore the internal structure of complex datasets can guide experimental design, reduce redundancy, and make large-scale studies more feasible. As the number of measurable cellular features keeps growing, tools that untangle the data instead of flattening it may become essential infrastructure for AI-driven biology. Read more about APOLLO in the scientific paper.
The post AI Framework APOLLO Brings Structure to Multimodal Single-Cell Analysis appeared first on HPCwire.
A Greek court has convicted four individuals linked to the marketing of Predator spyware in the wiretapping scandal that shook the country in 2022. The BBC reports: In what became known as "Greece's Watergate," surveillance software called Predator was used to target 87 people -- among them government ministers, senior military officials and journalists. The four who had marketed the software were found guilty by an Athens court of misdemeanours of violating the confidentiality of telephone communications and illegally accessing personal data and conversations. The court sentenced the four defendants to lengthy jail sentences, suspended pending appeal. Although they each face 126 years, only eight would be typically served which is the upper limit for misdemeanors. One in three of the dozens of figures targeted had also been under legal surveillance by Greece's intelligence services (EYP). Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who had placed EYP directly under his supervision, called it a scandal, but no government officials have been charged in court and critics accuse the government of trying to cover up the truth. The case dates back to the summer of 2022, when the current head of Greek Socialist party Pasok, Nikos Androulakis - then an MEP - was informed by the European Parliament's IT experts that he had received a malicious text message containing a link. Predator spyware, marketed by the Athens-based Israeli company Intellexa, can get access to a device's messages, camera, and microphone. Its use was illegal in Greece at that time but a new law passed in 2022 has since legalised state security use of surveillance software under strict conditions. Androulakis also discovered that he had been tracked for "national security reasons" by Greece's intelligence services. The scandal has since escalated into a debate over democratic accountability in Greece.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Agentic AI is all about software acting independently. It's a prelude to physical AI finding a home in robots.
OpenAI-powered assistant will help to ‘understand overall service patterns’, company says, as move sparks backlash
From hospitality workers to retail employees, the exaggerated “customer service voice”, often mocked in internet memes as wildly different from someone’s real voice, has long been a cultural trope. Fast-food giant Burger King is now taking that voice one step further, saying it will detect whether employees are using words like “please” and “thank you” through the assistance of artificial intelligence.
On Thursday, Burger King announced it is rolling out a new AI chatbot connected to employee headsets at hundreds of locations in the US as part of a platform called BK Assistant, powered by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
Continue reading...Democracy Volunteers says it saw 32 cases of apparent collusion – the highest levels in its 10-year history
An election observer group has raised concerns over people appearing to collude on voting in the Gorton and Denton byelection.
Democracy Volunteers, an organisation founded by Dr John Ault, and supported by the Conservative peer and psephologist Prof Robert Haywood, deployed four accredited election observers across the constituency.
Continue reading...Netflix has declined to submit a new offer, clearing the path for Paramount in the bidding war.
FedEx said it will reimburse customers if the Trump administration provides refunds following a Supreme Court ruling that struck down emergency tariffs.
Colorado lawmakers are proposing SB26-051, a bill that would require operating systems to register a user's age bracket and share it with apps via an API. PCMag reports: The bill comes from state Sen. Matt Ball and Rep. Amy Paschal, both Democrats. "The intent is to create thoughtful safeguards for kids online through a privacy-forward framework for age assurance," Ball told PCMag. "Unlike some laws in other states, SB 51 doesn't require users to share personally identifiable information or use facial recognition technology." The legislation also promises to centralize the age check through the OS, rather than mandating that each app enforce their own age-verification mechanism, which can involve scanning the user's official ID, thus raising privacy and security concerns. The bill also forbids the sharing of the age-bracket data for any other purpose. But it looks like it's easy to bypass the age check proposed by SB26-051. The legislation itself doesn't mention any state ID check to verify the owner's age. In addition, the bill doesn't seem to cover websites, only apps and app stores. The report notes that the legislation was based on California's bill AB 1043, which was passed last year and expected to take effect January 1, 2027.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Charities hail ‘groundbreaking’ scheme for grandparents and others who take full parental responsibility for a child
Grandparents who step in to provide full-time care for their grandchildren to prevent them being taken into care will be given guaranteed financial support under a government pilot scheme.
Charities welcomed the trial as groundbreaking and said if fully rolled out across England it had the potential to transform the lives of tens of thousands of children looked after under “kinship care” arrangements.
Continue reading...My XR I have been riding for hundreds of miles, I know what pushback is and I know how it feels to overuse the board. I can 100% assure that I was not even close to maxing out the board when it had thrown me off and never turned on again starting immediately after that. I had not been doing any crazy or different type of riding prior. I would really appreciate if somebody could help me out with this problem because I have already cried about it. 😢
The change applies to accounts using parental supervision tools.
F1 fans can get revved up for the approaching season with a tech boost from Apple Maps.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani traveled to Washington, D.C., Thursday to meet with President Trump.
Pete Hegseth has threatened to cancel $200m contract unless it is given unfettered access to Claude model
Anthropic said Thursday it “cannot in good conscience” comply with a demand from the Pentagon to remove safety precautions from its artificial intelligence model and grant the US military unfettered access to its AI capabilities.
The Department of Defense had threatened to cancel a $200m contract and deem Anthropic a “supply chain risk”, a designation with serious financial implications, if the company did not comply with the request by Friday.
Continue reading...Care roles hit particularly hard by UK’s lurch to the right on migration, according to analysis of Home Office data
Hospitals and care homes in the UK face “an impending car crash”, experts have warned, as research shows the number of overseas nurses and carers has collapsed.
Analysis of Home Office quarterly data reveals the number of overseas nurses granted entry to the UK has fallen by 93% over three years. Just 1,777 overseas nurses were granted entry in 2025, compared with 26,100 in 2022.
Continue reading...Jack Dorsey's Block is cutting more than 4,000 jobs, or nearly half its workforce, as part of a deliberate shift toward becoming a smaller, "intelligence-native" company built around AI. The Verge reports: "We're not making this decision because we're in trouble," Dorsey says. "Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. But something has changed. We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. And that's accelerating rapidly." Dorsey opted to do a big layoff instead of gradual cuts because "I'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome." The layoffs were announced on Thursday as part of the company's Q4 2025 earnings. In a shareholder letter (PDF), Dorsey says that "We believe Block will be significantly more valuable as a smaller, faster, intelligence-native company. Everything we do from here is in service of that."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Every way the Samsung's new $1,300 ultra flagship compares to the prior models, with the Privacy Display providing a big upgrade.
The Genode OS Framework 26.02 has been released, and its tentpole improvement is the completion of moving configuration from XML to the new human-inclined data syntax, as we talked about a few months ago. The project has been working on this for years, and now that the tooling, documentation, and so on have been added this release cycle, they’re ready to make the switch. On top of that, they also made the move from GitHub to Codeberg, but that’s certainly not all.
The technical topics of the release revolve around the progressive update of our Linux device-driver environment (DDE-Linux) to kernel version 6.18, usability improvements of the Goa SDK, input-event processing, and code rigidity.
Feature-wise, version 26.02 further cultivates the genode-world repository as designated place for ported 3rd-party software, adding the port of Git as stepping stone on our way towards self-hosted development on Sculpt OS.
↫ Genode OS Framework 26.02 release notes
Be sure to read the entire release notes for much more detailed information, as well as a ton of things not mentioned yet.
Department of Justice did not release FBI memos when it uploaded millions of pages of files beginning in December
Three memos that describe four interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019 contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Guardian review of those documents.
The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of files related to Epstein beginning in December. The existence of the missing documents was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and subsequently confirmed by NPR, causing outrage in Washington and sparking an investigation from congressional Democrats.
Continue reading...New York mayor proposes 12,000-unit housing project to real estate developer turned president
Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, during an unannounced trip to the nation’s capital.
The New York mayor said he had a “productive” meeting with the US president and he was “looking forward to building more housing in New York City” in a post on X.
Continue reading...RFU due to confirm shake-up of rugby’s top division
Knighthead Capital Management in early discussions
Birmingham City’s owner, Knighthead Capital Management, is among a number of American investors exploring the purchase of potential new franchises in Prem Rugby before a radical shake-up of the sport due to be ratified by the Rugby Football Union on Friday.
The RFU council will vote at Twickenham on proposals to ringfence the 10-team Prem with no promotion or relegation until 2030, when a staged expansion is planned, beginning with the addition of two more teams.
Continue reading...The 20-year-old plaintiff alleges that using YouTube and Instagram from a young age intensified her depression and led to suicidal thoughts.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: There's a new agentic AI called Einstein that will, according to its developers, live the life of a student for them. Einstein's website claims that the AI will attend lectures for you, write your papers, and even log into EdTech platforms like Canvas to take tests and participate in discussions. Educators told me that Einstein is just one of many AI tools that can do homework for students, but should be seen as a warning to schools that are increasingly seen by students as a place to gain a diploma and status as opposed to the value of education itself. If an AI can go to school for you what's the point of going to school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, there isn't one. "I think about horses," he said. "They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free," he said. "They can do whatever they want now. It would be weird if horses revolted and said 'no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.'" But humans aren't horses. "This is much bigger than Einstein," Matthew Kirschenbaum told 404 Media. "Einstein is symptomatic. I doubt we'll be talking about Einstein, as such, in a year. But it's symptomatic of what's about to descend on higher ed and secondary ed as well." [...] The attractiveness of agentic AIs is a symptom of a decades-long trend in higher education. "Universitiesby and large adopted a transactive model of education," Kirschenbaum said. "Students see their diploma as a credential. They pay tuition and at the end of four years, sometimes five years, they receive the credential and, in theory at least, that is then the springboard to economic stability and prosperity." Paliwal seems to agree. He told 404 Media that he attempted to change the university from the inside while working as a TA, but felt stymied by politics. "The only way to force these institutions to evolve is to bring reality to their face. And usually the loudest critics are the ones who can't do their own job well and live in fear of automation," he said. "I think we really need to question what learning even is and whether traditional educational institutions are actually helping or harming us," said Paliwal. "We're seeing a rise in unemployment across degree holders because of AI, and that makes me question whether this is really what humans are born to do. We've been brainwashed as a society into valuing ourselves by the output of our productive work, and I think humanity is a lot more beautiful than that. Is it really education if we're just memorizing things to perform a task well?" Kirschenbaum added: "What we're finding is that if forms of education can be transacted then we've just about arrived at the point where autonomous software AI agents are capable of performing the transaction on your behalf," he said. "And so the whole educational paradigm has come back to essentially bite itself in the ass."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Dell restored its XPS brand, and the new XPS 14 is a fantastic way to get reintroduced. Dell also makes a solid midrange laptop, and we’ve also got a couple Alienware favorites for gamers.
Counting begins in south-east Manchester after one of the most unpredictable byelections in recent years
The polls have closed in the three-way battle for Gorton and Denton in south-east Manchester after one of the most unpredictable byelections in years.
The Green party leader Zack Polanski said before voting that his party was “neck and neck” with Reform UK to overturn Labour’s 13,000-vote majority, and that Labour will need to “search their conscience” if Reform UK wins.Keir Starmer’s party had targeted left-leaning voters in the Greater Manchester seat with claims that only Labour can see off Nigel Farage’s Reform, saying that a vote for the Greens was “in effect, a vote for Reform”.
Continue reading...Federal judge in Oregon rejects bid to overturn Biden-era agreement to protect endangered fish populations
A federal judge in Oregon sided with salmon against the Trump administration on Wednesday, ordering the federal government to change hydropower system operations long considered at the heart of native fish populations’ sharp decline.
At the center of the dispute are eight dams and reservoirs on the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Pacific north-west that have created devastating obstacles for salmon and steelhead unable to breach their deadly turbines or navigate through the large, warm, artificial pools. The federal agencies and their supporters, which include a group of utilities, water managers and farming organizations, argued that reservoir drawdown would put power reliability in peril.
Continue reading...The latest round of talks unfolded against the backdrop of the largest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion.
About 30 seals had died as of Thursday, nearly all of them weaned pups, amid the rise of avian influenza
An outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has killed more than two dozen elephant seal pups in California, leading to the temporary closure of seal-viewing areas at a popular Bay Area park.
California’s Año Nuevo state park is home to an elephant seal colony with about 5,000 seals during the marine mammals’ breeding season, which runs from mid-December through March. Researchers said about 30 seals had died as of Thursday, nearly all of them weaned pups, amid the rise of avian influenza.
Continue reading...Ellie Aghayeva confirms freedom hours after Department of Homeland security agents access residence hall
The Columbia University student arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday morning has been released, according to social media. The student, Elmina Aghayeva, posted a story to her Instagram account in which she confirmed her release. “I just got out a little while ago,” the statement reads. “I am safe and okay. In an uber otw [on the way] home.”
In her post, Aghayeva said that she is currently being inundated with calls from reporters. She writes: “I need a little bit of time to process everything. I will come back soon. But please don’t worry.”
Continue reading...
A viral audio clip claims to reveal a victim’s testimony of abuse by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on an island owned by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
This audio clip is not real. It was generated with artificial intelligence.
Hillary Clinton testified Feb. 26 before the House Oversight Committee as part of a probe into Epstein. Bill Clinton is expected to testify Feb. 27. Neither Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing or charged with a crime in connection to Epstein’s offenses.
A Feb. 24 TikTok shows an image of Epstein with Bill Clinton and plays an audio clip of what the post calls a "survivor."
"You want the truth about who spent the most time on that island? Fine, I'll give it to you straight, no filter. The former president. You know exactly which one. Yeah, Clinton. The survivors still call him number one," the narrator said.
Other Instagram and Facebook users also shared the audio clip. One post claimed it was the voice of Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, who died in April 2025.
In her Feb. 26 opening statement before the House Oversight Committee, Hillary Clinton said, "I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices."
We traced the audio to The People’s Voice, a frequent source of misinformation. It published a video in November that it said included a "newly leaked recording" from Giuffre.
The People’s Voice also recently published an AI-generated audio of a supposed "whistleblower" talking about television host Ellen DeGeneres, claiming the Epstein files exposed her as a cannibal. We rated that claim Pants on Fire.
We used the DeepFake-O-Meter, developed by the University at Buffalo Media Forensics Lab, to analyze the audio clip about the Clintons. Results from four out of five detection models showed it was likely AI-generated.
When we uploaded the audio clip to the AI speech classifier from ElevenLabs — a company that specializes in AI audio generation — it said, "it's very likely that this audio was generated with ElevenLabs."
We also asked multiple experts to analyze the audio, and they said it was AI-generated. V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University computer science professor, and Marco Postiglione, a postdoctoral researcher who works with him, used 83 deepfake detection algorithms to analyze the audio. Sixty-seven found the audio was more likely to be fake than real.
Subrahmanian and Postiglione also pointed to other signs of AI generation, including that the narrative seems "structured like written prose rather than spontaneous speech."
Siwei Lyu, a University at Buffalo computer science and engineering professor, said the audio included a 13-second segment without audible breath intakes. "Each sentence also ends with an abrupt cut to silence rather than fading out naturally, missing the subtle room tone and vocal decay you'd expect from a genuine recording," he said.
The voice’s pitch and delivery are also flat, said Hafiz Malik, University of Michigan – Dearborn electrical and computer engineering professor. He said it’s not likely for a human to speak for two minutes at the same rate without taking any pauses, like the voice in the audio clip does.
The audio clip includes claims about the Clintons’ actions on Epstein’s island, Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including physical and verbal abuse of Epstein victims.
We found no verified reports of such anecdotes from Giuffre or other Epstein victims about the Clintons.
Giuffre’s memoir, "Nobody’s Girl," published posthumously in 2025, mentioned that she was present when Epstein hosted Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore for dinner on separate occasions. She also talked about a time in 2022 when Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane, but Giuffre didn’t go with them. She noted that Clinton has said the trip was a humanitarian mission.
Giuffre also referred to a 2011 article that said she "had never been ‘lent out’" to the former president, referring to Bill Clinton.
The book doesn’t mention Hillary Clinton.
We found no evidence that audio from Giuffre was released after her death. On April 29, 2025, her family released a photo of one of Giuffre’s handwritten journal entries where she said she stood with survivors and encouraged them to fight for their rights.
This audio clip that posts say is an Epstein victim talking about abuse by the Clintons is fake. We rate it Pants on Fire!
This live blog is now closed.
Latest US-Iran nuclear talks conclude with claims of ‘significant progress’
How Trump shifted from opposing foreign wars to threatening war in Iran
The nuclear talks today are the third between the US and Iran since June 2025, when the US joined Israel’s war against Iran and bombed its nuclear and military sites. It effectively ended the US-Iran talks that were held in the weeks prior to the conflict aimed at reaching a nuclear peace agreement.
As before, the negotiations are being mediated by Oman, which has maintained a policy of neutrality and assumed the role of mediator both within the Arabian peninsula and more broadly across the Middle East. The country lies in the centre of tensions between the US and Iran and is directly vulnerable to maritime instability and regional escalation.
If the talks fail, there is uncertainty over what the US may do regarding a possible military attack against Iran, and when it might act. Questions remain over what this could mean for the wider region, with Iran warning it would retaliate and even attack Israel.
The state-run Oman News Agency has posted photos on social media showing the Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi sat with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva.
Continue reading...The AI assistant is meant to help employees, but it will also track their manners during customer interactions.
Google has launched Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), a faster, more realistic image generation model that becomes the default across Gemini, Search, Lens, and Flow. TechCrunch reports: The new Nano Banana 2 retains some of the high-fidelity characteristics of the Pro model but produces images faster. The company says you can create images with a resolution ranging from 512px to 4K, in different aspect ratios. Nano Banana 2 can maintain character consistency for up to five characters and fidelity of up to 14 objects in one workflow for better storytelling. Users can also issue complex requests with detailed nuances for image generation, Google says. In addition, users can create media with more vibrant lighting, richer textures, and sharper detail. [...] On Google's higher-end plans, Google AI Pro and Ultra, subscribers can continue to use Nano Banana Pro for specialized tasks by regenerating images via the three-dot menu. [...] The company said that all images created through the new model will have a SynthID watermark, which is Google's mark to denote AI-generated images. The images are also interoperable with C2PA Content Credentials, created by an industry body consisting of companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Meta. Google said that since launching the SynthID verification in the Gemini app in November, people have used it over 20 million times.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mediators say more talks to be held next week but no clear evidence two sides any closer on uranium enrichment
High-stakes talks between the US and Iran over the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme ended on Thursday without a deal, as the White House weighs a military operation that would mark its largest intervention in the Middle East in decades.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claimed “good progress” had been made at the talks and Omani mediators predicted negotiations would reconvene at a technical level next week in Vienna.
Continue reading...An increasing number of journalists were killed by drones, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. The IDF said it “strongly rejects” the group’s findings.
European Anti-Fraud Office to look into the former US ambassador’s time as trade commissioner in Brussels
Peter Mandelson is facing an inquiry by the EU’s anti-fraud agency after the European Commission requested the body look into his activities during his time as trade commissioner in Brussels.
The commission said it referred the peer, 72, to the European Anti-Fraud Office, known as Olaf, last week after the US Department of Justice released documents allegedly showing he shared sensitive government information with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Continue reading...You may not be aware that FreeBSD has a pretty robust set of tools to run Linux binaries, unmodified.
The result? A fast, smooth, fully-featured remote development experience on FreeBSD running Linux binaries transparently via the Linuxulator.
It genuinely feels like magic.
More importantly, it’s a testament to how stable the Linux ABI itself is and how well FreeBSD’s Linuxulator implements it. This setup completely changed how I work with FreeBSD, and it finally removed one of the biggest friction points in my workflow.
↫ Hayzam Sherif
FreeBSD’s Linux compatibility does kind of feel like magic. There’s people running Steam and Steam games on FreeBSD using these very same technologies, and while it’s far from perfect, it works for quite a few games without any issues. It’d be great is Steam ever made it to FreeBSD natively, but sine that’s probably not going to happen any time soon, it’s great to see that those of us using FreeBSD can still play at least some Steam games just fine.
It seems the widespread efforts in Europe to drastically reduce its dependency on US technology companies is starting to worry some people.
President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered U.S. diplomats to lobby against attempts to regulate U.S. tech companies’ handling of foreigners’ data, saying in an internal diplomatic cable seen by Reuters that such efforts could interfere with artificial intelligence-related services.
Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach as some foreign countries seek limits around how Silicon Valley firms process and store their citizens’ personal information – initiatives often described as “data sovereignty” or “data localization.”
↫ Raphael Satter and Alexandra Alper at Reuters
It’s going to take time, but untangling the EU from the US – especially technologically and militarily – is worth the effort. I’ll gladly pay more taxes to make this happen.
Einstein is a new AI tool that can watch lecture videos, read essays, write papers, complete quizzes and basically take your class for you.
The new version of Firefox with AI is now available on desktop.
Create a playlist for long after you're dearly departed.
(thanks to @fosterqc for this infographic)
Below is the pinout for thor 301
Using JST-GH 1.25 6 pin connector we can connect dem together.
buy precrimped wire set from wherever.
Cheat sheet:
Switchcraft - Color - JST-GH (thor 301)
Pin 1 - Green - H1
Pin 2 - Blue - H2
Pin 3 - Black - GND (ground)
Pin 4 - Red - 5V
Pin 5 - White - Tmot (temperature)
Pin 6 - Yellow - H3
Thanks for coming to my ted talk
Final note: h1,h2,h3 are interchangeable, their order do not matter.
New submitter sabbede shares a report from CNN Politics: A sprawling Chinese influence operation -- accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official's use of ChatGPT -- focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down. "This is what Chinese modern transnational repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, told reporters ahead of the report's release. "It's not just digital. It's not just about trolling. It's industrialized. It's about trying to hit critics of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] with everything, everywhere, all at once." Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official focused on emerging technologies, said the report from OpenAI "clearly demonstrates the way that China is actively employing AI tools to enhance information operations. US-China AI competition is continuing to intensify. This competition is not just taking place at the frontier, but in how China's government is planning and implementing the day-to-day of their surveillance and information apparatus."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
House Democratic leaders threw their weight behind a vote to force President Donald Trump to make the case for war with Iran on Thursday, after concerns from advocates that they were slow-walking a war powers resolution.
In a joint statement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other top Democrats said they would force a vote as soon as Congress reconvenes next week.
The delay in forcing a vote means, however, that Trump or Israel could attack Iran before a vote even happens. No matter the timing, observers expect the war power resolution to fail due to scattered Democratic opposition.
Pro-Israel hard-liners Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., have both come out against the bill. They have taken the position that Trump should have a free hand — with Moskowitz even deriding the resolution as the “Ayatollah Protection Act.”
In Moskowitz’s case, his position is drawing fire from primary opponent Oliver Larkin, a Democratic Socialists of America member who said Moskowitz’s comments showed “unseriousness” about the looming war.
“He is ultimately willing to cede congressional war powers authority, which is required under the Constitution. He is willing to continue this failed, multiple decades of ceding congressional power to the president, to the executive, with catastrophic results,” Larkin said.
Moskowitz’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Gottheimer and Moskowitz have taken a different public stance than Democratic leaders, who have generally expressed caution about the prospect of war with Iran.
It was only Thursday, however, that top Democrats including Jeffries gave a full-throated endorsement of a bipartisan war powers resolution from Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
At a minimum, Democratic leaders could have been more aggressive in pursuing a vote on a possible U.S attack that Trump has floated for weeks, said Erik Sperling, the executive director of the nonprofit group Just Foreign Policy.
“What really counts is having the vote and having it before the war.”
“But what really counts is having the vote and having it before the war. If they’re willing to get behind Khanna–Massie and whip for it, then that’s what the Democratic base and the American people hope to get from them, so that would be very positive,” Sperling said Wednesday.
The exact timing of the House floor on the Khanna–Massie resolution remains unclear, but members are back in their districts until Monday. In the Senate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Wednesday that he will move to force a floor vote on his resolution “very soon.”
Gottheimer was the first Democrat to oppose the war powers. In a February 20 joint statement with Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Gottheimer said that Iran posed a “direct threat.”
“We respect and defend Congress’s constitutional role in matters of war. Oversight and debate are absolutely vital. However, this resolution would restrict the flexibility needed to respond to real and evolving threats and risks, signaling weakness at a dangerous moment,” the lawmakers said.
Moskowitz was even more blunt in his statement to the news outlet Jewish Insider last week.
“I am not willing to preemptively tell the supreme leader that he has nothing to worry about, no reason to negotiate because you are totally safe, and that the people of Iran can’t depend on us. They should just rename it the Ayatollah Protection Act because that’s what it does,” he said.
If Gottheimer and Moskowitz were hoping to lead a Democratic stampede, it hasn’t materialized yet. Still, their votes appear likely to block the resolution, since almost all the Republicans in the House are expected to vote against it.
A series of war powers resolutions in the House and Senate aimed at blocking strikes on Iran and Venezuela have failed since Trump took office for a second time, most recently when the president crushed a short GOP insurrection in the Senate over his attack on Venezuela.
Even if one of the measures were to pass, Trump could veto it. He has also argued that the 1973 law creating a process for Congress to pass the resolution is unconstitutional, a position that scholars have dismissed as wrong.
Still, advocates argue that there is still value in putting members of Congress on the record about a matter as weighty as war, if only so that voters in the next elections know where they stand on the issue.
Larkin, Moskowitz’s primary challenger in Florida, said Democrats have lost ground there because voters have been disillusioned by the party’s record on Israel and Gaza.
“The larger trend here, if we continue to nominate these neoconservative establishment Democrats, is that the Democratic Party is going to lose ground,” he said.
The post Democrats Finally Get Around to Forcing Iran War Powers Vote appeared first on The Intercept.
Keep your web browsing activity hidden, mask your torrenting activity and unblock geo-protected streaming content with the best VPNs for Mac.
On Tuesday, the FDA upgraded the recall to Class I, a situation in which a product can cause "serious adverse health consequences or death."
So I've been on a Pint then a Pint X for the entire time I've been riding (since 2019, over 6000 miles between both boards) and even as a heavier guy, I have to say I love the Pint form factor and don't want anything bigger
I do ride purely for fun occasionally (usually a "take the long way" type ride), but I am definitely a utilitarian rider more than anything. I take my Onewheel to the store where I want to be able to put it under the cart, to get coffee, on the train where it has to partially fit under a seat, etc.
So I want to upgrade my current Pint X, and am going back-and-forth between upgrading to the Pint S motor, getting the PintV kit from Floatwheel, or maybe eventually both? Not sure if that's an option—didn't see any mention of the Pint S motor specifically on FW's site
My main goal is just to give myself some more torque/power when going up the hills in my area, not as much to go faster, although I know they're pretty closely linked
So just looking for any advice/feedback from those who've done one or the other, and if anyone has done both or knows if that's possible (and would have any benefit) I'd love to hear from you!
TLDR: Is the Pint S motor or the PintV a bigger upgrade in terms of torque/power and is it possible to do both?
Clinton delivers withering rebuke and says hearing is an attempt to deflect attention from Trump’s actions
Hillary Clinton delivered a withering rebuke to a congressional committee investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, accusing its Republican members of embarking on a “fishing expedition” intended to cover up and deflect attention from the actions of Donald Trump.
In a furious opening statement, the former secretary of state suggested the event was “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people” while repeating her insistence that she had never met Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker who died in 2019.
Continue reading...Michael Ortega Casanova is one of four people who were killed after people aboard a U.S.-registered speedboat allegedly opened fire on Cuba's border patrol.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her opening statement before the House Oversight Committee that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.
The investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie is still running at full speed, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CBS News.
Feb. 26, 2026 — In response to the societal challenge of growing electricity demand from AI data centers, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is launching the Next Generation Data Centers Institute (NGDCI). This internal ORNL institute will unite the laboratory’s unique expertise and facilities that span energy technologies, high-performance computing, cybersecurity, and grid science to ensure that America’s rapidly growing AI infrastructure remains secure, efficient, and reliable.
Kashif Nawaz, head of the Building Technologies Research Section, and Wes Brewer, senior research scientist in the National Center for Computational Sciences, walk through the energy plant that supports the Frontier data center. Credit: Amy Smotherman Burgess/ORNL, U.S. Dept of Energy.
ORNL’s launch of NGDCI comes as the federal government is advancing its own national initiative: Genesis Mission. The Genesis Mission, led by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), calls for linking the nation’s most powerful computing resources with the energy systems that support them, doubling the productivity and impact of American research and development within a decade.
“Artificial intelligence is transforming every part of our society, but its energy appetite is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. “The electricity required to power AI data centers is expected to double or triple in the coming decade, straining infrastructure that is already under pressure. ORNL is uniquely positioned to meet this challenge.”
NGDCI supports the national mission to secure American energy dominance and deliver the science and technology needed to power, cool, operate, and secure AI infrastructure at scale. As ORNL prepares to deploy Discovery and Lux — next-generation AI supercomputer systems — NGDCI will focus on the technologies required to operate these systems reliably while accelerating scientific breakthroughs.
Urgency and Scale of the Challenge
Data centers account for more than 4% of U.S. electricity use, and by 2030, that figure could climb as high as 17%, according to analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute. AI-specific workloads drive much of this growth: Training a single large language model can consume hundreds of megawatt-hours of electricity. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation warns that surging demand from AI and industrial electrification poses mounting risks to grid reliability.
Investment is rising accordingly. McKinsey estimates that global data center infrastructure spending will reach $7 trillion by 2030, with more than 40% in the United States.
“That scale of opportunity also exposes critical vulnerabilities in power, cooling, and advanced components. NGDCI will not only help U.S. industry capture this generational opportunity but also ensure that the supply chains underpinning it are secure and aligned with national interests,” Streiffer said.
As data center demand accelerates, the nation’s grid cannot absorb projected load growth without new approaches to planning and operation. Yet with intelligent integration — linking power, cooling, thermal management, workload scheduling, and AI-enabled forecasting — the next generation of data centers could shift from being stressors to becoming contributors to resilience.
NGDCI will tap into the capabilities of the lab’s Modeling Energy Growth Associated with Data Centers (MEGA-DC) project, which has created a multi-criteria decision support platform. MEGA-DC models and forecasts the costs and economic benefits of implications of infrastructure upgrades needed by utilities, states, data center developers, and end-use consumers to help decision-makers identify pathways for scalable AI data center growth.
“We envision a future where data centers are national assets — adaptive, efficient, and strengthening the nation’s grid while fueling discovery and advancing America’s leadership in AI,” said ORNL’s Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for energy science and technology.
Industry Voices: A Call to Action
Companies across the AI and energy ecosystem, including AMD, Carrier Energy, Chemours, and NVIDIA, welcome the launch of NGDCI as a timely effort to address rapidly emerging challenges.
About NGDCI
“NGDCI aims to drive innovation that makes AI data centers more efficient, reliable, secure, and integrated with the nation’s energy system,” said Tom King, ORNL grid infrastructure crosscut lead. “It connects ORNL’s energy science, computing, and national security strengths, while remaining flexible and collaborative with other national labs, industry, and utilities.”
The Oak Ridge Reservation has been selected by DOE as a site for advancing large-scale AI data center and energy generation projects, reflecting its suitability for hosting secure, reliable and grid-supportive AI infrastructure on federally managed land.
ORNL’s leadership is built on decades of unique capability:
Research Priorities
NGDCI will focus on six research areas:
National Impact
NGDCI supports national goals to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation. By aligning ORNL research capabilities, NGDCI can help identify the most urgent opportunity areas to help secure AI infrastructure and ensure the United States can build advanced AI systems on an energy foundation that is reliable and globally competitive.
UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.
Source: ORNL
The post ORNL Launches the Next-Generation Data Centers Institute appeared first on HPCwire.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 26, 2026 — Broadcom Inc. today announced it has begun shipping the industry’s first 2nm custom compute SoC built on its 3.5D eXtreme Dimension System in Package (XDSiP) platform. A proven modular, multi-dimensional stacked die platform, 3.5D XDSiP combines 2.5D techniques and 3D-IC integration using Face-to-Face (F2F) technology.
3.5D XDSiP is foundational to next-generation XPUs. With 3.5D XDSiP, consumer AI customers can deliver the most advanced XPU with unparalleled signal density, superior power efficiency and low latency to meet the massive computational demands of gigawatt-scale AI clusters. Broadcom’s XDSiP platform allows compute, memory and network I/O to scale independently in a compact form factor, enabling high-efficiency, low-power computing at scale.
“We’re proud to deliver the first 3.5D custom compute SoC for Fujitsu – a testament to the outstanding execution and innovation by the Broadcom team,” said Frank Ostojic, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s ASIC Products Division. “Since introducing our 3.5D XDSiP platform technology in 2024, Broadcom has expanded its 3.5D platform capabilities to support XPUs for our broader customer base that will ship from 2H ’26. These developments underscore Broadcom’s unrivaled technology leadership in delivering high-complexity XPUs to enable transformative breakthroughs in AI.”
“The launch of Broadcom’s 3.5D XDSiP technology marks a transformative milestone in advanced semiconductor integration. By combining 2nm process innovation with Face-to-Face 3D integration, it unlocks unprecedented compute density and energy efficiency essential for the next era of AI and HPC,” Naoki Shinjo, SVP, Head of Advanced Technology Development Unit, Fujitsu. “This breakthrough is a key enabler for Fujitsu’s FUJITSU-MONAKA initiative to deliver cutting-edge, high-performance, and low-power processors. We highly value our strategic partnership with Broadcom and believe this technology will help power a more scalable and sustainable AI-driven society.”
For more information on Broadcom’s 3.5D XDSiP, please click here.
About Broadcom
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a technology leader that designs, develops, and supplies semiconductors and infrastructure software for global organizations’ complex, mission-critical needs. Broadcom combines long-term R&D investment with superb execution to deliver the best technology, at scale. Broadcom is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit www.broadcom.com.
Source: Broadcom
The post Broadcom Ships 3.5D Face-to-Face Compute SoC appeared first on HPCwire.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. and SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 25, 2026 — AMD and Nutanix today announced a multi-year strategic partnership to jointly develop an open, full-stack AI infrastructure platform designed to power agentic AI applications, everywhere. This agreement aligns to both companies’ commitment to an open ecosystem for AI, providing customers with choice and easy-to-deploy, production-ready, high-performance, and efficient solutions that are optimized for agentic AI, at the edge, inside enterprises, and across the cloud.
Credit: Shutterstock
The partnership aligns silicon innovation, open runtime software and enterprise cloud orchestration technologies for AI to deliver scalable, production-ready agentic AI platforms across data center, hybrid and edge environments. By optimizing the Nutanix Cloud and Nutanix Kubernetes Platforms on AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs, and integrating the AMD ROCm software ecosystem and the AMD Enterprise AI platform into Nutanix AI full-stack solutions, the companies are developing an open solution for agentic AI platforms using high-performance infrastructure and supported by a broad set of OEM partners.
As part of the agreement, AMD will make a strategic investment of $150 million in Nutanix common stock at a purchase price of $36.26 per share, and fund up to $100 million for Nutanix to support joint engineering initiatives and go-to-market collaboration to accelerate the adoption of AMD and the Nutanix-powered agentic AI platform, everywhere. The equity investment is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
“Enterprise customers need the freedom to run the models and workloads that matter most to their business, without compromise,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager of Compute and Enterprise AI at AMD. “Through our partnership with Nutanix we’re building a scalable, full-stack AI platform rooted in openness, designed to give enterprises and service providers the flexibility to innovate, extend and grow AI deployments across Enterprises.”
“Our partnership with AMD reflects a shared vision for scalable, production-ready AI infrastructure,” said Tarkan Maner, President and Chief Commercial Officer, Nutanix. “Together, we are delivering full-stack, integrated platforms optimized for inference and agentic applications across hybrid environments for enterprises and service providers.”
Advancing the Open Ecosystem for Enterprise AI
Enterprise AI infrastructure is entering a phase where inference workloads dominate and openness is essential for long-term innovation. AMD is committed to advancing an AI ecosystem built on open standards, interoperable software frameworks and architectural choice, which are essential requirements for Enterprises.
The first jointly-developed agentic AI platform from this partnership is expected to come to market beginning in late 2026, underscoring the companies’ commitment to rapid execution and delivery.
As AI inference becomes foundational to enterprise computing, infrastructure must deliver performance, efficiency and operational simplicity at scale. The co-engineered platform will be designed to provide high-performance inference acceleration powered by AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs, high-core-density compute and orchestration through AMD EPYC processors, and unified lifecycle management via Nutanix Enterprise AI — enabling enterprises to deploy open-source and commercial AI models without dependency on vertically integrated AI stacks.
Together, AMD and Nutanix are defining a new class of open AI infrastructure designed to support enterprise AI agents, multimodel inference services and industry-specific intelligent applications.
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. Learn more at www.amd.com.
Source: AMD
The post AMD and Nutanix Announce Strategic Partnership to Advance an Open and Scalable Platform for Enterprise AI appeared first on HPCwire.
Law demanding IDs match ‘sex at birth’ also includes bathroom ban provision for trans people in public buildings
Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.
The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.
Continue reading...Apple's iPhone and iPad running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have become the first consumer mobile devices cleared for NATO-restricted classified data. No special software or settings are required. MacRumors reports: Apple's devices are the first and only consumer mobile products that have reached this government certification level after security testing and evaluation by the German government. iPhones and iPads running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 are now certified for use with classified data in all NATO nations. In an announcement of the security clearance, Apple touted its security features: "Apple designs security into all of its products from the start, ensuring the most sophisticated protections are built in across hardware, software, and Apple silicon. This unique approach allows Apple users to benefit from industry-leading security protections such as best-in-class encryption, biometric authentication with Face ID, and groundbreaking features like Memory Integrity Enforcement. These same protections are now recognized as meeting stringent government and international security requirements, even for restricted data."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Struggling pizza chain Papa John's said it will close 200 restaurants this year and another 100 by the end of 2027.
Commercially supported offering unifies open source availability and enterprise capabilities in one solution, eliminating infrastructure fragmentation and delivering long term support, FIPS and direct bug fixes as standard features.
RENO, Nev., Feb. 26, 2026 — CIQ, the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux, today launched Rocky Linux from CIQ Pro (RLC Pro), a commercially supported Enterprise Linux subscription that transforms how organizations consume production-grade infrastructure and provides a strong foundation for next-generation software infrastructure, including AI, HPC and security hardened options. With Enterprise Linux binary compatibility, RLC Pro bundles long term support and lifecycle management, FIPS 140-3 validation, indemnification, security and support SLAs and customer-driven, direct bug fixes as necessary features, creating a clear path from community-based to mission-critical enterprise production.
RLC Pro represents a fundamental shift in what can be expected from enterprise operating systems and redefines the Enterprise Linux standard. CIQ believes that long term support, FIPS validation and direct bug fixes should be bundled as base features, not sold as expensive add-ons. For the first time, organizations get the commercial accountability and vendor support production infrastructure demands, bundled into one solution as the base offering from CIQ.
This addresses a long-standing market gap. Today, enterprises choosing open source solutions accept operational risk, spending engineering resources hunting through GitHub for stability solutions and managing security vulnerabilities without vendor backing. Those who choose commercial solutions often pay additional subscription fees to unlock the features they need on top of base licensing costs. This is orders of magnitude more difficult and risky when maintaining the operating system. RLC Pro eliminates the difficulty and risk by making these capabilities standard, delivering the support enterprises need, leaning on CIQ for faster bug fixes, vulnerability patches and escalated support as part of the base offering.
RLC Pro transforms what enterprises can accomplish by providing:
Rocky Linux is one of the most widely deployed enterprise Linux distributions worldwide, with Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) telemetry showing more than 2.75 million actively deployed instances globally. As adoption has accelerated, so has enterprise demand for commercially backed support, long-term lifecycle guarantees and validated compliance capabilities. RLC Pro directly addresses that market need.
“AI is driving a true inflection point for enterprise infrastructure,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and Cofounder of Rocky Linux. “RLC Pro brings together the infrastructure capabilities organizations need into a use-everywhere model that prioritizes efficiency, security and usability. We believe long term support, FIPS validation and direct, responsive engineering should be standard. When you hit a bug, we fix it. When you need a security remediation, we deliver it. And when you need a partner to ensure your infrastructure is running at its best, CIQ is there with you.”
“The real transformation here is what this enables enterprises to do,” said Bjorn Hovland, President of CIQ. “Deploy in regulated environments immediately. Plan infrastructure investments with confidence. Free engineering talent to build products instead of managing operating systems. RLC Pro doesn’t just change how organizations consume Linux, it changes what they can accomplish with it.”
RLC Pro is available today from CIQ and through AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Azure Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace. It will soon be available through the CIQ Portal, launching in the coming months.
To learn more about RLC Pro and CIQ’s complete Enterprise Linux portfolio, read the CIQ blog post. Also, join Brady Dibble, Director of Product Management, for the upcoming webinar “RLC Pro: Redefining what Enterprise Linux should be,” on Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 11am PT / 2pm ET.
About CIQ
CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and the leader in enterprise Linux architecture for sovereign AI inferencing at scale. CIQ delivers a complete software infrastructure stack, from the operating system to orchestration, enabling enterprises, government agencies, research institutions and supercomputing centers worldwide to deploy AI and high-performance computing workloads with strategic independence and control. CIQ’s product portfolio includes the Rocky Linux from CIQ Pro (RLC Pro) family of enterprise operating systems, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Fuzzball for cloud HPC orchestration, Warewulf Pro for cluster provisioning, and Apptainer, the leading container system for high-performance computing. Together, these products provide the secure, performant infrastructure foundation that modern AI deployments demand. For more information, visit ciq.com.
Source: CIQ
The post CIQ Launches RLC Pro Enterprise Linux Subscription for Production AI and HPC Environments appeared first on HPCwire.
Bankruptcy can wipe out credit card debt, but it comes at a steep cost. Here's what to consider before you decide.
Shutdown affecting Fema has caused delay in delivery
Host city officials concerned about ability to stage events
Representative Nellie Pou: ‘Time for DHS to do its job’
Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, replied forcefully on Thursday to concerns about a holdup of federal funding for this summer’s World Cup, confirming that “no funds have been awarded yet” in a post on X. About $625m in grants administered by the Federal Emergency Management Authority (Fema) were authorized last summer and set to be distributed to US host cities to aid with security and planning for the tournament, which will be co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.
Noem’s comments follow congressional testimony earlier this week by host city officials who expressed concern that they may not have time to adequately prepare for the tournament if they don’t receive the funds in short order.
Continue reading...Cody Roberts agreed to a plea deal that would spare him from going to trial and possibly prison on charges of animal abuse.
The rationale to justify the US striking first has shifted from the country killing protesters to its developing weapons
As senior Democrats emerged from a classified briefing on Iran with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, earlier this week, the leaders of the opposition delivered reserved, cryptic warnings of what may become the US’s largest military intervention since the Iraq war.
This was not a line in the sand against a new war in the Middle East. Instead, Democrats targeted the opaque decision-making around Donald Trump – as well as his own unpredictable whims – that could guide the weightiest foreign-policy decision of his two terms in office.
Continue reading...First lady to preside over meeting on ‘children, technology and education in conflict’ in New York next month
Melania Trump is set to lead a session of the United Nations security council on Monday, coinciding with the US assuming the body’s rotating monthly presidency, the White House announced.
According to a statement, first cited by CNN, the first lady plans to spotlight education as a tool for fostering tolerance and promoting global peace at the global body, which has its headquarters in New York.
Continue reading...While not as profitable as it was, a CD account of this size and length can still be lucrative. Here's what to know.
Women from countries with near-total bans on terminations will be given help to access services elsewhere
EU states will be able to tap into a social fund to help citizens access safe abortions, in an announcement hailed as a “victory for women”.
The roots of Thursday’s announcement go back to a long campaign for the European Commission to create a funding mechanism that would allow women from countries with near-total bans on abortion, such as Malta and Poland, to go where it is legal.
Continue reading...Indhu Rubasingham calls in Jennie Lee lecture for renewed commitment to creative risk and new writing
The National Theatre’s artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, has said conservative theatre-making will kill the industry, even if it helps venues balance the books for now.
Delivering the second-ever Jennie Lee lecture in front of an audience of 200 representatives from the UK arts industry on Thursday, Rubasingham called for a renewed national commitment to backing creative risk and new writing.
Continue reading...Most of the student activists targeted for deportation by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestine speech have beaten back their deportation cases.
Despite being one of the most recognizable faces among the activists, however, Mahmoud Khalil still faces possible re-detention and deportation to Algeria, a country he’s never lived in.
Now, on the heels of a federal court ruling that delivered a blow to his case, Khalil is mounting a new fight in immigration court, where he is appealing his deportation order.
Earlier this month, Khalil and his legal team requested that the government move the case out of Louisiana, the conservative district where he was held for three months. The legal team asked the court to send the case back to New York, where Khalil was initially detained and where he lives with his wife, Noor Abdalla, and their 10-month-old son Dean, who was born when Khalil was incarcerated.
If they’re successful, the legal team plans to submit new evidence to show the government’s retaliation against Khalil in hopes of dismissing his deportation case, according to the February 13 motion exclusively obtained by The Intercept. The motion, filed in immigration court, lays out the inequities of how Khalil’s deportation proceedings were handled last year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Khalil’s attorneys hope to use a raft of government documents that have become public since his initial hearings — documents that emerged after Louisiana courts denied him access to the materials in discovery.
“This is the bare minimum that immigration courts should do, to look at the evidence,” Khalil told The Intercept. “And it’s clear by the government’s statements, by ICE and DHS conduct, that these were brought in retaliation to our freedom of speech.”
Among the documents is a newly unsealed March 2025 legal memo from the Department of Homeland Security that shows the Trump administration lacked evidence to support its case.
In addition to the documents, Khalil’s legal team drew comparisons to the cases of other student activists who have won relief from the courts. Unlike the cases of recent Tufts University graduate Rümeysa Öztürk and former Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, for instance, the immigration judge presiding over Khalil’s case has refused to rule on whether the Trump administration unconstitutionally targeted Khalil for his activism at Columbia while he was a graduate student.
Both Öztürk and Mahdawi relied in part on a landmark ruling in a separate case that the government violated the constitutional rights of pro-Palestinian activists, including Khalil, when it detained them last year. In late January, a judge dismissed Öztürk’s deportation case and cited the September ruling. Just last week, Mahdawi beat his own deportation case after the judge said the government failed to certify the document it used to detain the activist.
“At least some part of this immigration system is still functioning fairly,” said Khalil, whose legal team hopes to add to the string of victories.
For nearly a year, the Trump administration has attempted to make an example out of Khalil as part of its harsh crackdown on advocacy for Palestinian rights. ICE agents detained Khalil last March at his New York City home and whisked him away to Louisiana.
Immigration detainees are frequently rushed to Louisiana; critics of the transfers say they serve to isolate immigrants from loved ones and communities that could aid them, and also takes advantage of more conservative judges who could be friendlier to administration positions. Yet Khalil’s attorneys said the swift nature of the transfer, flying him out of New York within several hours of his detention, was especially punitive.
At the time of his detention and transfer, the Trump administration said Khalil should be deported because his campus activism harmed U.S. foreign policy, justifying the position by conflating his advocacy for Palestine with support for Hamas and antisemitism. The government later added a charge of immigration fraud to Khalil’s case.
Khalil and his legal team have long argued the Trump administration’s case against him was never about immigration, but about silencing Israel’s critics. That argument was never considered by Judge Jamee Comans, who declined to consider Khalil’s free speech claims.
Comans also denied Khalil’s application for a waiver that would create another path toward remaining the country; usually the waiver applications are reviewed in a hearing, Khalil’s lawyers said, but Comans denied Khalil’s outright.
Comans upheld the Trump administration’s claims in the case and twice last year ordered Khalil’s deportation.
In the February 13 filing, Khalil’s attorneys said the rejection of his waiver was part of the government’s relation for protected speech, an opinion backed up by a declaration from a former immigration judge. Khalil’s legal team said it was “unprecedented” for a judge to deny a detainee the opportunity to make a case for a violation of free speech rights.
“The whole case has been an example of abnormal, from Mahmoud’s arrest until now.”
“The whole case has been an example of abnormal, from Mahmoud’s arrest until now,” said Johnny Sidonis, a head attorney on Khalil’s immigration legal team. “If this evidence had been available to us and set forth in the record immigration court, it would have affected the outcome of the case.”
In December, Comans, the Louisiana judge, was promoted to an acting assistant director position in the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Comans could not be reached for comment, but her office said it does not comment on immigration judge decisions or active cases. (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.)
Khalil’s lawyers now hope to make the newly unsealed Homeland Security memo a major piece of their case. Drafted the day of Khalil’s detention, the memo was unsealed by a federal court in Massachusetts in late January as a part of litigation brought by The Intercept and other news outlets. The Trump administration acknowledged in the document that it lacked evidence to support its deportation case against Khalil beyond the rarely used foreign policy grounds provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The government said in the memo that it anticipated legal blowback.
A week after Khalil’s detention and after his initial lawsuit, the government added the immigration fraud charge to the docket, accusing Khalil of leaving information about his internship for a United Nations agency and membership in a pro-Palestine Columbia group off his 2024 green card application.
The new motion in Khalil’s case accuses the government of adding the second charge because the foreign policy-related “charge would not pass constitutional muster and therefore the government needed another reason to pursue Mr. Khalil’s removal, no matter how meritless and tenuous it would be to do so, due to its retaliatory animus.”
Khalil’s legal fight is being waged in two courts: in federal court, where the adverse ruling came from on January 15, and in immigration court.
In immigration court, the Department of Homeland Security has until March 23 to file its response to Khalil’s filing at the immigration appeals board, after which the board will render its decision. And Khalil already has an ongoing case against his detention in federal court.
Last month, a panel of appeals court judges overturned a lower court’s order to release Khalil based on his First Amendment rights, saying the lower court doesn’t have jurisdiction over free speech aspects of the case. Khalil has until March 31 to appeal that ruling.
In the meantime, Khalil has remained free from detention since last June, but he seldom gone outside since the federal appeals court ruling last month. A week after the ruling, an ICE spokesperson said the Trump administration was making plans to deport Khalil to Algeria.
Planning a future with his family is bogged down in uncertainty, he said. Before signing the lease to their new apartment, the first question he asked the landlord was: “What if I break the lease prematurely?”
“I can’t buy any piece of furniture,” Khalil said, “because I could be deported any day.”
“I can’t buy any piece of furniture because I could be deported any day.”
Despite the stress of his possible deportation and security risks, Khalil has continued his advocacy for Palestinian rights and that of others to speak out, giving speeches at events and meeting with members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
He has also remained in contact with Öztürk, Mahdawi, and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri, who was also detained for his pro-Palestine advocacy, as well as Leqaa Kordia, the last person who remains jailed after participating in the Columbia protests.
For Khalil, continuing to speak out, despite security risks, is his way of showing he will not be intimidated into giving the Trump administration wanted: his silence.
“The administration wanted to make an example out of me,” Khalil said. “And this is the way that I’m making an example of this administration.”
The post Pro-Palestine International Students Have Won in Court. Why Hasn’t Mahmoud Khalil Won His Freedom? appeared first on The Intercept.
Hannah Doran’s The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights and Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice declared joint winners of award for female, transgender and non-binary writers
The Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights has been awarded to joint winners, both for their debut plays.
Hannah Doran’s The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights and Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice beat the other eight finalists to the 48th annual award. Doran and Reddick each receive a cash prize of $25,000 (£18,500) and a signed print by the artist Willem de Kooning.
Continue reading...Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic until Friday at 5 p.m. to grant the military unresticted use of its AI technology.
Player is captain of NHL’s Ottawa Senators
Tkachuk expresses regret over Trump joke
US ice hockey star Brady Tkachuk has said he does not appreciate an AI video released by the White House that shows him insulting Canadians.
Tkachuk played in the Americans’ victory over Canada at the Winter Olympics on Sunday, which secured the US men their first gold medal since 1980. In the wake of that win, the White House’s TikTok account published video of Tkachuk saying: “They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating fuckers a lesson.”
Continue reading...Met urges pupils not to get involved and asks platforms to ban accounts promoting ‘fights’ with images of weapons
Pupils aged 11 to 16 are being encouraged to join in school fights in posts circulating on TikTok and Snapchat, prompting police to urge children not to get involved.
The Metropolitan police have asked social media platforms to ban accounts promoting “school wars”, while headteachers have warned parents about the posts.
Continue reading...You can feel comfortable scrolling on the subway in peace with Samsung's new flagship phone.
The decline in the average 30-year mortgage rate could be good news for home shoppers as the spring home-buying season gets rolling.
Mozilla has released Firefox 148 for Windows, macOS and Linux, bringing a new AI Settings section that lets users disable all of the browser's AI-powered features in one click and then selectively re-enable the ones they actually want, such as the local translation tool that works locally rather than in the cloud. The update also patches more than 50 security vulnerabilities -- none known to be under active exploitation -- over half of which Mozilla classifies as high risk, including five sandbox escape flaws and eight use-after-free bugs in the JavaScript engine that could allow code execution.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cuban president says country will ‘defend itself with determination’ after deadly coastal assault by exiles
Cuba has vowed to defend itself against any “terrorist and mercenary aggression”, a day after border guards said they had killed four exiles on a Florida-registered speedboat that opened fire on a patrol.
Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on X that the Caribbean country would “defend itself with determination and firmness” after the incident in which six other people on the boat were injured.
Continue reading...Feb. 26, 2026 — Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre has doubled the number of high-memory CPU nodes available on Setonix, increasing capacity from 8 to 16 nodes to better support memory-intensive research workflows.
Credit: Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre
Each high-memory node features dual 2.45 GHz AMD EPYC 7763 “Milan” 64-core CPUs with 1 TB of shared memory.
The latest annual Pawsey User Survey highlighted the need for more high-memory resources to run jobs that require a single shared memory space, support single-node codes, or need to access very large datasets instantly and together.
These types of workloads are increasingly common across disciplines such as health and life sciences, climate modeling, genomics, AI, and materials science. By expanding high memory capacity, Pawsey is enabling researchers to run larger, more complex jobs more efficiently, while reducing job failures caused by memory constraints.
The upgrade also benefits workflows that combine high memory and parallel computing, enabling researchers to move more efficiently between different stages of their computational pipelines on Setonix.
To ensure fairness of access to these nodes, high memory node usage is currently capped at two simultaneous jobs per individual researcher. In the future, usage will also be capped at four simultaneous jobs per project; researchers will be notified separately when the planned change is implemented. This is expected to improve availability and reduce waiting times for researchers who rely on high-memory CPU nodes.
The upgrade was made possible through a National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) grant awarded to Pawsey, showcasing the importance of sustained national investment in research infrastructure that responds to evolving scientific needs.
All researchers with an active Setonix CPU allocation automatically have access to the new high-memory nodes.
This upgrade is a clear example of how researcher feedback shapes Pawsey’s services and capabilities. Pawsey remains committed to listening to its user community and working towards providing access to a world-class supercomputing infrastructure that speeds up their scientific outcomes.
Pawsey Researchers are encouraged to share their experiences and priorities through Pawsey’s annual user survey at the end of their project, or anytime via the user feedback link: https://pawsey.org.au/user-feedback.
Source: Karina Nunez, Pawsey
The post Pawsey Expands High-Memory Resources on Setonix for Data-Intensive Workloads appeared first on HPCwire.
Firm’s automated warehouses are struggling to compete against swift deliveries from stores by bike riders
Only six years ago, the boss of Ocado Group was writing the obituary for supermarkets as he predicted that a surge in online grocery shopping during the pandemic had brought forward the hi-tech future.
“Not every store will disappear, but there will be a dramatic shift,” Tim Steiner said at the height of the Covid pandemic, when shopping from the sofa became the only option for many.
Continue reading...Speaking of the Citrini's blog post, which imagines a near-future AI-driven economic collapse, and which ended up help triggering the S&P 500's worst single-day drop in nearly two weeks on Monday, FT Alphaville decided to track how US stock markets have moved on the release days of notable dystopian speculative fiction throughout history. The story adds: You may contend that this is facile. We would agree. You might contend that the comparisons make no sense because it's possible to read a blog post during a single work shift, but it's tricker to complete a whole novel (or sneak out to watch a movie). We would contend: do you really think traders read? Let's begin. The methodology -- tracking S&P 500 daily moves for post-1986 releases and DJIA moves for pre-1986 ones -- crowned The Matrix as the all-time leader, its March 1999 US debut coinciding with a 1.11% drop in the index. Citrini's "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" came in a close second at -1.04%. On the positive end, the 2013 release of Her, a film about a man falling in love with an AI agent, coincided with the largest gain in the set at +1.66%.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 | I figure the community would appreciate the philosophy behind what we're doing here. Check out our mission statement! [link] [comments] |
The far-right activist’s trip came amid calls for the US to be included in a probe into foreign interference in UK politics
The hosting of Tommy Robinson by the Trump administration has been condemned by British MPs amid calls for the US to be included in a probe into foreign interference in UK politics.
The far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is being feted in the US, where he met figures including a political appointee at the Department of State in Washington DC and a congressman.
Continue reading...Benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell to 5.98% from 6.01% last week, the lowest level since September 2022
The average long-term US mortgage rate slipped this week below 6% for the first time since late 2022, good news for home shoppers as the spring home-buying season gets rolling.
The benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell to 5.98% from 6.01% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said on Thursday. One year ago, the rate averaged 6.76%.
Continue reading...AI’s appetite for power continues to expand, with little indication that demand is slowing. As AI models scale, energy costs have become an operational and strategic bottleneck. The race to find more efficient ways to compete has become as important as the race to build smarter algorithms. But what if the problem isn’t just inefficient chips, but the very way we think about computation itself? Perhaps, a new physical foundation for computing can solve this problem?
That is exactly what researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are now exploring – what they describe as a thermodynamic computer.
Modern chips are designed to keep everything perfectly controlled, including the electrical signals which must register as a zero or a one. However, any heat in the system can cause fluctuations. Keeping that level of precision stable takes energy – a lot of it.
A thermodynamic computer flips the equation. Instead of spending power to suppress those tiny fluctuations, it uses them as part of the computation itself. In other words, it allows a degree of controlled randomness to do some of the work.
(IM Imagery/Shutterstock)
The LBNL research team, led by Stephen Whitelam, a staff scientist at its Molecular Foundry division, demonstrated that this thermodynamic framework could generate simple images from random disturbances in data (essentially from noise). This allowed the system to mimic the generative behavior of neural networks.
Why does this matter? Because it suggests that GenAI behavior does not depend solely on energy-intensive digital hardware. If neural network outputs can emerge from physical processes that consume far less power, it could change how AI systems are built and scaled.
There is also a deeper scientific angle to this. Over the years, computing has been constrained by physical limits, such as Landauer’s principle – which ties information erasure directly to energy dissipation. With thermodynamic computing, you get a way to design around these limits. This echoes earlier interest in analog computing, where physical systems perform calculations naturally. The difference now is that the target workload is AI. Maybe digital dominance was less inevitable, and more convenient?
Whitelam shared that the thermodynamic computing system works similarly to boats in the ocean. In this analogy, the thermal noise is the waves of the ocean. Traditional computing is more like ocean liners, where they just plow through the waves. While it is effective and powerful, it is also very costly. Instead of fighting the waves, the boats ride the waves to steer and reach their destination.
“We introduce a generative modeling framework for thermodynamic computing, in which structured data is synthesized from noise by the natural time evolution of a physical system governed by Langevin dynamics,” shared the authors of the study published on arXiv.
“If realized in analog hardware, such a system would function as a generative model that produces structured samples without the need for artificially-injected noise or active control of denoising.”
(Image courtesy Facebook)
It is important to be clear about what a thermodynamic computer is and what it is not. The thermodynamic computer is still an early-stage research concept, demonstrated through controlled experiments. It is tested based on modeling rather than commercial hardware. So, it is not going to replace GPU and AI accelerators in data centers. At least not yet – not in the current form.
Significant engineering hurdles remain. Especially if such systems have to operate at scale. A chief challenge is how do you harness randomness without letting it spiral into chaos? Digital chips are popular because they are predictable. A thermodynamic system, by contrast, must prove that controlled disorder can be engineered into something stable and scalable.
If it can be achieved, the implications extend beyond energy savings. It would mean that AI workloads could one day be operated on totally different physical architecture. This could reduce pressure on power grids and data center cooling systems. However, for now thermodynamic computing sits at the edge of research and not commercial use. Let’s see how this space develops and whether AI companies, chip designers, and national labs invest in turning this physics-driven concept into scalable hardware.
The post Berkeley Lab Explores Thermodynamic Computing for AI appeared first on HPCwire.
Actor Robert De Niro has called for people to take to the streets peacefully against Donald Trump, who this week called him 'extremely low IQ' on social media.
The Guardian reporter Joseph Gedeon sat down with the Hollywood star to discuss hope, his longstanding feud with Trump – and how America can unseat him
Continue reading...Delia Ramirez said DHS head ‘viciously lied’ when pressed about departmental officials allegedly breaking the law
The US congresswoman Delia Ramirez, one of the most vocal pro-immigrant national lawmakers, pressed for the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, to resign during a “combative” closed-door meeting between the two on Wednesday, according to a Guardian interview with the representative and a follow-up letter submitted to Noem.
The meeting was the first one-on-one private meeting that Noem has had with a Democratic member of Congress since her tenure at the top of the DHS began last year.
Continue reading...Silver coins can be worth far more than face value. Here are the ones that pack the most precious metal right now.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled Thursday that the legal challenge brought by a preservationist group failed because the White House is not a government agency.
People across region are bracing for possibility of conflict as embassies evacuate staff and flights are cancelled
Anxiety is growing over a potential war between Iran and the US in the Middle East, with embassies evacuating staff and airlines cancelling flights as tensions mount.
As critical talks over Iran’s nuclear programme entered their second round on Thursday night, and a vast US military buildup continued in the Middle East, the Trump administration warned of drastic consequences if Iranian negotiators failed to make significant concessions.
Continue reading...Families are ‘struggling with cost of heating their homes’, letter says as Trump repeatedly pledges to slash utility bills
As energy prices for US households soar nationwide, Democratic and progressive lawmakers are calling on the energy department to end its plan to double exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
“The Trump administration’s LNG export policies are not putting America first: they have jacked up utility prices for families, leaving many Americans struggling with the cost of heating their homes this winter,” reads a letter to the energy secretary, Chris Wright, sent the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Independent senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and seven others.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader shares a report: It might look like something from the early days of the internet, with its aggressively grey color scheme and rectangles nested inside rectangles, but FPDS.gov is one of the most important resources for keeping tabs on what powerful spying tools U.S. government agencies are buying. It includes everything from phone hacking technology, to masses of location data, to more Palantir installations. Or rather, it was an incredible tool and the basis for countless of my own investigations and others. Because on Wednesday, the government shut it down. Its replacement, another site called SAM.gov with Uncle Sam branding, frankly sucks, and makes it demonstrably harder to reliably find out what agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are spending tax payers dollars on. "FPDS may have been a little clunky, but its simple, old-school interface made it extremely functional and robust. Every facet of government operations touches on contracting at one point, and this was the first tool that many investigative journalists and researchers would reach for to quickly find out what the government is buying and who is selling it, and how these contracts all fit together," Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple is taking a different approach with its latest event, as new product announcements could happen all week long.
This year’s crop of tops draw on Venus flytraps, cherry blossoms and classic soccer jersey designs – to varying degrees of success
The 2026 NWSL season is upon us, and so are its kits.
All 16 of the league’s clubs got new kits ahead of this season, and for the first time the league gave select clubs the opportunity to design third kits. The resulting collection, which includes initial home and away looks for debutants Boston Legacy and Denver Summit, is a mixed bag.
Continue reading...Lawsuit against the Trump administration says penalties against Francesca Albanese violate the first amendment
The family of independent UN investigator Francesca Albanese has sued the Trump administration over US sanctions imposed on her last year for her criticism of Israel’s policies during the war with Hamas in Gaza, saying the penalties violate the first amendment.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the US district court in Washington, Albanese’s husband and minor child outlined the serious impact those sanctions have had on the family’s life and work, including the ability to access their home in the nation’s capital.
Continue reading...I'd been a gas stove user my entire life. A year into my induction journey, I can't imagine going back.
Been riding my brothers one wheel GT whenever I can steal it from him. Usually when hes out of town. Finally talked the wife into letting me pull the trigger on getting my own. Looking to purchase in the next month or so. When the weather starts to warm up. Do I just get it from the One wheel web site or are there other options. I do want a new board or at least one with a warranty/Support.
Are there options for reman boards that are already modded with better Motor/battery options? Mabey one with the badger kit installed already?
A second season of "Heated Rivalry" is underway and filming will begin this summer, says show creator and director Jacob Tierney.
The announcement comes ahead of the 2026 Formula 1 season.
A fictional memo set in June 2028, published by short seller Citrini Research, wiped roughly $10 billion off Indian IT stocks in a single trading session on February 24 and sent the Nifty IT index down as much as 5.3% -- its worst single-day fall since August 2023 -- on the argument that AI coding agents have collapsed the cost advantage of Indian developers to the price of electricity. The index has shed more than $68 billion in market value in February alone, its worst month since 2003. But the core claim that India's entire $205 billion software export industry rests on cheap labor is roughly 15 years out of date, an analysis argues, custom application maintenance alone accounts for about 35% of a typical Indian IT firm's revenue, per HSBC, and enterprise platforms require deterministic outputs that probabilistic AI systems cannot wholesale replace. HSBC estimates gross AI-led revenue deflation for the sector at 14-16%, a measured headwind rather than an extinction event. The story adds: 24 years of software export data that has never posted a decline, $200 billion in annual revenue, partnerships with the very AI labs whose products are supposed to be the instrument of the sector's destruction, possibly a new $1.5 trillion market category emerging at the intersection of services and software, and the largest U.S. corporates in the middle of mapping their entire workforces into process architectures that require technology partners to modernise. I think India's IT is going to be fine.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The stars appear to be aligning for silicon photonics, the emerging technology that uses tiny strands of glass to distribute electric signals. With advantages over copper wires in terms of bandwidth, reach, latency, power, and heat, silicon photonics and co-packaged optics (CPOs) are poised to emerge in a big way–especially for scale-up HPC systems powering agentic AI workloads.
The state-of-the-art for scale-up HPC and AI today is Nvidia’s NVL72, which uses the NVLink interconnect to make 72 Blackwell GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs appear to work as a single processor. Compared to scale-out clusters, scale-up systems offer a simpler development paradigm, higher memory bandwidth, and lower data latencies. Despite the speed at which NVLink can move data between processors and high bandwidth memory (HBM), it’s just not fast enough to keep up with AI inference demands.
Nvidia’s NVL72
NVLink is the world’s fastest scale-up interconnect and therefore in high demand. Today, it’s a copper-only affair, although that could change at GTC 2026 in a few weeks (or not). Copper has proven itself to be an extremely resilient element for conducting electricity and digital signal processing. However, as great as it is, there are some unsurpassable physical limits to copper that Nvidia and other hyperscale builders are starting to hit their heads upon. That has them looking for alternatives, and photonics and CPO are at the top of the list.
There are limits to the amount of data you can cram through a copper wire before the signal degrades. A single Cat6 copper wire can deliver up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of data over short distances, while silicon optics can deliver more than 1 Tbps on a single strand.
Copper’s distance limitations also frequently require re-timers and signal boosters (although NVL72, as an all-copper system, does not use re-timers). Another factor is the power consumption of copper-based networks, which also lends itself to additional heat. There’s a reason why today’s dense GPU systems, including NVL72, require liquid cooling, which adds cost and complexity.
Silicon photonics holds advantages over copper in each of these areas. These advantages have been known about for some time, but the industry hasn’t needed the extra capacity that silicon photonics can provide–that is, until the AI boom drove demand for HPC through the roof and exposed the ragged edge of the copper performance curve.
One company that’s preparing for the coming photonics wave is Scintil Photonics. The French company is developing a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) laser that’s capable of delivering data across up to 16 separate frequencies in a single silicon strand.
Silicon photonics are poised to address obstacles in scale-up servers (Image source: Scintil photonics)
Last week, Scintil Photonics announced that its DWDM laser is now being manufactured using Tower Semiconductor’s process. The company is currently in early production and serving a few large customers, says Matt Crowley, Scintil’s CEO.
Scintil’s laser plugs into TSMC’s Compact Universal Photonic Engine, or COUPE, which is its next-generation photonics platform that is being adopted by a range of chip makers, including Nvidia, which is also an investor in Scintil. Placed at the front of a rack, Scintil’s laser and chip, dubbed the Scintil Heterogeneous Integrated Photonics (SHIP), sends data across hundreds of individual silicon strands to processors, memory, and system storage.
“You can attach a huge amount of bandwidth per chip, easily 1.6 Tbps per GPU, or you can attach two fibers and have 3.2 Tbps,” Crowley told HPCwire. “It could be 6.4 Tbps. Theoretically at least, they have a roadmap to put as much bandwidth as they need. So it almost becomes this bandwidth abundance.”
In addition to more bandwidth, silicon photonics can shrink latencies by 90%, according to Scintil. While power consumption is currently on par with copper–about 3.5 picojoules per bit–the photonics roadmap with DWDM multi-plexing foresees reducing power consumption by more than 50% compared to copper networks, according to Crowley.
“People say copper doesn’t consume power,” Crowley said. “Well, that’s kind of like saying my car doesn’t consume power when it’s parked in the driveway. It’s the gigantic SerDes chips on either end of the cable that are running so hot you can’t touch them, that are consuming the power. So if I can bring down the data rate per channel, I actually drastically cut the power consumption.”
The bandwidth constraints of existing scale-up AI systems are forcing customers to make tradeoffs when it comes to agentic AI workloads. How much data customers can afford to retain in KV caches will determine how much memory the AI application can retain from session to session. It’s all about the costs of generating tokens, or tokenomics.
Scintil Photonics uses multi-plexing to split a single photonic strand into eight frequencies (Source: Scintil Photonincs)
Today’s largest scale-up servers have about 100 chips. But with silicon photonics’ superior latency and reach up to 1 kilometer, it will soon be possible to build much bigger scale-up systems with thousands of GPUs and other accelerators, according to Crowley.
“I’d like to go multi-rack scale-up network, so I can basically have this supercomputer where physical distance is no longer a real limitation,” Crowley said. “One of our customers told us it can more than double, potentially triple the utilization rate, which from an economic point of view is it reduces the cost per token by a third.”
If the bottleneck around memory bandwidth suddenly disappears–if we suddenly have an abundance–it could eliminate those tradeoffs and unlock AI. The cost per token would decrease, and users would be able to keep much more data in memory, potentially opening up all kinds of new AI applications. In short, it could be the key for actually achieving those wild AI dreams.
Scintil is currently shipping its DWDM laser in low volume. It’s manufacturing wafers in the hundreds, and is finalizing the commercial product, which will include a custom ASIC in addition to the laser. Its customers are champing at the bit to unleash AI, whatever that takes. Whether the key to unlocking AI resides in silicon photonics has yet to be determined, but the indicators suggest it very well could be.
“The big guys are telling us they want to deploy this for real in 2028,” Crowley said. “In our world, it’s actually coming up pretty fast. Because I think it will be a major architectural shift.”
The post Eyeing the Massive HPC Opportunity for Unlocking Agentic AI with Silicon Photonics appeared first on HPCwire.
Trump’s tariffs: Are they here to stay? Independent Thinking podcast Audio sseth.drupal@c…
The US Supreme Court ruled against President Donald Trump on his first justification for tariffs, but he says he will push them through by other means.
On this week’s Independent Thinking podcast, our experts analyse why Trump is wedded to tariffs as an economic and political tool, and what effect they will have on the US and global economies.
They also discuss whether tariffs have ended globalization for good even after the Trump era ends.
Joining regular host Bronwen Maddox are Creon Butler, director of the Global Economy and Finance programme at Chatham House, and down the line from Washington, Heather Hurlburt, a consulting fellow in our US and North America Programme.
Independent Thinking is a weekly international affairs podcast hosted by our director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists, and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.
More ways to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
‘It will soon be spring – and the Danes will soon be going to the polls,’ Danish PM tells the parliament in a special statement
Nordic correspondent
Frederiksen is speaking now.
Continue reading...Mette Frederiksen hopes to profit from her stand against Donald Trump’s attempt to claim the Arctic territory
Denmark’s prime minister has called an early election to take advantage of a “Greenland bounce” after Donald Trump’s threats to invade the Arctic territory.
Mette Frederiksen, who has been in office since 2019, is required by Danish law to call an election by 31 October. Setting a date with eight months to go appears to be an attempt to ride improved poll ratings after disastrous local elections in November that saw her Social Democrats lose control of Copenhagen for the first time in a century.
Continue reading...SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 26, 2026 — Supermicro, Inc. is announcing the launch of the industry’s first and highest-density blade server platform powered by the latest AMD EPYC 4005 series processors. Designed with a flexible, density-optimized blade architecture, Supermicro’s new MicroBlade platform is designed for longevity and versatility. By including the latest AMD EPYC 4005 series processors, along with previous versions, the system provides seamless scalability and long-term investment protection, allowing organizations to expand and upgrade as compute requirements evolve.
Supermicro MicroBlade platform
“Our flexible blade architecture enables customers to mix different node types with different CPUs within a single enclosure and can incorporate up to 320 server nodes in a standard 48U rack,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. “Supermicro continues to lead the industry in delivering advanced, energy-efficient platforms to market that maximize scalability, lower total cost of ownership, and protecting data center investments for the long term.”
The new 6U system supports up to 40 nodes in a single enclosure, delivering unparalleled compute density, energy efficiency, and cost effectiveness for scale-out and multi-tenant environments. The platform is optimized for a wide range of efficient and high-density workloads, including:
Each node supports a single AMD EPYC 4005 series processor with two DDR5 ECC UDIMM slots operating at up to 5600 MT/s, along with two PCIe Gen5 E1.S SSDs and one M.2 SSD per node. Integrated networking features dual-port 25GbE via Broadcom BCM57414, with advanced security and manageability including TPM 2.0, signed firmware, hardware root of trust, IPMI 2.0, KVM over IP, and Redfish API support. The new MicroBlade system uniquely enables flexible mix-and-match configurations across single-wide and double-wide nodes further showcasing the versatility of the all-in-one Supermicro blade system. Connectivity further elevates its capabilities, with two integrated 25G Ethernet switches with 100G uplinks in the back of the enclosure, ensuring reliable, high-speed networking while lowering the TCO through cable reduction.
The MicroBlade chassis management module (CMM) provides total remote control of individual server blades, power supplies, cooling fans, and networking switches remotely. System administrators can control the maximum power consumption per server through power capping and manage the power allocation in the MicroBlade CMM for each blade server. Remote power control capabilities to reboot and/or reset the server are available as well as remote access to the BIOS configuration and operating system console information via SOL (Serial over LAN) or embedded KVM capabilities. Because the controller is a separate processor, all monitoring and control functions operate flawlessly regardless of CPU operation or system power-on status.
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
Source: Supermicro
The post Supermicro Debuts High-Density MicroBlade Server Featuring AMD EPYC 4005 appeared first on HPCwire.
 | In a rough financial situation and Onewheel is one of the best ways I can get around my small town. Do you think I can keep riding this for a little while longer until I get some extra cash to replace? Or am I really in danger…? [link] [comments] |
The release of Nancy Guthrie's home in Tucson, Arizona, comes nearly four weeks after she was reported missing on Feb. 1.
Labour has focused its efforts at voters who may be tempted to back the Reform candidate in the by-election
The number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in hotels has fallen to the lowest level for 18 months, Home Office figures show. Rajeev Syal has the story.
A minister has confirmed that the government is pressing ahead with the deal to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Yes. My colleague the foreign secretary Yvette Cooper has been talking to Marco Rubio, her opposite number in the US, about it. Foreign policy is never easy. We will make progress on the Chagos deal.
Continue reading...Feature for supervised accounts rolls out as Meta platforms faces US trials over alleged harms to children
Instagram said Thursday it will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm. The alerts will only go to parents who are enrolled in Instagram’s parental supervision program.
Instagram says it already blocks such content from showing up in teen accounts’ search results and directs people to helplines instead.
Continue reading...Marcelo Gomes da Silva attended President Trump's speech at the Capitol as the guest of Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton.
The crew of the Florida-registered vessel opened fire on border agents, Cuba’s Interior Ministry said. Cuban forces returned fire, killing four.
The Federal Trade Commission, joined by 11 states, claimed that the retail giant deceived its employees about pay and the tips they could earn.
Børge Brende admitted dining with the convicted sex offender on three occasions between 2018 and 2019
The boss of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has quit following criticism of his connections to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Børge Brende said he will step down as president and chief executive after more than eight years leading the body, which is best known for its annual meeting held each January in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
Continue reading...New York state has filed a lawsuit against Valve alleging that randomized loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 amount to a form of unregulated gambling, letting users "pay for the chance to win a rare virtual item of significant monetary value." From a report: While many randomized video game loot boxes have drawn attention and regulation from various government bodies in recent years, the New York suit calls out Valve's system specifically for "enabl[ing] users to sell the virtual items they have won, either through its own virtual marketplace, the Steam Community Market, or through third-party marketplaces." The vast majority of Valve's in-game loot boxes contain skins that can only be resold for a few cents, the suit notes, while the rarest skins can be worth thousands of dollars through marketplaces on and off of Steam. That fits the statutory definition of gambling as "charging an individual for a chance to win something of value based on luck alone," according to the suit. The Steam Wallet funds that users get through directly reselling skins "have the equivalent purchasing power on the Steam platform as cash," the suit notes. But if a user wants to convert those Steam funds to real cash, they can do so relatively easily by purchasing a Steam Deck and reselling it to any interested party, as an investigator did while preparing the lawsuit.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Former Labour leader says time for ‘real work’ to begin as his candidates take 14 of 24 available places on executive committee
Jeremy Corbyn is to become the de facto leader of Your Party, after an election in which his rival Zarah Sultana was also voted on to the party’s leadership committee.
The former Labour leader’s allies declared victory immediately after the vote in which Corbyn-backed candidates took 14 of the 24 available places on the party’s central executive committee (CEC). Sultana-backed candidates took seven of the seats and three went to independents.
Continue reading...The price of silver, following a drop from a record high, is on the rise again. Here's where it sits as of February 26.
British Muslim Trust says fund announced last week falls short as it requires mosques to prove they have been targeted
Ministers are being urged to drop the requirement for mosques to prove they have faced a hate crime before they can apply for protective security.
Last week, the Home Office announced up to £40m in funding for security staff, CCTV, fencing, alarms and floodlights for mosques, Muslim schools and community centres through the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme.
Continue reading...BRAUNSCHWEIG, Germany and INNSBRUCK, Austria, Feb. 26, 2026 — QUDORA and ParityQC have announced a strategic partnership to optimize quantum algorithm performance on trapped-ion hardware platforms.
QUDORA develops quantum computing systems based on trapped-ion technology, including the hardware, control systems, and system integration. ParityQC specializes in hardware-aware quantum architecture, resulting in scalable blueprints for quantum hardware and algorithms. Its Parity Twine method has demonstrated record efficiency in implementing quantum algorithms on every known hardware connectivity.
The partnership combines QUDORA’s proprietary Near-Field Quantum Control (NFQC) technology with ParityQC’s architecture framework. ParityQC will work with QUDORA’s engineering teams to tailor and optimize its algorithms for QUDORA’s hardware platform.
“Efficient use of hardware resources is essential for delivering practical quantum computing,” said Dr. Daniel Borcherding, Head of Quantum Software at QUDORA. “ParityQC’s architecture-driven approach allows us to improve algorithm performance on our systems without increasing hardware complexity. This supports faster progress toward customer-relevant quantum applications.”
“We’ve shown that Parity Twine enhances the performance of currently existing quantum hardware and allows to implement corner-stone algorithms in the most efficient way. Combining our approach with QUDORA’s vast experience in building trapped-ion quantum hardware will fast-track the development towards utility scale quantum devices,“ said Wolfgang Lechner and Magdalena Hauser, Co-CEOs ParityQC.
The Optimization Challenge
Quantum computers deliver practical value only when algorithms are aligned with the physical characteristics of the underlying hardware. Without hardware-specific optimization, algorithms typically require more qubits, deeper circuits, and longer coherence times than needed.
ParityQC’s Parity Twine technology addresses this challenge by restructuring algorithms to match the topology and operational constraints of specific quantum processors. Applied to QUDORA’s trapped-ion systems, this approach reduces gate counts and circuit depth, directly improving computational efficiency. Fewer operations mean less accumulated error and better results with existing hardware.
Quantum Computing Made in Europe
The partnership is rooted in a shared European quantum technology ecosystem. QUDORA operates from Germany, while ParityQC is based in Austria with subsidiaries in Germany, France and UK. Both companies are engaged with partners such as the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and NXP Semiconductors, creating a strong foundation for coordinated technical development.
Together, QUDORA and ParityQC aim to enable faster validation of quantum use cases and provide customers with quantum computing solutions that are technically robust, resource-efficient, and ready for real computational environments.
About ParityQC
As quantum architecture company, ParityQC’s focus is on developing blueprints and operating systems for quantum computers. ParityQC solves the challenges in the scalability of quantum devices by a fundamentally new paradigm which allows for fully programmable quantum chips with simplified design and control, as well as integrated error correction. ParityQC collaborates with hardware partners all over the world to jointly build highly scalable quantum computers for applications ranging from solving optimization problems on NISQ devices to general-purpose, error-corrected quantum computing.
About QUDORA
Founded in 2021, QUDORA is a leading full-stack system integrator of trapped-ion quantum computers based in Germany. The company’s proprietary Near-Field Quantum Control (NFQC) technology brings together ultra precise qubit control with very long coherence times significantly improving the performance per qubit. QUDORA’s QC systems are designed for seamless integration with existing industrial infrastructure, including on-premise deployments for HPC centers. With operations in Braunschweig and Hamburg, QUDORA is making quantum computing accessible to a broader range of applications and industries.
Source: ParityQC
The post QUDORA and ParityQC Partner to Optimize Quantum Algorithms for Trapped-Ion Systems appeared first on HPCwire.
A Columbia student detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday morning has been released from federal immigration custody.
Elmina Aghayeva, a neuroscience researcher and influencer from Azerbaijan, took to social media to thank her supporters hours after her arrest caused an uproar on campus.
“I am so grateful for everyone of you,” Aghayeva wrote in an Instagram story posted on Thursday afternoon. “I just got out a little while ago. I am safe and okay.”
A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed Aghayeva’s release, which came after Mamdani discussed the issue in a meeting with President Donald Trump earlier in the day. Mamdani said on X that Trump had called him following the meeting to say that Aghayeva was set to be released.
“The Mayor’s Office on Thursday morning asked that ICE not move her out of New York City, so she could have her day in court here, and ICE cooperated with the request,” the spokesperson told The Intercept. “Mayor Mamdani then raised the issue directly with the President at the White House, and shortly after their meeting, the President informed him over the phone that Aghayeva would be released.”
Federal agents detained Aghayeva at university housing early on Thursday morning, according to interim Columbia President Claire Shipman. In an email to the university community, Shipman wrote early Thursday that agents with the Department of Homeland Security entered a Columbia residential housing building and detained the student at approximately 6:30 a.m.
“Our understanding at this time is that the federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person,’” Shipman said in her email.
Students rallying to get the student released collected information about the detention and, in a letter to New York City Council Member Shaun Abreu, said they had learned from a security guard at the building that federal agents represented themselves as members of the New York Police Department and Columbia security officials.
“From what was relayed to us, the individuals who arrived were presented as NYPD alongside Columbia Public Safety,” the students wrote in the letter to Abreu, which was obtained by The Intercept.
At a protest outside the gates of the university on Thursday afternoon, Abreu alleged that the agents had masqueraded as NYPD cops.
“I consider it to be very much confirmed that they pretended to be NYPD officers in search of missing persons,” Abreu told The Intercept. “So they used false pretenses and they used straight-up lies to get the person they were looking for.”
In post on X, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said,
“ICE used a phony missing persons bulletin for a 5 year old girl.”
“The fact is that this student’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when ICE entered this building under false pretenses and engaged in criminal conduct,” Hoylman-Sigal went on. “We have clear evidence that this was a criminal operation. They are the secret police.”
The Department of Homeland Security, New York Police Department, City Hall, and Shipman’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Columbia security guard declined to comment.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested Aghayeva, who is Azerbaijani, for not having a proper student visa.
“The building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment,” the Homeland Security spokesperson told The Intercept. “She has no pending appeals or applications with DHS.”
The students who wrote the letter to the City Council also said they spoke with the detained student’s roommate, who said the agents did not present a warrant.
“According to the roommate, the individuals who entered did not present a warrant to the occupants,” the students said in the letter, whose contents The Intercept was unable to independently confirm. “She could not confirm whether a warrant existed, but stated that the officers or agents allegedly misrepresented themselves or the circumstances in order to gain entry into the apartment.”
Shipman implored members of the university community to not let unidentified people into campus buildings without a judicial warrant.
“It is important to reiterate that all law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to access non-public areas of the University, including housing,” Shipman wrote. “An administrative warrant is not sufficient.”
The Department of Homeland Security, New York Police Department, City Hall, and Shipman’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The incident took place a day after students rallied on campus to demand protections for international students as well as calling for the release of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student who has been in federal custody since her arrest by immigration agents nearly a year ago.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The post Zohran Mamdani Kept Columbia Student in New York — Then Phoned With Trump to Secure Her Release appeared first on The Intercept.
Ford said a tech glitch can increase the risk of a crash for vehicles towing a trailer. Here's what to look for.
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Staff at a for-profit Pennsylvania immigrant prison serially falsified detention records about a man who died in 2023, according to a federal death review obtained exclusively by The Intercept earlier this month.
Despite these findings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to punish the facility’s politically connected operator, GEO Group. Instead, records show the agency gave GEO even more money to run the facility after the man died: $4 million in additional funds, just three months after the death review was completed. After an April 2024 visit at the facility, ICE’s acting director called GEO a “valued partner.”
Frankline Okpu died in solitary confinement at GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center in Clearfield County on December 6, 2023. According to the detainee death report, two days before his death, staff sent the 37-year-old Cameroonian father of three to solitary confinement following an altercation with a guard in which he allegedly swallowed an unknown substance they believed to contain “k2,” a synthetic form of cannabis, “mixed with a tranquilizer.”
A physician who treated Okpu upon his placement in segregation instructed facility staff to take him to the emergency department. According to GEO, Okpu refused informed consent for this course of treatment; the doctor ordered GEO to house him in the facility’s infirmary for observation. GEO staff claim Okpu refused this course of treatment, too. The provider ordered prison staff to conduct 15-minute visual checks to ensure his safety.
But records show that did not always happen before Okpu died, according to ICE’s death review.
Surveillance footage revealed 94 of 219 required visual inspections (42 percent) did not occur as ordered. In 23 instances, GEO staff recorded checks that never occurred at all. In another 33, staff logged visual inspections without looking in the cell window to personally observe Okpu. And in 38 logged events, the checks staff claimed to perform every 15 minutes occurred outside that required timeframe.
Federal prosecutors have previously indicted GEO staff for falsifying visual inspection logs during the period preceding an incarcerated person’s death in custody.
The Intercept sought comment and posed a series of detailed questions to ICE and GEO. An ICE spokesperson said the agency was unable to provide a response by deadline, citing “the blizzard in the Northeast.” GEO Group did not respond.
ICE’s reviewers found discrepancies between the chain of events on the morning Okpu died and GEO’s documentation. According to the death report, Okpu was due to have a routine dental appointment, but when a resident adviser went to bring him in shortly after 7 a.m., Okpu did not respond. The resident adviser reported to a dental assistant that Okpu had refused his appointment, and the dental assistant completed and signed a refusal form, however, she “acknowledged she did not witness Okpu’s refusal, visit Okpu to explain the risks associated with refusing the appointment, nor attempt to obtain Okpu’s signature on the form.” ICE concluded GEO “failed to comply” with the medical care standard requiring providers to obtain a signed refusal form after counseling patients.
The dental assistant also told ICE “it is common practice to have another staff member sign as a witness on refusal forms when patients refuse appointments, then deliver the completed form later.”
The death review also found facility medical staff violated ICE standards by failing to conduct a face-to-face encounter with Okpu less than an hour before he was found unresponsive, despite documenting that they had done so. Video revealed that when three nurses conducted their rounds shortly after 10:30 a.m., they “knocked on Okpu’s cell and then all three briefly looked in the window of Okpu’s cell, then walked away without conducting a face-to-face encounter.”
And although GEO staff documented that Okpu ate both breakfast and lunch on the day he died, ICE investigators found prison staff did not confirm he ate the breakfast staff slid inside his door, and he was found unresponsive as lunch was being distributed. By 11:15 a.m., a nurse arrived at Okpu’s cell and found him lying on his side, with a “clear frothy liquid coming from his mouth.” Nurses administered Narcan and CPR and summoned EMS. Okpu was declared dead at 12:02 p.m.
In all, ICE investigators found GEO staff failed to comply with four of the agency’s detention standards, committed two additional facility policy violations, and noted one area of concern. “These deficiencies,” the report notes ICE notes, “are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as contributory to the detainee’s death.”
ICE’s findings that GEO failed to follow informed consent protocols in Okpu’s case mirrors a pattern observed in March 2024 by ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight, or ODO. In its compliance review of operations at Moshannon, ICE inspectors found medical staff violated ICE standards by failing to explain the need for treatment to detained immigrants, allowing non-medical resident advisers to carry out refusals and sign as witnesses — thus preventing detained people from asking follow-up medical questions, and failing to ensure medical staff obtained signed refusal forms. ODO deemed these failures “a priority component.”
The ODO inspection report also found GEO staff failed at least six times to perform required 15-minute safety checks in one of 13 files reviewed involving detained immigrants on suicide watch, suggesting the serial failures to conduct safety checks in Okpu’s case were not an isolated occurrence.
Since Okpu’s death in 2023, at least two more men have died in custody at Moshannon. Chinese national Chaofeng Ge, 32, died by hanging himself in a shower room at the facility on August 5, 2025. His hands and feet were bound behind his back, according to Ge’s autopsy and first reported by Scripps News.
Then, on December 14, 2025, 46-year-old Sheikh Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, a beloved imam in Ohio who was originally from Eritrea, died at Moshannon from unspecified causes. A one-page Detainee Death Report ICE released last week claims he “declined recommended admission to the medical housing unit for monitoring,” following an abnormal EKG reading “in early December,” after he’d reported chest pain, numbness, and tingling. The detainee death report does not explain why Abdulkadir was not rushed to the Emergency Department following the abnormal EKG.
The fact pattern is similar to what happened after the death of 57-year-old Jaspal Singh, who died of a heart attack on April 16, 2024, at GEO’s Folkston ICE Processing Center in south Georgia. An ICE Health Service Corps mortality review found that GEO’s care in Singh’s case “deviated beyond safe limits and directly contributed to his death,” according to records obtained by The Intercept through Freedom of Information Act litigation. But, as it did with Moshannon following Okpu’s death, ICE subsequently awarded GEO millions more in federal funding — a $50 million expansion deal of Folkston was finalized in 2025, when ICE received an influx of money from Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill — after Singh died under circumstances where ICE reviewers found violations.
The post Private Prison Falsified Records in Detainee’s Death in ICE Custody appeared first on The Intercept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called "Patty," is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for "friendliness." Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer, tells The Verge that the company compiled information from franchisees and guests on how to measure friendliness, resulting in the fast food chain training its AI system to recognize certain words and phrases, such as "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you." Managers can then ask the AI assistant how their location is performing on friendliness. "This is all meant to be a coaching tool," Roux says, adding that the company is "iterating" on capturing the tone of conversations as well.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google says the second-generation model uses the precision of the pro model with the speed of the original.
The founder of a Kenyan recruitment agency stands accused of deceiving and then trafficking young Kenyans to fight in Russia's war on Ukraine.
‘Dynasty: The Murdochs’ will debut on the streamer on 13 March
The real-world drama that is said to have inspired the hit HBO show Succession is set for its own four-part series when Netflix debuts Dynasty: The Murdochs on 13 March.
The docuseries, based on thousands of pages of documents, emails and text messages, presents an exhaustive history of Rupert Murdoch’s rise while homing in on the tensions that have built for decades between him, his chosen heir Lachlan, and Rupert’s three other adult children: James Murdoch, Elisabeth Murdoch and Prudence MacLeod.
Continue reading...I ordered an tfl enduro for my pint x that will be here tomorrow and I’m curious about a few things
What are silly mistakes you guys have made during tire changes so I can try to avoid.
I think I’m going to put 2-4 oz of stans tire sealant rather than the float life sealant. Has anyone done this, how well does it work?
An estimated 4,793 people slept rough in tents, doorways or parks on single night in autumn – up 3% year on year
Record numbers of people slept rough on the streets of England last year, according to the latest official statistics.
An estimated 4,793 people spent the night in tents, doorways and parks on a single night in autumn 2025, up 3% year on year, and overtaking the previous peak of 4,751 in 2017, though charities believe these figures underestimate the scale of the nation’s homelessness crisis.
Continue reading...The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to end temporary deportation protections for thousands of Syrian immigrants living in the U.S.
Alan Milburn says people feel ‘social contract is being broken’ as number of Neets climbs to 957,000
The number of young people in the UK not working or in education has risen closer to a million, figures show, as a government adviser warned that for the first time in a century parents do not think their children will have a better life than them.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of people aged 16 to 24 who were not in education, employment or training (Neet) rose to 957,000 in the final three months of last year, equating to 12.8% of this age group.
Continue reading...Feb. 26, 2026 — A team led by University College London (UCL) will receive £19.5 million over five years to provide a powerful, high-speed computing resource for researchers across the UK in areas ranging from medicine to engineering to history.
The computing resource, called Charger, will consist of more than 37,000 central processing unit (CPU) cores. The system will power a wide range of academic and industrial applications, from climate modeling to engineering calculations to the design of new materials at an atomic scale.
Charger is one of four new “digital engines,” known as National Compute Resources (NCRs), funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Compute is the digital horsepower required to process data and run complex simulations. These new computing resources are a major step in delivering the UK Compute Roadmap, the national plan launched by the Government in July 2025 to make the UK a global leader in high-tech research.
While supercomputing was once reserved for niche technical fields, these resources are designed for everyone in the research community – whether a scientist is mapping the human genome, an engineer is designing greener planes, or a historian is analyzing massive digital archives.
Dr Owain Kenway (UCL Advanced Research Computing), who is part of the UCL-led team that has received the funding, said: “Charger boosts the UK’s capability to do real computational research across a wide variety of fields (including but not limited to the physical sciences, biosciences, social sciences and humanities) and puts compute power in the hands of researchers who might otherwise be denied access to larger resources because of the way their problems are structured (many small tasks rather than one large one).
“As part of this service, we are also committed to putting part of the system into the hands of undergraduate students on courses around the country. This will give them invaluable experience learning how to use real, national scale high performance computer systems and preparing them for a world where research increasingly relies on computers for large scale simulation and data analysis.”
Professor James Hetherington, Director of UCL Advanced Research Computing, said: “UCL Advanced Research Computing is delighted to have been selected as a host of the National Compute Resource. We’re a hybrid of a professional information technology service and a research centre, and we look forward both to delivering reliably for the UK and to discovering and sharing new things about how we best use computers to do science.”
UCL Advanced Research Computing is responsible for centrally provided research IT services (data, compute, AI) at UCL. Its new Charger system builds on the success of the Materials and Molecular Modelling Hub, a high-performance UCL-led computing hub that served researchers modelling materials and molecules over 10 years.
The Charger system itself will run on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) technology, including cutting-edge HPE Slingshot networking and HPE Cray storage. The system will be hosted with DataVita, which provides market-leading capability to support high-density, liquid-cooled high-performance computing and AI infrastructure, including next-generation GPU and CPU platforms. DataVita’s Scottish facilities are engineered to accommodate ultra-high-density environments while maximizing efficiency through year-round free air cooling enabled by Scotland’s cooler climate.
By hosting this system with DataVita in Scotland instead of London, this will deliver a carbon saving of approximately 465 tonnes of CO₂e per year due to Scotland having the least carbon intensive electricity supply of anywhere in the UK.
Danny Quinn, Managing Director of DataVita, said: “We want to thank UCL for choosing to partner with DataVita and by combining the research excellence and innovation leadership of leading London institutions with the environmental and cost advantages of hosting in Scotland, this approach brings together world-class compute capability with measurable sustainability benefits. Our recent designation as an AI Growth Zone further demonstrates our infrastructure readiness, market credibility and strategic importance within the UK’s sovereign AI and HPC landscape, reinforcing why Scotland and DataVita represent the most efficient and future-proof location for high-performance AI and supercomputing workloads.”
Richard Gunn, Digital Research Infrastructure Programme Director, UKRI said: “With the £19.4 million award to UCL, UKRI is significantly expanding the capacity of our national network to handle a huge range of research tasks. This system is designed to be a versatile and reliable resource for a vast array of use cases, from life sciences, humanities, to engineering.
“Our goal in funding this facility is to ensure that the UK’s research community has the ‘digital horsepower’ required to solve complex challenges and maintain our global edge in innovation.”
The other NCRs are led by the universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham and Cambridge. By investing in these four distinct compute resources, UKRI is ensuring that researchers have access to:
These new resources will work alongside the UK’s existing flagship AI and supercomputing services.
Charger is expected to be fully up and running for researchers later this year.
Source: UCL
The post University College London to Host £19.5M Supercomputing Facility appeared first on HPCwire.
University of Padua employee fractured ankle when getting up to fetch documents during video meeting
An Italian woman who fell and broke her ankle while working from home has obtained compensation in an unprecedented court ruling hailed a victory for workers’ rights.
In April 2022, the woman, an employee in the University of Padua’s law department, fractured her ankle in two places. The injury, which happened during a Zoom meeting where she fell after she got up from her desk to fetch documents, required surgery and treatment lasting more than four months.
Continue reading...Exclusive: DHS chose firm with ties to Corey Lewandowski after demanding partisan loyalty, in departure from federal procurement guidelines
The US Department of Homeland Security has awarded a $250,000 public relations contract to a Republican political consulting firm led by former Trump campaign officials with connections to Corey Lewandowski, a senior adviser to DHS secretary Kristi Noem, according to federal records reviewed by the Guardian.
On 26 September 2025, DHS posted an opportunity for “public affairs consulting services”, specifying that the successful applicant would provide “strategic counsel” to top officials at the department including Noem. The work would also include ensuring that media outlets in “alignment with DHS priorities” were present at appearances with Noem, as well as drafting position papers and devising negotiation strategies “tailored to DHS’s priorities in border security, immigration enforcement, and cyber defense”.
Continue reading...HBO Max will be cracking down on password sharing around the world. From a report: The streamer first started cracking down on password sharing in the United States late last August. Subscribers are now able to add an additional out-of-household account for $7.99 a month. Before that August change, Warner Bros. Discovery had been testing for months to determine who may or may not be a "legitimate user," as CEO and President for Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming and Games JB Perrette described the plan. On Thursday during the company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2025, WBD revealed that the streaming limitations would be expanding. This news came as part of an answer about which levers the company plans to pull to grow HBO Max. Password crackdowns have proven to be a lucrative way to both boost revenue and subscriptions. Netflix, for example, saw 9 million more subscribers after its first wave of password crackdowns in 2024. The caveat is that password crackdowns do not lead to consistent growth, and they often infuriate subscribers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Photograph shows conservative activist handing slip to Darin McCann and Marlene Brady holding a similar paper
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
Continue reading...Four arrests over Camorra’s alleged infiltration of San Giovanni Bosco to carry out lucrative criminal activity
Italian police on Wednesday arrested four people over an alleged Camorra plot to infiltrate a Naples hospital, stage fake crashes for insurance payouts and spirit corpses away on oxygen-masked stretchers to profit from private ambulance transfers.
The investigation, prompted by the testimony of a state witness, uncovered a web of lucrative criminal activity allegedly carried out by members of the Contini clan of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, inside San Giovanni Bosco hospital. Prosecutors said the “operations were made possible by the organisation’s capacity for intimidation, a force that bent public officials and private citizens alike to its will”.
Continue reading...Family learned of change while abroad, and fear dual-national children will have to stay with relatives while they return to apply for passports
A British man and a Danish woman fear they will be separated from their young children in Copenhagen airport because of new border control rules on British dual nationals.
James Scrivens and his wife, Sara, who live in Wales, were visiting relatives in Norway and Denmark during the school holidays, and learned about the new Home Office rules only while they were abroad.
Continue reading...Internal email outlines how to handle misconduct claims as expansion raises concerns about background checks
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is struggling to keep pace with vetting new hires during its historic recruitment push and is laying out a process to deal with allegations of past misconduct among recruits, the agency said in an internal email this week, underscoring concerns about ICE’s rapid expansion.
The email, sent to supervisors with ICE’s enforcement and removal operations (ERO) division and seen by Reuters, said the “high volume of new hires” and stalled background checks could create uncertainty for field offices when allegations arise related to actions before joining the federal agency, and that allegations should be referred to the internal integrity investigations unit (IIU).
Continue reading...Edit: not trying to rage bait. I've been looking everywhere for someone to also dislike their onewheel. But guess that's not gonna happen. Not going to go faster or try anything crazy but I'll keep it for longer. And maybe it will click. I just feel a crash coming soon. And I'm not excited. Just gotta get some protective gear ig. Sorry for shitting on the community.
I don't understand why there isn't more hate for the onewheel. I got a used xr 5 days ago. I can now ride it at 7-8 miles an hour and turn pretty well. Can't do switch. Anyway. I feel like after going past 8 mph. There is nothing protecting me from massive damages. I don't want to wear a bunch of protective gear to ride it and still end up probably getting hurt. The fact that it's hard enough already. And people say there are malfunctions apart from the pushback and voltage overload. That cause it to turn off. And send you to the ICU. Is that really worth going like another 7-8 miles per hour? The carving is pretty cool. But idk for a 1k+ device id expect to be able to relax on it and chill. Ride around or choose to go hit some trails and side hits. But no it's constant risk for minimal reward. I can't find a single person saying they dislike their onewheel outright why is that? Am I missing something? What is the minimal protective gear I need to be able to chill on it? In my mind it's already on fb marketplace. But I'm looking for some validation before selling it. And getting a safer vehicle to take on trails and explore. Like a MTN bike or e bike.
A few essential tools are required to brew professional-grade coffee at home. An expert clued me in on the most important one.
The UK will phase out traditional home phones by 2027, but the switchover has been stressful for some. How do you feel about the change?
UK telecoms companies are retiring traditional landline services and replacing them with internet-based home phone connections.
The industry has set a deadline of January 2027 to complete this switch with roughly 3.2 million homes still to move over. While the digital switchover has been straightforward for most households, for some vulnerable customers, such as those with telecare devices, it has been very stressful.
Continue reading...HAMBURG, Germany, Feb. 26, 2026 — ISC High Performance is excited to announce a comprehensive tutorial program featuring 23 in-depth sessions this year. Many of them will include hands-on learning focused on essential high performance computing technologies, AI methods, intelligent systems in scientific computing, and hybrid quantum-classical workflows.
The ISC tutorials take place on June 22 and complement the conference program by emphasizing practical skills, performance optimization, emerging software models, reproducibility, and the integration of AI and quantum technologies into scientific workflows.
As HPC evolves at the intersection of simulation, data, and intelligent systems, the 2026 tutorials provide attendees with the opportunity to deepen their technical expertise and reflect on the growing convergence of HPC, AI, and quantum technologies shaping next-generation research infrastructures.
The complete list of tutorials offered is now available on the ISC website. Detailed descriptions will be published on March 25 when registration opens.
Reduced Pricing to Support the Next Generation
To broaden participation and support the next generation of researchers and technology leaders, tutorial pricing is being reduced across all registration categories.
New tutorial rates are:
“By lowering financial barriers, ISC aims to make advanced technical training more accessible and to support the development of the next generation of HPC, AI, and quantum computing experts. We hope that students, doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career professionals will take advantage of the opportunity,” said Tanja Gruenter, Head of ISC Program Team.
ISC 2026 looks forward to welcoming participants from around the world to engage, learn, and advance their expertise at the forefront of scientific computing.
Join ISC High Performance 2026 in #ConnectingTheDots
ISC 2026 returns to the Congress Center Hamburg from June 22 – 26 for its 41st edition. Since its inception in 1986, it has been recognized as the world’s oldest and Europe’s most attended event for the HPC community, and increasingly for AI and quantum professionals interested in performance, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.
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Source: ISC High Perfrmance
The post ISC 2026 Announces Tutorial Program with Reduced Pricing appeared first on HPCwire.
SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 26, 2026 — At VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data announced a unified, global partner program within VAST’s Cosmos Community that brings together VAST’s partner ecosystem of resellers, service providers, systems integrators and advisory partners, technology alliance partners, distributors, cloud service providers and hyperscalers – all under one consistent framework.
VAST Cosmos is a global community of developers, builders and experts in innovative AI solutions. Within Cosmos, this program is designed to make it simple for partners to engage VAST in the way that best fits their business and their customers – while providing a clear, transparent path to grow with VAST.
As enterprises race to operationalize AI, partner ecosystems have become the fastest way to deliver validated architectures, production-ready integrations, and repeatable services. The VAST Cosmos Partner Program now formalizes how partners can participate in one or more routes to market while aligning around common training, enablement, governance, and go-to-market resources through a centralized partner portal.
“Cosmos was created to transform how organizations build and advance AI by bringing AI practitioners together in a comprehensive, supportive community that nurtures innovation, collaboration, and growth,” said John Mao, Vice President, Global Technology Alliances at VAST Data. “Now, with the addition of the Cosmos Partner Program, we’re expanding that mission by giving technology, cloud, and channel partners a unified framework to build and validate solutions, differentiate service offerings, and bring the VAST AI Operating System to customers – across the data center, cloud, and at the edge.”
“Partners want clarity and consistency in how they engage with VAST Data, from selling motions and technical validation, to enablement and delivery,” said John Cedillo, Vice President, Global Partner Organization, VAST Data. “Now Cosmos brings that to life with a single program that supports a clear set of pathways to take VAST to market, and the assets that drive execution – structured onboarding, tiered benefits, and a partner portal that connects training, deal registration, and joint go-to-market into one repeatable motion.”
Cosmos brings together disparate partner tracks under one cohesive ecosystem story and engagement model. Together, these tracks provide a single, unified way for partners to build, validate, deliver, and scale customer solutions on the VAST AI Operating System:
“Agency amplifies returns on intelligence and H2O.ai goes where the data is,” said Sri Ambati, Founder & CEO, H2O.ai. “By partnering with VAST Data through Cosmos, we’re embedding H2O AI Super Agent into modern AI infrastructure with the VAST AI Operating System to automate data prep, model surveillance, and continuous model building at scale. Enterprises are demanding intelligent workflows that operate natively within their data platforms – not bolted on top. We’re seeing strong pull for an AI user experience that transforms massive infrastructure into actionable intelligence.”
“As organizations scale AI, they’re looking for partners who can guide them from design, to deployment to ongoing optimization – and they require proven architectures that they can deploy quickly, without stitching together fragmented systems,” said Mike Trojecki, AVP, AI Practice, Global Solutions & Architecture, WWT. “By joining VAST Constellation, we can deliver validated solutions on the VAST AI Operating System that shorten deployment timelines, simplify operations, and help customers move AI workloads into production faster.”
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About VAST Data
VAST Data is the AI Operating System company – powering the next generation of intelligent systems with a unified software infrastructure stack that was purpose-built to unlock the full potential of AI. The VAST AI OS consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform, enabling organizations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on VAST’s breakthrough DASE architecture – the world’s first true parallel distributed system architecture that eliminates tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience – VAST has transformed its modern infrastructure into a global fabric for reasoning AI.
Source: VAST Data
The post VAST Data Expands Cosmos Community to Unify Global Partner Ecosystem appeared first on HPCwire.
The Even Realities G2 glasses have a spectacular design. I just wish they actually felt useful.
Falling volcanic ash has for years been viewed as a nuisance. But a Sicilian project has discovered its agricultural potential and wants to spread the word
In the Sicilian town of Giarre overlooking Mount Etna, Andrea Passanisi, a tropical and citrus fruits producer, uses an unusual fertiliser on his 100-hectare (247-acre) stretch of land: volcano ash.
Like hundreds of farmers and citizens of rural towns perched on the slopes of Europe’s highest and most active volcano, the 41-year-old’s family has had to deal with the nuisance of falling volcanic ash for generations. But it is only in recent years that the quantity of ash has become so excessive that it required an alternative approach.
Continue reading...For decades, the Valero refinery shaped Benicia’s economy, politics and health. Now the city has become a reluctant test case of whether an oil town can reinvent itself
Less than 40 miles north of San Francisco, the city of Benicia has the quaint ambience of an American small town, where a white gazebo and sign for a community crab bake mark the approach to a vibrant downtown stretch of restaurants, cafes and antique shops.
From many vantage points, it’s easy to forget the city is home to a massive 900-acre oil refinery, its imposing sprawl of stacks, holding tanks and billowing steam hidden from view. But for nearly 60 years, the refinery has loomed over every aspect of life in Benicia, exerting outsized influence on its economy and politics, while posing serious risks to public health.
Continue reading...Feb. 26, 2026 — In a new workshop report published by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), Grand Challenges for the Convergence of Computational and Citizen Science Research, experts across disciplines examine the ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) and citizen science can mutually enrich each other, fostering increased opportunity for advancement in numerous scientific fields.
The report presents a roadmap for maximizing the potential of citizen science through the contributions of AI — and vice versa — while also demonstrating the broader applications of this union for challenges across ecological, infrastructural, clinical, and other domains. “We are entering a brave new world where we are renegotiating the relationship between humans and machines,” says Lucy Fortson (University of Minnesota), one of the report’s lead authors. “Investing in human-machine teaming research for citizen science is investing in … accelerating scientific output.”
The report, also co-led by authors Tanya Berger-Wolf (The Ohio State University), Kevin Crowston (Syracuse University), Haley Griffin (Computing Research Association), Corey Jackson (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Saiph Savage (Northeastern University), and Lea Shanley (International Computer Science Institute and GNIES, University of Wisconsin-Madison), is the culmination of extensive visioning. The findings are most notably informed by discussions at the CCC Grand Challenges for the Convergence of Computational and Citizen Science Research workshop on April 8-9, 2026 in Washington, D.C., as well as two virtual roundtables on the topic. In total, 46 experts across computing research, NGOs, philanthropy, industry, and federal agencies came together to envision “how humans and machines may team up to solve some of the world’s most pressing scientific problems,” articulating specific next steps for making that future a reality.
Key Priorities and Opportunities for Growth
This report centers the immense opportunity that arises when human talent is at the core of emerging technologies. Volunteer citizen scientists are capable of data labeling, analysis, and creativity that machines are simply currently incapable of or may not have the resources to perform. Scaling these citizen science efforts would help close the gap between the sheer volume of data that computational technologies are able to produce and the data-based interpretations scientists can then apply to solving complex questions.
Five strategic priorities are identified for increasing this convergence of computational technology and citizen science:
Future Recommendations
These strategic priorities guide detailed recommendations for the future research directions and other actions that support the goal of large-scale convergence. They call on researchers, federal agencies, and industry professionals:
Read the Full Report
The Grand Challenges for the Convergence of Computational and Citizen Science Research report is available now on the CCC website. It provides a detailed roadmap of not only the full benefits of convergence and human-centered computing, but clear, actionable steps for making it possible.
We encourage all members of the computing community to read the full report here.
Source: Computing Community Consortium (CCC)
The post CCC Report Examines How AI and Citizen Science Can Advance Research Together appeared first on HPCwire.
The Galaxy S26's AI-powered Circle to Search tool just leveled up to full-outfit detection, and my bank account may never recover.
Don't know what to watch? Dig through these Netflix movie picks that span every genre.
Space heaters can keep you warm, but only when they're not allowed to burn your entire home down.
EBay is cutting about 800 jobs, or 6% of its full-time employees, saying the layoffs are needed to align its workforce with strategic priorities. From a report: "We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce," the San Jose, California-based company said early Thursday in a statement. "We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect." EBay will continue to hire in key areas. The cuts come a week after the company said it would acquire secondhand fashion marketplace Depop for about $1.2 billion in an effort to draw younger shoppers and after it reported robust quarterly results. Revenue increased 15% to $3 billion in the fourth quarter, surpassing analyst estimates.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases
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ChatGPT Health regularly misses the need for medical urgent care and frequently fails to detect suicidal ideation, a study of the AI platform has found, which experts worry could “feasibly lead to unnecessary harm and death”.
OpenAI launched the “Health” feature of ChatGPT to limited audiences in January, which it promotes as a way for users to “securely connect medical records and wellness apps” to generate health advice and responses. More than 40 million people reportedly ask ChatGPT for health-related advice every day.
Continue reading...Fear, fights and feverish fanservice collide in this celebration of Resident Evil’s recent and retro legacy
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2; Capcom
There’s often an undercurrent of existential fatigue in games that look back at their legacy. Dark Souls III’s dying kingdom, Metal Gear Solid 4’s decrepit Snake. So when Capcom showed us an ageing Leon Kennedy entering the ruins of the police station that marked the start of his journey from rookie cop to hardened veteran, it felt tinged with ennui as much as nostalgia. That self-reflective swansong for this 30-year series may still happen one day, but Requiem isn’t it. Even at its dourest and most pensive, this is less a song for the dead, more a knees-up in honour of the rocket launchers and typewriters that came before. Leon may be getting on a bit, but this is Capcom as energised, devious and goofy as ever.
Leon’s old scars will have to wait, anyway. Requiem’s new blood is FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft. Equal parts tenacious and nervous, she’s a fitting lens on the horror portion of Requiem’s split focus between disempowered terror and cathartic action. The story opens with Grace – more acquainted with desk work than field ops – tasked to go over a crime scene at a gutted hotel. She knows the place well, since it holds some horrific memories for her. Still, she heads off with little more than a flashlight and a pistol you’ll never find quite enough ammunition for to feel safe.
Continue reading...“I think he is alive today because of Amy and Ryan stepping up to the plate and taking him in,” said Jason Cole, True’s cardiologist.
Rare clash off island’s coast took place amid US oil embargo and heightened tensions between two countries
Cuban forces killed four exiles and wounded six others who sailed into its waters onboard a Florida-registered speedboat and opened fire on a Cuban patrol, the country’s government said, at a time of heightened tensions with the US.
Cuba’s interior ministry said the group comprised anti-government Cubans, some of whom were previously wanted for plotting attacks. They came from the US dressed in camouflage and armed with assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, ballistic vests and telescopic sights, it said.
Continue reading...Trump says he won't let Iran to build a nuclear weapon, and Iran says it doesn't intend to, but as talks resume, experts see war as more likely than a deal.
At least 10 FBI employees who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into President Trump's retention of classified records were fired Wednesday, multiple sources said.
Tehran is expected to deliver a new proposal on nuclear enrichment in Geneva as the United States continues to amass military forces in the Middle East.
The Roli Piano Learning System promises to make learning the piano at home easier than ever before. But just how easy can it be to pick up and play a new instrument?
While some who have lived their entire lives under democracy seem willing to forsake it, many who have experienced life under autocracy want out
There is plenty to worry about in the global contest between democracy and autocracy. Iran’s violent repression of antigovernment protests in January crushed the latest effort to challenge a ruthless regime. In many European countries, including Britain, Germany and France, far-right parties seem ascendant. And Donald Trump is doing what he can to undermine democracy in the United States.
Yet a closer analysis shows that autocrats are often running scared of their people. And surprisingly, democracy these days seems sometimes to be held in higher esteem in the global south than in the democratic heartland of the west.
Continue reading...It took Ellen Baum about 16 hours to finish clearing one section of hair ties, condoms and tissues woven into the fencing
On a blisteringly cold day earlier this month, Ellen Baum was not in the best mood as she walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to meet some friends in Manhattan.
“I had read particularly horrible news that morning about, you know, the general state of the world,” said Baum, who is 37 and works in tech. And then there was the garbage. Baum stared at the dirty tissues, hair ties, trash bags, and socks affixed to the suspension bridge’s frame – sometimes she even sees condoms and tampons woven into the fencing – and had a thought. “I can’t do anything about some of these big problems that the world and the city are facing. But I can do one modicum of something nice.”
Continue reading...Before arrest at US House chamber Tuesday, Aliya Rahman had only a month earlier been dragged from her car by ICE
When Aliya Rahman accepted Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar’s invitation to attend the State of the Union address, she said she had no intention of disrupting Donald Trump’s high-profile speech.
“It is a locus of people gathering and an opportunity to talk to legislators and to be in DC and try to understand – for someone like me, that doesn’t work in politics, who is not involved in policy work and organizing – what is the texture of this stuff here?” Rahman told the Guardian.
Continue reading...A new survey shows that our gadgets make us feel in control, but our expert calls that concerning.
MLS coaches’ reputation abroad won’t get any better after two disastrous appointments by desperate clubs
The shipment of Eric Ramsay’s possessions must have hardly made it to the West Midlands in time. After leaving Minnesota United this MLS offseason, his era in charge of West Bromwich Albion lasted just 44 days, during which time the Baggies played nine games, and won none. The club couldn’t afford to be patient – not while perched just one point above the drop zone in the Championship. Ramsay was sacked on Tuesday.
In one sense, this is business as usual in the English second tier. Ramsay is the 11th coach to be sacked, to resign or part by mutual consent since the 2025-26 season commenced, and the league’s 12th midseason change when counting Rob Edwards’s move to Wolves. One level below, League One has seen nine such changes; League Two has undergone seven. As Ramsay himself said a year ago: “getting managers sacked is a bit of a national sport.”
Continue reading...
NIK ANNA
Photographer
HANNAH PALIATH
Photographer
Photographers Nik Anna and Hannah Paliath capture Delaware’s game against Navy
Firm, which has announced record profits and £9bn share buyback, has £3bn project for smaller commercial planes
The chief executive of Rolls-Royce has pressed ministers for taxpayer support for a new jet engine, on a day the company also announced record profits and promised to give up to £9bn back to shareholders.
The £3bn engine project, designed to power smaller commercial planes, would allow Rolls-Royce to re-enter the lucrative short-haul flights market.
Continue reading...Man in 20s arrested on Thursday after man in 40s reportedly carrying weapons apprehended at scene on Tuesday
A second suspect has been arrested after a man allegedly entered Manchester Central Mosque with an axe and a knife on Tuesday.
Greater Manchester police announced on Thursday that a man in his 20s had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a section 18 assault in relation to the incident.
Continue reading...Tehran insists deal is possible if Trump abides by preconditions agreed with Witkoff. Plus, will Andrew bring down the British monarchy?
Good morning.
Iran enters critical talks on its nuclear program with the US in Geneva today, insisting a deal is possible as long as Washington sticks by three preconditions: to concede Iran’s symbolic right to enrich uranium, allow Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and not impose controls on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
What do we know about Trump’s position? In his State of the Union speech, Trump veered sharply away from the negotiating path adopted by Witkoff when he warned about Iran’s ballistic missiles reaching Europe, accused Iran of being the number one sponsor of terrorism and again claimed Iran had not promised to forgo nuclear weapons. He also claimed 32,000 demonstrators had been killed by the Iranian authorities in recent protests.
This is a developing story. Follow our live coverage here.
How have Democrats responded? “This has nothing to do with fraud,” Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, said on X. “The agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children. His DoJ is gutting the US Attorney’s Office and crippling their ability to prosecute fraud. And every week Trump pardons another fraudster.”
Continue reading...The club’s chief executive, Paul Lakin, explains how they reached the top so quickly and what it will take to stay there
When Hull Kingston Rovers play Leeds Rhinos in Las Vegas on Saturday night, they will do so as domestic treble winners and world club champions. The club’s chief executive, Paul Lakin, explains how they made it this far and what they want to achieve next.
Leeds say they will struggle to break even on Vegas as the Super League teams have to pay all their own costs. So how difficult a decision was it to give up a home game to go? “It was a big decision and one that we didn’t take lightly. Part of our strategy is to constantly raise our profile and when you looked at the results from a marketing and audience perspective for Wigan v Warrington in Vegas last year, the eyeballs on that were incredible. You don’t get given a pot of money: you have to generate your own money through ticket sales. But like Leeds, we felt that we have a big enough fanbase to financially support our ability to go out there. It’s an incredibly tough schedule but to put ourselves on that stage was too big an opportunity to turn down. A year ago we said: ‘What if we won the Grand Final? It’ll be the World Club Challenge and straight into Vegas.’ We just decided to worry about it when it happens. And now it’s happened!”
Continue reading...An exit from Soldier Field could lead the Bears across state lines. But it could help revive a once thriving area and the team would still be in most fans’ orbit
You think you’re locked out of the housing market? The Chicago Bears have been renting since Warren G Harding was president.
They started out in the NFL as tenants at Wrigley Field, sharing the baseball cathedral with the Cubs for 50 seasons before the league insisted all teams play in a stadium with a capacity of at least 50,000. So in 1971, the Bears decamped to Soldier Field, where they’ve been ever since – save for a season-long “road trip” in 2002 to the University of Illinois’ Memorial Stadium during renovations. Soldier Field is prime football real estate: neoclassical, on the downtown lakefront, with sweeping views of one of America’s most sumptuous skylines. But the lease terms are crazy, the city park district (which owns the stadium) is a borderline slumlord, and the Bears – star-crossed to play in the league’s oldest and smallest stadium while representing its third-largest market – have outgrown the place.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader shares a report: In its 250th year, is America, land of immigration, becoming a country of emigration? Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn't definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus -- negative net migration -- as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas. Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less-noticed reversal: America's own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe. Since the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. hasn't collected comprehensive statistics on the number of citizens leaving. Yet data on residence permits, foreign home purchases, student enrollments and other metrics from more than 50 countries show that Americans are voting with their feet to an unprecedented degree. A millions-strong diaspora is studying, telecommuting and retiring overseas. The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is to no longer live there. In the cobblestoned streets of Lisbon, so many Americans are snapping up apartments that the newest arrivals complain they mostly hear their own language -- not Portuguese. One of every 15 residents in Dublin's trendy Grand Canal Dock district was born in the U.S., according to realtors, higher than the percentage of Americans born in Ireland during the 19th-century influx following the Potato Famine. In Bali, Colombia and Thailand, the strains of housing American remote workers paid in dollars have inspired locals to mount protests against a wave of gentrification. More than 100,000 young students are enrolled abroad for a more affordable university degree. In nursing homes mushrooming across the Mexican border, elderly Americans are turning up for low-cost care. [...] The U.S. experienced net negative migration -- an estimated loss of some 150,000 people -- in 2025, and the outflow will likely increase in 2026, according to calculations by the Brookings Institution, a public-policy think tank. The number could be larger or smaller because official U.S. data doesn't yet fully capture the number of people leaving, Brookings analysts noted. The total in-migration was between around 2.6 and 2.7 million in 2025, down from a peak of almost 6 million in 2023. The U.S. saw 675,000 deportations and 2.2 million "self-deportations" last year, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. A Wall Street Journal analysis of 15 countries providing full or partial 2025 data showed that at least 180,000 Americans joined them -- a number likely to be far higher when other countries report full statistics.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Did you miss the reveal of the Galaxy S26? There were more than phones at Samsung's Unpacked event.
Peacock's got the goods, from Oscar contenders to big-budget blockbusters.
Air fryers have taken over kitchens like few appliances in history. I took a deep dive into who's using these speedy countertop ovens, and the numbers are staggering.
Thinktank proposes councils stop using private contractors in attempt to improve quality and spending
Councils should train up their own workers to install insulation in England’s draughty houses, and offer home upgrades street by street, beginning in the most deprived areas, according to proposals for cutting energy bills.
Setting up “home improvement corporations” would allow greater control by councils over low-carbon retrofits for housing, and would be a more efficient way of spending limited public funds for insulation, according to the Common Wealth thinktank, sets out the proposals in a report this week.
Continue reading...Bills aim to make ICE employees ineligible for jobs in law enforcement, public education and state civil service
Supercharged by billions in dollars from Congress, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has hired thousands of new officers to carry out Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign in an effort it has likened to “wartime recruitment”. In several states, Democratic lawmakers want applicants to think twice about taking part.
Bills introduced in recent weeks in the legislatures of at least four Democratic-led states would impose long-term consequences on new ICE employees by rendering them ineligible for jobs in law enforcement, public education, and, in their most expansive form, the entire state civil service.
Continue reading...The Tennessee socialist and labor organizer creates art that reflects and inspires organizers and workers
The crowd lining up to get into Tabitha Arnold’s exhibition in New York City last fall wasn’t full of the older, moneyed types one might expect to find at a Chelsea gallery opening. Instead, the small space was packed with twenty- and thirtysomethings wearing Zohran Mamdani pins, Democratic Socialists of America hats and SEIU T-shirts.
If the crowd might have seemed unusual in the context of the city’s fancy gallery district, they looked right at home next to the art that had drawn them there. The exhibition on display, called Gospel of the Working Class, featured monumental handmade tapestries highlighting working-class struggles from both recent and distant history. In one, textile workers carry bolts of fabric and wield scissors, while people dodge bullets from strike-breakers outside the factory. In another, angels walk behind autoworkers carrying picket signs above a row of hands holding drills and other tools.
Continue reading...Daniel Siad, facing allegation of rape in France, appears in more than 1,000 documents in latest declassified files
“In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish,” Daniel Siad, a model scout, wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in July 2014, explaining the frustrations of his work scouring the world for future models.
In this exchange, released in the latest batch of US Department of Justice documents, Siad was annoyed with Epstein, who had failed to turn up for a planned meeting.
Continue reading...Starting next week, parents will get an alert if their teen repeatedly searches for certain terms related to self-harm or suicide in a short time span.
The Hedgehog Go was designed to be the world’s first dual-purpose dryer for hair and winter gear. I tested it for several weeks.
Assembly members voted on Wednesday in favour of the bill, which will need royal assent before it becomes law
Jersey’s parliament has given final approval to a bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults who live on the island.
Members of the States Assembly voted by 32 to 16 on Thursday in favour of the bill, which will now need royal assent before it becomes law.
Continue reading...The toucan has been living in Las Vegas since November, much to the concern of bird experts who were worried about the exotic bird's health and ability to survive.
Offering “peaceful coexistence or eternal confrontation,” North Korea’s leader said he would only restart talks if the U.S. ends “hostile” policies and accepts Pyongyang’s nuclear status.
Where does the UK sit in the global race for AI leadership? 5 March 2026 — 6:00PM TO 7:00PM Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House and Online
Following the AI Summit in India, Kanishka Narayan MP, Minister for AI and Online Safety, will speak at Chatham House on the UK’s position in race for AI development, deployment and governance.
Following the AI Summit in India, Kanishka Narayan MP, Minister for AI and Online Safety, will speak at Chatham House on the UK’s position in race for AI development, deployment and governance.
The world is facing twin revolutions: in geopolitics and in emerging technology. This is a pivotal moment for the UK as it navigates both.
The AI race is between laboratories as they race to the frontier, between countries as they race to diffuse the technology across their economies, and between the two technology superpowers, the US and China, whose rivalry shapes the trajectory both of the technology and its use by the rest of the world. The UK faces a pivotal moment in carving out a strategic position, shaping emerging governance norms and maintaining influence over the systems underpinning tomorrow’s economies and security environments.
At this Chatham House event, Kanishka Narayan MP, UK Minister for AI and Online Safety, will reflect on the global AI summit in Delhi last month, assess the viable paths forward for countries like the UK in navigating the technology transition, and outline the diplomatic balancing act required to navigate competing spheres of technological influence.
Former Air Force fighter pilot Gerald Brown, who allegedly trained Chinese military personnel without authorization, has been arrested, the Justice Department says.
Will US intelligence learn its lessons from the Iraq war, and just how badly their legitimacy has been undermined?
Four years ago, on 24 February 2022, the Russian military began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, having already occupied Crimea since 2014. Tensions between Ukraine’s government and western leaders on one side and the Kremlin on the other had been escalating for years, but war did not seem like a foregone conclusion, at least not to key European politicians and even to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president.
Zelenskyy hadn’t even packed an emergency suitcase, though talk of war was everywhere. All that changed at 4.50am that Thursday morning. Russian missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, and Russian troops invaded the eastern flank of the country on three different fronts. Zelenskyy and his family fled to an undisclosed location amid threats of Russian assassination squads. What has become the largest war on European soil since the second world war, what Putin has blandly called a “special military operation”, had begun.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Continue reading...The US has lost factory jobs amid promises of a tariff-led renaissance
Workers at Whirlpool, the US’s largest appliance manufacturer and a champion of Donald Trump’s tariff policies, are criticizing the company for cutting jobs at an Iowa plant while bolstering production in Mexico.
The job cuts at Whirlpool come as the company has continued to support the Trump administration’s trade policies and claimed they will help bolster US manufacturing. Trump’s trade policies appear to have done little for US manufacturing so far. The US has lost 83,000 factory jobs since Trump took office in January 2025.
Continue reading...After the star made a fresh denunciation of the US president at an alternative State of the Union event, Trump returned fire at length on Truth Social, calling De Niro ‘sick and demented’
Donald Trump has responded to a recent podcast appearance by Robert De Niro, in which he called the president “an idiot”.
Speaking on Monday’s episode of The Best People with Nicole Wallace, De Niro, who has long criticised the politics, morals and competence of Trump, said: “He’s an idiot. We gotta get rid of him. He’s gonna ruin the country.”
Continue reading...Under a bill gaining traction in its state legislature, Florida could soon have its own spy squad.
The spooks operating in the shadows of the Sunshine State would track and “neutralize” people “whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat” to Florida.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Danny Alvarez, a Republican from the Tampa area, would create a state-level counterintelligence and counterterrorism unit inside the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Alvarez says the unit is needed to defend against the likes of China and Cuba. Critics, however, see a civil liberties nightmare in the making that could be used to target Muslims and alleged subversives based solely on their views or opinions, much like the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO program.
During a Tuesday committee hearing, Alvarez said he was preparing to introduce an amendment to address civil liberties concerns and gave a fiery defense of his bill.
“People are looking for boogeymen here. There’s no boogeyman. I’m going to strip everything that makes you question it. You just have to trust me to get to the next committee,” he said. “But while you look for boogeymen, I need to be looking for terrorists. I need to prevent the next bomb.”
Alvarez’s promise of a rewrite did not persuade state Rep. Michele Rayner, the committee Democrat who raised the specter of COINTELPRO, which targeted 1960s radicals using illegal methods. She said that as a black woman working in the civil rights field, she herself had been tracked by law enforcement.
“I don’t know if there’s any iteration of this bill that I could support, because quite frankly that means any of us in this room could be a target,” she said.
The legislation has already passed votes in three Florida House committees, and a companion bill is pending in the state Senate, giving it a stronger chance than most of making it into law.
The proposed unit is already drawing interest from the spy industry. The Israeli spyware company Cellebrite is tracking the bill’s progress through a registered lobbyist, according to state disclosures, which do not list the company’s position. (The lobbyist, Alan Suskey, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Alvarez argues that Florida needs to step up to protect itself, especially in light of two intelligence failures in the past three decades: the September 11 attacks and the more recent New Year’s truck-ramming attack in New Orleans. He said he envisions the unit as a complement to federal law enforcement.
In a statement, Alvarez denied that the new unit would be allowed to open investigations based solely on people’s views.
“It does not authorize investigations based solely on speech,” he told The Intercept. “Any action must be tied to demonstrable conduct and constitutional standards. The First Amendment remains fully intact, and the unit operates under strong statutory safeguards and oversight.”
At a minimum, the current language of the bill leaves the spy squad’s targeting process open to debate. The bill says state intelligence officers are supposed to detect so-called “adversary intelligence entities” and “neutralize” them.
According to the bill, those entities include but are not limited to “any national, foreign, multinational, friendly, competitor, opponent, adversary, or recognized enemy government or nongovernmental organization, company, business, corporation, consortium, group, agency, cell, terrorist, insurgent, guerrilla entity, or person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”
The unit will also deploy “tradecraft” against Florida’s enemies, among other language in the bill drawn from the cloak-and-dagger world of espionage that raised questions at the Tuesday hearing.
There’s no specific language in the bill protecting U.S. citizens from being targeted. In a press release last month, Alvarez said he wants it to tackle “both foreign and domestic threats.”
Bobby Block, executive director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, said the bill’s sweeping language leaves open the possibility that the new unit could target people simply based on their views, citing the language about actors who hold views deemed “inimical” to Florida.
“What does that mean? If I’m not a white Christian nationalist, does that mean my views are inimical to the values? It begs a lot of questions,” Block said.
The lack of explicit civil liberties protections in the bill worried Block, who pointed out that Congress passed a host of such legislation in the 1970s after the famed Church Committee investigated intelligence community abuses, including COINTELPRO.
With ongoing attacks in Florida against Muslim groups, CAIR-Florida officials think they know who will wind up being a target of the new counterterrorism unit.
In the past few months, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in deeming the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, as a “foreign terrorist organization,” a designation the Muslim advocacy group is challenging in court.
“It’s going to be one particular group that is going to be surveilled.”
“If it’s anything like what we’ve seen, which we’re pretty sure it is, it’s going to be one particular group that is going to be surveilled,” Omar Saleh, a civil rights lawyer for CAIR-Florida, told The Intercept. “They are not going to go into churches or synagogues or any other places of worship — they’re going to focus on mosques.”
Saleh said he believes that Alvarez’s legislation is one of several pending attempts to “codify” DeSantis’s executive order if it is struck down by a judge.
Alvarez didn’t respond directly to a question about whether Muslims would be targeted, but he dismissed the idea that the bill would lead to civil liberties violations.
“Anyone pretending that safety equals tyranny is guilty of performance art,” he said. “Some people act as if safety and liberty can’t coexist. In Florida, we believe they can, and they do.”
The post Florida Might Make Its Own Spy Squad. Muslims Think They Have a Pretty Good Idea Who’ll Be Targeted. appeared first on The Intercept.
When guards appeared earlier this month outside the room Christian Hinojosa shared with her son and other women and children at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, she guessed what they might be after. She quickly donned her puffy winter jacket, then slipped a manila envelope inside it. “Thank God the weather was cool,” she said — the jacket didn’t raise suspicions.
Then, she said, she was instructed to leave the room while eight to 10 guards lifted up mattresses, opened drawers and rifled through papers. In the envelope were kids’ writings and artwork about life in America’s only detention facility for immigrant families, a collection of trailers and dormitories in the brush country south of San Antonio. She planned to share their letters with the outside world.
Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to Hinojosa and three other former detainees, along with lawyers and advocates in contact with the families inside.
Guards have taken artwork, too, they said — even one child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.
They said detainees have lost access to Gmail and other Google services in the Dilley library amid stepped up searches, seizures and restrictions on communications, making it more difficult for them to contact lawyers and advocates.
They and family members said guards sometimes hover within earshot during detainees’ video calls to relatives and reporters.
The detainees and others interviewed for this story said these measures increased after the Jan. 22 arrival of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old in a blue bunny hat, sparked protests and congressional visits. They said the clampdown intensified as children and parents at Dilley wrote letters to share with the public and reporters and relatives recorded video calls with the detainees, including those published by ProPublica this month. The children’s stories, many told in their own words, fueled an outcry over the scope of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which the president had promised would focus on criminals.
The detainees said the more they tried to make their voices heard, the more difficult it became.
One mother, who asked to remain anonymous because her immigration case is still pending, told ProPublica that she and her three kids watched through a window as guards swept through their room in late January, removing drawings from the walls and placing colored pencils and crayons in plastic bags before taking them away.
With little schooling available at Dilley and weather too chilly for kids to want to play outdoors, drawing had been the children’s main diversion, the former detainee said. “What were they going to do now?” she said. “They were so bored.”
After the room inspection, the woman said, the children just “cried and cried and cried.”
CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the Dilley facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a written statement that routine inspections of living facilities are a common practice and that detainees are informed of what items they are allowed to have in their rooms.
“We vehemently deny any claims that our staff have confiscated or destroyed children’s personal artwork or their related supplies,” the statement reads, adding that there are examples of kids’ artwork “proudly displayed” throughout the facility.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that “ICE is not destroying children’s letters,” but the agency acknowledged that in one case “all the written items in the cell were seized” as part of an investigation of a mother who DHS said refused to comply with a search and pushed a detention center employee. CoreCivic referred questions to DHS when asked about this incident. ProPublica was unable to reach the mother for comment.
This week, DHS issued press releases that it said were “correcting the record” about Dilley, saying “adults with children are housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security, and medical needs.” DHS’ and CoreCivic’s statements to ProPublica did not answer questions about Google services being blocked or whether guards listen in on Dilley detainees’ calls.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, visited Dilley after Liam and his father, both originally from Ecuador, were picked up in Minnesota and transferred in January. He went again last week and was asked at a Friday news conference about reports of children’s letters and drawings being suppressed.
“I believe those stories, because I’ve heard similar stories myself,” Castro said.
He said he’d been told repeatedly that guards had warned detainees not to talk to him. “Yes, I think there’s a lot of secrecy there,” Castro said.
DHS did not respond when asked to comment on Castro’s assertion about the guards. A CoreCivic spokesperson said, “We are not aware of any staff member warning residents not to speak with Rep. Castro.”
The Dilley Immigration Processing Center first opened during the Obama administration primarily to hold families that had just crossed the border. Then Biden ended the practice of detaining families in 2021. President Donald Trump restarted it even as border crossings in his second term hit record lows. Now ICE is ramping up immigration arrests inside the country, and Dilley holds many families who have been living in the United States for years.
The families spend their days behind a metal fence, sleeping in rooms that hold six bunk beds and a common area with a few small tables and desks. More than 3,500 people have cycled through the detention center since the Trump administration began sending families here last spring.
A ProPublica reporter who had been speaking with families at Dilley since late last year went to the center for an in-person visit in mid-January and asked families whether their children would want to write about their experiences. On Jan. 22, we received a packet of colorful drawings and handwritten letters from a detainee who had been recently released, which we later published.
Then on Jan. 24, dozens of detainees staged a mass protest in the yard, which was photographed from above, where they yelled “libertad” and held up hand-drawn signs. The signs were made using the detention center’s art supplies, former detainees said.
That protest and Liam’s detention triggered widespread media coverage and a visit by Castro, who arrived on Jan 28. Supporters gathered outside Dilley, and some clashed with state troopers. At the beginning of February, Liam and his father were released, and ProPublica published the letters it had received. By that time, it had become clear to detainees that their voices — especially children’s voices — had gotten broad public attention.
They kept writing.
“We were looking for help,” said Hinojosa, who collected letters at ProPublica’s request. “We were looking to be heard.”
Hinojosa, along with her 13-year-old son, Gustavo, both originally from Mexico, were released in early February after four months at Dilley to return home to San Antonio. (Although a 1990s legal settlement holds that children should generally not be detained for more than 20 days, DHS has said the settlement should be terminated because newer regulations have addressed the needs of child detainees.)
“My parents say it’s been 4 months but for me and my little sister,” a 9-year-old wrote in one of the letters Hinojosa gathered. “It feels like a year I just want to go to the United States to be with my grandparents and finally end this nightmare.”
“I’m writing this letter so that you can hear my story,” a 7-year-old wrote in another of the letters. “I need you to help us … I cry a lot. I want to get out of here go back to my school.”
“I see how they treat us like criminals,” wrote Edison, a seventh grader from Chicago who was born in Guatemala, “and we’re not.”
CoreCivic said that Dilley residents are given a written description of property they’re allowed to have in their living areas, and that decorating rooms with personal items is permitted “provided they do not present a health or safety hazard.”
Former detainees told ProPublica they experienced room searches before January but that they typically were carried out by just two employees at a time, not eight or more.
After guards searched Hinojosa’s room following the protest, she said, she and the other residents were unable to locate their colored pencils, which were purchased at the commissary and stored in a little cup atop the writing table where the kids liked to doodle. “Even knowing that we had paid for those ourselves,” she said, “they removed them.”
“There were many, many families whose children had their pencils and paper thrown away,” said a third mother, who also asked to remain anonymous because of her immigration status.
Former detainees and their family members described close attention by guards during calls home, some of which happened via tablet computers in a common area.
Edison, the 13-year-old Chicago seventh grader, cried during a recent video call home that his father shared with ProPublica, saying he felt locked up.
The father, who asked that his son’s last name not be used, recalled the boy saying before the recording began, “Dad, there’s an agent here and he’s watching us.” He said his son sounded panicked.
The mother who said she watched guards sweep her room told ProPublica that after the January protest inside Dilley, a half-dozen guards were posted in a room where calls took place. “Every time someone came in to make a call,” she said, “they practically stood behind you.”
As families held at Dilley continue to try to make themselves heard, Hinojosa and other recently released detainees are determined to help.
Hinojosa carefully protected her fellow residents’ letters and drawings before her release. Every time she left her room, she wore the CoreCivic-issued puffy gray jacket and tucked the drawings and letters inside.
“I carried them around with me all day to prevent anyone from taking them,” she told ProPublica. “I knew they were valuable.”
Many of the pieces she carried were different from the vibrant paper drawings ProPublica received in January. With paper in short supply, Hinojosa said, children drew pictures on the backs of old artworks. With crayons and colored pencils now scarce, some drew in plain pencil.
Hinojosa walked out of Dilley earlier this month with her son Gustavo and with 34 pages of drawings and letters. They capture the names and lives of dozens of people.
Along with long notes from moms who remain inside are simple sketches by the kids detained with them: a teddy bear. A bus going home. A pet cat named Willi. A family of three stick figures trapped behind a wire fence. A family of six stick figures trapped behind a wire fence. A single small stick figure trapped behind a wire fence. Many of the drawings show faces, and most of the faces are frowning.
The post Seized Art, Eavesdropping Guards: Parents Describe a Clampdown at Dilley Detention Center as Kids Shared Their Stories appeared first on ProPublica.
Group aims to be ‘simpler, lower-cost, AI-enabled business’ and achieve £500m of annual savings by 2028
The beleaguered UK advertising group WPP has announced a radical restructure to counter the threat posed by the growth of artificial intelligence, including plans to sell assets and job cuts.
Aiming to be “a simpler, lower-cost, AI-enabled business”, the London-based company laid out plans to achieve £500m of annual savings by 2028, at a cost of £400m over two years.
Continue reading...  | Absolute doozy of a project and this is the non electronic side lol. Almost 100% infill ASA printed in two parts along the plane and then acetone welded together(to minimize warping during printing). Custom cut out some Viscous extra coarse grit grip tape with a printed template I made which came out surprisingly clean considering I was hacking at the stuff with a box cutter for 15 minutes. All in all the most expensive part was the grip tape but I got several pieces to make more with now. MUCH cheaper than a store bought pad [link] [comments] |
The ongoing battle over for the iconic film studio is set to have a major impact on what we, the viewers, get to watch
It’s not unusual for a corporate merger to take months and months to actually finalize, but even by those standards, the bidding for ownership of Warner Bros Discovery has been drawn out. Netflix made a deal to buy the Warner Bros side of the company – its studio and streaming businesses – late last year, but Paramount Skydance has been undeterred, aggressively pursuing what it claims to be a better offer for the entire WBD operation. After several failed attempts at a hostile takeover, WBD is considering a final Paramount offer, to which Netflix will have the opportunity to counter. What we have is what learned cinema scholars might refer to as an Alien v Predator situation, in honor of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox: whoever wins, we lose.
That is to say that for cinema devotees, casual viewers and people working in the film industry, the ideal outcome would be for Warner Bros to continue as its own entity: an entertainment company making movies and TV series. But that’s clearly not going to happen – nor are any number of relatively superior options floated last year, like the idea of Apple, who worked with the studio on the global smash and Best Picture nominee F1, buying Warner instead. They are still a massive corporation, but they have shown a willingness to spend on major (and theatrically released!) projects like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, and have such a thriving business in other areas that they could afford to run Warner as a real studio, trying to continue the company’s recent hot streak.
Continue reading...Some say the technology is devaluing their work, while others reckon it is not yet – and might never be – good enough to replace them entirely
Workers grappling with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence have said they feel “devalued” by the technology and warned of a downward trajectory in the quality of work.
Recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund found AI would affect about 40% of jobs around the world. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, has said: “This is like a tsunami hitting the labour market.”
Continue reading...A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives
There’s not much to love about big tech these days. So many ills can be laid at its door: social media harms, misinformation, polarisation, mining and misuse of personal data, environmental negligence, tax avoidance, the list goes on. Added to which, Silicon Valley’s leaders seem all too keen to cosy up to the Trump administration, to shower the president with bribes – sorry, gifts – and remain silent about his worsening political overreach. And that’s before we get to the rampant “enshittification”, as the tech writer Cory Doctorow describes it, which means that by design many big tech products have become less useful and more extractive than they were when we originally signed up to them.
We’ve entered into a Faustian pact with these companies: “While it’s brilliant to have access to high-quality products and software, very often for ‘free’, it’s important to remember that there is a trade-off involved – often of our personal data and privacy,” says Lisa Barber, tech editor at Which? We give these companies our attention and our information, which they then turn into big bucks and apparently unassailable monopolies.
Continue reading...Senate leaders are urging the Department of Defense to prioritize the purchase of generic drugs manufactured in the United States, warning that the country’s overreliance on foreign factories poses an “existential risk” to the military.
In a letter last week, Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., asked Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide information about drugs or key ingredients purchased from foreign sources and how long the department’s inventory would last if China restricted exports. They also sought details about whether the Food and Drug Administration had imposed any import bans on the department’s suppliers.
The letter cited ProPublica reporting last year that found the FDA allowed dozens of foreign drugmakers, mostly in India and China, to continue sending generic medication to the U.S. even after the factories were banned because of serious safety and quality-control failures. Since 2013, ProPublica found, the FDA allowed more than 150 drugs or their ingredients into the United States from banned factories, including antibiotics, anti-seizure drugs and chemotherapy treatments.
The agency has said that the exemptions helped prevent drug shortages and that factories were required to conduct extra quality testing with third-party oversight.
“Exempting these drugs or facilities allows for substandard and potentially unsafe drugs to enter the U.S. market,” the senators wrote in their letter. “These exemptions can pose a threat to drug safety for American consumers.”
Scott and Gillibrand also noted they are worried about instability in global trade and politics, which they said can create “profound ramifications for the availability of medications” and pose public health and national security risks.
Nine in 10 prescriptions in the United States are for generics, many of them made overseas. Last year, the senators, who lead the Senate Special Committee on Aging, released an investigative report demanding changes in the FDA’s oversight of the generic drug industry. Among other things, they asked the FDA to alert hospitals and other group purchasers when troubled foreign drugmakers are given a special pass to continue sending their products to the United States.
This month, Scott and Gillibrand introduced legislation known as the Clear Labels Act to help patients, doctors and pharmacists know more about the drugs they use and prescribe. The proposal calls for prescription labels to disclose the original manufacturer as well as the suppliers of key ingredients. The generic drug lobbying group has said that the labeling requirements would be costly and that drug manufacturers already disclose country of origin information under U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules. The trade group for brand-name drugmakers said the industry would “welcome conversations” about strengthening the supply chain.
ProPublica had to sue the FDA in federal court last year to learn more about where generic drugs were made and whether the agency’s inspectors had ever flagged those factories for safety and quality lapses. ProPublica ultimately created a first-of-its-kind tool that empowers consumers to find the information themselves.
Now, Scott and Gillibrand are turning their attention to the medications used by millions of U.S. servicemembers, veterans and their families. They requested a briefing by the Pentagon to explore whether officials are prioritizing the purchase of American-made drugs.
Drug safety experts said the push could ultimately help shore up a vulnerable supply chain.
“Before you can be deployed, you have to be stable on your medications,” said David Light, president of the independent testing lab Valisure, which is conducting drug-quality testing for the Defense Department. “If you purposely add more variability to your drugs, you could prevent the deployment of thousands of troops without a single shot.”
Last year, ProPublica engaged Valisure to test several widely used generic drugs and found several samples had irregularities that experts say could compromise their effectiveness.
Vic Suarez, a retired Army medical supply-chain commander, said he hopes the effort in the Senate will lead to stronger drug acquisition policies.
“This is a national security issue. It is an economic security issue. And it is a patient safety issue,” he said.
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
The post Senate Leaders Warn Defense Department About Procuring Generic Drugs Overseas appeared first on ProPublica.
Federal drug enforcement investigators targeted Jeffrey Epstein and 14 others in a yearslong probe first reported by CBS News.
Chaz and Jean Franklin were facing a sevenfold increase in their health premium payments with the expiration of enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans. Then Jean received a crushing diagnosis.
A bipartisan Senate duo is teaming up on legislation that would ban large investment firms from snapping up single-family homes, a measure they say is aimed at the country's housing affordability crunch.
You can have conversations with the Luna Ring about your health and even ask it questions instead of tapping through an app.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Smoke shops proliferated in Wilmington in recent years just as THC-infused drinks and edibles quietly entered Delaware’s retail market without state oversight. Now, authorities say some of those shops have broken the rules around how much THC can be in a product, while others have allegedly been illegally selling marijuana.
New smoke shops are now prohibited from opening in Wilmington after Mayor John Carney signed an ordinance Tuesday that placed a moratorium on such businesses.
The Wilmington City Council passed the measure last week. Its sponsor, Councilman Chris Johnson, said the moratorium is in place to give city officials time to conduct an assessment on the health and safety impacts of smoke shops – which typically sell cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and, more recently, hemp-derived THC products.
The moratorium will be in place for one year or until “such time an equity impact assessment is completed by the city’s Department of Land Use and Planning, unless this city council repeals this moratorium,” the ordinance’s text states.
City officials say they are uncertain as to when the assessment will begin, as they are “still working through the logistics,” Carney spokeswoman Caroline Klinger said.
Johnson, who introduced the moratorium proposal last month, said that several smoke shops across the city have been selling illegal products, including unregulated marijuana.
He has also claimed that some are linked to illegal firearm possession.
During a City Council meeting last week, Johnson said one of the goals is to understand how to better regulate the city’s smoke shops.
“They’re not tobacco, they’re not marijuana, they’re not retail. Some are going unlicensed,” Johnson said.
Currently, smoke shops operate under standard retail business licenses issued by the municipalities in which they are located. Many of the products they sell are not produced or tested in Delaware, and the stores themselves are not licensed or regulated by the state government.
The passage of Johnson’s ordinance follows at least two arrests in Wilmington over the previous three months involving the alleged selling of marijuana within smoke shops that were not licensed cannabis retailers.
One occurred in early February at the VIP Smoke Shop, located on Maryland Avenue near Browntown. In a statement, Wilmington Police said its officers arrested the retailer at the shop, after they found a loaded 9mm handgun, and about 4,630 grams of “marijuana and marijuana products.”
During last week’s council meeting, Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver expressed frustration over the VIP Smoke Shop remaining open after the police seizure.
“If plenty of marijuana and a gun are not a code violation, I don’t know what it is. What’s the purpose of putting in these regulations if we don’t have enforcement?” she said.
Asked about the situation, Carney’s deputy chief of staff, Daniel Walker, said the city will look into Oliver’s claim.
“Our team will be investigating,” he said.
Also during the meeting, Councilwoman Michelle Harlee questioned how the city will be able to determine which businesses end up selling smoke-related products. She noted that some establishments apply to operate in the city as delis or convenience stores, but later end up selling such products.
“There needs to be some type of monitoring, especially for the businesses that did not get a license to be a smoke shop but they have those types of products in their stores,” Harlee said.
Asked how the city would ensure businesses did not bypass the moratorium, Elijah Simmons, the City Council’s chief of staff, noted that “any enforcement would be a business compliance matter. The city does regular reviews of businesses and will continue to operate in that posture.”
The smoke shop moratorium passed unanimously among councilmembers who were present.
Councilmembers Maria Cabrera, Yolanda McCoy, Alex Hackett, and James Spadola, were absent.
On Tuesday, Spotlight Delaware called nine smokeshops throughout Wilmington seeking those business owners’ opinions about the moratorium and about claims that crime is prevalent within the industry. Four stores declined to comment, five others did not respond.
The post Smoke shop moratorium now in effect in Wilmington appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Immigration Judge John Carle’s face suddenly materialized on the flat-screen television hanging at the center of the mid-sized Philadelphia courtroom – he was presiding virtually.
The tubular cream-colored camera perched atop the television then craned its neck to focus on a man from Venezuela who sat in the immigration courtroom on a recent afternoon.
Carle asked the man why he was just now beginning his court proceedings to seek asylum, if he had already been in the country for nearly three years. The man replied that he was living under Temporary Protected Status, which provides work authorization and protection from deportation for immigrants fleeing war, natural disaster and other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions.
But those protections are now gone.
A year ago, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided to terminate TPS for Venezuelans, kicking off a year of legal battles and appeals that threw the program into uncertainty.
In October, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the termination to take effect, pending appeals — effectively leaving hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants without a legal status in the country.
Still, the Venezuelan man appeared in court and looked into the camera. His previous legal status was stripped and now he must find a different path.
“Now I have to get an asylum application or get a lawyer,” the man told Carle.
“You read my mind,” the judge replied.
In Philadelphia’s Immigration Court, people must navigate a year’s worth of ever-changing policies and dense legal decisions under the Trump administration’s immigration agenda — oftentimes without lawyers. The Trump administration has systematically cut legal pathways available to immigrants while gutting the immigration judge workforce.
In California, the state lost more than a quarter of its immigration judges in 2025, with the San Francisco Immigration Court permanently shutting down as a result — further straining other judges’ workload.
Courthouse arrests of immigrants who have their asylum cases quickly dismissed have become a mainstay of the Trump administration’s enforcement tactics. And, under a new directive, millions of immigrants are now subject to mandatory detention without the opportunity to ask an immigration judge to be released on bond.
The detention policy has “frustrated” Philadelphia federal judges as the city’s federal courthouse has seen a deluge of lawsuits filed by undocumented immigrants who are opposing their mandatory detention, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
These release petitions now comprise more than one sixth of the civil lawsuits filed in the district, according to recent legal opinion written by U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond.
Still, despite the evolving policies, the day-to-day reality of the Philadelphia immigration court, which also oversees Delaware cases, remains mundane and routine. Sometimes, moments of humanity and levity even slip through the bureaucracy.
One morning in December, a man from Richmond, Va., appeared for his hearing before Immigration Judge Joseph Scott in Philadelphia’s immigration courthouse.
Scott offered to move the man’s case to a courthouse closer to his home, but the man refused. When Scott asked why the man would want to keep driving more than five hours for his immigration appointments, the man had a simple response.
“When I come to (Philadelphia), I visit my friends and eat food from my country,” the man told Scott. “So, I have a good time.”
The judge chuckled and turned to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorney to ask if they had a motion to move the case closer to Virginia.
“Why does he want to keep his case in Philadelphia?” the DHS lawyer asked.
“Food, and friends,” Scott replied with a smile.
DHS offered no opposition, and Scott gave the man a list of low-cost immigration lawyers in the Richmond area.
Food, and friends and onto the next case.
A woman called in virtually to the court from Harrisburg, Pa. The person whom she hired to drive her to Philadelphia for her court hearing did not show up that morning, she said.
If she appears virtually again, it would probably be considered a non-appearance, Scott said. That morning, 10 people did not appear for their court hearings.
Scott then turned his attention to the group of people sitting in the courtroom’s wooden pews. Eleven wait to have their cases called. Six need an interpreter in Spanish, four in Haitian-Creole and one in Arabic.
“You are all here in immigration court because the government of the United States believes you are here unlawfully,” Scott said to the group.
The judge, who was appointed to the court in 2020 under the first Trump presidency, encouraged the group to talk to a lawyer to help them with their asylum proceedings.
“Who would like more time to try and find a lawyer?” Scott asked.
The interpreters echoed. Everyone raised their hands. More time was needed.
It has become commonplace for people to appear for their hearings without a lawyer and decide to represent themselves. Unlike other courts, non-citizens are not provided an attorney if they cannot afford one.
No lawyers and an increase in people representing themselves could lead to less fair outcomes and less efficiency in the court system, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Back in Immigration Judge John Carle’s courtroom, the proceedings continued as he remained on the television on a recent afternoon.
An uncle and nephew from Cuba had filed a motion to terminate their case. They had no lawyer and were representing themselves.
The pair had applied for their permanent residency, also known as a green card, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and were just waiting to receive their final paperwork. They wanted to terminate their bid through the court as they found success through another pathway, the nephew told Carle.
Carle suggested they instead file to adjust their status and set a future hearing date.
“Hopefully, you’ll have good news by then,” Carle said in regard to their green card applications.
Next, a man from Colombia sat in front of the television. He traveled from his home in New Jersey for his preliminary hearing for his asylum application.
At the end of the hearing, Carle said he’d move the man’s case to a court closer to his home.
“Do you have any other questions?” Carle asked.
“I would have liked to stay here with you, but you moved me,” the man joked in response.
Carle laughed. A baby’s cries began to spill out of the courtroom down the hall. The day continued.
The post Immigrants navigate complex federal policies in court amid mundane day-to-day reality appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
An anonymous reader shares a report: A Cloudflare engineer says he has implemented 94% of the Next.js API by directing Anthropic's Claude, spending about $1,100 on tokens. The purpose of the experimental project was not to show off AI coding, but to address an issue with Next.js, the popular React-based framework sponsored by Vercel. According to Cloudflare engineering director Steve Faulkner, the Next.js tooling is "entirely bespoke... If you want to deploy it to Cloudflare, Netlify, or AWS Lambda, you have to take that build output and reshape it into something the target platform can actually run." The Next.js team is addressing this following numerous complaints that deploying the framework with full features on platforms other than Vercel is too difficult, with a feature in progress called deployment adapters. "Vercel will use the same adapter API as every other partner," the company said when introducing the planned feature last year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Retail technology business to reduce about 5% of global workforce, with two-thirds of job losses affecting UK
Ocado is to cut 1,000 jobs as the retail technology business attempts to £150m in costs though a substantial restructuring programme.
The company confirmed that about 5% of its global workforce will be affected, with roughly two-thirds of the job losses affecting its UK operations.
Continue reading...Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise were taken into custody under laws that have outraged LGBTQ+ community and rights activists
Two women have been arrested and detained in Uganda after allegedly kissing in public, an act of “same-sex activity” which can lead to a life sentence in the east African country..
Wendy Faith, a 22-year-old musician known as Torrero Bae, and Alesi Diana Denise, 21, were taken into custody after police raided their rented room in Uganda’s north-west Arua City last week.
Continue reading...Resembling cigarette packet warnings, the ads highlight dangers and urge people to email MPs
Mumsnet has launched a campaign to introduce a ban on social media for under-16s featuring health warnings in the style of those on cigarette packets.
The deliberately provocative national advertising campaign calls for all social media to be banned for children under the age of 16. The images on billboards and social media make a number of stark statements related to health.
Continue reading...Just over a year ago, a fellow Onewheel rider, Heath Ogle was killed while riding his XR on the night of February 19, 2025. Since then, I have obtained case reports from both the San Diego medical examiner's office and sheriff's department to try to piece together exactly what happened and see if there's any lessons to learn from this tragedy.
Regrettably, there were several decisions Heath made that evening that may have contributed to his vulnerability on the road. While the primary cause of the tragedy was a hit-and-run driver who failed to stop, I have identified some critical safety lessons to share with my fellow riders.
The medical examiner reported Heath was riding without a helmet and the autopsy showed he suffered severe, life-threatening blunt force trauma to the head and neck, including base of the skull fractures and hemorrhaging in the brain. While it's impossible to know if a helmet could have saved Heath, you should be wearing one. It is the most critical piece of safety gear you can wear for surviving head trauma.
The toxicology reports indicate that Heath was riding while intoxicated. His blood alcohol content was 0.141% and he had significant THC in his system. We don't know if this was a contributing factor, but riding a Onewheel requires constant micro-adjustments, balance, and hyper-awareness of your surroundings. Riding while impaired is a bad idea for coordination and avoiding traffic.
The accident occurred at night, with 911 being called around 8:13PM. The medical examiner noted Heath was wearing almost entirely black clothes with dark blue jeans. If you're going to ride at night, maximize your visibility. Wear lights, bright colors, reflective clothing, anything that will make you more visible to speeding or inattentive drivers. Responding officers noted there were no skid or tire marks on the road where Heath was found. It's possible the driver never saw him until it was too late.
Heath was riding on a stretch of road that was known to be dangerous, and the posted limit was 45 MPH. Highway patrol data shows his death was the fourth deadly pedestrian crash in the past four years. Be careful where you ride. Even if there's a bike lane, it's still super risky to ride near vehicles going that fast.
To be perfectly clear, I'm not trying to shame or blame Heath for this accident. It's ultimately the driver who struck him and fled the scene that is responsible. That said, there are some defensive measures we can take to protect ourselves while riding: riding sober, wearing a helmet, increasing nighttime visibility, and avoiding dangerous roads. My heart goes out to Heath and his family, and I hate that he was killed doing something I enjoy so much. Take care, ride safe!
Having Perplexity's AI and models on devices from the world's biggest phone-maker puts the company under a brighter light.
Along with Alberto Carvalho's L.A. home, search warrants were also executed at LAUSD headquarters and a home in South Florida, according to the FBI.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Some Uber employees have built an AI clone of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi -- internally dubbed "Dara AI" -- and have been using it to rehearse and fine-tune presentations before delivering them to the actual Khosrowshahi, he revealed on a recent podcast. Khosrowshahi said a team member told him that some teams "make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me," and that the bot helps them adjust their slides and sharpen their delivery. Asked by the podcast host whether employees might eventually show Dara AI to the board, Khosrowshahi laughed but noted that AI models still can't process and act on new information the way executives do. "When the models can learn in real-time, that is the point at which I'm going to think that, yeah, we are all replaceable," he said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Delaware Tourism Office is planning to host two large World Cup watch parties in Newark this summer.
With Moscow pressing its advantage, Kyiv should trade land for peace.
The era of neutral enforcement is over.
Atmospheric machine-gun has fired storm after deadly storm at the region this year, leaving a trail of widespread destruction
For Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water started to spurt from plug sockets. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugal, it was the helplessness that hit as violent winds smacked down trees and tore tiles from roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, it was the reality that dawned when a corpse was pulled onboard a boat in the flooded medina.
Each moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric machine-gun that in recent weeks has fired storm after storm at the western Mediterranean. Scientists do not know if climate breakdown helped pull the trigger, but research suggests it loaded the chamber with bigger bullets.
Continue reading...A third victim has died following the Feb. 16 shooting at a high school hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Cuba's Interior Ministry said Wednesday night that the boat was carrying 10 people armed with assault rifles, handguns and Molotov cocktails.
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 26.
Anthropic last week promoted Claude Code Security, a research preview capability that uses its Claude Opus 4.6 model to hunt for software vulnerabilities, claiming its red team had surfaced over 500 bugs in production open-source codebases -- but security researchers say the real bottleneck was never discovery. Guy Azari, a former security researcher at Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks, told The Register that only two to three of those 500 vulnerabilities have been fixed and none have received CVE assignments. The National Vulnerability Database already carried a backlog of roughly 30,000 CVE entries awaiting analysis in 2025, and nearly two-thirds of reported open-source vulnerabilities lacked an NVD severity score. The curl project closed its bug bounty program because maintainers could no longer handle the flood of poorly crafted reports from AI tools and humans alike. Feross Aboukhadijeh, CEO of security firm Socket, said discovery is becoming dramatically cheaper but validating findings, coordinating with maintainers, and developing architecture-aligned patches remains slow, human-intensive work.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The lawyer for Nicolas Maduro says the U.S. is blocking Venezuela's government from paying for the cost of his legal defense against drug trafficking charges.
Dismissals follow revelations that FBI subpoenaed records of Patel and Susie Wiles before Trump returned to office
At least 10 FBI employees connected to an investigation of Donald Trump have reportedly been dismissed following revelations that the agency subpoenaed personal records of the current FBI director, Kash Patel, and White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in the years before Trump returned to office.
The dismissals, reported by CBS News and CNN, were linked to the federal investigation led by former justice department special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that were found at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort after his first term.
Continue reading...This blog has closed. Read more here
A newly revealed diplomatic cable calls on US diplomats to work against attempts by foreign nations to regulate how US tech companies handle their citizens’ data, as “data sovereignty initiatives” gather steam in Europe over security concerns.
More from Reuters:
President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered U.S. diplomats to lobby against attempts to regulate U.S. tech companies’ handling of foreigners’ data, saying in an internal diplomatic cable seen by Reuters that such efforts could interfere with artificial intelligence-related services.
Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach as some foreign countries seek limits around how Silicon Valley firms process and store their citizens’ personal information - initiatives often described as “data sovereignty” or “data localization.“
Continue reading...Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 26, No. 521.
hey y'all I'm trying to get setup for my 5in superflux coming in. I already have the axle blocks l, so I went to test the axle blocks on my rails. Only to find out that the outer axle bolts are too big. correct length just the bolt head size is too big. So I ordered some what I thought different, but same problem with the head being to big. I ordered some m8 1.25x 25mm. Can anybody point me in the right direction for what might be the correct bolts? please and thank you 🙏 are there any options for like stock XR bolts but extended? appreciate any help 👍
Is the Mini Crossword too easy, but the original one just too time-consuming? Here's your new puzzle.
 | Hey guys, so I was finally able to change my tire but in the process I chipped the left outer plastic to one of the connectors. Is this serious since another piece screws on over it?? Any ideas if I need to put something else to help protect it from moisture?? [link] [comments] |
 | Man, I’ve had my GTS for just over a year and 1,100 miles later, I finally made the switch to the soft lowboy flared footpads. These are a total game changer. The board feel and control is amazing. Living in Baltimore City where the streets are littered with pot holes, these really take the stress off the knees and feet. I also took my tire from 20 psi to about 16 and the combo feels like I’m standing on pillows. Even with the lower psi, I was still hitting the speeds I wanted to. I highly recommend these, they are worth every penny. Keep on floatin on. [link] [comments] |
ADT's acquisition of Origin AI brings presence-sensing technology under the home security company's umbrella.
Since 2019, when Baltimore's murder rate hit an all-time high, something has changed, and data points to the city showing major improvement.
The game developer targets young people, which could lead to serious addiction problems, according to the suit.
Kalshi, the prediction market platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has for the first time publicly disclosed the results of an insider trading investigation, naming an editor for YouTube's biggest creator as the offender. The company identified Artem Kaptur, an editor for MrBeast, who it says traded around $4,000 on markets tied to the streamer and achieved "near-perfect trading success" on low-odds bets -- a pattern investigators flagged as suspicious. Kalshi froze Kaptur's account before he could withdraw any profits, fined him $20,000, suspended him for two years, and reported the case to the CFTC.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
VAST Data today unveiled CNode-X, a new node type that will allow customers to accelerate data analytics and AI workloads within their data platforms.
While VAST’s software governs the storage that interacts with GPU clusters via systems like GPUDirect and NVMe over Fabric, it has avoided incorporating GPUs directly into its clusters, VAST Co-founder Jeff Denworth said.
That’s starting to change, and now the company sees a need for accelerating the processing of tables and vectors, he said. “Where we’re going now [is] to a point of maturity that it makes sense to start to do these integrations,” Denworth said.
VAST Data Co-Founder Jeff Denworth delivers a keynote address at VAST Forward
VAST clusters are composed of CBoxes and DBoxes, which allow customers to expand the compute and data storage available to their cluster, respectively. The CBoxes and DBoxes, which are housed in EBox enclosures, themselves are composed individual CNodes and DNodes.
The new CNode-X offering will incorporate several external libraries from Nvidia, including cuVS, a library for accelerated vector search and retrieval. Embedding cuVS into VAST cluters via CNode-X will bring GPU acceleration to bear on vector database operations, and also boost performance for vector search and RAG pipelines utilizing VAST’s InsightEngine. VAST will support Nvidia Nemotron models and NIM microservices.
VAST says that CNode-X, which will become available later this year, will also support Nvidia’s Context Memory Storage (CMS) platform. Supporting CMS will allow VAST to support the latest BlueField-4 DPUs and Spectrum-X scale-out network switches, which it says will accelerate access to shared KV cache and lower time-to-first-token for long-context, multi-agent inference.
“This is the first time that we’ve run accelerated services natively within our system,” Denworth said. “Ultimately, what this allows us to do is to take our software and then power it with a bunch of very specific Nvidia libraries that are being built into the system.”
Nvidia and VAST are working together to accelerate AI infrastructure
CNode-X will also leverage Sirius, the open source library that provides GPU-based acceleration for SQL workloads. VAST says Sirius will reduce SQL query times by 44% and query costs by up to 80%.
Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang commented on the launch of CNode-X in a video message played for the VAST Forward audience.
“Three year sago we started working on a problem that nobody had solved: How do you make data infrastructure–all of it, every layer of it–run at GPU speed? Without it, AI infrastructure powered by Nvidia GPUs running lightning fast is bottlenecked because storage can’t keep up. The world’s fastest AI supercomputers are waiting on storage.
So VAST’s engineering team came to Nvidia and we started co-designing, from the ground up, a new architecture for data processing and storage,” Huang continued. “What we bulit together is remarkable: The world’s first fully Nvidia CUDA-accelerated data platform.”
Adding GPU acceleration into the data infrastructure also lengthens the memory of AI agents, Huang said.
“AI agents today have a problem: Every time they start a new task, they need to reload their context,” he said. “It’s like you and I waking up in the morning with no memory. You spend the first hour of the day relearning what you already knew. With VAST integration of Nvidia inference context memory on Bluefield-4, agents have persistent memory across the entire cluster, with microsecond latency.”
VAST is going to add a number of different form factors with its C-nodes, depending on customer demand. But it’s starting with CNode-X, said Sagi Grimberg, Vast VP of architecture said during a VAST Forward session today.
Supermicro and Cisco are the first two computer makers to sell CNode-X, which represents the first time VAST’s stack is being deployed directly atop accelerated compute. The company is also working with HPE and Lenovo to bring new specialized CNodes to market. VAST is planning to add more OEMs in the future.
The post VAST Adds GPUs Into Clusters with CNode-X appeared first on HPCwire.
Whether you're a new fan or a Pokemon master, the famous monster-catcher franchise has a game for everyone. Strap in to catch 'em all, enter a multiplayer online battle arena or solve an engrossing mystery.
Samsung just unveiled the new Galaxy S26, S26 Plus and S26 Ultra. All three give you access to a variety of new Galaxy AI features, while the Ultra gets a new built-in privacy display.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Feb. 26, No. 1,713.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 26, No. 725.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 26 #991.
A new study reveals that a car's tire pressure monitoring system can be easily accessed by hackers.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the AI company Anthropic an ultimatum about the military's use of its technology, known as Claude.
"I know, like, later on, there'll be a full invite for all Team USA athletes to go to the White House like there has been in the past," decorated U.S. women's hockey veteran Kelly Pannek told CBS News.
The ruling could make it more difficult for the government to send migrants to countries that are not their own.
 | Some how it's still holding air on my btg burris. My guess dry rot got to it as I was out due to injury for half a year. I'm just using the green slime and it's dirt cheap. [link] [comments] |
The death last March of Ruben Ray Martinez in South Padre Island, Texas, was not disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security for nearly a year.
Federal immigration agents arrested 261 DACA recipients during the first 10 months of the second Trump administration, according to statistics shared with Congress.
Here are the differences between all three new Galaxy S26 phones.
Exclusive: Former New Zealand PM ‘based out of Australia’, according to spokesperson, after rumours she was looking for houses in Sydney
The former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is living in Australia with her family, a spokesperson has confirmed.
“The family has been travelling for a few years now,” her office told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Vice-president makes announcement with Mehmet Oz, who says other states will be next after Minnesota
JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump’s newly announced “war on fraud”.
Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax money”, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.
Continue reading...I’ve got a one wheel pint in the closet for about two years now. The battery obviously won’t hold a charge. What are my best options for it at this point. Should I sell it for parts as is or can I repair or replace the battery myself. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated
Damning inquiry into services in England reveals falsification of medical records after ‘negligent’ care
What is the national maternity and neonatal investigation and why was it launched?
Cruel comments, racism and cover-ups: key findings from England’s maternity care report
Hospitals that cause harm and injury to women and babies during childbirth often resort to a “cover-up” of their mistakes, falsify medical records and deny bereaved parents answers, a damning report has found.
“Negligent” care has devastating emotional and psychological consequences for families, disputes between maternity staff have a “disastrous” impact on mothers, and ethnic minority and poorer women have worse outcomes because of racism and discrimination, Lady Amos said.
Banning families from being involved in investigations into the mistakes they encountered.
Conducting inquiries into errors which families think are poor quality and do not properly reflect what occurred.
Driving distressed families to instigate legal action as a way of getting at the truth after they were “denied openness and honesty in the aftermath of harm and bereavement”.
Failing to treat families who have lost a baby with compassion.
Continue reading...Independent commissioner’s report finds websites can act as ‘accelerators’ of exploitation for sex workers using them
The anti-slavery watchdog has called for a complete overhaul of websites advertising sexual services after an investigation revealed they can act as “accelerators” of exploitation for sex workers using them.
While working online can provide enhanced protections for some, a new report from the independent anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, investigated the experiences of women who said they were exploited on the adult services sites, which typically allow users to browse through images and videos of women selling sex in their local area.
Continue reading...Updated guidance from Crown Prosecution Service covers forms of spiritual and immigration abuse for first time
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has published new guidance for its lawyers to help tackle “honour”-based abuse, with spiritual and immigration abuse included for the first time.
The guidance was updated to reflect growing concerns around evolving forms of abuse and to tackle what the CPS described as “emerging harmful practices”.
Continue reading...From racism to staff shortages, the interim report found a host of deep-rooted issues affecting women and babies
NHS maternity units often cover up harmful errors in childbirth, report finds
Cruel comments, racism and cover-ups: key findings from England’s maternity care report
On Thursday, a damning interim report published after a national investigation into England’s maternity services found deep-rooted issues affecting women and their babies, including insensitivity from maternity staff, racism and discrimination, and chronic staff shortages. Below is an exploration of what led to the report and what happens next.
Continue reading...Go behind the scenes with our team as we find and make sense of the numbers.
Group says case far from over after being found liable for defamation and other claims brought by energy firm
A North Dakota judge has said he will order Greenpeace to pay damages expected to total $345m in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline from nearly a decade ago, a figure the environmental group contends it cannot pay.
In court papers filed Tuesday, Judge James Gion said he would sign an order requiring several Greenpeace entities to pay the judgment to pipeline company Energy Transfer. He set that amount at $345m last year in a decision that reduced a jury’s damages by about half, but his latest filing did not specify a final amount.
Continue reading...Tehran insists deal is possible if Trump abides by preconditions agreed with Witkoff and Kushner
Iran enters critical talks on its nuclear programme with the US on Thursday, insisting a deal is in reach as long as Washington sticks by its willingness to concede Iran’s symbolic right to enrich uranium, allow Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and not to impose controls on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
The three preconditions for success are seen as critical by Iranian diplomats, but it remains unclear whether Trump accepts these parameters.
Continue reading...Agitator whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was hosted by senior adviser at US state department
The far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been hosted by the Trump administration for a meeting at the state department in Washington.
Robinson, 43, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the state department.
Continue reading...This is the second factory the Swiss brand is banking on to produce its shoes.
Killing of Ruben Ray Martinez on 15 March 2025 in Texas was not disclosed by the department until media reported it
A grand jury on Wednesday rejected indictments over the fatal shooting last year of a US citizen by a federal immigration agent during a traffic encounter in Texas, prosecutors said.
The shooting of Ruben Ray Martinez on 15 March 2025 by a Homeland Security investigations agent wasn’t publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security until the Associated Press and other media outlets reported it last week.
Continue reading...Feb. 25, 2026 — Designing ventilation systems for large vessels is highly demanding due to the complexity of the ventilation network, internal obstacles, and numerous branches that must distribute air evenly throughout the entire system. Conventional engineering calculations often cannot fully predict how air will behave in such complex configurations. The team at NCC Croatia collaborated on precisely this type of challenge with Lürssen Design Centre Kvarner, an engineering company specialized in superyacht design.
As part of the collaboration, NCC Croatia provided a range of services tailored to Lürssen’s needs. The first step involved training the company’s engineers in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the application of high-performance computing (HPC). The objective of the training was to enable the engineering team to independently use CFD tools in combination with HPC infrastructure, thereby opening up opportunities for faster and more detailed analyses in everyday engineering practice.
In addition to the training, a detailed analysis was conducted on a section of the ventilation system of an active vessel, where measured values significantly deviated from the initial air distribution design. The analysis aimed to identify the causes of these discrepancies: where and why unexpected air distribution occurs, which system components most strongly influence the observed issue, and what possible solutions could be implemented. Furthermore, the study sought to determine whether CFD could effectively model this type of problem and whether, already at the design stage and with the support of HPC resources, results consistent with real operating conditions could be obtained within a reasonable timeframe.
OpenFOAM, a leading open-source software package for CFD simulations, was used for the analysis. The process was carried out on the supercomputing infrastructure available through NCC Croatia. In the preliminary configuration, the primary distribution segment with nine outlet branches was modeled. The initial simplified analysis revealed that the geometry of the system itself caused uneven flow distribution as a direct consequence of duct arrangement and internal obstacles.
These observations were confirmed by on-site measurements on the vessel. In the extended configuration, additional downstream duct segments were introduced to simulate the resistance of the actual distribution network, enabling more realistic simulation of real operating conditions. Complex three-dimensional flow patterns were observed, including secondary circulations, preferential air paths, and zones of flow separation and reattachment around internal obstacles. The established workflow enabled simplified models to be computed in approximately one hour, while more detailed analyses, using HPC resources, required less than twelve hours — making this type of analysis a practical tool in everyday engineering practice.
The collaboration resulted in tangible advancements for Lürssen. The company is now equipped with the knowledge and tools to independently conduct similar analyses, enabling faster development iterations, more efficient testing of design modifications, and shorter development cycles for new systems.
The collaboration was carried out within the activities of the NCC Croatia and the EuroCC 2 project.
Source: HPC in Europe Portal
The post NCC Croatia Brings CFD and HPC to Superyacht Engineering Workflows appeared first on HPCwire.
Airline credits better fuel efficiency, customer demand, new routes and more flights to Japan, Bali and New Zealand for strong result
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Qantas has delivered a bumper $1.46bn half-year underlying profit as travellers shrug off cost-of-living pressures to travel within and outside Australia.
Australia’s biggest airline credited robust customer demand, new routes and increased flight frequency to “Japan, Bali and across the Tasman”, and more fuel-efficient new aircraft for the strong result, up 5% from a year ago.
Continue reading...I’ve been a .com purist for over two decades of building. Once, I broke that rule and bought a .online TLD for a small project. This is the story of how it went up in flames.
↫ Tony S.
An absolute horror story about Google’s dominance over the web, in places nobody really talks about. Scary.
Proposed settlement would pay users of glyphosate-based weedkiller with non-Hodgkin lymphoma $10,000-$165,000
A group of 14 law firms representing nearly 20,000 plaintiffs is seeking to intervene in Bayer’s proposed class-action settlement of Roundup litigation, citing concerns that the deal will not be fair to cancer sufferers.
The group filed both a motion to intervene and a motion for an extension of time for court preliminary approval of the deal in St Louis city circuit court in Missouri late on 24 February.
This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group
Continue reading...Marshall Yates also served on a "weaponization" working group tasked with carrying out Trump's quest for retribution.
Former Australian Border Force officer Rohan Pike, who has been quoted extensively as an expert, also advises nicotine-industry-linked organisations
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A former Australian Border Force officer who has positioned himself before government inquiries as Australia’s “foremost law enforcement expert” on illicit tobacco also advises nicotine industry-linked organisations – leading public health advocates to argue that more transparency is needed.
Rohan Pike, who spent more than two decades in law enforcement and now runs a consultancy, has become a prominent media commentator on the illicit tobacco trade, promoting policies that align with those supported by the tobacco industry.
Continue reading...Investigation under way after man was dropped off five miles from home but family wasn’t notified, officials say
A nearly blind Burmese refugee who was abandoned by border patrol agents has been found dead in Buffalo, New York, city officials confirmed.
Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, had been missing since 19 February, when he was dropped off by border patrol following his release from Erie county holding center, according to the Investigative Post.
Continue reading...  | hucka bucked off a small cedar stump [link] [comments] |
Only a few days ago we talked about the concept of client-side decorations, and how more and more desktop environments and operating systems – specifically GNOME and macOS – are putting more and more buttons, menus, and other widgets inside title bars. How about we take this concept a step further?
This hides the AppMenu icon button and draws the menu in the title bar. It also includes a search button to find actions. It works on both X11 and Wayland. On Wayland, GTK apps don’t export the menu in a KDE-friendly way. You need to start them with
↫ material-decoration’s GitHub pageGDK_BACKEND=x11environment variable or you can try the experimental appmenu-gtk-module-wayland (GTK3 only).
So this little tool allows you to add an application’s menu bar (file, edit, view, etc.) to the titlebar of a KDE application. The way it works is that it adds an optional widget to KDE’s System Settings > Colors & Themes > Window Decorations > Configure Titlebar Buttons…, alongside regular staples like close, minimise, maximise, etc. You can then freely add said “menu bar” to the title bar of your applications. There’s some configuration options, too. For instance, you can disable the search button, or turn the entire menu bar into a hamburger menu instead.
It looks weird, and I’m definitely not the target audience for this, but I do find it intriguing. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and I doubt many people will like it since it takes up so much space if you don’t opt to use the hamburger menu option. That being said, I’m fairly sure KDE and Kwin allow you to edit the titlebars of specific applications and specific windows, which does open some interesting possibilities for, say, applications or windows which you always have maximised or whatever.
There’s an AUR package for Arch users, but everyone else will have to build it themselves.
Tech companies ranging from 300-person startups to giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce have moved beyond encouraging employees to use AI tools and are now actively tracking adoption and, in several cases, tying it to performance reviews. Google is factoring AI use into some software engineer reviews for the first time this year, and Meta's new performance review system will do the same -- it can track how many lines of code an engineer wrote with AI assistance. Amazon Web Services managers have dashboards showing individual engineer AI-tool usage and consider adoption when evaluating promotions. About 42% of tech-industry workers said their direct manager expects AI use in daily work as of last October, up from 32% eight months earlier, according to AI consulting firm Section. At software maker Autodesk, CEO Andrew Anagnost acknowledged that some employees had been using initially blocked coding tools like Cursor stealthily -- and warned that AI holdouts "probably won't survive long term."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The generative AI assistant can be brief, chill or sweet, using different responses for each version.
The Cuban government said it returned fire following an attack by passengers on a Florida-based speedboat that had entered its territorial waters on Wednesday. Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior said its border guards killed at least four people aboard the U.S. boat and wounded six others.
A U.S. government official said the firefight did not involve U.S. Navy or Coast Guard vessels but a civilian boat. The speedboat approached within one nautical mile northeast of the El Pino channel north of Corralillo, a town in the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, according to an official statement by the Cuban government.
Cuban border guards on a government vessel approached the speedboat seeking identification when people aboard the American boat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, wounding the Cuban vessel’s commander, the statement said.
“As a result of the confrontation, at the time of this report, four foreign attackers were killed and six were wounded,” according to the Cuban government.
The firefight comes during a pressure campaign by the Trump administration that is causing immense hardship on the island. In the past, the U.S. military drew up secret plans for a false-flag attack in Cuban waters to justify a U.S. military intervention.
The U.S. military has been regularly carrying out attacks on supposed drug boats in the Caribbean, the most recent on Monday, killing three people. There have now been 44 such attacks in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, killing at least 151 people since September.
The Cuban government said on Wednesday that the “injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.” The U.S. government, by contrast, has killed survivors clinging to wreckage or left boat strike victims to drown.
The Defense Department and the U.S. Coast Guard referred all questions about Wednesday’s attack to the State Department, which did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez called for revenge on Wednesday, despite the fact that all reports indicate that the American boat attacked the Cuban vessel. “The dictatorship in #Cuba has just attacked a boat from Florida & murdered those on board,” he wrote on X. “This regime must be relegated to the dust bin of history!”
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up pressure on Cuba’s Communist government and extreme pain on its people, cutting off foreign oil shipments and other revenue sources that had kept Cuba’s rickety economy afloat. The pain has increased after oil shipments from Venezuela, its main supplier, were halted after the U.S. attacked the South American country, kidnapped its then-president Nicolás Maduro, and began running the country via a puppet regime. Mexico, another major petroleum supplier, also suspended oil shipments under U.S. pressure. This has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe of food, medicine, and fuel shortages, raging inflation, prolonged blackouts, and service cuts at hospitals.
“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters,” the Cuban government said in a statement. “Based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.”
Many U.S. presidents have attempted to overthrow the Cuban government. During the Cold War, the CIA launched the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The agency also tried to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro at least eight times. The U.S. also conducted a covert campaign of bombing Cuban sugar mills and burning cane fields, among other acts of sabotage.
In the wake of the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Pentagon prepared top-secret plans to excuse an attack on the island. In the spring of 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a top-secret memorandum titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba.” It described numerous false-flag operations that could be employed to justify a U.S. invasion. These proposals included staging assassinations of Cubans living in the U.S.; developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area … and even in Washington”; a plot to “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated)”; faking a Cuban air attack on a civilian jetliner filled with “college students”; and even staging a modern “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters — and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.
The post Cuban Border Guards Attacked by Florida Speedboat appeared first on The Intercept.
In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump said his tariffs are "saving our country."
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, delivering the Democratic response, said the opposite.
"Since this president took office last year, his reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs," Spanberger said Feb. 24.
We’ve fact-checked other Democrats’ estimates about how much Trump’s tariffs are costing American families. Spanberger’s $1,700 figure is roughly in line with multiple estimates by groups that study the tariffs’ effect. These groups, which represent diverse political ideologies, used different metrics to calculate the tariffs’ cost to American households.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to levy tariffs on his own, as he had been doing. Trump reinstated a global 15% tariff after the decision, using other laws.
When contacted for comment, Spanberger’s office cited a study from the Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, estimating that the average household has paid about $1,745 in tariff costs from February 2025 to January.
Economists say tariff impacts are mostly passed on to consumers, similar to taxes. But because consumers don’t spend as much on imports, tariffs don’t affect all purchases equally.
Other groups provided estimates:
The Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, estimated that, in 2025, Trump tariffs contributed to an average tax increase of $1,000 per household.
The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan policy research center, estimated in November and January an average income loss of about $1,700, based on consumer prices. Using another measure based on spending relative to a household’s income, the group estimated the median cost at $1,400 per household.
The National Taxpayers Union, a center-right advocacy organization, estimated in August 2025 that Trump’s tariffs would cost households an average of $2,048 each year if left in place.
These estimates measured the impact of tariffs that were in place before the Supreme Court struck them down.
Some groups measured how much tariffs would cost families after Trump tweaked his tariffs following the Supreme Court ruling. The Tax Foundation predicted that new tariffs on items such as lumber, steel and cars will increase taxes by $400 per household in 2026. Other tariffs, which are temporary and up to 15% on imported goods, could also add another $200 to $600 in taxes, for a total of $600 to $1,000 in tax increases in 2026.
The Yale Budget Lab made two estimates after the Supreme Court ruling. The first, based on consumer price increases, found that a household would lose $800 on average in the short run if certain tariffs expired, or $1,300 if those temporary tariffs are extended.
The second measured how much families spend in relation to their income. It calculated that average annual household costs from tariffs range from around $400 to $1,800, and would increase to around $700 to $3,000, if some tariffs were extended.
Spanberger said Trump’s tariff policies "have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs."
Spanberger referred to a study that showed households have paid an average of $1,745 in tariff costs from February 2025 to January.
Three other groups came up with four estimates. Three of their estimates came in roughly the same or within $350 of Spanberger’s estimate. The fourth was lower than Spanberger’s figure.
The statement is accurate but needs additional information. We rate it Mostly True.
Chipmaker’s quarterly earnings surpassed Wall Street’s expectations every quarter for multiple years
Nvidia released its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, with the chipmaker revealing higher than expected revenues and extending its years-long streak of surpassing Wall Street’s sky-high expectations.
The company receives the vast majority of its revenue from its datacenter business, which has been buoyed by the tech industry’s immense investment into AI infrastructure. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported 75% year-over-year growth of this vertical to $62.3bn. The world’s most valuable publicly traded company, Nvidia has dominated the chip market as its processing units have become the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom. The company also posted an enormous total profit for the fiscal year: $120bn.
Continue reading...SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 25, 2026 — Today at VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data announced the VAST Data PolicyEngine and VAST Data TuningEngine, two new computing services that will allow the next generation of the VAST AI Operating System to deliver key requirements for organizations looking to scale their mission-critical AI initiatives.
Specifically, PolicyEngine and TuningEngine work in tandem within the VAST DataEngine to create AI systems and interactions that are trusted, explainable, and continuously learning. PolicyEngine governs agentic activity and TuningEngine manages model tuning, working in conjunction to power automatic learning loops that remain aligned with organizational expectations.
“Just as people are always learning, so should tomorrow’s applications,” said Jeff Denworth, Co-Founder at VAST Data. “With the introduction of PolicyEngine and TuningEngine, the VAST AI Operating System has become a thinking machine that customers can deploy wherever they compute – a machine that safeguards every interaction and learns from every outcome, bringing the power of AI within reach of every organization.”
Introducing the VAST Data PolicyEngine
AI workflows and agents are increasingly accessing organizational data, using it to produce more information in the form of generated responses, agent-to-agent communications, event logs, and more. Without fine-grained controls on what agents can access and how they communicate with other agents, tools, and remote data products, the chance for data spillage and leakage rises greatly. Without strict controls on how data is accessed and how services communicate, and without tools to log every aspect of an agentic workflow, AI cannot be fully trusted.
The VAST PolicyEngine resolves these concerns via an inline policy enforcement engine to safeguard every aspect of agentic interaction and communication. PolicyEngine governs agents’ access to shared memory, external tools, knowledge bases, or other agents by permitting access, actions, and communications according to fine-grained, explicit permissions, as well as AI-derived context. Because enforcement occurs before actions execute, and because the system maintains extensive, tamper-proof traces and logs, the system maintains a zero-trust operating posture to ensure that decisions and actions remain observable, explainable, and auditable.
Introducing the VAST Data TuningEngine
VAST AgentEngine is the agentic runtime of the AI OS. This serverless computing environment is simple to program and coordinates multi-agent workflows, model invocation, and agentic tool usage within the VAST AI OS. While AgentEngine has been suitable for the deployment of static models, the completeness of the AI OS stack allows the platform to also support “learning loops” that use all of the system’s telemetry, as well as agent and model feedback, to support fine tuning and reinforcement learning pipelines.
The VAST TuningEngine captures outcomes from agentic pipelines and utilizes curated feedback to enhance model performance over time. Using popular methods such as LoRA fine tuning, supervised fine tuning, and reinforcement learning, TuningEngine pipelines automatically ingest that data, process it, and suggest new candidate models. Each new candidate can be evaluated and benchmarked within the VAST AI OS, and then manually or automatically deployed into the platform. This will kick off a new learning loop that uses future interactions to improve on the newly deployed, updated model.
A Big Step Toward VAST’s Thinking Machine Vision
These new capabilities represent a massive step toward building systems that automatically evolve as they interact with data from the natural world. VAST Data has been working on building such a system since 2016, and unveiled the full extent of its vision in 2023. With today’s announcement, VAST AI OS finally creates a closed operational computing loop that observes, reasons, acts, evaluates, and improves – all while fortifying security and explainability by unifying and safeguarding all activities in one unified system.
The VAST PolicyEngine and TuningEngine are slated for release by the end of 2026.
More from HPCwire
About VAST Data
VAST Data is the AI Operating System company – powering the next generation of intelligent systems with a unified software infrastructure stack that was purpose-built to unlock the full potential of AI. The VAST AI OS consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform, enabling organizations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on VAST’s breakthrough DASE architecture – the world’s first true parallel distributed system architecture that eliminates tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience – VAST has transformed its modern infrastructure into a global fabric for reasoning AI.
Source: VAST Data
The post VAST Data Unveils Platform for Secure, Trusted, and Self-Learning Agentic AI Systems appeared first on HPCwire.
Captain says controversy overshadows Olympic gold win
Trump quipped about inviting US women to White House
Knight says there is respect and support with men’s team
Hilary Knight, the captain of the US women’s ice hockey team, has responded to comments made by Donald Trump after the Americans won gold at the Winter Olympics, calling the president’s quip a “distasteful joke”.
After the US men’s ice hockey team won gold on Sunday, Trump called into the locker-room celebration and invited the players to be his guests at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
Continue reading...  | Hope yall have riding weather! [link] [comments] |
Record rainfall in famously arid California park has caused a wildflower eruption nearing levels of a superbloom
Death Valley and parts of southern California have erupted in wildflowers thanks to record rain that helped deliver spectacular blooms.
In the famously arid national park, the rare display has covered miles of the landscape in vibrant shades of yellow and purple.
Continue reading...Trump’s tariff strategy is alive and well Expert comment jon.wallace
The State of the Union showed the president’s faith in the efficacy of tariffs is undimmed – despite the adverse Supreme Court ruling.
‘Are you tired of winning?’
President Donald Trump isn’t, he said on Tuesday night in his 2026 State of the Union address, drawing smiles from Vice President JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson, seated on the dais behind him.
Despite the setback inflicted by a recent US Supreme Court ruling, Trump left no doubt that he intends to continue using tariffs aggressively – in his words, to win some more.
US trading partners have good reason to feel relief after the Court’s verdict. The Court invalidated the administration’s reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as a basis for sweeping tariff action. This will reduce the speed and discretion of future tariff imposition.
Other observers will be relieved by the Court’s decision as a visible demonstration that America’s institutional checks and balances are functioning as designed. Court judges selected by President Trump were willing to reach judgements that angered the president and undermined his agenda. Some had doubted they would be.
But there is also bad news for tariff skeptics and America’s trade partners. In the State of the Union, Trump made clear that he has no intention of abandoning his broader tariff strategy.
Within the speech, one could discern the familiar strands Trump has long used to justify tariffs.
First, tariffs as revenue.
‘I used these tariffs to generate hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country,’ he declared, crediting them as ‘one of the primary reasons for our country’s stunning economic turnaround’.
Trump went further, suggesting that ‘As time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax – taking a great financial burden off the people that I love’.
Critics were quick to dismiss this claim. Income taxes account for the largest share of US federal revenue, and even substantial tariff increases would generate only a fraction of what income and payroll taxes provide.
Most economists therefore see tariffs as supplementary revenue tools rather than plausible substitutes for the income tax. Although the maths may not add up, the idea has intense political appeal: it frames tariffs as an external revenue source that could ease the domestic tax burden.
Second, Trump framed tariffs not merely as fiscal instruments but as tools of geopolitical leverage. In criticizing the Supreme Court’s ‘very unfortunate ruling’ – while four black-robed, stone-faced justices faced him from the chamber’s front row – Trump lamented that limiting presidential tariff authority weakens the executive branch’s power in foreign affairs. Tariffs, in this framing, are tools of statecraft – a way to coerce trading partners, extract concessions, and rebalance relationships without resorting to military force.
Indeed, Trump asserted that the threat of tariffs had enabled him to end ‘several wars’. He described tariffs as ‘peace protecting’, stating that ‘many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs’ and that ‘I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without [tariffs]’. In this telling, tariffs are a central instrument of US foreign policy influence.
US trading partners around the world can take from the State of the Union that tariffs are here to stay – at least for the duration of this administration. While the Supreme Court may have curtailed one legal pathway, it did not eliminate presidential tariff authority. It certainly did nothing to shake Trump’s broader faith in the tariff instrument.
Following the ruling, Trump indicated that his administration would continue using other statutory tools, including Section 301 of the Trade Act (addressing unfair trade practices), Section 232 (national security), and related provisions. In other words, while one instrument has been declared invalid, the broader tariff toolkit remains – as does Trump’s faith in its efficacy.
Microsoft released an optional cumulative update for Windows 11, and for once, it actually includes something many of you might actually like: it adds Sysmon from Sysinternals to Windows natively, so you no longer have to install it manually. Here’s a refresher on what, exactly, Sysmon does.
System Monitor (Sysmon) is a Windows system service and device driver that, once installed on a system, remains resident across system reboots to monitor and log system activity to the Windows event log. It provides detailed information about process creations, network connections, and changes to file creation time. By collecting the events it generates using Windows Event Collection or SIEM agents and subsequently analyzing them, you can identify malicious or anomalous activity and understand how intruders and malware operate on your network. The service runs as a protected process, thus disallowing a wide range of user mode interactions.
↫ Mark Russinovich and Thomas Garnier
After installing the optional cumulative update in question, KB5077241, you can install Sysmon as an optional Windows component. Of course, this is Microsoft we’re talking about, so it’s not quite as straightforward as you’d think. In Windows 11, there’s two places to add optional Windows features, and in the case of Sysmon, you have to go to the old Windows features dialog instead of the new View or edit optional features one. And also, don’t forget to first remove the old Sysmon from Sysinternals in case you have it installed. After installation, run sysmon -i as an administrator to enable the feature.
Department commissioner will be Erin Dalton, who conducted outreach in Pennsylvania among unhoused communities
Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor, has hired Erin Dalton as a new commissioner of the city’s department of social services.
The hire comes as the new mayor has faced scrutiny over the city’s handling of its unhoused population following the deaths of at least 20 people who were found outdoors during an especially cold winter.
Continue reading...The revolt inspired fear that Francoist fascism had returned. Mr. Tejero died the same day the Spanish government declassified documents related to the coup.
COVINA, Calif., Feb. 25, 2026 — The Align Foundation, a nonprofit accelerating predictive biology by convening the world’s leading minds to generate and optimize the data that powers AI breakthroughs, has announced a partnership with Google DeepMind to work with the global community to chart a new roadmap for data and evaluations that can help drive AI for AMR research. Building on the calls to action within the AI for AMR report released by Google DeepMind and the Fleming Initiative, the organizations will convene global experts in microbiology, medicine, and AI to define and prioritize data generation. Resulting datasets will enable the development of “dream models”–predictive systems capable of catalyzing field-wide changes in how the world understands, predicts, and ultimately addresses AMR.
“Our vision at Align is to build the research infrastructure needed to make biological data collection and model development frictionless, scalable, and shareable,” said Peter Kelly, Co-founder and Head of Science at The Align Foundation. “We’re excited to collaborate with Google DeepMind on AMR to create a space where researchers can jointly define the data needed and subsequent models that would truly move the needle for drug resistance. This partnership is about centering the community’s most pressing questions and then developing the shared understanding of data, methods, and benchmarks required to answer them.”
As part of the roadmapping effort, Align and Google DeepMind will host two AMR Community Workshops, one in North America and another in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in spring 2026. The invite-only ideation workshops will surface leading regional perspectives from across disciplines to build prioritized, technically defined dataset proposals with concrete use cases, data standards, and evaluation frameworks required to enable predictive modeling of AMR. The workshops are designed to generate funding‑ready project plans for implementable dataset blueprints that can serve as launchpads for multi-year, multi-stakeholder data generation initiatives.
During the open submission window, the partners will solicit diverse input addressing priority datasets for novel research questions that could accelerate the development of robust, clinically relevant AMR models that can positively impact health outcomes. Interested applicants can learn more and submit concepts by visiting the submission portal through March 31, 2026.
“Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most urgent challenges in global health, and we believe AI can help researchers understand and address it in new and highly impactful ways,” said Agata Laydon, Science Lead in the Google DeepMind Impact Accelerator. “Working with The Align Foundation, we’re excited to support a global community of experts in shaping foundational AI for AMR capabilities that are grounded in real‑world needs and can be developed and evaluated in a safe, responsible way.”
AMR is one of the most significant global health threats we face today. AI technologies have the potential to help address many of the open questions and challenges and to accelerate research in AMR. AI models such as AlphaFold–which has already been cited in over 2,500 papers relevant to AMR–are already helping researchers answer important and long-standing questions, while the potential of others, such as Google’s AI co-scientist, is beginning to be demonstrated. However, for the most part, the broad potential of AI remains untapped because the necessary foundations, including AI-ready data and evaluations, are not yet available.
This partnership builds on Align’s work to create open, standardized biological datasets and benchmarks, including its efforts to generate large‑scale microbial phenotyping resources for the global AI research community. Align’s community-driven processes have surfaced high-impact “dream datasets” that evolved into platform designs, technical reports, and collaborative project proposals. In its flagship GROQ‑Seq initiative to measure protein function at scale, Align’s roadmap has already advanced through methods development into active data generation across seven projects, including partnerships with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boston University’s DAMP Lab, Battelle, Profluent, the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), and a global network of academic collaborators.
The AMR ideation sessions follow a similar arc, from shared vision to funded, multi-year data generation efforts fueling “dream model” development. These living datasets and data generation platforms will provide a durable foundation for future AI advances in AMR. Together with Google DeepMind, Align aims to ensure that future AMR dataset and evaluation investments accelerate meaningful downstream impact by the end of 2028.
About The Align Foundation
The Align Foundation is a nonprofit research organization accelerating the future of life sciences by building large, open biological datasets to power predictive breakthroughs. Founded in 2021, Align enables dataset creation through high-throughput experimentation, automation partnerships, and global scientific collaboration. Align also hosts competitions to transparently benchmark scientific progress and measure the impact of open data. With support from philanthropic and research funders, Align is creating the reproducible, scalable, and shareable infrastructure needed to unlock the next generation of data‑powered breakthroughs in biology. Learn more at alignbio.org.
About Google DeepMind
Google DeepMind is a leading AI research organization working to build safe and responsible AI systems that can help solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Combining cutting‑edge research with large‑scale engineering, Google DeepMind develops advanced AI models and technologies that power products across Google and support breakthroughs in fields such as science, health, and robotics.
Source: The Align Foundation
The post Align Foundation Partners with Google DeepMind on AI Data Roadmap for Antimicrobial Resistance appeared first on HPCwire.
HANOVER, Md., Feb. 25, 2026 — Building on its long history as the leader in high-speed connectivity – and marking the first product introduction following its acquisition of Nubis Communications – Ciena is unveiling Vesta 200 6.4T CPX, the industry’s highest-density, lowest-power pluggable CPO solution. Designed to reduce power consumption by up to 70%, the solution helps hyperscalers, cloud providers, and data center operators evolve their architectures to reliably address AI workloads in both scale-out networks as well as next generation scale-up networks.
Vesta 200 6.4T CPX Pluggable Co-packaged Optical Engine
“We’re delivering the industry’s first truly flexible, open pluggable optical engine, removing barriers to CPO adoption and giving our customers exactly what they’ve been asking for: greater density, power efficiency, and reliability – all in an open, multi‑vendor ecosystem,” said Dino DiPerna, Senior Vice President of Global Research & Development at Ciena. “We continue to innovate in response to evolving customer needs, allowing operators to scale AI clusters more efficiently, using less energy and space, while lowering overall infrastructure costs.”
Vesta 200 6.4T CPX provides more power-efficient optical interconnect and delivers the chip-edge density required for massive scale-up and scale-out networks on 200G/lane switches, XPUs, and NICs.
Key features include:
Ciena will offer a demonstration of Vesta 200 6.4T CPX at booth #1927 at OFC 2026, taking place March 15-19 in Los Angeles.
About Ciena
Ciena is the global leader in high-speed connectivity. We build the world’s most advanced networks to support exponential growth in bandwidth demand. By harnessing the power of our networking systems, interconnects, automation software, and services, Ciena revolutionizes data transmission and network management. With unparalleled expertise and innovation, we empower our customers, partners, and communities to thrive in the AI era.
Source: Ciena
The post Ciena Unveils New Pluggable Optical Engine to Meet Data Center AI Demands appeared first on HPCwire.
A new advertisement misleadingly accuses a Republican North Carolina legislative candidate of criticizing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
The video ad, paid for by the NC True Conservatives political action committee, is meant to sway Guilford and Rockingham county voters in North Carolina’s 26th Senate District to vote for state Sen. Phil Berger over his GOP primary challenger, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.
The ad accurately points out that Trump endorsed Berger, the state’s Senate leader since 2011, partly because of Berger’s support for Trump’s immigration policies. The ad then claims Page "got busted calling Trump’s plan unrealistic."
Here’s a transcript of the ad:
Trump: "Seal the border. Stop the invasion, and send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens the hell back home."
Narrator: "Phil Berger backs President Trump’s plan to stop illegal immigration. That’s why President Trump backs Phil Berger. And Sam Page? He got busted calling Trump’s plan unrealistic."
Page, in what the ad labels a "leaked video" clip: "It is unrealistic to assume that 12 to 14 million people will just leave the United States."
Narrator: "Sam Page — wrong on Trump, wrong on immigration, wrong for us."
Page has been a Trump ally for years, and the ad doesn’t provide any context for Page’s remarks, which were made in 2012. That’s years before Trump filed to run for president the first time — and even longer before Trump had articulated his immigration enforcement plan. The ad also deceptively edited Page’s complete comments.
Page pointed PolitiFact to a YouTube video posted Oct. 12, 2012 showing Page speaking at a lectern.
In it, Page said the federal government needs to do more to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, such as hiring more Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. "Therefore, the National Sheriffs’ Association recommends the following," Page can be heard saying.
"We’re asking for additional ICE agents, Border Patrol agents," Page said. "We’re also asking for continued increased funding for our 287(g) and ‘Secure Community’ program."
He continued: "On the pathway to legal employment and legal status, the National Sheriffs’ Association does, at this point and time, strongly oppose outright amnesty for those individuals currently here illegally. Amnesty does not work. However, it is unrealistic to assume that 12 to 14 million people will just leave the United States if asked. A plausible solution must be developed. And that’s what I’m saying tonight."
Page then encouraged people to watch a documentary on illegal immigration and to call their representatives in Congress to demand a more secure border.
Page said he was reading from a 2011 National Sheriffs’ Association position paper on comprehensive immigration reform.
The association’s position paper read: "When granted in 1986, [amnesty] did little to stop the flow of illegal individuals from coming across the border and, in fact, contributed to thousands of fraudulent applications for amnesty. History cannot repeat itself. However, it is unrealistic to assume that 12 to 20 million people will just leave the United States if asked. A plausible solution must be developed."
When PolitiFact presented this information to NC True Conservatives, group spokesman Lawrence Shaheen said Page’s comments reflect the candidate’s personal beliefs. Shaheen cited a segment of the video when Page says, "And that’s what I’m saying tonight" — as well as an Oct. 8, 2012, Winston-Salem Journal article that read in part:
The goal, Page said, is to motivate people to lobby members of Congress to do something about illegal immigration. Asked what he thinks should be done, Page said he supports comprehensive immigration reform — legislation that would deal with the estimated 11 million to 14 million noncitizens in the U.S. without authorization.
Mass deportations, Page said, would not be an effective way to deal with the issue.
"In the U.S., you can't just deport 14 million people. There is going to have to be some type of fix for the long term."
Page told PolitiFact that he didn’t recall his conversation with a Winston-Salem Journal reporter, but said he was likely attempting to relay the position of the association. After Page campaign attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to Shaheen, lawyers for NC True Conservatives responded to the Page campaign citing the same news article and 2012 video. The group declined to take down the ad.
Page told PolitiFact that his support for that plan is evident through his backing of Trump and tougher immigration policies through the years.
In 2015, Page testified before a Congressional committee on immigration and border security. In a prepared statement, Page expressed support for legislation that would deport undocumented minors to their home countries so long as they wouldn’t face persecution there or face the risk of trafficking.
Page says he co-founded "Sheriffs for Trump" in 2016, when Trump promised to deport every immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, then estimated to be 11 million people. In September 2016, Page told The New York Times: "I believe we need to remove all criminal offenders that are in this country illegally." In January 2017, Page told WXII-TV that he supported Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern U.S. border and crack down on illegal immigration. The next month, Page was one of several sheriffs to visit Trump at the White House and praise his agenda.
Page helped lead Trump’s 2020 campaign in North Carolina, and in recent years supported local legislation that would require North Carolina sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officers.
Page supported Trump again in 2024, when Trump vowed to carry out the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history." The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump last year provided hundreds of billions of dollars in new Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding to help Trump achieve his goal. Page congratulated Trump for signing the legislation, describing it on X as a "major achievement and bold step forward."
When Trump endorsed Berger in the race in December, the president said Page had been a longtime supporter and described him as an "outstanding" person.
Page also referred PolitiFact to an article by The Assembly, which described him this way: "No North Carolina law enforcement official has cheered President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda as much as Rockingham County’s cowboy hat-wearing sheriff, Sam Page."
The Trump administration has asked immigrants to leave on their own, calling it self-deportation. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in January that an estimated 2.2 million people had self-deported during the first year of Trump’s second term in office. That number is under scrutiny, however, because the Trump administration hasn’t released monthly detailed deportation data.
But the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement plan shows it isn’t relying solely on self-deportation.
DHS is offering a $2,600 stipend to each immigrant who self-deports and reports it on a government app. The offer comes with a warning: Those who don’t self-deport will be "arrested, deported, and they will never be able to return to the United States." To execute that plan, Trump’s administration is investing billions of dollars to hire immigration agents to conduct what it touts as the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history."
A NC True Conservatives ad claims that Page "got busted calling Trump’s [immigration] plan unrealistic."
The group cited comments Page made about immigration in 2012, years before Trump ran for president. He was repeating a portion of the National Sheriffs’ Association’s position paper at the time, and Page says he was reading them to an audience. He was not commenting on Trump’s immigration plan at all.
Page has been an ardent supporter of Trump’s for years — even after the president’s vows to conduct large-scale deportations. We rate the ad’s claim False.
The prediction market said it suspended Artem Kaptur, an employee of the popular YouTuber MrBeast, for insider trading.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled that the Trump administration's policy for swiftly deporting migrants to third countries violates federal immigration law and the Constitution.
Fixing the Space Launch System rocket's helium pressurization problem has pushed the Artemis II launch to at least April 1.
Marco Rubio attended a regional summit to emphasize the Trump administration’s focus on the Western Hemisphere even as the prospect of conflict in the Middle East looms.
It’s unclear what agents sought at locations tied to Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the country’s second-largest district.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Brian Merchant, writing for Blood in the Machine, reports that people across the United States are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras, amid rising public anger that the license plate readers aid U.S. immigration authorities and deportations. Flock is the Atlanta-based surveillance startup valued at $7.5 billion a year ago and a maker of license plate readers. It has faced criticism for allowing federal authorities access to its massive network of nationwide license plate readers and databases at a time when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is increasingly relying on data to raid communities as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Flock cameras allow authorities to track where people go and when by taking photos of their license plates from thousands of cameras located across the United States. Flock claims it doesn't share data with ICE directly, but reports show that local police have shared their own access to Flock cameras and its databases with federal authorities. While some communities are calling on their cities to end their contracts with Flock, others are taking matters into their own hands.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Commentary: Galaxy AI is too invasive for my liking.
The 2018 assassination of rights activist and Rio de Janeiro city council member Marielle Franco, a rising star in Brazilian politics, reverberated worldwide.
Critics concerned as Casey Means, aligned with RFK Jr on vaccine stance, does not have active medical license
Casey Means, Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for US surgeon general, appeared before the Senate health committee on Wednesday for a two‑hour hearing in which she defended her medical credentials, side-stepped direct questions on vaccine guidance, and blamed the country’s chronic‑disease burden on “ultra‑processed foods, industrial chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, chronic stress and loneliness, and over‑medicalization”.
As the nation’s prospective top doctor, Means would be responsible for communicating federal public‑health guidance. In her opening remarks, she said Americans were “angry, exhausted and hurting from preventable diseases” and called for a “great national healing”. Her hearing was postponed in October, after she went into labor hours before she was scheduled to testify.
Continue reading...Three research stories show that AI is entering a more mature phase. Scientists are using AI to better understand complex research data and extend foundation models deeper into scientific discovery.
A common theme across these projects is that AI is moving beyond experimentation toward practical integration into research workflows. Researchers are using AI to handle messy scientific data and apply automation to explore ideas without replacing human judgment.
A major obstacle in scientific AI is data heterogeneity – the challenge of dealing with data that comes in many different types and formats that don’t easily fit together. Traditional AI models tend to assume uniformity – that doesn’t work that well in science.
In an effort to overcome this limitation, Penn State researchers have developed a new AI framework, named ZENN, with implications for fields ranging from Alzheimer’s disease research to advanced materials design. ZENN is short for Zentropy-Embedded Neural Networks.
(3rdtimeluckystudio/Shutterstock)
The model is designed to teach AI models to recognize and adapt to hidden differences in data quality rather than ignoring them. It embeds concepts such as those from thermodynamics directly into the learning process.
“Most machine-learning methods assume that all data is homogeneous,” said the researchers, “But real-world data is heterogeneous by nature. If we want AI to be useful for scientific discovery, it must account for that.”
“If you are reading a handwritten note with smudges and stains, you know which marks are meaningful and which are just noise. Traditional AI often treats everything the same. ZENN is designed to tell the difference.”
They tested ZENN on standard AI benchmark datasets and on an experimental scientific problem involving an iron-platinum alloy to see if it could model physical behavior correctly. The researchers claim that ZENN performed better than or matched leading AI models on benchmark tests – it handled messy data more reliably and showed a remarkable ability to learn meaningful patterns and not just rely on data it was trained on. While ZENN still learns from training data, it is designed to recognize that not all data should be treated equally.
Using earthquake data to build a foundation model sounds unexpected, yet that is the direction researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are taking.
The project, called SeisModal, is part of a larger DOE effort (Steel Thread) that brings together scientists from multiple national labs to test whether AI can actually make sense of complex scientific signals – like those from seismic events.
Earthquake data is often incomplete and often arrives in streams rather than tidy datasets. Typically, AI models are built to process datasets that are consistent. Seismic signals rarely behave that way. SeisModal (as the name suggests) is multimodal. This means it can make sense of various types of data, including waveforms, metadata, text, video, and images. With multimodal input, it can provide information about the intensity of the earthquake, its location, timing, and other details that help with emergency assistance and forecasting.
“We’re creating a foundation model with broad capability that can be applied to multiple problems in science with minimal retraining for each application,” said Karl Pazdernik, a chief data scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who is the science lead of the Steel Thread team.
The Steel Thread project includes scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories , as well as PNNL.
A feature of the SeisModal model is its capacity to analyze a “time series”- a series of events or data points, such as tremors from an earthquake or the electrical signals of a heartbeat.
“SeisModal can reason over complex time series data such as seismic waveforms, which is an advance over many current large language models,” said Stewart. “The ability to detect these signals and other uncommon data types opens the door to a wider variety of scientific analysis methods that were previously unavailable.”
One of the great benefits of AI for scientists is that they can automate some processes to free up time so they can focus on tasks that require more human insight or judgment. That is exactly what researchers at the Allen Institute of AI (Ai2) aim to do with AutoDiscovery (AutoDS) – a new AI-powered system they developed to “automate” research. It can be used to generate hypotheses, suggest experiments, run simulations, and analyze results.
How exactly does it work? Well, it all starts with data, which it gets from files uploaded to the system and sets of its own questions to understand the context. The model is based on the principle of Bayesian surprise – which measures how the new findings change or adapt based on what the model expected to see. The more the deviation from expectation, the more attention it receives. As it investigates the patterns that are already known, it can lead to new discoveries.
Ai2 shared that “This design reflects a familiar scientific intuition: results that meaningfully shift our expectations are often more interesting than those that simply confirm what we already assumed.”
“By chasing surprise, AutoDiscovery naturally gravitates toward the unexpected—the results most likely to represent genuine discoveries rather than obvious patterns.”
Ai2 claims AutoDS has been used “to surface surprising, hidden patterns across disciplines, from uncovering trophic relationships in 20 years of marine ecosystem data to identifying mutual-exclusivity patterns in cancer mutations that could inform treatment decisions.” It also published some of the test results in a peer-reviewed paper last November.
While AutoDS is designed to “automate” discovery, the researchers are clear that the goal is not to replace human scientists. Instead they want the model to act as a reliable and fast exploration assistant. Leveraging the power of AI to digest vast data and test various pathways, it can help scientists narrow down the path they want to proceed.
The work is still early, and the researchers acknowledge that. After the results continue to be good after broader testing across domains, AutoDS would be a big step forward in using AI for scientific workflows – in a way that is reliable and easy to set up. With the method it uses, the challenge will be separating statistical novelty from meaningful scientific insight.
None of these systems we covered above replace scientific expertise. However, they suggest AI is moving into a new role where it’s not just analyzing research data, but also helping shape how science itself gets done.
The post Scientific AI Enters a More Mature Phase: Three Projects Explain Why appeared first on HPCwire.
Commentary: You can't spell sustainability without AI.
A Yosemite park ranger was fired last year after helping to display a transgender pride flag from El Capitan.
There are many savings accounts to consider for a $50,000 deposit. Here's which could earn the most interest in 2026.
Industry’s first global control plane purpose-built for AI data infrastructure spanning hyperscale cloud and datacenter deployments
SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 25, 2026 — Today at VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data announced Polaris, a global control plane designed to provision, operate and orchestrate distributed AI infrastructure across public cloud, neocloud and on-premises datacenter environments. Polaris transforms VAST deployments into a unified, fleet-scale platform, enabling enterprises to manage AI data and infrastructure wherever training and inference workloads run.
As AI pipelines expand across regions and providers, infrastructure is no longer a single-cluster problem. Training may occur in one geography, inference in another, and data collection at the edge, all under strict governance and cost constraints. Polaris introduces a centralized service delivery layer that automates deployment, lifecycle management and multi-cluster orchestration, converting distributed infrastructure into a single operational platform rather than a collection of environments.
Included at no extra cost, Polaris complements the VAST AI Operating System by coordinating how VAST environments are deployed and operated across infrastructure boundaries. The VAST DataSpace unifies data across clusters through a global namespace and distributed fabric, while Polaris governs how those clusters are deployed and lifecycle-managed across cloud and hybrid environments. Together, DataSpace abstracts data location and Polaris abstracts infrastructure location, allowing applications and agents to operate against a single logical environment regardless of where compute or data resides.
“AI infrastructure has outgrown the idea of a single deployment in a single location,” said Jonsi Stefansson, General Manager, Cloud Solutions at VAST Data. “Polaris establishes a global control plane that makes distributed AI infrastructure operationally coherent. It allows enterprises to deploy, scale and govern VAST clusters on any cloud or on-premises, all while managing them as one system.”
A Global Control Plane for the AI Era
Built as a secure, multi-tenant Kubernetes-based control plane with a lightweight agent on every VAST node, Polaris automates provisioning in customer accounts, integrates with cloud marketplaces for subscription and entitlement, and centrally orchestrates upgrades, expansion and node replacement. The platform includes enterprise identity integration, role-based access control and audit logging, delivering cloud-style operational consistency for AI infrastructure that spans hybrid and multicloud environments. Additionally, Polaris can be VAST-managed, partner-managed, or customer-managed and supports cloud service provider partners, as well as sovereign deployments. Designed to scale from the largest cloud providers to global neoclouds, VAST Polaris supports multi-site, multi-cluster deployments under centralized management.
Polaris operates as an intent-driven management layer: administrators define the desired state of infrastructure, and Polaris coordinates both cloud-native services and VAST software to reach and maintain that state. Deployments can be created, expanded and governed through a single API and interface, ensuring consistent configuration, policy enforcement and operational behavior across regions and providers.
By combining global data services with fleet-scale orchestration, the VAST AI Operating System enables AI pipelines to move from isolated deployments to continuously operating systems. Organizations can align compute placement with GPU availability, cost and compliance requirements without changing application behavior or operational models.
Polaris is available as part of VAST cloud deployments, with expanded multi-cluster orchestration capabilities planned in future releases.
More from HPCwire: VAST Data Expands AI Data Stack, Keeps Eye on North Star
About VAST Data
VAST Data is the AI Operating System company – powering the next generation of intelligent systems with a unified software infrastructure stack that was purpose-built to unlock the full potential of AI. The VAST AI OS consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform, enabling organizations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on VAST’s breakthrough DASE architecture – the world’s first true parallel distributed system architecture that eliminates tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience – VAST has transformed its modern infrastructure into a global fabric for reasoning AI.
Source: VAST Data
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Antonio Tejero, who has died aged 93, was part of rightwing network whose efforts were thwarted by King Juan Carlos
The Spanish officer who led his armed followers into the Spanish congress in a failed military coup in 1981 has died on the same day that the socialist-led government declassified documents relating to the murky attempt to overthrow the country’s post-Franco democracy.
Antonio Tejero, who died aged 93, was part of a network of rightwing police and military officers whose efforts to seize power were thwarted after King Juan Carlos refused to support the coup and ordered the generals to obey the democratic constitutional order.
Continue reading...Feb. 25, 2026 — Simon Fraser University (SFU) has signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with three strategic partners to build on the industry-leading efficiency and sustainability of the Cedar Supercomputing Centre at its Burnaby campus, which houses Fir, the fastest and most powerful academic supercomputer system in Canada.
The Cedar Supercomputing Centre. Credit: SFU.
The Cedar Supercomputing Centre empowers Canadian companies and public institutions to harness world-class artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, while safeguarding Canadian sovereignty, security and sustainability. AI is a research priority for SFU, and the university ranks in Canada’s top five for AI (AI Rankings, 2025), with more than 100 researchers focused on AI solutions.
The agreements formalize collaborations with industry-leading partners, targeting specialist needs:
Each partnership will further boost the sustainability credentials of the Cedar Supercomputing Centre (CSC), which is powered by clean hydroelectric energy and already boasts an industry-leading power usage effectiveness of 1.07.
“These new agreements will help us take the Cedar Supercomputing Centre to new heights of efficiency and performance, as we continue to support research and innovation across Canada with our secure, high-performance data centre infrastructure hosted right here at SFU,” said Dugan O’Neil, Vice-President, Research and Innovation. “They also reflect our commitment to building partnerships with Canadian companies that are advancing technology and sustainability and investing in our national economy.”
Cerio
Cerio is an Ontario-based company specialized in developing more sustainable data centre infrastructure. Their innovations in composable disaggregated infrastructure (CDI) enable data centre operators to optimize graphics processing unit (GPU) resource allocation to improve efficiency and reduce power use, while their advanced optical interconnect technology also delivers high-speed connectivity with lower power consumption. The MOU with Cerio formalizes plans to collaborate on expanding the Cedar Supercomputing Centre using Cerio’s products, to further develop SFU’s AI infrastructure, research and training.
“We’re excited to partner with SFU to bring our sustainable infrastructure solutions to one of Canada’s most advanced academic computing facilities,” said Phil Harris, CEO of Cerio. “At Cerio, we believe that the future of AI and high-performance computing must be built on a foundation of energy efficiency and environmental responsibility. Our composable disaggregated infrastructure and optical interconnect technologies are designed specifically to help organizations like SFU maximize their computing power while minimizing their environmental footprint. This collaboration with the Cedar Supercomputing Centre will not only support groundbreaking AI research but also demonstrate how Canadian innovation can lead the way in sustainable data center operations.”
Corix
Since 2012, Corix has operated a district energy system on Burnaby Mountain, first serving the UniverCity community and later expanding to SFU campus buildings. Corix and SFU formalized the Burnaby Mountain District Energy Utility project in 2016, culminating in the construction of a $33-million biomass-based Renewable Energy Centre in 2020. The project has since delivered an 85-per-cent reduction in annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The latest MOU with Corix will explore opportunities to capture and reuse excess waste heat from the Cedar Supercomputing Centre for use within the existing neighbourhood energy system that provides heating and hot water across Burnaby Mountain. The initiative aims to demonstrate the viability of data centers as a source of low-carbon heating source amid accelerating data center growth, constraints to the electrical grid, and the growing importance of securing social license for large energy users.
“This MOU builds on our longstanding partnership with SFU and our shared commitment to a more sustainable future,” said Diego Mandelbaum, Chief Development Officer at Corix. “By harnessing data centre waste heat and putting it to productive use, we are exploring the synergy between data centres and district energy, reducing emissions, easing grid constraints, and delivering lasting value to the Burnaby Mountain community.”
Moment Energy
Moment Energy is North America’s leading large-format battery repurposing company, powering commercial and industrial operations with high-performance battery energy storage systems (BESS). By working with industry partners and major automotive companies, Moment Energy’s technology reduces energy costs, supports grid resilience, and keeps batteries out of landfills. Moment Energy is rapidly scaling to provide worldwide access to affordable, reliable, and clean power.
The company was founded in 2019 by four SFU alumni from the Mechatronic Systems Engineering (MSE) program, and the agreement with SFU is a first step toward Moment Energy installing a reliable backup power system, as well as exploring other clean energy solutions and energy storage projects at the university.
“Moment Energy is proud to partner with SFU, a leader in research and sustainability, to explore how our Canadian-made energy storage solutions can help power the next generation of data infrastructure like the Cedar supercomputer,” said Gurmesh Sidhu, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Moment Energy. “Together, we aim to advance the clean energy transition, promote local innovation, and enhance energy security for Canada’s high-performance computing needs.”
More from HPCwire: Simon Fraser University Installs Fir, Canada’s Most Powerful Academic Supercomputer
Source: Will Henderson, SFU
The post Simon Fraser University Signs MOUs to Advance Sustainability at Cedar Supercomputing Centre appeared first on HPCwire.
SAN JOSE, Calif. and SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 25, 2026 — Supermicro, Inc. is launching, with VAST Data, the CNode-X Solution, a highly integrated, rapidly deployable AI Data Platform. The VAST AI Operating System, including the VAST InsightEngine and VAST DataBase, together with NVIDIA open models, microservices and libraries, along with Supermicro GPU and storage servers, form a fully integrated AI infrastructure stack, enabling enterprises to rapidly deploy a complete AI solution.
Supermicro VAST Data
“Building on our successful collaboration with VAST Data, this solution brings together Supermicro’s high-performance AI systems, VAST’s software, and NVIDIA’s technology into a truly integrated enterprise AI platform,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. “Together, we enable organizations to accelerate AI factory deployment, whether scaling large AI initiatives or deploying enterprise applications like generative AI and video analytics.”
“CNode-X brings together Supermicro’s integrated infrastructure expertise with the VAST AI Operating System and NVIDIA-accelerated compute to deliver a turnkey foundation for enterprise AI factories,” said John Mao, Vice President, Global Technology Alliances at VAST Data. “Together, we’re making it dramatically easier for organizations to deploy an end-to-end AI data platform – keeping GPUs fed with data, helping teams move faster from deployment to first token, and scaling AI workloads with confidence.”
Supermicro’s existing EBox solution with VAST, which was launched in 2024 and widely adopted by large storage customers based on its space, power, and cost efficiency, combines two different server nodes into a single server. The second-generation EBox solution has been updated to the latest AMD EPYC 9005 CPUs.
The CNode-X solution follows the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference architecture, which incorporates GPU acceleration into the platform to accelerate data vectorization, vector database searching, and inference workloads. The benefits of this solution include:
Supermicro and VAST presented the new AI Data Platform solution at the VAST Forward conference in Salt Lake City February 24-26.
More from HPCwire: VAST Data Expands AI Data Stack, Keeps Eye on North Star
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
Source: Supermicro
The post Supermicro and VAST Data Launch New Enterprise AI Data Platform Solution with NVIDIA appeared first on HPCwire.
“These people are crazy! I’m telling ya — they’re crazy,” President Donald Trump exclaimed, pointing to Democratic members of Congress near the start of his lengthy and lie-drenched State of the Union speech.
At that particular moment, the Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to stand and applaud when Trump called for a nationwide ban on the ability for trans kids to exist in public.
“We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately,” the president said.
The Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to applaud Trump’ attacks on trans kids.
The “it” here did not refer only to gender-affirming health care for trans youth, which is already banned or restricted in at least 27 states. Trump appeared to be going even further: The thing he wants banned would be the ability for trans kids to socially transition safely in school.
“Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” said Trump, whose administration has a standing policy of ripping children from their parents’ arms.
In response, Republican members of Congress — supporters of industrial-scale family separations — rose in a standing ovation.
Democrats sat still in their benches.
With midterm elections approaching, Trump will inevitably escalate these attacks on trans kids.
Democrats should refuse to take the bait. They should stay, at least metaphorically, seated. They don’t need to prove to some imagined anti-trans majority that they are not “crazy” for refusing to support persecution of a vulnerable minority.
On Tuesday, the president’s vehicle for attacking trans kids was the story of Virginia teen Sage Blair, a student at Liberty University, whose mother Michele is suing the Appomattox County School Board.
According to reports, Michele is accusing members of the school district of failing to disclose to the family that Sage was identifying as male; she claims this contributed to the teen running away and subsequently facing sexual abuse. Both Sage and Michele attended the State of the Union as Trump’s special guests.
Sage’s tragic story is now being used as the basis for Virginia legislation aimed at forcing schools to notify parents should a student identify with a gender other than their sex as assigned at birth and requiring parental consent to allow a student to use a new name or pronoun in school.
Such a law — essentially mandating forced outing — would put thousands of trans kids at risk. Republican claims to parental rights in such cases are, of course, a laughable fig leaf when the same anti-trans politicians are pushing for laws to prosecute parents as child abusers if they support their children transitioning.
Health care bans, school sports bans, bathroom bans, bans on obtaining the correct identification, and bans on socially transitioning at school – these astroturfed anti-trans policies all come together to make it impossible to safely live as a trans kid and flourish into a trans adult.
Democratic leaders to date have failed to robustly oppose these eliminationist efforts, again and again ceding dangerous rhetorical ground to the anti-trans right.
A false dichotomy has emerged in which supporting trans people is deemed at odds with a focus on key economic, so-called kitchen-table issues.
Just last week, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has a grim record of entertaining anti-trans positions, told CNN that he wants his party to be “less prone to spending disproportionate amounts of time on pronouns, identity politics. More focused on tabletop issues, things that really matter — the stacking of stress in terms of the electricity bills and childcare costs and health care and obviously housing costs.”
Newsom wants, he said, Democrats to be more “culturally normal.”
The idea that establishment Democrats have failed to support policies for the working class because they have been too focused on supporting trans people and minorities is laughable. In response to such a claim, a diligent journalist should surely ask, “When?”
Aside from a few shallow and embarrassing performances, when have Democratic leaders given significant time to advocating for oppressed minorities, in particular trans people? They haven’t — with a few pitiful, symbolic exceptions, such as when they knelt in Kente cloth in 2020 during the George Floyd uprisings.
What we have seen, though, is Democrats like Newsom dedicating airtime to urging other Democrats to throw trans people under the bus. It is a perverse performance of his own criticism — spending disproportionate amounts of time talking about trans people for all the wrong reasons.
None of this, of course, is to say that Democrats have not failed the working class. Of course they have! But it’s not because of trans kids: It is fealty to wealthy donors, Wall Street, and industry lobbies.
In addition to this vile scapegoating of their own shortcomings, Newsom raises another offensive proposition: What constitutes “culturally normal” for his ilk? The ability to remove whole groups of people from access to necessary health care and public life?
Democrats should absolutely run on campaigns that center wages, working conditions, housing, and health care — and they should insist on these being essential issues for all people, including trans people.
Not only is including trans rights in your platform a morally sound position, it can also be good electoral politics: Numerous 2025 election victories — from New York to Pennsylvania to Virginia — saw wins for Democrats who refused to throw people under the bus.
In the months ahead, we can expect more of the same from Trump and his party. They are going to attack trans people, particular trans kids, as a means of cynical fearmongering.
Trump’s anti-trans onslaught is a transparent effort to rally support around a conjured scapegoat as his approval ratings continue to tank. Yet the elimination of trans people, the removal of health care provisions, and attacks on people’s bodily autonomy are not incidental to the Republican project — they are central to it.
Trans people’s survival is not just a distraction and shouldn’t be treated that way. Instead, Democrats need to reject far-right frameworks of “crazy” and “normal” from the jump. They do not need to abandon trans rights to defeat Republicans. And if they pretend otherwise — endangering a vulnerable population in a naked and ill-thought attempt to save their own political hides — they’re not worthy of winning our votes in the first place.
The post Democrats Should Never Again Rise to Trump’s Anti-Trans Bait appeared first on The Intercept.
Federal officials search district chief Alberto Carvalho’s home, but allegations being examined remain unclear
The FBI raided the headquarters of the Los Angeles unified school district, the second largest school district in the US, as well as the home of Alberto Carvalho, the district’s superintendent, federal officials confirmed on Wednesday.
An unnamed source familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities served warrants that were part of an “ongoing investigation”.
Continue reading...Seamus Blackley, one of the original founders of Xbox who helped convince Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to back a console project more than 26 years ago, told GamesBeat in an interview that he believes Microsoft is quietly sunsetting the platform under the guise of an AI-driven leadership transition. Microsoft recently announced that Asha Sharma, whose career has focused on AI and software as a service, will replace Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO, and that COO and president Sarah Bond is leaving the company. Blackley said he expects Sharma's role to be that of "a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," arguing that Satya Nadella's all-consuming bet on generative AI has turned every business unit -- Xbox included -- into a nail for the same hammer. He compared the appointment to putting someone who doesn't like movies in charge of a major motion picture studio, and advised Sharma to either develop a genuine passion for games or find a way to leave the job soon.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The popular romance series returns tomorrow.
You can scroll on the subway in peace with Samsung's new flagship phone.
The body of 24-year-old tourist Amy Lopez was found by children in 1994 near the historic Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, located on the Rhine river.
Chatbots can sound reassuring and comforting. They're designed to. But they aren't trained to be mental health providers.
The company has doubled its operating area for robotaxi services over the past several months.
Shabana Mahmood given green light to take case to court of appeal with ban to remain in place pending outcome
The home secretary has been granted permission to challenge the high court’s ruling that the decision to ban Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws was unlawful.
An order issued by the high court on Wednesday said Shabana Mahmood could take the case to the court of appeal and that the ban would remain in place pending the outcome of the fresh hearing.
Continue reading...Ten years ago, VAST Data founders pondered what it would take to build a thinking machine, a computer that would continuously learn from new data. While it hasn’t delivered that thinking machine yet, the company took a few more steps toward that goal this week at the inaugural VAST Forward conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.
VAST Data has come a long way since co-founders Renen Hallak, Shachar Fienblit, and Jeff Denworth started the journey to build a thinking machine back in 2016. They started by building a new data storage platform that could capitalize on recent developments, including the widespread availability of solid state drives and the introduction of NVMe over Fabric, and serve data for new exabyte-level HPC, AI, and big data workloads.
VAST PolicyEngine bolsters data security
The cornerstone of the new system was an architecture dubbed Disaggregated and Shared Everything (DASE). The first element built atop DASE was DataStore, which is a unified object and file storage system. That was followed up with a storage system for tabular data (DataBase), a system for executing functions on the data (DataEngine), and a global namespace that united data silos (DataSpace).
Buoyed by early success, the company kept adding to the stack. In October 2024, VAST introduced the InsightEngine to trigger actions on the platform. It added support for Apache Kafka in early 2025, followed by a vector database, support for serverless triggers, and fine-grained access control. In May 2025, it launched what it calls an operating system for AI, with the AgentEngine as the key component. It followed that up in August with SyncEngine to function as a universal data router.
Today at VAST Forward in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company unveiled the next two engines: PolicyEngine and TuningEngine.
PolicyEngine is designed to give fine-grained control over the army of AI agents that are emerging in customer environments. VAST users can set policies governing what data agents are allowed to access and how they can communicate with other agents, tools, and remote data products. The software uses an explicit permission structure to grant or deny access in real time, and can also act upon AI-derived context.
VAST has not wavered from its goal to build a thinking machine
The goal of PolicyEngine is to reduce the chances of data spillage and make agentic AI trustworthy, Denworth said during a press briefing last week
“First, it’s a decisioning framework. But the second thing that it will do, it will determine the types of data and the ways in which data can be presented out to agents,” he said. “There will be interpretation and there will be transformations of data in certain cases where there needs to be some sort of redaction or some sort of transformation of data in order to make it safe for an endpoint to see.”
The VAST Data TuningEngine, meanwhile, complements the AgentEngine runtime to complete the “learning loop” needed to continuously improve AI models in customer environments. TuningEngine collects data that comes out of AgentEngine to create artifact tables that are then fed into a series of tuners, which could be based on LoRA fine tuning, supervised fine tuning, and reinforcement learning methods. TuningEngine uses the results of those fine-tuning runs to create (hopefully) a better AI model, which is then automatically redeployed into the customer environment.
While it’s ostensibly built for fine-tuning, there’s also a security aspect to TuningAgent, Denworth said.
“Our conclusion was if we don’t handle fine tuning, then that’s going to be a security gap that ultimately makes AI less trustable,” he said. “And it just happens to be this is the point in time in terms of our product development, where it becomes the right time to infuse model evolution into the platform to kind of get close, or as close as possible, to that thinking machine vision that we started with 10 years ago.”
Hallack delivers a keynote at VAST Forward 2026
VAST is also delivering a new capability called Polaris that will simplify the management of VAST customer environments. Polaris is a global control plane designed to provision, operate, and orchestrate VAST clusters. It will start with support for major public cloud platforms, and will be expanded to support on-prem systems later.
VAST is making a slew of other announcements at its conference, which is expected to host 1,200 attendees jn Salt Lake City this week.
VAST has not wavered from that initial goal to build a thinking machine. DASE, the AI OS, and all of the many engines are stops on that journey, Hallak said during a press briefing at VAST Forward.
“It took us 10 years. It was a long journey. But over those 10 years we basically built…a lot of the parts that we think are needed to fill out this software infrastructure layer of the AI stack,” Hallak said. “We obviously started from storage and database and then DataEngine. Over the last few years, we’ve been adding more engines into it, to enable agents and to enable RAG and to add observability and security and all of these things that we think that we need for this AI operating system.”
Where will the company go next? It seems likely there will be more engines. But Hallak said that the company has not taken its eyes off the big prize.
“We always have our North Star, and that has been from day one, enabling these very, very large scale AI systems,” Hallak said in the press briefing. “Even before generative AI, it was hedge funds and it was life science institutes. That was our North Star, and it still is. We’re trying to build a thinking machine. We think if we can build a thinking machine, then it solves all the other problems for us.”
The post VAST Data Expands AI Data Stack, Keeps Eye on North Star appeared first on HPCwire.
The president reiterated a plan to ban big investors from buying single-family homes, but some experts say bigger remedies are needed.
Exclusive: Police meet Lindsay Hoyle to explain error after Hoyle shared tip that Mandelson planned to flee UK
The Metropolitan police has apologised to the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, for accidentally revealing he was the source of a tipoff that Peter Mandelson supposedly planned to flee the UK, prompting officers to arrest the former ambassador.
In yet another twist to the saga of Mandelson’s departure from his post and the Met’s investigation into allegations he fed secret government information to Jeffrey Epstein, Hoyle told MPs on Wednesday that he passed the information to police.
Continue reading...Committee to Protect Journalists report says Israel also to blame for 81% of ‘intentionally targeted’ journalist killings
A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed in the course of their work in 2025, two-thirds of them by Israeli forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
It was the second consecutive year in which killings of members of the press reached unprecedented levels, and the second year running in which Israel was responsible for roughly two-thirds of the total, the New York-based independent organisation, which documents attacks on journalists worldwide, said in its annual report published on Wednesday.
Continue reading...AI is leading the way in the S26 Ultra's cameras, though there are some upgrades for content creators.
Admitting it made some missteps when it announced the changes, Discord is pushing those modifications back to later this year.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s high-profile trip to the Munich Security Conference earlier this month sprouted 1,000 takes, counter-takes, editorials, op-eds, and analyses from the right, the center, and the left. Ocasio-Cortez, along with her new foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, attempted to paint a vision for a “progressive foreign policy” that would embrace “working class-centered politics” to “stave off the scourges of authoritarianism.”
It’s a perfectly sensible, and potentially appealing, narrative that speaks to a real truth: There is little doubt rising inequality and decades of neoliberal policy have fueled the rise of the far right. But it was nevertheless jarring to watch an American Democratic politician immediately pivot to a vision of the future where a progressive U.S. president could usher in an era of consistently applied Liberal Rules Based Order without reckoning with their own party’s role in supporting a genocide for 15 months. Aiding and abetting a genocide makes you a war criminal, and progressive Democrats should, in principle, have no issues explicitly condemning war criminals. Genocide is a central moral transgression that needs to be faced head-on, not just referenced opaquely, or in passing, or as an abstraction we need to avoid in the future. Its culprits within the party need to be called out by name and admonished before anyone can move on to this newer, kinder version of the Liberal Rules Based Order.
Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
Despite her now-infamous lie at the 2024 Democratic National Convention that then-Vice President Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza,” Ocasio-Cortez has a comparatively solid record on Palestine. She was early to call for a ceasefire and to use the word “genocide,” and has been consistent and vocal in her opposition to new military aid to Israel (with a mixed record on Iron Dome funding). But it seems clear that anyone attempting to be a progressive foreign policy leader needs to address a central issue before we move on to articulating a broader vision for the years ahead: What is the plan to hold the Democrats responsible for genocide accountable?
Beyond Ocasio-Cortez, any progressive looking to present themselves as a party leader needs to answer this question. Committing to holding Republicans — who are just as guilty — responsible is an easy “yes.” Committing to holding the previous Democratic administration responsible is far more politically difficult but just as necessary.
There’s been a total erosion of trust between the Democratic Party and large sections of its base on this issue, and there’s reportedly new evidence in the party’s still-secret “autopsy report” that shows Gaza may have been a significant factor in handing the White House back to Donald Trump. But so far, there’s been no discussion or plan from progressives in Congress to lay out what accountability would look like for Biden officials, namely Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Director of Policy Planning Jon Finer, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and the president himself. These officials, among others, not only armed and funded genocide, but worked to cover it up, lied to Congress about it, and repeatedly misled the public.
The Intercept reached out to five members of Congress who are broadly considered leaders on progressive foreign policy and have also called Gaza either a genocide or an ethnic cleansing — Reps. Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez, and Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Bernie Sanders — to ask what their vision for accountability would be for Biden and Trump officials alike.
Tlaib, who sponsored the Gaza genocide resolution in the House last November that both Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez co-sponsored, made clear that Biden officials, specifically Blinken, should not only be banished from Democratic Party politics, but also investigated and prosecuted for their role in the genocide.
“U.S. officials should absolutely be held accountable for their role in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” Tlaib said in a statement to The Intercept. “Genocide is the crime of crimes. It is not something you can commit or enable and just move on from without facing justice. This is true for Biden administration officials and Trump administration officials alike. The evidence is clear that high-level Biden officials, such as Secretary of State Blinken, knew exactly what was happening in Gaza, silenced internal reports of war crimes and forced starvation, and proceeded to lie to the American people and continue to arm, fund, and enable mass atrocities.”
Tlaib would go on to demand “the U.S. to fulfill its binding legal obligations as a party to the Genocide Convention, including by investigating and prosecuting individuals in the United States implicated in these crimes.”
Van Hollen, who has called what occurred in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing” (but, somewhat conspicuously, has not labeled it a genocide), offered a firm rebuke of Biden and Trump officials, albeit in vaguer terms than Tlaib, telling The Intercept: “Officials of both parties should be held accountable for U.S. complicity in the man-made humanitarian disaster, indiscriminate killings, and massive destruction we have witnessed in Gaza. Those who have chosen to bury the truth, whitewash the facts, and directly facilitate American complicity should be disqualified from positions in the current and future administrations.”
Sanders did not return multiple requests for comment. Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez, who are both seen as strong contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Discussing accountability for an ongoing atrocity might seem premature, especially given that key Democratic leaders, chief among them Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, are still supporting Israel. But for the purposes of giving shape to this topic, holding up Biden’s lockstep backing of genocide in Gaza for 15 months is worth isolating and discussing in its own right.
The reason why it matters, aside from the intrinsic virtue of justice, is that the assumption that those covering up, arming, and funding a genocide could do so, half-heartedly mumble some excuse, and everything would eventually go back to Business As Usual in the coming years was the exact dynamic they were counting on when they helped Israel carry out its genocide. They knew full well this dynamic would play out, as it did for Vietnam, post-9/11 CIA torture, and Iraq before it. Those who unleashed untold horrors, mass death, starvation, and wiped out entire families could — in the event it became a minor PR headache— feign powerlessness, insist they were actually changing things from the inside or index it as a “mistake,” then eventually ease their way back into the liberal foreign policy establishment.
Key supporters of the genocide and its cover-up are filling elite jobs without any meaningful pushback.
This plan appears to be working, as key supporters of the genocide and its cover-up are filling elite jobs without any meaningful pushback. Finer and Sullivan started a chummy podcast for Vox and the latter has joined the left-leaning Foreign Policy for America as well as Harvard Kennedy School. Blinken has joined the board of directors of the influential liberal think tank Center for American Progress, with Finer joining him there as a distinguished senior fellow. No harm, no foul; everything is going back to business as usual.
That’s why it’s incumbent upon anyone from the left wing of the party running in 2028 to not only openly reject this dynamic, but also to articulate what real accountability ought to look like for the Democrats who co-authored the deaths of at least 75,000 Palestinians including over 17,000 Palestinian children. It’s not the only step, but it is a requisite first step before anyone can begin to define a populist and humanitarian foreign policy.
The moral minimum would be to support war crime prosecutions, as Tlaib explicitly does, and refer top Biden officials to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. The optical minimum — the bottom of the barrel, the floor under the floor of the barrel — is the wholesale rejection of the genocide’s top architects from polite society, to declare that they ought to have no role in any future Democratic Party event, administration, consultancy, or top think tank.
This, of course, is in no way a sufficient punishment, but it’s the bare minimum for anyone who believes Gaza is a genocide. Any embrace of Blinken, Finer, Sullivan, or Biden in these circles is to desecrate and belittle the very concept of genocide. It is to mock the intelligence of their supporters and the suffering of Palestinians in equal measure.
“Healing” without accountability is simply another word for cover-up.
During the 2024 presidential election, anti-genocide progressives framed their falling in line to support genocidal actors as an unfortunate but pragmatic form of harm reduction — that Biden, and later Harris, were the only realistic alternative to Trump, who very much also supported genocide (a claim that has certainly proven to be true). Since the fact of genocide was baked into our electoral duopoly, playing along was a necessary evil to mitigate harms elsewhere, we were told.
Regardless of whether this logic was morally sound, it no longer applies in February 2026, two years away from the presidential primary. There is no need for Biden, Sullivan, Finer, and Blinken. A progressive campaign, whether for the Senate or the White House, can function without them. The only reason why any progressive would condemn a genocide, but refuse to explicitly reject Biden-era war criminals, is because they do not believe their own words. They evoke the word to signal maximum outrage but do not believe it carries inherent obligations and implications.
Under the banner of “unity,” many will insist that rejecting, much less demanding prosecutions of, Biden officials is simply not possible. We’d like to in the abstract, they may insist, but Savvy Pragmatism has once again forced us to “bridge the divide” and unite the left and liberals. This was, albeit in the “bipartisan” context, the logic former President Barack Obama used when he refused to prosecute any Bush administration war criminals for their widespread use of torture. “Look forward, not back,” Obama infamously insisted in 2009 under the auspices of “unity” and “healing.”
This culture of not looking backward helped create the circumstances under which the genocide in Gaza could foment. Biden officials could do whatever they wanted to do, regardless of the depravity and cruelty, knowing full well this cycle of impunity would be fiercely backstopped by elites in both parties.
“Healing” without accountability is simply another word for cover-up. Biden officials knew this, Trump officials currently know this, and the next administration that seeks to dispossess, starve, and kill Palestinians will no doubt know it too. If progressives in Congress can’t break this cycle of elite impunity, who will? If they can’t draw a line in the sand, name names within their own party, and have a principled opposition to genocide and its authors, what is the point of having a left wing of the Democrats at all? There will always be some existential election just around the corner to deploy as pretext to discipline the left wing into complying and accepting the unacceptable. Years out from 2028, no such excuse exists now. Biden and his officials remain either obscure or unpopular.
Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Khanna not replying to requests for comment on this topic is not, of course, evidence they have no plans to address the matter of accountability at some further date. But at some point in the near future, it’s an issue they will have to confront. Accusations of genocide carry certain obligations and implications. It’s not an abstract moral claim or a box to be checked; it’s a duty to stand in clear opposition to the architects of genocide. If those attempting to articulate a progressive foreign policy cannot do this, if they can’t name names and commit to — at the very least — purging Biden officials from the party and liberal spaces, then how can any progressive vision for foreign policy be seen as remotely credible?
The post There’s No “Progressive Foreign Policy” Without a Reckoning for Dems Who Supported Genocide appeared first on The Intercept.
Together with a team in China a team at TU Wien extends the capabilities of quantum computers: Instead of combinations of 0s and 1s, the new technology uses four different states simultaneously.
Feb. 25, 2026 — The collaboration of TU Wien with research groups in China represents a crucial building block for a new kind of quantum computers: The realization of a novel type of quantum logic gate makes it possible to carry out quantum computations on pairs of photons that are each in four different quantum states, or combinations thereof – an important milestone for optical quantum computers that opens up new opportunities.
Marcus Huber (left) and Nicolai Friis. Credit: Alexander Rommel / TU Wien.
The study has now been published in the scientific journal Nature Photonics.
The basic idea of quantum computers is simple: While a classical computer only works with the values 0 and 1, quantum physics allows for arbitrary combinations of these states. In a certain sense, a quantum bit (qubit) can be in the states 0 and 1 simultaneously. This makes it possible to develop algorithms that can solve some problems much faster than a comparable classical computer.
However, such superpositions can in principle involve more than two states. Depending on what degree of freedom one considers, a quantum system such as a photon may not just have two different settings—two different outcomes of a potential measurement—but many. In this case one refers to the system as a qudit rather than a qubit. For quantum computations this can bring along significant advantages, but ultimately one requires a mechanism by which two such qudits can interact in a controlled way. A research team at TU Wien was able to theoretically design a scheme to jointly process two qudits encoded in two photons—and a team in China successfully realized this scheme in their laboratory, resulting in a novel type of quantum gate, with potentially revolutionary applications.
Until now, quantum-computing experiments with photons have often been carried out by relying on the polarization of photons—a property with two different possible measurement outcomes. From the point of view of quantum physics, the photon can be in a superposition of these two options, like moving simultaneously North and East when walking Northeast.
“We use photons in a fundamentally different way,” explained Nicolai Friis from the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics of TU Wien. “We aren’t interested in the polarization, but in the spatial wave form of the photons, which can be in infinitely many different states, corresponding to different orbital angular momenta.”
The team surrounding Nicolai Friis has developed a procedure that works with two such photons: Both can be in arbitrary superpositions of different wave forms. Through sophisticated manipulation, two initially independent photons can be brought into a joint state—a so-called “entangled” state. Likewise, the new quantum gate can also be used to separate two entangled photons in a controlled way to make the states of the photons independent of each other again.
Exactly such an operation—an entangling quantum gate—is needed to build quantum computers, to carry out calculations on multiple inputs. For a first experiment, the researchers decided to work with four different states. “This is as if, in addition to the North-South and East-West directions, one would have access to two additional axes,” said Friis. “In some sense one is moving in a four-dimensional space, and we can work with arbitrary combinations of such states.”
Realizing their theoretical ideas did not just require a new protocol but also made it necessary to significantly improve the state of the art in technology and experimental precision—an area in which the team of Hui-Tian Wang in China made remarkable progress.
“We were successful in realizing a quantum logic gate that works with two photons that can be prepared in combinations of four different states,” said Nicolai Friis. “We can entangle the photons—and we can do so in a heralded fashion, meaning that we can tell, when the protocol worked. And if it did not, we can repeat the procedure. This is what is needed in practice.”
The new approach is hoped to make quantum information technology more efficient and stable in different areas. “We need fewer particles to carry the same amount of quantum information,” said Marcus Huber (also from the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics of TU Wien). “This has many advantages, also with a view towards the reliability of quantum operations.”
The new study thus—quite literally—opens up new dimensions for quantum technologies.
Original Publication
Z-F Liu et al, Heralded high-dimensional photon–photon quantum gate, Nature Photonics (2026).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-026-01846-x
Source: TU Wien
The post TU Wien Team Advances Optical Quantum Computing with Four-State Photons appeared first on HPCwire.
SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 25, 2026 — Today at VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data announced an end-to-end, fully CUDA accelerated AI data stack, delivered through an expanded collaboration with NVIDIA. With the VAST AI Operating System now running directly on NVIDIA-powered servers, customers can eliminate data bottlenecks across the AI pipeline and deliver ingestion, retrieval, analytics, and inference in a single unified platform.
By accelerating both data services and the compute layer as one coherent system, the VAST AI OS eliminates the operational complexity of stitching together separate storage, database, and AI infrastructure stacks. The result is a simpler and faster path from experimentation to production for RAG pipelines, agentic systems, and continuous AI workloads.
Designed in collaboration with NVIDIA, the VAST CNode-X introduces a new generation of NVIDIA-Certified Systems that transform how AI infrastructure is built and operated. In addition to providing high-performance storage services to NVIDIA GPU-accelerated clusters, the VAST AI OS now runs directly on NVIDIA-powered servers, making these systems first-class infrastructure citizens inside the VAST platform. This architectural shift enables VAST to orchestrate AI pipelines, high performance analytics, vector search, RAG functions, and agent runtimes as a single, unified software stack.
New CNode-X servers provide the computing foundation for the VAST AI OS to leverage a wide variety of NVIDIA software libraries and APIs directly within core VAST software services, including the VAST DataEngine and VAST DataBase. These accelerations are embedded deep inside the platform, delivering higher performance, lower latency, and improved efficiency across real-time SQL analytics, vector search and retrieval, as well as a wide-range of AI inferencing workflows.
“Ten years ago, we set out to build a system that could continuously refine data into intelligence and action,” said Renen Hallak, Founder & CEO of VAST Data. “That future is here. By accelerating both compute and the data paths inside the VAST AI OS with NVIDIA, we’re giving customers a faster, simpler way to operationalize retrieval, analytics, and agentic workflows as one coherent pipeline so AI can move from pilot to durable, production systems.”
“NVIDIA is reinventing every pillar of computing for AI. With VAST Data, we’re transforming the storage of AI infrastructure,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “CNode-X is CUDA-accelerated at every layer to give AI agents persistent memory so they can work on complex problems over days or weeks, and eventually years, without forgetting — opening the world to the next frontier of AI.”
With new GPU-accelerated VAST CNode-X servers as the foundation, VAST is bringing together broad support for NVIDIA-accelerated capabilities inside the VAST AI OS and deploys them within a full-stack software platform that runs and orchestrates AI pipelines, vector search services, and production AI pipelines. New capabilities include:
Hardware Choice for Accelerating the VAST AI Operating System
VAST plans to bring CNode-X servers to market through leading OEM partners, including Cisco and Supermicro, enabling customers to procure GPU-accelerated infrastructure through their preferred vendors while maintaining a consistent VAST software, support, and operational experience.
Through certified configurations delivered with OEM partners, VAST provides a faster and more supportable path to production AI. As enterprise AI pipelines become continuous systems, VAST combines its data platform with full-stack NVIDIA accelerated computing to deliver high-performance retrieval, analytics, and vector search that keep GPUs productive across RAG, real-time analytics, and large-scale AI workloads.
“AI doesn’t scale on isolated components. It scales through integrated systems,” said Jeremy Foster, SVP and General Manager, Cisco Compute. “Customers need infrastructure that keeps data secure and tightly aligned with intelligent networking and GPU-accelerated compute for an efficient, production-ready platform. Cisco’s collaboration with partners like VAST and NVIDIA is delivering the enterprise-ready foundation organizations need to help securely scale AI with performance, resilience, and control.”
“Production AI demands a new level of integration across compute, acceleration, and the data platform,” said Charles Liang, President and CEO, Supermicro. “Together with VAST Data and NVIDIA, we’re delivering a truly integrated AI Data Platform that removes complexity from enterprise AI. By bringing high-performance compute, scalable data infrastructure, and intelligent software together as one solution, we’re enabling organizations to move from experimentation to production faster and unlock real business value from AI.”
More from HPCwire: VAST Data Expands AI Data Stack, Keeps Eye on North Star
About VAST Data
VAST Data is the AI Operating System company – powering the next generation of intelligent systems with a unified software infrastructure stack that was purpose-built to unlock the full potential of AI. The VAST AI OS consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform, enabling organizations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on VAST’s breakthrough DASE architecture – the world’s first true parallel distributed system architecture that eliminates tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience – VAST has transformed its modern infrastructure into a global fabric for reasoning AI.
Source: VAST Data
The post VAST Data Introduces End-to-End Fully Accelerated AI Data Stack with NVIDIA appeared first on HPCwire.
Settling debt for $0.20 on the dollar sounds too good to be true, but is that type of agreement really realistic?
Aliya Rahman, who was dragged out of her car in January by agents, arrested for ‘refusing to obey orders’ to sit down
A guest of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, was arrested by Capitol police during the State of the Union address.
Omar had invited Aliya Rahman, a US citizen and Minneapolis resident who in January was removed from her car and dragged by immigration agents in the city as part of the Trump administration’s increased efforts to arrest and deport alleged undocumented immigrants. The officers had been shouting at her to move.
Continue reading...Organizers scramble for new venue after University of Southern Maine cites sanctions over Francesca Albanese’s virtual talk
The University of Southern Maine abruptly revoked access to an on-campus venue days before a conference about Palestine was to take place there, citing the participation in the program of an individual under US sanctions and following pressure from local legislators.
More than 300 participants have registered to attend the “Consequence of Palestine” conference, which was slated to include remote participation from Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, who has been under sanction by the Trump administration since last year.
Continue reading...
EAMON BONSALL
Opinion Columnist
During a very unproductive and boring day last week, I decided that I was in the mood for a movie. However, I realized that my first instinct was not to look on Main Street Movies 5’s website, but instead to search through a plethora of streaming services for a movie to watch.
It’s a little sad to think about how the days of Redbox and CDs are over, but the emergence of new digital technologies have made inroads in improving film quality, efficiency and more.
However, the development of streaming services and the declining popularity of movie theaters raise concerns about the future of contemporary American filmmaking.
It seems now that modern American films fall into one of two categories: remakes of already popular, well-known films, or poor quality movies that only aim to make a quick million dollars.
How did we get here? Films from the start of the century, such as “Memento” (2000) and “Shutter Island” (2010), would never be made today because they require too much effort and thought.
I believe that one of the reasons why original, well-developed films are not made today is because of the reduced attention spans of Americans, with entertainment forms such as TikTok and Instagram reels being a primary source of enjoyment for young people.
If filmmakers believe that young people aren’t willing to participate in a two-hour plus movie, then why would they devote care and attention into making them? Surely, it would be much easier to make a cheap, unoriginal and short movie worth millions of dollars.
The emergence of lazy filmmaking is turning a classic art form into a cheap caricature of its former self. If we continue to make poor films, then maybe one day we’ll be in a world of writing poor books and painting poor art. Some would say we’re already there.
The world of American filmmaking has changed a lot over the course of the past century. We have gone from soundless, slow-paced, black-and-white pictures to the modern, fast-paced action and thriller films we’re used to today.
One of the main reasons for this shift of interest is that the American zeitgeist has simply diverted its attention to faster-paced media. While at one point a slow romance film was enough to whet the appetite, now a movie has to be action-packed and fast-paced to satiate the average American viewer.
Creating a film also used to be significantly more difficult and expensive than it is now. While some high-caliber action movies have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, anyone can create a movie with their iPhone and a tripod.
It’s very hard to pinpoint what exactly went wrong with modern cinema. What was once an iconic and trailblazing art form has devolved into a quick way to make some money and garner some social media attention.
It’s an unfortunate truth we have to accept, that American film may never return to what it was even 10 or 15 years ago. We didn’t realize how good we had it in entertainment until a great era of film was already over.
However, like the real Great Depression of the late 1920s, there is still some hope that the entertainment industry can recover from this deficit.
If we want to see change in the American film industry, we have to be willing to see and experience new things we’ve never seen before. A lot of people I know are very against “artsy” films by independent filmmakers.
One of the best examples of modern and inventive filmmakers is Robert Eggers. Movies such as “The Witch” (2015) and “The Lighthouse” (2019) are artistic and emotionally deep, so long as the viewer is able to convince themselves to wait for the payoff.
Sometimes, the longest waits can deliver the sweetest reward. Modern audiences are too focused on quick, swift gratification rather than the indulgence of a prolonged adventure. Eggers is an example of someone who provides such an adventure.
I get why people don’t like these artsy, independent films. Sometimes they’re a little slower and less action-packed, but what audiences need to understand is that not every movie is going to be “thrilling.” Sometimes, what makes a film great is its story and artistic value.
A great example of a well-made, action-packed film is “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” (2022). The movie perfectly captures a captivating story combined with the deep emotion of a mother and daughter at odds with each other. It’s the perfect way to combine an art form and the silver screen.
Film is not everyone’s cup of tea, which I totally understand. Modern cinema especially, can be particularly drab, but if we are able to promote the idea of original, creative films, we could return to an age of greatness in American movies.
Eamon Bonsall is an opinion columnist at The Review. His opinions are his own and do not represent the majority opinion of The Review staff. He may be reached at ebons@udel.edu.
A hacker exploited Anthropic's AI chatbot to carry out a series of attacks against Mexican government agencies, resulting in the theft of a huge trove of sensitive tax and voter information, according to cybersecurity researchers. From a report: The unknown Claude user wrote Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security said in research published Wednesday. The activity started in December and continued for roughly a month. In all, 150 gigabytes of Mexican government data was stolen, including documents related to 195 million taxpayer records as well as voter records, government employee credentials and civil registry files, according to the researchers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sharon Graham tells chancellor she should ‘back British industry’ by increasing military spending
The head of Britain’s largest trade union has demanded that Rachel Reeves be sacked as chancellor if the Treasury continues to hold up a multibillion-pound defence investment plan.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said tens of thousands of jobs were at risk from political dithering and called on ministers to “back British industry” by signing off on future defence contracts.
Continue reading...Currently available for testing, Oura wants your feedback on this women's health AI chatbot.
Drivers of SUV and pickup truck emerge unscathed from incident in trendy section of Nebraska city
Surveillance video captured the dramatic moment a sinkhole opened up on a busy intersection in south-central Omaha, Nebraska, swallowing up two vehicles.
The incident happened on Tuesday afternoon in a trendy section of the midwest city, when a sport utility vehicle and a pickup truck waiting at a traffic light dropped into a hole several feet deep as the pavement under them suddenly gave way. Neither driver was injured, police said.
Continue reading...The Broadway actor’s nine-decade career included beloved screen roles and coaching Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda
Sondra Lee, the Broadway and film star, died on Monday of natural causes at the age of 97.
The news of her death came from her collaborator and friend the Rev Joshua Ellis, a former Broadway publicist and an interspiritual minister.
Continue reading...Former Northern Ireland correspondent Vincent Kearney subjected to ‘unprecedented’ surveillance, says lawyer
Police and MI5 subjected a BBC journalist to a “long and consistent campaign of unlawful interference” by obtaining communications data from his mobile phone, a tribunal has heard.
The surveillance was targeted at Vincent Kearney, who was the BBC’s Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent, and occurred over an eight-year period as authorities sought to identify his sources.
Continue reading...Ex-US ambassador’s media strategy looks set to be ‘attack as best form of defence’, PR consultants suggest
For those seeking to understand Peter Mandelson’s media strategy as he navigates the greatest crisis of a crisis-strewn life, the latest instalment of the Jeffrey Epstein files may offer a steer.
“You and your lawyers must start setting down the irrefutable facts, build a narrative and fight back,” Mandelson advised the disgraced financier in May 2011, according to the emails released by the US Department of Justice.
Continue reading...Commentary: Samsung needed to give us a reason to be excited about its latest flagship. It delivered.
I have noticed a relationship between the gap between the tire and footpads/enclosures and the efficiency of the motor. In short, when the gap is too small, objects picked up by the tire are impacting the footpads/enclosures causes small spikes in current. These add up to a 10-15% efficiency loss.
The reason I noticed this is because I build my own rails. I prefer the board to be as short as possible for agility, so minimizing the tire gap is a priority. Having a gap that is too small can be an issue for mud and sticks that can get caught in the gap, so I have always preferred a gap of 1/4" or more.
With growler sized rails and tires, the distance between the footpad/enclosures is about 11" and the tire is 10.7-10.8". This gives only about 1/8" tire gap. At this gap I notice decreases in efficiency from 20-22 wh/mi to 25-28 wh/mi on streets and 38-42 wh/mi to 44-48 wh/mi trail, compared to a gap of at least 1/4".
This has also translated to increased motor temperatures when trail riding. This is harder to quantify. I have a bit of a sixth sense about when the motor will overheat from experience. I noticed it overheating slightly sooner than expected. I checked all my wires and connections searching for added resistance that would produce this heat, In the end, I found it was the tire gap causing the issue.
I believe this is less of an issue with slick tires since they pick up less debris. I definitely notice this on the newer soft, treaded tires, but it has also been an issue for me with the original hoosier treaded I used to ride.
A hot phone can kill your battery quicker. Cooling it better will hopefully mean fewer abrupt shutdowns.
This March could be a smart time for seniors in need of extra financing to pursue a reverse mortgage. Here's why.
Commentary: This new Galaxy S26 feature gives me hope for this year's batch of AI integrations on smartphones.
Peter Kyle signs cooperation deal on competition and says it is not a case of being nostalgic for pre-Brexit past
The British public are “not nostalgic” for the pre-Brexit past but are pragmatic and want to move forward and “deepen” ties with the EU on trade and the economy, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, has said.
Signing an agreement in Brussels to cooperate closely on competition issues, Kyle said he thought the deal was “a real vindication of the reset and the relationships that have emerged between the EU and the UK” since Labour came to power.
Continue reading...The new $250 Galaxy Buds 4 Pro have definitely improved in design and performance. Here's why I awarded them a CNET Editors' Choice.
Here's how the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra compares with its Apple rival, the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Samsung's high-end phone gets a subtle makeover, as well as some improvements to the camera, battery and display. Plus, lots of AI.
I went hands-on with Samsung's newest base and plus model phones. The Galaxy S26 has a larger screen and a bigger battery, while the S26 Plus is a lot like the S25 Plus.
DVD and Blu-ray sales have been in freefall for years, but the decline is slowing considerably as Gen Z buyers turn to physical media and drive a measurable uptick at video rental stores and retailers across the U.S. Overall disc sales fell just 9% last year after dropping more than 20% in both 2023 and 2024, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, and U.S. consumers spent 12% more on 4K UHD Blu-rays in 2025 than the prior year. The Criterion Collection, a leading boutique Blu-ray label, confirmed significant year-over-year sales increases that its president credits to younger customers. Vidiots, a video store in Los Angeles, averaged 170 rentals a day in January 2026 -- its biggest month ever -- after loaning about 22,000 discs total in 2023 and roughly 50,000 in 2024. Barnes & Noble reported DVD and Blu-ray sales growth of "mid-double digits" over the past year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Exclusive: Jamie Raskin, top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, asks for justice department briefing
House Democrats on Wednesday demanded a briefing from the justice department on the removal of Gail Slater, who was forced to resign as head of the antitrust division this month under a cloud of controversy and fraught tensions with her bosses inside the Trump administration.
The request from Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, and Jerry Nadler, a Democratic New York congressman, marked the first step in what is almost certain to become a much larger investigation should Democrats reclaim the House majority in the midterm elections and gain subpoena power.
Continue reading...Emergency meeting called to discuss festival’s ‘future direction’ after series of controversies
The organisation that manages the Berlin film festival is to meet for talks amid reports that its American director faces dismissal after a series of rows over Gaza.
In a statement on Wednesday, the office of Germany’s federal government commissioner for culture and media said the emergency meeting on Thursday had been called to debate the “future direction of the Berlinale”.
Continue reading...If it's time for a new desk, why not look at the best desks?
Four House Democrats demanded the top Federal Bureau of Prisons official explain how he plans to address the agency’s “persistent, unsafe conditions” and “pervasive shortage of critical staff,” driven in part by corrections officers fleeing the bureau for more lucrative jobs at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Outlined in a six-page letter sent Friday to BOP Director William Marshall III, the lawmakers’ questions come after a ProPublica investigation found that workers at federal lockups from Florida to California had been lured away by the $50,000 starting bonus and higher pay at ICE, which more than doubled its number of officers and agents last year during the Trump administration’s monthslong recruiting blitz. The prisons bureau, meanwhile, lost a net of more than 1,800 workers last year.
“We are deeply concerned that these developments compromise the safety and security of both inmates and staff,” Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Lucy McBath of Georgia, Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Joe Neguse of Colorado wrote in their letter. “The shrinking existing workforce has been left to contend with an ever-growing use of overtime, which leads to fatigue, burnout, and increased attrition.”
The representatives said that short staffing, in turn, has led to more lockdowns, more violence and less access to recidivism-reducing programs for prisoners. Their letter also raised questions about the cancellation of the union contract, which they noted critics have said “appears retaliatory,” and the ongoing reliance on “augmentation” — the practice of forcing nurses, teachers and plumbers who work in the prisons to fill in as corrections officers — to plug staffing gaps.
“We believe these deeply troubling issues require concrete answers,” the lawmakers wrote. They set a 30-day deadline for the bureau to respond in writing.
Prison union officials have also pressed the case, urging lawmakers to insist that Marshall and his deputy, Josh Smith, testify before Congress on the issue.
The prison agency declined to answer questions from ProPublica about the lawmakers’ letter, saying it would respond directly to Congress.
In a statement, a spokesperson said that the BOP “continues to prioritize efforts” to increase staffing, adding that some staff will always have to step in as corrections officers “for the safety and security of staff, inmates and the public.”
The BOP has long struggled to hire and retain enough workers to staff its facilities, where roughly 34,700 employees are responsible for more than 138,000 prisoners. As of 2023, union officials said some 40% of corrections officer jobs remained vacant. That same year, the lack of staff helped land the prison system on a government list of high-risk agencies with serious vulnerabilities.
As part of a long-term hiring push, the bureau turned to signing bonuses, retention pay and a fast-tracked hiring process. Although those efforts drew in a net of more than 1,200 people in 2024 — the bureau’s largest workforce increase in a decade — the cost of hiring incentives, along with raises, overtime and inflation, strained an already-stagnant budget.
Early last year, the agency paused hiring and retention incentives to save money, a move that threatened to undermine the prior year’s staffing gains. Still, the financial strain continued and, by the fall, dozens of staff and prisoners were telling ProPublica about unusual scarcities in facilities across the country. Some prisons fell behind on utility and trash bills, while others ran out of staple foods including eggs and beef. At one point, a prison in Louisiana came within days of running out of food for inmates before union officials intervened and urged agency leaders to fix the problem.
In their letter last week, the representatives said they were “alarmed” by the financial shortfalls ProPublica reported, as well as by the worsening staffing figures. Last year, the bureau’s net loss of employees was larger than in any other year since 2017, according to data ProPublica obtained through an open records request.
With a dwindling workforce, the bureau’s overtime costs have soared. According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, in 2025 the federal prison system spent more than $387 million on overtime, a number surpassed only once in the past decade.
Several prison officials who asked to remain anonymous told ProPublica this month that officers at some facilities are often forced to work two to four double shifts per week, sometimes putting in so many overtime hours that prisoners have expressed concern.
“The only ones who like it are the predatory inmates,” one corrections officer told ProPublica. “Inmates don’t like super cops, but they at least want to feel like if they are attacked, someone will see it and stop it as quickly as they can. You ain’t getting that with a CO on a double who can barely keep his eyes open.”
Meanwhile, the lawmakers said they were “gravely concerned” about some of the ways BOP leaders have tried to save money and minimize the use of overtime, including by locking down facilities and skimping on staff, which, lawmakers said, the bureau then attempted to cover up.
When the Office of Inspector General visited one facility last year, the housing units were all well staffed, “a trick” the lawmakers said was accomplished only by extreme use of augmentation. “Reportedly, after the visit, the facility immediately resumed short-staffing units,” the lawmakers wrote. “Committee staff have reviewed housing unit staffing and augmentation rosters documenting this apparent effort to mislead the OIG.”
Last year, prison employees worked more than 700,000 augmentation hours, the most in any single year for at least a decade, according to the Congressional Research Service report.
“That’s why I left,” one former prison official told ProPublica last year, explaining that he chose to retire instead of being forced to abandon his duties resolving discrimination complaints to instead work as an officer on a housing unit two days a week.
The post Democrats Demand Answers for Federal Prison Staffing Shortage After Corrections Officers Flee for ICE Jobs appeared first on ProPublica.
João Francisco Inácio Brazão and Domingos Inácio Brazão sentenced for murder of Marielle Franco, a gay Black woman and rising political star
Two influential Brazilian politician brothers have been convicted by Brazil’s supreme court of ordering the murder of Marielle Franco, the Rio de Janeiro city councillor, nearly eight years ago.
João Francisco Inácio Brazão, the former congressman known as Chiquinho, and the former adviser to Rio’s court of auditors Domingos Inácio Brazão were sentenced to 76 years and three months in prison for the murders of Franco, 38, and her driver, Anderson Gomes, 39.
Continue reading...The State of the Union address has been in decline for decade as a TV spectacle, and Trump probably hastened that trend
In fulfillment of clause 1 of section 3 in article II of the US constitution, Donald Trump duly gave Congress “Information of the State of the Union” last night.
Information … and more information. At an hour and 47 minutes, this was the longest State of the Union address in history. As he has so often done in the past, Trump bobbed and weaved impressively (“the weave” is his own term for his meandering speaking style). He zigged and zagged, taunting Democrats for much of the speech (he called Zohran Mamdani a “communist” and took pot shots at Democrats throughout the night), while claiming to be a unifier when the mood struck.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was looking to repair the Druzhba oil pipeline but “it was not so fast,” Reuters reported.
Shipments of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia have been cut off since 27 January, when Kyiv says a Russian strike hit pipeline equipment in western Ukraine.
Continue reading...Israel welcomes move described by Palestinian Authority as undermining possibility of an independent state
The US will provide on-site consular services in two Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank for the first time, breaking with previous policy, in a move that has been criticised by Palestinian officials as “a clear violation of international law”.
In a post on X, the US embassy in Jerusalem said that as part of an initiative to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence, it would provide Americans with routine passport services in the West Bank settlement of Efrat on Friday “for one day only”.
Continue reading...Fight the mental fatigue and shoulder stiffness of daily desk life with the best standing desks.
Democrats accuse president’s address of litany of lies as Republicans hail his bullish claims about year back in office
Congressional Democrats lined up on Tuesday night to call Donald Trump a liar and Republicans said America had never been greater. The country’s longest-ever State of the Union address had ended, and the two parties had, again, watched entirely different speeches.
Trump’s address ran for nearly two hours, with the president touching on tariffs, border security, military recruitment and energy production, among other topics. He told the country the economy was booming, inflation was under control and a golden age was at hand, but Democrats were not persuaded.
Continue reading...Drinks maker reduces sales and profit forecast for second time in four months amid weak demand in US and China
Diageo has slashed its dividend and cut its annual sales and profit forecast for the second time in four months, as the maker of Guinness warned of capacity constraints affecting drinkers of “the black stuff” in London pubs.
The world’s largest spirits maker – which owns brands including Smirnoff vodka, Johnnie Walker whisky and Don Julio tequila – lost more than £5bn of its market value on Wednesday as it reported weak demand in the US and China in the first results released under the new chief executive, Sir Dave Lewis.
Continue reading...Officers say flood of low-quality reports is draining resources and slowing cases amid New Mexico lawsuit
Meta’s use of artificial intelligence software to moderate its social media platforms is generating large volumes of useless reports about cases of child sexual abuse, which are draining resources and hindering investigations, said officers from the US Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) taskforce.
“We get a lot of tips from Meta that are just kind of junk,” Benjamin Zwiebel, a special agent with the ICAC taskforce in New Mexico, said last week during his testimony in the state’s trial against Meta. The state’s attorney general alleges the company’s platforms are putting profits over child safety. Meta disputes these allegations, citing changes it has introduced on its platforms, such as teen accounts with default protections. The ICAC taskforce is a nationwide network of law enforcement agencies coordinated with the US Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute online child exploitation and abuse cases.
Continue reading...About 50 million workers lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, a hurdle to setting aside money for old age.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from his remaining roles at Harvard over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the university confirmed to CBS News.
Consumers today can easily spend more than $1,000 a year for streaming TV, music and other widely used apps, new analysis finds.
Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has apologized to staff of his foundation over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
The Parisians look to get the job done at home in this delicately poised UCL playoff.
Los Blancos take a slender lead home to the Bernabéu for the second leg of this fractious knockout playoff.
The screeching sound that Scotch tape makes when you rip it off a surface -- that fingernails-on-a-chalkboard noise most people try not to think about -- is produced by shock waves from micro-cracks that travel across the peeling tape at supersonic speeds, according to a new paper published in Physical Review E. Researchers led by Sigurdur Thoroddsen of King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia used simultaneous high-speed imaging and synchronized microphones to capture both the propagating fractures and the sound waves they generate in the surrounding air. The team's earlier work, in 2010, had identified a sequence of transverse cracks racing across the width of the adhesive during peeling, and a 2024 follow-up established a direct correspondence between those cracks and the screeching sound, but neither study pinpointed a mechanism. The new findings show that a partial vacuum forms between the tape and the surface as each crack opens, and because the crack moves faster than air can rush in to fill the void, the vacuum travels along until it reaches the tape's edge and collapses into the stationary air outside, producing a discrete sound pulse.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nobel laureate Richard Axel announced resignation as co-director of Columbia University’s neuroscience institute
Dr Richard Axel, a molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, has announced that he is stepping down as the leader of a prestigious neuroscience institute at Columbia University over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Axel, who has taught at Columbia for 53 years, said in a statement on Tuesday that he would be leaving his post as co-director of the university’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute to “focus on research and teaching in my lab”.
Continue reading...Unimpressed tech equity campaigners compare move to ‘inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse’
Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.
James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Continue reading...A British gym chain is offering classes in "kidulting," luring adults into fitness with classes built around playground and PE class classics.
Australian detectives arrested two men over the alleged kidnapping and murder of an elderly grandfather in a suspected case of mistaken identity.
Government reviews options for university graduates on Plan 2 loans, such as increasing repayment thresholds
Ministers are examining ways to ease the burden of student loans after weeks of pressure over a policy pulling more people into repayments, the Guardian understands.
The Treasury and the Department for Education are reviewing different options to offer relief to graduates with Plan 2 student loans, often paying tens of thousands more than their original loan amount.
Continue reading...Minister told MPs the deal had been been paused, but that was immediately denied by the Foreign Office
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published figures showing that local authorities in England dealt with 1.26m flytipping incidents in 2024/25 – 9% increase on the previous year.
And there was an 11% increase in incidents involving a “tipper lorry load” amount of rubbish. There were 52,000 of these, up from 47,000 in 2023/24. Defra said these alone cost councils £19.3m.
These figures show the equivalent of 142 monster landfills a day took place, confirming what communities across the country know all too well – our beautiful countryside is being used by criminal gangs as their personal landfill.
For far too long, waste gangs have pocketed millions in illegal earning, poisoning our environment and our health without consequence. The Liberal Democrats are demanding an end to this environmental vandalism.
Continue reading...Minister ‘misspoke’ by telling MPs UK was ‘pausing for discussions with our American counterparts’, officials say
Plans to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius are still on track, the UK government has insisted, after a minister caused confusion by telling MPs that the deal was “paused”.
Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister and former diplomat, was speaking on Wednesday as the deal came under increasing pressure from opposition parties in the UK and from Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Having Perplexity's AI and models on phones from the world's biggest phone-maker puts the company under a brighter light.
Are more than a quarter of homes being bought by Wall Street investors, rather than people looking to make them their primary residence? Rep. Josh Riley, D-N.Y., recently said so.
In a press release about legislation he’s sponsoring to stop Wall Street investors from buying up homes, he wrote, "Families in Upstate New York shouldn’t have to compete with Wall Street hedge funds just to buy a home. But that’s exactly what’s happening — big investors are swooping in, buying up houses, and pricing out regular families who’ve been working hard and saving up."
Riley went on to write that "nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first quarter of 2025 were bought by investors," citing a CBS MoneyWatch article that, in turn, referred to data by the real estate firm BatchData.
Riley’s office did not reply with supporting evidence beyond what was in the press release. BatchData did not respond to inquiries for this article. But housing experts expressed caution about overinterpreting Riley’s data point.
Experts pointed out three issues with Riley’s talking point.
One has to do with who these "investors" are. In the press release, Riley framed the buyers as "Wall Street hedge funds." But experts said such buyers are outnumbered by individuals and families investing on a much more limited scale.
"The purchasing activity of small-scale, ‘mom and pop’ investors accounts for most of the current increase" in investor-owned single family rentals, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis wrote in an October 2025 analysis.
An analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, found that large institutional investors — those owning 100 or more properties — held roughly 1% of the nation’s single-family housing stock. By contrast, smaller investors, with two to nine properties, held about 11%, the analysis found.
In other words, the combination of the two would account for about 12% of holdings, collectively accounting for a distinct minority of units.
A second issue is that Riley cited a data point for new sales, rather than the total accumulated ownership rate. This means the 27% figure, covering new sales, overstates the extent of units in investors’ hands overall.
The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, reported in 2024 that large-scale institutional investors own roughly 2% of the single-family rental housing stock nationally.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis analysis aligns with the American Enterprise Institute and Government Accountability Office assessments, concluding that investor-owned units "form a small fraction of the national" market for single family rentals.
Carl Goertemoeller, executive director at the University of Cincinnati Real Estate Center, agreed, telling PolitiFact New York that he would be "shocked to observe 27% nationwide."
Don Haurin, an emeritus Ohio State University economics professor, said that despite recent growth, "the ownership of the stock of housing by investors is much lower than 27%."
A third issue concerns regional variation. The Federal Reserve analysis said "large-scale, ‘institutional’ investors exert considerable influence in the 20 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, where they primarily operate," but not as much outside those markets.
The Government Accountability Office estimated that institutional investors own 25% of Atlanta’s single-family rental housing market, 21% in Jacksonville, Florida, 18% in Charlotte, North Carolina, and 15% in Tampa, Florida.
Riley said, "Nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first quarter of 2025 were bought by investors."
This percentage is credible for new sales, but the talking point exaggerates the overall share of housing in investors’ hands and who owns them.
Data shows that small-scale, "mom and pop" investors account for a far greater share of investor-owned units than Wall Street firms do, and the combination of the two remains a distinct minority of all units. And large-investor holdings are primarily an issue in about 20 large metropolitan areas, not the nation as a whole.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important context, so we rate it Half True.
Gold is grabbing headlines, but silver, platinum and palladium tell a different investment story in today's market.
Feb. 25, 2026 — Researchers at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have developed a new tool providing a first step toward the ability to forecast space weather weeks in advance, instead of just hours. This advance warning could allow agencies and industries to mitigate impacts to GPS, power grids, astronaut safety and more.
The left figure shows solar observations of two warped toroid patterns (derived from SDO/HMI magnetograms) in the southern and northern hemispheres. PINN-derived results (center) show magnetic vectors (black arrows) overlaid on bulges (red) and depressions (blue) match with observed toroidal bands. The velocity field is marked with black arrows in the right image. These results provide clues about the global sources of active regions that produce space weather, which can impact our technical society.
The research team’s newly published research highlights a tool they developed called PINNBARDS (PINN-Based Active Regions Distribution Simulator), which bridges surface observations of solar active regions and deep solar magnetic dynamics. The PINNBARDS framework is advancing a new generation of physics-informed, AI-enabled forecasting tools to better understand and anticipate extreme space weather. PINNBARDS offers the potential for substantially longer forecast lead times, which is critical for safeguarding satellites, communications infrastructure and future human space exploration.
“The reconstructed subsurface states from PINNBARDS provide initial conditions for forward simulations of solar magnetic evolution, opening the door to predicting where and when large, flare-producing active regions are likely to emerge weeks in advance,” said Mausumi Dikpati, NSF NCAR senior scientist, who led the team and co-authored the paper.
The simulations for the research – including code development, testing, and production runs – utilized the Derecho supercomputer at the NSF NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer Center. The research was funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Guest Investigator Open (HGIO) program and Consequences of Fields and Flows in the Interior and Exterior of the Sun (COFFIES) DRIVE Center, a NASA-funded initiative where Dikpati is a co-investigator.
“One of COFFIES aims is to predict where and when the Sun will produce its next big, flare-generating active region,” said Todd Hoeksema, Stanford University professor and the lead of the COFFIES DRIVE Center. “By combining physics-based modeling with AI, this work lets us peer beneath the Sun’s surface and reconstruct the magnetic conditions that give rise to those regions.”
For more about the research, see the SwRI news release here.
About the Article
Title: A Physics Informed Neural Network for Deriving MHD State Vectors from Global Active Regions Observations
Authors: Subhamoy Chatterjee and Mausumi Dikpati
Journal: The Astrophysical Journal
More from HPCwire
Source: Audrey Merket, NCAR
The post NCAR: New Research Takes 1st Step Toward Advance Warnings of Space Weather appeared first on HPCwire.
States call move an illegal threat to public health and argue CDC puts children’s lives at risk with new guidance
More than a dozen states, including California, sued the Trump administration over its rollback of vaccine recommendations for children, calling the move an illegal threat to public health.
The states argue that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put children’s lives at risk when it announced last month that it would stop recommending all children get immunized against the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV. Under the new guidance, which was met with criticism from medical experts, protections against those diseases are recommended only for certain groups deemed high risk or when doctors recommend them in what’s called “shared decision-making.”
Continue reading...Casey Means is an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and an advocate for his "Make America Healthy Again" agenda.
Fines for illegal dumping decreased over past year with only 0.2% of incidents resulting in court action
Fly-tipping incidents across England have reached the highest level since current records began, with most offences continuing to involve household waste.
In 2024-25, 1.26m fly-tipping incidents were recorded by local authorities, an increase of 9% on the 1.15m reported in the year before, according to data released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on Wednesday.
Continue reading...We're reporting live from Samsung's Unpacked event in San Francisco, where the company's expected to reveal the Galaxy S26, S26 Plus and S26 Ultra.
Corporation says broadcasting of N-word by Tourette syndrome campaigner was ‘serious mistake’
The BBC is to undertake a fast-track investigation into the broadcasting of a racial slur aired during its coverage of the Bafta film awards, amid rising anger inside the corporation over the error.
Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson could be heard shouting the N-word as Sinners stars Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the award for special visual effects at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan's Fair Trade Commission raided Microsoft Japan's offices on Wednesday as part of an investigation into whether it improperly restricted customers of its Azure platform from using rival cloud services, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The source said Japan's antitrust authorities would also be seeking clarification from Microsoft's parent company in the United States. Microsoft Japan is suspected of setting conditions that effectively shut out other services by limiting access to popular services on other cloud platforms, the source said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Water leak detectors can warn you this winter before pipes freeze and burst. These smart detectors performed the best in our tests.
Will recent declines in the mortgage interest rate climate continue this March? Here's what experts are expecting.
The Sharp Celerity oven harnesses the power of three types of heat to blast food to doneness even faster than an air fryer.
Looking to buy a home or refinance your current one? Here are the mortgage interest rates to know right now.
Microsoft co-founder admits affairs and calls meetings ‘huge mistake’ but denies involvement in Epstein’s crimes
Bill Gates apologized to staff of his foundation for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and admitted to two affairs but stated he did not participate in the convicted sex offender’s crimes, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
At a town hall on Tuesday, Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, said it was a “huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” and to bring Gates Foundation executives to meetings with Epstein.
Continue reading...I looked back to discover the untold story of how western intelligence was misread, even in Kyiv. The conclusion offers a stark warning for the future
Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and at this time of year it’s hard not to recall memories of the morning of 24 February 2022, when the fate of Ukraine and the history of Europe were irrevocably changed by the decision of the man in the Kremlin.
Around 9pm the evening before, I had received a message from a colleague at another news outlet. It was an unequivocal warning from an intelligence source that the war would start that night. We discussed it among the Guardian’s Ukraine reporting team and international editors. My colleague Emma Graham-Harrison, who was on an overnight train from Kyiv towards the frontline city of Mariupol, decided she would get off halfway, in the middle of the night, and beg a spot on the first train heading back to Kyiv. It turned out to be a wise move: Mariupol was soon under siege and the scene of much of the worst carnage of the war. Emma remained in Kyiv, part of our team covering the initial Russian attack on the capital.
Continue reading...“The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me,” says Jordan Uhl of Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening State of the Union. This week on the Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Uhl, Akela Lacy, and Jessica Washington disentangle Trump’s nearly two-hour-long speech so you don’t have to.
“This is who these people are. In some ways, they’re trying to sugarcoat what they’re doing, but in other ways they’re so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it,” says Lacy, in reference to Trump talking about kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “It is really alarming to me how good they are at framing that in a positive light. And there were people cheering all over the room for us toppling a regime, doing regime change, while they’re telling you that we don’t do that anymore.”
Washington adds, “The whole thing, if you read it, if you listen to it, it reads like a white nationalist speech.”
The co-hosts also dissect the Democratic Party’s official response to the State of the Union, delivered by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jordan Uhl, Intercept contributor and co-host of this podcast, joined by my co-hosts.
Akela Lacy: I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.
JU: Akela, Jessica, it is late. We just sat through — endured, rather —nearly two hours of Donald Trump’s State of the Union and the multiple responses. We’ll get into some of what will surely be the main takeaways from this speech, but in a word or a few words, what are both of your initial reactions to tonight’s State of the Union?
JW: My word is “long.” I don’t think it needs an explanation.
AL: This is not a word, but I kept having an image in my head of villains in a superhero movie, standing around, laughing at what they’ve accomplished. [laughs]
JW: No, but you’re totally right because that one line about the food stamps. So there was this line from the very long speech that we’re describing where Donald Trump says that, he — I can’t remember exactly what word he gave.
AL: “Lifted off.” I think he said “lifted off.”
JW: Lifted off.
AL: Yeah.
JW: Lifted off 2.4 million people from food stamps as like an economic accomplishment. And that does give like Disney villain in a very specific way.
AL: “Dark” — dark is my one word.
JU: Yeah, that was certainly one way to frame plunging millions of people into food insecurity. And of course that was an applause line.
My takeaway would be the weaponized contrast. One thing I thought was a significant departure from past State of the Unions was how Trump specifically leaned into Democrats not standing and clapping for certain talking points. Now in the state of the union’s past, of course, the opposition party for the most part remains seated, but tonight felt like a slight departure from that partisan tradition where he singled them out. Repeatedly pointed out that they weren’t standing and clapping, and even on some points remarked how he was surprised that they even clapped.
Trump specifically leaned into Democrats not standing and clapping for certain talking points.
Trump delivered his last [joint session of Congress] address a year ago in a very different environment, coming off winning the presidency for a second time and major GOP wins that year. Things aren’t so rosy this time around. What do you both think has been the biggest change for Trump? What was the primary obstacle that he needed to clear or try to spin in tonight’s speech?
JW: There’s a lot that he had to clear up. I think there’s his loss on tariffs, obviously he’s still smarting from that, now saying that he’s going to do it anyway. A little bit confusing on what he means by that.
I think his “anti-war” agenda that he’s been trying to spin himself as very anti-war is difficult when he just did what he did in Venezuela and when we’re watching the preparations for a very likely strike on Iran. So he’s got a lot that he has to spin because he’s tried to create this image of himself as anti-war, as good on the economy — and those things are not panning out even remotely close to what he’s promised.
AL: And the Epstein files blowing up in his face. There was reporting today that apparently DOJ scrubbed allegations against Trump sexually abusing a minor, and we have some Democrats, I think Rashida Tlaib was yelling at him during this to release the Epstein files. And this is high on many Democrats’ mind, but obviously not that he would address this, but that’s in the background here. Not even in the background, it’s in the foreground right now.
And then, yeah, his approval ratings are lower than they were at this point in his first term. His disapproval ratings, I would say are higher, and his approval is about the same.
And there are two very different stories being told about the economy right now. Obviously, Democrats are — we’ll get to the response later — but trying to focus on affordability issues. And you have Trump pretty much making a mockery of that and trying to throw that in their faces while claiming that everything is fine and dandy when we know very clearly that it’s not, people have lost their health care, are paying exorbitant amounts just to get through on a day-to-day basis.
And I feel like this didn’t really come through. If you haven’t been paying attention, and you might have just been watching the State of the Union for pleasure — which I don’t know many people who are doing that — but he was able to get the One Big Beautiful Bill. As Jessie mentioned, the tariffs are falling apart. That was another major part of his economic agenda.
But you also have Republicans who are saying that they’re not necessarily going to go through with his pressure to have them codify tariffs or codify any of these other things into law. And this is not a “Let’s hand it to Republicans” moment, but they have also broken with him on Epstein in very small numbers. But not everything is hunky dory with him and the Republican caucus right now as well.
JU: I think any Republican opposition in Congress to another attempt to institute tariffs isn’t out of concern for those costs being passed on to the consumer. It’s simply out of fealty to corporate interests, the Chamber of Commerce, their donors.
That’s where he would meet opposition, not out of any purported concern for their base. And like you’re saying, there are two different stories about the economy. He’s bragging, similar to Pam Bondi in the Epstein hearing, about the Dow hitting 50,000. He’s bragging about the stock market.
Donald Trump: The stock market has set 53 all-time record highs since the election. Think of that, one year.
JU: Those gains rarely affect the average working person. And then on the other side, you have “60 Minutes” reporting that SNAP and Medicaid benefits are facing the biggest federal funding cuts in history.
Another part of the speech that stood out was the focus on militarism. Along those lines on these funding cuts for these social safety net programs, we’re seeing a massive uptick in military spending. He’s committing to 5 percent of GDP in our military spending. And we saw a report over the past few days from Jeff Stein of the Washington Post that said a requested $500 billion increase in military spending is slowing down the budget process because the military doesn’t even know how they would spend that additional $500 billion.
So I’m curious, from both of your perspectives, how do you think this lands in the minds of the average voter? Granted, like you said Akela, who’s watching this for fun? But we live in a shortened attention span economy where people will see clips, and surely some of these narratives will filter out. So when they see him bragging about the economy saying it’s robust and strong, meanwhile they’re looking at their bank accounts and they see a totally different story but ratcheting up military spending, how does this land?
JW: Yeah, I think that kind of stuff backfires. I think you’re talking about kind of two separate but connected things, which is military interventions, which we know are unpopular with a lot of, even the Republican base, a lot of Trump’s base is uninterested in that.
And then there’s also — which is the same mistake that the Biden administration made — which is telling people what the economy looks like for them. And I interviewed members of the Biden administration during the presidential election. And something that they kept saying was, people feel great, the economy is strong, people are doing fine. And people didn’t feel that, and they didn’t vote that way.
And so I think they’re going to run into the exact same problems that every administration runs into, when they’re campaigning on their accomplishments, which is, it actually has to match up with how people are feeling economically, and the indicators just aren’t there.
I also listened to Summer Lee’s rebuttal for the Working Families Party, and this was something she brought up really directly. And I think this is something that has been talked about in our politics a lot recently, which is, we have money for bombs overseas, but we don’t have money for health care. We don’t have money to actually provide a good life for our citizens. And that’s something that Summer Lee brought up. They’re trying to distract you with all these different issues when the real problem is we’re giving money to corporations, we’re spending money on bombs, and we’re not spending money feeding people as Donald Trump himself pointed out. And we’re also not spending money on people’s health care.
Summer Lee: Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t afford it. We somehow find endless money for ICE, for private prisons to warehouse Black and brown people and for bombs to be sent abroad. But we’re told health care and childcare are too expensive. And when we begin questioning those priorities, the powerful try to divide us once more. But that old playbook is losing its grip.
AL: I was reading some reporting in Punch Bowl on Tuesday that Republicans were talking about how they wanted Trump to frame this military spending. This is talking about him wanting to increase Pentagon funding by 50 percent. And they’re like, we don’t want him to sit to say the number $1.5 trillion. We want him to talk about it as a percentage of GDP and how it compares to past decades of military spending. Basically so it doesn’t sound as bad, but they also want him to frame it as what we’re doing to modernize the military and counter threats from our enemies around the globe.
“It’s an artful exercise in cognitive dissonance, the way that they’re trying to frame this stuff to people.”
Which we did hear him, reverting to this, what is a theme for him, painting this image of himself as a strongman, like policing the world while also telling everyone that he’s not policing the world and he’s the president of peace. So it’s an artful exercise in cognitive dissonance the way that they’re trying to frame this stuff to people.
But to their credit, Republicans are at least acknowledging openly that you have to frame this in a way that makes sense to the American public, whether it’s accurate or not. And I think that is the one thing that if you’re someone who is already giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and you listen to this, that sounds good, right, on its face?
JU: Yeah. It’s much more abstract when you’re talking about percentages of GDP than a $1 trillion-plus military budget.
JW: You guys can’t forget that he ended the war in the Congo, though. That was a key accomplishment from the speech. [laughs]
JU: Oh, who could forget? Where were you?
AL: Can we talk about the Venezuela thing? Because that —
JW: Please,
AL: Freaked me out to my core. Like jokingly, let’s not forget about our buddy Venezuela, when you kidnapped the fucking president, and JD Vance and Mike Johnson are behind him, like, laughing. I don’t know, that moment for me was just so blatantly, this is who these people are. In some ways, yes, they’re trying to sugarcoat what they’re doing, but in other ways, they’re so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it. And it is really alarming to me how good they are at framing that in a positive light. And there were people cheering all over the room for us toppling a regime, doing regime change, while they’re telling you that we don’t do that anymore.
JW: Yeah.
JU: Yeah. Not just that, but the deliberate reckless killing of fishers. Yeah, that was a laugh line. Yeah. Oh, we decimated their fishing industry, and you get hardy laughs from the Republican caucus.
DT: We have stopped record amounts of drugs coming into our country and virtually stopped it completely coming in by water or sea. You probably noticed that. [Laughter]
We very seriously damaged their fishing industry. Also nobody wants to go fishing anymore. [Laughter]
JW: The Intercept’s reporting, which we’ve done a lot of great reporting on this from Nick Turse. But we’re talking about these strikes where people were clinging, dying with no relief. Just like these strikes are horrific, if you read about them the strikes have now passed over 150 dead. So just to keep that in mind for the laugh line there.
JU: The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me as yet another departure from past State of the Unions, and we saw that also in how they talked about the Somali population in Minnesota. Trump made, if you want to call it a joke, that once they crack down on Somali fraud in Minnesota to a sufficient extent, we will balance our budget. And this served as a segue to brutal crackdowns in our cities, the deliberate targeting of certain populations in places like Minneapolis and St. Paul. And what was also interesting to watch in this part of the speech was the vocal opposition from Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Talib. Now, what were both of your reactions during this part and what stood out to you?
AL: What really stood out to me beyond the disgusting racism was the fact that he telegraphed that they’re going to do this in other states. At the end of that whole thing, he was like, oh, the number of this fraud is much higher in California, Massachusetts, and Maine. Places where he’s also been sending ICE. There’s been ICE agents terrorizing people all over those states and ramping up operations in Maine, particularly after Minneapolis. So that was alarming.
DT: There’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota. Where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. Oh, we have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine, and many other states are even worse.
This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe. So tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the War on Fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance.
AL: We’ve been talking about this and doing a lot of reporting on this, but a perfect and fully disturbing example of how the racist conspiracy theories that incubate in the far-right corners of the internet, become policy like that in this administration. And where like where this whole thing came from is a far-right influencer who started peddling this online. Chris Rufo picked it up and a couple months later, ICE agents killed two people in Minneapolis.
Like these are the consequences of this. And I think people understand that is directly linked to what he’s doing with ICE. This is obviously not about fraud. This is about creating a pretext to unleash this country’s military power on its own citizens.
“This is obviously not about fraud. This is about creating a pretext to unleash this country’s military power on its own citizens.”
JU: Chris Rufo, of course, for those unfamiliar, is with the Manhattan Institute and has been a key player in nationalizing right-wing controversies and culture wars, specifically the rights fight against “DEI” — diversity, equity, and inclusion — initiatives among other “hot-button issues.” He really does have a significant and outsized ability to shape narratives on the right.
AL: And while we’re talking about DEI, there was raucous applause to Trump saying we ended DEI. I think that was the most applause that I heard the whole time. And like, people were cheering.
JU: Kitchen table issue.
AL: You can also thank Chris Rufo for that.
JW: To your point, the whole thing, if you read it, if you listen to it, it reads like a white nationalist speech — not all of it, but large sections of it. Particularly when he says that Somali pirates are coming to commit fraud and also to ruin the culture. The cultural elements of the ways he was talking about Somali people, I think are some of the most kind of clearly racist elements.
“In some ways, he’s broken the racism barrier.”
But I have been just thinking about the State of the Union in the light of Trump posting that really racist image of the Obamas, because in some ways he’s broken the racism barrier is the way I would think about it is that he’s done something so blatantly racist in our culture. And just to be clear, I’m referring to the photo, sorry, the AI image that he posted on Truth Social of the Obamas as apes. So he’s already broken this racism barrier. So there is almost no point. to a certain extent, in even talking about him saying that Somali people are ruining the culture, the kind of Hitler-esque things that he said before about immigrants poisoning the blood — there is no deniability at this point about who and what he is. And so this white national speech, it just makes sense. It’s in character and it’s almost un-newsworthy in that way.
“There is no deniability at this point about who and what he is. … It’s in character and it’s almost un-newsworthy in that way.”
AL: It just makes me so upset because each of these things are issues where Democrats ceded so much ground in the beginning that like allowed him to just be like, OK, actually yeah, now we’re just doing racist stuff because you guys let us get really far on immigration and claiming this was a problem and claiming there were people flooding in.
They’re like, some people are ruining the culture, not quite in the way that you’re saying it. Some people are creating all this crime problem, not quite in the way that you’re saying it, and like that being their strategy to win back voters is like to cede ground on these issues effectively. And it just makes me really mad when I think about it for too long. That’s what you saw in my eyes.
JW: On that point, I do want to talk about his anti-trans rhetoric. Speaking of Democrats ceding ground on issues, Donald Trump brought a Liberty University college student at one point, who he had brought as a guest, to make this point about transgender children, essentially. And so he had said that a school had enabled her to transition, which had then led her to run away and be kidnapped and sex trafficked. Now the mom and this girl are suing multiple entities that they hold responsible, including the school. But Donald Trump really used this moment to try and fearmonger against trans children.
This kind of idea on the right that they’re going to kidnap your children and make them trans — I think this is really an issue where we’ve seen a lot of Democrats cede ground. Obviously there was the infamous Seth Moulton comment about not wanting his kid, his young daughters, to play with males — referring to trans children that they would potentially be playing soccer with, trans girls.
So we’ve seen Democrats really cede ground on this issue and say it’s fair that people have these concerns. It’s fair that people are scared about their children being kidnapped and turned trans — which is not a thing that’s happening.
But it’s really just this massive ceding of ground. We’ve seen obviously outlets like The Atlantic, the New York Times have obviously really contributed to this paranoia. And it’s legitimizing this fearmongering that Republicans have invested millions and millions of dollars, and it’s doing the work for them instead of actually talking about this issue directly or not just throwing trans kids under the bus is another option. So that’s my little rant.
AL: I’ll also just add one thing on that, I am not a fan of Abigail Spanberger. She’s a moderate and she’s an ex-CIA agent. We’ll leave it at that. But the fact that she delivered the Democratic response after winning a gubernatorial election, in which her Republican opponents repeatedly tried to bait her on trans issues and weaponize this issue against her — We did some reporting on that, talking with analysts about how her win was an example of Democrats sticking to their values on this issues is not necessarily a liability. I can’t speak to her record throughout Congress on this stuff, but at least in charting the path for midterms for both parties tonight and the Democratic response, I just thought that was interesting, that like after doing this whole dog-and-pony show over trans stuff, like they picked someone who stood firmly on that to give the response.
JW: I will also say anecdotally, so I’ve been covering the Senate primary race between Seth Moulton and Ed Markey, and I would say anecdotally, people are still really upset about those comments that Seth Moulton made about trans children.
And so there’s this idea that there’s only political upside to throwing part of your base and parts of your base that your base also cares about, right, even if they aren’t a large part of your voting block. I think there is a political penalty for that that Democrats don’t see, and I think that’s true with immigrants. That is true on issues related to transgender people. They only see the upside of winning over this kind of mythical moderate and they never seem to see the downside, where you lose people who actually thought that you supported their values.
[Break]
JU: One of the other areas on the topic of ceding ground that I’m really fascinated by that Trump talked about in this speech were his purported desires to ban private equity in Wall Street from buying single-family homes and his calls for Congress to pass a ban on congressional stock trading. Now the devil’s in the details with these sorts of things and with the stock trading ban further reporting shows that he opposes a version of this bill that would also apply to himself, the White House and the judiciary.
Then while he says he wants to stop Wall Street and private equity from buying single-family homes, he’s calling on Congress to do that. And similar to the expected opposition from Republicans in Congress on tariffs at the behest of corporate interests, I expect similar opposition on this. But in rhetoric alone, I do think those are two things that resonate with the average American. What did you both make of those two points tonight?
AL: It’s one of those things where he knows what to say. He knows to say the right thing. Less than 1 percent of the population is going to be like, is this true? Maybe that’s ungenerous, but you know what I mean. Democrats, on the flip side, tangle themselves up in the these particular issues, not only because they’re doing the thing that’s bad, like they’re doing insider stock trading, they’re siding with corporate landlords and fighting or doing everything they can to not really do anything on housing, but they’re so afraid to say something that isn’t poll tested that again, they’re ceding ground to him on this when he’s clearly lying and enriching himself and doing all these things that would negate this behind the scenes, particularly for himself, as you’re saying.
But the fact that Democrats are also hypocrites on this doesn’t really work because they won’t say the thing. It’s not that hard to go toe to toe with him. It’s actually very simple, but you’re so concerned about making sure that you’re not turning off again, this middle of the road person, that you don’t take this low-hanging fruit.
And like you saw Elizabeth Warren standing up. This is the only part that they panned to her during this. I don’t know if she stood otherwise, but she was like pointing at him, being like, what about you? OK, let’s get that. Let’s get that in the response. Let’s get Abigail Spanberger hitting that on the head.
JW: Yeah. To your point, Akela, in her response for the Working Families Party, Summer Lee brought up the fact that Democrats are hamstrung by their commitment to corporate donors.
SL: The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. On one side are millions of working people demanding bold action, lower costs, higher wages, Medicare for all. On the other side are corporate donors and consultants who are terrified of upsetting the very interests that rigged this economy in the first place.
JW: You cannot be sworn to the American public, sworn to working people and to their benefit, and also sworn to corporations that we cannot bring down MAGA while also making billionaires comfortable. And I think she’s really poking at that weak center point of the Democrats that you keep mentioning, which is that they are unwilling to, I think there’s both the issue of everything needs to be tested, but they’re also unwilling to throw off the shackles of corporate money, corporate interests.
JU: And to add some context to Trump’s investments, specifically Dave Levinthal in NOTUS has a piece from December 23, 2025, where he wrote that Trump has invested tens of millions of dollars into corporate and government bonds, including those of companies and local governments his administration’s decisions could affect according to a new financial disclosure. So it’s not just that he’s enriching himself off of dealings with other governments, dealings with other oil Gulf state figures. He’s also making money in the market and his own decisions influence the performance of those investments. So of course, he’s going to oppose applying a stock trading ban to himself.
But I also want to go back to Spanberger and the Democratic Party’s decision to pick her to deliver the official response. Like you said Akela, you’re not necessarily a fan, she’s extremely moderate, we’ll say, former CIA official. What do you think this says at a time where we’re seeing surprising flips in state legislatures in red states, massive swings in favor of Democrats, poll numbers for Trump in the tank, you’re seeing Trump voters, some of Trump’s loudest supporters switch? They’re changing their tune entirely. They’re criticizing him over his handling of the Epstein files, of ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies’ presence and actions in cities across this country. That seems like a window where they can shift things more to the left, but here they rolled out Abigail Spanberger. Does that send up a red flag for you going into the midterms?
AL: I’m of two minds about this because you can’t ignore the fact that she just won her race and that Glenn Youngkin was the governor of Virginia. For a while, Democrats thought they had it in the bag. She was openly talking about her win in her response, pointing to the fact that they had Republican voters, Independent voters, Democratic voters, this big tent. And that’s important in a state like Virginia.
Is that a roadmap? Is that what’s going to help them win back the house? Wild card Senate even might be up for grabs. Republicans seem really concerned about this. I don’t think so, but I do think, again, the fact that she didn’t see it on some of these “cultural war” issues in her last race is a positive sign. Do I think that means that’s how Democrats are going to play this? Absolutely not.
I’ll also mention that Abigail Spanberger was a pretty big recipient of corporate PAC money while she was in the House and during the 2023 to 2024 cycle. AIPAC was her top single donor. So these are all issues that we know have lost Democrat support and mixing that with a couple of things that are positive and helped her win her election, I don’t think that’s enough to get them where they want to be.
I was not shocked at all that they pick someone like Abigail Spanberger. They typically pick a moderate. I was pleasantly surprised, I would say, because the bar is on the floor, the fact that she was saying Trump is not telling you the truth, talking about the fact that he’s enriching himself, talking directly about the impact that him unleashing federal agents on U.S. cities has had.
Abigail Spanberger: In his speech tonight, the president did what he always does. He lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted, and he offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges, so many of which he is actively making worse. He tries to divide us. He tries to enrage us to pit us against one another, neighbor against neighbor. And sometimes he succeeds.
And so you have to ask who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress? Somebody must be benefiting. He is enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented.
AL: She didn’t say this explicitly, but shortly after being sworn in as governor, she said Virginia law enforcement was going to stop cooperating with ICE. These are things that we know are moving Democrats. And so whether that translates into the whole party getting on board with this, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. But it wasn’t like, didn’t Elissa Slotkin give the response one year? And I just remember sitting there and being like, this is worse than the State of the Union, and I didn’t feel that way coming out of this. So what does that mean? I don’t know.
JU: I guess that’s good.
JW: That was a ringing endorsement from Akela [laughs]: The speech didn’t make me feel like it was worse than the two-hour speech we all just listened to from the president.
AL: Sorry, the thing that pissed me off the most about Abigail Spanberger’s speech, I will say, and I think this gets to the heart of the issue, was that she’s in Virginia, she’s in Williamsburg where I went to college. So I understand sort of the nerdy allusions to what our Founding Fathers would’ve wanted.
“It’s just like third-grade patriotism.”
But she was using this like trite device to be like, Trump is ruining the America that our Founding Fathers wanted for us. And we could sit here and talk about all day how stupid that is. But that is like the model: It’s just like third-grade patriotism — a couple of jabs here and there, and we’re going to get everyone back on board. Again, I just don’t think it’s enough.
JW: Like you said, I’m not at all surprised that they picked her. They want a moderate. It obviously looks good for the Democrats to have a woman combating Trump. So that’s clearly part of the calculus as well. Spanberger did just win her election, flip the governor’s mansion, if you want to call it that. But with Spanberger’s election, you also have to keep in mind the context of Trump and what he did to the federal government.
He decimated the economy of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. The massive layoffs, the anger at Trump in this area is astounding, so it’s not at all shocking, frankly, that she would win in this exact moment. Is that something that can be replicated throughout the country? Are they feeling the same direct impacts of Trump? I think in some ways, they are. When you look at SNAP cuts, when you look at cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, when you even just see videos of the violence happening in cities from ICE. But it doesn’t have that same direct impact, and so I don’t know if she’s as exciting [for] somewhere that’s not Virginia.
JU: As we wrap, we’re all exhausted. We’re fed up. What was the bright spot tonight for both of you? Was there a funny moment?
JW: This is not necessarily funny, but it made me think of a funny joke, when he brought out the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team. Now, they’d also had this kind of video stunt where the team had also been hanging out with Kash Patel, the FBI director; they had Trump on the phone where he made a joke about, I’ve gotta invite the women’s hockey team [or be impeached] — which, by the way, declined.
But the only thing that kept going through my mind was that this was terrible hockey PR. And “Heated Rivalry” had worked so hard to get us all into the spirit, to get all of us woke people who are too woke for hockey into it, and they’ve just tarnished the reputation of hockey. Once again, it can’t recover.
JU: Akela, what about you?
AL: I’m somewhere between the communist mayor of New York City, his little homage to Zohran Mamdani, who he’s obsessed with, and I just think it’s funny. And said again, I don’t like his policies, but I like him a lot [laughs] which honestly probably applies to like more than 75 percent of people outside of New York in his age demographic. They’re like, there’s something about this guy, I like him.
Either that, or this is just my brain being broken, because this made me laugh — this is not funny at all, but the response was funny — when he was like, “This should have been my third term.” And in the audience, you hear — I heard — like a mixture of what sounded like “Awww” and like boos. And I was just like, yeah, that sums it up pretty much.
JU: Someone did yell out “Four more years,” which is —
JW: Oh, great.
JU: Disconcerting. I’d say mine was, again, not funny subject matter, but the reaction was funny when he was talking about Iran yet again, trying to escalate tensions there, making not-so-veiled threats. Credit to the camera people and the control room for the event because somebody wisely fixated their camera on Lindsey Graham, who looked like he had reached another plane — like just the bliss that was so visible on his face throughout his body did make me laugh, as horrifying as it is. And that one was mine.
AL: “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
JU: Yeah. Good Lord. I want to thank you both for suffering through this with me, and hopefully we saved the listeners two hours of their precious lives.
JW: Thanks, Jordan.
AL: Thanks, Jordan.
JU: That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.
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Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl.
The post Rambling Man: Trump’s State of the Union appeared first on The Intercept.
Fifa to allow traditional Highland accessory into grounds
Tournament rules only permit certain types of bags
Scotland fans have been given the all-clear to wear their sporrans at the team’s matches at the 2026 World Cup.
Tournament rules only permitted certain types of bags into stadiums, and the pouch traditionally worn by Scots at the front of their kilt was deemed too large to meet the strict criteria.
Continue reading...Coalition government agrees to remove parts of controversial law and allow homes to rely on fossil fuels
Germany’s coalition government has been accused of abandoning its climate targets after agreeing to scrap parts of a contentious heating law mandating the use of renewables in favour of a draft law allowing homeowners to rely on fossil fuels.
While the previous law required most newly installed heating systems to use at least 65% renewable energy, often with a heat pump, the amended legislation will allow households to keep using oil and gas.
Continue reading...With Republicans facing grim poll figures, Trump promised action to influence the vote citing debunked fraud claims
Donald Trump once again railed against imagined fraud in America’s elections on Tuesday during the State of the Union address.
“They want to cheat,” he said of Democrats. “They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that their only way to get elected is to cheat. And we’re going to stop it.”
Continue reading...CBS News fact checked President Trump's 2026 State of the Union address, and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger's Democratic response.
Hamas to almost certainly reject plan described in Israeli press, say experts, as no guarantee Israel will withdraw on surrender of weapons
Progress in the Gaza peace plan has stalled over disagreements on how Hamas should be disarmed, with Israel threatening to go back to full-scale war if the condition is not carried out quickly.
The second phase of the US-brokered ceasefire, which Washington declared had begun in January, was meant to involve Hamas disarming, Israeli forces withdrawing, and a Palestinian interim administration moving into Gaza backed by a Palestinian police force and an international stabilisation force (ISF).
Continue reading...Capcom finally found the right formula to give fans the scares they've wanted with the fan service they've been demanding.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Uber is one step closer to going airborne. On Wednesday, the company previewed its air taxi booking service ahead of an expected launch in Dubai later this year. The inaugural Uber Air program will let travelers book Joby Aviation's electric air taxis through a familiar process in the Uber app. The experience of booking an air taxi will be much like reserving a four-wheeled Uber. In the app, after entering your destination, Uber Air will appear as an option for eligible routes. The Uber app will book a flight and an Uber Black to pick you up and drop you off at a Joby "vertiport." Joby's air taxis, built exclusively for city travel, can accommodate up to four passengers and luggage. (Uber says size and weight guidelines will be announced closer to launch.) The interior is about the size of an SUV and has "comfortable seating" with panoramic windows. They can travel up to 200 mph and have a range of up to 100 miles. Four battery packs and a triple-redundant flight computer are onboard for safety purposes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pros will reportedly include the iPhone's Dynamic Island feature on their OLED screens.
Proposal approved by Modi government will bring official English name into line with Malayalam language
The Indian state of Kerala, known as “God’s own country” for its golden beaches and lush tea plantations, is to be given a new name.
Narendra Modi’s cabinet has approved a proposal to change the southern coastal state’s name from Kerala to Keralam. The move will bring the official English name into line with how it is pronounced in Malayalam, the primary language spoken by the state’s estimated population of 35 million.
Continue reading...TORONTO and MUNICH, Feb. 25, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc., a leading photonic quantum computing company, today announced that it has successfully integrated PennyLane and its Catalyst compiler with the Munich Quantum Toolkit (MQT). MQT is developed by teams at the Chair for Design Automation of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Munich Quantum Software Company (MQSC) and enables an interoperable and scalable quantum software stack, based on mature classical compilation technology. This collaboration creates more accessible quantum software by connecting a user-friendly Python interface through Xanadu’s PennyLane to high-performance code that is the foundation of Catalyst and MQT.
As quantum hardware scales, quantum programs are becoming exponentially more complex, and compiling these larger programs efficiently is expected to become a major challenge in the quantum computing stack. Together, PennyLane, Catalyst, and MQT’s Core project bring complementary capabilities. PennyLane offers an intuitive interface for writing hybrid quantum-classical programs, while Catalyst and MQT handle the heavy-lifting for compilation by using specialized, high-performance tools that have been built over decades in classical computing.
Users can now access advanced compilation techniques from both tools by adding a single line of code to their PennyLane programs. This integration works seamlessly in the background and lowers barriers for designing quantum algorithms using software – allowing researchers and developers to focus on innovation rather than managing complex software configurations.
“This integration represents a significant step forward for the quantum software ecosystem and a great collaboration between leading players from Canada and Europe,” said Robert Wille, Full Professor representing TUM.
Lukas Burgholzer, Chief Technology Officer of MQSC, adds: “By bringing MQT’s advanced tools for verifying and optimizing quantum programs directly into the Catalyst infrastructure, we are giving researchers and developers the best of both worlds: a convenient frontend with state-of-the-art tools underneath that run automatically and efficiently.”
“To make quantum computing practical, we need a software stack that is both modular and high performing. Our work with TUM and MQSC demonstrates the power of unifying tools with unique specializations into a single, cohesive workflow,” said Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu. “We are accelerating the development cycle and ensuring that quantum programs are not only faster but also more efficient by enabling PennyLane users to leverage MQT’s methods without changing their code structure.”
The project highlights the use and value of modular infrastructure for quantum software. Connecting complementary technologies from different sources – such as those from Xanadu, TUM, and MQSC – allows for a “mix-and-match” approach that unlocks the software stack to become more accessible for users. The result is a flexible infrastructure where specialized technologies can interoperate freely, fostering greater connectivity across the growing quantum software ecosystem.
About Xanadu
Xanadu is a Canadian quantum computing company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Founded in 2016, Xanadu has become one of the world’s leading quantum hardware and software companies. The company also leads the development of PennyLane, an open-source software library for quantum computing and application development.
Source: Xanadu
The post Xanadu’s PennyLane Integrates with Munich Quantum Toolkit to Advance Quantum Compilation appeared first on HPCwire.
Talks reportedly focused on assets of owner Jim Ratcliffe’s vinyls business Inovyn as group scrambles to cut costs
The chemicals empire owned by the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe is in talks to sell parts of the business in the hope of raising hundreds of millions of pounds to tackle its rising debts, according to a report.
The talks are at an early stage but have focused on selling assets from Ratcliffe’s vinyls business, Ineos Inovyn, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Continue reading...The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced its 2026 list of nominees, including Phil Collins, Mariah Carey, Wu-Tang Clan and more.
Feb. 25, 2026 — Two researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have been named recipients of 2025 Early Career Research Program awards from the DOE Office of Science. David Kaphan and Yong Zhao will each receive $550,000 per year for five years to further their research.
Two Argonne scientists selected for DOE early-career support for projects in catalysis and nuclear physics.
This DOE Office of Science program seeks to strengthen the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to outstanding researchers early in their careers, when many scientists make formative contributions. Awardees were selected from a large pool of applicants from universities and national labs based on peer review by scientific experts.
David Kaphan is a chemist in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division. His research focuses on designing a new generation of catalysts — materials that speed up chemical reactions — for chemical transformations to overcome key kinetic limitations of today’s catalysts. His project aims to explore the potential of electric field-responsive oxides, such as ferroelectrics, to actively control the surface-level electronic characteristics of catalytic active sites. This approach could enable the development of catalysts that adapt during chemical transformations, optimizing reactivity for different phases of chemical synthesis processes.
Kaphan’s project will study the complex role that external electric fields can play in the modulation of electronic surface properties during catalytic processes. He will use X-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques and other methods at the Advanced Photon Source and the Center for Nanoscale Materials — both DOE Office of Science user facilities at Argonne — to measure properties such as field responsive surface electron density and catalytic reactivity. Additionally, the project will integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the exploration of reaction parameters and electric field conditions. This work has the potential to revolutionize catalyst design for critical processes such as selective methane oxidation and ammonia synthesis.
“Stimulus-responsive, nonequilibrium catalysis represents an exciting opportunity to overcome the classical limitations of static processes and increase efficiency in chemical transformations,” said Kaphan. “This support will allow us to explore new frontiers in field-responsive dynamic catalyst design and develop new solutions to address key challenges in energy-related chemistry.”
Yong Zhao is an assistant physicist in the Physics division. His research seeks to address one of the most fundamental questions in nuclear physics: understanding the internal structure of protons and neutrons. These are key objectives of multidimensional proton imaging efforts at DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and the forthcoming Electron-Ion Collider at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Both protons and neutrons consist of different combinations of quarks and gluons. Zhao plans to develop a new theoretical approach and use lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) for precise calculations of the underlying multidimensional quark and gluon structures. This approach will enable high-precision imaging of the proton, as well as reveal the contributions of quark and gluon spin and orbital angular momentum to the proton’s spin.
Using the Aurora and Polaris supercomputers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, Zhao’s project aims to reduce systematic uncertainties and improve numerical precision in proton and neutron structural studies. Its insights will provide crucial theoretical guidance for experiments at Jefferson Lab, Brookhaven and other facilities.
“This award is a tremendous opportunity to push the boundaries of our understanding of the strong force and the fundamental building blocks of matter,” said Zhao. “I am grateful for the support that will allow us to make significant strides in this area of research.”
“Sustained investment in early-career researchers is essential to the long-term vitality of the nation’s scientific enterprise,” said Kawtar Hafidi, associate laboratory director for Argonne’s Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate. “Programs like the DOE Early Career Research Program help ensure that bold ideas and new approaches have the support they need to advance fundamental science and deliver lasting impact for the nation.”
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
The post Argonne’s David Kaphan and Yong Zhao Receive 2025 DOE Early Career Research Awards appeared first on HPCwire.
Man, 32, shot dead by deputy after stabbing attack was the subject of domestic violence protection orders
A man shot dead by a sheriff’s deputy after he fatally stabbed four people outside his mother’s home near Gig Harbor, Washington, on Tuesday morning was the subject of domestic violence protection orders recording mental health and substance abuse issues stretching back at least five years.
Records reviewed by Associated Press show that the woman living at the address had obtained a 12-month protection order against her 32-year-old son in May. The order noted that he struggled from substance abuse, and had threatened his mother saying that her “grave has been already dug up”.
Continue reading...Oklahoma prosecutor Jimmy Harmon was making his usual points about why Richard Glossip belongs behind bars when he trotted out a not-so-casual dig at his opposing counsel.
It was mid-February in Oklahoma City, and one of Glossip’s lawyers had just explained the main reason why his client should be released on bond. Under Oklahoma law, defendants like Glossip are entitled to bail unless there is a firm basis to believe they are guilty. The evidence against Glossip had never been strong — and the U.S. Supreme Court demolished the state’s case when it vacated Glossip’s conviction over false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling, the attorneys argued, there was no justification for keeping him in jail.
Harmon responded with scorn. “The defendant’s argument reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song,” he said. “It’s called ‘Glory Days.’”
“The gist of that song is that glory days will pass you by,” he went on. Glossip’s attorneys were clinging to their cherished Supreme Court victory because, after years of losing in court, “they finally won one,” he said. “And they want to wave that Supreme Court opinion around.”
In other words, Glossip’s lawyers were like Springsteen’s former high school baseball star — still talking about his winning fastball at a roadside bar.
In the quiet courtroom, Harmon’s zinger landed with a thud. The comparison was clumsy and ill-fitting; a Supreme Court victory is anything but fleeting. Lawyers and courts are bound by Supreme Court decisions — invoking its rulings is sort of the point.
Glossip, meanwhile, sat at the defense table in his orange prison garb over a thermal shirt. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Natalie Mai — the seventh judge assigned to his case since the high court sent it back to Oklahoma — had allowed him to be unshackled for the hearing. Just a few days earlier, Glossip had turned 63, his 29th birthday behind bars. He knew more than most people about time you can never get back.
Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to die for the 1997 murder of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, who was brutally killed at the Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of town. A 19-year-old handyman named Justin Sneed admitted to fatally beating Van Treese but insisted that Glossip pushed him to do it. Sneed’s account became the basis for the state’s case against Glossip — and for a plea deal that allowed Sneed to avoid the death penalty. Sneed is serving a life sentence.
But the case began unraveling soon after Glossip arrived on death row. Footage of Sneed’s police interrogation cast serious doubt on the state’s version of events, revealing coercive questioning by Oklahoma City detectives who pressured Sneed into implicating Glossip. In the decades that followed, Glossip’s attorneys discovered that prosecutors hid and destroyed evidence in the case — and that Sneed had attempted to recant his testimony multiple times.
The case ultimately ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Glossip’s favor on February 25, 2025. The justices found that Sneed lied on the stand, that prosecutors had failed to correct his testimony, and that additional evidence of prosecutorial misconduct “further undermines confidence in the verdict.”
Yet one year later, the case is far from over. Rather than release Glossip, as advocates expected him to do, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced that he would retry Glossip for first-degree murder — and asked a judge to keep him in jail awaiting trial. An Oklahoma County judge granted the request and refused to release Glossip on bond, only to later step down from the case after admitting that she was close friends with the lead prosecutor at his second trial. A revolving door of recusals followed, with five more criminal court judges leaving the case due to their own ties to the district attorney’s office that sent Glossip to death row.
Natalie Mai is the seventh judge assigned to Glossip’s case since the Supreme Court sent it back to Oklahoma.
Mai, a civil judge, was assigned to the case in December. It was now up to her to reconsider whether Glossip should be released from jail. Standing before her, defense attorney Corbin Brewster urged Mai to consider the Supreme Court’s decision before weighing the other factors that judges use to make bond decisions — whether a defendant is a flight risk, for example, or a danger to the community. The “threshold question” before the court, he said, was whether prosecutors could show by clear and convincing evidence that Glossip should be presumed guilty of murder. The answer was clearly no. If Mai agreed, she could rule from the bench and free Glossip that day.
But Mai wasn’t ready to do that. She told Brewer that she had reserved the whole day for the hearing and would issue an order after considering all the evidence. “I would like to get all the information today, so that way I can make a written finding in an expedient manner,” she said.
After three decades insisting on his innocence, Glossip would have to wait a little bit longer.
The 2025 ruling in Glossip v. Oklahoma was momentous: an astonishing victory for a man who had stared down nine execution dates and lived. For Glossip’s longtime attorney, Don Knight, the ruling should have marked the end of a protracted legal battle that had made his client the most famous death row prisoner in the country — and which had won the support of the Oklahoma attorney general himself.
Drummond, who entered the attorney general’s office in 2023, once took unprecedented steps to stop Oklahoma from killing Glossip. After commissioning an independent investigation into his case, he asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn Glossip’s conviction. When the court refused, setting Glossip up for execution, Drummond personally testified before the state’s pardon and parole board, urging them to spare Glossip’s life.
But things changed in the months following the Supreme Court’s decision. After initially basking in the justices’ ruling, Drummond vanished as the public face of the case. In June, he shocked Glossip’s longtime supporters — including conservative allies of the Republican attorney general — by announcing he would retry Glossip.
The most obvious explanation was politics: Drummond’s decision coincided with his run for governor — and his previous interventions in Glossip’s case had infuriated members of Oklahoma’s conservative legal establishment. In the months after the ruling, Drummond lurched noticeably to the right, going out of his way to align himself with the Trump administration’s political agenda. In the meantime, he left it to one of his deputies, Harmon, to retry Glossip’s case.
Harmon has since downplayed the significance of the Supreme Court ruling while peddling a warmed-over version of the state’s discredited case. The lack of new evidence was striking at Glossip’s first bond hearing, when he introduced exhibits designed to cast Glossip in a sinister light — but which fell far short of proving he was capable of murder. He presented affidavits from Glossip’s ex-wife and another woman who had previously provided him with financial support, both of whom wrote that they later felt used and manipulated. Harmon also played a recording of a phone call between Glossip and a third woman, in which Glossip expressed estrangement from his family — an attempt to show that he had no deep ties to Oklahoma.
At the time, Oklahoma County Criminal Court Judge Heather Coyle seemed somewhat skeptical of the evidence. She reminded Harmon that she needed “clear and convincing evidence” that Glossip was likely to be found guilty at a third trial, asking him to “please expand on the facts that support that.” Harmon directed her to the transcripts from Glossip’s previous trials, which ultimately proved persuasive enough.
There was little guarantee that the same approach would prove convincing to Mai. Yet Harmon mostly repeated his prior presentation, resubmitting the affidavits and phone recording, along with the transcripts from Glossip’s two trials. “We have a plethora of evidence,” he told Mai, only to acknowledge that there was nothing new. “The evidence presented will be essentially the same as was presented in the first two trials,” he said.
“The evidence presented will be essentially the same as was presented in the first two trials.”
Harmon also insisted that Glossip posed a danger to the community. “He’s not as young as spry as he was,” he said. But “Mr. Glossip’s manipulative behavior is dangerous in and of itself.”
Glossip’s attorneys, too, repeated arguments from the prior hearing. But there was one major development that had unfolded since then. In July 2025, while the decision to grant bond was pending before Coyle, Glossip’s lawyers revealed a secret deal between Knight and Drummond dating back to 2023. The attorney general had agreed to let Glossip plead to a lesser charge and then walk free. Although the deal was based on the erroneous assumption that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals would grant Drummond’s request to vacate Glossip’s conviction, it remained current well after the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a lengthy affidavit filed by Knight last summer.
Lawyers for Glossip asked the court to enforce the agreement — an issue that is being litigated separately. At the bond hearing, Brewster invoked the deal to remind Mai that Drummond himself clearly did not buy Harmon’s portrayal of Glossip as a “killer.” If he did, he would never have agreed to a deal that allowed for Glossip’s immediate release.
At the end of the hearing, Mai told the lawyers she needed time to review the full record, which she had yet to receive from the state. She also requested a last round of briefs from both sides. “If you can get that to me in about 30 days, and give me another 15 to 30 days to work with it, I promise I will try to get it out as soon as possible,” she said. “But the reality is my docket is just so full right now, and so I’ll work on it to the extent that I can.”
Shortly afterward, Glossip was placed back in shackles and escorted out of the courtroom. Sheriff’s deputies took him down the elevator to await transfer back to the county jail. Speaking to reporters, Knight reiterated that Drummond should honor their previous agreement to release Glossip — and if he refuses, the court should make him do it.
Knight expressed some hope that, by taking the time to study the record, Mai might see the case for the travesty it is — and give his client a long-overdue taste of freedom. Nobody should have to spend so much time waiting for their first fair trial. “This is wrong,” he said. “It’s been wrong for 30 years.”
Jordan Smith contributed to this report.
The post A Supreme Court Win Didn’t Free Richard Glossip. But This Judge Could. appeared first on The Intercept.
Whether you want a video doorbell to keep track of packages or visitors, these popular models from Ring, Blink and more will get the job done.
The company's new eSIM option should allow for a faster sign-up experience.
Adobe Firefly's Quick Cut tool clips and combines all your raw footage into a video in under two minutes.
Anthropic, the AI company that has long positioned itself as the industry's most safety-conscious research lab, is dropping the central commitment of its Responsible Scaling Policy -- a 2023 pledge to never train an AI system unless it could guarantee beforehand that its safety measures were adequate. "We didn't really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments ... if competitors are blazing ahead," chief science officer Jared Kaplan told TIME. The overhauled policy, approved unanimously by CEO Dario Amodei and Anthropic's board, instead commits the company to matching or surpassing competitors' safety efforts and to delaying development only if Anthropic considers itself to be leading the AI race and believes catastrophic risks are significant. The company also plans to publish detailed "Risk Reports" every three to six months and release "Frontier Safety Roadmaps" laying out future safety goals. Chris Painter, director of policy at the AI evaluation nonprofit METR, who reviewed an early draft, told TIME the shift signals that Anthropic "believes it needs to shift into triage mode with its safety plans, because methods to assess and mitigate risk are not keeping up with the pace of capabilities."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Night owls will be able to check out the lunar eclipse when it appears this March.
Jamieson Greer warns tariffs may climb from 10% after Trump imposed global levy amid US supreme court setback
The US tariff rate for some countries will go up to 15% or higher from the newly imposed 10%, Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, said on Wednesday, without naming any specific trading partners or other details.
“Right now, we have the 10% tariff. It’ll go up to 15 [%] for some and then it may go higher for others, and I think it will be in line with the types of tariffs we’ve been seeing,” Greer said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria program.
Continue reading...Milwaukee city council member calls for inquiry into Uline’s previous ‘shuttle program’ to bring in Mexican workers
A Milwaukee city council member has called for an investigation into the immigration policies at Uline, the office supply company owned by Liz and Richard Uihlein, two of the biggest donors to Maga Republicans in the 2024 election.
The statement by JoCasta Zamarripa, who is running for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin secretary of state ahead of November’s election, follows an investigation by the Guardian into Uline’s previous use of a so-called “shuttle program”. It involved the company bringing workers from its facilities in Mexico to staff warehouses at its headquarters in Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania, for weeks and even months at a time, using visas that are meant for workers who are being trained – not working regular full-time jobs.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Alvi Choudhury claiming damages against Thames Valley police after biased technology confused him with man looking ‘10 years younger’
Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.
Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in Southampton in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am.
Continue reading...If the future of toilets is one in which our toilet can clean itself in just one flush, that's a future we can get behind.
Iran accuses Trump of lying in his State of the Union about the country's nuclear ambitions, as the next round of bilateral talks looms.
The newly crowned Olympic champions were warmly greeted by both Republicans and Democrats. They were also used as props by the president
During Tuesday’s State of the Union, Donald Trump welcomed members of the US men’s national hockey team to the House gallery to chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A!”. Trump revealed that Team USA’s goaltender, Connor Hellebuyck, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “What special champions you are,” Trump told the players, who had beaten Canada on Sunday in the gold medal game of the Winter Olympics.
In Trump’s America, proximity is never neutral.
Continue reading...The Democratic congressman Al Green has addressed his protest at Donald Trump's State of the Union speech, in which Green held up a handwritten sign that read 'Black people aren't apes!'. The sign referenced a racist depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama that the president had shared on social media. After being ejected from the event, Green told journalists he had wanted to take a stand against the president doing 'these dastardly things with impunity'
Continue reading...The bill would ban distribution of taxpayer money for any "January 6th compensation fund" and any further refund of damage payments made by convicted Capitol rioters.
Tommy Schaefer was sentenced for the 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the mother of Heather Mack, during a luxury vacation.
Leaked draft of $1bn memorandum of understanding reveals mandatory targets, sharing of data, and reported access to mining concessions
The US has been accused of “shameless exploitation” over a health financing agreement with Zambia worth more than $1bn (£740m), amid warnings that the country is getting a raw deal from the Trump administration.
A leaked draft of a five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries, seen by the Guardian, reveals that Zambia may accept terms worse than health financing agreements the US has reached with 16 other African countries.
Continue reading...Study finds participants saw reduction in depressive symptoms as researchers welcome ‘promising’ results
A phase II clinical trial has found dimethyltryptamine (DMT), one of the psychoactive components traditionally used in the Amazonian psychedelic ritual ayahuasca, might be a promising therapy for depression.
The psychedelic pharmaceutical company Small Pharma (now Cybin UK) sponsored and designed the trial, which was led by Dr David Erritzoe, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Imperial College London. The results were published in Nature this month.
Continue reading...International conference circuit gives worldwide right wing opportunities to share ideas and learn from each other
The president of the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) is a featured speaker at a conference this week in Pretoria, South Africa, hosted by an Afrikaner nationalist group whose founder was instrumental in persuading the American right that white South African farmers face systematic attacks.
Stefano Forte, also the executive director of the billionaire-funded 1776 Project Pac, will speak at the Lex Libertas Future of Nations conference on 25 February alongside leading figures from the Afrikaner Solidarity Movement, members of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang – whose predecessor was outlawed for racism – and a political analyst from a thinktank wholly funded by the regime of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Continue reading...We break down the complex tax rules for capital gains, pass-through entities, foreign investments and real estate to help you file your taxes in 2026.
A New Hampshire resident has been charged after a shooting involving a Border Patrol agent at a Canada crossing, the DOJ says
Witness claims suspect entered mosque during Ramadan evening prayers armed with axe
Police in Manchester have arrested a suspect after he allegedly entered Manchester Central Mosque with an axe and a knife.
Police were called at about 8.40pm to reports that two men had entered Manchester Central Mosque on Upper Park Roadand were acting suspiciously.
Continue reading...President’s address littered with false and misleading claims. Plus, how Trump’s big climate finding repeal could actually hurt big oil
Good morning.
Donald Trump declared his first year in office a success during his rambling State of the Union address, despite his presidency being plagued by low public approval ratings.
What misleading and false claims did Trump make? He presented the US economic situation positively, when job gains slowed in 2025; claimed that Iryna Zarutska was killed by an immigrant (false); and claimed that energy prices have fallen, when household energy bills have risen. Here are the biggest false claims, debunked.
What is Anthropic resisting? Anthropic has reportedly resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can use AI to kill people without human input.
Continue reading...Details emerge after struggling carmaker reports pre-tax losses of £363.9m for 2025
The luxury carmaker Aston Martin Lagonda is to cut its workforce by 20% as it looks to save about £40m after reporting widening losses.
The group, which said earlier this month it was consulting on its latest redundancy programme, said it would reduce its workforce by up to a fifth, or about 500 employees, after action at the start of last year that cut 170 jobs.
Continue reading...With its longtime figureheads stepping aside, Microsoft’s gaming division faces a pivotal moment, raising questions about whether it can still balance creative ambition with corporate strategy in the age of AI
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And so it’s all change at Xbox. Last Friday it was announced that the CEO of Microsoft’s gaming division, Phil Spencer, is to retire, while its president Sarah Bond is resigning. In their place, a new partnership: Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is promoted to chief content officer, while the new CEO is Asha Sharma, who moves from her post as president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product.
In a company-wide email, Spencer stated that he would stay on until the summer in an advisory role before, “starting the next chapter of my life”. For her part, Bond issued a statement on her LinkedIn account: “I’ve decided this is the right time for me to take my next step, both personally and professionally.” It was all extremely good natured, but its doubtful these airy missives tell the full tale.
Continue reading...During his State of the Union, President Trump honored several service members and an Olympic athlete with awards that included the Purple Heart, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Legion of Merit and the Medal of Freedom.
Tommy Schaefer released early from sentence for murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack and will face US federal charges
Indonesia has freed and deported a US man after he spent 11 years in prison for the premeditated murder of his then girlfriend’s mother on the tourist island of Bali, and he will now faces federal charges in the US.
Tommy Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison in Bali for the 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the mother of Heather Mack, during a luxury holiday, in a case that became known as the Bali suitcase murder. Prosecutors allege the couple were trying to gain access to a $1.5m (£1.1m) trust fund.
Continue reading...Lilia Valutyte was attacked by Deividas Skebas, 26, in Boston in July 2022 while playing outside her mother’s shop
A man who murdered a nine-year-old girl by stabbing her in the heart while she played with a hula hoop in the street has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years.
Lilia Valutyte was attacked by Deividas Skebas, 26, in the town centre of Boston, Lincolnshire, on 28 July 2022, while she was playing outside her mother’s embroidery shop.
Continue reading...Christophe Leribault, most recently Versailles director, will be tasked with improving security and ‘restoring climate of trust’
France has appointed Christophe Leribault as the new head of the Louvre, bringing in the director of the Palace of Versailles to turn around the world’s most visited museum after a humiliating jewellery heist and staff strikes.
Leribault, who was chosen by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will succeed Laurence des Cars, who resigned on Tuesday. Des Cars had faced intense criticism since burglars made off in October with jewels worth an estimated $102m, exposing glaring security gaps at the museum. The jewels are still missing.
Continue reading...The TCL X11L is the first TV to feature Super Quantum Dots, which promise better color than ever before, and I went eyes-on.
Apple has an epic roster of sci-fi shows.
The GR IV is a mild update to one of my favorite compact cameras that's perfect for travel and street photography.
He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 years
Stewart Brand thinks big and long. He thinks on a planetary scale – as suggested by the title of his celebrated Whole Earth Catalog – and on the longest of timeframes, as with his Long Now Foundation, which looks forward to the next 10,000 years of human civilisation. He has had a lifelong fascination with the future, and anything that could get us there faster, from space travel to psychedelic drugs to computing. In fact, he was arguably the bridge between the San Francisco counterculture of the 60s and present-day Silicon Valley: in his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs eulogised the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand’s philosophy, and echoed its farewell mantra: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
You could say that Brand has also lived big and long. He is now 87 years old, in the final chapters of an eventful and adventurous life that has crossed paths with some of the most consequential events and figures of his era. He has been a writer, an editor, a publisher, a soldier, a photojournalist, an LSD evangelist, an events organiser, a future-planning consultant, even a government adviser (to the California governor Jerry Brown in the late 70s). “There was a time when people asked me, ‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I find things and I found things,’” says Brand, as in he is a founder. He is speaking from a library where he likes to work in Petaluma, California, not far from his houseboat in Sausalito. “I’m always searching for good stuff to recommend, and good people.”
Continue reading...HP has revealed that memory now accounts for 35% of the cost of materials it needs to build a PC, up from between 15 and 18% last quarter. And the company expects RAM's contribution will rise through the year. From a report: Speaking on the company's Q1 2026 earnings call, interim CEO Bruce Broussard said the company has secured long-term supply agreements for the year and also "qualified new suppliers [and] built in strategic inventory positions for key platforms and cut the time to qualify new material in half to accelerate our product configuration changes." That sounds a lot like HP Inc is signing up new suppliers at a brisk pace. Broussard said the company has also "expanded lower-cost sourcing across our commodity basket, lowering logistics costs with agile end-to-end planning processes." The company is using its internal AI initiatives to power those new processes. The company is also "configuring our products and shaping demand to align the supply we have with our customer needs" and "taking targeted pricing actions to offset the remaining cost impact in close partnership with both our channel and direct customers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The artist, who was controversially revoked and then reinstated by his government, is planning a ‘nurturing experience’ to bring people together
Australia’s presentation at the Venice Biennale in May will be a “nurturing experience” designed to bring people together – in the aftermath of one of the most turbulent and divisive periods in the country’s 72-year history at the prestigious international art festival.
Artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino, who were controversially dumped and then reinstated as Australia’s representatives, will present not one but two major works at the Venice Biennale in May – both informed by Sabsabi’s practice as a Sufi Muslim and exploring “spirituality, migration, and the vastness of shared humanity”.
Continue reading...Bank reports better-than-expected annual results and CEO signals overhaul of lender is almost over
Bankers at HSBC are to share a bonus pot worth $3.9bn (£2.9bn), the highest in more than a decade, after Europe’s largest lender reported better-than-expected annual results.
The bonus pool for staff is 10% higher than a year earlier and the bank said it had determined it “based on a review of our performance against financial and non-financial metrics”, while the bank’s chief executive’s pay also rose.
Continue reading...If you're 55 or older you can save money using AT&T and T-Mobile. Here are the best discounts and special phone plans for people in their golden years.
President Trump delivered his 2026 State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Read the transcript and watch the full video.
Your rice cooker is far more versatile than the name implies.
It's great to see Dell bring back the XPS and do so with such style.
Glowfrog Games; PC
Short but very sweet tale asks the player to compile a scrapbook of mementoes telling the story of a heartfelt bond that frays over time
There are few things sadder than the end of a close friendship. Whether it happens in a sudden moment of betrayal or after years of gradual separation, the feelings of loss can stay with you for a lifetime.
This is the theme of Pieced Together, a quiet, charming narrative game about best pals Connie and Beth, who meet at school in the 1990s and form an immediate, seemingly inseparable bond. Through the ingenious medium of an interactive scrapbook, we play as Connie, glueing in photos, notes and memories of her friend after years of separation. The game begins with several attempts to write Beth a letter, before we cut-out, stick and sort the story of their lives together.
Continue reading...In his new memoir, Art Manteris recalls raucous times in Nevada, and explains why the explosion of sports betting in the US presents serious risks
Forty years ago, the New England Patriots played in their first Super Bowl. It ended disastrously for New England, who lost 46-10 to the Chicago Bears. The Bears’ mammoth defensive tackle, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, even got involved in the scoring with a touchdown.
That moment looked like it would cause serious problems for Art Manteris, who at the time ran the sportsbook at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Under Manteris, Caesars had offered odds on whether Perry would score during the game – and, as fans scrambled to back the popular player, the house stood to lose a significant sum if he did. When Perry ran into the end zone, gamblers collected handsomely, to the tune of $250,000. The next day, Manteris was summoned to meet the boss of Caesars, Henry Gluck.
Continue reading...Timing and luck often dictate a team’s success at tournaments. And the co-hosts have players coming into form at just the right time
Bruce Arena once said that if his United States men’s national team had contested the 2006 World Cup a year earlier, the Americans would have done much better than the joyless, winless group stage elimination they suffered through. That team, he felt, had peaked during qualifiers and were past their best – despite being ranked an absurd fourth in the world by Fifa – when the World Cup kicked off.
Four years earlier, when the USMNT stunned the 2002 World Cup by nearly reaching the semi-finals, his side benefited from time’s relentless march, Arena argued. The Americans, cohesive and energized then, upset a golden Portugal generation that had already lost its sheen, 3-2, to spark their run.
Continue reading...President derided Biden’s ‘green new scam’ during State of the Union address, and hailed the rise in US oil production
Trump didn’t say the words “climate change” during the State of the Union, but it loomed large over his 108-minute speech as he touted his “drill, baby, drill” agenda and derided Joe Biden’s “green new scam”.
Toward the beginning of his address, the president discussed last year’s flooding at Camp Mystic in Texas, saying they were “one of the worst things I’ve ever seen”.
Continue reading...McDonald’s and other food industry players accuse the big beef packers of collusion and price-gouging. The packers deny these allegations
On 21 November, at the end of the first shift at the Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, all workers were called to the lunchroom and told they no longer had jobs. Many gathered afterward in the gravel parking lot. Some wailed and cried out.
“It’s a terrible thing to know that we won’t be able to pay rent, won’t be able to pay the electricity, our cars – all the bills coming our way,” said Constancio Perales, a 64-year-old worker born in Durango, Mexico, who has worked at the plant since 1996 – the last 25 years cutting the bone out of chuck steaks. “It’s very sad that they would fire us like that – just telling us there’s no more work, as if to say go away.”
Continue reading...Lenovo's compact gaming tower has great performance for the money and looks good, too, but could be more upgrade-friendly.
If you're wondering how to post about ICE on neighborhood apps, here are some tips.
Texas Democrat removed for holding ‘Black people aren’t apes’ sign as colleagues stay seated while Republicans cheer
As dozens of their colleagues boycotted Trump’s State of the Union address, several of the Democrats in the House chamber on Tuesday night made their opposition to the president’s remarks clear.
Congressman Al Green was ejected from the speech almost immediately, marking the second year in a row he has been removed from the annual event. After being ordered out by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, during last year’s speech for yelling responses as the president spoke, this year’s protest from the Texas representative was silent but pointed.
Continue reading...Former official at Altach given suspended prison term
Player says the sentence ‘leaves me speechless’
A man has been given a seven-month suspended prison sentence and fined €1,200 (£1,046) after being found guilty of taking secret videos and photographs from the changing room, gym and showers of the Altach women’s football team. He was also told to pay the victims €625 each in compensation.
The sentence was handed out in the regional court in Feldkirch, Austria, with the judge saying that it made a huge difference “if one looks at pictures or actually creates them oneself”. The defendant accepted the sentence but the prosecutor may appeal.
Continue reading...Amid Trump’s lies and xenophobic rants, people struggling to pay bills and make ends meet are unlikely to be moved
He wanted to give the king’s speech. Donald Trump entered the US House chamber on Tuesday like a medieval monarch, with Republicans lined up eager to touch his royal robes (or, in two cases, grab a selfie with him). But within moments, the illusion was shattered.
As the US president strolled by, soaking up adulation, Democratic representative Al Green of Texas held aloft a handwritten sign: “Black people aren’t apes!” – a reference to Trump recently sharing a racist video depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Continue reading...President hails ‘turnaround for the ages’ but offers few policy pledges and repeats jibes against ‘crazy’ Democrats
Donald Trump proclaimed his first year in office a success at the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, even as his presidency is dogged by low public approval ratings before November’s midterm elections in which voters could hand control of Congress back to his Democratic opponents.
The annual address to a joint session of Congress came after months of turmoil for the Republican president, including a crackdown on immigrant communities in Minneapolis that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens, and faltering progress on his campaign promise of lowering the cost of living.
Continue reading...Donald Trump proclaimed his first year in office a success at the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, even as his presidency is dogged by low public approval ratings before November’s midterm elections in which voters could hand control of Congress back to the Democrats. Trump spoke for two hours addressing a host of issues, from his supreme court challenges to Iran, with some Democrats reacting by walking out, holding signs and verbally clashing in the chamber
Continue reading...Spring is round the corner!
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Saw dome geese fly overhead last night which is usually a good indication the weather is going to be good again 🥰
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address showed how much more public political vitriol has become. At this watch party, viewers were waiting for it.
In the first State of the Union address of his second term, President Donald Trump proclaimed that “our nation is back, bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.”
“What a difference a president makes,” Trump said. “A short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
But our review of his speech found that he distorted a number of facts about the state of the economy, health care, immigration and other topics.
Trump’s Feb. 24 address was longer than any prior SOTU, clocking in at over 1 hour and 47 minutes, as measured by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Trump falsely claimed that he inherited “a stagnant economy” with “inflation at record levels.”
Economists have told us that the U.S. economy under Joe Biden was not stagnant. “Real GDP growth during the Biden presidency was positive and often above trend, and unemployment remained historically low,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told us for a Feb. 11 story.
Bureau of Economic Analysis data show that under Biden, real gross domestic product (meaning it has been adjusted for inflation), grew at an annual rate of 6.2% in 2021 (during the COVID-19 recovery), 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023 and 2.8% in 2024. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate also decreased under Biden, going from 6.4% when he was inaugurated to 4% in his last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average monthly unemployment rate for Biden’s presidency was 4.1%, below the historical average
As for inflation, when Trump took office, the annualized rate of inflation was 3%, based on the Consumer Price Index. That was far from the 9.1% rate in June 2022, under Biden, which was the highest 12-month increase since November 1981, according to the BLS. The worst inflation in U.S. history was not long after World War I, when the Consumer Price Index was up 23.7% for the 12 months ending in June 1920.
Trump later said in his speech that “the roaring economy is roaring like never before.” But under Trump, real GDP growth was down to an annual rate of 2.2% in 2025, and the unemployment rate was up to 4.3% as of January.
Trump also claimed that the 43-day shutdown of the federal government ended up “costing us two points” on GDP.
Fourth quarter growth in 2025 was 1.4%, much lower than economists had projected. The Bureau of Economic Analysis said that was partly due to the extended shutdown, but attributed just 1 percentage point — not 2 — of reduced GDP growth to the shutdown.
Trump misleadingly claimed to be bringing down “high prices” he blamed on Democrats.
“Their policies created the high prices,” the president said. “Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting downward.”
He went on to name some food items that he claimed have seen average price declines and cited energy prices as well. “Nobody can believe when they see the kind of numbers, especially energy,” he said. “When they see energy going down to numbers like that, they cannot believe it.”
Prices had increased substantially during the first half of Biden’s term, due largely to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic — not just Democratic policies.
Furthermore, overall prices are not down under Trump. As we said, in January, the annual inflation rate was down to 2.4%, which is above the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve. So, prices are still increasing, but at a slower pace than when Trump took office.
In addition, while the average price of some grocery items, such as eggs and bread, have come down since the start of Trump’s second term, other items, such as beef, or ground chuck, have seen an average price increase, contrary to what Trump said. And average food prices overall are up instead of down. As of January, the Consumer Price Index for at-home food products purchased at a grocery store or supermarket had increased about 2.2%, year over year, according to the most recent BLS data.
As for energy prices, it wasn’t clear from his remarks which energy prices Trump was referencing. The CPI for energy overall was down 0.3% for the 12 months ending in January, while the index for household energy specifically rose 6.6% in that period, according to BLS data. Also, the average price of electricity per kilowatt hour has risen about 7.3% in the last year.
During the speech, Trump claimed, “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.” While accurate, the statistic loses some luster when factoring in steady U.S. population growth. In fact, job growth slowed and the employment-to-population ratio declined a bit in the first year of Trump’s second term.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 158,627,000 people employed in the U.S. in January, and that’s the highest number on record. But by and large, as the population of the U.S. has grown over the years, so too has the number of people employed in the U.S., with notable exceptions during recessions.
Since employment recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-2022, jobs have reached new highs nearly every single month. Trump’s claim also overlooks that job growth was lower between January 2025 and January 2026 under Trump — a gain of 359,000 jobs or 0.2% — than it was for Biden’s final year — a gain of 1.2 million jobs or 0.8.%.
There are other, more relevant statistics, on employment growth that factor in population growth. BLS’ employment-population ratio, which is the percentage of the population that is working, declined from 60.1% in January 2025 to 59.8% in January 2026. Another measure is the labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work. That rate has stayed relatively the same, going from 62.6% in January 2025 to 62.5% in January 2026. The so-called “prime age” labor force participation rate, focusing just on those ages 25 to 54, rose from 83.5% in January 2025 to 84.1% in January 2026.
Trump misleadingly said that he had taken prescription drugs “from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest.” He also said that Americans “will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs.”
The Trump administration’s negotiations with drugmakers may have lowered prices for specific drugs to some degree, and in limited situations. However, there’s no evidence of a broad decrease in U.S. drug prices, as we wrote in a recent story. In fact, the median list price for hundreds of brand-name drugs rose by 4% in 2025 and in 2026 thus far, according to the research firm 46brooklyn.
Trump’s drug pricing strategy is based on the concept of most favored nation pricing. Under an MFN policy, a country bases its prices off of those in other countries.
So far, the Trump administration has made deals with 16 drug companies, securing commitments to offer selected brand-name drugs at discounted cash prices for people not using insurance. Companies have also promised to launch new drugs and offer drugs to Medicaid at MFN prices. In return, companies have gotten various benefits, including promised exemptions from tariffs and from future mandatory MFN policies.
TrumpRx, the federal website designed to highlight the administration’s cash deals, launched on Feb. 5 and so far shows cash prices for 43 brand-name drugs from the first five companies to make deals with the administration.
However, experts previously told us that while the site does offer a few good deals — for example, for people taking fertility or weight loss drugs that are often not covered by insurance — its impact is limited.
“Manufacturers have agreed to discount prices on some drugs that are not well covered by insurance or already have generic competition, and that’s not nothing, but it’s not necessarily going to help a lot of people, right now anyway,” Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF, told us.
For most people, insurance will offer a better deal, she said. And even for people paying for their drugs in cash, at least 18 of the drugs on TrumpRx are available as generics for lower prices elsewhere, an analysis from STAT found.
Trump claimed that the prices are now the lowest in the world, but even for the select drugs on TrumpRx, it’s not clear if that’s true. A spokesperson for the White House previously told us the administration was using prices from other G7 nations as comparators on the site but didn’t specify what prices were being compared. Cubanski told us that it’s difficult to determine whether the prices are the lowest internationally, as countries may get rebates or discounts that are not disclosed.
Trump said he was asking Congress to “codify” his MFN program but his Great Healthcare Plan is light on specifics regarding the legislation he is suggesting Congress should pass.
Trump repeated a regular talking point, saying, “In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.” That’s an unsubstantiated figure.
A White House website tallying such promises puts the total at $9.6 trillion for “U.S. and Foreign Investments,” providing very few details on these agreements. But as we’ve written before, even that number is shaky because it includes pledges and planned investments that may not happen.
“[T]hey’re just promises — and often vague ones at that,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in an April 2025 analysis when Trump began making such claims.
In looking at the White House list in May, we found that some investments may not be due to Trump. A $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project, for example, was reportedly in the planning stages in March 2024, well before the election. And both a labor union and a Democratic governor took credit for the announced reopening of an auto assembly plant that also was on the Trump administration’s list.
Trump made the unsupported claim that “the flow of deadly fentanyl across our border is down by a record 56% in one year.”
Experts who study drug flow and policy have told us before that it’s not possible to know how much more or less of an illicit drug is getting into the U.S. That’s because there is no comprehensive data on the total flow of drugs into the country, which includes drugs that have not been detected by authorities, as the Congressional Research Service has reported.
“The best thing that we have as a gauge for what comes into the country is the seizure data,” and that “is not a metric of how much is actually coming into the U.S.,” Katharine Neill Harris, a fellow in drug policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told us for an October 2024 story. “This is just the data that’s coming through the border security,” she said, noting that this excludes drugs that are smuggled into the country other ways, such as by mail.
Some use the seizure data as a proxy for how much enters the country undetected, with more drug seizures suggesting that more drugs are coming into the country — or vice versa.
The amount of fentanyl seized by federal border officers decreased by about 49% in the first year of Trump’s second term, going from 21,075 pounds seized in Biden’s last full 12 months in office to 10,674 pounds seized in Trump’s first full 12 months, according to the most recent Customs and Border Protection data. A White House spokesperson pointed to a CBP announcement in September that said since Trump took office in January, “fentanyl trafficking at the southern border is down by 56% compared to the same period in 2024.”
The number of pounds seized has been on the decline since peaking in fiscal year 2023. The fact that the seized amount has gone down could mean that less of the drug is being trafficked to the country, but it could mean that authorities are simply catching less of it. (The declining number of fentanyl overdose deaths since late 2023 suggests that it may be the former.)
But not having the figure for the total fentanyl flow to the U.S. makes it difficult to know if the president’s claim is accurate. “If you don’t know the denominator, you can’t have an answer,” David Luckey, director of the RAND Rural America Partnership Initiative and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy, told us in 2024.
Trump continued to making false claims about gasoline prices, saying: “Gasoline — which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor was, quite honestly, a disaster — is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states. And in some places, $1.99 a gallon. And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline.”
As of Feb. 24, there were no U.S. states where the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was below $2.30, according to state price data from AAA. Oklahoma was the closest to that figure, with an average price of $2.37. That also means there are no states with an average price below $2 per gallon. In Iowa, the state Trump mentioned, the average price statewide was $2.55, at the time of his remarks.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told us for a Feb. 19 story that, as of Feb. 14, there were “about 40 stations in the nation with gasoline below $2/gal, which is what we’ve generally seen on a daily basis for February thus far.” In a Feb. 24 post on Substack, he wrote that, as of that date, $2.69 was the “most common price being charged at stations nationwide.”
Nationwide, gasoline prices are roughly 17 cents (or about 5%) lower than they were when Trump took office. As of the week ending Feb. 23, the average price in the U.S. for a gallon of regular gasoline was almost $2.94, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Trump continued to make his inflated claim about ending “eight wars.”
“My first 10 months, I ended eight wars, including Cambodia,” Trump said. “Cambodia and Thailand, Pakistan and India would have been a nuclear war. Thirty-five million people, said the prime minister of Pakistan, would have died if it were not for my involvement. Kosovo and Serbia, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Congo and Rwanda. And, of course, the war in Gaza, which proceeds at a very low level, it’s just about there.”
When his claim was seven wars last year, experts in international relations told us that Trump played a substantial role in ending fighting in four of those conflicts — although the Indian government denied that the U.S. played a role in negotiating the ceasefire with Pakistan. Trump also counts some international disagreements that weren’t wars, as well as some battles that haven’t ended.
Trump includes the more than two-year-long war between Israel and Hamas as the eighth war, as the two sides agreed in October to a ceasefire and the return of hostages and prisoners. Many have said that Trump should get credit for getting the deal done, including Biden’s former national security adviser.
Steven A. Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that implementing Trump’s 20-point peace agreement comes with challenges. “Whether this leads to an end to the war remains an open question,” Cook said.
We’d note that both Israel and Hamas have accused the other of violating the terms of the ceasefire deal.
Trump claimed to have presided over a “tremendous renewal” of religion in America, but recent polling has found the opposite.
A Gallup poll conducted in November found that less than half of Americans reported that religion was an important part of their daily lives, which is a 17 percentage point decline since 2015, the year before Trump won his first election.
“The steady decline in U.S. religiosity over the past decade has been evident for years,” according to Gallup. “Fewer Americans identify with a religion, church attendance and membership are declining, and religion holds a less important role in people’s lives than it once did.”
That contradicts the president’s claim that “during my time in office, both the first four years, and in particular, this last year, there has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God.”
Trump went on to claim, “This is especially true among young people, and a big part of that had to do with my great friend, Charlie Kirk.”
A study released by the Pew Research Center in December found that Americans have remained roughly steady in whether or not they identify as religious since 2020, and that there is no surge in religious belief among the young.
“On average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans,” according to Pew. “Today’s young adults also are less religious than young people were a decade ago. And there is no indication that young men are converting to Christianity in large numbers,” as had been suggested in some recent reporting.
The president touted the so-called “warrior dividend” bonus checks that were sent to military personnel in December.
“Every service member recently received a warrior dividend of $1,776,” Trump said, later adding, “we got the money from tariffs and other things.”
It’s true that about 1.5 million active-duty and reserve military members received checks, but the money didn’t come from tariffs.
Those bonuses were a reallocation of funds initially earmarked for an increased Department of Defense housing allowance, funded by a $2.9 billion appropriation in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
During his address, Trump repeated — as he does in virtually every speech — his unsupported claim that many of the immigrants who came to the U.S. during the Biden administration “poured in by the millions and millions, from prisons, from mental institutions” in other countries. Trump has never provided any credible evidence of that.
Trump also claimed that Biden’s immigration policies allowed the entry of “11,888 murderers.” He has been citing variations of this figure for more than a year. But as we’ve written, he’s referring to noncitizens convicted of murder who were not being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The list, known as the agency’s non-detained docket, included 13,099 people as of July 21, 2024. The “vast majority” of them entered the country prior to the Biden administration and had their custody status determined “long before this Administration,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a 2024 statement, noting that many were in prison. Also, the noncitizens include those who entered the country legally, such as green-card holders.
Trump boasted, “The stock market has set 53 all-time record highs since the election. Think of that, one year. Boosting pensions, 401(k)s and retirement accounts for the millions and millions of Americans are all gaining. Everybody’s up, way up.” The stock market is up in Trump’s first year, but it’s down from the gains seen in the last two years under Biden.
Since Trump took office, the S&P 500 has risen 14.9% (that’s for the period between the close of the market on Jan. 17, 2025, the last business day before the inauguration, and the close of the market on the Feb. 24, 2026). Although Trump has said stocks far outperformed Wall Street expectations, that’s only a little better than many financial analysts forecast for 2025 just before Trump took office.
As Yahoo! Finance wrote on Jan. 2, 2025, “The median year-end target for the S&P 500 among strategists tracked by Yahoo Finance sits at 6,600. This would represent about a 12% increase from the index’s current level.”
Trump claimed the Dow Jones “broke 50,000 four years ahead of schedule, and the S&P hit 7,000 where it wasn’t supposed to do it for many years.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, reached 50,000 in early February, but has since dropped a bit, and was at 49,174 at the close of the market on Feb. 24.
Although Trump’s claim may make it seem like the stock market rebounded since he took office, the stock market performed well in Biden’s final two years in office — with the S&P 500 rising over 20% each of those years — better than the 13% gain Trump saw in his first year. As we wrote in our story, “Biden’s Final Numbers,” the S&P grew by nearly 58% over the entirety of Biden’s four years. The stock market has been on a good long-term run, with the S&P rising nearly 68% during Trump’s first four years in office and by 166% during the eight years under President Barack Obama before that.
We also note that while Trump said that “everybody’s up, way up,” only about 62% of Americans own any stock, according to a Gallup poll in 2025. Ownership of stock skews heavily to the wealthy — 87% among those in households earning at least $100,000. It was 28% among those in households earning less than $50,000.
“With the great Big Beautiful Bill, we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors,” Trump said, recycling some of his favorite short descriptors to describe the reconciliation bill he signed into law in July.
As we’ve noted before, the law boosted the number of people who don’t have to pay any tax on their Social Security benefits through 2028, but does not eliminate the tax for all seniors since there is a phase-out for those with higher incomes.
According to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, 88% of Social Security recipients 65 years or older will not pay any tax on those benefits under the law. That’s up from the 64% of senior recipients who already did not have to pay. (The law does not exempt individuals younger than 65 from having to pay taxes.)
The situation is similar with Trump’s claims of “no tax” on overtime or tips, which are also temporary and have phase-outs as income increases and other limitations. There is a maximum deduction of $25,000 for tips and $12,500 for overtime pay.
As he has for years, Trump insisted, without evidence, that “cheating is rampant in our elections.”
Trump urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, and also photo identification to vote in federal elections. Under the current law, registrants must attest that they are a citizen under penalty of perjury, and noncitizens who vote risk deportation and being permanently inadmissible for return to the U.S. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 14 states and Washington, D.C., don’t require identification at the polls.
We’ve written a lot of articles about Trump’s false, misleading and unfounded claims about fraud in the 2020 election (and other elections). We’ve also looked at the Trump campaign’s 2020 legal challenges, which lacked evidence of voter fraud and were almost universally dismissed by judges.
Trump’s own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency concluded that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history” and that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” And William Barr, U.S. attorney general in Trump’s first term, told a House committee in testimony released June 13, 2022: “In my opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud.” Barr told the committee the election fraud narrative the Trump campaign was “shoveling out to the public … was bullshit.”
Trump said the SAVE America Act was needed “to stop illegal aliens and others — they’re unpermitted persons — from voting in our sacred American elections.” He called that kind of illegal voting “rampant” in American elections. But that’s not what was found when numerous states used a program called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, to check the citizenship status of people on the voter rolls in numerous states.
According to the New York Times, of the 49.5 million voter registrations checked, the Department of Homeland Security referred about 10,000 cases to investigators. As the Times noted, that’s about 0.02% of registrations that were flagged as potentially being noncitizens. But even that number is inflated. The Times found that when several counties began looking into those on the voter rolls who were marked as potentially noncitizens, it turned out that only a fraction of them were. Moreover, there was no indication of how many of those who may have improperly registered to vote actually voted.
A spokesperson for the Trump administration noted that most of the states using the verification program are Republican-led states, and that the program might identify more noncitizens if it were embraced by Democratic-led states, many of which have less strict voter ID laws.
A systematic review and analysis of claims about noncitizen registrants and voters in all 50 states by the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, updated in February, found that “sweeping allegations about noncitizen registrations or voting appear to arise from misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications about complex voter data. In every examined case, when claims about large numbers of noncitizens on voting rolls are subject to scrutiny and properly investigated, the number of alleged instances falls drastically.”
Trump also criticized mail-in ballots, calling them “crooked,” and saying they should only be allowed, “for illness, disability, military or travel.”
Mail-in voting is widely used around the country. Eight states and Washington, D.C., conduct their elections mostly by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Another 28 states offer “no excuse” mail-in voting, meaning that any voter can request a mail-in ballot without needing to provide a reason. As we have written, experts have told us that voter fraud via mail-in ballots is rare, though more common than in-person voting fraud.
Trump made the dubious claim that the federal budget can be balanced by eliminating fraudulent spending.
“I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance,” he said. “We’ll get it done, and if we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly.”
In a 2024 report, the Government Accountability Office estimated that the entire federal government “could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.” But the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2025, which ended on Sept. 30, was nearly $1.8 trillion, and the Congressional Budget Office projected in its February budget outlook that the deficit will be $1.9 trillion for fiscal year 2026 and rise to $2 trillion or more in 2028 and subsequent fiscal years.
Trump claimed that he inherited “rampant crime at home” and later boasted “last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline, think of it, in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years.”
Crime data show that violent crime continued to decline in 2025, but the trend began in 2022 after a spike in crime, particularly murders, in 2020 — the year the pandemic began and the last year of Trump’s first term. Trump is right in touting the good news that violent crime continues to fall, but he wrongly paints this as a stark turnaround from when he took office.
U.S. violent crime rate peaked in the early 1990s and has generally declined since, even with the bump up in 2020. The rate dropped by 33.2 percentage points under Biden and was less than half the 1990s peak in 2024, the year before Trump took office, according to estimates from the FBI, which relies on voluntary reports from law enforcement agencies nationwide. The number and rate of murders also declined since 2020.
In 2024, Trump claimed such crime data amounted to “fake numbers.” But now that he’s in office, and the drop in crime continues, he has embraced those numbers.
Full-year nationwide data from the FBI won’t be released until later this year, but, as we reported last month, other groups that aggregate crime data reported by law enforcement agencies across the country show violent crime, including murder, went down again in 2025. Trump has highlighted a report by the Council on Criminal Justice that found a 21% decline in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025 in 35 cities.
CCJ reported, “When nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.”
The nationwide homicide rate was 5 per 100,000 in 2024.
Trump has attributed the crime drop to his policies of sending federal law enforcement, including the National Guard or immigration officers, into cities, as he mentioned repeatedly in the NBC News interview. But crime experts say such claims need robust research. “Without rigorous evidence, it is not possible to confidently pinpoint the factors fueling the drop in homicide,” the CCJ report said. “Any assertive claims about the influence of specific policy interventions, such as National Guard deployments and increased immigration enforcement or expanded community violence intervention programs, should be supported by robust research designs intended to measure their causal effects.”
Trump repeated a dubious claim he’s made several times before — and we’ve written about twice — regarding the ability of his increased tariffs to replace income taxes.
“I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love,” the president said.
But, as we’ve explained, there’s a wide margin between the revenues raised from personal income taxes versus those raised from tariffs.
For example, the federal government brought in a total of $560 billion in January, according to the Treasury’s most recent monthly report. More than half of that revenue came from individual income taxes, while just 5% came from tariffs.
“It is literally impossible for tariffs to fully replace income taxes,” Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld, economists with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote in 2024. “Tariff rates would have to be implausibly high on such a small base of imports to replace the income tax, and as tax rates rose, the base itself would shrink as imports fall, making Trump’s $2 trillion goal unattainable.”
Replacing the income tax with higher tariffs would cause job losses, higher inflation, larger federal deficits and a recession, Clausing and Obstfeld said.
“It would also shift the tax burden away from the well off, substantially increasing the tax burden on the poor and middle class,” they argued.
Many economists also say Trump is wrong to say tariffs are “paid for by foreign countries.” A Federal Reserve Bank of New York analysis published on Feb. 12 concluded that “nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers.”
White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett blasted the report as an “embarrassment,” saying, “It’s, I think, the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system.” Hassett claimed the authors “put out a conclusion which has created a lot of news that’s highly partisan based on analysis that wouldn’t be accepted in a first-semester econ class.”
But the New York Fed is hardly alone in holding that position. A working paper revised in February from Harvard University professor and former International Monetary Fund economist Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago for the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that “tariff pass-through to U.S. import prices is almost 100 percent, so the United States is bearing a large share of the costs.”
Trump said that last year, the U.S. “obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program” and “wiped it out.” But experts told us at the time that the June bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities damaged the country’s nuclear capabilities but that they were not “obliterated.” A preliminary classified intelligence assessment, described by CNN and the New York Times, said that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back by just a few months.
Indeed, Iran’s nuclear program continues. On Feb. 21, special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News that Iran is “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.” Meanwhile, the U.S. has been amassing warships and warplanes in the Middle East, and Trump has threatened military action against Iran. There will be further talks between the U.S. and Iran about the Iranian nuclear program on Feb. 26.
“We will always protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,” Trump insisted, about a third of the way through his speech.
To partially pay for the tax cuts in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans cut more than $990 billion in spending on Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for people who have low incomes or disabilities. The law has many Medicaid-related provisions, but a major way spending was brought down was by modifying Medicaid eligibility requirements and introducing new work requirements. With fewer people on Medicaid, the program costs less.
Republicans have previously argued that Medicaid remains available and has not changed, but the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicaid-related changes in the law would result in 7.5 million fewer Americans having health insurance in 2034. A much smaller number of people — 100,000 — would lose coverage in a decade as a result of changes to Medicare under the law, CBO said. Another 2.1 million were estimated to lose coverage as a result of changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
Trump exaggerated the increase in U.S. oil production and gave himself too much credit for the country’s record output of natural gas.
“American oil production is up by more than 600,000 barrels a day, and we just received, from our new friend and partner, Venezuela, more than 80 million barrels of oil,” he said. “American natural gas production is at an all-time high because I kept my promise to drill, baby, drill.”
As of November, U.S. crude oil production had increased to an average of more than 13.6 million barrels per day in Trump’s first full ten months in the White House, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s up about 2.5%, or 334,600 barrels per day, from less than 13.3 million barrels per day during the same period in 2024.
Before Trump was inaugurated, and before any of his policies were in place, the EIA had already projected in its January Short-Term Energy Outlook that average daily production would increase to a 13.5 million barrels a day in 2025 — up from the previous record of 13.2 million barrels per day in 2024.
Meanwhile, through November, production of dry natural gas had increased to an average of nearly 3.3 trillion cubic feet per month in Trump’s first full ten months in the White House, according to EIA data. That’s up about 4.2% from more than 3.1 trillion cubic feet produced per month during the same period in 2024, which was already a record year for natural gas production in the country, the EIA said.
Correction, Feb. 25: We have corrected Trump’s quote about the price of gasoline. He said gasoline is “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states,” not $2.36.
Clarification, Feb. 25: We edited the summary to make clear that the annual inflation rate was 3% when Trump took office in January 2025, not 9.1%.
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Film screening: Oscar-shortlisted The President’s Cake 9 April 2026 — 4:30PM TO 7:30PM Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House
Join us for a screening and panel discussion of the critically acclaimed film offering lessons from Iraq on dictatorship, corruption and the long-term impacts of sanctions.
Join us for a screening and panel discussion of the critically acclaimed film offering lessons from Iraq on dictatorship, corruption and survival under sanctions
From debut Iraqi director Hasan Hadi, The President’s Cake is a poignant story of love, friendship and resilience told through the eyes of a child growing up under Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime. It was the first Iraqi film to feature at the Cannes Film Festival, premiering in Directors’ Fortnight and winning both the section’s Audience Award and the festival’s prestigious Camera d’Or.
As many states in the Middle East continue to prioritise internal control and regime durability, The President’s Cake shows how power is sustained not only through coercion, but also through everyday social practices that shape behaviour and reinforce compliance. These dynamics remain central to understanding current political trajectories, state–society relations, and the prospects for meaningful reform.
A panel discussion following the screening, featuring the director and leading Iraq experts, will explore these themes in greater depth – drawing lessons from Iraq’s experience on authoritarian resilience, social cohesion, and the long-term legacies of political control.
Click here for The President’s Cake official trailer.
The event will be followed by a drinks reception for guests.
Opposition campaigners claim top figures in regime use state wealth to fund lifestyles counter to those they preach
Members of Iran’s ruling elite have been accused of brazen hypocrisy by allegedly using the state’s wealth to help to fund their adult children’s lives in the west while presiding over growing economic misery and repression at home.
Opposition campaigners made the accusation against some of the clerical regime’s most powerful figures as a military confrontation with the US appears increasingly likely. Donald Trump has deployed a vast armada in the Middle East and confirmed he is considering strikes.
Continue reading...Lio Cundiff, who is trans, told the Guardian he hopes the act shows everyone how ‘human we are – because all I did was a human act’
A Chicagoan who recently jumped into a perilously cold lake to help rescue a baby whose stroller was blown into the water by a wind gust has implored everyone in the US to “just take care of one another”.
In an interview Tuesday, Lio Cundiff, who is a trans man, said of himself: “All I did was a human act. I’m just a human who did the most human thing you could do – which is save someone who can’t save themselves.”
Continue reading...
Why Should Delaware Care?
U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s guest to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address helped protect a Delaware citizen from the administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement last year.
A tenacious Delaware immigrant rights advocate accompanied U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester to President Donald Trump’s second State of the Union Address on Tuesday — an attempt to underscore Delaware’s aid efforts following a year of heightened federal immigration enforcement.
Blunt Rochester invited Maria Mesias-Tatnall, director of outreach services for immigration assistance with Delaware’s Office of the Attorney General, to be her guest to the president’s annual speech to a joint session of Congress.
Mesias-Tatnall was chosen because she “epitomizes the moment,” as dozens of advocates work to help Delaware’s immigrant communities that are living in “terror,” Blunt Rochester said. Mesias-Tatnall played a crucial role in rescuing a survivor of domestic violence who was on the verge of being deported back to her abuser last spring — a story recounted by Spotlight Delaware last year.
The woman — who was identified under the pseudonym of “Isabela” in order to protect her identity — was in the process of obtaining a visa reserved for victims of crime and was temporarily shielded from deportation. Still, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested the mother of two with no criminal history inside her Sussex County home in March 2025, before she was sent to a detention center in Louisiana.
“We represent the people who cannot come in front of the camera,” Mesias-Tatnall said.
Earlier this month, Blunt Rochester hosted a roundtable discussion in Georgetown with leaders and members of Delaware’s Haitian and Latino immigrant communities, with Mesias-Tatnall in attendance. During the meeting, several attendees reported that people have not shown up to medical appointments while some families have stopped sending their kids to Head Start programs.
“It’s not just happening in one part of the country, it’s also happening right here at home,” Blunt-Rochester said.
On Feb. 3, the Department of Homeland Security moved to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian immigrants in the U.S. The termination would leave about 330,000 Haitian immigrants nationwide open to potential deportation.
But, that same day, a federal judge temporarily blocked the termination from taking place, setting up a legal battle that is slated to end with a Supreme Court decision.
In the days following the judge’s ruling, Blunt Rochester — alongside all Senate Democrats and Independents — sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, demanding that she reverse her directive to end TPS for Haitians.
In March 2025, ICE agents burst into Isabela’s house in the middle of the night – without presenting an arrest warrant – looking for her brother. The agents arrested Isabela in front of her two children as they searched the house,
Agents did not ask about Isabela’s immigration status before she was taken away in handcuffs as a collateral arrest, she told Spotlight Delaware.
Isabela was living in Delaware under the legal protection of “deferred action” as part of the lengthy U visa process, which helps victims of crime who assist law enforcement in catching criminals. Other U visa holders across the country, who have temporary legal status, have also been detained and deported as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
As a victim of domestic violence, Isabela helped police find, prosecute and deport her ex-husband who stabbed her in 2019.
A U visa allows undocumented victims of crime to live and work in the U.S. for up to four years and places them on a pathway to citizenship. The status is intended for crime victims who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement during the investigation.
ICE moved Isabela to Baltimore and then to a Louisiana detention center. After nearly a month in custody, Isabela’s release was negotiated through the efforts of the Delaware Attorney General’s office and Community Legal Aid Society Inc.
ICE planned on dropping Isabela at Louisiana’s Monroe Regional Airport with no documentation, phone, or money. As a result, Mesias-Tatnall boarded a Louisiana-bound flight to meet Isabela and bring her back home.
Mesias-Tatnall arrived at Isabela’s hotel room door at midnight. Isabela skeptically opened the door, wearing the same pajamas she wore the night ICE took her.
“You’re safe,” Mesias-Tatnall said. “We got you.”
Isabela threw her arms around Mesias-Tatnall and cried.
Following the rescue, Mesias-Tatnall visited Isabela just before Christmas. Isabela and her family have since moved to a new house and her children are getting therapy, Mesias-Tatnall said.
The post Blunt Rochester invites immigrant advocate to State of the Union amid heightened enforcement appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
From fire alarms to telephone cables, low voltage contractors are behind a lot of the wiring that powers peoples’ daily lives. Discussions of new licensing and inspection requirements have raised concerns about what the future of the low voltage electrical industry could look like in Delaware.
Delaware’s electrical workers are in a state of uncertainty as an oversight board considers implementing new requirements that could fundamentally change low voltage electrical work processes.
In August, the Delaware Board of Electrical Examiners, a little-known state regulatory body, introduced a proposal that would make low voltage electrical workers, who install “energy limited” wiring like telephone systems, fire alarms and satellite dish antennas, obtain an electricians’ license to do their work.
Completing a full electricians’ license, which includes an apprenticeship and classroom instruction, typically takes at least four years. Low voltage workers, who install systems under 50 volts, often undertake specialized training depending on what they are installing, but are exempt from acquiring an electricians’ license under existing Delaware code.
Low voltage workers and contracting associations protested the board’s licensing idea en masse, both at meetings during the fall and online, prompting the board to later withdraw the proposal.
“By eliminating that exemption, they would have required all the voltage work to be done by a licensed electrician,” said Jen Cohan, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Delaware trade association.
The saga continues, however, as the board of examiners – which falls under the state’s Division of Professional Regulation – discussed at its most recent meeting on Feb. 17, implementing an inspection requirement as part of the installation process for low voltage cabling instead of full licensure.
What exactly the inspection requirement might look like, and why the board began exploring changes to the low voltage work systems in the first place, remain unclear.
Some low voltage electrical workers and contracting associations told Spotlight Delaware that they did not know why the board was looking at changing the processes for low voltage work, especially when there does not appear to be a problem with those operations in the first place.
“I don’t know what problem the board is trying to solve,” said Dave Sweeney, regional director for the company Advantech Security, which installs various types of low voltage cabling.
Many also pointed to a rumor circulating the electrical industry that the state fire marshal was advocating for the licensing and inspection requirements due to some fire safety concerns that had arisen.
State Fire Marshal John Rudd, however, said that was a “misconception,” and he had not brought any suggestions to the board of examiners.
“We haven’t really recommended anything to the board,” Rudd told Spotlight Delaware. “We defer to the board on their recommendations because they are the ones that are in charge of all that stuff.”
Members of the Board of Electrical Examiners did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s multiple requests for comment.
Get Involved
The Board of Electrical Examiners is scheduled to meet next on Wednesday, March 4, at 8:30 a.m. inside the Cannon Building, located at 861 Silver Lake Blvd. in Dover.
Recent discussions of low voltage contract work provided more questions than answers about the board’s goals, and how it intends to move forward with the requirements.
At the Feb. 17 meeting, board president Karl Segner said the goal of an inspection requirement would be to ensure that low voltage projects are installed properly, and are in line with local and state codes.
He did not elaborate as to whether there have been incidents of low voltage installation not being up to code, or other safety concerns with low voltage work.
The Delaware Board of Electrical Examiners code defines low voltage contractors as those who install wiring for telephone systems, sound systems, cable television systems, closed circuit video systems, satellite dish antennas, and instrumentation and temperature controls.
To Sweeney, the Advantech director, it functions to “lump” all different types of low voltage workers into one licensing exemption, but trying to create a blanket licensing or inspection requirement for such varied low voltage jobs, he said, does not work.
“The board is going to have to take a more granular approach and look at specific trades or specific subsets of the low voltage industry,” he said.
Members of the Board of Examiners said at the meeting that they were not sure whether an inspection would be necessary for every single cable installation, or only for installations of a certain size.
They also mentioned that creating a new, separate licensing process for low voltage contractors, instead of the previous idea of combining them with electricians’ requirements, could be a possibility.
Some board members mentioned that nearby Cecil County, Md., has required inspections and licenses for low voltage work, which could serve as a model for a similar program in Delaware.
Cecil County did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment about their low voltage work requirements.
Sweeney, along with two other low voltage contractors, were asked to weigh in on the inspection and licensing discussions at the Feb. 17 meeting. Sweeney said he anticipates continuing to weigh in on the board’s discussions.
Cohan, with the builders and contractors association, said her group also plans to be involved in discussing ways to implement inspections with the board in the coming months.
Eddie Lesniczak, vice president of IBEW 313, the state’s electrical workers union, said he too has been following the discussion at recent board meetings, and has concluded there has been a lot of “confusion in the room” about what the board is trying to accomplish.
Lesniczak said he could see the merits of creating some licensing requirements for low voltage workers, but that those licenses should be entirely different from electricians’ licenses, as they are different crafts.
He added that the union has been struggling with workers who pretend to be certified electricians or pretend to know how to do low voltage cabling, and then they do installation projects incorrectly, so more verification of electricians’ licenses could be a way to assuage those concerns.
Amid the confusion about what inspired the low voltage discussion, rumors have circulated that the union encouraged the board of examiners to consider the licensing concept.
Lesniczak, however, said that is not the case.
“I’ve seen a lot of people’s comments pop up that the union is behind it,” he said. “We’re not behind this at all. It’s kind of surprising.”
Republican state lawmakers have also jumped into the conversation, criticizing the board’s proposals as a regulatory overreach and a detriment to the electrical work industry.
Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn (R-Georgetown), who has a background in data cabling work, said he does not understand why there is a conversation surrounding licensing and inspection because there is not a safety or fire risk with such low voltage cabling.
Pettyjohn added that low voltage cabling is an entirely different field from bigger electrical work, so the requirements must be kept separate.
“You’re talking about two different types of art,” he said. “And to lump them into one is something that would be devastating to the folks that do that now and drive up costs.”
House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton) said similarly that there is already a labor shortage in the trades, and adding more steps for electrical workers will only cause more problems, “without really solving anything.”
The board will continue discussing low voltage inspection requirements at its next meeting on March 4.
The post Low voltage electrical work discussion prompts widespread confusion, pushback appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
The Maduro raid encouraged anti-government activists in Iran, some of them said. But it doesn’t appear to have sent a clear message to Tehran’s leadership.
The Trump administration is loosening restrictions on the sharing of law enforcement information with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, officials said, overriding controls that have been in place for decades to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Government officials said the changes could give the intelligence agencies access to a database containing hundreds of millions of documents — from FBI case files and banking records to criminal investigations of labor unions — that touch on the activities of law-abiding Americans.
Administration officials said they are providing the intelligence agencies with more information from investigations by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to combat drug gangs and other transnational criminal groups that the administration has classified as terrorists.
But they have taken these steps with almost no public acknowledgement or notification to Congress. Inside the government, officials said, the process has been marked by a similar lack of transparency, with scant high-level discussion and little debate among government lawyers.
“None of this has been thought through very carefully — which is shocking,” one intelligence official said of the moves to expand information sharing. “There are a lot of privacy concerns out there, and nobody really wants to deal with them.”
A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Olivia Coleman, declined to answer specific questions about the expanded information sharing or the legal basis for it.
Instead, she cited some recent public statements by senior administration officials, including one in which the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, emphasized the importance of “making sure that we have seamless two-way push communications with our law enforcement partners to facilitate that bi-directional sharing of information.”
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, revelations that Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had used the CIA to spy on American anti-war and civil rights activists outraged Americans who feared the specter of a secret police. The congressional reforms that followed reinforced the long-standing ban on intelligence agencies gathering information about the domestic activities of U.S. citizens.
Compared with the FBI and other federal law enforcement organizations, the intelligence agencies operate with far greater secrecy and less scrutiny from Congress and the courts. They are generally allowed to collect information on Americans only as part of foreign intelligence investigations. Exemptions must be approved by the U.S. attorney general and the director of national intelligence. The National Security Agency, for example, can intercept communications between people inside the United States and terror suspects abroad without the probable cause or judicial warrants that are generally required of law enforcement agencies.
Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the expansion of that surveillance authority in the fight against Islamist terrorism has been the subject of often intense debates among the three branches of government.
Word of the Trump administration’s efforts to expand the sharing of law enforcement information with the intelligence agencies was met with alarm by advocates for civil liberties protections.
“The Intelligence Community operates with broad authorities, constant secrecy and little-to-no judicial oversight because it is meant to focus on foreign threats,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement to ProPublica.
Giving the intelligence agencies wider access to information on the activities of U.S. citizens not suspected of any crime “puts Americans’ freedoms at risk,” the senator added. “The potential for abuse of that information is staggering.”
Most of the current and former officials interviewed for this story would speak only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the matter and because they feared retaliation for criticizing the administration’s approach.
Virtually all those officials said they supported the goal of sharing law enforcement information more effectively, so long as sensitive investigations and citizens’ privacy were protected. But after years in which Republican and Democratic administrations weighed those considerations deliberately — and made little headway with proposed reforms — officials said the Trump administration has pushed ahead with little regard for those concerns.
“There will always be those who simply want to turn on a spigot and comingle all available information, but you can’t just flip a switch — at least not if you want the government to uphold the rule of law,” said Russell Travers, a former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center who served in senior intelligence roles under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The 9/11 attacks — which exposed the CIA’s failure to share intelligence with the FBI even as Al Qaida moved its operatives into the United States — led to a series of reforms intended to transform how the government managed terrorism information.
A centerpiece of that effort was the establishment of the NCTC, as the counterterrorism center is known, to collect and analyze intelligence on foreign terrorist groups. The statutes that established the NCTC explicitly prohibit it from collecting information on domestic terror threats.
National security officials have spent much less time trying to remedy what they have acknowledged are serious deficiencies in the government’s management of intelligence on organized crime groups.
In 2011, President Barack Obama noted those problems in issuing a new national strategy to “build, balance and integrate the tools of American power to combat transnational organized crime.” Although the Obama plan stressed the need for improved information-sharing, it led to only minimal changes.
President Donald Trump has seized on the issue with greater urgency. He has also declared his intention to improve information-sharing across the government, signing an executive order to eliminate “information silos” of unclassified information.
More consequentially, he went on to brand more than a dozen Latin American drug mafias and criminal gangs as terrorist organizations.
The administration has used those designations to justify more extreme measures against the criminal groups. Since last year, it has killed at least 148 suspected drug smugglers with missile strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, steps that many legal experts have denounced as violations of international law.
Some administration officials have argued that the terror designations entitle intelligence agencies to access all law enforcement case files related to the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and other gangs designated by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.
The first criterion for those designations is that a group must “be a foreign organization.” Yet unlike Islamist terror groups such as al-Qaida or al-Shabab, Latin drug mafias and criminal gangs like MS-13 have a large and complex presence inside the United States. Their members are much more likely to be U.S. citizens and to live and operate here.
On Sept. 22, the Trump administration also designated the loosely organized antifascist political movement antifa as a terrorist group, despite the lack of any federal law authorizing it to do so. Weeks later, the administration named four European militant groups said to be aligned with antifa to the government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Those steps were seen by some intelligence experts as potentially opening the door for the CIA and other agencies to monitor Americans who support antifa in violation of their free speech rights. The approach also echoed justifications that both Johnson and Nixon used for domestic spying by the CIA: that such investigations were needed to determine whether government critics were being supported by foreign governments.
The wider sharing of law enforcement case files is also being driven by the administration’s abrupt decision to disband the Justice Department office that for decades coordinated the work of different agencies on major drug trafficking and organized crime cases. That office, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, was abruptly shut down on Sept. 30 as the Trump administration was setting up a new network of Homeland Security Task Forces designed by the White House homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller.
The new task forces, which were first described in detail by ProPublica last year, are designed to refocus federal law enforcement agencies on what Miller and other officials have portrayed as an alarming nexus of immigration and transnational crime. The reorganization also gives the White House and the Department of Homeland Security new authority to oversee transnational crime investigations, subordinating the DEA and federal prosecutors, who were central to the previous system.
That reorganization has set off a struggle over the control of OCDETF’s crown jewel, a database of some 770 million records that is the only central, searchable repository of drug trafficking and organized crime case files in the federal government.
Until now, the records of that database, which is called Compass, have only been accessible to investigators under elaborate rules agreed to by the more than 20 agencies that shared their information. The system was widely viewed as cumbersome, but officials said it also encouraged cooperation among the agencies while protecting sensitive case files and U.S. citizens’ privacy.
Although the Homeland Security Task Forces took possession of the Compass system when their leadership moved into OCDETF’s headquarters in suburban Virginia, the administration is still deciding how it will operate that database, officials said.
However, officials said, intelligence agencies and the Defense Department have already taken a series of technical steps to connect their networks to Compass so they can access its information if they are permitted to do so.
The White House press office did not respond to questions about how the government will manage the Compass database and whether it will remain under the control of the Homeland Security Task Forces.
The National Counterterrorism Center, under its new director, Joe Kent, has been notably forceful in seeking to manage the Compass system, several officials said. Kent, a former Army Special Forces and CIA paramilitary officer who twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Washington state, was previously a top aide to the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard.
The FBI, DEA and other law enforcement agencies have strongly opposed the NCTC effort, the officials said. In internal discussions, they added, the law enforcement agencies have argued that it makes no sense for an intelligence agency to manage sensitive information that comes almost entirely from law enforcement.
“The NCTC has taken a very aggressive stance,” one official said. “They think the agencies should be sharing everything with them, and it should be up to them to decide what is relevant and what U.S. citizen information they shouldn’t keep.”
The FBI declined to comment in response to questions from ProPublica. A DEA spokesperson also would not discuss the agency’s actions or views on the wider sharing of its information with the intelligence community. But in a statement the spokesman added, “DEA is committed to working with our IC and law enforcement partners to ensure reliable information-sharing and strong coordination to most effectively target the designated cartels.”
Even with the Trump administration’s expanded definition of what might constitute terrorist activity, the information on terror groups accounts for only a small fraction of the records in the Compass system, current and former officials said.
The records include State Department visa records, some files of U.S. Postal Service inspectors, years of suspicious transaction reports from the Treasury Department and call records from the Bureau of Prisons.
Investigative files of the FBI, DEA and other law enforcement agencies often include information about witnesses, associates of suspects and others who have never committed any crimes, officials said.
“You have witness information, target information, bank account information,” the former OCDETF director, Thomas Padden, said in an interview. “I can’t think of a dataset that would not be a concern if it were shared without some controls. You need checks and balances, and it’s not clear to me that those are in place.”
Officials familiar with the interagency discussions said NCTC and other intelligence officials have insisted they are interested only in terror-related information and that they have electronic systems that can appropriately filter out information on U.S. persons.
But FBI and other law enforcement agencies have challenged those arguments, officials said, contending that the NCTC proposal would almost inevitably breach privacy laws and imperil sensitive case information without necessarily strengthening the fight against transnational criminals.
Already, NCTC officials have been pressing the FBI and DEA to share all the information they have on the criminal groups that have been designated as terrorist organizations, officials said.
The DEA, which had previously earned a reputation for jealously guarding its case files, authorized the transfer of at least some of those files, officials said, adding to pressure on the FBI to do the same.
Administration lawyers have argued that such information sharing is authorized by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the law that reorganized intelligence activities after 9/11. Officials have also cited the 2001 Patriot Act, which gives law enforcement agencies power to obtain financial, communications and other information on a subject they certify as having ties to terrorism.
The central role of the NCTC in collecting and analyzing terrorism information specifically excludes “intelligence pertaining exclusively to domestic terrorists and domestic counterterrorism.” But that has not stopped Kent or his boss, intelligence director Gabbard, from stepping over red lines that their predecessors carefully avoided.
In October, Kent drew sharp criticism from the FBI after he examined files from the bureau’s ongoing investigation of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist. That episode was first reported by The New York Times.
Last month, Gabbard appeared to lead a raid at which the FBI seized truckloads of 2020 presidential voting records from an election center in Fulton County, Georgia. Officials later said she was sent by Trump but did not oversee the operation.
In years past, officials said, the possibility of crossing long-settled legal boundaries on citizens’ privacy would have precipitated a flurry of high-level meetings, legal opinions and policy memos. But almost none of that internal discussion has taken place, they said.
“We had lengthy interagency meetings that involved lawyers, civil liberties, privacy and operational security types to ensure that we were being good stewards of information and not trampling all over U.S. persons’ privacy rights,” said Travers, the former NCTC director.
When administration officials abruptly moved to close down OCDETF and supplant it with the Homeland Security Task Forces network, they seemed to have little grasp of the complexities of such a transition, several people involved in the process said.
The agencies that contributed records to OCDETF were ordered to sign over their information to the task forces, but they did so without knowing if the system’s new custodians would observe the conditions under which the files were shared.
Nor were they encouraged to ask, officials said.
While both the FBI and DEA have objected to a change in the protocols, officials said smaller agencies that contributed some of their records to the OCDETF system have been “reluctant to push back too hard,” as one of them put it.
The NCTC, which faced budget cuts during the Biden administration, has been among those most eager to service the new Homeland Security Task Forces. To that end, it set up a new fusion center to promote “two-way intelligence sharing of actionable information between the intelligence community and law enforcement,” as Gabbard described it.
The expanded sharing of law enforcement and intelligence information on trafficking groups is also a key goal of the Pentagon’s new Tucson, Arizona-based Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel. In announcing the task force’s creation last month, the U.S. Northern Command said it would work with the Homeland Security Task Forces “to ensure we are sharing all intelligence between our Department of War, law enforcement and Intelligence Community partners.”
In the last months of the Biden administration, a somewhat similar proposal was put forward by the then-DEA administrator, Anne Milgram. That plan involved setting up a pair of centers where DEA, CIA and other agencies would pool information on major Mexican drug trafficking groups.
At the time, one particularly strong objection came from the Defense Department’s counternarcotics and stabilization office, officials said. The sharing of such law enforcement information with the intelligence community, an official there noted, could violate laws prohibiting the CIA from gathering intelligence on Americans inside the United States.
The Pentagon, he warned, would want no part of such a plan.
The post Trump Administration Moves to Allow Intelligence Agencies Easier Access to Law Enforcement Files appeared first on ProPublica.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The plans for several data centers in Delaware have garnered backlash from residents who are worried about their potential impact on energy costs and the environment. The outcome of this fight over environmental law will impact several of those proposals.
The developer behind a billion-dollar plan to build a data center near Delaware City is not giving up without a fight.
Last week, Starwood Digital Ventures appealed a state decision issued last month by Environmental Secretary Greg Patterson that the data center is not allowed under the Coastal Zone Act — a landmark Delaware law designed to limit heavy industry along the state’s shorelines.
The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control publicly released the appeal on Tuesday.
In it, Starwood’s attorney Jeffery Moyer argued that the data center plan, dubbed Project Washington, does not have the characteristics of heavy industry, such as smokestacks, chemical processing equipment or waste-treatment lagoons.
“Project Washington will be a non-manufacturing data-center campus that stores and manages data,” Moyer stated in the appeal.
In recent years, the data center industry has been among fastest growing in the country, with investors seeking the profits from an ongoing artificial intelligence boom. The exuberance appeared in Delaware in recent months with developers proposing several data center plans.
One of them, proposed near land that hosts the popular Halloween attraction Frightland north of Middletown, also sits within Delaware’s coastal zone boundaries and may have to comply with the provisions of the act.
The Delaware General Assembly passed the Coastal Zone Act in 1971 to protect the state’s environmentally sensitive shorelines by prohibiting new heavy industry from them.
In his decision on the Starwood proposal, Patterson pointed to the data center’s proposed use of 516 backup diesel generators, which would operate in the case of a power outage, as a reason for the heavy industry classification.
Together, they would rely on 2.5 million gallons of stored diesel, which Patterson called “entirely unprecedented” in his ruling.
Moyer — who represents Starwood as an attorney with Wilmington-based Richards, Layton & Finger — argued in the appeal that Patterson’s analysis “improperly” determined that the diesel engines’ exhaust and fuel storage amounted to tanks and smokestacks, under the law.
The Delaware Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board will decide whether to reverse Patterson’s decision. The date of the hearing has not yet been determined.
Despite Pattenson’s Coastal Zone Act decision, Starwood is continuing to progress through its other county and state regulatory processes.
In January, the company filed a request with New Castle County’s Board of Adjustments for a special use permit to allow it to build an electric switch station for the project. The board will consider the request during a hearing on March 5.
Starwood’s plan is also continuing to move through the state’s land-use review process – in which representatives from multiple state agencies offer comments about how the data center plan may be impacted by their respective regulations. Among the agencies that typically participate in the process is Patterson’s DNREC.
The process is conducted by the Delaware Preliminary Land Use Service board, which does not have the power to make final decisions. Still, its recommendations can influence the ultimate decisions that local governments make.
Get Involved
The Board of Adjustments will meet at 6 p.m. on March 5 at 67 Reads Way in New Castle. Members of the public can also attend the meeting over Zoom. The Preliminary Land Use Service will meet from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on March 5
Moyer, Starwood’s lawyer, also stated in the appeal that Patterson should not have relied on a worst-case scenario when calculating the potential emissions from the backup generators.
In its Coastal Zone application, Starwood reported that the maximum possible hours the generators could operate would be 500 hours, or a little over 20 days, per year.
“Under this worst-case assumption, this proposed campus has the potential to emit more tons of nitrogen oxides than any other industrial use in the coastal zone, with the exception of the Delaware City refinery,” Patterson said.
Starwood’s Coastal Zone Act application did say the generators could operate for that long in the worst-case conditions.
But Moyer said that Patterson “downplay[ed] the project’s actual expected operating scenario” of the generators running 20 hours per year “and failed to evaluate the potential to pollute under realistic operating conditions.”
Patterson did reference the 20-hour estimate in his decision. But he used the 500-hour scenario to calculate potential emissions.
Those familiar with the Coastal Zone Act decision process are unsure of whether Starwood has a case.
Kenneth Kristl, former director of the Environmental Rights Institute at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, said Patterson, as DNREC’s secretary, generally has considerable discretion about how the Coastal Zone Act is implemented.
Still, whether large-scale data centers count as heavy industry has not yet been litigated, he said.
“To me, it’s an intriguing legal question that needs to be resolved,” Kristl said.
New Castle County Councilman Dave Carter, who is trying to regulate data centers, said he has been on both sides of the Coastal Zone Act decision process, as a DNREC employee and as a litigant.
He thinks Patterson’s decision that Project Washington is heavy industry aligns with the “functional reality” of the plan, not how the developers are labeling it.
“You can do all the wordsmithing you want, but if you look at the actual impact … it’s clearly heavy industry,” Carter said.
Carter said regardless of what the Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board decides, he thinks the losing side will likely appeal the decision to the Delaware Superior Court, then the Delaware Supreme Court.
“This could take years,” he said.
Kristl agreed, saying he thinks the whole process will take between 18 months and three years.
The post Delaware City data center developer appeals Coastal Zone denial appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
President Trump defended his first year back in office in his 2026 State of the Union address, touting his record on immigration, the economy, tariffs and more.
Poet’s second collection The Rot won the Victorian prize for literature and the Indigenous writing category
Evelyn Araluen has won both the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature and the $25,000 Indigenous writing category at this year’s Victorian premier’s literary awards, for her second poetry collection The Rot.
Selected from almost 700 books entered for the prize, The Rot won the two awards on Thursday night, having also been shortlisted in the poetry category. The Goorie and Koori poet won the 2022 Stella prize, and was shortlisted for three premier’s literary prizes, for her debut collection Dropbear.
Continue reading...Rumors point to new Galaxy Watches on the way, but the rugged Ultra may steal the spotlight this year.
Apple's forthcoming touch-screen MacBook Pro models -- the company's first-ever laptops to support touch input -- will feature the iPhone's Dynamic Island at the center top of their OLED displays and a new interface that dynamically adjusts between touch and point-and-click controls, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the plans. The 14-inch and 16-inch models, code-named K114 and K116, are slated for release toward the end of 2026 and won't be part of Apple's product announcements in the first week of March. The redesigned interface brings up a contextual menu surrounding a user's finger when they touch a button or control, and enlarges menu bar items when tapped, adapting the available controls based on whether the input is touch or click. Apple does not plan to position the machines as iPad replacements or describe them as touch-first; the physical design retains the full keyboard and large trackpad of the current MacBook Pro. Last year's Liquid Glass redesign in macOS Tahoe, which added more padding around icons and touch-optimized sliders in the control center, was partly groundwork for this shift.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This blog is now closed
Trump claims host of successes and attacks old foes in longest State of the Union
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Erika Kirk, the widow of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, will attend tonight’s State of the Union address as a special guest of the president.
After her husband was assassinated at a college event for his non-profit Turning Point USA, Erika Kirk took over the organization.
If he’s coming to our house, you got to be there. Otherwise, you let him own the house.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: With the latest supreme court ruling exposing the president’s tariff plans as unlawful, US politicians and the American people have found them to be unworkable. Where does Trump go from here?
Good morning. Let’s delve into the two Ts shaping the global economy right now: tariffs and Trump.
Last week, the US supreme court ruled that Donald Trump had unlawfully used executive powers to impose sweeping global tariffs. In a 6-3 decision, the court found that the 1977 law Trump relied on did not give him the authority he claimed to introduce tariffs across the world. The ruling dealt a significant blow to a central plank of the president’s economic and geopolitical agenda.
US news | Donald Trump proclaimed his first year in office a success at the State of the Union address overnight, even as his presidency is dogged by low public approval ratings before November’s midterm elections.
UK news | Peter Mandelson condemned the police for his arrest and claimed he was only taken into custody because detectives had wrongly believed he was about to flee the country.
Reform | Unions and renters’ groups criticised Reform UK after the party’s business spokesperson pledged to introduce a “great repeal act” that would abolish Labour legislation on workers’ rights and protection for tenants.
Education | Teachers and schools face “a huge ask” implementing the government’s special needs proposals, according to education leaders and MPs who otherwise gave the plans a cautious welcome.
Health | Almost half the public delay or avoid contacting their GP surgery when they are ill, mainly because they think they will struggle to get an appointment, a survey found.
Continue reading...Throughout the speech, Trump seemed tired. He had difficulty reading from his teleprompter; he gripped the podium with a tightness bordering on desperation
It is one of Donald Trump’s unique talents that he reveals the absurd obsolescence of long-held traditions. In presidential election years, his screaming bloviations on stage make the exercise of gathering the candidates together seem futile. In power, when he divorces facts from policymaking and relies instead on myth and grift to guide his decisions, he renders useless and impotent vast fields of expertise.
When he lies in public, and insists that his fantasies and distortions will dictate the course of government action, he makes those of us in the news business wonder if there’s any point, any more, in gathering and printing the truth.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
Continue reading...  | I recently replaced my Pint X Enduro tire (soft) and the wear on the shoulders is significant, especially on my toe edge. If you look closely, you can see the surface is no longer flat as it is on the new tire. The old tire has 1200+ miles on it. [link] [comments] |
The City of Newark is inviting residents to learn about solar power, and all attendees will receive a $40 credit on their electric bill just for showing up.
Surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, will be located on Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost island
Japan will deploy missiles to a tiny island near Taiwan within five years, its defence minister has said, in a move that is likely to inflame tensions with China.
The surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, will be located on Yonaguni – Japan’s westernmost island – by March 2031, Shinjiro Koizumi said.
Continue reading...Virginia’s new governor gives State of the Union rebuttal while Alex Padilla echoes similar themes in Spanish response
Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger gave a crisp and pointed rebuttal to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, focusing on what she called the president’s failure to deliver costs, safety and humanity to the American people.
“We did not hear the truth from our president,” Spanberger said in the 12-minute speech on Tuesday night, asking voters to reflect on how Trump’s agenda has directly affected their lives. “So let’s speak plainly and honestly,” she said. “Is the president working for you?”
Continue reading...Hi guys!
I recently got my first onewheel (pint) and I really want to screw around with VESCing the board, but there isn't a ton of information readily available. I have lots of questions, but I will try to be brief xD.
I'm a budget baller (obviously very difficult for onewheel, but 🙄) but it seems the easiest VESC to start with would be the floatwheel one. My main questions come from what kind of performance I could expect from various configs. Main two choices being: keeping the stock BMS and just building a higher quality battery than the stock one (21700s maybe), or fully upgrading and going to 20s or so. I really just want a speed increase (cruise 20-25mph or so). I really just want to hear more options and how different configs affect the final result.
TLDR: How good is the performance difference just by upgrading the controller?
Candidates wishing to run for school board have until March 6 to file to run in the May 12 election.
Not all partnerships are worth reviving.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered the Democratic response to President Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday night as the party attempts to counter the president's message.
Secretary of state makes rare briefing to so-called ‘gang of eight’ as US deploys largest force of aircraft and warships to Middle East since 2003
Marco Rubio delivered a rare briefing to top US lawmakers on Iran, just a few hours before Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to say that Tehran would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
Amid the largest deployment of aircraft and warships to the Middle East since the 2003 buildup to the Iraq war, Trump said he wanted to solve the confrontation with Iran through diplomatic means while claiming that Tehran was seeking to develop ballistic missiles that could reach the US, without providing further details.
Continue reading...During the State of the Union address, President Trump awarded Royce Williams a Medal of Honor for his actions in a secret mission during the Korean War.
President Trump touted his work during his first year back in office, saying, "inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before."
President Trump pressed the Iranian government to reach a deal on its nuclear program as he weighs possible military action against the country.
Connor Hellebuyck stopped 41 of Team Canada's 42 shots in the Olympic gold medal match.
The United States installed a record 57 gigawatt hours of new battery storage on its electric grids in 2025, a nearly 30% increase over the prior year that arrived even as the Trump administration cut tax credits for wind and solar in last summer's One Big Beautiful Bill. The figures come from a Solar Energy Industries Association report published Monday, which also projects the market will grow another 21% this year by adding 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. Battery tax credits themselves survived the legislation largely intact, and the majority of last year's new installations were stand-alone systems not tied to specific solar projects. In Texas, solar met more than 15% of electricity demand throughout the summer and beat out coal for the first time, and the SEIA report predicts the state will overtake California this year in total deployed storage. Supply chain restrictions reinforced by the bill and project cancellations could slow the pipeline this year, the report cautions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rebound in the country – which has been having demographic crisis – said to be partly because of 3.6 million born between 1991 and 1995 having children
South Korea recorded 254,500 births in 2025, the largest annual increase in 15 years, driven largely by a temporarily enlarged generation – known as “echo boomers” – now in their early thirties, alongside marriage rates recovering from Covid-era delays.
The country’s fertility rate – the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – rose to 0.80 from 0.75 last year, returning to the 0.8 range for the first time since 2021, according to provisional figures released by South Korea’s ministry of data and statistics on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 25.
Just got myself a pint x just this last saturday and have been ripping it around town and all about learning a getting the feel for it. I was wondering what shoe helps with foot fatigue abit I've seen some things about vans mte, I know that I'm still new an my muscles have grow for this but once I ride for a while mostly my feet hurt I can put up with the leg pain.
The U.S. men's hockey team also visited the White House on Tuesday following their gold medal win at the Winter Olympics.
I tried skating once or twice in my youth and struggled to push my board and keep my balance on the board at the same time. Has anyone found their skills learned from riding a Onewheel helped learn using a regular skateboard? Thinking about grabbing a cheap board next time I see one at the thrift store.
Four-day Caricom summit dominated by debate about US interventions in the region as military strikes against suspected drug boats continue
US interventions dominated speeches at a summit of 15 nations from the Caribbean and the Americas on Tuesday, as the region’s leaders met amid deadly military strikes against suspected drug boats and an oil blockade on Cuba.
During the opening ceremony of the four-day Caricom summit in St Kitts and Nevis, leaders of the regional bloc called for a strategic collaborations to deal with the impact of recent US policies.
Continue reading...Dick Durbin accuses FBI chief of ‘irresponsible joyriding’ and says agency’s work marred by Patel’s poor decisions
A top Senate Democrat alleged on Tuesday that FBI director Kash Patel’s personal travel and decision-making have undermined high-profile investigations, citing a whistleblower report.
Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, wrote in a letter to two government watchdogs that Patel has “seemingly engaged in what amounts to irresponsible joyriding on DoJ and FBI-operated aircraft at the expense of the American taxpayer and to the detriment of ongoing bureau operations”.
Continue reading...I’m looking for a handle - I’ve seen some of you use a paranoia concoction or similar. What are you using to carry your ride like a briefcase?
A man fatally stabbed four people before being shot dead by a sheriff's deputy outside a home northwest of Tacoma, Washington, authorities said.
The Democratic Women's Caucus wore pink to President Trump's address to Congress last year. This year, they're returning to white.
Critics say proposal to fold department into a new ‘mega ministry’ will dilute accountability and put nature protections at risk
New Zealand’s government is seeking to abolish its dedicated environment ministry to cut down on bureaucracy, a move critics say could dilute environmental protections.
Under the plan, the department would be folded into a new “mega-ministry” that will cover housing, urban development, transport, local government and the environment.
Continue reading...A 10-week-old boy named Hugo has become the first baby born in the UK from a womb transplanted from a deceased donor, after his mother Grace Bell -- who was born without a viable womb due to a condition called MRKH syndrome, which affects one in every 5,000 women -- underwent a 10-hour transplant operation at The Churchill Hospital in Oxford in June 2024. Hugo was born just before Christmas 2025, weighing nearly 7lbs, at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in west London, following IVF treatment and embryo transfer at The Lister Fertility Clinic. Bell's transplant is one of three completed so far as part of a UK clinical research trial that plans to carry out 10 such procedures from deceased donors, and Hugo is the first baby born from any of them. Earlier in 2025, a separate effort produced baby Amy, the first UK birth from a living womb donation -- her mother had received her older sister's womb in January 2023. Globally, more than 100 womb transplants have been performed, resulting in over 70 healthy births.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Feb. 25, No. 1,712.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 25, No. 724.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 25 #990.
Savannah Guthrie said in a new video that the family is offering an additional reward of up to $1 million for information about their mother Nancy Guthrie's whereabouts.
Toby Walsh says he despairs at Australian government’s lack of regulation of artificial intelligence
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A leading AI expert has warned some Australians are showing signs of psychosis or mania in their interactions with chatbots, arguing Silicon Valley is being “careless” with the technology amid a pursuit of profit.
During an address at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Toby Walsh, scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, said he believed the AI race will be both “boom and doom”, with some benefits.
Continue reading...The acquisition, covering more than 13,000 parking locations, is aimed at commuters, large events and airports.
A federal magistrate judge has blocked the DOJ from searching through a Washington Post reporter's devices after they were seized by the FBI last month, instead ruling that the court would conduct a search.
Lawmaker says DoJ appears to have withheld interviews with survivor who accused Trump of ‘heinous crimes’
Democrats on the House oversight and government reform committee announced on Tuesday the launch of an investigation to determine whether the US Department of Justice (DoJ) purposely withheld materials that pertain to allegations against Donald Trump in the government’s release of the Epstein files.
The lawmakers pledged to look into a report that Trump had been accused by a woman of sexually abusing her decades ago when she was a minor, and that material relating to the allegation in the Epstein files has not been released to the public.
Continue reading...Anthropic presents itself as most safety-forward AI firm and Pentagon has threatened penalties if it does not yield
US military leaders including Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, met with executives from the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic on Tuesday to hash out a dispute over what the government will be able to do with the company’s powerful AI model. Hegseth gave Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO, until the end of the day on Friday to agree to the department’s terms or face penalties, Axios reported.
Anthropic, which presents itself as the most safety-forward of the leading AI companies, has been mired in weeks of disagreement with the Pentagon over how the military is allowed to use its large language model, Claude. US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities, while Anthropic has reportedly resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can use AI to kill people without human input. The Department of Defense (DoD) has integrated Claude into its operations, but has threatened to sever the relationship over what its top brass perceives as roadblocks erected by Anthropic.
Continue reading...Melvin Trotter, 65, gets lethal injection for 1986 stabbing death, becoming second person executed by state this year
A man convicted of killing a 70-year-old grocery store owner was put to death Tuesday in Florida, becoming the second person executed by the state this year after a record 19 executions in 2025.
Melvin Trotter, 65, was pronounced dead at 6.15pm following a lethal injection at Florida state prison near Starke for the 1986 stabbing death of Virgie Langford, according to authorities. Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesperson for Republican governor Ron DeSantis, said there were no complications.
Continue reading...Lawsuit is latest action by Trump administration against a university and escalation of president’s feud with California
The justice department sued the University of California, Los Angeles on Tuesday, alleging the university created a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff after protests against the war on Gaza broke out across campus.
The lawsuit claims UCLA violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by “failing to prevent and correct discriminatory and harassing conduct” after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing war on Gaza. The lawsuit is the latest action against a US university by the Trump administration since the president took office last year, and an escalation of Donald Trump’s feud with the state of California.
Continue reading...In new CBS News poll, most describe the state of the country as "divided;" Republicans are optimistic. Democrats and Republicans alike want to hear Trump talk about the economy and the cost of living.
Most believe they will struggle to get an appointment, with over a quarter choosing to manage ailment themselves
Almost half the public delay or avoid contacting their GP surgery when they are ill, mainly because they think they will struggle to get an appointment.
Overall 48% of people across the UK did not bother to ask their family doctor for help – either initially or at all – when they got sick over the past year, a survey found.
Faster access to GPs and A&E are the public’s top priorities for the NHS.
Only 32% believe the NHS provides a good service nationally.
42% think the standard of NHS care has worsened over the past year and only 12% think that it has improved.
47% fear NHS care will decline further over the next year and just 15% expect it to get better
Continue reading...A rider is an additional provision added to a bill, often unrelated to its main purpose, and considered as part of the full legislation.
A roll call vote records each legislator’s individual vote—yea, nay, or present—creating an official public record for transparency.
A federal EAP offers voluntary, confidential support for personal or workplace concerns, providing counseling, referrals, and guidance.
The order of business is the structured sequence a legislative body follows to conduct work, set schedules, and ensure proceedings follow established rules.
This blog is now closed. You can find our live coverage of the State of the Union here:
About 30 members of Congress are planning to attend a Democratic counter-program event tonight instead of the State of the Union, according to the organizers of the “People’s State of the Union,” led by liberal group MoveOn and progressive media outlet MeidasTouch.
Here are the lawmakers who are expected to attend the separate event and skip the Trump speech:
Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA)
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)
Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Senator Tina Smith (D-MN)
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
Representative Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03)
Representative Becca Balint (D-VT)
Representative Greg Casar (TX-35)
Representative Lizzie Fletcher (TX-7)
Representative Maxwell Frost (FL-10)
Representative Robert Garcia (CA-42)
Representative Adelita Grijalva (AZ-07)
Representative Jim Himes (CT-04)
Representative Sara Jacobs (CA-51)
Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07)
Representative John B. Larson (CT-01)
Representative Summer Lee (PA-12)
Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez (NM-03)
Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37)
Representative April McClain Delaney (MD-6)
Representative Christian Menefee (TX-18)
Representative Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Representative Ayanna Pressley (MA-7)
Representative Emily Randall (WA-6)
Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-05)
Representative Melanie Stansbury (NM-01)
Representative Delia Ramirez (IL-03)
Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12)
Continue reading...The Supreme Court decision spiking Trump’s tariffs threatens to undermine the White House’s China strategy, just weeks before the two leaders are expected to meet.
Firefighters search for 39 people missing in debris after river burst and houses were swept away
Three firefighters pulled a man’s body from the mud amid the rubble of houses swept away in a landslide in south-eastern Brazil, where 30 people died and 39 were still missing on Tuesday after torrential rains.
A river in the state of Minas Gerais burst its banks and streets became raging currents of brown water after an overnight downpour in a region that has seen record rain this month.
Continue reading...Zohran Mamdani calls for ‘respect’ of New York police as hundreds of thousands in US still face power outages
New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, called for “respect” of local police officers in the wake of Monday’s blizzard after a viral video showed some getting pelted by snowballs in Washington Square Park while responding to a large snowball fight.
In the video, a crowd of people boo and jeer at two officers, and some throw snowballs in their faces. At one point, the officers push at least two people to the ground in response to the snowballs.
Continue reading...The Senate failed to advance a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, 11 days into a partial government shutdown with no apparent end in sight.
Warner Bros. Discovery said it will engage with Paramount Skydance to assess if its latest offer is superior to Netflix's $83 billion bid.
The Pentagon inspector general recommended the military reduce the number of military working dogs until there are enough caretakers to provide all dogs with satisfactory care.
Government ignores pleas for a grace period before new rules come into force on Wednesday
British citizens with a second nationality risk being blocked from entering the UK from Wednesday, the Home Office has confirmed.
The government has decided to ignore pleas from families, the3million campaign group, the Liberal Democrats and the former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis for a grace period to allow British dual nationals to adapt to the new rules they face.
Continue reading...Republican Tony Gonzales allegedly pressured Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who died by suicide, into sexual relationship
US congressman Tony Gonzales refused growing calls to resign from his fellow Republicans on Tuesday amid a furore over allegations that he had an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.
Gonzales has been accused of sending sexually explicit text messages in which he appeared to pressure the senior staffer to share images of herself and, eventually, coerced her into a sexual relationship.
In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CBS News that GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales should resign, after a set of text messages drew fresh scrutiny to an alleged affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.
A college degree still provides an edge when it comes to finding a good job, but a person's major may be just as important to career stability, research suggests.
Feb. 24, 2026 — CSCS is pleased to announce the Eurohack26: High-Performance Computing Applications Programming hackathon. Eurohack26 is devoted to porting scientific applications to GPUs of different vendors or other massive parallel architectures, as well as optimizing existing high-performance computing applications. AI applications are welcome if they require massive compute power provided by parallel architectures.
The event will take place in person, from September 7 to 11, 2026, at Hotel de la Paix in Lugano, located in the Italian speaking area of Switzerland.
Background
High Performance Computing utilizes more and more parallelism provided by modern supercomputers. One development is General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs), which offers exceptionally high memory bandwidth and performance for a wide range of applications together with many parallel programming units. Another development is increased parallelism in multicore processors. Today, these devices can be programmed with the CUDA/C++ programming platform, HIP or with OpenACC directives for accelerators, which offer straightforward extensions to C++ and Fortran to address this programming hurdle. Alternative programming paradigms such as OpenCL or Kokkos can also be employed.
The workshop does not solely focus on the programming techniques but also on the algorithmic aspects of the codes. These algorithms could be numerical ones such as parallel methods for linear algebra as part of parallel solutions of partial differential equations, but also non-numerical aspects for optimal performance like sorting of data and the optimal choice of communication patterns. Adaptations and redesign of codes will be discussed to accommodate massive parallelism.
Workshop Goal
EuroHack provides an opportunity for current and prospective user groups of large hybrid CPU–GPU systems to (1) port (potentially) scalable applications to GPU accelerators, (2) optimize existing GPU-enabled applications on a state-of-the-art GPU system, or (3) optimize applications for multicore architectures.
In all cases, the focus is on improving application-level parallelism. For AI workloads, particular emphasis will be placed on extending applications from single-GPU execution to multi-GPU and multi-node configurations.
By the end of the week, participating teams are expected to have applications that run more efficiently, or a clearly defined roadmap for achieving improved performance. The workshop will combine technical discussions with hands-on development and structured scrum sessions.
Target Audience and Format
This program is addressed to small teams of 3 to maximum 4 developers interested in porting or optimizing their application on a cluster of CPUs and GPU accelerators in a short but extremely intense time window. This is a great opportunity for grad students and Postdocs.
Collectively, the team should know the application intimately. There will be intensive mentoring during this 5-day hands-on workshop. Mentors come from universities, supercomputing centers and industry, and they bring their extensive experience in programming GPGPUs, many of them develop the GPU-capable compilers and help define the OpenACC standard.
The in-person portion of the event will be limited to 5 or 6 teams of 3 to 4 developers with 2 mentors for each team.
Submissions
Submissions for EuroHack26 are now open. CSCS invites teams to propose an application to be ported to or be optimized on GPU or other massive parallel architectures. The CSCS “Alps” Grace-Hopper machine will be utilized for the workshop. The selected teams will be joined by two mentors with extensive programming experience.
The submission deadline is April 30, 2026, anywhere on Earth.
Full details including the link for submissions can be found in the event page here.
Source: CSCS
The post CSCS Opens Submissions for EuroHack26 HPC and GPU Optimization Workshop appeared first on HPCwire.
JESSICA BASSION
Copy Desk Chief
Edward A. “Nick” Nickerson, founder of the university’s journalism program, passed away on New Year’s Day at the age of 100.
The program began in Nickerson’s windowless office in the basement of Memorial Hall. There, he built it from the ground up — teaching everything from news reporting to radio writing. Prior to his retirement, Nickerson led the program for 21 years.
“He had fun,” Matt Nickerson, his son, said. “He liked jumping on his desk. He liked making up songs. He just got a kick out of being a teacher.”
On his centennial birthday, Nickerson’s family gifted him a book that combined his writings with letters and reflections from those who cherished him.
Each tribute made clear that Nickerson demonstrated a commitment to service in all aspects of his life.
Nickerson fought in the Apennine Mountains of Italy in 1945 after joining the 10th Mountain Division in 1943. He was awarded the Silver Star medal by the United States Army for “gallant conduct under fire,” and “disregard for his own safety to save the lives of his comrades.”
McKay Jenkins, the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English at the university, is the author of “The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and the Assault on Hitler’s Europe.”
“Ed granted me a lengthy interview about his experiences, and generously invited me to join him for a gathering of vets,” Jenkins said. “He was a gregarious, witty and entirely charming guy, and I felt honored to know him.”
After the war, Nickerson attended Dartmouth College where he majored in English and served as the associate editor of The Dartmouth, Dartmouth College’s student newspaper. He later returned to Italy for a year to study at the University of Rome.
Nickerson began his professional career at the Rutland Herald, a Vermont newspaper. He then joined the Associated Press (AP) wire service, working first in its Baltimore bureau and then at its New York headquarters. Eventually, he received a Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Albany.
Still, his greatest contribution came through his work as a teacher.
“He checked his ego at the door and channeled his energies into delivering great experiences — and wonderful stories of his career — to his students,” Blake Wilson, a former student, said. “Thanks to his ability to paint a picture with his storytelling, the Rutland Herald and Associated Press seemed bigger than life to me.”
Wilson spent nine years in journalism, then pursued a 38-year career in public policy. Nickerson’s teaching extended beyond journalism; his lessons guided his students throughout their lives.
“Nick always closed his messages with the tagline ‘keep the faith,’” Wilson said. “This had such an influence on me that for decades I have used the same closing. I continue to use it today, nine years into retirement.”
Many of Nickerson’s students went on to have distinguished careers. His friends and family counted six Pulitzer Prize winners among his former students.
After Nickerson retired from the university in 1991, he volunteered to teach extension literature classes and sang in a barber shop group called the HousaTonics.
As he neared 100, Nickerson survived cancer, COVID and pneumonia.
“Nick has a zest for life and has never given up, even as his abilities have become diminished,” Liz Nickerson, his daughter-in-law, said in a tribute written to him.
Nickerson’s memory also lives on in the archives of The Review, where he once served as an advisor.
In a farewell article, Nickerson contributed to The Review as a guest columnist, thanking the staff who he said, “present the student perspective as no house organ of the university is capable of doing.”
“They share my faith that despite all the flaws of journalism, printing the news is worthwhile, for the simple reason that knowledge is better than ignorance, openness better than secrecy and light better than darkness.”
Nickerson signed his farewell article the same way he did with all closing remarks.
“Keep the faith.”
September can't come quickly enough.
This must be a universal experience at this point for people who aren’t swayed by the latest and greatest marketing hype around new phone models: there’s just nothing out there that fits one’s needs.
When I walked into a phone shop, I expected to witness with amazement how much technology has advanced in the present day compared to my eight-year-old model, and for the power of marketing to mind control me into buying a new phone that would bring all sorts of benefits to my life. But instead, I felt disappointed that I’d be forced to choose between two suboptimal devices, either of which would be a compromise compared to what I already have. I felt frustrated that my OnePlus 5T, which still meets my needs and is working wonderfully (apart from the volume buttons), is being taken from me by the 3G shutdown.
↫ Cadence
It’s remarkable how a market that was once rife with competition and choice, has now been reduced to well I guess I’ll settle for this one then in such a short time frame. There’s barely any competition, the number of device makers in (western or western-adjacent) countries has dropped to two, maybe three, and all of them are making what is essentially the exact same device with only the smallest of differences between them. For most average, normal people, it’s some model by either Samsung or Apple.
There’s definitely more choice once you’re willing to leave local stores (and thus, easy and quick repairs) behind, but most normal people who just want a phone aren’t going to do that. You can also spend like twice or thrice the amount of money to get some foldable thing, but again, if you’re just looking for a bog-standard normal-person phone, that’s not a realistic option either. Smaller devices, headphone jacks, SD card slots – so many things have just disappeared from the face of the earth for most people, something that will definitely come as a huge, unpleasant surprise if you’ve been happy with an older phone that just had those things.
It’s like driving the same car for a decade and needing a new one, but you can only choose between a Toyota and a Volkswagen that look and feel entirely the same. And also the seats are now candles, door handles are gone, and there’s no trunk.
Eufy's new Omni C28 robot vacuum comes with an extra-long roller mop and some premium features often seen on high-end models.
Hours before President Trump's State of the Union address, House Speaker Mike Johnson told CBS News the U.S. economy is on the right track — but inflation hasn't been "completely fixed yet."
Donald Trump invited team after Olympic gold
Women’s team chose to skip event
The victorious US Olympic men’s ice hockey team visited the White House on Tuesday, although there were several notable absences.
Donald Trump invited the team to celebrate in Washington DC after they beat Canada in a dramatic Olympic final on Sunday. He also invited the US women’s team, who declined citing “timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments”.
Continue reading...Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales has been accused of having an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.
Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue posted a now-viral account on X describing how an OpenClaw agent she had tasked with sorting through her overstuffed email inbox went rogue, deleting messages in what she called a "speed run" while ignoring her repeated commands from her phone to stop. "I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb," Yue wrote, sharing screenshots of the ignored stop prompts as proof. Yue said she had previously tested the agent on a smaller "toy" inbox where it performed well enough to earn her trust, so she let it loose on the real thing. She believes the larger volume of data triggered compaction -- a process where the context window grows too large and the agent begins summarizing and compressing its running instructions, potentially dropping ones the user considers critical. The agent may have reverted to its earlier toy-inbox behavior and skipped her last prompt telling it not to act. OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent designed to run as a personal assistant on local hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Should legislation pass House of Lords, the matter will require another vote after May’s Welsh elections
Wales’s Senedd has voted in favour of implementing Westminster’s assisted dying bill, overcoming a constitutionally awkward situation that could have forced terminally ill people who wish to end their lives to travel to England or seek private provision.
In a debate stretching into Tuesday night in the Senedd’s newly expanded chamber, members voted 28 for and 23 against, with two abstentions. Should the legislation pass the House of Lords, the matter will require another Senedd vote after May’s Welsh elections.
Continue reading...SambaNova today unveiled its latest chip, the SN50, which it says is five times faster than Nvidia Blackwell and offers 3X the throughput, enough oomph to run agentic AI models exceeding 10 trillion parameters. It also announced the deployment of SN50s into Japan’s SoftBank, a new partnership with Intel, and a $350 million fundraising round.
SambaNova is one of the new chipmakers looking to capitalize on the AI boom and the insatiable demand for data processing that it has unleashed. The company developed its Reconfigurable Data Unit (RDU) architecture, which implements custom processing pipelines where data flows through the complete computation graph, to address the inefficiencies in data movement experienced by instruction set architecture (ISA) used by traditional CPUs and GPUs.
Rodrigo Liang, co‑founder and CEO, and the new SN50 chip
Like the SN40, the SN50 features a tiered memory architecture that combines 64GB of high‑bandwidth memory (HBM), 432 MB of static random-access memory (SRAM), and 256 GB to 2 TB of DDR5. SambaNova says this memory architecture allows it to host the largest AI models, including models with up to 10 trillion parameters. “Models residing in HBM and SRAM can be hot swapped in milliseconds, a capability that is essential for agentic workloads switching frequently between multiple models,” the company writes in a blog post today.
SambaNova says the SN50 delivers five times more compute per accelerator and four times more network bandwidth than the SN40. It says that internal benchmarks show that, compared to Nvidia’s Blackwell B200 GPU, the SN50 delivers 5X the maximum speed and more than 3X the throughput for agentic inference workloads running on models like Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B.
SambaNova sells its chips in preconfirgured racks, called SambaRacks, which can contain up to 16 individual SN50. The company supports the capability to scale its SambaRacks outward to support a cluster with up to 256 SN50s connected across a multi‑terabyte‑per‑second interconnect. Each SambaRack consumes an average of 20 kW of power, which allows it to use air cooling rather than liquid cooling.
AI inference workloads are the target for SambaNova and its chips, and that story hasn’t changed with the SN50. The company says that its capability to cache input tokens in memory reduces the time-to-first-token (TTFT) relative to mainstream GPU architectures. It can also keep multiple AI models in memory and swap them in a fraction of the time that it takes Nvidia GPUs, the company claims.
SambaNova chips support a reconfigurable dataflow architecture
SoftBank will be the first company to deploy the SN50, SambaNova said. The Japanese company will deploy SN50 in its next-generation AI data center, SambaNova said.
The company also announced a new collaboration with Intel, which reportedly tried to buy SambaNova in January for $1.6 billion. Instead, Intel is a participant in SambaNova’s Series E round of financing worth $350 million, which it says it will use to expand manufacturing and cloud capacity.
“AI is no longer a contest to build the biggest model,” Rodrigo Liang, co‑founder and CEO of SambaNova, said in a press release. “With the SN50 and our deep collaboration with Intel, the real race is about who can light up entire data centers with AI agents that answer instantly, never stall, and do it at a cost that turns AI from an experiment into the most profitable engine in the cloud.”
The post SambaNova Eyes 10-Trillion Parameter Models for Agentic AI with New Chip appeared first on HPCwire.
Volunteer group Citizens of the Reef made the find as part of the Great Reef Census
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Citizen scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the largest coral colonies ever documented on the Great Barrier Reef.
The coral spans approximately 111 metres in maximum length and covers an estimated area of 3,973 sq m – about half the size of a soccer field.
Continue reading...You're probably curious about these beverages. Here's what to know first.
 | For a big guy 260, I feel so much more comfortable cruising on my XR now. I don’t push it and just go 10-12 mph cruising around my neighborhood, carving and what not. I used to skateboard as teen so this is what got me attracted to Onewheel. I plan to ride this XR for a bit as a practice board and will get the XRC or GT later this year. Maybe the GTS if I can afford it. But man this is so much fun! [link] [comments] |
You can buy tickets to watch the limited event at select theaters.
Apple will begin manufacturing the wee desktop computer in Houston later this year.
Six in 10 employers want workers with AI skills, but few are offering higher base pay or bonuses for the know-how.
Meta will take a stake in the chipmaker in exchange for a commitment to buy billions of dollars' worth of AI chips.
The Pentagon may decide to officially designate Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" to push them out of government, sources say.
Dozens of Democrats are boycotting the State of the Union on Tuesday, as many opt to hold nearby counterprogramming rather than signs of protests like those seen within the House chamber in recent years.
What started as a joyous snowball fight Monday in New York City morphed into a political tempest after residents began pelting police officers with snow and ice.
The amount of power being sought by new datacentre projects in Great Britain would exceed the national current peak electricity consumption, according to an industry watchdog. From a report: Ofgem said about 140 proposed datacentre schemes, driven by use of artificial intelligence, could require 50 gigawatts of electricity -- 5GW more than the country's current peak demand. The figure was revealed in an Ofgem consultation on demand for new connections to the power grid. It pointed to a "surge in demand" for connection applications between November 2024 and June last year, with a significant number coming from datacentres. This has exceeded even the most ambitious forecasts. Meanwhile, new renewable energy projects are not being connected to the grid at the pace they are being built to help meet the government's clean energy targets by the end of the decade. Ofgem said the work required to connect surging numbers of datacentres could mean delays for other projects that are "critical for decarbonisation and economic growth." Datacentres are the central nervous system of AI tools such as chatbots and image generators, playing a vital role in training and operating products such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The close friend and passenger of a 23-year-old American citizen who was killed by an ICE agent in Texas last year disputed officials' account of the fatal shooting.
Former Labour grandee’s arrest over his links to Epstein came after Met police informed he was preparing to fly to British Virgin Islands
Peter Mandelson condemned the police for his arrest on Monday and claimed he was only taken into custody because detectives had wrongly believed he was about to flee the country.
In a remarkable rebuke to the Metropolitan police, lawyers for the former peer challenged the force to provide the evidence to justify their actions, insisting it was prompted by a “baseless” suggestion that he was planning to move abroad.
Continue reading...Former US ambassador issues statement via lawyers saying his priority is to cooperate with police and clear his name
Keir Starmer is taking part in a coalition of the willing video call to discuss Ukraine. There is a live feed of his public contribution here.
Kemi Badenoch is holding a press conference now. She is appearing with the relatives of children who she says have died as a result of social media – either because they took their own lives, or because it led to them being attacked. She says she wants to give them a platform to tell their stories.
Continue reading...Sammy Azdoufal alerted New York-based outlet the Verge after he took control of DJI Romo devices around the world
A Spanish software engineer reportedly contacted a New York-based tech outlet recently to reveal he had remotely taken control of about 7,000 vacuum cleaners worldwide, in the process shedding light on a broad vulnerability with smart products, according to a cybersecurity expert.
The Verge reported that the situation came to light when Sammy Azdoufal was trying to reverse-engineer his new DJI Romo vacuum so that he could control it with his Playstation 5 gamepad.
Continue reading...Funds promised for security have not been received
Officials warn of potential cancellations to fan festivals
Local and national officials expressed concern on Tuesday that the ongoing partial government shutdown in the United States could adversely affect planning and preparation for the 2026 World Cup, which is just over 100 days away.
In a hearing before the House committee on homeland security, representatives from Miami, Kansas City and New Jersey – three locations that will host a combined total of 21 matches in the tournament, including the final – said they are still waiting on federal funds to be released to their respective local agencies. Last July, lawmakers pledged $625m in federal assistance toward World Cup security via the Trump administration’s “big beautiful” policy bill.
Continue reading...Social media is going the way of alcohol, gambling, and other social sins: Societies are deciding it’s no longer kid stuff. Lawmakers point to compulsive use, exposure to harmful content, and mounting concerns about adolescent mental health. So, many propose to set a minimum age, usually 13 or 16.
In cases when regulators demand real enforcement rather than symbolic rules, platforms run into a basic technical problem. The only way to prove that someone is old enough to use a site is to collect personal data about who they are. And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely. Age-restriction laws push platforms toward intrusive verification systems that often directly conflict with modern data-privacy law.
This is the age-verification trap. Strong enforcement of age rules undermines data privacy.
↫ Waydell D. Carvalho
The answer to the dangers of social media is not to ban social media use among minors, for a whole variety of reasons. There’s data privacy, as the linked article goes into, but there’s also the fact that for a lot of people, including minors, who live in regressive, backwards environments and/or are victims of abuse, social media is their only support network. Cut them off from social media, and you cut them off from the very people who can save them from further abuse.
The problem isn’t social media in and of itself – it’s profit-seeking social media. Companies like Facebook and TikTok spend billions to hyper-optimise and hyper-target vulnerable people, much like how tobacco companies and drug dealers do, to feed and worsen their addiction because keeping people addicted is how they maximise profits. The solution to the dangers of corporate social media is to strictly regulate their behaviour, something we already do with countless dangerous products and services.
I’m obviously not qualified to come up with specific measures that would need to be taken, but I think we can all agree that whatever corporate social media have been and are doing is dangerous, unethical, should be stopped.
SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 24, 2026 — SambaNova today announced the SN50 AI chip, a new processor designed for large-scale AI inference workloads. The company also outlined plans to collaborate with Intel on high-performance AI inference systems and disclosed additional funding totaling more than $350 million from new and existing backers. The SN50 will be shipping to customers later this year.
SambaNova SN50 chip
To quickly scale and distribute SN50, SambaNova is collaborating with Intel, and has obtained $350 million in strategic Series E financing to expand manufacturing and cloud capacity.
“AI is no longer a contest to build the biggest model,” said Rodrigo Liang, co‑founder and CEO of SambaNova. “With the SN50 and our deep collaboration with Intel, the real race is about who can light up entire data centers with AI agents that answer instantly, never stall, and do it at a cost that turns AI from an experiment into the most profitable engine in the cloud.”
“Customers are asking for more choice and more efficient ways to scale AI,” said Kevork Kechichian, EVP, General Manager, Data Center Group, Intel. “By combining Intel’s leadership in compute, networking, and memory with SambaNova’s full-stack AI systems and inference cloud platform, we are delivering a compelling option for organizations looking for GPU alternatives to deploy advanced AI at scale.”
SambaNova says the SN50 delivers five times more compute per accelerator and four times more network bandwidth than the previous generation. It links up to 256 accelerators over a multi‑terabyte‑per‑second interconnect, cutting time‑to‑first‑token and supporting larger batch sizes. The result: Enterprises can deploy bigger, longer‑context AI models with higher throughput and responsiveness — while keeping performance high and costs and latency under control.
“AI is moving from a software story to an infrastructure story,” said Landon Downs, co-founder and managing partner at Cambium Capital. “SN50 is engineered for the real-world latency and economic requirements that will determine who successfully deploys agentic AI at scale.”
The news follows SambaNova’s record bookings and revenue as they closed out 2025, reflecting accelerating demand for production-ready AI systems across financial services, telecommunications, energy, and sovereign deployments worldwide.
SoftBank Deploys SN50 Within Its AI Data Centers in Japan
SoftBank Corp. will be the first customer to deploy SN50 within its next‑generation AI data centers in Japan. The deployment will power low‑latency inference services for sovereign and enterprise customers across Asia‑Pacific, supporting both open‑source and proprietary frontier models with aggressive latency and throughput requirements.
“With SN50, we are building an AI inference fabric for Japan that can serve our customers and partners with the speed, resiliency and sovereignty they expect from SoftBank,” said Hironobu Tamba, Vice President and Head of the Data Platform Strategy Division of the Technology Unit at SoftBank Corp. “By standardizing on SN50, we gain the ability to deliver world‑class AI services on our own terms — with the performance of the best GPU clusters, but with far better economics and control.”
The SN50 deployment deepens SambaNova’s existing relationship with SoftBank Corp., which already hosts SambaCloud to provide ultra‑fast inference for developers in the region. By anchoring its newest clusters on SN50, SoftBank positions SambaNova as the inference backbone for its sovereign AI initiatives and future large‑scale agentic services.
SambaNova and Intel Plan Multi‑Year Collaboration
SambaNova and Intel have entered into a planned multi‑year strategic collaboration to deliver high‑performance, cost‑efficient AI inference solutions for AI‑native companies, model providers, enterprises, and government organizations around the world. The collaboration will give customers a powerful alternative to GPU‑centric solutions, offering optimized performance for leading open‑source models with predictable throughput and total cost of ownership.
As part of the collaboration, Intel plans to make a strategic investment in SambaNova to accelerate the rollout of an Intel‑powered AI cloud. The collaboration is expected to span three key areas:
Together, SambaNova and Intel aim to shape the next generation of heterogeneous AI data centers — integrating Intel Xeon processors, Intel GPUs, Intel networking and storage, and SambaNova systems — to unlock a multi‑billion‑dollar inference market opportunity.
Raises $350M+ Series E
The oversubscribed Series E round was led by Vista Equity Partners and Cambium Capital, with strong participation from Intel Capital. New investors joining the round include: Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Gulf Energy, Mayfield Capital, Saudi First Data, Seligman Ventures, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Existing investors participating include: A&E, 8Square, Atlantic Bridge, BlackRock, GV, Nepenthe, Nuri Capital, and Redline Capital.
As agentic workloads expand, enterprises are discovering that infrastructure optimized for training struggles to meet production latency and cost requirements: “We’re proud to be investing in SambaNova at such a pivotal time in the company’s growth,” said Monti Saroya, Partner at Vista Capital. “SN50 is engineered for agentic AI systems that orchestrate multiple models and process requests in near real-time, and more efficiently than traditional GPU-centric systems.”
Proceeds will be used to expand SN50 production, scale SambaCloud, and deepen enterprise software integrations.
More from HPCwire: SambaNova Eyes 10-Trillion Parameter Models for Agentic AI with New Chip
About SambaNova
SambaNova is a leader in next‑generation AI infrastructure, providing a full stack platform that powers the fastest, most efficient AI inference for enterprises, NeoClouds, AI labs and service providers, and sovereign AI initiatives worldwide. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., SambaNova delivers chips, systems and cloud services that enable customers to deploy state‑of‑the‑art models with superior performance, lower total cost of ownership and rapid time to value.
Source: SambaNova
The post SambaNova Introduces SN50 AI Chip, Intel Collaboration, and $350M in New Funding appeared first on HPCwire.
RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 24, 2026 — Red Hat today announced the Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA, a co-engineered software platform that combines Red Hat AI Enterprise and NVIDIA AI Enterprise to provide an end-to-end AI solution optimized for organizations deploying AI at scale. Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA is the latest milestone in the companies’ deep collaboration, accelerating the delivery of the newest AI innovations to enterprise customers today while also delivering Day 0 support for NVIDIA hardware architectures.
With enterprise AI spending expected to reach over $1 trillion by 20291, driven in large part by agentic AI applications, organizations are looking to shift their strategies toward high-density, agentic workflows and address the resulting demands on AI inference and infrastructure. To help organizations keep pace, Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA empowers IT operations teams to streamline management of both traditional infrastructure and the evolving demands of the AI stack.
“The shift from AI experimentation to industrial-scale, enterprise-wide production requires a fundamental change in how we manage the AI computing stack,” said Chris Wright, chief technology officer and senior vice president, Global Engineering, Red Hat. “We’re accelerating the path to deploy AI and move quickly to production using Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA. With a stable, high-performance foundation driven by our proven hybrid cloud offerings, we’re enabling our customers to own their AI strategy and scale with the same rigor they apply to their core IT platforms.”
Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA accelerates the path to production AI and delivers the software platform for AI factories, running on accelerated computing infrastructure that fuels higher performance for the models and NVIDIA GPUs driving the inference stack. The platform is supported on AI factory infrastructure from leading systems manufacturers, including Cisco, Dell Technologies, Lenovo and Supermicro. This empowers IT administrators and operations teams to scale and maintain AI deployments with the same operational rigor and predictability as any enterprise workload.
This co-engineered software platform integrates the open source collaboration, engineering and support expertise of both Red Hat and NVIDIA to deliver a trusted, enterprise-grade solution. The Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA provides a highly scalable foundation for AI deployments across any environment, whether on-premises, in the cloud or at the edge. It includes core capabilities for high-performance AI inference, model tuning, customization and agent deployment and management, with a focus on security. This allows organizations to maintain architectural control from the datacenter to the public cloud, delivering:
Availability
Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA is available now. Learn more here.
About Red Hat
Red Hat is the open hybrid cloud technology leader, delivering a trusted, consistent and comprehensive foundation for transformative IT innovation and AI applications. Its portfolio of cloud, developer, AI, Linux, automation and application platform technologies enables any application, anywhere—from the datacenter to the edge. As the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, Red Hat invests in open ecosystems and communities to solve tomorrow’s IT challenges. Collaborating with partners and customers, Red Hat helps them build, connect, automate, secure and manage their IT environments, supported by consulting services and award-winning training and certification offerings.
Source: Red Hat
The post Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA Accelerates the Path to Scalable Production AI appeared first on HPCwire.
NAPA, Calif., Feb. 24, 2026 — The PyTorch Foundation, a community-driven hub for open source AI under the Linux Foundation, today announced significant expansion of its membership, with nine new members joining since December 2025. New members include Carnegie Mellon University, Clockwork.io, CommonAI CIC, Emmi AI, Monash University, National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), Nota AI, University of Leicester, and yasp.ai.
New PyTorch Foundation membership signals sustained growth and progress in agentic AI innovation, with the Foundation leading the way on open, community-driven AI. Fueled by industry participation from leading universities, AI startups, global governments, and more, the PyTorch Foundation’s production-ready tools and libraries – including PyTorch, vLLM, DeepSpeed, and Ray – play integral roles in the AI stack.
“There are no agentic systems without the models that power them,” said Mark Collier, GM of AI at the Linux Foundation and Executive Director of the PyTorch Foundation. “From training frameworks like PyTorch and optimization systems like DeepSpeed that create capabilities such as advanced tool calling, to inference engines and orchestration layers like vLLM and Ray that operationalize them, the Foundation hosts critical layers of the open source AI stack. The growth of our membership reflects a shared recognition that these capabilities must be built collaboratively in a vendor-neutral environment.”
Clockwork.io, Emmi AI, NIPA, Nota AI, and yasp join the foundation as Silver members. CommonAI CIC, Carnegie Mellon University, Monash University, and University of Leicester join as Associate members.
This news follows Ray joining the PyTorch Foundation as a foundation-hosted project in October 2025. The open source distributed computing framework for AI workloads, developed by Anyscale, offers development teams a seamless way to execute data processing, forming an integrated open source distributed computing layer for agentic AI alongside vLLM and PyTorch as part of the foundation.
To learn more, join the global PyTorch community in Paris, France from April 7-8, 2026 for the inaugural PyTorch Conference Europe. Register here for early-bird pricing on the latest in open source AI and machine learning.
“At Emmi AI, PyTorch is a key part of how we bring AI into real-world engineering workflows. Becoming a member of the PyTorch Foundation is a natural step for us as we contribute to an open ecosystem that accelerates research, deployment, and impact,” said Miks Mikelsons, Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder, Emmi AI.
“Open source AI plays a critical role in bringing research innovations into real-world applications. By joining the PyTorch Foundation, we look forward to collaborating with the community and contributing our experience in AI model optimization,” said Tae-Ho Kim, CTO, Nota AI.
“AI teams shouldn’t have to redesign their models every time the hardware changes,” said Reza Rahimi, CTO, yasp. “Our work focuses on separating model innovation from infrastructure constraints, so developers can run efficiently anywhere. Becoming part of the PyTorch Foundation aligns with our belief that open ecosystems are essential to reduce friction, avoid lock-in, and scale AI sustainably.”
About the PyTorch Foundation
The PyTorch Foundation is a community-driven hub supporting the open source PyTorch framework and a broader portfolio of innovative open source AI projects. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the PyTorch Foundation provides a vendor-neutral, trusted home for collaboration across the AI lifecycle—from model training and inference, to domain-specific applications. Through open governance, strategic support, and a global contributor community, the PyTorch Foundation empowers developers, researchers, and enterprises to build and deploy AI at scale. Learn more at https://pytorch.org/foundation.
About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
Source: PyTorch Foundation
The post PyTorch Foundation Announces New Members as Agentic AI Demand Grows appeared first on HPCwire.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 24, 2026 — Marvell Technology, Inc., a leader in data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, today announced that it will demonstrate PCIe 8.0 SerDes running at 256 gigatransfers-per-second (GT/s) data rate in the Marvell booth #904 at DesignCon 2026, February 24 to 26 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.
As AI workloads continue to drive a massive expansion in data center infrastructure requirements, PCIe technology continues to evolve to deliver higher bandwidth for in-chassis, in-rack and across-rack connectivity. Expected to be finalized by 2028, the PCIe 8.0 specification is expected to double the bandwidth of the PCIe 7.0 specification for up to 1 TB/s of bidirectional bandwidth, supporting demanding applications including AI, machine learning, high-speed networking and other data-intensive workloads.
In preparation for the PCIe 8.0 specification, hyperscalers and cloud data center operators can start pathfinding now, solidifying strategies to re-architect their infrastructure and take full advantage of the new specification when it is released. Providing an early demonstration of the PCIe 8.0 specification with the TE Connectivity AdrenaLINE Catapult connector at DesignCon 2026, Marvell is committed to helping the industry scale beyond traditional copper interconnects.
Enabling low power, low latency and low bit-error-rate transmission over copper and optical channels, the Marvell Alaska P PCIe 6.0 retimer and its PCIe 7.0 and PCIe 8.0 SerDes technology will deliver the scalability, power efficiency and high performance required for next-generation infrastructure to support tomorrow’s AI and data center bandwidth demand.
“Marvell continues to drive industry leadership in the critical connectivity technologies that power the most demanding AI workloads,” said Xi Wang, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity Business Unit at Marvell. “We enable hyperscalers and cloud data center operators to optimize their AI architectures for maximum performance and scalability, and we will provide the technologies and support required to prepare the industry take full advantage of the benefits of the PCIe 8.0 specification when it is released.”
“As AI and other data-intensive workloads stretch the capabilities of the data center, the industry is continually looking for new ways to increase performance, scalability and power efficiency,” said Alan Weckel, co-founder and analyst of 650 Group. “With support for the PCIe 8.0 specification and other innovations, Marvell continues to push the envelope in delivering the technologies to fulfill the demands of AI hyperscalers and data center operators today and well into the future.”
About Marvell
To deliver the data infrastructure technology that connects the world, we’re building solutions on the most powerful foundation: our partnerships with our customers. Trusted by the world’s leading technology companies for over 30 years, we move, store, process and secure the world’s data with semiconductor solutions designed for our customers’ current needs and future ambitions. Through a process of deep collaboration and transparency, we’re ultimately changing the way tomorrow’s enterprise, cloud and carrier architectures transform—for the better.
Source: Marvell
The post Marvell to Showcase PCIe 8.0 SerDes Demonstration at DesignCon 2026 appeared first on HPCwire.
Savers who built a reserve worth $10,000 can boost it further in 2026 with select savings accounts. Here's how.
Collaboration with quantum computing company, co-founded by 2025 Physics Nobel Laureate Professor John Martinis, starting with new cryogenic filters development to address a critical bottleneck in building larger, more powerful quantum computers
SINGAPORE, Feb. 24, 2026 — Singapore is strengthening its role in the global quantum hardware ecosystem through a new collaboration between researchers at the National Quantum Federated Foundry (NQFF) and Qolab, a quantum computing company co-founded by 2025 Physics Nobel Laureate Professor John M. Martinis.
Credit: Singapore NQO
Drawn by Singapore’s strong semiconductor and deep tech ecosystem, Qolab will work with Singapore researchers to develop new components essential for scaling next-generation quantum computing systems.
The research focuses on developing critical components, specifically cryogenic low-pass filters, for quantum processor chips1. These filters address a critical bottleneck in building larger, more powerful quantum computers.
“Building useful quantum computers requires scaling from dozens to millions of qubits, and that means we need not just more qubits but also reliable, manufacturable supporting hardware,” said Professor Martinis, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Qolab. “Singapore’s strong capabilities in advanced semiconductor manufacturing makes it an ideal partner for Qolab as we develop critical components that will support the next generation of quantum computing.”
This collaboration comes as global momentum in quantum hardware accelerates. Through sustained research, innovation and enterprise (RIE) investments, Singapore has continued strengthening its capabilities across semiconductor manufacturing, advanced engineering, and quantum device development. This unique intersection of strengths, combined with Singapore’s open and collaborative approach to international partnerships, has positioned the country as an attractive base for leading quantum technology companies looking to develop and scale critical hardware.
The Role of Cryogenic Filters in Quantum Computing
Superconducting qubits are one of the most mature and pioneering technology used by technology industry leaders to power quantum processors. These operate at temperatures close to absolute zero and are extremely sensitive to environmental noise. Cryogenic low-pass filters act as shields, blocking unwanted high-frequency signals. However, conventional filter solutions currently used in quantum computers are large, subject to errors, and difficult to manufacture at scale.
The collaboration will leverage complementary strengths from NQFF’s quantum device nanofabrication capabilities, and Qolab’s quantum computing systems expertise towards developing cryogenic filters that can be manufactured on semiconductor wafers – similar to how computer chips are made. This approach enables denser integration of filters directly with qubit circuits, allowing more qubits to fit into smaller, more reliable packages. The filters are expected to be deployed in quantum systems at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
“This collaboration demonstrates how Singapore can contribute critical quantum hardware components to the global ecosystem,” said Mr Ling Keok Tong, Executive Director of the National Quantum Office. “It brings together our strengths in semiconductor engineering, advanced manufacturing and quantum research to address real-world hardware challenges. With partners such as UCLA already committed to deploying these filters, it signals growing confidence in Singapore’s capabilities and strengthens our role in the global quantum supply chain.”
The research collaboration agreement was signed between NQFF and Qolab and witnessed by Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo. It was part of a quantum-related event today which commenced with opening remarks by Guest-of-Honour Minister Josephine Teo.
The event featured a public guest lecture – organized by the National Quantum Office (a national platform hosted by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research) and the National Research Foundation – by Professor Martinis on the history of superconducting qubits and the NQFF Industry Day, which showcased quantum hardware developments from industry partners and leading global players.
[1] About cryogenic low-pass filters and quantum processors
Cryogenic low-pass filters are specialized components that operate at extremely low temperatures (near absolute zero). They play a critical role in ensuring the accurate operation of the qubits by shielding the superconducting circuits from unwanted microwave noise.
The filters being developed through this collaboration are designed for solid-state quantum processors, including superconducting qubit systems (used by leading technology companies) and spin qubit systems (an emerging approach using electron or nuclear spin). Both types require precise signal control and noise reduction to scale effectively.
Source: National Quantum Office, Singapore
The post Singapore Researchers Partner with Qolab on Components to Scale Quantum Computers appeared first on HPCwire.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Cyberattacks reached victims faster and came from a wider range of threat groups than ever last year, CrowdStrike said in its annual global threat report released Tuesday, adding that cybercriminals and nation-states increasingly relied on predictable tactics to evade detection by exploiting trusted systems. The average breakout time -- how long it took financially-motivated attackers to move from initial intrusion to other network systems -- dropped to 29 minutes in 2025, a 65% increase in speed from the year prior. "The fastest breakout time a year ago was 51 seconds. This year it's 27 seconds," Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, told CyberScoop. Defenders are falling behind because attackers are refining their techniques, using social engineering to access high-privilege systems faster and move through victims' cloud infrastructure undetected.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Paris-born artist reinvented the synthesizer through meditative and feedback-drenched sonic explorations
The French composer and musique concrète pioneer Éliane Radigue has died at the age of 94.
“It is with immense sadness that we learn of the passing of Éliane Radigue at the age of 94,” the Paris-based experimental music center INA GRM posted on Instagram. “A major figure in musical creation has left us.”
Continue reading...National security committee warns until tougher safeguards are in place, UK elections dangerously exposed to covert foreign money
Political donations in cryptocurrency should be subject to an urgent temporary ban to stop foreign interference in British elections, the chair of the national security committee has said.
Matt Western, who leads the committee of MPs and peers, said a moratorium was needed until the risks of donations in cryptocurrency have been dealt with – including adequate checks on the source of the money.
Continue reading...Richard Tice echoes Donald Trump with pledge of ‘great repeal act’ and ‘tight quotas and significant tariffs’
Unions and renters’ groups have criticised Reform UK after the party’s business spokesperson, Richard Tice, pledged to introduce a “great repeal act” that would abolish Labour legislation on workers’ rights and protection for tenants.
In his first speech since being appointed by Nigel Farage to a portfolio covering business, trade and energy, Tice promised a bonfire of regulations, including an end to net zero targets and a new push for home-produced shale gas using fracking.
Continue reading...Operating from the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, the new spin-out is the only company in the UK manufacturing niobium-based components.
Feb. 24, 2026 — Quantcore, a University of Glasgow spin-out, has raised £2.5 million in seed funding to create a sovereign supply chain, as the UK races to build domestic capacity in technologies critical to national security and economic competitiveness. The round was co-led by PXN Ventures, Blackfinch Ventures and Scottish Enterprise, with investment also coming from Quantum Exponential and STAC.
Pictured left to right, Quantcore co-founders Dr Valentino Seferai (CTO), Dr Jack Brennan (CEO), Wridhdhisom Karar (Measurement Lead), and Prof Martin Weides (Scientific Advisor).
Quantcore is the only company in the UK manufacturing niobium-based components. One benefit of niobium is it can operate at higher temperatures than aluminum, which is one of the most common materials used by Quantcore’s global competitors.
Thanks to the use of niobium, Quantcore is helping its customers, which include UK national laboratories, to save energy and do more with its quantum components at a more scalable rate.
Operating from the University of Glasgow’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, the company designs, manufactures and tests the superconducting processors, resonators and sensors that form the core of quantum computers and advanced sensing systems.
Beyond computing applications, Quantcore’s quantum sensors enable secure communications and unprecedented accuracy in medical imaging that classical technology cannot achieve, which could lead to breakthroughs in areas such as neuroscience, early disease detection, secure infrastructure, and fundamental physics.
Following the investment, Quantcore plans to grow its team from four to 12 employees over the next 18 months, with engineering roles across design, manufacturing and cryogenic testing as well as non-technical positions to aid its commercial strategy.
Dr Jack Brennan, CEO and co-founder of Quantcore, said: “This technology is extremely powerful. One of the main features of quantum computers is that they will be really good at cracking codes. So, as a country, you have to ask: do you want to wait until other countries have this capability, or do you want to get there first?
“The world is not what it was. If you want this technology, which you do, you need to be able to manufacture it domestically so you can control every part of it. That’s what we’re building from Scotland.
“Classical computers are hitting a plateau as silicon reaches its limits. We’re entering a new paradigm based on fundamental physics, and it’s coming whether we like it or not. There’s no reason all the advanced tech in the UK has to be in London, Cambridge, and Oxford. Why not build it here?”
The investment comes at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and follows the UK government’s pledge to invest £670 million into quantum computing as part of its 10-year modern industrial strategy, with the global quantum computing market projected to reach $20.2 billion by 2030.
Quantcore was founded by Dr Jack Brennan, Dr Valentino Seferai, Wridhdhisom Karar, and Prof Martin Weides, and spun out from the University of Glasgow in August 2025. The company was also part the first cohort of deep tech startups to take part in the university’s Infinity G accelerator program, led by STAC.
Uzma Khan, Vice Principal, Economic Development and Innovation, University of Glasgow, said: “Quantum technology is a core area of research excellence for the University. This activity is generating new innovations with potential for scalable economic impact via spin-out company creation.
“Quantcore Technologies has the potential to become a market leader in supply of hardware for quantum computing. We wish the founding team and their investors every success.”
As a crucial anchor driving regional economic growth, the University of Glasgow is working to translate its research into commercial opportunities in sectors like life sciences and quantum technologies to create jobs and boost prosperity.
Spin-outs formed since 2020 have collectively secured over £100 million in investment, demonstrating the growing strength of the University’s innovation pipeline.
Meanwhile, the University is working with its partners Scottish Enterprise and Glasgow City Council to deliver jobs, training opportunities and economic growth through Glasgow Riverside Innovation District.
Source: University of Glasgow
The post Quantcore Raises £2.5M to Build UK Supply Chain for Quantum Hardware appeared first on HPCwire.
"We play for one team," House Speaker Mike Johnson told "CBS Evening News" anchor Tony Dokoupil ahead of the State of the Union. "We're all for America."
Huw Pill warns combined effect of national insurance and minimum wage rises have ‘acute’ effect on youth employment
The negative effect of a combined increase in employers’ taxes and minimum wages has been “particularly acute” for young people, the Bank of England’s chief economist has warned.
Huw Pill said on Tuesday that the increase in national insurance contributions (NICs) from April last year and the government’s efforts to equalise the “national living wage” had caused a particular problem for young people trying to find jobs.
Continue reading...The US president fights 1970s battles in a financialised age. America faces not a payments crisis but a slow erosion of industrial and technological power
When the US supreme court voted 6-3 last Friday to strike down Donald Trump’s tariffs, he was incandescent. Two judges he had elevated – Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – were suddenly recast as traitors to the cause. Both were, he insinuated, under the sway of foreign interests. The court ruled that the tariffs overstepped the powers the US Congress granted under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Mr Trump responded by reaching for a 1974 trade law, invoking “international payments problems” to slap on a 10% tariff for 150 days.
Mr Trump was moulded by the 1970s. His political DNA was formed in that era’s crises and he governs as if America were still in the Nixon era of shock politics. In some ways there are parallels. The political mobilisation around economic insecurity echoes that period, as does distrust in elite authority. This explains why many populist politicians on the right reach for the 1970s, which fits the mood of decline and rivalry and offers a narrative of “restoring strength”. Internationally, Mr Trump also sees the world through the 1970s lens of industrial rivalry and trade grievance. But the world today is in a far more financialised and interdependent state.
Continue reading...The passenger received medical attention after the plane returned to Wichita, Kansas, Alaska Airlines and the FAA said.
Looking to avoid an endless scroll? Check out these essential Hulu movie picks for a guaranteed good night in.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to give the military unfettered access to its AI model or face harsh penalties, Axios has learned. Hegseth told Amodei in a tense meeting on Tuesday that the Pentagon will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk," or invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military's needs. The Pentagon wants to punish Anthropic as the feud over AI safeguards grows increasingly nasty, but officials are also worried about the consequences of losing access to its industry-leading model, Claude. "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. The problem for these guys is they are that good," a Defense official told Axios ahead of the meeting. Anthropic has said it is willing to adapt its usage policies for the Pentagon, but not to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Feb. 24, 2026 — QEC4QEA, funded by the EuroHPC JU, is one of two Quantum Excellence Centres established in Europe. It will enhance the uptake of quantum computing technologies and the development of applications to ensure Europe’s leadership in quantum computing.
QEC4QEA (Quantum Excellence Centre for Quantum-Enhanced Applications) is designed to make quantum computing more accessible and easier to use. It will connect end users with quantum application developers, experts, and computing providers. By bringing these groups together, QEC4QEA will help users navigating the complexity of quantum computing technologies and apply them effectively in real-world workflows. For this purpose, the project builds on European quantum computing infrastructure that combines quantum and high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities.
QEC4QEA will support users at every stage of the application journey. It will provide access to guidance, tools, and services needed to develop, test, and run quantum-enhanced applications. These services will include training, support in selecting appropriate computing resources, and assistance with efficient execution. The goal is to provide a complete and practical support chain that allows users to focus on results rather than technical barriers.
By guiding users to the most suitable resources and helping them optimize their workflows, QEC4QEA will enable applications to run efficiently and cost-effectively on European quantum computers and hybrid quantum-HPC systems operated by EuroHPC JU and national organizations. This approach is expected to accelerate innovation across Europe, encourage the development of new quantum-enhanced applications, and build lasting expertise and interest in quantum technologies.
Together with its sister project QEX, QEC4QEA supports EuroHPC JU’s vision of strengthening Europe’s knowledge base and building a thriving, sustainable quantum ecosystem.
More Details
The QEC4QEA project is coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) and brings together 19 partners from eight EuroHPC JU participating countries (France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey), representing a broad range of scientific and technical expertise.
QEC4QEA is structured into five clusters led by major European supercomputing centers that are deploying and operating the EuroHPC quantum-HPC infrastructure: Forschungszentrum Jülich, CEA, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), CINECA, and PCSS. Led by these centers, the clusters combine advanced supercomputers and quantum computers with strong technical expertise, established application portfolios, and direct access to cutting-edge HPC and quantum computing infrastructures. This federated model will strengthen cross-regional cooperation, maintain close proximity to users, maximize synergies, and ensure scalable impact at the European level.
The consortium will also closely work with key European Quantum Flagship projects, including OpenSuperQPlus, PASQuanS2, and QuIC, as well as major national initiatives such as QSolid (Germany), HQI (France), Quantum Spain (Spain), and KCIK (Poland).
The QEC4QEA Quantum Excellence Centre has been selected following the call HORIZON-EUROHPC-JU-2023-QEC-05-01 and is funded by the Horizon Europe program, with a total EU contribution of around EUR 4.9 million.
Source: EuroHPC
The post QEC4QEA to Support Development of Quantum-Enhanced Applications Across Europe appeared first on HPCwire.
State District Judge Tony Graf decided in a Tuesday ruling to keep the Utah County Attorney's Office on the case against the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk.
A new player in the U.S. military’s decadeslong war on drugs announced itself to the world on Sunday, providing intelligence that supported a Mexican military operation that killed the head of the infamous Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Though details continue to emerge from the operation, which set off a spasm of violence that left at least 70 people dead, some of the information that led Mexican security forces to Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes was delivered by a new Joint Interagency Task Force called Counter Cartel, based out of Southern Arizona.
The outfit operates out of Fort Huachuca, a military intelligence hub nestled in a rugged mountain chain 15 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border. According to media reports, the task force, staffed by a combination of some 300 military and civilian employees, provided its Mexican counterparts with a “detailed target package” in the run-up to Sunday’s operation. The CIA also provided key support for the mission.
Existence of the task force was first revealed in a little-noticed ceremony at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, last month. Its online footprint is slight. The information that is publicly available, however, confirms deepening ties between President Donald Trump’s domestic homeland security agenda and his lethal drug war operations abroad.
Known internally as JIATF-CC, the task force is part of the U.S. Military’s Northern Command, once considered a backwater that today enjoys renewed prominence under Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In the past year, Trump and Hegseth have used the Southern Command, NORTHCOM’s counterpart in the Western Hemisphere, as well the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, to conduct the kinds of targeted killing missions long associated with the war on terror against targets in Latin America.
To date, the military has conducted more than 40 airstrikes against alleged drug traffickers, killing at least 137 people without producing a shred of evidence to support its claims. While those strikes have been concentrated in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, the task force involved in Sunday’s Mexico operation is distinct for its focus much closer to U.S. soil.
“What the Trump administration has done more than its predecessors is give NORTHCOM a hugely bigger role,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group.
With that newfound stature has come a greater level of secrecy over what, exactly, the command is up to — and whether its operations might spill back over the border into the U.S.
In years past, when his organization would raise concerns over U.S. operations, the military would make available attorneys who could quote the Posse Comitatus Act — the law restricting military involvement in domestic policing — by chapter and verse, Isacson recalled. No more. Even his contacts on Capitol Hill, staffers working on armed services and homeland security issues, have found their letters to department chiefs met with silence.
“It freaks me out when I talk to oversight staff,” he said. “They’re just not getting answers.”
In a sparse January press release, Northern Command said the JIATF-CC is a component of the Homeland Security Task Force National Coordination Center. Its mission, the release said, is to “identify, disrupt, and dismantle cartel operations posing a threat to the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border.”
While information on the coordinating center is similarly scant, FBI national security branch operations director Michael Glasheen testified in December before the House Committee on Homeland Security that the president created a wide network of Homeland Security Task Forces in accordance with an executive order he signed on his first day back in office in January 2025.
Titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the order called on the attorney general and the DHS secretary to “jointly establish Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) in all States nationwide.” Their shared mission would be to “end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States” and “dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks.”
Though the order made no mention of the U.S. military, Glasheen’s testimony confirmed the Pentagon had joined the HSTF mission.
“This task force construct is the first of its kind,” he told lawmakers, taking a “whole-of-government” approach and “consolidating all of U.S. law enforcement, military, and intelligence efforts into a targeted effort in combatting these threats.” According to Glasheen, individual task forces are led by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the powerful investigative wing of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In addition to more than 8,500 federal agents and officers, hundreds of analysts and legal attachés from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies support the HSTF mission worldwide, Glasheen testified. The national coordination center that the new border-focused JIATF-CC belongs to, he continued, “serves as the primary federal coordinating entity to align law enforcement, defense, and intelligence efforts.”
A recent job posting for a database administrator for the center — requiring at least a “secret” security clearance and paying upward of $189,750 a year — described the “care and feeding” of hundreds of terabytes of law enforcement data.
The precise relationship between the U.S. military and federal agencies like ICE and the FBI in support of the president’s homeland security mission is unclear. Northern Command did not respond to The Intercept’s request for an interview.
For generations, the U.S. military has played a driving role in the drug war abroad, training allied security forces, sharing intelligence on wanted drug traffickers, and facilitating covert kill-capture operations in nations such Colombia and Mexico.
Beginning under President Ronald Reagan and continuing into the administration of Bill Clinton, Northern Command oversaw a steady growth in military counternarcotics operations on the U.S.–Mexico border, including on U.S. soil. Those operations ended when a Marine sniper team killed an American teenager named Esequiel Hernández while he was tending his family’s goats in West Texas in 1997.
Since then, the Pentagon has largely kept its focus south of the border. That, however, may be changing. A defense official speaking to Reuters said the new Arizona task military force is working to map suspected drug cartel networks on both sides of the international divide.
The director of the task force, U.S. Brig. Gen. Maurizio Calabrese, compared his team’s mission to the targeted killing campaigns previously waged against terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The motivations were different, he said, but in terms of sheer size, the drug cartel threat was perhaps even larger.
The general estimated that hundreds of leaders occupied the upper echelons of Mexican organized crime, supported by as many as a quarter-million lower-level operatives, which he referred to as “independent contractors.”
Correction: February 24, 2026, 2:26 p.m. ET
Due to an editing error, this story contained an errant reference to the military command responsible for strikes against alleged drug smugglers. It has been corrected to reflect that the strikes were carried out by the Southern and Special Operations Commands.
The post Mexico Got Help Killing Drug Lord From Secretive U.S. Campaign Led by FBI and ICE appeared first on The Intercept.
Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão accused of ordering shooting of Marielle Franco and her driver in 2018
Brazil’s supreme court has opened the trial of politicians accused of ordering the 2018 murder of Rio de Janeiro councillor Marielle Franco, a case that exposed deep ties between politics and organised crime in the city.
Franco, an activist who grew up in a favela and became an outspoken critic of Rio’s powerful militia groups, was 38 when she was shot dead in the city centre alongside her driver, Anderson Gomes.
Continue reading...Market swings can quietly reshape your nest egg, but there are ways to protect your retirement plan from losses.
Laurence des Cars steps down days after parliamentary inquiry called Paris museum a ‘state within a state’
The president of the Louvre in Paris has resigned, four months after a gang of thieves broke into the museum’s Apollo gallery and made off with €88m (£76m) of Napoleonic jewellery in France’s most dramatic heist in decades.
Laurence des Cars, who had offered to step down in the immediate aftermath of the burglary, tendered her resignation to Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday in what the French president called “an act of responsibility”, the Elysée Palace said.
Continue reading...Smart glasses let you follow a recipe and ask basic cooking questions hands-free. Here's how my first experience cooking with smart frames went.
Ursula von der Leyen talks up prospect of €90bn loan but appears cautious on timetable for Ukraine joining bloc
Zelenskyy says “we must be just as determined and strong as we were when the invasion began,” as “the threat hasn’t become smaller.”
He says Europe can only respond to this war working together with the US, even as he remarks it “is not an easy task to maintain transatlantic unity and cooperation in the current conditions.”
“So there must be no place in the free world for Russian oil, for Russian tankers, Russian banks, Russian sanctions …, schemes, or for any Russian war criminals. The time has come to fully ban all participants in Russia’s aggression from entire Europe.”
Continue reading...More than two decades after Maine became the first state to hand laptops to middle schoolers -- distributing 17,000 Apple machines across 243 schools in 2002 -- neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told a U.S. Senate committee earlier this year that Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before it. The U.S. spent more than $30 billion in 2024 alone putting laptops and tablets in classrooms, and Horvath cited PISA data from 15-year-olds worldwide showing a stark correlation between time on school computers and worse scores. A 2014 study of 3,000 university students found they were off-task on their machines nearly two-thirds of the time. Fortune reported back in 2017 that Maine's own test scores hadn't budged in the 15 years since the program launched, and then-governor Paul LePage called it a "massive failure." Horvath framed the generation's eroding capabilities not as a personal failure but a policy one, calling them victims of a failed pedagogical experiment.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sunset phenomenon at national park’s Horsetail waterfall still drew large crowds even with freezing temperatures
Heavy snow did not deter visitors from flocking to Yosemite in recent days, in hopes of seeing the park’s spectacular natural light show.
Firefall occurs each year in February during sunset when the light hits Horsetail Fall in such a way that, for a brief period, the waterfall appears illuminated by lava. In recent years, the phenomenon has drawn large crowds – and lots of photographers.
Continue reading...AI safety, especially around images and videos, continues to be an evolving challenge.
Chatham House appoints Owen Jenkins as Research Director for Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Asia Pacific News release jon.wallace
Owen will join Chatham House on 9 March.
Owen Jenkins will join Chatham House as Research Director for Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Asia Pacific on 9 March.
Owen is a senior British diplomat and highly experienced leader in international affairs. He most recently served in the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) as Director General for the Indo-Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and was previously the UK’s ambassador to Indonesia and Timor-Leste.
Earlier in his career, he worked as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan to two prime ministers, and held diplomatic roles in Turkey, Argentina, Brussels and India.
Bronwen Maddox said:
‘Owen’s depth of regional and global experience makes him exceptionally well suited to join our Executive Leadership Team, providing leadership across Chatham House’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Asia Pacific Programmes.
‘This role is central to guiding our work on the evolving world order and shifting global alliances – questions shaped by the increasing influence of China, the assertiveness of regional powers, and the ambitions of countries across the Global South.
‘Owen’s experience working at the highest levels of diplomacy will be invaluable in sharpening our analysis, strengthening our external influence and developing our ideas.’
Owen said:
‘I’m thrilled to be taking up this great job at one of the world’s leading international policy institutes. I have drawn on Chatham House’s expertise in every job I’ve done, from gaining insight into the Balkan wars in the 1990s to understanding Indonesia as British ambassador there.
‘I look forward to working with the impressive teams in the Africa, Middle East and North Africa and Asia Pacific programmes and to using my own knowledge to increase still further the impact of Chatham House’s work.’
US president had said he would raise levy to 15% after last week’s supreme court ruling
Donald Trump’s new global tariffs have taken effect at 10%, even though last weekend he had threatened a higher rate, of 15%, providing “some relief” for British businesses, according to a lobby group.
After the US president suffered a defeat at the hands of the supreme court on Friday, which struck down his sweeping “liberation day” tariffs imposed last year, he angrily reacted by announcing a 10% global tariff, which he raised to 15% on Saturday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Continue reading...Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Uranus and Neptune will all be in the night sky at the same time.
Mexico’s president says there is ‘no risk’ for those visiting for Fifa games after military killed drug lord ‘El Mencho’
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said that there is “no risk” for visitors coming to Fifa World Cup games scheduled to be held in the country, after the death of a top cartel boss triggered a wave of retaliatory violence from gunmen who blocked roads and attacked security forces across the country.
The Mexican military attempted to detain “El Mencho”, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in a dawn raid on Sunday, leading to a firefight in which he was fatally wounded, before dying while being airlifted to hospital.
Continue reading...Charles Kushner, father of president’s son-in-law Jared, failed to show up to meeting to explain US comments relating to death of far-right activist
Donald Trump’s envoy to Paris has called France’s foreign minister and pledged not to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs, a day after he was barred from talking to government officials for failing to attend a formal meeting at the ministry.
The foreign ministry said on Monday that Charles Kushner would not be permitted to carry out his diplomatic duties until he had explained his refusal to comply with the summons over US comments about the killing of a far-right activist in France.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman have written a paper arguing that senior software engineers must mentor junior developers to prevent AI coding agents from hollowing out the profession's future skills base. The paper, Redefining the Engineering Profession for AI, is based on several assumptions, the first of which is that agentic coding assistants "give senior engineers an AI boost... while imposing an AI drag on early-in-career (EiC) developers to steer, verify and integrate AI output." In an earlier podcast on the subject, Russinovich said this basic premise -- that AI is increasing productivity only for senior developers while reducing it for juniors -- is a "hot topic in all our customer engagements... they all say they see it at their companies." [...] The logical outcome is that "if organizations focus only on short-term efficiency -- hiring those who can already direct AI -- they risk hollowing out the next generation of technical leaders," Russinovich and Hanselman state in the paper.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sony, Bose and Apple are often considered the top names in premium wireless noise-canceling earbuds, but each has pros and cons. Here's how they compare in my testing.
Until now, you needed to upgrade to a pricier plan for these features.
Former US president’s part in ending the Troubles threatened by fallout from Epstein scandal, which has tainted his former envoy, George Mitchell
When Bill Clinton testifies later this week at a congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein there is unlikely to be any reference to his most precious foreign policy achievement – helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
Whether Clinton is linked to Epstein’s predations or turns the tables on his inquisitors, his legacy in Northern Ireland might appear to stand apart, a jewel of his presidency that is immutable, enshrined in history.
Continue reading...The rumored shade is reminiscent of OPI's Big Apple Red.
Claim of ‘abetting terrorist activities’ comes as Kremlin attempts to steer users on to state-controlled app
Russia has launched a criminal investigation into the Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, on suspicion of “abetting terrorist activities”, further escalating the Kremlin’s standoff with the widely used messaging app.
The state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported on Tuesday that a case had been opened “based on materials from Russia’s federal security service”, which accused the app of being compromised by western and Ukrainian intelligence.
Continue reading...SANTA CLARA, Calif. and MENLO PARK, Calif., Feb. 24, 2026 — AMD and Meta today announced a 6-gigawatt agreement to power Meta’s next generation of AI infrastructure across multiple generations of AMD Instinct GPUs. This agreement expands on the companies’ existing strategic partnership and aligns roadmaps across silicon, systems and software to deliver AI platforms purpose-built for Meta’s workloads.
Credit: Shutterstock
The first deployment will use a custom AMD Instinct GPU based on the MI450 architecture to deliver AI platforms that are optimized for Meta’s workloads at gigawatt-scale. Shipments supporting the first gigawatt deployment are scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026 powered by the custom AMD Instinct MI450-based GPU and 6th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, codenamed “Venice,” running ROCm software and built on the AMD Helios rack-scale architecture. AMD Helios was developed jointly by AMD and Meta through the Open Compute Project to enable scalable, rack-level AI infrastructure.
“We are proud to expand our strategic partnership with Meta as they push the boundaries of AI at unprecedented scale,” said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. “This multi-year, multi-generation collaboration across Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs and rack-scale AI systems aligns our roadmaps to deliver high-performance, energy-efficient infrastructure optimized for Meta’s workloads, accelerating one of the industry’s largest AI deployments and placing AMD at the center of the global AI buildout.”
“We’re excited to form a long-term partnership with AMD to deploy efficient inference compute and deliver personal superintelligence,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta. “This is an important step for Meta as we diversify our compute. I expect AMD to be an important partner for many years to come.”
In addition to the collaboration on GPUs, AMD and Meta are expanding their AMD EPYC processor partnership. Meta has been a close partner over multiple generations, deploying millions of AMD EPYC CPUs and significant deployments of AMD Instinct MI300 and MI350 series GPUs across their global infrastructure. As AI infrastructure grows in scale and complexity, CPUs are a strategic pillar of the AI compute stack, enabling efficiency, scalability and orchestration alongside GPUs. Building on deep roadmap alignment, Meta will be a lead customer for 6th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, codenamed “Venice,” and “Verano,” a next-generation EPYC processor designed with workload-specific optimizations to deliver leadership performance-per-dollar-per-watt.
As part of the agreement, to further align strategic interests, AMD has issued Meta a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock, structured to vest as specific milestones associated with Instinct GPU shipments are achieved. The first tranche vests with the initial 1-gigawatt of shipments, with additional tranches vesting as Meta’s purchases scale to 6 gigawatts. Vesting is further tied to AMD achieving certain stock price thresholds and exercise is tied to Meta achieving key technical and commercial milestones.
“We expect this partnership to drive substantial multi-year revenue growth and be accretive to our non-GAAP earnings per share, marking another significant step forward in delivering on our ambitious long-term financial model,” said Jean Hu, EVP, CFO and treasurer, AMD. “The performance-based structure also tightly aligns AMD and Meta around execution and long-term value creation.”
Together, AMD and Meta are collaborating across silicon, systems and software to enable AI infrastructure at a global scale that accelerates AI innovation and brings AI-powered services and experiences to billions of users.
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. Learn more at www.amd.com.
Source: AMD
The post AMD and Meta Announce Expanded Strategic Partnership to Deploy 6 Gigawatts of AMD GPUs appeared first on HPCwire.
ATLANTA, Feb. 24, 2026 — Morehouse College has received a prestigious grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to participate in a $457 million project to build one of the most powerful academic supercomputers in the southeast. This historic investment in higher education cyberinfrastructure will elevate Morehouse’s ability to provide access to world-class computational resources for its students, faculty, and HBCUs nationwide.
Morehouse College students, faculty, and HBCUs nationwide will benefit from access to the supercomputer.
The Morehouse Center for Broadening Participation in Computing has received an initial $5 million portion of the NSF grant to start construction on a site that will house the cutting-edge supercomputer, Horizon, part of the NSF’s Leadership-Class Computing Facility (LCCF). More funds will be disbursed to support ongoing operations. The supercomputer will push the boundaries of artificial intelligence, providing greater access to areas such as climate modeling, machine learning, and biomedical research.
The computing project is being led by the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. As a primary partner in the LCCF project, Morehouse will play a pivotal role in the deployment of Horizon. In addition to housing the system, Morehouse will serve as a national epicenter for programmatic support, leading free initiatives such as a summer enrichment program for middle and high school boys, a postbaccalaureate program in artificial intelligence, and three weeklong faculty accelerators in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, focused on research, teaching, and grant proposal writing.
“Morehouse College is honored to partner with the NSF and the University of Texas at Austin on this transformative project,” said Dr. F. DuBois Bowman, 13th President of Morehouse College. “By hosting one of the Southeast’s most powerful academic supercomputers, we are providing HBCUs with unprecedented computational power to explore bold ideas, accelerate discovery, and unleash new frontiers of creativity and innovation. This investment positions our students and faculty to help shape the future of science, technology, and global problem-solving.”
“This contribution cements Morehouse’s place as the undisputed HBCU leader in artificial intelligence,” says Dr. Kinnis Gosha, Principal Investigator of the grant and Hortinius I. Chenault Endowed Professor and Chair of Computer Science. “As a national resource provider, we will empower other HBCUs and non-research-intensive institutions to contribute to growing their research capacity and enhancing student learning.”
The NSF partnership underscores Morehouse College’s commitment to academic rigor and its growing influence as a leader in global STEM research. It reinforces the College’s position as a champion for equity in the technological landscape, a field with a workforce that is still lacking diversity. According to national labor statistics, some 62 percent of tech jobs are held by White Americans.
Morehouse will share its research and project progress at the Integrating Supercomputing-Powered Instruction, Research, and Entrepreneurship (InSPIRE) Workshop, which is held annually in Austin, Texas. The conference offers support to faculty and students using AI research in teaching and entrepreneurial endeavors.
For more information on Morehouse’s role in the NSF Leadership-Class Computing Facility or other AI initiatives offered by the Morehouse Center for Broadening Participation in Computing, please visit https://morehouse.edu/academics/centers-and-institutes/cbpc.
About Morehouse College
Founded in 1867, Morehouse College is the nation’s only college founded to educate men of color. Ranked as Georgia’s top liberal arts college for men, Morehouse produces more Black men who go on to receive doctorates than any other college in the country and is a top feeder school for Black men entering prestigious graduate schools and MBA programs. Also named Georgia’s #1 small college, Morehouse educates a selective group of some 2,800 students each year, 60 percent of whom come from families with household incomes of $40,000 or less, yet many of whom are highly recruited by Fortune 500 companies. The College has created more Rhodes Scholars than any other HBCU and has the #1 core curriculum among HBCUs nationally. It is the nation’s top producer of Black male graduates in the social sciences, and the top HBCU producer of Black male graduates in business administration, management, operations, English, foreign languages, mathematics, statistics, philosophy, religious studies, and physical sciences. As the national epicenter for thought leadership on human rights and equity, Morehouse is committed to helping the nation address the challenges caused by institutional racism, income and health care disparities, lack of access to capital, detrimental public policy, and the need for high-quality education.
Source: Morehouse College Office of Institutional Advancement
The post Morehouse College Selected as Host Site for NSF Supercomputing Project appeared first on HPCwire.
Partnership with Idaho National Laboratory boosts computing power for Idaho universities, accelerating discovery, funding competitiveness and workforce development
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho, Feb. 24, 2026 — A powerful supercomputer is expanding high-performance computing for researchers across Idaho, enabled by a partnership between Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the state’s public research universities.
High-performance computing systems like this enable researchers to run complex simulations and analyze large datasets in a fraction of the time required by standard computers.
The system, known as Lemhi, serves researchers at University of Idaho, Boise State University and Idaho State University and replaces the Falcon supercomputer, delivering substantially faster performance and improved efficiency. The upgrade strengthens Idaho’s capacity for research, education and innovation and provides computing capabilities comparable to those at major national research institutions.
“Access to this level of computing allows Idaho to punch well above its weight,” said Luke Sheneman, director of research computing and data services at U of I. “It helps us attract top faculty and graduate students, compete for federal research funding and tackle problems we could not address without this kind of infrastructure.”
High-performance computing, often called supercomputing, allows researchers to solve problems that require enormous computational power, not because of the amount of data involved, but because of the complexity and scale of the problem itself. These systems process information faster than standard computers, accelerating discovery across disciplines such as artificial intelligence, energy systems, engineering, health sciences and natural resources.
“My research uses large-scale molecular simulations to better understand how chemicals interact with liquids, which is important for applications ranging from drug development to energy storage,” said Bourgeois Gadjagboui, a doctoral student at Boise State. “Lemhi enables this work to scale by providing the computing power and data infrastructure needed to analyze thousands of molecules efficiently and support>
Researchers throughout the state can access Lemhi remotely using their university credentials, allowing them to complete computing tasks in just hours or days that might otherwise take weeks or months on a regular computer. This level of access supports advanced research, workforce development and collaboration among institutions.
Keith Weber, director of the GIS Training and Research Center at Idaho State University, said a task that previously took 12.8 hours on a Windows workstation was completed in six minutes on the supercomputer. The faster processing enabled researchers to create digital terrain and ladder fuel models used in pre-wildfire mitigation efforts and post-fire management studies funded by FEMA and NASA.
Lemhi is hosted at INL’s Collaborative Computing Center in Idaho Falls, where INL provides the secure facility, power and core infrastructure required to operate and sustain a supercomputer. U of I currently oversees day-to-day operations, with leadership set to rotate among the three universities in the future. Boise State is expected to assume the lead role in late 2026.
Both Falcon and Lemhi are the result of a long-standing collaboration between INL and Idaho’s research universities. As INL modernizes its computing systems, select resources are made available for academic use, extending the value of major research investments before systems are eventually retired through federal surplus processes.
INL researchers used Lemhi for approximately six years before making it available for academic research, reflecting INL’s ongoing commitment to supporting university partnerships. This approach helps maximize the value of advanced computing investments while expanding access to cutting-edge tools for education and research.
“Scientific computing and artificial intelligence are critical enablers of Idaho’s leadership in research and engineering,” said Eric Whiting, senior advisor of scientific computing and AI at INL. “University access to capable computer systems such as Lemhi will continue to elevate Idaho’s scientific reputation and create positive impacts for both the state and INL.”
By supporting research across a wide range of disciplines, Lemhi helps Idaho institutions compete for federal funding, attract top researchers and train the next generation of scientists and engineers, reinforcing the statewide impact of INL’s long-term investment in research excellence.
More from HPCwire: Idaho National Laboratory Deploys Teton Supercomputer to Expand Multiphysics Simulations
Source: University of Idaho
The post Lemhi Supercomputer Expands Idaho Research Capacity appeared first on HPCwire.
Shares in Uber, Mastercard and American Express fall on back of apocalypse scenario posted on Substack
US stock markets have been hit by a further wave of AI jitters, this time from yet another viral – and completely speculative – warning about the impact of the technology on the world’s largest economy.
The latest foreboding is from Citrini Research, a little-known US firm that provides insights on “transformative ‘megatrends’”. Its post on Substack, which it called a “scenario, not a prediction”, rattled investors by portraying a near future in which autonomous AI systems – or agents – upend the entire US economy, from jobs to markets and mortgages.
Continue reading...We report from California’s Silicon Valley, where billionaires pour money into midterms, and the AI Impact summit, where India pushes back on ‘AI monopoly’ held by US and China
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, we’re examining the tech industry’s push for influence in two places separated by a time difference of 13 hours and 30 minutes. The first is where tech sees its next big market, the second its home turf. My colleague Robert Booth reports from last week’s India AI Impact summit, where tech companies pledged to spend tens of billions in the coming year to build customer bases and datacenters in the subcontinent. Dara Kerr and Lauren Gambino reported from Silicon Valley, where billionaires are marshalling their wealth to influence California’s politics at greater levels than they ever have before.
Nascent tech, real fear: how AI anxiety is upending career ambitions
How the anxiety over AI could fuel a new workers’ movement
The bogus four-day workweek that AI supposedly ‘frees up’
Continue reading...Facebook owner’s investment described by semiconductor company as ‘big bet’ on artificial intelligence
The owner of Facebook has agreed to buy $60bn (£44.5bn) of artificial intelligence chips from the US semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices – despite fears about the vast sums committed to AI infrastructure projects.
It is one more massive deal in a year in which US tech companies are expected to spend $660bn on AI assets, and may represent part of a broader pivot in Meta’s AI strategy, said Alvin Nguyen, an analyst at Forrester.
Continue reading...Raising the rainbow Pride flag instead of the more inclusive Progress flag excludes the trans community, activists say
Thousands of protesters gathered outside the iconic Stonewall Inn on a near-freezing night last week to re-raise the rainbow Pride flag in defiance of the Trump administration, which had unceremoniously ordered its removal days earlier.
It was meant to be a joyous occasion, an act of protest for the New York City LGBTQ+ community, but trans activists in the crowd were deeply disappointed by what they say was exclusion of their community in choosing to raise the historic rainbow Pride flag instead of the newer, inclusive Progress Pride flag.
Continue reading...Choice of Virginia governor to give Trump rebuttal suggests DNC believes moderate approach could bring midterm wins
On Tuesday night, Abigail Spanberger will walk out on to the historic grounds of Colonial Williamsburg and deliver the Democratic response to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. With midterm elections approaching and Democrats desperately searching for a roadmap back to relevance, the party has turned to a moderate who once flipped a Republican-held congressional seat in the suburbs of Richmond and then parlayed that into the governorship by 15 points.
Since taking the office from Republican Glenn Youngkin in January, Spanberger has moved with lightning speed that has caught conservatives flat-footed, much to the delight of those who still identify as liberal.
Continue reading...Europe is helping Ukraine resist a US push for peace at any price Expert comment LToremark
European governments are realizing how Ukraine is helping fill the void left by a diminished US presence.
The latest round of US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine concluded without a significant breakthrough. While the parties reached near-consensus over a ceasefire monitoring mechanism, they remain deadlocked over the key issue of territory. Kyiv maintains that a comprehensive ceasefire must precede any peace agreement or elections. Meanwhile, Moscow insists that Ukraine must cede the entire Donbas region – including territories Russia has failed to secure militarily – before fighting can stop.
Moscow has managed to convince US President Trump’s team that it is engaging in peace talks ‘in good faith’ and that ceding Ukrainian-held territory is the only path to a lasting peace. This has added pressure on Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to finalize a peace settlement and establish a timeline for national elections by the summer. Increasingly aware of Ukraine’s importance to European security, Europe has stepped up to help Kyiv withstand US pressure for a quick deal – which would only embolden the Kremlin.
Notwithstanding US diplomatic pressure, Zelenskyy’s main constraint is the risk of a domestic backlash against terms perceived as a betrayal of the nation’s wartime sacrifices. Zelenskyy has warned that he cannot accept territorial concessions because the Ukrainian people would ‘never forgive this’. According to a January 2026 survey, 54 per cent of Ukrainians categorically reject the idea of Ukraine withdrawing its troops from parts of Donbas it still controls and transferring these to Russia in exchange for Western security guarantees. Cementing Russian control over Donbas would leave Ukrainians vulnerable to further Russian attacks. Any changes to Ukrainian territory would also require a nationwide referendum, which must be approved by parliament. Not only would a referendum face severe security and legal challenges but any conditions that would undermine Ukrainian sovereignty would likely be rejected.
In terms of pressure to hold elections, Ukraine is currently under martial law and thus constitutionally barred from holding elections. There are other concerns too. Without a ceasefire, polling stations would become targets for Russian missile strikes. A quarter of the country’s population are internally displaced or have fled the country, meaning voter registration data is largely outdated. Millions are still serving in the military or living under occupation and would be unable to cast ballots or run for office. There would also be the threat of destabilizing Russian influence campaigns during the election. A December 2025 survey showed that 59 per cent of Ukrainians oppose holding elections before fighting ends and a peace deal is reached.
As the US scales back its military support for Ukraine and pushes for a quick deal, European governments have stepped up to ensure Ukraine is able to defend itself and negotiate from a position of strength. Europe has effectively replaced the US as Ukraine’s main donor. EU military aid rose by 67 per cent in 2025 and the EU has approved a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for budgetary and military support in 2026–27.
Increased European burden-sharing has provided Kyiv with a defensive buffer. The responsibility for funding new advanced equipment (like Patriot air defence systems) has shifted from the US to European NATO allies through the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has indicated that the alliance could secure an additional $15 billion in 2026 (on top of the $5 billion allocated in 2025) to sustain Ukraine’s military needs. With the US stepping back from the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (the ‘Ramstein format’), the UK and Germany assumed co-leadership to ensure the continued coordination of weapons deliveries.
European leaders are also working to ensure Kyiv is not coerced into a bad deal. The ‘coalition of the willing’ – led by France, the UK and Poland – has proposed security guarantees that include potential European troop deployments to enforce any future ceasefire. Critics fear that post-ceasefire deployments create an incentive for Russia to prolong the conflict. But this commitment sends an important signal that Ukraine is now an inextricable part of Europe’s future security architecture – and boosts Zelenskyy’s leverage.
An even stronger signal is Ukraine’s integration into Europe’s defence industrial base. The EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence fund offers member states up to €150 billion in loans for long-term rearmament and allows Ukraine to participate in joint procurement. This mechanism will reduce Europe’s reliance on US supply chains, scale up domestic arms production, and enhance interoperability. There are other innovative schemes too. Countries like Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway are funding weapons production inside Ukraine through the so-called ‘Danish model’. Meanwhile, major European firms like Rheinmetall (Germany) and BAE Systems (UK) have established production hubs inside Ukraine under the ‘Build in Ukraine’ initiative.
There is also increasing cooperation on drone production as Europe aims to bolster its defences against Russia’s sub-threshold operations. European defence giants have high-quality tech but suffer from slow production cycles and high costs. Ukraine, meanwhile, is a world leader in producing cheap and effective drones capable of destroying multimillion-dollar assets. Ukraine’s defence sector has developed a direct feedback loop between frontline units and producers, adapting technology to battlefield realities in real time. The UK–Ukraine Project Octopus leverages Ukrainian battlefield innovation and British industrial capacity to mass-produce autonomous interceptors that cost less than 10 per cent to produce than the Russian strike drones they are designed to destroy. There is also a new joint venture to mass-produce Ukrainian-designed drones in Germany.
Europe is wielding its financial, diplomatic and industrial leverage to support Ukraine, but significant challenges remain.
One is continued European hesitation to repurpose frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. Europe’s seizure of these funds would send the message that Moscow will be held liable for war damages without burdening European taxpayers. Even if the rift in the transatlantic alliance deepens, this move would secure funding for Ukraine’s long-term defence and recovery.
Why Should Delaware Care?
New Castle County residents have pushed back against large-scale development projects in recent years, with many complaining that the county’s land-use process is not transparent. Now, some council members want to give the neighbors earlier notice of development proposals.
It’s no secret that many New Castle County residents do not pay close attention to the goings on of their local government. Some may not even hear about a county land-use approval for a large development near their house until shovels are in the ground.
Now, three New Castle County Council members want to change how residents learn about land-use plans — just as increasingly controversial proposals for big commercial developments creep closer to isolated neighborhoods.
During a meeting on Tuesday, Councilmembers Brandon Toole, Dave Tackett and Dee Durham will introduce an ordinance that proposes to widen the circle of who gets advance notice when a developer first proposes a building project.
This move comes after the County Council faced citizen backlash in recent years to several large-scale building projects, such as the proposed data center near Delaware City and a massive warehousing complex near Middletown.
Under current rules, county officials must mail land-use meeting notices to all owners of property that sit within 300 feet of a new building project. In an email, Durham said she thinks that radius – which is about the length of a football field – is too small.
“That is simply not sufficient public notice about major projects being proposed,” she said.
The new ordinance would increase the radius to 1,000 feet. It would also require developers to update yellow notice signs posted at properties with the dates of upcoming hearings if the plan for the development changes.
Tackett said he hopes the ordinance will encourage more people to get involved with the public hearing process.
“The changes are really about transparency and accountability,” he said.
Though the ordinance will be introduced on Tuesday, the County Council won’t discuss it until the following week, or perhaps later, Durham said.
Three years ago, then-New Castle County Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle proposed a similar public notice ordinance amid the controversy surrounding a comprehensive rezoning of more than 80 different properties across New Castle County.
The rezoning plan at that time faced fierce pushback, largely from suburban residents who feared it would accommodate plans for distribution warehouses and other large developments.
Among those criticising the comprehensive rezoning plan then was Dale Swain, a local land-use activist. On Monday, he said the idea for the increased radius came as part of a larger conversation in the past surrounding how to better notify the public about developments.
“Not that you’re going to stop the development, but it would at least be nice to know about it,” Swain said.
Hartley-Nagle said the council did not pass her ordinance three years ago, partially because New Castle County staff said it would cost too much to send notices to more people. Her original proposal would have required residents to sign the mail to show they received it.
But, she said, it would be a worthy use of public funds because it would directly help people.
“We spend a lot of money for things [constituents] never see,” Hartley-Nagle said.
Tackett said New Castle County staff wrote the ordinance at his direction and did not raise any concerns about cost.
Swain said he and others residents have also discussed cheaper ways to notify residents of developments proposed nearby, such as emails or clearer posts on the county website.
The post Who should be alerted to new developments? NCCo to consider widening the circle of neighbors appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Longtime residents remember it as the motel where college freshmen Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson dumped their newborn baby in the trash in 1996, bringing national media attention to Newark.
Newarkers awoke to a winter wonderland Monday morning, but the snowstorm fell well short of what forecasters had predicted.
Seventeen nonprofit organizations, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief today urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to prevent the Federal Trade Commission from conducting a retaliatory investigation into Media Matters for America, brought after Media Matters published critical reporting about allies of the Trump administration.
The brief, authored by Albert Sellars LLP, notes that this sort of coercive tactic — where a federal agency will launch a pretextual investigation, keep it open as a way to coerce compliance, and resist any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions — has become a troublingly common form of government intimidation under the current administration. From the Justice Department to the Federal Communications Commission, court intervention has been one of the few tools that organizations have to prevent federal overreach. The amicus brief asks the appellate court to uphold a preliminary injunction. Without judicial remedy, such investigations are an acute danger to the nonprofit organizations that Americans rely on for information on matters of public concern. The brief argues that courts must intervene to prevent such investigations from chilling coverage of issues that might be adverse to those currently in power.
“Nonprofit organizations must be aggressively vigilant to protect First Amendment rights in the face of a federal government’s onslaught,” said David Bralow, legal director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund. “The chilling investigation into Media Matters is one of many affronts to free speech. These unabridged regulatory invasions, combined with such other attacks like the arrest of journalists in Minnesota and the invasive seizure of confidential communications in Washington, D.C., demonstrate the perilous state of our democracy.”
The coalition includes a mix of nonprofit research, advocacy, and media organizations, including CalMatters, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, the Dangerous Speech Project, Defending Rights & Dissent, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Lion Publishers, MuckRock Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, Open Vallejo, the Project on Government Oversight, Public Knowledge, and Reporters Without Borders USA.
“The Press Freedom Defense Fund exists to confront exactly this kind of abuse. When the government uses open-ended investigations to drain resources, intimidate funders, and silence critics, the damage goes far beyond one organization — it sends a warning to every journalist and researcher in the country. We’re standing with Media Matters because the First Amendment is not negotiable,” said Annie Chabel, CEO of The Intercept.
For more information, please contact The Intercept’s Miroslav Macala at miroslav.macala@theintercept.com.
The post Nonprofit Coalition Asks Courts to Prevent Coercive Federal Investigation Tactics appeared first on The Intercept.
Why Should Delaware Care?
In 2020, officials across the United States removed dozens of statues of historical figures from public property following protests over racial injustice. In Wilmington, those included the statues of Caesar Rodney and Christopher Columbus. Recent advocacy from Italian American residents for the famed explorer has since revived the debate, leading the Wilmington City Council to consider its stance on the statue’s potential return.
Six years after Wilmington took down a statue of Christopher Columbus, the sculpture is again exposing tensions in the city over who gets to determine which symbols to publicly embrace.
During a city council meeting last week, members of Wilmington’s large Italian-American community stated that the Columbus statue should return to public display – either at the city’s Father Tucker Park or at its previous location along Pennsylvania Avenue. They argued that Columbus was a historical figure who, while flawed, sparked pride within their community.
But, in response, a mixture of older Black residents, younger white residents and Black city council members stated that Columbus should not be publicly celebrated, citing his role in slavery and in the colonization of the Americas.
During the meeting, Albert Greto – an attorney who is leading a broader Italian-American community coalition – said he wants Wilmington to turn over the statue to his coalition. Then, if the city determines the statue will not be placed at a public site, he said his group will restore it to private property.
During his public comment, Greto also acknowledged that Columbus had enslaved people.
“I think there’s no dispute in that,” he said. “Be that as it may, there’s good and bad in everyone.”
After nearly an hour of public comments and council debate, the Wilmington City Council voted down 6-3 a resolution that would have formally opposed the statue being placed on public land, including city parks.
The resolution had been introduced by City Councilwoman Shané Darby.
The council members opposed to the resolution, such as Councilwoman Christian Willauer, said they wanted to allow different communities to be able to celebrate their cultural symbols.
“I believe our communities are better when we give each other space to express ourselves according to our own traditions, as long as those traditions are not about taking something away from someone else or putting someone else down,” Willauer said.
For months, multiple Italian American community groups have been organizing to push the city to return and re-erect the Columbus statue, which once stood on a strip of land at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Franklin and 13th streets.
Many have said that Father Tucker Park, which sits across the street from the St. Anthony’s Lodge No. 3012 in the Little Italy neighborhood, would be an ideal location.
The recent advocacy comes amid an ongoing national conversation about the kind of monuments that should be displayed in public. On the other side of the ideological spectrum from Darby, the Trump administration last month removed over two dozen panels at the President’s House site in Philadelphia that exhibited stories of people enslaved by President George Washington.
The city and others sued the Trump administration, and last week a federal judge ordered the exhibits to be temporarily restored until the pending case is resolved.
The removal of the panels were part of broader efforts by the Trump administration to examine monuments and other historical markers to ensure they are not displaying content that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.”
The Christopher Columbus statue was originally erected on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1957.
The Christopher Columbus Monument Committee, a group composed of Italian Americans in the community, had raised $40,000 to commission the statue. Committee members also maintained it over the subsequent decades.
Then, in 2020, the administration of then-Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki contacted Mike Panfile, the head of the Columbus Monument Committee, asking for permission to take down the statue amid protests against racial injustice that occurred following the police murder of George Floyd.
The committee agreed and the city then took down the statue. At the same time, Purzycki also had taken down a statue in the city central square of Delaware Founding Father Caesar Rodney.
Following the removals, Purzycki said he wanted to hold more discussions with the community about the public display of historical figures and events.
“We cannot erase history, as painful as it may be, but we can certainly discuss history with each other and determine together what we value and what we feel is appropriate to memorialize,” Purzycki said in a public statement in 2020.
More than five years later, Darby introduced her resolution, opposing the effort to restore the statue to a public place. She said she supports the statue being returned to private property, but believes that the statue shouldn’t be placed on land that taxpayers are funding.
“Globally, he just represents something so terrible and bad. In a predominantly Black and brown city, we shouldn’t have to pay to maintain him at a city park,” she told Spotlight Delaware.
The council heard about 40 minutes of public comments before discussing the measure.
More than a dozen residents, many of them older, came in opposition to the resolution. Several referenced the discrimination that Italian Americans faced after immigrating to the United States. Some described Columbus as a “sign of hope” for their community. Others characterized him as someone who “connected two great continents and paved the way for others to follow.”
“Ask yourself, how would you feel if a council member presented false toxic narratives designed to malign MLK’s character and campaigned against the legacy,” city resident Rob Savarese said to the 13-member city council, which is made up of nine Black members.
Like Savarese, most of the city residents who spoke during the public comment period opposed Darby’s resolutions.
Those who supported it emphasized Columbus’ role in colonization and slavery. Some even urged their Italian-American neighbors to choose another historical figure to honor.
“Every kind of disgusting thing that could happen happened on his watch,” city resident Baba Hamine said. “Christopher Columbus did that to my ancestors.”
Wilmington’s Columbus statue is currently being stored in a facility that “specializes in high-dollar art and sculptures,” according to Daniel Walker, deputy chief of staff for Mayor John Carney.
Walker declined to disclose the exact location, but he emphasized that the mayor’s office has made multiple offers for the community to see and pick up the statue.
Carney’s office had not been involved in conversations involving the statue, according to Walker. Asked whether Carney was in support of re-erecting the statue, Walker said the community needs to have that discussion with the City Council.
In a more recent interview after the city council vote, Walker said that Carney’s office will be in discussions with the city council and members of the community to find a path forward.
Walker noted that placing the Columbus statue in a public park would not require City Council approval through an ordinance. Still, he said ordinances have been used in the past to take similar actions.
The resolution voted down by the City Council last week was only a declaration emphasizing the position of the public body.
Councilmembers Willauer, Chris Johnson, Alex Hackett, James Spadola, Nathan Field, and Zanthia Oliver voted against it.
Councilmembers Darby, Coby Owens, and Council President Trippi Congo voted for it.
Councilmembers Michelle Harlee and Latisha Bracy voted present.
Later, Johnson, who represents Little Italy and stood as the main opponent to Darby’s ordinance, told Spotlight Delaware that if an ordinance were required to put the statue back up, he would be willing to propose it.
He said it could also include a broader monument to highlight the history and achievements of indigenous communities.
Amid protests by organizations like Black Lives Matter amid the George Floyd killing in 2020, Wilmington’s Columbus statue was one of at least 33 statues around the nation that were taken down, as well as other confederate monuments, as reported by CBS News.
Individuals throughout Delaware and other states have spoken out about Columbus’s efforts to colonize land occupied by Indigenous people, which some say led to his role in a “genocide” of the native population.
The first contact between Europeans and the indigenous civilizations that occupied the Americas occurred after Columbus arrived in 1492 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is currently Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
A report from the College of Charleston’s Lowcountry Digital History Initiative asserts that Columbus directly captured about 500 Taino slaves to be sold in Spain. About 200 of them did not survive the voyage, according to the report.
By the year 1600, the arrival of Europeans led to the deaths of roughly 55 million indigenous people, according to a 2019 study published by the Quaternary Science Reviews Journal.
During a community meeting at the St. Anthony’s Lodge No. 3012 in Little Italy last week, residents pushed back against criticism of Columbus, with some saying claims of genocide were myths.
Greto’s coalition gave a presentation discussing the history of Columbus, the oppression faced by Italian Americans, and how the celebration of Columbus Day, which was made a national holiday in 1937, gave his community hope and pride.
About 70 residents were present, including Johnson, the councilmember who represents the area. Darby did not attend the meeting.
During the presentation, Peter Frattarelli, cultural director of Societa da Vinci, argued that Columbus’s actions did not fit the definition of genocide.
Frattarelli also argued that most scholars agree the decline of the Taino people was primarily due to European diseases, not systematic extermination. He also framed Columbus’s violence as retaliatory warfare.
Finally, Frattarelli also strongly pushed back against claims that Columbus was a sex trafficker of young girls.
“Was he a saint? Was he a sinner? I’m going to tell you he was closer to a saint than a sinner,” he said.
The post Which monuments should Wilmington celebrate? Columbus statue sparks renewed debate appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Ukrainian ambassador Valerii Zaluzhnyi says future wars will require ‘technological alliances, not treaty articles’ News release thilton.drupal
The Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK addressed the evolution of the war in the four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, and the future ‘robotization’ of war.
At Chatham House, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK said future conflicts will be fought by ‘autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic systems’.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UK and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, delivered a speech at the London-based international affairs think-tank on Monday 23 February, presenting his insights on the transformation of battlefield war and marking four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion against Ukraine.
Zaluzhnyi said technological advancements will transform the future of war, stating that modern conflicts have gone beyond conventional weapons and tactics.
Zaluzhnyi added that the ‘robotization’ of warfare will ensure military effectiveness without the need for human involvement, and that, as a result, there will be fewer casualties.
Ambassador Zaluzhnyi at Chatham House
But he warned that while states could develop and control specific technologies, no one country would be capable of dominating all vital military technologies needed in future conflicts.
Nations would also need to combine their efforts, otherwise Russia will remain a threat to Europe and beyond. ‘We will need technological alliances, not treaty articles,’ he said.
Zaluzhnyi also called for sanctions against Russia to be maintained, and argued that Russia’s economy should be pushed to breaking point: ‘…it is necessary to move away from the classic strategy of inflicting maximum damage and consistently defeating the enemy… We need to make the war more costly for Russia, and as a result, lead to its inevitable defeat.’
During the question and answer session after his keynote speech Zaluzhnyi was asked by a member of the press whether he hoped to be president of Ukraine, following speculation in recent news media coverage.
He replied that he could not consider his political future until after the war, ‘When it is over, when martial law is lifted in Ukraine…only then will we be able to discuss my personal future,’ he said, adding that such speculation was a distraction from Ukraine’s war efforts.
‘We Ukrainians no longer have a choice. We will either perish or survive. The formula for survival is simple: continue to fight, strengthen the economy and maintain unity,’ he said.
A 19-year-old Newark woman was killed in a crash on Interstate 95 north of Wilmington on Feb. 20.
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US Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s tariffs: Early analysis from Chatham House experts Expert comment thilton.drupal
Chatham House analysts give their initial reactions to the Supreme Court’s tariffs ruling, its likely impact on President Donald Trump’s economic agenda, and his angry response to the ruling.
The US Supreme Court has ruled against President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs in a long-awaited ruling that will be seen as a blow for the president’s economic agenda.
By 6-3 the court found that President Trump exceeded his authority by using a law reserved for national emergencies.
Trump called the ruling ‘deeply disappointing’ and said he will impose global tariffs of 15 per cent. Here is early analysis from Chatham House experts, who are are monitoring developments.
The head-spinning changes in US tariff policy in the last few days – first the Supreme Court decision invalidating the Trump administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), then President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 10 per cent across the board tariff under Section 122 of US trade law, followed just a day later with the president upping that duty to 15 per cent – have left the American and foreign business communities, US consumers, and foreign governments with more questions than answers.
Any sighs of relief in the wake of the Court’s decision should be tempered by a new reality.
The effective global U.S. tariff rate was 13.7 per cent before the Court decision, according to the Yale Budget Lab. With Trump’s new Section 122 action duties will now be 8 per cent. But in January 2025, before the Trump administration came to power, the effective US tariff rate was roughly 3 per cent. More than a doubling of American protectionism is better than a quadrupling, but it is still higher than at any time in more than 60 years.
It is highly likely some affected party will challenge the use of Section 122, which has never been invoked by any president in its half century on the books.
The law stipulates this power is to be used for a balance of payments problem. But the Department of Justice lawyers claimed in the IEEPA case that: ‘Nor does [122] have any obvious application here, where the concerns the President identified in declaring an emergency arise from trade deficits, which are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits.’ This awkward statement may come back to haunt the Trump Administration.
For those outside the United States, a major question is how the many trade and investment deals Washington has imposed on countries around the world will be affected by the scrambling of US tariff policy.
The Financial Times was quick to opine that: ‘Analysts say the risk of retaliation is likely to deter countries from seeking to backtrack on already agreed deals.’
But the Japan Times saw it differently: ‘Trump’s treasured negotiating edge dulled by tariff defeat…With a stroke of a pen, the U.S. Supreme Court wreaked havoc on President Donald Trump’s favorite method of wielding leverage over other countries.’
At the very least, the uncertainty created by the Court’s decision may lead to more foot dragging by other nations as Washington attempts to finalize the details of its framework trade and investment deals with the EU, Japan, India and others. If they do, who knows what America’s hair-triggered President may do.
It is a fallacy to assume that Trump will play by the rules. The 122 tariffs expire in 150 days. To be extended, Congress must vote to do so. Congress has shown no appetite for tariffs, especially with Congressional mid-term elections in November.
The Administration claims they can use other trade powers – Section 301 that deals with ‘unfair’ trade practices and Section 232 that allows duties for ‘national security’ purposes – to replace the 122 tariffs.
But the scope of these sections is not as broad as an across the board 15 per cent tariff. Once this becomes apparent to the president, his past behavior suggests he may simply extend the 122 tariffs or use his 301 and 232 authority in unprecedented and arguably illegal ways, challenging importers to ‘sue me’. As the IEEPA suit showed, this could take months.
Finally, it is not clear that the invocation of Section 122 and its 15 per cent tariffs will help the president politically. Just before the Court ruled, the Washington Post and ABC News conducted a public opinion survey showing that 64 per cent of Americans disapproved of how Trump was handling tariffs on imported goods.
And in the wake of the Court decision a snap YouGov poll found that 60 per cent of Americans strongly approve of striking down the IEEPA tariffs.
So the bottom line is that US protectionism will continue, and it may be even more chaotic, unpredictable and disruptive.
Bruce Stokes is a US-based non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Read his full biography here.
At first glance, this is a more comprehensive repudiation of the Trump administration’s tariff policies than many (including me) expected.
The language of the majority opinion appears to include an attempt to close off some of the other unilateral options that President Trump had said he had at his disposal.
I do wonder if the more recent rounds of purely geopolitical tariff threats influenced the decision. It may reflect both the breadth of corporate support for the lawsuit and concern with Trump’s recent rounds of tariff threats, including against Europe over Greenland.
The SCOTUS ruling covers President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ baseline 10 per cent tariff that he announced on 2 April 2025, higher tariffs on many countries, and fentanyl and other ‘national security’ tariffs.
However it does NOT cover steel/aluminum and many other product-specific tariffs issued as a result of a “232” or “301” investigation. (‘232’ and ‘301’ refer to specific sections of decades-old trade laws passed by Congress, which authorize the executive branch to impose tariffs in specific circumstances, after an investigation. 232 tariffs may include national security as a justification.)
President Trump still has lots of ways to impose tariffs. He’s not going to back down.
I’m very struck by this phrase from Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent: ‘So the Court’s decision is not likely to greatly restrict presidential tariff authority going forward.’
The court also did not mandate refunds of the tariffs collected to date, either to consumers or to manufacturers reliant on tariffed imports.
Does that suggest that Chief Justice Roberts identified an approach to the law that feels like a momentous defense of the Constitution but has relatively little practical effect?
Or will this ruling presage a vibe shift that gets the administration to change course?
Senator Bernie Moreno, the senior Republican senator from Ohio, has called on Congress to use reconciliation to enact the president’s tariffs.
This would presumably be challenging given that Republicans in both houses have joined Democrats in opposing President Trump’s tariffs.
Heather Hurlburt served as Chief of Staff to US Trade Representative Katherine Tai from 2022 to 2024. Read her full Chatham House biography here.
The 20 February US Supreme Court 6-3 decision on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is a significant fork in the tariff-driven trade policy road taken exactly 13 months ago by President Donald Trump when he announced his America First Trade Policy.
It does not, however, mark an end to his expansive use of Executive authority to shape his engagement with global trading partners.
In his combative reaction to the ruling, the president previewed alternative legal authorities that his administration will use as a basis for continued tariff action, including a new 10 per cent global tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows for temporary import surcharges or import quotas to address balance-of-payments issues.
With details on scope, applicability and implementation of additional actions still unclear, US trade partners around the world will scramble in the coming days to determine the potential impact on their respective deals or framework agreements reached with Washington. Uncertainty will continue to be the name of the game.
The ruling comes on the heels of the release of the US Census Bureau’s 2025 international trade data confirming Mexico and Canada’s place as the first and second US trading partners, export markets and sources of imports, and as the three countries undertake the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)’s first joint review.
In North America, with intraregional annual trade at almost 2 trillion dollars and millions of jobs and investment decisions linked to the continuity of the agreement, a great deal is at stake.
In its initial reaction to the ruling, the government of Canada stated that it reinforces its view that the IEEPA tariffs ‘are unjustified’. Mexico’s Secretary of the Economy said he would be reaching out to his US counterparts and await more details on the announced 10 per cent global tariff. Both countries were subject to IEEPA tariffs (35 per cent on Canada and 25 per cent on Mexico) on non-USMCA compliant exports, in addition to various Section 232 sectorial tariffs which continue to apply.
It’s important to keep in mind that roughly 85 per cent of massive Canadian and Mexican USMCA-compliant exports – totalling approximately 780 billion dollars – maintains tariff-free access to the US market.
Beyond specific negotiating strategies with Washington, Ottawa and Mexico City will continue to focus on reducing uncertainty and preserving their current relative competitive advantages in a rapidly changing tariff environment.
Ambassador Julián Ventura is a career diplomat, currently on leave from the Mexican Foreign Service, with over 33 years in public service. Read his full Chatham House biography here.
The Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs may have removed one instrument from his tariff toolkit, but it has done nothing to make US trade policy more predictable. If anything, it may herald even greater volatility.
Trump retains several alternative instruments now that tariffs imposed under the IEEPA have been ruled unlawful. Each entails procedural hurdles, evidentiary thresholds, time limits and litigation risks. Yet, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed in his dissenting opinion, ‘the Court’s decision might not prevent Presidents from imposing most, if not all, of these same sorts of tariffs under other statutory authorities.’
That Trump, visibly angered by the ruling, quoted Kavanaugh’s statement not just once but twice suggests that he is not reconsidering his long-held belief in the benefits of tariffs. He has already pledged to introduce a new global tariff of 15 per cent, while signalling that further measures may follow.
For US trade partners – including several that negotiated agreements intended to reduce IEEPA tariffs on their exports – the outlook is unclear. The uncertain status of those arrangements, together with the prospect of new tariffs, now adds an additional layer of unpredictability to an already unstable picture.
Canada, for its part, gains little from the removal of the IEEPA tariffs, since goods compliant with the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement were already exempt. Meanwhile, the tariffs inflicting real pain on key Canadian sectors – including autos, steel, aluminium and lumber – remain in place because they rest on different statutory authorities. And any new US global tariffs may prove more damaging than the IEEPA measures if they eliminate existing exemptions.
The logic of Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, in other words, remains unchanged: the US is no longer a predictable or reliable partner, leaving its jilted allies with little choice but to diversify their trade partnerships and invest in their own resilience.
Canada-based Roland Paris is director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and former foreign policy adviser to the prime minister of Canada. Read his full Chatham House biography here.
Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold.
The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes.
As the U.S. hurtles toward war with Iran and further military action in the Middle East and continues to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Cuba is just the latest foreign policy arena where the Trump administration has further ensnared the U.S. This week on The Intercept Briefing, senior politics reporter Akela Lacy speaks with fellow reporter Jonah Valdez about how U.S. foreign policy is impacting the upcoming midterm elections and Valdez’s recent reporting on how a new anti-Zionist PAC has associated with influencers who have made statements that are outright antisemitic.
Lacy also speaks to University of Miami history professor Michael Bustamante and Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba specializing in post-1959 regime durability, about the crisis unfolding in Cuba.
Missing from mainstream news coverage of Trump’s attacks on Cuba and U.S. efforts to impose regime change in the region is a recognition of how Trump’s policies fit into his attacks on immigrants in the U.S., Bustamante says.
“One of the, I think, subtext of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it’s not just about being able to plant the flag and say, ‘We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do,’” Bustamante says.
“It’s also about, we can deport more people. And so how does the Cuban American community react to that? That, I think, is an open question. Something that I haven’t seen linked yet to the conversation about regime change, per se.”
The Trump administration’s strategy is likely to backfire, Pertierra says.
“You don’t get long-term cooperation stability through fear,” he says. “So I don’t think it’s actually going to solidify the U.S. position in Latin America. I think it’s going to further weaken it.”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter for The Intercept.
Jonah Valdez: And I’m Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept, also covering politics and U.S. foreign policy.
AL: We have been deep in midterms coverage. We had early voting in Texas start this week. The first real midterms of the cycle are less than a month away in March.
Jonah, you’ve been reporting on a new and interesting fundraising group that’s active in midterms this cycle — a group called the Anti-Zionist America PAC, or AZAPAC. Tell us a little bit about them.
JV: AZAPAC got its start in August, and so they’ve been around for a few months now, but really sort of hit traction online when they posted sort of like an ad video in November.
And the video is full of a lot of explosive imagery and language from Trump and Netanyahu shaking hands, to a lot of images of Israel’s bombs blowing up Palestinian civilian infrastructure, a lot of dead children. And in this, there’s this voiceover stating the whole thesis for the thing, which is “We need to get Zionists out of American politics. They are extorting Americans of their taxpayer dollars and they have too much influence over the U.S. government.” And they list some of their top enemies, which is AIPAC — which, Akela, you’ve reported on extensively — on top of the more moderate group J Street. So they’ve really positioned themselves as a group that is diametrically opposed to the pro-Israel lobby establishment in U.S. politics.
However, when you go a little deeper into its founder Michael Rectenwald, who is a former New York University professor, and the associations that he’s made with figures on the far right, the picture starts to be a lot muddier than just opposition of Zionism.
It’s a tricky thing, right? Because, as you know, it’s like the biggest weapon that the pro-Israel establishment has against the free Palestine movement, against any sort of advocacy to hold Israel accountable for the genocide in Gaza or any of its actions, is a blanket statement that all of that is antisemitic. A phrase that’s commonly used is, you know, claims of the genocide in Gaza is “antisemitic blood libel.” So you have this situation where this group is trying to be a very loud anti-Zionist voice, but is also making affiliations with figures who are very clearly interested in rooting their criticism of Israel in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
AL: Are they gaining a lot of traction? Are they raising a lot of money? Why should people care about what this group is doing?
JV: That’s a good question. I mean, the first FEC filings came out in January. And so from August when they were founded up until December, they raised about $111,000 — which in the grand scheme of things, when you’re going up against a PAC as large as AIPAC, it’s not a lot.
But I think why we should care about them is what makes them unique. And what makes them unique is they are very directly trying to win over support from not just the left, not just progressives, but also the right and growing criticism of Israel on the right, which has been a huge question mark for pro-Palestine advocates for the past year. Of like, how do we grapple with growing criticism of Israel among the Republican base or even further right than that, and people who are disaffected voters who may not have voted or even avoided voting for Trump altogether, but still have conservative views and are now criticizing Israel for its genocide in Gaza? How do we treat them? Should we ally with them? Should we get support wherever we can? Or should we be skeptical because of their other views?
And so AZAPAC is really, especially in its early months, really catered to that audience. And we see this with its founder Michael Rectenwald going on podcasts such as The Stew Peters Show. Which, if you’re not familiar with Stew Peters, he is a far-right white nationalist who has a show, a podcast that has gained popularity but really took off during Covid. But a big feature of his brand is what he calls the “Zionist occupation” of the government, and a lot of Jewish antisemitic conspiracy theories basically blaming Jewish people for all the issues, including domestic issues of the U.S. government.
He says the U.S. is “occupied” by “anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-American Jews who are not just working on behalf of Israel, but on behalf of a more broad Satanic Talmudic agenda that’s taken shape over thousands of years.” And in that same episode, he referred to Department of Justice Attorney Leo Terrell [as] the N-word, and also in another episode referred to Jewish people using another antisemitic slur. And this is just kind of run of the mill for folks like Stew Peters, who, again, the AZAPAC founder Michael Rectenwald is associating himself with, willingly, he told me, to gain support from other audiences to have a broad range of support.
AL: Jonah, I know you’ve had extensive conversations with Mr. Rectenwald, but can you tell us a little bit about his responses to some of your reporting?
JV: I reached out hoping to have an open-ended conversation. Just giving everyone the benefit of the doubt when they say that they are trying to be critical of Israel. It’s like, OK, well, let me hear out what you have to say.
But before our call, I did a little bit of digging — of like, how is he kind of framing the argument when he’s off-camera? Just going on his Twitter, his X account, and what I found was a lot of references, not just to Zionism, but a lot of references to what he calls the “Jewish mafia” or “Jewish elites,” which are pretty common dog whistles to the far right.
So I bring some of these questions to our conversation, and he gratefully agreed to talk with me on the phone. And [I] gave him a chance to let me know what his platform is, and he reiterated that he wants to end all U.S. military support to Israel. He opposes the genocide, wants to oppose the pro-Israel lobby in Congress, and he is pouring money into certain campaigns that are looking to unseat certain pro-AIPAC members, such as Randy Fine in Florida.
Then I ask him about, well, what about the language that you use? Don’t you think that this risks kind of blurring the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism? And that’s when he started kind of going on the defensive, and he disavowed any idea that he himself was antisemitic.
At the time, I only knew that he was on The Stew Peters Show for one appearance. And he said that that was like a very uncomfortable situation for him and that he would’ve called out Peters, but he’s a very aggressive person on his show and he didn’t want to startle him or anything. After our conversation, I come to realize that he has actually been on The Stew Peters Show three to four times to promote AZAPAC.
So I call him back and press him on this more. I say, like, hey, what’s going on here? You’re clearly a regular, and I think you’re clearly trying to gain his support and the support of his audience.
This time, he said, Stew Peters really helped us out in the beginning and after appearing on his show a lot of donations poured in and I don’t want to throw him under the bus. And he didn’t rule out any future appearances.
AL: Who are the candidates that this PAC is working with?
JV: I want to highlight two of them that stuck out to me. One of them is Tyler Dykes. You might recognize him as a convicted rioter from the Capitol riots on January 6. He pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, but also was accused, famously, of performing a Nazi salute on the Capitol steps while storming the Capitol building. And even before that, he was also convicted of taking part in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Actually, for that, he was also sentenced for carrying a burning tiki torch, which I guess there’s a charge in Virginia for carrying a burning object to intimidate.
Anyway, there’s also figures that AZAPAC is supporting, like Casey Putsch who is running for governor in Ohio. He posted a video where basically he is giving a lot of Hitler apologist statements.
But there’s two other candidates that I wanted to mention who AZAPAC supported and endorsed, which is Anthony Aguilar, who is running as a progressive Green Party candidate out of North Carolina. And he was actually one of the whistleblowers from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that blew the whistle on violence aimed at aid-seeking Palestinians in Gaza. He’s taken that moment into a whole political career.
He actually decided to rescind his endorsement after The Intercept approached him — after we approached him — with our reporting on both Rectenwald, his statements, his associations with the far right, but also these backgrounds of other candidates that Aguilar’s campaign wasn’t aware of.
And it’s the same case for another recent AZAPAC endorsement, which is Greg Stoker, who is also a progressive Green Party candidate. He was part of one of the flotillas to break the siege in Gaza. And, you know, similar case where when we approached him with our reporting on Rectenwald and AZAPAC — decided to rescind his endorsement. And sure enough, as of this week, all mention of both Aguilar and Stoker’s campaign were removed from AZAPAC’s website, scrubbed from social media.
I think they are making a calculation similar to some concerns that I’ve raised in my reporting — it harms the movement.
AL: Jonah, we’re looking forward to reading your piece, which is up now. Thank you for walking us through your reporting. You know, while frustration over Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been a major focus of our reporting and covering how the Israel lobby is approaching midterms and how much voters still care about that — this is far from the only foreign policy issue that is top of mind for voters right now.
We are potentially moving toward war with Iran, according to reporting from Axios on Wednesday. There is a very large aircraft carrier moving toward the Middle East.
Our episode today focuses on what’s happening as the U.S. is ramping up sanctions in Cuba. If you’ve been following The Intercept’s reporting, you know, we’ve been tracking the more than 140 people the administration has killed in boat strikes in the Caribbean. Amid these boat strikes, we hope you did not forget that the U.S. also kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
After toppling Maduro, the Trump administration demanded the Venezuelan government hand over its oil. This has led to a fuel shortage in Cuba, which largely depends on Venezuela’s oil. Now the Trump administration has Cuba squarely in its crosshairs. At the end of January, Trump signed an executive order declaring that Cuba constituted an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security — we’ve heard that one before — which has led to an oil blockade, which is now spiraling into a humanitarian crisis in Cuba as we speak.
To understand what’s happening, I spoke to Michael Bustamante, an associate professor of history and chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, and Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba specializing in post-1959 regime durability.
Here’s our conversation.
Michael Bustamante and Andrés Pertierra, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Andrés Pertierra: Thanks for having me.
Michael Bustamante: Thanks for having me.
AL: To start, Andrés, the last time you spoke to The Intercept in 2024, you were joining us from Havana, Cuba. You’ve since left. What can you tell us about what life was like for people in the country when you were last there?
AP: I was there in 2024. Things were really bad already when I was there. The country was recovering from the Covid crisis more or less, protest waves had gone from a historic exception to part of the new normal. And while I was there, there were actually the beginning of what became, I think, in total six national blackouts. Six times that the entire national grid collapsed, usually for two to three days. Inflation was out of control. Wages had gone back to basically symbolic, at least if you were in the state sector.
And there was just a despair, a generalized despair, that I had never remembered seeing before. I mean, people were always desperate and frustrated, but there was a despair of things ever getting better that was novel, that was kind of pushing people to leave en masse. In the last five years about 20 percent of the population has left the island, which is pretty extraordinary for a country not in a state of war.
AL: Recently, a reporter asked Trump about Cuba making a deal with the United States. Let’s hear Trump’s response.
Reporter: You’re warning Cuba to make a deal. What does that deal look like? What do you want them to do?
Donald Trump: Make a deal. Cuba is right now a failed nation, and they don’t even have jet fuel to get for airplanes to take off. They’re clogging up their runway. We’re talking to Cuba right now. They have Marco Rubio talking to Cuba right now, and they should absolutely make a deal because it’s really a humanitarian threat.
AL: In that clip, Trump goes on to say, “There’s an embargo. There’s no oil. There’s no anything.” Michael, can you bring us up to speed? Tell us about the long-standing U.S. embargo against Cuba and the Trump administration’s efforts to increase pressure.
MB: I think it’s widely known that the United States has had a program of comprehensive sanctions on Cuba since the early 1960s that come out of the consequences of the Cuban Revolution, the nationalization of U.S.-owned properties and businesses, the emergence of Cuba as a kind of a Cold War flashpoint. That history has never gone away.
What I think has changed over time is sort of the degree to which there are holes that are poked in that sanctions regime. There have been openings and closings — most memorably, perhaps, under the Obama administration that really moved to try to put relations with Cuba on a new footing and try to normalize diplomatic ties. In fact, they did that. But the sanctions as such have been codified under law since the 1990s, and that really limits the purview of what the executive branch can do on its own.
The first Trump administration when it came in promised to undo the “bad Obama deal” with Cuba, and it did so, piling on sanctions particularly by 2019 that certainly made things difficult — more difficult — in Cuba.
But the last decade in particular, I would say, has also been a time in which there is a greater and greater consensus inside Cuba, among Cuban economists, among Cuban social scientists, that the country itself is desperate for reforms of a political and economic variety, that the government has been slow — sort of slow footing. And those reforms are needed, not because the United States says so, but because foe and friend alike to Cuba have been been telling them so.
And so the Cuban people are left in the middle, it seems to me, of a U.S. policy that particularly in the last few weeks has intensified even further in the wake of the ouster of Nicolás Maduro, and the particular vulnerability to that pressure that comes from Cuba’s own inability to put forth a reform program and do so successfully.
So that’s kind of where we are. And right now, there are few lifelines available to Cuba in an economic sense. The Trump administration feels that it has the leverage and is trying to use it, albeit, as you heard the president admit, at a potentially, very significant humanitarian cost.
AL: Andrés, can you talk more about how these sanctions work and how they’re playing a role in the current state of Cuba’s economy and its prospects for governance? Walk me through how we got here, like I’m 5.
AP: I think that the most urgent sanction, which is the novelty here, is the current oil embargo.
Basically, the United States has declared it as a matter of policy that if you ship oil to Cuba, the United States government is going to increase tariffs and basically engage in punitive economic measures against your country. And so this obviously creates a huge disincentive for countries that even want to sell oil.
So Venezuela would give oil, it would sell it at below-market rates, it would aid Cuba for political reasons. That’s over, thanks to the change of leadership with Delcy Rodríguez. With Mexico, [President Claudia] Sheinbaum has made it clear that she wants to help Cuba. But she’s not really willing to cross Trump on the oil issue. So she’s sending every kind of aid except for oil. That is the real key thing that is basically causing the wheels to come off the bus, as it were.
But if you’re talking about broader sanctions and regimes, you have Helms-Burton. Trump, during the first Trump administration, activated Title III, which had never been activated before, which among other things, basically says if you’re doing business in a way that engages with or uses resources that were nationalized by the Cuban government, never compensated owners for them, and the owners are U.S. citizens — blah, blah, blah, lots of caveats there — but basically that you can then be sued.
For example, if you have a cruise ship and it docks in a port that was owned by a Cuban who has U.S. citizenship, da da dah, you can then be sued. So the Carnival cruise ships died overnight. That entire sector just collapsed. And I actually had a friend who part of his business model was giving day tours for the tourists who were just there for the day — dead overnight.
Or another thing is, by Trump, and this is — I’m not sure if this is technically an economic sanction, this is not technically an embargo. But another policy that’s hurt Cuba is by putting Cuba on the [state] sponsors of terrorism list. That means that if you’re a European citizen who normally qualifies for an ESTA visa to come to the United States, you no longer qualify if you visit Cuba for a period of, I think, five years, which obviously also impacts the tourism sector.
Also the famous one is, if you have a shipping container and you dock in a Cuban port, you can’t dock in an American port for six months. Like there’s a lot of different measures that turn up the pressure, but really it’s the state sponsors of terrorism list plus the oil embargo that’s really like turning the volume up to 11, right now.
MB: I just wanted to add to that — Andrés has done a good job zeroing in on some of the more recent things and some of the more specific things. But of course, there’s just a broader trade embargo, right? Which means that U.S. companies, by and large, with few exceptions, cannot export goods to Cuba, nor can U.S. persons or actors or companies import goods from Cuba.
Now, there have been exceptions to that put in place over time. A big one came in the year 2000 for the export of food stuff. So it is legal to export food. In fact, a lot of the chicken that gets consumed in Cuba is from the United States.
One of the, I think, Achilles’ heels of the Cuban economy is the degree of import dependence for foodstuffs. A lot of which has been coming over the last 10, 20 years through that loophole. But I think because of that, and because of loopholes like that, and then also because of the fact that the trade embargo per se is a bilateral thing, it doesn’t impact in theory the ability of Cuba to trade with France or Brazil or whatever else. You often hear this commentary, “Well, you know, embargo, what embargo if Cuba can trade with the rest of the world?” And that’s kind of true, but it neglects sort of the impact of the sanctions regime on global financial institutions.
The fact of the matter is that because the global financial system is so integrated and so tied into U.S. banking institutions — because particularly of Cuba’s addition to the state sponsors to terrorism list — any transaction that Cuba might want to do with an enterprise in Europe, say, but that has a link to a U.S. bank or that has a subsidiary that operates in the United States, they just don’t want to touch it. Cuba is radioactive.
And so there are significant kind of extraterritorial effects of the U.S. sanctions regime that obviously don’t make it any easier for Cuba to do business elsewhere in the world, even when in some ways they can.
AL: President Barack Obama, as you mentioned Michael, tried to normalize relations with Cuba when he first entered office, lifting restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba. In 2014, Obama and President Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother, took steps to fully restore diplomatic ties, and there were signs of positive economic outcomes as a result. Then Trump won in 2016, immediately reversed those Obama-era policies. Biden comes into office and tries to normalize relations again. Then Trump is back in office, this time increasing pressure on the country even more.
What has that back and forth on U.S. policy toward Cuba meant for the nation and what is driving the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts, which I will note that the United Nations is warning that the humanitarian situation will “worsen and if not collapse, if its oil needs go unmet.” Andrés, I’ll start with you.
AP: I think that the first thing the listeners should understand is that pre-1991 and post-1991 U.S. Cuba policy have similar but very different dynamics. In the context of the Cold War, you could make more arguments about Cuba as a national security threat. You could make these arguments, like Cuba is intervening in Angola and U.S. interests and all the rest, or U.S. support for guerrillas in Central America. Post-1991, the problem is more like a Jeep that’s stuck in the mud on the side of the road, right? Even though the consensus —
AL: I love that image. Yes.
AP: The consensus post-1991 has long been, at least in foreign policy circles, like a rational Cuba policy would be normalization. It would be engagement. I mean, think back to the ’90s. What is the U.S. approach to China? More trade, more investment, more integration in the hopes that you’re going to defeat Communism with Nike and Coca-Cola. That’s similar to what people have been thinking about Cuba for a long time. But because of the fact that an increasingly well-organized Cuba lobby in a strategic swing state — like Florida — is able to basically leverage that. Not saying you can’t cross them; you can. Obama did, and he won Florida anyway.
But it increased the pressure. And part of it is, Cuba is not important enough to kind of escape those shackles of domestic politics. If it were a national security issue, then those domestic policy issues could be overridden much more easily. But it’s not, and that’s kind of the core problem. It can have this kind of lobby interest capture in a way that many other countries don’t. And I think that’s the core problem.
“Cuba is not important enough to kind of escape those shackles of domestic politics. If it were a national security issue, then those domestic policy issues could be overridden much more easily.”
AL: Michael.
MB: First, just on the flip-flopping between relative degrees of openness and closeness in U.S. policy — it certainly doesn’t do anything to help, say, the investment landscape in a place like Cuba.
Imagine you’re a European company or whatever, and you’re watching this sort of flip-flop. You want stability in whatever the framework is in which you have to figure out how to operate. And by the way, that also applies to the increasingly important Cuban private sector, which has been growing slowly but surely through ups and downs in Cuba’s own internal regulatory framework. But in 2024, the Cuban private sector was doing more business just in terms of retail sales to the population than the Cuban state. And that is a very significant shift in kind of the internal economic logics of the place.
But they also are contending not only with an unstable policy landscape internally and the sort of ups and downs of opening and closing to private sector expansion, which have not been helpful. They’re also dealing with the ups and downs of U.S. policy and thinking, OK, can I get a visa to go to the United States and think about sourcing goods in the United States under certain embargo loopholes? Well, are they going to close me off, are they not? Is the U.S. going to authorize investment, for perhaps, in the private sector with the notion that United States might have a strategic interest in supporting the growth of the private sector versus the state economy?
So the flip-flopping makes it very difficult to sort of envision a path forward. It means that I think both for Cuban officials, but also Cubans on the ground who are trying to push their country forward sometimes against the ways that their officials are not happy with. Everyone’s sort of playing whack-a-mole constantly, right?
One thing I would just amend your description of the recent years slightly. And just to say that A, when Trump was elected the first term, he didn’t undo the Obama thing right away. It took a couple years and cruise ships kept going to Cuba for a couple years, and that was sort of an odd thing. Despite the rhetorical change, obviously. It’s really in 2019 when they put in place what they call a maximum pressure policy tied to a similar policy on Venezuela at the time.
And then the Biden administration, I think there was some expectation that when they came in, Biden would roll back the clock to what Obama had done. For better or worse, that didn’t happen. And part of that didn’t happen because when Biden comes in, he’s got a huge agenda. It’s the middle of the pandemic. Cuba’s not high on the geopolitical priority list, as Andrés mentioned.
And then when in July of 2021, Cuba was at the low point of the pandemic itself and the economic crisis that had been induced by it or worsened by it and there are these mass protests across the island. And the Cuban government responded to mass protests of people who wanted food, electricity, and greater political freedoms by throwing a thousand kids in jail.
And so, like it or not, the Biden administration is not going to step into that moment and say, “Yeah, let’s open the doors.” I wish they had been more, had more foresight on the humanitarian front, but there’s also a pattern here of the Cuban government doing things over time that make the political optics fair or unfair for the United States to move its own policy ball forward more difficult.
And when the Cuban president at the time says, you know, we’re sending out people to the street to combat these anti-revolutionaries, I mean, how do you think the United States is going to respond, even under a Democratic administration? So again, I just again and again, see that in this back and forth, the Cuban people are sort of caught in the middle of this geopolitical game between both governments. And we’re now seeing those consequences have really probably the most tragic effects that I’ve seen in my lifetime.
[Break]
AL: Michael, for the Journal of Democracy, you recently wrote, “Many U.S. policymakers, diaspora leaders, and opposition figures have embraced humanitarian suffering as a tool of political change.” You’re touching on this — I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that and what effect the Trump administration’s pressure campaign is having on the Cuban people and the government? That’s some of the least of what I’ve seen in the reporting on this, about the real effects on the ground. And I’m also curious what has been the response from Cuban people to the U.S.’s latest efforts to oust the government?
MB: Those lines in the piece alluded to the fact that, in addition to the effort to sanction or disincentivize further oil shipments and really cut off oil, Cuban American elected officials and other voices in the community have been calling for further measures. Measures that would include cutting off commercial flights that still exist between the United States and various places in Cuba that are largely used by members of the Cuban diaspora to go visit and support their families. The ability of Cubans to send remittances to send gift parcels of various kinds, right?
All of these things are really very important lifelines for Cuban families in unequal ways, because not every Cuban on the island has family outside, and not everyone has access to those remittance dollars. But those remittance dollars are a vital lifeline.
I think the position of the elected officials is, is that any kind of economic lifeline to the Cuban economy helps the Cuban state stay afloat. And they are arguing that if the Trump administration is really going to try to crack down, you might as well go all the way if you want to use leverage and try to force them to the negotiating table or force the Cuban government to cede to U.S. wishes or whether opening to U.S. economic interests or political change — you got to cut off every source of supply.
This has been a more delicate thing for Cuban American politicians to navigate in recent years because they’re well aware that many of their constituents are sending money to their families. Sending, you know, in a country that has — there’s no antibiotics, let alone basic painkillers, right? The care package that you can send really, really makes a difference.
And just to put it into context, while it’s really hard to calculate the number of remittance or the value of remittance that go into Cuba because a lot of it is sort of in people’s suitcases. It’s thought that the income that the Cuban economy gets from this is really on par of what it has gotten in from something like tourism. So it’s a major contributor to the Cuban economy, but it’s sensitive to cut that off because it touches people. It’s one thing to say, “Down with the Cuban government.” It’s another thing to say, “You can’t send painkillers to your mom.” But lately they have been saying it. The Cuban American officials have been saying it. They’re calling for it. And I think they’re making a bet that you step up the pressure to 1,000 percent and you have a better chance of getting the Cuban government to cede. Of course, there’s a huge humanitarian risk there.
“ There’s this very dangerous game of chicken that’s happening between both governments.”
I think it’s a mistake in some of the reporting I’ve seen to attribute the degree of, say, the trash piling up on Cuban streets or the degree of the economic problems to just what’s happened since January. This has been a rolling train wreck for a while. What we’ve done is ratchet it up, and there’s this very dangerous game of chicken that’s happening between both governments. And I think as time passes, the more difficult it is for U.S. policymakers to allege that none of the suffering is on their hands, that this is only the Cuban government’s fault. I mean, it’s both. And again, the Cuban people are sort of caught in the middle wondering which side is going to back down first.
AL: Andrés, can you expand on that?
AP: I did want to say that a lot of people, and I think Michael has already touched on this, is a lot of people think, oh, Miami Cubans, and you’re thinking about a bunch of white Cubans who left between 1959 and 1975 — that’s a minority.
Since 1980, not only do Cubans often come from working-class backgrounds, they grew up or were born under the revolution, they maintain closer ties. But many of them still buy in for reasons of extreme frustration with the Cuban government. So I think that even as I disagree with their policies, I do think it’s important for listeners to understand that this is not just the same kind of caricature of the white Cuban who left back in the day. This is like, I have classmates who are pro-Trump — or former classmates, because I did my undergrad in Cuba — and they are pro-Trump, despite being Black and Cuban. That is a dynamic that I think listeners should be aware of.
But I agree with another thing that Michael said and I think is really important here, which is that it’s not just that this is going to hypothetically hurt people, but this is going to kill people and it’s probably already killing people. What happens when someone has an asthma attack, and there’s no meds at the hospital? Or someone has an asthma attack, and you can’t even get to the hospital because there’s no ambulance, there’s no transportation, there’s no gas? Something that’s small or should be small then suddenly becomes this catastrophic life-changing event.
“What happens when someone has an asthma attack, and there’s no meds at the hospital?”
I even met someone two years ago — two years ago, before this mess — whose father-in-law fell and broke his hip. And she was told by the doctors that she would have to import basically everything, including surgical supplies, not just medicines for him to have his hip replaced or his hip operated on. And I said, “But that means he’s not going to be able to walk.” And she’s like, yeah.
That is the kind of impact that a maximum pressure campaign has. Which is why traditionally, it’s one thing to, for example, in World War I create this maximum pressure sanctions — no oil, no nothing — campaign against Germany in the context of aggression in World War I or World War II. Or even maximum pressure sanctions against Russia that’s invading Ukraine. Like, that is one thing.
It is entirely another to have this policy against a government which is despotic, which abuses its citizens, which is incompetent, which does all of these things — I’m not trying to dodge any of that — which throws kids in jail, draconian measures, all that stuff. But then who’s footing the bill? It’s everyday people, and the politicians don’t take responsibility for that. They still try and dodge, by and large, their responsibility.
And the fact that they are killing people and they’re doing it from the safety of Florida — which to me, beyond the intellectual component — to me just feels like, come on, if you really want to commit to this, you’re not even going to suffer from these policies that you’re enforcing. You’re not even going to take responsibility for it. And I don’t think it’s justifiable.
MB: Andrés is right, that it feels a little cheap to say pile on the pressure — pile on pressure from the outside — when you’re not going to be on the receiving end of it. But one thing that I think is important is that because of the tremendous recent migration from Cuba, some of the people who are calling on for piling on pressure do have family members in Cuba.
And they have grown embittered by the fact that they have to send remittances to their family in the first place. And this translates to more and more people I know on the island — I mean, of course there are people on the island who are horrified by what the United States is doing — but there are others who are saying, you know what? Between the sort of unwillingness to move the ball forward internally between our government officials saying we would rather sink in the sea than cede to the Americans when maybe we should cede a little because that would help me breathe too. And then the sort of hostility of the outside, I hear people saying more and more, listen, enough with the sort of middling approaches from the United States, whether it’s poke a little hole in the embargo this, or close down this. It’s either you rip off the band-aid of sanctions and let the economy breathe, and you just learn to live with the Cuban government — or send in the F-16s.
And I don’t say that to sound callous or to endorse that way of thinking, but that’s the mindset of many, many Cubans I know who are, I think, more open than they have ever been to some kind of drastic U.S. action, if it would at least maybe move the ball forward, even if there are tremendous risks that come from it, and rather that than this kind of slow-rolling humanitarian disaster that may unfold if the governments continue to just be playing the standoff over the oil shipments and other kinds of trade.
So I think there’s a thirst for decisive action, but of course this is an administration, if we want to go there, I think they’ve shown quite clearly in Venezuela that they’re not too keen on long-term boots on the ground and trying to do this sort of remote governance, in a sense, by proxy of the Delcy Rodríguez regime. In Cuba, that’s a much more difficult proposition to envision. And so one of the other things I argue in that piece of Journal of Democracy is that, ultimately, if the United States really wants to force regime change here, it might require a kind of forcing of the issue from the outside in a way that I think could get uncomfortable for more isolationist actors within the Trump administration. So that’s going to be very important to watch too — how that conflict internally in the decision-making process in Washington evolves.
AL: You also wrote, “Exile groups, for their part, are as numerous as they are competitive for influence and attention. With Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Cuban Americans have never held more sway in the U.S. federal government. But unlike during the heyday of the Cuban American National Foundation in the 1990s, there is no single organization or leader who can claim to speak for the entire diaspora community.”
I want to talk a little bit about Rubio’s influence here and of the Cuban diaspora, as well as what you describe as “credible architecture for political change.” And the question in the back of my mind here is also like, how much of what we’re seeing here is part of a lobbying effort on behalf of the Cuban diaspora or Cuban interests in the U.S. versus how much of this is just like, we don’t like communism?
MB: I mean, unquestionably, Marco Rubio has been highly influential, if not determinant in the direction of U.S–Cuba policy under this administration. He was certainly in the ear of the Trump administration, the first go around, albeit from the Senate. And it’s no secret that the secretary of state has had a long interest in seeing a different political and economic model in Cuba and believing that U.S. sanctions are the tool to achieve that.
You know, everybody’s making the Venezuela comparison. So the parts of my piece that you cited come a little bit in response to that. U.S. diplomats have floated this idea that what we want is to combine external pressure with sanctions, with trying to find someone in Cuba to negotiate with. That for someone like Rubio, I find to be highly interesting from a political point of view because this is somebody who made his career in a sense — or at least part of his career, part of his foreign policy bonafide — arguing, as many Cuban American elected officials have, that any talks whatsoever with the Cuban government are tantamount to legitimizing a government that is illegitimate.
“This is somebody who made his career … arguing, as many Cuban American elected officials have, that any talks whatsoever with the Cuban government are tantamount to legitimizing a government that is illegitimate.”
That was their response to the Obama normalization, and yet, in effect, what the president himself keeps saying, and Rubio confirms and denies — a little bit more, more unclearly — is that there may be talks underway. There’s a report in Axios that suggests that the secretary of state himself is actually engaged in a kind of a back-channel dialogue with Raúl Castro’s grandson, who is, let’s just say not a particularly beloved figure among most Cubans. How Rubio sells that to a Miami constituency, I think, is quite interesting. But that kind of deal-making impulse is very much in keeping with the Trump administration’s focus.
And I also happen to think that in the Venezuelan case, Rubio has said in response to criticism, look, you don’t get a political transition overnight, a political transition is not something you cook for two minutes in a microwave oven. I think he’s right in most cases, right? This idea of the Cuban government or the Venezuelan government just kind of imploding and disappearing and to be replaced by something that’s unclear is a little bit of fantasy, I think, in these two contexts. And particularly in the Cuban context where, as I argue, there are opposition actors in Cuba and groups and certainly in exile, but there is nothing comparable to the figure of María Corina Machado that acts as a force around which both an internal opposition and a diaspora opposition can gravitate. And so I think the big missing piece here, in this vision of forcing change through sanctions and dialogue is, where’s the counterpart? And so that’s the paradox of this moment, too.
I mean, you’ve never had Cuban Americans more influential in the foreign policy-making process toward Cuba, right? It’s not the Cuba lobby anymore. It is a Cuban American who’s the secretary of state. He doesn’t need to be lobbied perhaps in the same way that others needed to. This is his issue. But the Cuban American community is as divided as ever. Not necessarily in terms of their vision for change on the island, but who is to lead it and the politics — the intergroup politics — of this group or that group. I mean, that is as old as time and hasn’t gone away. And contrast with the moment in the 1990s when the Cuban American National Foundation was really the leading organization of the Cuba lobby, so to speak, and claimed, I think with a bit more credibility, to speak for the community as a whole. That’s disappeared. And there’s this sort of scrum of elected officials, influencers, you know, all sort of vying for attention.
But what is the actual structure of governance that would follow a supposed fall of the Cuban government on the island? I don’t think it exists. And that might explain why this administration, even under Rubio, is flirting with this idea of some kind of negotiated exit, even as improbable or fantastical as that may seem at this juncture.
AL: Andrés, do you want to jump in?
AP: I agree with what he’s saying, and I think that also it kind of underlines this broader tension in the MAGA coalition, as it were. So you don’t just have these conflicting interests and all these positions within the Cuban diaspora, but you also have this coalition where you’ve got the more isolationist wing and you’ve got the hawkish wing.
The hawkish wing is obviously more the Rubio wing. While the isolation of swing is, I guess, more Stephen Miller and JD Vance, though, I’m not sure how seriously Trump takes Vance, but Stephen Miller at the very least.
So you have all these conflicting interests, and this does seem to be narrowing the possible policies that the Trump administration is willing to do. So no boots on the ground. And this risks not only with Venezuela, with Delcy Rodriguez, that’s not a consummated regime change operation, right? They took out one person. They have someone who’s more pliable, but she’s in a very delicate position domestically.
So it remains to be seen how much of a transition there will be. There’s already like problems over how many political prisoners she’s released, you know, will she try and break free of this kind of quasi vacillation. So, not only is the Venezuela 1.0 model still a question mark, but you also have these tensions within the Trump coalition that severely constrain how much Rubio or Trump or anyone can have a coherent policy towards a country that is, you know, as Mike said, very different and very complex.
For context, I mean, not only is it that Cuba has a very different level of dissident organization, all the rest — like look at Eastern Europe, look at the USSR. In almost all cases, accept in Poland with Solidarity, dissident movements were microscopic until the very end. In Cuba, you had attempts to organize a broader dissident organization. There was right after the 2021 protest, you had the attempts to articulate something called Archipiélago. That movement was broken. Its leaders were basically given the choice of exile or jail. And there is no leadership.
And so really what you would have to do is negotiate with the state, but then that creates the tension that Mike’s already talked about, which is OK, how do we do that without pissing off these people? It seems like they’re going to piss off part of their coalition no matter how they handle it, even if the current approach is “successful,” right? So it’s really like even seeing things in terms of whatever they’re doing right now is successful, it is going to create problems down the road for them. And I’m not sure that it is going to be successful in the way that they think it is.
AL: For both of you, what do you think mainstream media, particularly in the U.S., is missing in how it’s covering the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Cuba right now?
MB: I mean, part of it is what I said already. I think there’s some missing context that this humanitarian crisis — like, it didn’t just start. There was already a humanitarian crisis. 850,000 Cubans came to the United States since 2021. That is the largest Cuban migration in history ever. That’s happening for a reason, right?
So where we are now hasn’t come out of nowhere. And I think there’s a kind of a presentism in coverage sometimes that is understandable but I think is missing a little bit of the boat of this wider history. That’s one thing.
To shift gears slightly to another issue that’s been kind of in the ether, particularly in the diaspora, all throughout this period, and certainly since Trump retook office, is the subtext of migration policy. And thinking about how the Trump administration has treated the historic numbers of those Cubans who came in recent years and sort of revoked status. Long story short, 400 to 500,000 Cubans of that giant recent exodus have some kind of indeterminate status that the Biden administration gave them, that the Trump administration has either tried to pull away or seems less likely than Biden ever was to sort of convert it to permanent status.
Deportations have been increasing, and they’ve been continuing even since January at a slow clip or relative to the size, but nonetheless significant. And so I think one thing that would even in a circumstance in which a Cuban government falls — there’s a regime insider that becomes the Delcy Rodríguez of Cuba, the best-case scenario that the Trump administration can imagine — the politics for the Cuban American community are going to be really important to watch because one of the, I think, subtexts of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it’s not just about being able to plant the flag and say, “We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do.” It’s also about, we can deport more people. And so how does then the Cuban American community react to that? That, I think is an open question. Something that I haven’t seen linked yet to the conversation about regime change per se.
AL: Andrés.
AP: One of the core things that I think a lot of the coverage has kind of struggled with is how to balance systemic failure from embargo policy in a particular Trump-era policy. And I think that part of the problem is that if you talk to a lot of people, especially politicians or activists, you’re going to get either it’s all the fault of the government, or it’s all the fault of sanctions, and there’s no real room in between or even like the beginnings of a framework to understand how to approach this.
And I think that, not only to mention it in the same breath is important because it’s clearly both factors. But also something that might be helpful for journalists covering this to think about is, think of the systemic economic and policy failures in Cuba as kind of an immune disease. People often miss that because these systemic failures, these policy problems, the unreformed nature of Cuban agriculture — meaning that a country that is a historical ag exporter is importing previously about 60 to 80 percent of its food. Now, I don’t doubt, somewhere around 95, like they’re importing everything at this point.
“Think of the systemic economic and policy failures in Cuba as kind of an immune disease.”
Like these are things that are aggravated by the embargo, but they’re not caused by the embargo. And that you need to see the embargo as multiplier rather than cause of why the system just is struggling to breath. Why there’s kind of like a pneumonia — economic pneumonia — in the country right now.
AL: Both of you have touched on the fact that this is happening right after our kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro. And I won’t say unprecedented because it’s not unprecedented, but probably the most U.S. intervention in Latin America that we’ve seen since the coup spree of the ’50s through the ’80s. What does this mean for Latin America more broadly?
Michael, I’m really glad you brought the immigration policy into this, but you know, we’ve killed people in boat strikes in the Caribbean. And as you mentioned Andrés, people are probably already dying now from the most recent sort of ratcheting up of these sanctions.
But as we’ve talked about, it’s not being covered in the same way. So I wonder if you could just speak to that and sort of what you were expecting to see in the future.
MB: The conversation about Cuba policy is intimately related to broader conversations about U.S. national security strategy. If you read that national security strategy that was put out by the administration late last year I believe, I think what was so striking to many folks was how far it leaned away, even from the rhetoric of kind of great power competition and more that we will let China and Russia do their thing, but it’s really about spheres of influence.
And so I think, all this business about the revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the “Doroe” doctrine, and aggressive force projection, to put it mildly in the Western Hemisphere, feels like deja vu for someone who teaches about the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America in the early 20th century quite often. So it’s inseparable from that. There’s this notion that the administration feels that this is our hemisphere. I mean, they’re using this language much more boldly and baldly than I think we’ve seen since, I don’t know, Teddy Roosevelt or something.
What I think is interesting about this moment is that Latin America itself as a region has had its own backs and forths in terms of the ideological direction of leadership but right now is in a moment of largely or sort of more of a swing to the right with few exceptions. You know, [Gustavo] Petro (Colombia) and Lula (Brazil) are exceptions in the regional political landscape. And also, there’s no love lost in much of the region even on the center left for parts of the region, for someone like Nicolás Maduro who, you know, Venezuela became the source of a mass exodus in its own right that impacted a number of countries and became a political problem across the region.
So I think part of that is why you don’t see many voices in the region necessarily standing up and criticizing too much what the administration has done in Venezuela. The critiques have been more pro forma, but also because those governments that might be more likely to critique those actions, they’ve got their own fish to fry with an increasingly transactional administration that’s wielding tariff threats in new ways. That explains why Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, to go back to an earlier point, is sort of caught between a rock and a hard place with regard to the demand that she stop Mexico’s own oil shipments to Cuba. And I don’t think the Cuban government can count on the kind of regional support that it might have in prior moments.
If you go back 10 years ago, part of the reason that Obama does what he does on Cuban normalization is because he’s hearing an earful every time he goes to a regional summit that the path to improving U.S. relations with Latin America as a whole coming out the George W. Bush years is to get away from sort of unilateralism and interventionism or the threat of that. And that the way to signal to the region that you’re turning the page is to fix your problem with Cuba and get policy on a more normal, practical footing. And guess what? The Cubans are also reforming and there’s a path here. The regional landscape right now is very, very, very different — very different politically. And so Cuba is much more isolated than it has been in a long time.
You hear voices on the center-left also saying, you know, the Cuban government here, yes, what the United States is doing is horrible and using Cuban people as cannon fodder for this policy that increases humanitarian suffering with the goal of getting the Cuban government to cede or come to the table. But man, the Cubans have had a decade or more — 30 years since the end of the Cold War — to get their economy on at least a little bit stabler footing. And they’ve kind of opened themselves up to this in a way, right? Which is not to blame the victim per se, but it is a complicated story. And I think Cuba’s more isolated on the regional front than it’s been in a while because of it.
AP: There’s a reason that the United States just didn’t really do what the Trump administration is doing anymore, right? Like that really in your face, just do it, break some things on our way to fixing it solution or approach to Latin America. There’s a reason we moved past that.
And I think that a return to that is going to create a backlash. The exact way that this backlash is going to take form we won’t see it for a while. He’s going to cow various governments into obeisance for a bit, but you don’t get long-term cooperation stability through fear. You get them to temporarily cooperate while they now figure out a backdoor, other guarantors.
“If you look at who is the main trade partner of a lot of Latin America, it’s not the U.S. anymore, it’s China. China’s investing.”
So I don’t think it’s actually going to solidify the U.S. position in Latin America; I think it’s going to further weaken it. Not least because I mean, if you look at who is the main trade partner of a lot of Latin America, it’s not the U.S. anymore, it’s China. China’s investing. This is not the USSR, where the USSR even at peak was a fraction of the U.S.’s GDP and had real trouble exporting their economic model. This is a country that can compete with the U.S. on its own terms, and in fact can excel because like they, oftentimes the Chinese don’t really care as much about, is this country a dictatorship? Is this country going to be able to pay us back reliably? They’ll just do it.
So, I don’t even think that purely in a Machiavellian sense, this is going to create a coherent policy or an effective policy. And another way that I think this is going to create a likely backlash and actually strengthen authoritarian tendencies among the left, is look at the overthrow Jacobo Guzmán in 1954 in Guatemala, which was a seminal moment for many Latin Americans during that period, not at least many of those who created the Cuban Revolution, but also look at [Salvador] Allende in 1973. And I understand that’s more complicated. It wasn’t just a foreign coup. It was like a lot of domestic factors. But what I’m trying to say is, the lesson that a lot of people on the left took was, a democratic path to policies that we want is impossible, ergo realism dictates that we take a different road. And does that mean that we’re going to see guerrillas pop up tomorrow? Probably not. This seems to be set to supercharge that tendency, even if we can’t exactly foresee what direction or manifestation it will have in practice.
AL: I want to thank you both for helping me and our listeners understand this even a tiny bit better. Michael and Andrés, thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with us on The Intercept Briefing.
MB: Thanks a lot.
AP: Thank you.
AL: That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
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Chatham House Prize 2025: A humanitarian lifeline in Sudan 26 March 2026 — 6:00PM TO 7:00PM Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House and Online
Please join us as Sudan’s grassroots mutual aid groups, the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), accept the Chatham House Prize.
Join us to celebrate Sudan’s grassroots mutual aid groups – the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – the 2025 winners of the Chatham House Prize.
Sudan’s grassroots mutual aid groups–the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs)–have been awarded the 2025 Chatham House Prize, in recognition of their crucial role in delivering humanitarian assistance during the ongoing war in Sudan.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed by a devastating war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), triggering one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. Over thirteen million people have been displaced from their homes, with more than thirty-three million–around two‑thirds of the population–needing humanitarian assistance. The conflict has devastated infrastructure and left vast areas without functioning state institutions, or reliable access to basic services, with women and children most impacted by the lack of security, healthcare and livelihoods.
In this context, the ERRs have proven indispensable. These community networks are said to have been the difference between life and death for millions–saving lives in areas often inaccessible to international organizations. They provide essentials like food, water and medical supplies, and maintain or repair infrastructure such as power and water systems–all while under risk of attack and obstruction by the warring parties. Their work has been praised and recognized by several international bodies, including the Norwegian Nobel Committee, particularly for their impartial nature and attempts to provide aid to all those caught up in the conflict.
About the Chatham House Prize
The Chatham House Prize is voted for by Chatham House members, following nominations from the institute’s staff. The award is presented on behalf of the institute’s patron, His Majesty the King, representing the non-partisan and authoritative character of the Prize.
The Chatham House Prize was launched in 2005. Previous recipients of the Prize include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Sir David Attenborough, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Médecins Sans Frontières.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has made a series of claims about the economy, a topic that should feature prominently in his State of the Union address to Congress on Feb. 24.
“We have the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a White House press briefing on Jan. 20, adding later that “America is booming.” He made similar comments the following day, asserting that “we were a dead country” a year ago.
But his economic boasts include false or misleading claims, and he sometimes pushes an incorrect narrative of an abrupt change in some economic indicators since he came back to the White House.
As preparation for what we might hear in Tuesday night’s speech, we offer a guide to a dozen of Trump’s recent claims about the economy, most of which we’ve written about before. They touch on inflation, economic growth, manufacturing, wages, jobs, the deficit, stock market and more.
Proud of federal data showing that economic growth in the second and third quarters of 2025 exceeded expectations, Trump in Iowa on Jan. 27 falsely claimed that “under my leadership, economic growth is exploding to numbers unheard of. They’ve never had them before.”
After declining by an annualized rate of 0.6% in the first quarter of 2025, which covers the three months from January to March, real gross domestic product (meaning it has been adjusted for inflation) grew at a rate of 3.8% in the second quarter of 2025 and at a rate of 4.4% in the third quarter, according to estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
But those were not record-setting numbers. They were the largest quarterly increases since the economy expanded at a rate of 4.7% in the third quarter of 2023, under President Joe Biden.
As we wrote this month, the quarterly growth record is 34.9% in the third quarter of 2020, which was at the beginning of the economic recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, according to BEA estimates back to 1947, the record was 16.7% growth in the first quarter of 1950. Yearly growth in GDP has averaged about 2.75% over the last 50 years.
Trump told NBC News in a Feb. 4 interview: “We have, it was just announced, more jobs right now occupied in the United States of America than at any time during its existence, 250 years. There are more people working today than at any time in the history of our country. Pretty good stat.”
While accurate, the statistic loses some luster when factoring in steady U.S. population growth. In fact, job growth slowed and the employment-to-population ratio declined a bit in the first year of Trump’s second term.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 158,627,000 people employed in the U.S. in January, and that’s the highest number on record. But by and large, as the population of the U.S. has grown over the years, so too has the number of people employed in the U.S., with notable exceptions during recessions. This graph from BLS gives the long-term picture:
Since employment recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-2022, jobs have reached new highs nearly every single month. Trump’s claim also overlooks that job growth was lower between January 2025 and January 2026 under Trump — a gain of 359,000 jobs or 0.2% — than it was for Biden’s final year — a gain of 1.2 million jobs or 0.8.%.
There are other, more relevant statistics, on employment growth that factor in population growth. BLS’ employment-population ratio, which is the percentage of the population that is working, declined from 60.1% in January 2025 to 59.8% in January 2026. Another measure is the labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work. That rate has stayed relatively the same, going from 62.6% in January 2025 to 62.5% in January 2026. The so-called “prime age” labor force participation rate, focusing just on those ages 25 to 54, rose from 83.5% in January 2025 to 84.1% in January 2026.
Trump has frequently cited this hollow statistic about more people being employed than ever before during both his first and second terms, including during his State of the Union address in 2019.
In the NBC News interview, Trump repeated his false claim that he “inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country,” and added that “now we have almost no inflation.”
When Trump took office in January 2025, the annualized rate of inflation was 3%, based on the Consumer Price Index. That was far from the 9.1% rate in June 2022, under Biden, which was the highest 12-month increase since November 1981, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The worst inflation in U.S. history was not long after World War I, when the Consumer Price Index was up 23.7% for the 12 months ending in June 1920.
Trump has repeatedly mocked Democrats for raising the issue of “affordability,” which Trump says he has since solved.
“Prices are way down. You don’t hear the Democrats talking about affordability anymore, which they caused the affordability problem, very badly,” Trump said on Feb. 6. “But you don’t hear that word. I haven’t heard that word spoken in a week and a half because they can’t speak because the prices are down.”
But overall prices are not down. As of January, one year into Trump’s second term, the annual inflation rate was down to 2.4%. However, that’s above the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve. So, prices are still increasing, but at a slower pace than when Trump took office.
In the Jan. 20 press briefing at the White House, Trump falsely claimed to have “ended Biden stagflation,” which he said is “far worse than inflation.” The U.S. was “plagued by the nightmare of stagflation” under Biden, and now “we are witnessing the exact opposite,” Trump said at a World Economic Forum meeting on Jan. 21.
But, as we’ve written, economists told us that the U.S. economy under Biden did not experience stagflation, which Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told us “refers to a sustained period of high inflation combined with weak or stagnant real economic growth, typically alongside rising unemployment.” He said that definition did not apply to the Biden economy.
Inflation was high during Biden’s first two years in office, then declined sharply in the last half of his presidency. “However, real GDP growth during the Biden presidency was positive and often above trend, and unemployment remained historically low,” Handley said.
In addition, Aeimit Lakdawala, an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest University, told us that there has not been a complete economic turnaround under Trump.
“What we’re really seeing is a continuation of trends that were already well underway before Trump took office in January 2025,” Lakdawala said. He noted that the annual inflation rate is “modestly lower” under Trump, while the average annualized increase in real GDP under Trump is “a touch lower” than in Biden’s last two years. The unemployment rate, at 4.3% as of January, is also slightly higher than it was when Trump took office.
Trump has repeatedly boasted that the stock market has outperformed expectations. “Your 401(k)s are doing very well,” Trump said in a speech to military families in North Carolina on Feb. 13.
A Feb. 16 press release from the White House put some additional spin on the claim, saying the stock market has “rebounded strongly under President Trump’s leadership.” The release notes that the S&P 500 “surg[ed] nearly 40% from its early-year low.” That’s true. But the low in 2025 came just a few days after Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on April 2 that sent stock prices tumbling. Since then, stocks have rebounded and achieved new highs.
Since Trump took office, the S&P 500 has risen 14.5% (that’s for the period between the close of the market on Jan. 17, 2025, the last business day before the inauguration, and the close of the market on Feb. 18, 2026). Although Trump has said stocks far outperformed Wall Street expectations, that’s only a little better than many financial analysts forecast for 2025 just before Trump took office.
As Yahoo! Finance wrote on Jan. 2, 2025, “The median year-end target for the S&P 500 among strategists tracked by Yahoo Finance sits at 6,600. This would represent about a 12% increase from the index’s current level.”
“And if you remember when I was first elected, everybody said, if I got it to 50,000, the Dow, or 7,000 with the S&P, if I got it to 50,000 with a Dow, that would be an amazing — that would be in four years from then, from the election,” Trump told reporters on Feb. 13.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, reached 50,000 in early February, but has since dropped a bit, and was at 49,576 at the open of the market on Feb. 19.
But it’s misleading to suggest the stock market “rebounded strongly” under Trump. The stock market performed well in Biden’s final two years in office — with the S&P 500 rising over 20% each of those years — better than the 13% gain Trump saw in his first year. As we wrote in our story, “Biden’s Final Numbers,” the S&P 500 grew by nearly 58% over the entirety of Biden’s four years. The stock market has been on a good long-term run, with the S&P rising nearly 68% during Trump’s first four years in office and by 166% during the eight years under President Barack Obama before that.
We also note that while Trump often boasts that everyone’s 401(k) retirement account has risen, only about 62% of Americans own any stock, according to a Gallup poll in 2025. Ownership of stock skews heavily to the wealthy — 87% among those in households earning at least $100,000. It was 28% among those in households earning less than $50,000.
In a Feb. 6 gaggle with reporters, in which he claimed that “we’ve had massive price reductions,” Trump misleadingly said that “if you look at gasoline, $1.99 a gallon.” That was far from the national average price.
Gasoline prices are about 19 cents (or 6%) lower than they were when Trump took office, but, as of the week ending Feb. 9, the average price in the U.S. for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.90, nearly $1 more than Trump said, according to the Energy Information Administration. One week later, the average price was $2.92, as of the week ending Feb. 16.
There also were no states in which the average price was below $2 at the time of Trump’s claim. Oklahoma had the lowest average price at $2.36 per gallon on Feb. 6, according to AAA data. That state, at $2.29, also had the lowest average price on Feb. 18.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told us in an email that, as of Feb. 14, there were “about 40 stations in the nation with gasoline below $2/gal, which is what we’ve generally seen on a daily basis for February thus far.” In a Feb. 16 post on Substack, he wrote that, as of that date, $2.79 was the “most common U.S. gas price encountered by motorists.”
In a Jan. 27 press gaggle, Trump also claimed to have “made a lot of progress” on the “very, very high prices” that he inherited. “So, we have the groceries going down. We have the energy going down,” he said. That’s misleading.
While the average price of some grocery items, such as eggs and bread, has decreased since the start of Trump’s second term, average food prices overall are up — not down. As of January, the Consumer Price Index for at-home food products purchased at a grocery store or supermarket had increased about 2.2%, year over year, according to the most recent BLS data.
As for energy prices, it’s not clear what Trump is referring to. The CPI for energy overall was down 0.3% for the 12 months ending in January, while the index for household energy specifically rose 6.6% in that period, according to BLS data. Also, the average price of electricity per kilowatt hour has risen about 7.3% in the last year.
In his Jan. 30 opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Trump exaggerated when he wrote that “with the help of tariffs, we have cut that federal budget deficit by a staggering 27% in a single year.”
Budget deficits occur when federal spending exceeds revenue. The White House has said that Trump’s figure was calculated by comparing the cumulative budget deficit from February to November in 2025 with the combined deficit for the same 10 months in 2024.
But organizations that track the budget deficit typically compare deficits based on months in fiscal years, not calendar years. The $1.78 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2025, which began on Oct. 1, 2024, and ended on Sept. 30, decreased about 2.3% from the $1.82 trillion budget gap in fiscal year 2024. (Trump alone was president for a full eight out of the 12 months in FY 2025.)
As of January, the budget deficit was down about 17% through the first four months of FY 2026 when compared with the same period in FY 2025. An increase in federal revenue, including from tariffs, contributed to the decline. On Feb. 9, the Congressional Budget Office said, “Customs duties, including tariff revenues, collected this year were more than four times the amount recorded in the first four months of last year, an increase of $90 billion.”
However, in its most recent long-term budget outlook, the CBO projected that the final FY 2026 budget deficit will end up being close to $1.9 trillion, higher than the deficit in FY 2025. That would be about $140 billion higher than the deficit that CBO projected for FY 2026 in January 2025, before any of Trump’s policies had been implemented.
Trump’s claim that he has “slashed our gaping trade deficit by a staggering 77%,” as he said Jan. 27 in Iowa, is misleading. In 2025, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services decreased by 0.2%, or about $2.1 billion, from 2024, according to data the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Feb. 19. The 2025 goods-and-services trade deficit of roughly $901.5 billion was the third largest going back to 1960.
Instead, as we wrote on Feb. 3, Trump’s claim appears to compare the monthly trade deficit in January 2025 to the deficit nine months later in October, a 16-year low. That’s a decrease of 77.6%, according to BEA figures revised this month. (The decrease from January to December was 45.2%.) But economic experts told us that comparing the trade deficit in one month to another is not preferable because monthly trade figures can be volatile.
For instance, in the first three months of 2025, the trade imbalance surged to between roughly $120 billion and $136 billion, as U.S. importers loaded up on foreign goods to get ahead of tariffs on imported products that Trump had proposed. Imports went back down after the tariffs went into effect, producing smaller trade deficits in the months later in the year.
“Large month-to-month swings are common, even in periods with no underlying structural change in trade policy or economic conditions,” Handley, at the University of California, San Diego, said in an email for our story. “For that reason, economists almost never evaluate claims about the ‘trade deficit’ based on comparisons between two individual months.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that “factory construction is up by 41%” under his second term. That’s misleading. The Census Bureau’s manufacturing construction spending data, which the White House referred us to, shows that spending has declined since Trump took office.
The quarterly data show a 6.7% decline, while the drop was 7.3% on a monthly basis, from January 2025 to October, the latest data available.
As we’ve explained, the White House gets a 41% increase by comparing the monthly average from January to August 2025 with the yearly average for 2021 to 2024. But that methodology fails to take into account the 212% increase in factory construction spending over Biden’s four years, partly fueled by the 2022 CHIPS Act, which helped fund semiconductor manufacturing facilities and continues to affect construction spending. Anirban Basu, chief economist for the Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry trade association, told us that the manufacturing construction spending in 2025 is “largely due” to the CHIPS Act.
It’s worth noting that the economy lost 83,000 manufacturing jobs in Trump’s first 12 months. In the year before he took office, the decline was 202,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Trump has repeatedly mentioned the decline in real wages, meaning they are adjusted for inflation, over the four years of Biden’s presidency and the increase in real wages so far under his second term. It’s true that real average weekly earnings fell 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, during Biden’s term, and they’ve gone up 1.9% in the year since January 2025. But Trump at times has left the misleading impression that this has been an abrupt turnaround. Over Biden’s last year, real wages went up 0.7%
On Jan. 13, Trump said: “After real wages plummeted by $3,000 under sleepy Joe Biden, real wages are up by $1,300 in less than one year under President Trump.” Later that month, he said that “wages have gone up … much faster” than inflation. With Biden, he said, “it was just the opposite. Wages in the United States in the last year have gone up.”
Wages rose faster than inflation over the last year-and-a-half of Biden’s presidency. They’ve outpaced inflation since June 2023, and they’ve continued to do so since Trump took office.
“It remains the case that both at the tail end of the Biden administration and the beginning of this Trump administration, real wages have been rising. That is to say, inflation has been rising more slowly than wages have been,” Gary Burtless, a senior fellow emeritus in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told us in a phone interview when we wrote about this topic in December.
As for the specific dollar amounts Trump has mentioned — a $3,000 decline in real wages under Biden and a $1,300 increase under his term — the White House told us that’s based on weekly wage data from BLS that’s adjusted for inflation using the CPI-W, which is the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers. It measures the change in prices for a basket of goods purchased by such workers, and it’s the index Social Security uses to calculate cost-of-living adjustments. Using that method, we got a decline of nearly $2,900 over Biden’s four years and an increase of about $1,400 for Trump’s first year ($1,363 to be exact), a figure that includes January data released this month.
Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank, cautioned against looking at wage growth only over presidential terms, calling it “deeply misleading” because “macroeconomic cycles occasionally have huge effects that have nothing to do with presidential performance.”
Bivens noted that average wages jumped up during the COVID-19 pandemic when the unemployment rate also spiked as mainly low-wage workers lost their jobs. As those low-wage workers regained employment, “it had the effect of artificially lowering measured wages in the aggregate.” (Burtless also said the pandemic had this impact on wage data.)
“The lesson is that the proper way to measure macroeconomic variables like average wages is from business cycle peak to business cycle peak, not from the trough to a peak. That’s why, for example, we measure from 2019-2024 or 2025,” Bivens said.
But presidents of both parties are apt to take credit or cast blame for increases or declines in real wage growth.
The president continues to make the exaggerated boast that “we secured commitments for a record breaking plus $18 trillion” in “new investments,” as he said in Iowa in late January. In his pre-Super Bowl NBC News interview, Trump also made the claim, saying “$18 trillion is being invested in our country as we speak.” At times, he has attributed this to his policies on tariffs.
A White House website tallying such promises puts the total at $9.6 trillion for “U.S. and Foreign Investments,” providing very few details on these agreements. But as we’ve written before, even that number is shaky because it includes pledges and planned investments that may not happen.
“[T]hey’re just promises — and often vague ones at that,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in an April 2025 analysis when Trump began making such claims.
In looking at the White House list in May, we found that some investments may not be due to Trump. A $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project, for example, was reportedly in the planning stages in March 2024, well before the election. And both a labor union and a Democratic governor took credit for the announced reopening of an auto assembly plant that also was on the Trump administration’s list.
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The post A Pre-SOTU Guide to Trump’s Economic Claims appeared first on FactCheck.org.
Why are Middle Eastern governments lobbying against a US attack on Iran? Expert comment jon.wallace
Threat perceptions have changed. Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt all wish to avoid a war that would bring even more upheaval to the region.
Not long ago, most leaders in the Middle East were frustrated with the US for not taking a firmer stance towards Iran. Many regional elites were furious with the Obama administration for pursuing diplomacy with Tehran, adopting an accommodating stance, and prioritizing a nuclear deal, which culminated in the short-lived JCPOA.
The reason was clear: Iran was widely viewed as a major threat to regional stability.
Between 2003 and 2023 its influence had grown across the region. In the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion, Iraq came increasingly under Tehran’s influence, alongside Iran’s long-standing alliance with Syria (under the now deposed Assad regime), and its considerable clout in Lebanon wielded through Hezbollah. Conflict in Yemen saw Iran’s influence in the country deepening through its alliance with the Houthis. Iran, therefore, had created a powerful network of state and non-state allies across the region, commonly referred to as the ‘Axis of Resistance’.
This Iran-centric network was previously a highly potent way for Tehran to capitalize on conflicts and instabilities and deepen its influence. Arab leaders feared this network: King Abdullah of Jordan portrayed it as an emerging ‘Shia Crescent’, following the Iraq invasion.
Yet today, with a real prospect of US military action against Iran, regional states are pursuing energetic diplomacy to dissuade the US from attacking. Oman, Qatar, and Turkey have all ramped up their efforts to mediate. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also advocated for de-escalation and diplomacy. What explains this striking reversal?
Iran’s power and ambition across the region is diminished, and the prospect of an Iran-centric order has receded. For Middle Eastern leaders, the threats have changed: the greatest risks are now an expansionist and aggressive Israel, and the chaos of a potentially collapsed Iranian state.
The Axis of Resistance, once a powerful network, is increasingly transforming into a resistance without an axis. It has been severely damaged since Hamas’s cross-border attacks of 7 October 2023, the war in Gaza, and a sequence of Israeli military campaigns.
Hezbollah has been degraded in Lebanon by relentless Israeli attacks. Assad has been toppled in Syria. The Iraqi Shia militias and Houthis in Yemen are under increasing pressure. Iran itself has been weakened by the damage to its network, the 12-day war with Israel, and the US strike on its nuclear facility. That, in turn has diminished the Iranian threat to regional states.
Conversely, Israel’s expansionism and unpredictability have grown, and increasingly alarm countries in its near neighbourhood.
Its September 2025 attack on Doha in particular indicated a willingness by Israel to breach commonly held understandings about regional security and the US security umbrella, amplifying the Gulf’s threat perception emanating from Israel.
The prevailing view across the region is that they have overestimated the Iranian threat, and underestimated the Israeli one. The less the region’s leaders perceive a threat from Iran, the more they will feel threatened by Israel and seek to counterbalance its power.
The changing nature of regional states’ threat perceptions informs their strategy towards Iran. Broadly speaking, there are three main policy approaches: regime change, containment, and policy-based pushback.
The US and Israel remain wedded to the first two approaches. There were indeed times when some regional states favoured elements of these approaches too. As late as 2018, during Trump’s first term, the US tried to midwife the stillborn Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), commonly known as the Arab NATO, composed of the six Gulf states plus Egypt and Jordan as a bulwark against Iran.
But in the post-7 October context, the regime change and containment policies hardly find any receptive ears amongst the Arab states.
Regime change, through a war, is viewed as highly dangerous. There is no organized, nation-wide, popular and credible opposition in Iran, and the regime and state are so intertwined, any regime collapse raises the prospect of a state collapse – or a regime that metamorphizes into something even more militarized.
The repercussions of a state collapse would far exceed what the Middle East has experienced as a result of conflict in Iraq, Syria, or Yemen, whether in the form of instability, migration, radicalism, the proliferation of armed groups, or regional spillover.
And Iran’s demographic composition, with its sizeable ethnic minorities concentrated in specific areas of the country, heightens fears that the country could become internally fragmented.
Plus, it is widely believed among regional leaders that an Iran knocked out of the equation will embolden Israel to attempt to reshape the region in its image – something that is an anathema to most regional states.
Trump’s lack of clarity regarding the scale and aim of any military option further heightens regional fears about the implications of a potential military strike.
Containment of Iran was one of the central elements of US-backed regional initiatives, such as the Abraham Accords, which were premised on the idea of an order built on Arab-Israeli cooperation within a US-centric framework.
This containment logic was probably more applicable to Israeli policy than to the Arab-Gulf states. But Arab-Gulf countries increasingly dismiss the strategy. In the Middle East, containment-based policies have seldom achieved the intended outcomes. They failed to contain and instead contributed to increased regional polarization and fragmentation.
Given the high cost and danger linked to the first two options, regional states have increasingly adopted the policy-based approach towards Iran. That means opposing and pushing back against certain Iranian policies rather than seeking regime change or a broad containment. In the ongoing US–Iran dispute, Tehran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missiles, and regional network and policy are the core elements.
Regional states oppose a US strike on Iran as a means to resolve these issues – but are concerned by them too. Opposition to Iran’s proxy network is a common policy position that unifies most regional countries. Similarly, these states do not want to see a nuclear Iran, although they do not believe this is likely to happen anytime soon.
Conscious of regional concerns about the core elements of the US-Iranian negotiations, Tehran has a limited appetite for a diplomatic approach that involved not only the US and Iran but also regional states, as proposed by Turkey. Another possible reason for Iran’s opposition to a broader diplomatic track is that, if diplomacy fails in a bilateral negotiation, Iran can blame the US’s bad faith: whereas a wider format might see regional states assign part of the blame to Iranian intransigence.
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| USAFacts | Nonpartisan Government Data | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-27 14:04 |
| VESCmann | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-28 12:04 |
| wheel -●- Self-Balancing Electric Skateboards | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-27 14:04 |
| World | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-27 14:04 |
| World news | The Guardian | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-27 14:04 |
| www.newarkpostonline.com - RSS Results in news,news/* | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-28 12:04 |
| www.newarkpostonline.com - RSS Results in regional,regional/* | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-28 12:04 |
| www.newarkpostonline.com - RSS Results in sports/college,sports/college/* | XML | 2026-02-27 12:04 | 2026-02-28 12:04 |
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