News Reel

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: President Javier Milei of Argentina promoted a cryptocurrency last year that quickly skyrocketed in value then cratered just as fast, costing investors millions of dollars and setting off a scandal and an investigation. Mr. Milei said he was simply highlighting a private venture and had no connection to the digital coin called $Libra. New evidence is now raising questions about his assertion. Phone logs from a federal investigation by Argentine prosecutors into the coin's collapse show seven phone calls between Mr. Milei and one of the entrepreneurs behind the cryptocurrency on the night in 2025 when Mr. Milei posted about $Libra on X. The contents of the calls, which took place before and after Mr. Milei's post, are not known. But the phone logs -- which were obtained by The New York Times and first reported by a local cable news channel, C5N -- suggest a greater degree of communication between Mr. Milei and the entrepreneurs who launched the token than what the president has publicly acknowledged. Newly uncovered messages also suggest Mr. Milei received regular payments from one of the entrepreneurs while he was a congressman. Mr. Milei has not publicly commented on the call logs and other documents, and he did not respond to a request for comment. He is named as a person of interest in the federal prosecutor's continuing investigation into the digital coin, according to court documents reviewed by The Times, but has not been formally charged with any crime. The latest revelations have revived a scandal that threatens the very foundation of a president who rose to power and was elected president in 2023 by attacking a political class he called corrupt.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump posted on social media that "a whole civilization will die tonight," adding "but I don't want that to happen, but it probably will."

Bill Gates will appear before the House Oversight Committee as part of the panel's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein​, according to a source familiar with the plans.

US vice-president claims ‘the bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary’

… and here they are!

JD Vance and Usha Vance off the Air Force Two, welcomed by Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó as they begin their two-day trip to the Hungarian capital.

Iran's regime calls on civilians to shield power plants as Trump threatens "a whole civilization" with destruction if Tehran doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The US president once again warned Iran to make a deal to avert threat of massive attacks

Here are some of the latest images coming in from the Middle East as the war continues in week six.

The Israeli military has just warned the people of Iran not to use trains, saying that doing so “endangers your life”.

Dear Citizens, for the sake of your security, we kindly request that from this moment until 21:00 Iran time, you refrain from using and travelling by train throughout Iran.

Your presence on trains and near railway lines endangers your life.

Authorities launch investigation after human remains found at DeForest Park in Long Beach

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The discovery of a human skull during an Easter egg hunt near Los Angeles has prompted authorities to launch an investigation.

At about 5pm on Sunday a family discovered the human remains during an egg hunt at DeForest Park in Long Beach, California, according to local reports.

The Reform UK leader says he is ‘shocked’ by the remarks which were ‘over the top in every single way’

The Green party is backing resident doctors who are on strike. This morning the party issued a statement on the dispute from its co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, saying:

Rather than shifting goalposts or arm twisting resident doctors with threats over training places, Wes Streeting needs to get serious about resolving resident doctors long term concerns over pay, training and working conditions. The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS will go nowhere if the workforce feels unappreciated, devalued and demotivated.

I think I’m going to stay out of the selection of music by different bands. We live in a free country; people are going to say things. Let’s just let people listen to the music they want to.

People should choose their music and they don’t really they need advice from John Swinney unless they want to listen to The Jam or Amy McDonald.

Well, the government should go on and take their decisions within their powers, but I’m not going to give a running commentary on music taste.

US vice-president rails against ‘bureaucrats in Brussels’ interfering in Sunday’s vote as he arrives in Budapest

JD Vance has railed against the EU, accusing it of blatantly interfering in Hungary’s upcoming elections, even as the US vice-president said he had travelled to Budapest to “help” Viktor Orbán win Sunday’s vote.

Speaking to reporters shortly after landing in Budapest on Tuesday, Vance’s tone was combative as he alleged that the EU was responsible for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he had ever seen.

Chuck Schumer says Republicans who voted against Senate’s attempt to pass war powers resolution own ‘every consequence of whatever the hell this is’

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During a press conference in Budapest with Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, vice-president JD Vance is asked how the military goals in Iran can be achieved if the US continues its attacks on the country.

Vance was also asked about reports about US attacks on Kharg Island. The vice-president said the plan was to hit “some military targets” there and “I believe we have done so.”

A major music festival featuring the rapper formerly known as Kanye West was canceled after the U.K. government blocked Ye from entering the country.

Guardian journalist among those to get surprise request, though Farage denies party are ‘begging’ people to stand

• UK politics live – latest updates

Reform UK has been cold calling people asking them to become “paper” candidates for the party at the local elections, as parties dash to sign up enough names before Thursday’s deadline.

Nigel Farage’s party has been ringing members of the public asking them to stand despite apparently knowing very little about them except that they have signed up for Reform’s email updates.

Rapper had been booked to play at festival in London, prompting outcry over his past antisemitic remarks

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Wireless music festival has been cancelled after the artist formerly known as Kanye West was banned from entering the UK amid a deepening political row over his previous antisemitic statements.

West, who is legally known as Ye, made an application to travel to the UK via an Electronic Travel Authorisation on Monday but it has been blocked by officials.

In a patch of desert in Isfahan province, personnel clear the site where just hours earlier two C-130 planes and two helicopters were destroyed

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The small farming community of Parzan near the city of Shahreza in Iran’s Isfahan province had been largely spared from the US-Israeli war now in its second month – until several US aircraft landed on a dirt airstrip near their village.

The site of the destroyed aircraft in Isfahan province

Minister says change for plan 2 and 3 loans in England and Wales will protect borrowers from impact of global conflict

• Explainer: what the rate cap means for graduates

Millions of graduates will have the interest on their student loans capped at 6% from September as a temporary measure to protect them from the risk of rising inflation driven by war in the Middle East.

Ministers acted after months of criticism over the loans becoming a “debt trap” that often leave graduates in England and Wales paying tens of thousands more than the original loan amount.

Reuters uncovers that the TSA shared more than 31,000 traveler records with ICE for immigration enforcement

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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested more than 800 people following tips shared by federal airport security officials from the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency through February 2026, according to internal agency data reviewed by Reuters – a figure far above what was previously publicly known.

The leads came from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which supplied ICE with records on more than 31,000 travelers for possible immigration enforcement, the data showed.

Silver can play a critical role in a diversified portfolio. Here's how much it costs per ounce right now.

People in Iran say they could be left to pick up the pieces if President Donald Trump destroys the country’s infrastructure and economy.

President threatens in Truth Social post to annihilate Iran if government ignores deadline to reopen strait of Hormuz

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Donald Trump on Tuesday morning threatened to completely annihilate the entirety of Iranian civilization should their government ignore his 8pm ET deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz.

The president’s own words, posted publicly and tied to a specific deadline and set of demands, provide unusually direct evidence of intent to violate international law, and is widely being met with shock and dismay by Democrats.

The Artemis II crew is departing the lunar sphere of influence. Here's everything you need to know about the seventh day of the historic mission.

Mortgage rates are holding firm overall after last week's market chaos, but one loan type just got cheaper.

Shahid Bagheri leaking fuel towards Hara mangrove forest, home to migrating birds and endangered turtles

• Middle East crisis – live updates

An oil slick from a stricken Iranian ship threatens to contaminate one of the Middle East’s most important wetlands, satellite image analysis suggests, making it one of a number of spills posing a risk to the livelihoods of coastal communities in the Gulf.

The Shahid Bagheri, a drone carrier, began leaking heavy fuel oil in Iranian territorial waters near the strait of Hormuz after it was hit by a US warplane in the first few days of the US-Israel attack on Iran.

theodp writes: "Gates Computer Science Building renamed Peter Thiel Center for Panoptic Computing" reads the headline of an April Fools' Day story that ran in the Humor section of The Stanford Daily (with the further disclaimer that "This article is purely satirical and fictitious"). The story begins: "Following revelations that the billionaire founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, had a longstanding relationship with convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Stanford has announced it will strip Gates' name from the William H. Gates Computer Science Building and instead honor alumnus Peter Thiel B.A. '89, JD '92. Gates, who is not a Stanford alumnus, gave an initial gift of $6 million toward the building's construction in 1992." While fictional, the story does make one wonder what may become of the academic and institutional buildings worldwide named after Bill Gates in the blowback over his past ties to Epstein, which have already played a factor in the breakdown of his marriage to Melinda French Gates and friendship with Warren Buffet. In addition to The Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford, this includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex at the University of Texas at Austin, Bill and Melinda Gates Hall at Cornell, The Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and The William H. Gates Building at MIT's Stata Center. Buildings named after Gates' parents include Mary Gates Hall and William H. Gates Hall at the University of Washington, and The William Gates Building at the University of Cambridge (UK). Aside from the Thiel angle, The Stanford Daily's April Fools' Day story may not be as far-fetched as it may seem -- many universities' naming policies include provisions allowing donors' names to be removed from buildings, programs, or other facilities under extraordinary circumstances. For example, the University of Washington's Regent Policy No. 50 states, "The University reserves the right to revoke and terminate any naming on reasonable grounds not limited to the revelation of corporate or individual acts detracting from the University's mission, integrity, or reputation." Then again, UW notes that Bill's parents and siblings served as UW Regents for decades, so one expects Bill will be granted some leeway here for what he has characterized as 'foolish' choices on his part.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to meet with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Tuesday ahead of Orbán's reelection bid.

April 7, 2026 — A key bottleneck in today’s leading approaches to quantum error correction is the need to repeatedly pause and measure the quantum processor mid-computation, a process that is slow, technically demanding, and itself a significant source of errors. Now, a joint team from the University of Innsbruck, RWTH Aachen University, Forschungszentrum Jülich and spin-off Alpine Quantum Technologies (AQT) has demonstrated fault-tolerant quantum computation without any such interruptions.

Credit: kritsak permrit/Shutterstock

In a study published in Nature Communications, the team presents a complete toolbox of fault-tolerant quantum operations that eliminates so-called mid-circuit measurements and feed-forward control entirely. Rather than stopping the computation to read out error information and classically deciding on a correction, the new approach processes error information coherently.

“That happens entirely within the quantum computation itself, using only standard quantum gate operations,” said Friederike Butt. “This makes the method faster and potentially less error-prone than conventional schemes, and particularly well-suited to hardware platforms where measurements are especially costly.”

To put their approach to the test, the researchers implemented Grover’s quantum search algorithm fault-tolerantly on three logical qubits encoded across eight physical qubits of a trapped-ion quantum processor. The experiment clearly identified the correct solutions, providing a compelling proof-of-concept.

“For the first time, we have shown that a complete fault-tolerant quantum algorithm can be executed without mid-circuit measurements with feed-forward control,” said Ivan Pogorelov from the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck.

“This is a new paradigm for quantum error correction, and this experiment is a first, important step toward realizing its full potential,” said team leader Thomas Monz.

The theoretical framework was developed by Friederike Butt and Markus Müller at RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich, while the experimental implementation was carried out by Ivan Pogorelov and others at the University of Innsbruck. Their findings demonstrate the practical feasibility of measurement-free protocols and mark an important first step toward exploring this largely uncharted direction in quantum computation.

The work was supported by the European Union, the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG, the Federation of Austrian Industries Tyrol and other funding bodies.

Publication: Demonstration of measurement-free universal logical quantum computation. Friederike Butt, Ivan Pogorelov, Robert Freund, Alex Steiner, Marcel Meyer, Thomas Monz & Markus Müller. Nature Communications (2026) 17:995. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-68533-x

Source: University of Innsbruck

The post Researchers Execute Fault-Tolerant Quantum Algorithm Without Mid-Calculation Measurements appeared first on HPCwire.

Delta is the third major U.S. carrier to hike its bag fees, as airlines face surging jet fuel costs and other headwinds from the Iran war.

IMF head warns Middle East war will lead to higher inflation and slower global growth while IEA director says oil and gas crisis ‘more serious than the ones in 1973, ​1979 and 2022 together’

Brent crude has now fallen 1.8% to $107.86 a barrel.

“For now, the absence of a clear path forward is keeping markets volatile and indecisive,” said Daniela Hathorrn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.

Markets are once again on edge as the US–Iran conflict enters a critical phase, with investors effectively trading against another countdown clock set by the Trump administration. The situation has evolved into a near-term binary outcome: either escalation through direct strikes on Iranian infrastructure, or a last-minute de-escalation that could trigger a sharp reversal in risk assets.

Recent developments suggest that tensions remain high. Despite intermittent headlines hinting at negotiations or potential off-ramps, rhetoric from Washington has remained aggressive, while Iran continues to hold firm on its position, particularly around control of the strait of Hormuz. That chokepoint remains the central issue in the conflict, and neither side appears willing to concede easily. While escalation would be damaging for both, the strategic incentives are misaligned: the US is trying to restore stability and energy flows, while Iran is leveraging disruption as a deterrent. That dynamic keeps the risk of further escalation elevated.

Investors realise that recession is once again on the table.

The attacks on energy infrastructure and disruptions to shipping in the Persian Gulf are weighing even more heavily on people’s minds than they did four weeks ago.

The astronauts aboard Artemis II are the first humans to see some parts of the far side of the moon with the naked eye.

Union rejected 4.9% pay rise for resident doctors, who are on six-day strike, but offered its own staff 2.75%

The British Medical Association has been accused of the “height of hypocrisy” for offering its own staff below-inflation pay rises while demanding a 26% increase for resident doctors.

Tens of thousands of medics walked out of the NHS in England on Tuesday, the 15th time they have staged industrial action since March 2023 in their campaign for “full pay restoration”.

President Donald Trump said the United States would target “every” Iranian bridge and power plant. Experts say such blanket action violates international law.

The president had issued a deadline of 8 p.m. Eastern time for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz, pledging destruction by midnight if leaders don’t comply.

"This is a potentially huge market event like no other. It's a known unknown with a clock," one investment adviser said.

Nasa astronauts begin journey home having collected eagerly awaited images of impact craters and ridges

Nasa’s Artemis II astronauts have described the powerful emotion felt when soaring over the moon as they photographed impact craters, cracks and ridges and began their long journey home.

Among the eagerly awaited images captured by the crew, who worked in pairs at the Orion capsule windows, are those of the Earth rising from behind the moon, a solar eclipse and parts of the 590-mile (950km) wide Orientale impact basin that have never been observed with the naked eye.

Attacks on Iran increase and Israel tells Iranians to avoid train travel as deadline to reopen strait of Hormuz looms

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran does not accept his demands, amid a wave of bombing as Israel told Iranians their lives would be at risk if they used the country’s railways.

A rail bridge in the central Iranian city of Kashan was one of the first reported bombed on Tuesday by Iranian state media, with two people reportedly killed as Israel’s military said it had launched “a wide-scale wave of strikes targeting dozens of infrastructure sites”.

Rosedale residents considering car licence plate-scanning Flock system in bid to tackle property crime

A row has broken out in one of Canada’s wealthiest neighbourhoods over plans to use an AI-powered surveillance system to create the country’s first “virtual gated community” to combat surging property crime.

Crime rates in Toronto as a whole are dropping but residents of Rosedale have been left on edge by a sustained rise in home invasions, with robbers targeting the tree-lined neighbourhood at a rate more than double the city average. Break-ins and thefts remain the third highest per capita in Toronto.

Kara Voorhies, a little-known contractor, worked closely with top aide Corey Lewandowski and had wide influence over contracts under Noem’s leadership.

From 2024, but still accurate and interesting:

Plan 9 is unique in this sense that everything the system needs is covered by the base install. This includes the compilers, graphical environment, window manager, text editors, ssh client, torrent client, web server, and the list goes on. Nearly everything a user can do with the system is available right from the get go.

↫ moody

This is definitely something that sets Plan 9 apart from everything else, but as moody – 9front developer – notes, this also has a downside in that development isn’t as fast, and Plan 9 variants of tools lack features upstream has for a long time. He further adds that he think this is why Plan 9 has remained mostly a hobbyist curiosity, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the main reason. The cold and harsh truth is that Plan 9 is really weird, and while that weirdness is a huge part of its appeal and I hope it never loses it, it also means learning Plan 9 is really hard.

I firmly believe Plan 9 has the potential to attract more users, but to get there, it’s going to need an onboarding process that’s more approachable than reading 9front’s frequently questioned answers, excellent though they are. After installing 9front and loading it up for the first time, you basically hit a brick wall that’s going to be rough to climb. It would be amazing if 9front could somehow add some climbing tools for first-time users, without actually giving up on its uniqueness. Sometimes, Plan 9 feels more like an experimental art project instead of the capable operating system that it is, and I feel like that chases people away.

Which is a real shame.

Analysis shows developing economies more likely to experience higher interest rates and currency shocks

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Emerging economies are at greater risk of higher interest rates and currency shocks resulting from the Iran war because of increased reliance on market investors such as hedge funds, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

The IMF’s analysis shows that a cumulative $4tn flowed into emerging markets last year from outside the formal banking sector – including from hedge funds and investment funds.

Upgrade to Brent Spence Bridge linking Kentucky and Ohio clouded by concerns about cost overruns, pollution and housing

Connecting manufacturers in the industrial north to booming southern cities in Georgia and beyond in the south, the Brent Spence Bridge that spans the Ohio River is a debacle to all who know it.

Built and designed in the early 1960s to accommodate a maximum of 85,000 vehicles a day, today twice as many cars and trucks traverse it along the Interstate-75, a 1,785-mile (2,873km) route that stretches from the border with Canada in the north to the Florida Keys. Its narrow lanes, curved approaches and absence of emergency access lanes meant that, following frequent accidents, drivers could find themselves stuck for hours.

How will Mr. Charles react to Fisk's latest devious move? Tune in as we hit the halfway mark for this season.

A CBS News investigation found one Los Angeles County hospice physician's name, Dr. Rajiv Bhuva, on Medicare claims for nearly 2,800 patients across 126 hospices in a single year.

Astronauts had a call with the US president from space after setting record for the farthest-traveled humans from Earth

The crew of Artemis II phoned home from above the moon on Monday night after their record-breaking day, to find Donald Trump musing about how he had saved the US space agency, Nasa, from closing down and telling the astronauts how much they deserved the honor of the president seeking their autographs.

The intermittently uncomfortable 12-minute Earth-to-space call, facilitated by the Nasa administrator and Trump acolyte, Jared Isaacman, featured a lengthy period of silence, several references by the president about his friendship with the retired Canadian ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky, and how “America is the hottest country in the world right now”.

The US constitution should make it possible to remove a president who’s not fit for office. But we’re going to need another way out

For the past few months, I have been waging a cold war with a neighbour who constantly puts out their rubbish on the wrong day. And by “cold war” I mean complaining incessantly to my longsuffering wife while the neighbour goes about their business blissfully unaware that we are mortal enemies. But enough is enough. Last week I decided to end this situation via a strongly worded letter. “Tuesday will be Explosions Day in your house, neighbour!” I wrote. “There will be nothing like it!!! Put out your Fuckin’ Rubbish properly, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

I am sorry to drag Allah into this obviously imaginary exchange, but I’m just channelling the US president. I’m sure you’ve already seen Donald Trump’s profanity-laden Easter Sunday warning to Iran, where he threatened to carry out the mass bombing of civilian infrastructure – but if you haven’t, then go read it and weep. The days where Trump’s outbursts were amusing (remember “covfefe”?) are long gone. There is nothing funny about endless stream-of-consciousness screeds from a seemingly unwell man who is not just destroying the US, but dragging the whole world down with it. If a civilian acted like the president routinely does, they’d find themselves fired or institutionalised very quickly.

Elon Musk’s aerospace to AI company will host summer event to try to convince buyers it is worth $2tn

• Business live – latest updates

SpaceX will kick off the marketing for its highly anticipated stock exchange debut by hosting an event in June for 1,500 retail investors, as executives set out to convince buyers that the aerospace-to-artificial-intelligence group should be valued at $2 trillion.

In an unusual move, the company has earmarked a large portion of its shares – potentially up to 30% – for non-professional, non-institutional investors, banking on the popularity of its chief executive, Elon Musk, to help it raise $75bn (about £56bn) in what is expected to be the largest public offering in history.

Q: I read this on FB. Is it true? The U.S. Treasury just declared the U.S government is insolvent.

A: No. That’s the conclusion of an opinion piece that cited a Treasury report showing the government’s liabilities outweigh its assets. But that’s been the case for decades, and unlike an insolvent business, the government can levy taxes.

FULL ANSWER

Two economists — Steve Hanke at Johns Hopkins University and David Walker, a former comptroller general of the U.S. — published an opinion piece in Fortune last month advocating bills aimed at reining in the national debt. In support of this, they pointed to the U.S. Treasury’s financial report on fiscal year 2025, noting that the liabilities for the U.S. government far outweighed the assets and characterizing the government as “insolvent.”

The headline on the March 23 piece — “The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it” — became a viral claim on social media, suggesting that there’s been a major new development in the government’s financial position.

But there hasn’t been. One reader asked us about a post that suggested President Donald Trump was to blame.

“The U.S. Treasury did not declare the U.S. government insolvent,” said Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, who told us that he agreed with the larger point of the opinion piece — that the government’s fiscal policy is imbalanced and in need of change.

The writers cited the most recent annual report from the Treasury, released in March, that listed the government’s total assets for fiscal year 2025 — including cash on hand, federal land and loans owed — as just over $6 trillion. It listed the total liabilities as almost $48 trillion.

From that, they concluded, “The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the conclusion drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, released last week to near-total media silence.”

The economists likened the federal government to a household with liabilities totaling much more than its assets could cover. “Uncle Sam, by any accounting standard, is insolvent,” they wrote.

But Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution, told us that the economists are using the methodology of a business, rather than a government — which, importantly, has the authority to levy taxes. The Treasury report does, indeed, confirm that the government could not pay off the federal debt and cover its commitments by selling its assets. “If they didn’t have the power to tax, that would be a problem,” Riedl said.

The Treasury report, itself, makes this point, too. “Due to its sovereign power to tax and borrow, and the country’s wide economic base, the government has unique access to financial resources through generating tax revenues and issuing federal debt securities,” it said. “This provides the government with the ability to meet present obligations and those that are anticipated from future operations and are not reflected in net position.”

Smetters said something similar. “The government’s assets are beyond just its holdings of property and buildings and things like that. It’s really the fact that it has access to a tax base that’s still pretty large in present value.”

Steve Ellis, president of the nonpartisan budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, told us in an email, “I don’t think insolvency is the right term for the federal government. Except for a short time in Andrew Jackson’s presidency the country has always been in debt. Even when there was brief surplus in late 90s, early aughts, there was still debt.”

All three of the experts we spoke to, though, agreed with the larger premise of the opinion piece, which is that the federal budget is unsustainably imbalanced.

The debt held by the public, which excludes money the federal government owes to itself, was $31.4 trillion as of April 3. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the fiscal year 2026 deficit will be $1.9 trillion, and in 2036, the annual deficit will be $3.1 trillion. 

“The real problem facing the government,” Smetters said, “is that we currently have a fiscal policy path that is itself imbalanced. Specifically, the present value of future spending far exceeds the present value of future tax revenue. To create balance, we would either need to raise all federal income taxes, including payroll taxes, immediately and forever by 30%, or cut all federal spending, including entitlement programs, immediately and forever by 25%, or some combination.”

But the Treasury has not revealed any new insolvency. The government’s liabilities have been larger than its assets in the Treasury’s annual reports going back decades.

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

The post The U.S. Treasury Didn’t Declare the Country ‘Insolvent’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Anos is a modern, opinionated, non-POSIX operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like GNU-Linux) for x86_64 PCs and RISC-V machines.

Anos currently comprises the STAGE3 microkernel, SYSTEM user-mode supervisor, and a base set of servers implementing the base of the operating system. There is a (WIP) toolchain for Anos based on Binutils, GCC (16-experimental) and Newlib (with a custom libgloss).

↫ Anos GitHub page

It’s written in C, runs on both x86-64 and RISC-V, and can run on real hardware too (but this hasn’t been tested on RISC-V just yet). For the x86 side of things, it’s strictly 64 bit, and requires a Haswell (4th Gen) chip or higher.

ZIELONA GÓRA, Poland and ESPOO, Finland, April 7, 2026 — IQM Quantum Computers, a global leader in superconducting quantum computing, today announced a commercial milestone to deploy a hybrid integrated quantum computer at Galaxy Systemy Informatyczne Sp. z o.o., marking its first deployment in a private enterprise worldwide.

Credit: IQM

Galaxy has been implementing innovations in security, digitisation, and hardware infrastructure while providing IT solutions, supporting HPC infrastructure to shape Poland’s economy based on data and artificial intelligence.

The 54-qubit Radiance system will also be the most advanced quantum computer in Poland, and Galaxy, a provider of technological solutions, will become the first private company in the world to own and operate such quantum infrastructure.

The system, which will be installed at Galaxy’s headquarters in Zielona Góra in the fourth quarter of 2026, will feature industry-leading fidelities, enabling Galaxy to execute quantum algorithms across various application areas, including supporting calculations related to space technologies and within the financial and energy markets.

“The deployment of our quantum computer at Galaxy demonstrates that we are building enterprise-ready products enabling customers to build their own capabilities,” said Jan Goetz, CEO and Co-founder of IQM Quantum Computers. “Every quantum computer we deploy makes the future more tangible for our customers who gain experience on their own infrastructure. Building such an ecosystem is based on Poland’s recognized, rich traditions in the fields of quantum physics, mathematics and computer science.”

The machine will serve a broad range of users, from the industry to academia, while strengthening Poland’s position within the European quantum ecosystem.

“The installation of the IQM Radiance 54-qubit quantum computer in our data center is a turning point not only for Galaxy, but for the entire Polish digital economy. By choosing IQM’s superconducting technologies, we are committing to full technological sovereignty—having such advanced infrastructure on-site in Poland allows us to become independent of external cloud providers and guarantees the highest level of security for processed data as well as the development of algorithms and applications,” said Jacek Michalski, CEO of Galaxy Systemy Informatyczne. “Thanks to the development of quantum technologies, research laboratories will be established for business and science in the broadest sense.”

With this deployment, IQM continues to demonstrate its commercial leadership to deliver real quantum computers to customers and build local quantum ecosystems with open and transparent hardware and software.

The company has sold 21 quantum systems to 13 customers globally to date, more than any other manufacturer.

About IQM Quantum Computers

IQM Quantum Computers is a global leader in superconducting quantum computers, delivering full-stack quantum systems and cloud platform access to research institutions, universities, high-performance computing centres, and national laboratories worldwide. IQM’s on-premises deployment model gives customers direct ownership and control of their quantum infrastructure. Founded in 2018, headquartered in Finland, it has over 350 employees. IQM operates across Europe, Asia, and North America and has announced its plans to become the first publicly listed European quantum company on a major U.S. stock exchange with a dual listing on the Helsinki Stock Exchange also under consideration.

About Galaxy Systemy Informatyczne

Galaxy Systemy Informatyczne sp. z o.o. has been operating in the IT market for 30 years; the experience gained over the years helps us create projects in various fields of IT, security, defense, energy, finance, and space technology. Our experience in designing high-performance computing (HPC) clusters has allowed us to bring together many talented individuals who create and implement ideas on a global scale of modernity.

Source: IQM

The post IQM Installs 54-Qubit Quantum Computer at Poland’s Galaxy in 1st Enterprise Deployment appeared first on HPCwire.

I had a nosedive one time due to having “Disable Moving Faults” turned off. I always leave it on now and have not had a problem. I can’t think of any good reason to leave that setting turned off.

Female journalists’ accounts of harassment trigger avalanche of allegations reaching as far as government

Juanita Gómez was reporting on an international assignment for Caracol, a Colombian television channel in 2015, when an older colleague attempted to forcibly kiss her by inside a lift.

She only managed to break free from him by pushing him away several times. Fearing any complaint would come down to the word of a “girl” against that of a senior presenter, she did not report the incident.

City released video of January shooting after charges against two Venezuelan men involved were dropped

The city of Minneapolis released a video on Monday that undermined the initial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) account of a shooting involving an agency officer and two Venezuelan men in January.

The video, from a city-owned security camera, captured federal officers chasing one of the men to his residence. Another Venezuelan man who lives there was shot during the confrontation, which eventually led to the suspensions of two federal officers involved in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the so-called Operation Metro Surge.

A family of three was found alive by the U.S. Coast Guard, seven days after they went missing on a small boat in the western Pacific Ocean.

This year sees 35 years since 2.11BSD was announced on March 14, 1991 – itself a slightly late celebration of 20 years of the PDP-11 – and January 2026 brought what looks to be the venerable 16-bit OS’s biggest ever patch!

Much of the 1.3 MB size is due to Anders Magnusson, well-known for his work on NetBSD and the Portable C Compiler. Since 2.11BSD’s stdio was not ANSI compliant, he’s ported from 4.4BSD.

↫ BigSneakyDuck at Reddit

There’s an incredible amount of work in here on this old variant of BSD, including fixes for old bugs and tons of other changes. This, the 499th patch for 2.11BSD, is so big, in fact, that vi on 2.11BSD can’t handle the size of the files, so you’re going to need to cut them up with sed, for which instructions are included.

It’s quite unique to see such a big update on the 35th anniversary of an operating system.

• Derby striker was stretchered off after awkward landing

• 25-year-old had scored for US in friendly v Belgium

US national team striker Patrick Agyemang will miss this summer’s World Cup after suffering a “serious” achilles tendon injury during Derby County’s 2-0 win over Stoke City on Monday, the club said.

The 25-year-old, who is in his first season at Derby, rose to settle a ball in the 37th minute and landed awkwardly. Play stopped for five minutes before he was stretchered off by medical staff.

After putting 12 different air purifier models in a smoke chamber, we found the best one for capturing viruses so you don't breathe them in.

Like the ultra-customized feel of a Tubi rec? The streamer aims to make it even more personalized.

It's a way to introduce baseball and softball to the next generation of fans.

We liked this meal delivery service and smart oven for individuals, but here's how the new family meals compare.

The $499 Moto G Stylus gains new stylus tricks, but now costs the same as Google's Pixel 10A.

Lawmakers led by Elizabeth Warren in scathing letter say system used to track detainees ‘increasingly unreliable’

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A group of 36 lawmakers says the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created “disappearances” on US soil, due to the “increasingly unreliable” online system used to track people detained by immigration authorities, according to a letter shared with the Guardian.

The lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, are urging that the DHS inspector general’s office open an investigation into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “online detainee locator system” (ODLS), which has been used for years by family members, attorneys and journalists to track people in the federal immigration detention system.

I spent months testing nine robot lawn mowers in my tricky backyard. Here are the five that handled it best.

Federal regulators said the windshield wipers could fail, reducing the driver's visibility and increasing the risk of a crash.

Madrid and Basque government leaders call each other ‘provincial’ in dispute over the artwork

A row has broken out between the Madrid and Basque regional governments in Spain over the latter’s request for Guernica, probably Picasso’s most celebrated work, to be housed temporarily in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to mark the 90th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town.

The work has hung in the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid since 1992 and repeated requests for it to be moved to the Basque Country have been refused.

Scale AI gig workers describe desperation of using people’s personal profiles and copyrighted work to train AI

Tens of thousands of people have been paid by a company part-owned by Meta to train AI by combing Instagram accounts, harvesting copyrighted work and transcribing pornographic soundtracks, the Guardian can reveal.

Scale AI, 49%-controlled by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire, has recruited experts across fields such as medicine, physics and economics – putatively to refine top-level artificial intelligence systems through a platform called Outlier. “Become the expert that AI learns from,” it says on its site, advertising flexible work for people with strong credentials.

They have degrees, expertise and years of experience – but can’t find work. For many Americans, AI training has become a last refuge in a brutal job market

When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.

“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”

The Trump ‘library’ and an attack on the Presidential Records Act have more in common than it might seem

Last week, the Trump administration proudly published two pieces of news which, at first sight, could not be more different: one a dry 52-page legal opinion from the justice department declaring the 1978 Presidential Records Act unconstitutional; the other an AI-generated clip of Trump’s planned “presidential library”, a waterfront skyscraper in Miami. Both sent the same message, though: the legal opinion – authored by a jurist heavily involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 election – leaves Trump free to destroy evidence of wrongdoing; the building envisaged for Biscayne Bay appears to be less of a library than a hotel complex. As the president reassured anyone suspecting that he might fill a glitzy edifice with boring papers and books: “I don’t believe in building libraries or museums.” These are clear signals about wanting to avoid accountability; it is not too early to devise strategies to counter politically motivated amnesia.

In what jurists widely saw as an opinion of breathtakingly bad faith, T Elliot Gaiser, the Ohio-based election denier and a former clerk of Samuel Alito, asserted that Congress had no right to ask the president to preserve records; the imperative to create and keep documents served “no legislative purpose” and could “impede” the day-to-day “performance” of the head of the executive. The act had been crafted in the wake of the misdeeds of Richard Nixon, who had wanted discretion over which of his tapes and papers to destroy; in response, Congress first passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act in 1974, making the government take custody of Nixon’s materials. Nixon sued; the supreme court rejected the view that the separation of powers had been violated; the justices also took the occasion to affirm the importance of “the American people’s ability to reconstruct and come to terms with their history”. Congress then passed the more general Presidential Records Act, which no one up until Trump appeared to have experienced as remotely burdensome.

Subscribers can also explore a Soulslike game that just got a big update.

Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank said he brought his wife, Annie Ramos, 22, to his base so that she could begin the process to receive military benefits and take steps toward a green card.

A shootout with Turkish police outside the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul left one gunman dead and two others wounded, the local governor says.

Transcript reportedly details Hungarian leader offering whatever assistance he can to his Russian counterpart

• Europe live – latest updates

• Hungary elections explainer

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán offered to go to great lengths to help Vladimir Putin, telling the Russian leader “I am at your service” in an October call, it has emerged, prompting further scrutiny of Budapest’s ties to the Kremlin just as JD Vance arrived in the city.

Air Force Two landed in Budapest on Tuesday morning carrying the US vice-president and his wife, Usha Vance, as Hungary reaches the final, heated days of a hard-fought election campaign that has played out against a backdrop of scandals regarding the relationship between Budapest and Moscow.

London festival will feature an intimate Styles performance as well as appearances from Warpaint, Kamasi Washington, Devonté Hynes and more

Harry Styles has announced the lineup of artists he has curated for this year’s Meltdown festival, held at London’s Southbank Centre.

As well as performing a solo concert on 16 June at Royal Festival Hall, sandwiched amid his run of 12 dates at the considerably larger Wembley Stadium, Styles has brought together a diverse range of artists spanning jazz, pop, indie rock and electronic music.

American hedge fund Pershing Square announced it's offered to buy Universal Music Group in a merger, saying it believed the world's biggest music label was undervalued by stock markets.

Oil prices seesaw and stock markets on edge amid Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen strait of Hormuz

• Business live – latest updates

The current oil and ‌gas crisis triggered by the blockade of the strait of Hormuz is “more serious than the ones in 1973, ​1979 and 2022 together”, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned, as Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the waterway approached on Tuesday.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, told ⁠Le Figaro newspaper that the impact of the Middle East conflict on the oil market was larger than the combined force of the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Trump administration’s pushing of the war in Iran reflects a sporting culture driven by clipped-up content, shameless tribalism and a lust for escalation

Among the more surprising continuities of 2026 has been the visual kinship between the Winter Olympics and the US’s illegal and unprovoked war in Iran. High-speed camera drones were a highlight of TV coverage of the recent Games in Milano Cortina, bringing viewers within kissing distance of the action as Olympic athletes hurtled down the slopes and around the tracks in the skiing and sliding events. The incessant screech of the drones aside, the introduction of quadcopter-borne cameras felt like a real step forward in coverage of the winter sports, bringing a (literal) new perspective to events that had become, over recent decades, fairly static as a viewing experience.

No sooner had the Olympics finished than aerial video was back on our screens – only the footage, in this case, was of a far darker variety. In place of the ludicrous hip flexibility of the slaloming skiers and the high-speed cornering of the monobobbers, for the past month our feeds have been flooded with satellite and drone imagery of the US military blowing Iranian aircraft, ships, vehicles, munitions buildings, and citizens to smithereens. The aerial perspective that brought the strength and speed and elasticity and joy of Olympic competition to our screens now transmits the daily horrors of war in easily snackable, two-minute clips on to our phones. In the era of the milkshake duck, it’s almost expected that anything positive in our culture will eventually turn sour – and technology, of course, is ethically agnostic, a tool that can be used for both good and evil ends. But even in a culture as depraved and hypocritical as ours, the seamless transition from drone-supplied footage of Olympic excellence to drone-supplied footage of war crimes has felt genuinely jarring.

Rachel Waters gave morphine to her dying mother to ease her in her final hours. Then came the murder charge

Rachel Waters was in her apartment in Queens, watching food reviews on YouTube, when a nurse called: her mother was dying.

She needed to get to the memory care facility in Evans, Georgia, immediately. A physician had said Marsha could pass within hours.

Licensed school teacher and one-time police officer among those participating in riot-style gatherings as experts warn of threat to public safety

A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution”.

Social media posts and group chats show members of so-called active clubs from Texas, Tennessee and Pennsylvania have in recent weeks and months travelled to Lynchburg, Virginia to train together at a secretive compound. The compound is run by the Wolves of Vinland, which the civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a neopagan white nationalist hate group. Also present were members of the white supremacist hate group Patriot Front and the neo-Nazi skinhead group known as the Hammerskins.

LinkedIn is facing allegations that it quietly scans users' browsers for installed Chrome extensions. The German group Fairlinked e.V. goes so far as to claim that the site is "running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history." "The program runs silently, without any visible indicator to the user," the group says. "It does not ask for consent. It does not disclose what it is doing. It reports the results to LinkedIn's servers. This is not a one-time check. The scan runs on every page load, for every visitor." PCMag reports: This browser extension "fingerprinting" technique has been spotted before, but it was previously found to probe only 2,000 to 3,000 extensions. Fairlinked alleges that LinkedIn is now scanning for 6,222 extensions that could indicate a user's political opinions or religious views. For example, the extensions LinkedIn will look for include one that flags companies as too "woke," one that can add an "anti-Zionist" tag to LinkedIn profiles, and two others that can block content forbidden under Islamic teachings. It would also be a cakewalk to tie the collected extension data to specific users, since LinkedIn operates as a vast professional social network that covers people's work history. Fairlinked's concern is that Microsoft and LinkedIn can allegedly use the data to identify which companies use competing products. "LinkedIn has already sent enforcement threats to users of third-party tools, using data obtained through this covert scanning to identify its targets," the group claims. However, LinkedIn claims that Fairlinked mischaracterizes a LinkedIn safeguard designed to prevent web scraping by browser extensions. "We do not use this data to infer sensitive information about members," the company says. "To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members' consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn's Terms of Service," LinkedIn adds. [...] The statement goes on to allege that Fairlinked is from a developer whose account was previously suspended for web scraping. One of the group's board members is listed as "S.Morell," which appears to be Steven Morell, the founder of Teamfluence, a tool that helps businesses monitor LinkedIn activity. [...] Still, the Microsoft-owned site is facing some blowback for not clearly disclosing the browser extension scanning in LinkedIn's privacy policy. Fairlinked is soliciting donations for a legal fund to take on Microsoft and is urging the public to encourage local regulators to intervene.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Washington DC has the highest unemployment rate in the US

Alicia Contreras was in Tunisia, working as the deputy country representative for Libya for USAID, when she received the news: she was fired. The Trump administration had ceased the cooperation agency’s operations and terminated most overseas staff. What she didn’t expect back then was that after a double major, an MBA and 17 years of experience as a public servant, she wouldn’t be able to find a job back at home.

Contreras moved back to the Washington DC area last September and immediately started her job search. She looked for positions in both the public and private sectors, in-person, hybrid and remote. She focused her search mostly on the US capital city and its two nearby states, Maryland and Virginia, because of her family commitments: she has two children, ages three and six. Six months later, none of her close to 100 applications have been successful.

The US president has threatened to bomb power plants and bridges unless Iran reopens the strait of Hormuz. Plus, the US origins of Mexico’s toxic waste problem

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Good morning.

Israel has told Iranians their lives will be at risk if they use the country’s railways on Tuesday, after Donald Trump’s threats to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants unless a deal is reached by Tuesday evening.

How are negotiations to end the war going? They appeared to be faltering. Iran, which has submitted its own 10-point peace plan, said it wanted a permanent end to the war, not a ceasefire.

What is the latest on oil prices? Oil traded at more than $110 a barrel on Tuesday.

This is a developing story. Follow our liveblog for updates.

Ex-CIA director David Petraeus says Ukraine has offset its disadvantages against Russia through its innovation in its unmanned systems.

Ben Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2011, a medal reserved for only the most courageous wartime exploits.

Viktor Orban, who has built strong ties to the MAGA movement and the Kremlin, faces a tough electoral challenge from center-right candidate Peter Magyar on April 12.

Atlanta-born rapper Offset is hospitalized after a shooting at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida, just outside Miami, police and his representative say.

Richard Walker, Iceland’s chair, says Walker Smith is ‘welcome to a job with us’ as public fundraiser hits £7,500

Keir Starmer’s cost of living tsar, who is the chair of Iceland, has offered a job to a worker who was sacked from Waitrose after trying to stop a shoplifter.

Waitrose faced public outcry over its treatment of Walker Smith, who was fired two days after he stopped the shoplifter taking items from the Easter egg display, including Lindt chocolate bunnies.

What I’m Discussing Today:

• Kareem’s Daily Quote: Success, without all the noise

• Medical Concerns Mount: Is the president cognitively impaired? Or simply out of control?

• Video Break: What a difference a minute makes!

• The Cuba Playbook: Hurt first, justify later.

• The Win That Showed What Bruins Are Made Of: Definition of excellence

• What I’m Watching: The Plastic Detox

• Jukebox Playlist: Miles Davis

Kareem’s Daily Quote

“Success is peace of mind that comes from knowing you did your best to become your best.” — John Wooden

We live in a world that measures everything. Followers. Views. Rankings. Salaries. Awards. It’s easy to start believing that success is something handed to you by other people. But the truth is, the most important part of success is internal. It’s personal and private. It’s between you and the mirror.

Did you give your best today?
Did you stretch yourself?
Did you move closer to the person you’re trying to become?

If the answer is yes, then you’re already succeeding, even if nobody claps for you.

That’s why I’ve always loved Coach Wooden’s quote: “Success is peace of mind that comes from knowing you did your best to become your best.” It’s simple, deceptively so, but the more the years pass, the more I realize how much truth is packed into that one line. We spend so much of our lives chasing the version of success that other people can see— the job title, the trophy, the applause, the numbers on a screen—that we forget the version that actually lets us sleep at night.

Because here’s the thing. You can “win” in the eyes of the world and still feel completely empty. You can hit every external milestone and still feel like you’re sprinting on a treadmill, going fast but going nowhere. But when you know—truly know—that you showed up with everything you had, that you pushed yourself honestly, that you didn’t cut corners or hide from the hard parts, something shifts. You get that quiet, steady feeling in your chest that says, I honored the work.

That’s the peace the quote is talking about.

And peace is underrated. We talk a lot about ambition, hustle, achievement, but peace? That’s the real luxury item.

Coach’s definition of success puts the focus back where it belongs: on the process, not the outcome. You can’t control everything. You can’t control the market, or the judges, or the bounce of the ball. But you can control your effort. You can control your preparation. You can control the way you show up when no one is watching.

That’s where the real growth happens, in the quiet, unglamorous moments when you’re choosing to get a little better instead of staying exactly the same.

And here’s the beautiful part: when you chase that kind of “unglamorous” success, the external stuff tends to follow anyway. Not always immediately, not always in the way you expect, but eventually. Because people can feel the difference between someone who’s performing for approval and someone who’s grounded in purpose. One is loud. The other is steady. And steady wins more often than people think.

So maybe the real challenge isn’t to “be the best.” Maybe it’s to become your best—whatever that looks like today, whatever that looks like ten years from now. That’s a moving target, and that’s okay. Growth is always on the move.

Success, in the end, comes from knowing you didn’t hold back, didn’t coast and didn’t pretend. You showed up fully. You tried honestly. You grew intentionally.

Everything else is just noise.

Read more

Eighty-five countries have sought a roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels. A conference this month offers hope they could unite

• This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

The Iran war is also a climate war. Beyond its terrible human costs, the war’s disruptions of oil, gas, fertilizer and other shipments is another reminder of the risks inherent in basing the world economy on fossil fuels. The war’s jets, missiles and aircraft carriers, and the tankers, refineries and buildings they blow up, represent millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions that further imperil a climate system that is already “very close” to a point of no return, scientists say, after which runaway global warming could not be stopped. Nevertheless, petrostate leaders around the world continue doing their utmost to stave off a desperately needed course correction.

Now, a little noticed ray of hope may be peeking over the horizon.

Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope are co-founders of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

Liberals see chance to strengthen majority in state where Trump and allies could try to overturn election results

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday will select a state supreme court judge to replace an outgoing conservative in a race that could further solidify the liberal majority on the bench ahead of the midterms, when Trump and his allies could try to overturn election results again.

Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative, is retiring, giving liberals a chance to further consolidate their hold on the high court ahead of the next presidential election, when the swing state is sure to see challenges to election results.

Voters in Georgia's 14th Congressional District will choose between Republican Clay Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Months after Delaware received nearly $160 million from the federal government to bolster its rural health care infrastructure, one of its principal proposals to build a medical school now has multiple applicants. 

Two Philadelphia powerhouses have entered the running to operate Delaware’s first medical school, which will be funded by hundreds of millions of dollars awarded by the federal government. 

Thomas Jefferson University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) both submitted bids to the state late last month to operate the proposed medical school.

In its request for a partner institution to run the school, the state hopes that by the fall of 2028 it would have at least 40 students enrolled and attending classes. It does not specify a location or county where the state would like to house the operation. 

However, the medical school would be expected to stand up a program that takes advantage of clinical resources that already exist in the state. 

“The program will leverage Delaware’s existing health care infrastructure and clinical training sites in communities across the State of Delaware to prepare physicians for rural practice,” the bid said. 

Prior to the bidding process, Delaware and Jefferson signed a non-binding agreement, where Jefferson said it hopes to build a branch campus of its Sidney Kimmel Medical College somewhere in the state.

That agreement, which was signed prior to an announcement by the state that it was pursuing the federal funds, said Delaware will “provide all necessary and appropriate financial resources for the development, implementation, and sustainability of the branch campus.”

In November, a spokesperson for Gov. Matt Meyer’s office said the non-binding agreement would have no bearing on the competitive procurement process. 

Delaware applied for the funding through the “Rural Health Transformation Program,” a provision of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that earmarks $50 billion for states to improve their rural health care infrastructure.

In late December, Delaware was awarded $157 million in its first batch of funding through the program. According to the state website dedicated to the program, Delaware intends to spend $42.5 million of its first-year-award on the medical school.

Who are the bidders?

In total, four vendors applied to run Delaware’s first medical school. 

Two of the larger applicants, Jefferson and PCOM, already are established regional medical schools. Another applicant – a medical school in Puerto Rico – seems unexpected, but a representative from the school said it has a track record of success in standing up and operating branch campuses. 

The final applicant is the global consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which appears to be angling for a role where it would handle reporting requirements to the federal government. 

Jefferson already has a sizable footprint in Delaware’s medical education landscape with clinical and educational relationships with ChristianaCare, Beebe Healthcare and Nemours Children’s Hospital in Wilmington.

The university’s non-binding agreement with the state said the pair would work toward the “enhancement” of Jefferson’s current branch campus in Delaware, in which third- and fourth-year students work at ChristianaCare.

Jefferson also has an agreement with Delaware’s Institute of Medical Education and Research, which reserves seats in out-of-state medical schools for Delaware residents. Jefferson reserves 20 seats annually for Delawareans. 

Like Jefferson, PCOM reserves 10 seats for Delawareans looking to enter its osteopathic medicine program. 

Earlier this year, PCOM announced a collaboration with Delaware’s two largest health systems to “attract more physicians to practice in central and southern Delaware.” 

That partnership between Bayhealth, ChristianaCare and PCOM would place five third-year medical students in hospitals in the state’s lower counties to work clinical rotations.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, which applied under the name PwC US Consulting LLP, is a London-based consulting firm. It is one of the largest firms in the world, and is likely applying to serve as a vendor that would manage project oversight and required reporting to the state health department and the federal government.

Ponce Health Sciences University, which applied under the name “Tiber Health Public Benefit Corporation,” is a private Puerto Rican medical school. 

Kenira Thompson, vice president of research at the university, said many of Puerto Rico’s rural health needs mirror those of Delaware’s, specifically provider shortages. 

When asked why it was a better candidate to run the medical school compared to the more established regional options, Thompson pointed to a branch campus the university operates in St. Louis, that she said has been successful. 

“We’ve done this successfully,” Thompson said. “We have been able to prove that our students perform well.” 

Thompson also pointed to Delaware’s designation as a state eligible for the Institutional Development Award (IDeA), through the federal government. The IDeA program funds states that have had “historically have had low levels” from the government to do medical research. 

Puerto Rico shares this designation, Thompson said. She said with Ponce’s experience with the IDeA program, it could set Delaware’s medical school apart when it comes to research. 

None of the other three vendors returned a request for comment on this story, nor did Gov. Matt Meyer’s office. 

Federal funds for Delaware

The state announced in November it would fund 15 programs with money from the Rural Health Transformation Program. The program was created to court Republican senators hesitant to support more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which could disproportionately impact rural communities and their health care facilities. 

In February, Meyer’s office released an initial batch of requests for potential vendors to carry out programs that will be funded by a federal payout aimed at improving rural health across the country. Some of those bids include funding a new medical school, creating a “Food is Medicine” program, as well as operating rural health hubs in Sussex and Kent counties.

It came weeks after the state received its first award from the federal government totaling more than $157 million. The full award amount for the state remains unclear, but the state will receive at least $500 million from the multi-year federal program.

The initial award represents the first batch of funding Delaware hopes to receive over the next five years, which could increase or decrease on a yearly basis depending on how much money is spent.

Delaware also intends to build two homeless shelters in Kent and Sussex based on Hope Center New Castle County. According to the state’s website for the Rural Health Transformation Program, Delaware intends to spend more than $26 million of its first-year-award on the shelters, but has yet to put out bidding requests.

The post Two Philadelphia health giants enter race for Delaware medical school appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Wilmington is filled with dozens of corner stores and bodegas, giving residents convenient access to necessities when larger grocery stores are out of reach. But concerns over loitering, criminal activity and limited healthy food options have sparked a new city ordinance that could change the city’s future landscape.

New corner convenience stores may soon be prohibited from opening in Delaware’s largest city.

Last week, the Wilmington City Council unanimously passed an ordinance that would place a moratorium on the businesses. The measure now awaits a signature from Mayor John Carney, whose office has not revealed whether he supports it.

Nevertheless, the City Council’s passage of the ordinance reflects growing concerns among city leaders that an overconcentration of corner stores is contributing to issues related to crime and  public health. 

The concerns add to those around smoke shops in Wilmington, which prompted city leaders to approve a similar moratorium on those businesses in February. 

Councilwoman Shané Darby said a moratorium on corner stores would give city officials time to conduct a formal assessment of the societal impacts of corner stores, many of which are located in Wilmington’s lower income neighborhoods.

Darby — who sponsored the corner store ordinance — asserted that many corner stores attract illegal activity, including groups of people who loiter outside them. She also noted that the stores sell relatively unhealthy products, such as processed foods, alcohol, tobacco, and lottery tickets.

“I think that our focus as a council should be … looking at these properties and saying, ‘how do we create healthy food options, grocery stores, cafes,’” Darby said about the formal “equity assessment” that would be completed if the ordinance is signed into law. 

Darby’s ordinance states that policy changes that could result from the equity assessment could include requirements to create buffer zones between stores, capping the number of corner stores in a neighborhood, or prioritizing city approvals for businesses that bring in healthier foods.

Last fall, Spotlight Delaware spoke with several residents and convenience store owners across Wilmington about the corner store proposal. Many echoed the concerns raised by Darby and other members of the council.

“I hope that they never open up another corner store in our neighborhood,” said Joyce Woodlen, a Hilltop resident and local hair boutique owner, who previously dealt with a loitering issue caused by a convenience store across the street from her shop.

Several corner store owners noted that they understand residents’ concerns. Some said they have tried offering healthier options but claimed there was little demand for them. Others noted that they have little control over loitering and public safety issues outside their stores.

“We can’t do anything about it. If we call the cops, cops don’t come—only 30 to 40 minutes later,” said the store manager at Young’s Sub Shop, who provided his name as Muhammad.

Fiscal impact as a ‘weapon’?

The council’s passage of the corner store moratorium comes more than a month after the city approved the similar moratorium on smoke shops. 

Like Darby’s ordinance, the smoke shop moratorium was designed to give city officials time to assess the impact of the stores on communities. 

Unlike Darby’s ordinance, the smoke shop moratorium does not come with a fiscal note, which is an estimated cost to the city of the proposed legislation.  

According to a city estimate, the Wilmington Department of Land Use and Planning would be in charge of completing the corner store “equity impact assessment” at a cost of $250,000.  

During Thursday’s City Council discussion of Darby’s corner store legislation, Councilmembers Chris Johnson and Alex Hackett expressed concerns about why it included a fiscal impact while the smoke shop moratorium did not. 

In a response during the council meeting, Darby claimed that the steep cost estimate came from the Carney Administration’s dislike for certain council members. 

“They use this as a weapon. I’m telling this to the public. They’ll use fiscal impact notes as a weapon so that you can’t get things passed through,” Darby said. 

Asked why Darby’s bill carried such a hefty fiscal impact, officials said the city recently updated its process for preparing fiscal notes, with the Delaware Office of Management and Budget now responsible for all legislation. 

Johnson’s ordinance was completed during that transition period.

Carney spokeswoman Caroline Klinger said with the new process underway with OMB, the city is “committed to ensuring all ordinances are accompanied by a proper fiscal impact statement in accordance with this new law.”

While Carney’s office has not indicated whether the mayor supports the corner store moratorium, Klinger highlighted concerns last fall around the capacity of land use officials to carry out the equity assessment, as well as the potential costs of the measure. 

Klinger also asserted that the mayor wants to see healthier food options in the city and is willing to work with city council. 

“If these stores are the most accessible food option for residents, making them healthier could be more impactful than eliminating the establishment of new ones,” Klinger said in the city’s statement in September.

The post Wilmington City Council passes corner store moratorium appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Marcos Orellana, a special rapporteur, found lax environmental standards and lack of oversight allowed pollution to accumulate

• Revealed: Mexico’s industrial boomtown is making goods for the US. Residents say they’re ‘breathing poison’

Mexico is facing a “toxic crisis” and has become a “garbage sink” for the US, exposing Mexican communities to dangerous pollution, a UN expert has warned.

In an interview with the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative outlet, Marcos Orellana, an environmental specialist, said pollutants ranging from imported waste to dangerous pesticides were affecting people’s right to live healthy lives.

The astronauts of Artemis II flew further from Earth than any human beings before them, breaking Apollo 13’s distance record at 1.57pm ET on Monday.

Across a six-hour flyby, on the sixth day of a lunar mission that has reinvigorated Nasa’s space exploration programme, the crew of the Orion spacecraft captured views of the moon’s far side that have never been seen before

• Blackouts, broken records and a message from the past: five key moments from Artemis II’s lunar flyby

Even potato chips aren’t safe from the ripple effects of President Donald Trump’s war, which is disrupting supply chains across Asia.

I spoke with allergists to find out what we can do to reduce allergies before May -- the worst month for allergy sufferers.

Mass-produced coffee is hit or miss. I whipped out my pot and brewed beans from 20 roasters to find the best grocery store coffee to make your morning java.

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square claims world’s biggest music company has suffered because of delay of US listing

• Business live – latest updates

Billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at around €55bn (£48bn).

Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has made a bid for the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, with a cash and stock deal that would move its stock market listing from Amsterdam to New York.

The actor whose husband is charged with child sexual abuse says she believes ‘his side of the story’ is ‘the truth’

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Melissa Gilbert contends she is “neither naive nor … complicit” having married and deciding to stand by her fellow actor Timothy Busfield amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, saying she exclusively has “heard his side of the story” and that it is “the truth”.

“I know this man in my bones,” the former Little House on the Prairie cast member remarked in an interview on Monday’s edition of Good Morning America. “No one knows him better than I do.”

Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law.

The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties and municipalities accusing fossil fuel companies of misrepresenting the risks their products posed to consumers and seeking to recoup the costs of disasters and other climate impacts like wildfire losses or coastal flooding that their products helped cause. A goal of the legislation is to block these cases from going forward and prevent new ones from being filed.

The strategy to establish state laws that will make it all but impossible to sue oil and gas companies was laid out in detail by a group of lobbyists and political operatives in December, during a panel presentation at the annual States and Nation Policy Summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council — the influential organization that brings together state lawmakers, corporate leaders and conservative activists to draft and promote legislation.

During the session, one of the panelists, Will Hild, the executive director of a nonprofit called Consumers’ Research, described the climate cases as a liberal effort to use the judicial system to exact a new tax on energy companies in the form of civil judgments. Another panelist, Oramel H. Skinner, the former solicitor general for Arizona and the executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Consumers, warned that those judgments will trickle down to make citizens’ lives less affordable and ultimately make many of their choices — whether to own pickup trucks or purchase a side of beef — illegal.

ProPublica reviewed an audio recording of the event obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented.

Hild and Skinner had come to the session with a ready-made fix: a set of pre-written bills and plenty of funding.

Consumers’ Research and the Alliance for Consumers are both funded by organizations connected to Leo. ProPublica examined lobbying records across 25 states, federal tax disclosures for more than a dozen organizations and notes from other closed-door strategy sessions among ALEC members and found that several Leo-supported groups are part of a national strategy to give legal immunity to companies for their climate emissions.

Since 2021, Leo has been deploying a $1.6 billion gift through a series of nonprofits and other organizations that obscure the source and the recipients of donations — so-called dark money groups. Much of that money has been routed through a nonprofit judicial advocacy group Leo founded — now called The 85 Fund — which both receives and disseminates Leo’s funding. Many of these nonprofits are increasingly focused on issues related to climate change.

The panel session’s moderator, Michael Thompson, is a senior vice president at CRC Advisors, Leo’s for-profit Virginia-based political and corporate consulting firm. He also sits on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council. Hild’s organization, Consumers’ Research, received more than 65% of its funding in 2024 through a dark money group called Donors Trust. The 85 Fund contributed more than $67 million to Donors Trust in 2024. Consumers’ Research also works closely with — and contracted more than $670,000 of work in 2024 to — CRC Advisors. Another panelist, Paul N. Watkins, was a legal fellow at Consumers’ Research. According to tax filings, his law firm received more than $2.2 million in 2024 from the group. As recently as 2024, Skinner was also counsel for Leo’s 85 Fund, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings.

“For decades, the left has leveraged immense resources to capture the institutions that shape our society — the legal system, universities, medical and scientific bodies, the entertainment industry, and our biggest corporations,” Leo wrote to ProPublica in a text message. “That takeover resulted in a radically woke culture that does not reflect the will of the American people, or the pillars of limited constitutional government that made our country great. That is why our enterprise supports organizations that are committed to crushing liberal dominance and restoring balance in the institutions that shape society.”

At the ALEC session, Skinner presented a model bill that would effectively bar cities and towns from bringing public nuisance lawsuits against corporations and others when the issue is a broad public harm like climate change. In several cases, plaintiffs have argued that the impacts of climate change — the buckling of a road from extreme swings in temperature, for example — are a “nuisance” caused by fossil fuel companies.

Nuisance claims are common in the American legal system, giving individuals, companies or communities a way to sue when someone else’s actions damage their property, degrade the health or safety of the environment around them or interfere with their rights. Under these laws, parties can ask for financial compensation or seek court orders to remedy problems, such as pollution. Skinner, however, argues that nuisance laws should only be used to address local, easily fixable problems, like excessive noise from a bar. His bill would curtail the use of public nuisance suits in climate cases by limiting liability for manufacturers and other businesses and giving state attorneys general the sole authority to bring them.

“Think really hard about every lever you have in your states to shut off the ability for this woke lawfare machine to churn,” Skinner told the audience. “The left’s goal is to reshape society around you using the courtroom.”

The second draft law, called the Energy Freedom Act, was produced by the policy nonprofit associated with Hild’s organization. It would, among many provisions, shield businesses from liability related to emissions of greenhouse gases if those releases did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.

Critics of the bills say they subvert the rights of local communities. They send the message that “you can pollute with impunity,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s really a thumb in the eye of places that are affected by climate change.”

The push to block climate suits across the states comes as several of the cases against the oil industry approach, or have already entered, the perilous legal phases of discovery, when plaintiffs will have the opportunity to seek confidential industry documents and depose oil executives. The stakes for oil companies are enormous. By some estimates more than $10 trillion in damages can be attributed to U.S. emissions.

There’s a reason why state and local governments have increasingly brought these suits. The frequency and cost of climate-influenced disasters, including severe storms, drought and flooding, continues to mount — between $350 billion and $450 billion in each of the last three years — stretching government budgets. Significantly, the science that makes it possible to attribute how much any one disaster was influenced by climate change has steadily advanced. To cite one example, the March heat waves across the U.S. would have been virtually impossible without the emissions that have caused climate change, according to the European science group World Weather Attribution, and were about four times as likely to happen as they were a decade ago.

Boulder, Colorado, is among the places facing increasing droughts, more extreme precipitation and larger wildfires — all of which are significantly propelled by climate change linked to the emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The state has estimated the costs of these perils will run into the many hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2018, Boulder County sued Exxon Mobil and the Canadian oil company Suncor Energy, accusing the companies of “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.”

Among its claims, the county alleged the oil companies engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public and violated consumer protection rules by mischaracterizing the dangers of their products. They accused the oil companies of creating a public nuisance by altering the environment and leaving the county to pay to abate growing hazards such as the flooding that tests roads and bridges. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy have never filed a response in Colorado but asked for the case to be dismissed.

Ever since, the lawsuit has been mired in a dispute over whether Colorado courts were the correct venue, with the state Supreme Court ultimately ruling last May that they were. Suncor filed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider, and this fall it will weigh the company’s petition asking whether federal environmental law preempts the state law.

The high-profile national court case is just one facet in an increasingly tense fight over liability for the fossil fuel industry. In January, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest fossil fuel industry group in the United States, said fighting the climate liability lawsuits was one of its top priorities in 2026. Lobbying records for the group from last year show that it advocated for legislation to protect oil producers from climate lawsuits at the state level. The Trump administration; other industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce; and several of the nonprofit advocacy groups associated with Leo have argued that state courts are the wrong venue for claims that ultimately concern emissions that drift widely across borders, and they wish to see other cases moved or dismissed. They say that because the federal government already has the authority to regulate those emissions, the federal courts, not the states, should hear the claims.

In an interview, Hild told ProPublica that he sees the suits as an illegitimate effort to enact policy through the courts and to “regulate the entire U.S. economy from a single state.”

In an email, Skinner wrote: “Our effort is not one focused on climate change. But it is true that left-wing activists and their dark money donors have put vast sums of money and years of groundwork into pushing a coast-to-coast campaign of climate-focused public nuisance lawsuits.”

Neither Watkins nor Thompson responded to requests for comment.

When Skinner and Hild finished their presentation at ALEC they made a QR code available to download the language of the model bills and directed the audience to a woman named Catherine Gunsalus, who was in the back of the room. She would be able to answer any questions, they said.

Gunsalus until recently worked for the Heritage Action Fund, the political and lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned think tank that is most recently known for promoting the Project 2025 agenda. Records show that Gunsalus has also lobbied in collaboration with another Leo-affiliated group, Americans for Public Trust.

In April 2025, she formed a lobbying firm called Varidon Strategies and began registering in states almost immediately afterward, according to records. By mid-summer, Varidon was representing Alliance for Consumers Action Fund; Consumers’ Research; The Honest Election Project, an affiliate of The 85 Fund; as well as other Leo entities in 25 states. In the majority of those filings, Varidon used an email address at the domain of Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia-based law firm that is often retained by Leo’s organizations.

Gunsalus did not reply to a detailed list of questions.

In the four months since the ALEC summit, there has been substantial activity in the states where Varidon has registered. On Jan. 5, representatives in Missouri introduced the loosely related Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act, which could stop revenues flowing to law firms from settlements in the sort of nuisance suits often used in climate cases. Two days later, legislators took up the Public Nuisance Reform Act, which proposes narrowing the definition of what could be considered a nuisance.

That same month, similar bills were introduced in Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. In February, eight more followed in Oklahoma, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Louisiana and Kansas. Skinner, who is registered to lobby in Kansas, was invited to testify in a hearing about that state’s bill and launched a new “End the Lawfare” website targeting the “left-wing” agenda. As of April 2, versions of the model legislation offered at the ALEC meeting have been introduced across 11 states altogether. In Utah, the governor has signed two related bills into law, and in Tennessee and Indiana, bills are awaiting their governors’ signature.

The more states there are with some sort of waiver in place, the narrower the pathway for cities and states to seek redress as environmental conditions worsen, and the costs continue to rise. Hild and Skinner and the Leo network’s bills also serve another purpose: teeing up a conflict that pits states against one another, a conflict that only the Supreme Court or Congress can finally resolve.

As Hild put it at the ALEC gathering, “This is economic civil war.”

The post “Economic Civil War”: States Push Laws to Shield Oil and Gas Companies From Accountability appeared first on ProPublica.

President Trump's deadline for Iran to reach a deal to end the war or face punishing strikes on its bridges and power plants is less than 24 hours away.

No phones, no littering, no cheering bad shots – ‘patrons’ face strict rules at Augusta, but what a contrast to last year’s disgraceful Ryder Cup

It is easy to poke fun at the prissy traditions of the Masters. Golfers, never mind spectators, enter a state of panic over what horrible fate may befall them should they break the rules inside Augusta National. It is preposterous in so many ways; adults consumed by fear over missteps at a golf tournament. People do not typically feel this way inside the Sistine Chapel.

This year, there are reasons to be grateful for Augusta’s unapologetic approach. The Masters provides a welcome break from the ear-bashing noise of the modern world. The United States is an especially fractious place. This major also offers a timely escape from the racket within golf itself. Brief serenity should be appreciated.

Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares a report from Fuel Cells Works: China says the AEP100, a megawatt-class hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine developed by the Aero Engine Corporation of China, has completed its maiden flight on a 7.5-ton unmanned cargo aircraft in Zhuzhou, Hunan. The 16-minute test covered 36km at 220km/h and 300 meters altitude, with the aircraft returning safely after completing its planned maneuvers. State media described it as the world's first test flight of a megawatt-class hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine. [...] The Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) says the result shows China now has a full technical chain for hydrogen aviation engines, from core parts to system integration, which is the kind of capability needed before any industrial rollout can begin. You can watch a video of the test flight here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is Michigan's second NCAA title in school history, and the win ends a 26-year national championship drought for the Big Ten.

UN assists in emergency vaccination drive as country battles worst surge in cases in years amid fall in vaccination rates

Bangladesh is battling its worse measles outbreak in years, with more than 100 children dead amid a rise in unvaccinated infants.

The government, in partnership with the United Nations, has begun conducting an emergency measles-rubella vaccination drive for children across the country, after more than 900 cases were confirmed since March.

US president acknowledges ‘significant’ 10-point peace plan submitted by Tehran but says it is ‘not good enough’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Diplomatic negotiations aimed at halting the war in the Middle East appeared to be faltering a day before a deadline imposed by Donald Trump with a threat to destroy Iran’s bridges and attack its power plants.

Mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey want both sides to agree to a ceasefire and reopen the strait of Hormuz, to be followed by a period of detailed negotiations intended to reach a more complete peace agreement.

The Artemis II crew flew farther from Earth than any humans in history as they passed over the far side of the moon on Monday night.

Exclusive: Call for nudity-detection tech on phones as number of under-18s reporting blackmail attempts rises by 34%

• ‘I felt ashamed and scared’: how an online friendship became a sextortion nightmare

Children are reporting online sextortion attempts in record numbers in the UK, as campaigners urge tech companies to do more to stamp out the crime.

The Report Remove service, which allows children to flag intimate images or videos of themselves that have appeared, or could appear, online, said it received 394 reports from under-18s last year of blackmail attempts after sending sexual images to predators. The figure is 34% higher than in 2024.

Hungary’s prime minister has conducted a systematic attack on independent media. The parallels with the US are chilling

During his state of the nation address earlier this year, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, outlined a chilling vision of the country’s future. Signalling a new level of aggression in his campaign against the truth if he is returned to power in elections on 12 April, Orbán vowed to purge the country of “bought journalists” and “fake civil society organisations”.

Media repression isn’t just a Hungarian problem. According to the V-Dem Institute in Sweden, a leading democracy monitor, it is the most commonly used weapon in the authoritarian arsenal. Strikingly, its latest report finds that US democracy is now at its worst level since the 1960s, marked by a sharp decline in media freedom.

Amrit Singh is professor of practice and founding faculty director of the Rule of Law Lab at NYU School of Law

Wars in Gaza, Iran, and elsewhere have sunk Washington’s reputation—maybe for good.

Cooperation is necessary—and possible.

Trump can’t end a war with a real estate transaction.

With the UAE under fire from Iranian missiles, wealthy investors are turning to Italy’s flat-tax haven

Just over a month ago, Dubai was the obvious destination for wealthy Britons in search of a new home. Few cities allow you to earn vast sums tax-free and spend them across any number of luxury hotels, restaurants and shops.

But as the United Arab Emirates comes under Iranian fire, Dubai’s reputation – in part created by emigrant influencers – as a haven for the global elite is eroding. Super-rich UK nationals are now looking for a route back to Europe; and Milan, the financial centre of Italy, is climbing to the top of the list.

Claims explosives found near pipeline come before election in which PM Viktor Orbán is trailing in most polls

Hungary has placed the gas pipeline that straddles the Serbian border under military protection, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as accusations of a false-flag operation continued to swirl before a crunch election at the weekend and an official visit on Tuesday from the US vice-president, JD Vance.

Orbán travelled to Hungary’s southern border with Serbia on Monday, one day after Serbia said it had found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond.

California gas prices are the nation's highest. The candidates in the 2026 governor's race weighed in on the role of state policy, global supply risks, refinery closures, and how each would address rising gas prices.

• Elliot Cadeau scored 19 points and won Final Four MOP

• Foul trouble haunts Huskies in low-scoring affair

• As it happened: Read Beau Dure’s live play-by-play

High-scoring Michigan had to get down and dirty to dig out the national title Monday, making only two three-pointers all night but still muscling its way to a 69-63 victory over stingy, stubborn UConn.

Elliot Cadeau led the Wolverines with 19 points, including the team’s first basket from beyond the arc, which came 7:04 into the second half. He was later named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.

Elliot Cadeau scored 19 points as the Wolverines held off a late rally by UConn to capture their first title since 1989. Read Beau Dure’s live play-by-play

UConn 4-9 Michigan, 15:42 left, first half: Solo Ball works inside to get two for UConn, but then he gets called for blocking at the other end. Questionable call, to be honest. He seemed set.

Cadeau misses a three, but Michigan get a second and third chance. Johnson converts the tip-in.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that New Jersey gaming regulators cannot prevent Kalshi from allowing people in the state to use its prediction market to place financial bets on the outcome of sporting events. A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 (PDF) in finding that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over the sports-related event contracts that Kalshi allows people to trade on its platform. The ruling marked the first time a federal appeals court has ruled on what has become the central issue in an escalating battle over the ability of state gaming regulators to police the activity of prediction market operators. Kalshi and companies like it allow users to place trades and profit from predictions on events such as sports and elections. States argue that firms like Kalshi are operating without required state licenses, in violation of gaming laws, including bans on wagers by those under 21. Those states include New Jersey, which last year sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter stating that its listing of sports-related event contracts on its platform violated state gambling laws that prohibit betting on collegiate sports. Kalshi sued the state, arguing its event contracts qualify as "swaps," a type of derivative contract, that under the Commodity Exchange Act can only be regulated by the CFTC, which had granted the company a license to operate a designated contract market (DCM). A lower-court judge had sided with New York-based Kalshi and issued a preliminary injunction, prompting New Jersey to appeal. But a majority of the judges on the 3rd Circuit panel concluded the Commodity Exchange Act likely preempted state law. "Kalshi's sports-related event contracts are swaps traded on a CFTC-licensed DCM, so the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction," U.S. Circuit Judge David Porter wrote. The ruling was in line with the position advanced in other litigation by the CFTC under President Donald Trump's administration. The regulator last week sued Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois to prevent them from pursuing what it called unlawful efforts to regulate prediction markets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump praised the crew of NASA's Artemis II mission in a brief chat late Monday, saying they had "inspired the entire world" after they looped around the moon in a record-breaking voyage.

This blog is now closed – our live coverage continues here

A Japanese shipping firm said on Monday that an Indian-flagged tanker owned by its subsidiary had passed through the strait of Hormuz and was en route to India.

A spokeswoman for Mitsui O.S.K. Lines told AFP that the Green Asha – a liquefied petroleum gas tanker – had crossed the waterway.

Pakistan stands in solidarity with the brotherly people of the UAE and reiterates the urgent need for restraint and de-escalation in the region.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 7.

Markwayne Mullin questions why city governments don’t enforce federal immigration policies during interview with Fox News

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Donald Trump has endorsed the Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton in the California governor’s race, a move that could dash Republican hopes of locking Democrats out of the November runoff.

Trump announced his backing on Monday on Truth Social, writing that Hilton “has my COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT” and pledging federal support for his candidacy. “Steve can turn it around, before it is too late, and, as President, I will help him to do so,” he wrote.

Trump claims Iranians welcome US strikes and lower court judges challenge Trump’s ‘war on rule of law’ – key US politics stories from Monday 6 April at a glance

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Donald Trump was asked at a press conference on Monday if his war on Iran was winding down or ramping up. His response: “I can’t tell you.”

The US president’s comments came as diplomatic negotiations aimed at halting the war in the Middle East appeared to be faltering.

Someone fired into the home of Indianapolis city council member Ron Gibson, who favors plans to build a data center, and left a note on his porch. No one was hurt.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for April 7, No. 765.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for April 7, No. 1,753.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 7, No. 1031.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said officers found evidence of gunshots and believe it was "an isolated, targeted incident."

Shipping companies would take at least two months to resume operations in the Persian Gulf following a ceasefire in the region, according to the Eurasia Group.

An American woman disappeared in the Bahamas on Saturday, after her husband said she fell from their dinghy and was swept out to sea.

America's middle class is shrinking, but not because people are getting poorer. Instead, more households are climbing the ladder, new research suggests.

An investigation is underway in Long Beach after human remains were discovered in the area near DeForest Park and Wetlands on Sunday afternoon, according to police.

The president has given Iranian officials until 8 p.m. Tuesday to make a ceasefire deal or face widespread destruction. Tehran on Monday reasserted its rejection of U.S. demands.

Anyone remember the KDE 4.0 themes Oxygen and Air? Well, several KDE developers have been working tirelessly to bring them back, which means they’re patching it up, fixing bugs, and generally making these classic themes work well in the current releases of KDE Plasma 6.

The last post regarding work on fixing Oxygen was a month and a half ago. With all that’s happened in between, it feels like so much more time has actually passed. With this post, I’d like to do a sort of mid-term update summing up all of the improvements done so far. These improvements are not just my work, but also, as you’ll see, the work of the lead Oxygen designer Nuno Pinheiro, of several seasoned KDE developers, and of new contributors to Oxygen as well.

↫ Filip Fila

The effort to bring these themes back go much beyond just making them nominally work; the developers and designers are also making sure the themes work properly with all the new features that have come to KDE since the 4.x and 5.x days, like adaptive and floating panels, various forms of blur, and a ton more – which includes making sure the themes are fully compatible with Wayland, which introduced a slew of new visual glitches and issues to these old themes in recent years.

They are also working on improving, updating, and expanding the Oxygen icon set, which should surely bring back a ton of memories. This work involves not just designing new icons for applications and other things that didn’t exist back when Oxygen was current, but also fixing old icons that look blurry on modern setups, addressing cases where monochrome and colourful icons mismatch, and so on. They’re clearly taking this very seriously.

It seems to be an organic effort more and more people got involved with as time passed, and they’re aiming to have these themes ready for Plasma 6.7, to be released in June of this year. You can already try the current versions today, but they do require the absolute latest version of KDE Plasma to work properly. More improvements are planned for the coming weeks.

This whole thing brings a massive smile to my face, and is such a perfect illustration of why I love the KDE project and its approach and spirit. At this point in time, I personally can’t imagine using any other desktop environment.

LEUVEN, Belgium, April 6, 2026 — ‘SPINS’ (Semiconductor Pilot Line for Industrial Quantum NanoSystems), one of six European quantum pilot lines, has been launched. Coordinated by imec, the consortium brings together 25 European RTOs, industry partners, and academic research groups to strengthen Europe’s leadership and sovereignty in this strategically important domain. The €50 million SPINS project is co-funded by the European Union’s Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) and national and regional authorities across participating member states.

SPINS project partner overview. Credit: Fraunhofer IPMS.

Quantum computing is increasingly viewed as a strategic domain, with growing economic and societal relevance. Potential applications range from drug discovery and materials science to secure communications and advanced navigation systems.

However, a gap remains between current research and the ability to manufacture quantum processors at scale. Increasing the number of stable qubits is considered a key step toward building reliable, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

Given the technological complexity of quantum hardware—including cryogenic operation, ultra-precise control electronics, and specialized fabrication processes—and its strategic importance, the EU Chips Act has established six complementary quantum pilot lines. Each focuses on a distinct hardware platform, collectively advancing technologies across quantum computing, communications, and sensing. Within this portfolio, SPINS is dedicated to semiconductor-based spin qubits, with a primary focus on developing quantum chips.

Imec is coordinating the pilot line and leading a European consortium of 25 partners, including RTOs such as Fraunhofer, VTT, and CEA-Leti; industry participants ranging from large enterprises like Infineon and Siltronic to SMEs and startups; and academic institutions including TU Delft and the University of Jyväskylä. The effort aims to translate the EU Chips Act’s strategic framework into concrete actions.

The SPINS consortium’s initial efforts focus on process and design optimization to establish a foundation for scalable, stable, and high-performance spin qubits across three technology platforms: Si/SiGe, Ge/GeSi, and SOI. The project also aims to create a lab-to-fab pathway through Multi-Project Wafers (MPW) and standardized quantum Process Design Kits (PDKs), lowering entry barriers for startups and SMEs working on semiconductor-based quantum technologies and supporting the development of European expertise.

“Scaling qubits requires an extremely controllable environment and solid manufacturing processing, in view of the extreme sensitivity of qubits to environmental noise,” said Kristiaan De Greve, SPINS coordinator. “These challenges require both the accuracy and control that is only present in state of semiconductor cleanroom infrastructure, combined with the research and innovation mentality to adjust such an environment to address these sensitive qubits. At imec, we’ve been creatively addressing complex problems with advanced semiconductor manufacturing for over 40 years. By bundling the expertise of our European consortium partners in this quantum pilot line, we will speed up the development of high-TRL semiconductor qubits and thereby enable larger-scale quantum systems made in Europe.”

Complementary European quantum efforts alongside the semiconductor-based pilot line include photonics for quantum (‘P4Q,’ coordinated by the University of Twente, Netherlands, with imec also contributing), ion-trap qubits (‘CHAMP-ION,’ coordinated by Silicon Austria Labs, Austria), superconducting qubits (‘SUPREME,’ coordinated by VTT, Finland), diamond-based quantum chips (‘DIREQT,’ coordinated by the National Research Council of Italy), and neutral atom systems (‘Q PLANET,’ coordinated by Pasqal, France).

More from HPCwire

• EU Selects SUPREME Consortium to Develop Superconducting Tech for Wider Industrialization
• Silicon Austria Labs Leads CHAMP-ION Ion-Trap Chip Pilot Line Under EU Chips Act
• P4Q Brings 29-Partner Consortium to Develop Photonic Chips for Quantum Applications
• Sparrow Quantum Leads Photonic Quantum Computing Pillar in €50M P4Q Pilot Line

About imec

Imec is a world-leading research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies. Leveraging its state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and the expertise of over 6,500 employees, imec drives innovation in semiconductor and system scaling, artificial intelligence, silicon photonics, connectivity, and sensing.

Imec’s advanced research powers breakthroughs across a wide range of industries, including computing, health, automotive, industry, consumer electronics, aerospace and security. Through IC-Link, imec guides companies through every step of the chip journey – from initial concept to full-scale manufacturing – delivering customized solutions tailored to meet the most advanced design and production needs.

Imec collaborates with global leaders across the semiconductor value chain, as well as with technology companies, start-ups, academia, and research institutions in Flanders and worldwide. Headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, imec has research facilities in Belgium, across Europe, the USA and the GCC region, and representation on three continents. In 2024, imec reported revenues of €1.034 billion.

Source: imec

The post SPINS Launches €50M EU Pilot Line for Semiconductor Spin Qubit Development appeared first on HPCwire.

At least 432 ebike fires and 147 e-scooter fires recorded in 2025, up 38% and 20% respectively on previous year

Ebike and e-scooter fires in the UK reached a record high last year, an investigation has found, renewing concerns over the use of lithium batteries and unregulated marketplaces.

Fire brigade figures obtained by the Press Association show there were at least 432 ebike fires recorded across the UK in 2025, up 38% from 313 the previous year and more than five times higher than the 84 recorded in 2021.

Republican Tony Gonzales ended re-election bid in March after admitting to having affair with a different aide

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A second former female staffer for Tony Gonzales, a Republican congressman from Texas, has come forward claiming Gonzales sent her sexually explicit messages.

The San Antonio Express-News first reported the text messages on Monday and NBC News later confirmed the report.

OpenAI is proposing (PDF) sweeping policy changes to help manage the societal disruption caused by advanced AI, including taxes on automated labor, a public wealth fund, and experiments with a four-day workweek. The company said the policy document offered a series of "initial ideas" to address the risk of "jobs and entire industries being disrupted" by the adoption of AI tools. Business Insider reports: Among the core policy suggestions is a public wealth fund, which would see lawmakers and AI companies work together to invest in long-term assets linked to the AI boom, with returns distributed directly to citizens. Another is that the government should encourage and incentivize employers to experiment with four-day workweeks with no loss in pay and offer "benefits bonuses" tied to productivity gains from new AI tools. The policy document also suggests lawmakers modernize the tax system and shift the tax base to corporate income and capital gains, rather than relying on labor income and payroll taxes that could be hit by a wave of AI-powered job losses. It also recommends taxes related to automated labor. OpenAI also called for the accelerated expansion of the US's electricity grid, which is already feeling the strain from a wave of data center construction and energy demand for training ever more powerful AI models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four astronauts become Earth’s farthest travelled and exceed a 1970 record on the fifth day of the mission

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Artemis II astronauts broke Apollo 13’s distance record at 1.57pm eastern time on Monday, hugging each other in the cramped capsule as they made history for being the first four humans to travel the farthest from Earth than anyone before them.

Before hitting the record, the quartet dimmed the lights in their capsule and positioned themselves by the windows in preparation to set the long-distance record as they fly by the moon without stopping – with plans to ultimately swing around for planet Earth.

President’s press conference after White House Easter egg roll did little to dispel fears he has lost touch with reality

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Donald Trump began his day standing with a person in a giant bunny costume and boasting about the Iran war to an audience of children.

The annual Easter egg roll on the White House South Lawn conjured a fitting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland image for a US president who has disappeared down what many would call a rabbit hole.

Announced by President Trump less than six months ago, the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission is now up and running, and it’s moving quickly. The effort to accelerate AI for science and engineering has already made hundreds of millions of dollars available for projects. But interested parties should act fast, as the phase one deadline for applying for a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is at the end of the month.

The DOE formally announced its Genesis Mission Request for Application (RFA) on March 17. Dubbed “Transforming Science and Energy with AI,” the DOE is making $293.76 million available for research projects exploring the use of AI in science and engineering among government labs, universities, industry partners, and non-profit organizations.

The DOE has highlighted more than two dozen national challenges that it wants to tackle in the areas of advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear energy, and quantum information science. It’s ready to fund efforts to use AI to tackle science and engineering topics with titles like “Discovering Quantum Algorithms with AI” and “Scaling the Biotechnology Revolution.” You can read the full list of 26 challenges in the Genesis Mission National Science and Technology Challenges document.

“The goal is to double the productivity and impact of science and engineering within a decade,” Rian Bahran, the DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for nuclear reactors, said during an introductory webinar last week. “That’s the level of ambition the Genesis Mission executive order and direction has provided to us.”

During the March 26 presentation, titled “Genesis Mission: Request for Applications (RFA) Webinar,” Bahran and his colleague Bindu Nair, the associate director of the Basic Energy Sciences Program, provided some practical information for researchers who are interested in applying for government funding as part of the Genesis Mission.

Genesis Mission researchers can apply for phase one and phase two projects. In phase one, the government is offering to fund teams with between $500,000 to $750,000 over a period of nine months. Phase one projects that pan out may move on to phase two, which awards teams from $6 million to $15 million over a three-year project period. Researchers can also directly apply for phase two funding if the project is sufficiently fleshed out.

Parties that are interested in proposing a phase one project must submit their application by midnight Eastern Time on April 28. The application does not have to be long; a five-page document will suffice, Nair said. Parties that are interested in proposing a phase two projects are asked (but not required) to mail a letter of intent by 5 p.m. ET on April 28, with the final deadline for an application three weeks later. The DOE is still nailing down some of the details for phase two projects.

There are restrictions on who can apply for a Genesis Mission FOA. In phase one, each proposal must include a representative from two out of three categories: A DOE or National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) National Laboratories; a for-profit institution or industrial partner; and an institution of higher education or non-profit organization. “You have to have two out of the three,” Nair said. “We’re hoping for actually all three.” All three categories are eligible to serve as lead institutions. Other federal agencies and international entities can also be partners in projects, but they cannot be lead institutions, per the DOE requirements.

The 26 National Challenges of the Genesis Mission’s “Transforming Science and Energy with AI” RFA

There are no letters of intent or pre-applications for phase one projects, Nair said. “The first time we will hear from you is when you submit to us your full awards,” she said.

Phase one projects are staffed by small teams of three to four principle investigators who have “come together to design and demonstrate a clear and tangible research workflow that incorporates AI with concrete evaluation of the potential for AI advantage,” Nair said. “What that means is that we need you to tell us how you want us to measure you, that you have demonstrated, or that you are on a path to demonstrating AI advantage, and then show us where in your research or technology development workflow AI is supporting you.”

The DOE wants phase one researchers to pick one area to focus on and stick to it. Researchers should not apply for multiple awards with the same general research. PIs for one project cannot be PIs on another project, although senior investigators can be part of multiple projects. There’s no limit on the number of projects a lab, university, company, or non-profit organization can be involved in.

Phase two projects are composed of much larger teams, consisting of up to 20 investigators and perhaps crossing into multiple focus areas. While the DOE would like phase two projects to stem from phase one projects, it’s willing to accept phase two projects right away for projects that are demonstrating AI advantage. “I will remind you that phase two proposals are hard,” Nair said. “The barrier is higher. So if you are unsure, we recommend that you actually put forward a phase one proposal.”

The DOE is asking phase one submitters to describe the resources they’ll need to complete the work, including computing, networking, and data resources. While the RFA is not an application for computing resources, the DOE would like to know what will be needed. Preferably, the researchers will bring their own computing resources to bear on the project.

“We will try to help you also if you are selected,” Nair said. “But…we expect our computing and data storage resources to be oversubscribed, so we’re not going to promise anything. We will do the best we can to allocate as we can.” Phase one proposals do not need a data management plan, but phase two projects are required for phase two applications.

The Genesis Mission Consortium is also going to play a role in the DOE’s research projects, including by contributing computing power, AI tokens, technical expertise, and other support. The DOE is counting on Genesis Mission Consortium to connect industry and academic organization with the DOE and NNSA labs, to catalize data flows, and promote novel data applications. Research groups do not need to be members of the Genesis Mission Consortium under this RFA, and participation in the RFA does not grant them membership in the consortium.

The DOE is holding a series of webinars to discuss the specific research its interested in pursuing. There have been four webinars so far, and three more are planned, with the next one occurring April 7 at 2 p.m. ET.  You can see the full list of Genesis Mission webinars here.

Related Items:

Dario Gil at GTC: DOE’s Genesis Mission Moving from Vision to Execution

First Genesis Mission Supercomputers on Track to Launch by June. ‘Unprecedented’ Speed, DOE’s Darío Gil Says

Rick Stevens on the Genesis Mission and the Future of AI for Science

The post Genesis Mission Now Accepting Applications to Fund AI-for-Science Projects appeared first on HPCwire.

U.S. and Iraqi officials say they believe freelancer Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped last week by Kataib Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with links to Iran.

Neither Josh Hartnett nor Ewan McGregor were there, but the way the mainstream media is telling it, they might as well have been. The Sunday morning rescue of a U.S. airman shot down over Iran launched a thousand breathless tick-tock retellings from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and many, many more — helpful water-carrying for an administration prosecuting a deeply unpopular war without a clear end in sight.

“The rescue had unfolded with near‑perfect precision. Under cover of darkness, U.S. commandos slipped deep into Iran, undetected, scaled a 7,000‑foot ridge and pulled a ​stranded American weapons specialist to safety, moving him toward a secret rendezvous point before dawn on Sunday,” Reuters’ report on the rescue opens. “Then everything stopped.”

The operation was a “harrowing race against time,” according to the Times. As Politico put it, citing an anonymous senior administration official, it was “the ultimate ‘needle in a haystack’” mission, made possible by a CIA “deception campaign” in the country disseminating the misinformation that the airman had already been located and was being extracted by ground to confuse the Iranians’ search.

The White House frequently hosts widely attended “background briefing” calls for large groups of reporters. Maybe that’s how Axios chimed in with the same evocative “needle in a haystack” line, which it also attributed to a senior administration official.

“This was the ultimate needle in a haystack but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but for CIA’s capabilities,” the unnamed source told Axios.

Related

Far-Right Religious Leaders Advising Trump See Iran as an End Times Holy War

CBS News called locating and extracting the service member, who was aboard a craft known by the call sign “Dude 44,” “a herculean U.S. government effort.” Even The Associated Press characterized the mission as “a daring rescue,” and multiple publications reported that when the airman was able, they radioed the line “God is good” just ahead of Easter Sunday — a plot point that would make even devotees of the show “24” groan.

As government sources are telling the tale to eager reporters at national publications, the F-15E Strike Eagle was the first jet shot down Friday over enemy territory in this war on Iran. After coming under Iranian fire, the two-man crew ejected themselves, and the aircraft’s weapons systems officer was separated from the pilot, who was “quickly” rescued, according to the Journal.

While the initially missing service member’s identity has not been revealed, Trump said he is a colonel who was injured but managed to hide out in a mountain crevice to await rescue. Two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were also hit by incoming fire; in another incident, an A-10 Warthog was hit and crashed in a neighboring allied country, where the pilot was rescued.

“When airmen go down, you can’t get them in very tough countries, like in Vietnam,” Trump told the Journal, in a revealing comparison.

“He was able to climb, climb up as wounded as he was, he was able to climb up into a crevice,” Trump went on. “A lot of great things happened.”

To say it would be naive to take the Trump administration at face value is an understatement. Yet the complete lack of any skepticism of this Hollywood story from mainstream news would make even Breitbart writers blush.

Even the timing of the premiere was perfect for the Trump administration, which is acutely aware of how unpopular this war is at home. Is America winning this war? Don’t worry about that, check out this action sequence.

One of the ironies of all this is that it exposes exactly why the Trump administration can’t be trusted. Just two days before the fighter jet was shot down, Trump was blustering about how U.S. strikes had left Iran with “no anti-aircraft” capabilities. The daring rescue, however, is predicated on the very clear fact that Iran absolutely still has the ability to shoot down American planes.

The U.S. can certainly bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age” — a line both Trump and Hegseth deployed — but all that hellfire rained down on civilian targets won’t yield the political dividends they so desperately desire.

Related

The Architects of the Iraq War: Where Are They Now?

It’s all eerily reminiscent of the way the media covered the lead-up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when papers of record like the Times and The Atlantic and respected broadcast outlets like “Meet the Press” were more than happy to launder the Bush administration’s quarter-baked intelligence to make the case for war to the American public.

Even voices from the emergent, supposedly left-wing media — like the wonks making their name through a new format called “blogs” — were overjoyed to fall in line with the war effort. After all, the logic seemed to go, how could you be taken seriously if you were reflexively anti-war — the province of far-left nuts who are cast into the political wilderness? It was far safer and, in the long term, professionally beneficial to sell out any principles you had to enlist as junior partners in the pro-war coalition.

Even if, in this moment, the media is vaguely more skeptical of the war with Iran, national reporters simply couldn’t resist retelling the story of a Great American Rescue Mission, consequences, or the broader truth, be damned. Americans’ memories, especially for failing wars, are short.

As the fog clears and a fuller picture emerges, maybe we’ll see whether it shakes out the same way these serial liars sold it to huge swaths of the media.

The post The Media Just Can’t Help Turning Iran Fighter Jet Rescue Into “Black Hawk Down” appeared first on The Intercept.

Education department will no longer enforce schools from California to Delaware to comply with US civil rights law

The US education department said on Monday it had terminated agreements that previous administrations reached with five school districts and a college aimed at upholding rights and protections for transgender students.

The decision means the department will no longer play a role in enforcing those agreements, which called for schools to take steps to comply with federal civil rights law. The districts affected are Cape Henlopen school district in Delaware, Fife school district in Washington; Delaware Valley school district in Pennsylvania; and La Mesa-Spring Valley school district, Sacramento City Unified and Taft College in California.

Major companies, including Huawei and Hikvision, could see the last of their import orders cut off from the US within 30 days of implementation.

Is it the season for changing your wireless provider or picking a different phone plan? We've put together our picks for the top postpaid and prepaid plans from AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Mint Mobile, US Mobile and others.

Two more drug-making giants, Abbvie and Genentech, will start selling popular medications on the White House's discounted pharmaceutical site as soon as Monday.

TEL AVIV, Israel, April 6, 2026 — Q-Factor, a neutral atom quantum computing company, today announced $24 million in seed funding. The round was led by NFX and TPY Capital, with participation from Intel Capital, Korea Investment Partners, Deep33, and the Matias family, along with a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority. The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Weizmann Institute of Science are also shareholders in the company, which was founded to commercialize decades of foundational research in atomic physics conducted in their labs.

Founded by four leading physicists from the Weizmann Institute and Technion, Q-Factor is developing neutral atom tech to break through quantum computing’s scaling barriers. Credit: Intel Capital.

Neutral atoms have rapidly emerged as one of the most promising approaches to quantum computing. They are naturally inert, capable of holding quantum information for extended periods, yet precisely controllable using light alone, without the need for extreme cooling or complex wiring. However, current quantum computers across all modalities remain too small by orders of magnitude to deliver real commercial value. Breaking past a few thousand qubits to the hundreds of thousands or millions required for useful computation demands not incremental improvement, but a fundamental architectural leap.

Q-Factor was founded to tackle this challenge. The company brings together four physicists whose research spans decades at the forefront of neutral atom science. Three lead labs at the Weizmann Institute and the Technion that have pioneered the building blocks of neutral atom systems, including ultracold atoms, controlled atomic interactions (Rydberg physics), atom transport, and advanced laser techniques; the fourth brings extensive technical leadership building and scaling deep tech ventures. The founders closely analyzed the limitations of current neutral atom quantum computing, and have identified the architectural bottlenecks that prevent current platforms from scaling beyond a few thousand qubits. Q-Factor has developed an approach to overcome them and scale to over one million.

“The quantum computing industry needs a revolution, not an evolution,” said Prof. Ofer Firstenberg, co-founder and chief scientist of Q-Factor. “Current systems are too small to deliver on the promise of quantum computing, and incremental improvements alone aren’t going to close that gap. We’ve developed an architecture designed for continuous scalability, a Moore’s Law-like trajectory that can take neutral atom systems from thousands of qubits to millions and beyond.”

Q-Factor was founded by Prof. Nir Davidson, a world-renowned authority in ultracold atoms with 280 published papers and former dean of physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science; Prof. Ofer Firstenberg of the Weizmann Institute, an expert in quantum optics and Rydberg atoms, formerly of Harvard and MIT; Prof. Yoav Sagi of the Technion, a leading authority in neutral-atom manipulation, formerly of JILA and the University of Colorado; and Dr. Guy Raz, a physicist with 20 years of technical leadership for multiple deep tech startups.

“It’s rare to find a team with this combination of scientific authority and commercial instinct,” said Gigi Levy-Weiss, Partner at NFX. “Four Talpiot graduates with hundreds of published papers in the fields directly underlying this technology, and real experience bringing deep science to market. They are uniquely positioned to execute on one of the most ambitious goals in quantum computing.”

“Neutral atoms are emerging as the leading modality for scalable quantum computing, and Q-Factor is entering the race with a distinct architectural advantage,” said Dekel Persi, Partner at TPY Capital. “TPY has been investing in quantum computing for seven years and have evaluated dozens of companies across modalities and geographies. What the Q-Factor team achieved stood out immediately. Their architectural approach to scale made this a clear must-do for us.”

“Q-Factor’s founding team combines world-class scientific depth with a clear-eyed understanding of what it will take to build a commercially viable quantum computer,” said Lisa Cohen, Investment Director at Intel Capital. “They’ve watched the field evolve, learned from the challenges others have encountered, and assembled the right expertise to tackle the hardest remaining problem in quantum computing: scale.”

Source: Intel Capital

The post Q-Factor Emerges from Stealth with $24M to Advance Scalable Neutral Atom Quantum Systems appeared first on HPCwire.

The risky rescue of two American service members from Iranian territory sounds like the plot of an action movie, with a colonel stranded in the country for almost two days after he and a pilot ejected from an F-15E fighter jet that Iranian forces shot down. The two-man crew was later rescued in two different missions. But so far, the U.S. military has not released images from either operation — and artificial intelligence is responsible for the cinematic rescue scenes spreading on social media.

The pilot’s April 3 rescue involved the deployment of 21 military aircraft that faced heavy fire, President Donald Trump said a few days later. The injured colonel, who landed miles away from the pilot, had to climb treacherous mountain terrain, waiting close to 48 hours before U.S. special forces could extract him, Trump said.

Purported images of their rescues drew awed responses online. One showed a smiling man wearing a combat uniform and holding an American flag surrounded by other service members in what looks like a military plane. 

"I’ll never forget this picture on each & every Easter Sunday. Rescued," read an X post by John Bolaris, a realtor and TV meteorologist, with over 791,000 views. 

A Facebook user posting the image said, "Here is the photo of the honorable Colonel being rescued yesterday."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., shared and then deleted the photo on their X accounts.

Conservative commentator David J Harris Jr., shared another image April 5, claiming to show the rescue of the American pilot from Western Iran. But this photo was also fabricated using artificial intelligence.

One of the X posts sharing the photo of the colonel has a "Made with AI" label. 

Neither U.S. Central Command nor the U.S. government have released images of the rescued service members.

V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University computer science professor, and Marco Postiglione, a postdoctoral researcher who works with Subrahmanian, told PolitiFact the image of the colonel with a flag was likely generated with artificial intelligence.

(Screenshot of a purported image of a U.S. colonel's rescue has some visual inconsistencies indicating it was created using AI.) 

Subrahmanian and Postiglione also noticed some visual inconsistencies in the photo. A person’s uniform on the left, for example, bears a flag patch that sits at an unusual angle and position on the sleeve. Standard military regulations specify that the flag should be worn on the right shoulder, centered and typically a half-inch below the shoulder seam, they said. Another flag patch on the man to the right of the purported colonel appears on the front of his chest. 

Some other anomalies:

• The colonel’s hand on top of the American flag appears to have an extra finger and looks distorted. 

• The image is grainy and the background is blurred.

• The stripes of the flag are not folding the way they would on a real flag.

Hive Moderation, an AI-detection tool, said the picture was likely generated by GPT Image 1.5., Open AI’s image generation model. 

(Screenshot of Facebook post)

We ran the pilot photo through Hive Moderation as well. These programs are imperfect, but it concluded that it was "99.9% likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content." It said this image was likely generated using the AI-image generator Stable Diffusion XL. 

We rate claims these are authentic photos Pants on Fire!

Electric bag sealers use heat to reseal bags of chips, cereal and other pantry items. I tested two of the best-rated on Amazon to see if they earn the CNET seal of approval.

A teardown video of LG's never-released Rollable phone helps explain why rollable phones never became a real product category: they were likely too expensive, fragile, and complicated to manufacture at scale. "The complexity of the internals would have made the Rollable extremely expensive to manufacture, and it would have demanded a high price tag," reports Ars Technica. "Durability is also a big concern. There's just a lot going on inside this phone, with multiple motors, springy arms, tracks, and a screen that has to loop around the back. [...] It seems unlikely the LG Rollable could have survived daily use for multiple years." From the report: The LG Rollable is just one of several rollable concept phones that appeared throughout the early 2020s. Flexible OLED screens had finally become affordable, leading to foldable phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. Although, "affordable" is relative here. Foldables were and still are very expensive devices. Based on what we can see of the complex inner workings of the LG Rollable, these devices may have commanded even higher prices. Noted YouTube phone destroyer JerryRigEverything managed to snag a working prototype LG Rollable. It may even be the unit LG demoed at CES 2021. The device looks like a regular phone at first glance, but a quick swipe activates the motor, which unfurls additional screen real estate from around the back. This makes the viewable area about 40 percent larger without the added thickness of a foldable. The device expands with the aid of two tiny motors, which are attached via straight teeth to an internal track. The screen assembly has zipper-like teeth that keep it locked into the frame as it moves. The motors make a surprising amount of noise when operating, so LG designed the phone to play a musical chime to hide the sound. While the motor does the heavy lifting, the phone also has a lattice of articulating spring-loaded arms inside that keep the OLED panel even as the frame slides side to side. The battery and motherboard sit in a tray that allows the back of the phone to expand as the OLED rolls into view. This is a prototype phone, featuring a chunky frame and visible screws. That helped Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything successfully disassemble and reassemble the phone. So this little bit of mobile history was not destroyed, and the teardown gives us a good look at how LG was hoping to attract new customers before calling it quits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

April 6, 2026 — On March 5, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory threw open its doors, both in person and virtually, to share with the public some of the extraordinary research that’s happening here.

Deputy Laboratory Director for Science and Technology, Sean L. Jones, moderates the March OutLoud lecture. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory.

The occasion? The lab’s first OutLoud Public Lecture of 2026. It came as Argonne marks its 80th anniversary, and what better way to kick off celebrations than by showing off some of the lab’s crown jewels — the U.S. national scientific user facilities — while putting the OutLoud audience to the test.

User facilities are cutting-edge tools that serve as the foundation of countless groundbreaking scientific discoveries and advancements. Funded by the DOE, they significantly accelerate research in a wide range of areas. Argonne researchers aren’t the only ones who get the benefit of using these tools. More than 8,000 visitors each year — including scientists and engineers from academia, government and industry — are attracted to Argonne’s user facilities, fostering collaboration across many fields.

Argonne has six user facilities, but during this latest OutLoud lecture, ​“Beacons of Discovery: Argonne’s User Facilities and Some of Their Greatest Contributions,” the spotlight was on the three most utilized. The night proved to be an educational opportunity wrapped in fun.

More than 500 in-person and virtual attendees participated, welcomed by Laboratory Director Paul Kearns.

“Argonne’s 80th anniversary is a milestone that commemorates eight decades of advancing scientific discovery and innovation for our nation,” said Kearns. ​“This OutLoud lecture celebrated the impact made possible by our talented researchers and our world-class facilities. Together, they are driving science forward in ways that benefit society today and expand what is possible for generations to come.”

The event was moderated by Sean L. Jones, Argonne’s deputy laboratory director for science and technology. Jones summed up one of the many reasons the lab is so special: ​“Argonne is fortunate to be one of a handful of national laboratories with interconnected user facilities on the same campus. And by working together, our powerful tools and instruments solve complex challenges that improve our daily lives.”

The evening featured presentations by three Argonne researchers who are authorities on their respective user facilities. The first lesson was centered on the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), introduced by Connie Pfeiffer, user program manager. CNM is where scientists zoom in — way in — to study materials and processes at nanoscale to understand their properties and behaviors.

Audience members listen during the March 2026 OutLoud lecture. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory.

Pfeiffer discussed how CNM’s more than 160 tools and capabilities advance various areas of science, including quantum computing, microelectronics and autonomous discovery.

More specifically, CNM has been used to develop a new qubit platform. Qubits are the basic units of quantum computers. The qubit platform is the hardware system used to create and manipulate those building blocks. CNM has also helped researchers develop digital twin software that can mirror experiment conditions, ultimately helping scientists make efficient use of their time on user facilities.

The next researcher to take the stage, Stefan Vogt, associate director of Argonne’s X-ray Science Division (XSD), gave the audience a glimpse into the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the brightest synchrotron X-ray source in the world. The facility works by accelerating electrons near the speed of light, producing extraordinarily intense X-ray beams that allow scientists to probe the structure of matter in ways conventional X-rays cannot. The results have been nothing short of transformative.

APS data has contributed to three Nobel Prizes in chemistry. Among many other contributions to science, the APS played a pivotal role in determining the protein structures that led to the development of Paxlovid, a drug used to treat COVID-19. The APS has also given engineers unique insight into 3D metal printing, helping them build stronger, more reliable components.

Rounding out the trio was Katherine Riley, director of science for the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), which is home to some of the most powerful supercomputing and artificial intelligence resources in the world.

Riley discussed how scientists are using ALCF resources to pursue high-impact research that is improving aircraft and engine design, accelerating the discovery of new battery materials and advancing efforts to map the human brain. CNM, APS and ALCF are all DOE Office of Science user facilities.

After the presentations, it was time to take things up a notch with a quiz game that put audience members’ newly acquired knowledge to the test. Three guests were invited on stage as contestants — because what’s a night of world-class science without a little friendly competition? All three contestants walked away with bragworthy prizes — exclusive OutLoud and Argonne swag.

The audience also had the chance to engage with the night’s presenters during a Q&A segment, as well as one-on-one after the event.

The OutLoud Public Lecture Series, produced by Argonne’s Office of Community Engagement, is just getting started this year. Future lectures are planned for:

• June 18, 2026
• September 17, 2026
• November 12, 2026

Missed the event? You can watch ​“Beacons of Discovery: Argonne’s User Facilities and Some of Their Greatest Contributions” on YouTube.

To learn more about the OutLoud Public Lecture Series and to sign up for the email list, visit the OutLoud page.

Source: Courtney Gousman, Argonne National Laboratory

The post Argonne Kicks Off 80th Anniversary Celebrations with 1st OutLoud Public Lecture of 2026 appeared first on HPCwire.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for April 7, No. 561.

It's not an April Fools' joke: A new online tracker lets people enter the batch number from their KitKat wrapper.

Home Office will use mapping technology and crime data to identify up to 250 schools in areas of greatest risk

Schools across England are to receive dedicated support to prevent knife crime incidents in a hyper-targeted Home Office programme that uses mapping technology to identify areas of risk down to the level of specific groups of streets.

Under the £1.2m scheme – part of a series of initiatives launched under a government pledge to halve knife crime within a decade – a maximum of 250 schools will receive help.

Two fatalities reported in southern California so far, with warmer spring bringing reptiles out on trails earlier

A sixth person has been bitten by a rattlesnake in southern California’s Ventura county in just under a month, two-thirds of the number of people bitten in all of 2025.

Andrew Dowd, a Ventura county fire department spokesperson, said paramedics responded to a call on Sunday for a man who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. The victim said he had been bitten near California State University Channel Islands.

At a press conference, the US president, Donald Trump, addressed his latest deadline for Tehran to reach a deal (8pm ET on Tuesday), adding: “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” Trump also threatened to jail a journalist – or journalists – who reported that a second US airman was missing after being shot down by Iran on Friday in an effort to identify their source. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for specifics about the media company Trump was referring to. A White House official later said an investigation was under way.

• Middle East crisis live: Trump says Iran ‘can be taken out in one night, and that might be tomorrow night’

• Trump threatens to jail journalist to find source of second missing airman report

Performer is being extended ‘forgiveness’ over antisemitic remarks, says Melvin Benn, despite calls for ban

The promoter of Wireless festival has stood by the decision to have Kanye West perform at the event, despite an outcry over the rapper’s antisemitic behaviour and calls to cancel his appearance.

West, who is legally known as Ye, has been criticised for making antisemitic remarks including voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler. Last year he released a song called Heil Hitler, a few months after advertising a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.

The president vowed anew to destroy Iranian bridges and energy sites if a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reached.

How will Mr. Charles react to Fisk's latest devious move? Tune in as we hit the halfway mark for this season.

The Associated Press is offering buyouts to U.S. journalists "as part of an acceleration away from the focus on newspaper journalism that sustained the company since the mid-1800s," the not-for-profit outlet reported today. AP says it is making the move from a position of strength, responding to shrinking newspaper revenue and growing demand from digital, broadcast, and tech clients. "The AP is not in trouble," said Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP. "We're making these changes from a position of strength but we're doing so now to recognize our changing customer base." From the report: The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence, to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion's share of AP's revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income. "We're not a newspaper company and we haven't been for quite some time," [said Pace]. Despite changes -- the company has doubled the number of video journalists it employs in the United States since 2022 -- remnants of a staffing structure built largely to provide stories to newspapers and broadcasters in individual states have remained. That has its roots well back in American history; the AP was started in the mid-19th century by New York newspapers looking to share the costs of reporting outside their immediate territory. The number of AP journalists who will lose jobs is murky, in part intentionally. The AP does not say how many journalists it employs, though it has a large international presence as well as its U.S. staff. Pace said the AP's goal is to reduce its global staff by less than 5%. The Marketing and Media Alliance estimated the AP had 3,700 staffers, but it was not clear when that estimate was made. Since buyouts are being offered now to only U.S. journalists, it stands to reason that the cut among that workforce will be more than 5%. Whether there are layoffs depends on how many people take the offer, Pace said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets emerged from eggs on Easter weekend in Big Bear Valley as watched by thousands online

Over Easter weekend, thousands of people tuned in to celebrate something spectacular unfolding 145 feet up a pine tree in southern California’s San Bernardino national forest – the hatchings of two bald eagle chicks.

Two eaglets were born to Jackie and Shadow, the southern California pair that have become avian celebrities thanks to the webcam that has livestreamed their activities since 2018.

You might not be able to see the moon the way the Artemis II team is, but there's an educational Fortnite simulation that will get you onto the celestial body's surface.

President Trump and top national security officials shed new light on the daring rescues of two American airmen who were shot down over Iran last week.

The Education Department is rescinding agreements that required schools to stop discriminating against transgender students. The agency will continue to investigate sex discrimination.

Artemis II has broken the Apollo 13 record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. NASA reports: The Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen have set the record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by a human mission, surpassing the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles set in 1970. NASA Flight Director Brandon Lloyd, Capsule Communicator Amy Dill, and Command and Handling Data Officer Brandon Borter also marked a lighthearted milestone today by emailing the crew what is now assumed to be the longest person-to-person message ever sent in human history. After breaking the record for human spaceflight, crew also took a moment to provisionally name a couple of craters on the Moon, noting they were able to see them with their naked eye. Just northwest of Orientale basin highlighted above is a crater they would like to name Integrity after their spacecraft and this historic mission. Just northeast of Integrity, on the near and far side boundary, and sometimes visible from Earth, the crew suggested Carroll crater in honor of Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman. After this mission is complete, the crater name proposals will be formally submitted to the International Astronomical Union, the organization that governs the naming of celestial bodies and their surface features. On April 1, NASA successfully launched humanity's first crewed trip around the Moon in more than 50 years. A couple of days into the mission, attention turned to a more mundane problem when reports said the astronauts had access to "two Microsoft Outlooks" and neither was working properly. By April 4, the crew had passed 100,000 miles from Earth as they continued deeper into space, and by April 6, they had entered the Moon's gravitational pull and caught their first views of the lunar far side.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump targets media to find ‘leaker’ who revealed that a US airman was missing after being shot down by Iranian forces

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Donald Trump threatened to jail a journalist – or journalists – who reported that a second US airman was missing after being shot down by Iran on Friday in an effort to identify their source.

The badly injured airman hid in a mountain crevice to avoid capture before being rescued by a US recovery team that received heavy fire. The US president announced on Sunday that the service member had been recovered.

This is a great post, but obviously it hasn’t convinced me:

The folks waving their arms and yelling about recent models’ capabilities have a point: the thing works. This project finished in three weeks. Compare that to Ringspace, a similarly-sized project that took me about six months of nights and early mornings to complete, while not doing my day job or being Dad to an amazing, but demanding toddler. I simply could not have built this project as well or as quickly without help. And as other developers have noted, this is the help that’s showing up.

I’m not entirely onboard with Mike Masnick’s optimistic view of this technology’s democratizing power. I don’t think it’s as easy to separate the tech from its provenance or corporate control. But CertGen, my certificate application, exists now. It didn’t and couldn’t without the help of a tool like Claude Code. Open source in particular needs to reckon with this, because the current situation of demanding developers starve and bleed themselves dry without support isn’t tenable. We need to grapple with this. I’m not yet sure how it all breaks down, and anyone who says they do is lying, foolish, or fanatical.

↫ Michael Taggart

If you disregard that “AI” models are trained on stolen data, that such data was prepared by exploited workers, that “AI” data centres have a hugely negative impact on the environment, that “AI” data centers are distorting the entire computing market, that “AI” models they feed the endless firehose of intentional misinformation, that they are wreaking havoc in education, that they increase your reliance on American big tech companies, that you pay “AI” companies for taking your work, that “AI” models are a vital component in the technofascist wet dreams of their creators, that they are the cornerstone of politicians’ dream of ending anonymity, and that they contribute to racist and abusive policing, then yes, sometimes, they produce code that works and isn’t total horseshit.

It’s a deeply depressing reversed “what have the Romans ever done for us?” that makes me sad, more than anything. I’ve seen so many otherwise smart, caring, and genuine people just shove all of these massive downsides aside for the mere novelty, the peer pressure, the occasional sense that their “lines of code” metric is going up.

It’s the digital equivalent of rolling coal.

Ron Gibson had recently expressed support for a 14-acre, $500m datacenter project in Martindale-Brightwood

An Indianapolis city councilor said his home was fired at on Monday, with a note left behind suggesting he had been targeted over his support of datacenters.

The case involving Ron Gibson – a Democrat on Indianapolis’s city council – comes amid growing bipartisan concern in the US over political violence in the wake of cases such as the September murder of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist.

It's included on every Netflix plan.

President dismisses concerns that bombing civilian targets would punish ordinary people and could be war crimes

Donald Trump on Monday claimed that Iranian civilians were actively welcoming US strikes on their country’s infrastructure, saying they would be “willing to suffer” the loss of power and basic services in order to achieve freedom from the Islamic Republic.

Speaking to reporters from the White House press room, Trump dismissed concerns that targeting Iran’s power grid and civilian infrastructure would punish ordinary Iranians rather than the regime, saying without evidence that US intelligence had intercepts of civilians near active bombing sites urging American forces to continue.

HANGZHOU, China, April 6, 2026 — A research team led by Zhen-Xing Endowed Professor Jian Yang at the School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, together with collaborators, published their latest findings in Nature on April 1. The study explains a pangenome-informed genome assembly (PIGA) method. By combining a cost-effective hybrid sequencing strategy of long and short reads, the team successfully constructed a pangenome for over a thousand individuals. This achievement breaks through the limitations of previous small-sample pangenomes and provides a critical foundational infrastructure for medical and population genetics research.

Fig. 1. The pangenome-informed genome assembly (PIGA) workflow. Click to enhance.

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, single linear reference genomes (such as GRCh38) have served as the foundation for biomedical research. However, the genetic backgrounds of human individuals vary significantly, and a single reference genome cannot capture the full extent of genetic diversity across populations. This leads to complex forms of genetic variations, such as structural variants (SVs) and tandem repeats (TRs), being overlooked in traditional analyses. To address this challenge, researchers proposed the concept of a pangenome—a collection of genome sequences representing the genetic diversity of a population.

While advancements in long-read sequencing have enabled the assembly of high-quality diploid genomes, the high costs of sequencing have limited the sample sizes of previous pangenomes to only a few dozen individuals. Such small sample sizes are insufficient to accurately estimate the frequency of genetic variants in populations or to resolve low-frequency variants and high-complexity regions. Therefore, developing a cost-effective pangenome construction strategy for large-scale populations has become an urgent requirement for resolving the functional impact of complex variants and enhancing clinical diagnostics.

Yang’s team has long been dedicated to methodological research in statistical genetics, genomics, and the big data analysis of human complex traits. By developing efficient computational methods, the team has consistently tackled core challenges in processing large-scale genomic data. Analysis tools developed by the team, such as GCTA-GREML, SMR, and gsMap, have been widely adopted globally. To address the challenge in constructing large-scale pangenomes, the research team developed the pangenome-informed genome assembly (PIGA) workflow (Fig. 1). Unlike de novo assembly approaches, which rely on sequencing data from individual samples, PIGA adopts a pangenome-guided framework to integrate sequence information across the entire cohort. It fully leverages a cost-effective hybrid sequencing strategy based on modest-coverage Illumina short-read and PacBio long-read whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data. This approach substantially reduces sequencing costs while enabling the assembly of genomes from modest-coverage data, thereby providing a practical new technical pathway for future population-scale hybrid sequencing studies.

Applying this method, the research team constructed the world’s largest human pangenome to date, comprising 1,116 diploid genomes with a mean quality value (QV) of 46. The pangenome identified 405.3 million base pairs (Mb) of non-reference sequences absent from current references (GRCh38 and CHM13). Notably, the team annotated 26.2 Mb of these sequences as functional genic and predicted regulatory elements, greatly expanding our understanding of the non-reference sequences in the human genome.

Leveraging the large-scale assembly dataset, the researchers compiled a comprehensive catalog of genetic variation. In addition to 35.4 million small variants, the catalog captured a wide range of complex variants, including 110,530 SVs, 485,575 TRs, and 0.86 million nested variants embedded within non-reference sequences.

Using this catalog, the team characterized medically relevant variations at multiple scales (Fig. 2), including gene-altering SVs, pathogenic TR expansions, gene cluster variations, and HLA gene haplotypes. These findings indicate that the 1KCP variant catalog provides an important reference for the clinical screening of pathogenic mutations.

By integrating gene expression data, the team conducted pan-variant expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping. They identified 3,256 eQTLs involving complex variants (SVs, TRs, and nested variants), elucidating the regulatory complexity of these diverse variant types.

Together, this study significantly advances our understanding of complex genetic variants and their functional implications, establishing a new paradigm for human health research and pangenome studies in other species.

Ph.D. student Yifei Wang and Research Assistant Professor Zhongqu Duan are the co-first authors of the study. Professor Jian Yang is the last author. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key R&D Program, the Zhejiang “Pioneer & Leading Goose” Program, and the New Cornerstone Science Foundation. Computational resources were provided by the High-Performance Computing Center at Westlake University.

Professor Jian Yang’s research group is dedicated to developing statistical genetics and bioinformatics methods. By deeply analyzing genomic and multi-omic data from large-scale population cohorts, they aim to uncover the genetic architecture and molecular mechanisms underlying complex diseases, translating these discoveries into novel strategies for disease diagnosis, drug target discovery, and precision medicine.

Related links:

• Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10315-y
• Jian Yang lab website: https://yanglab.westlake.edu.cn
• GitHub: https://github.com/JianYang-Lab/PIGA

Source: Westlake University

The post Westlake University Applies PIGA Workflow to Construct Large-Scale Human Pangenome Dataset appeared first on HPCwire.

Samsung says it will discontinue its Samsung Messages app in July 2026 and is directing Galaxy users to switch to Google Messages instead. Android Central reports: [...] Samsung says users can switch to Google Messages as their default app to maintain a consistent Android messaging experience. The fine print also states that once the app is discontinued, "sending messages via Samsung Messages on your phone will no longer be possible, except for emergency service numbers or emergency contacts defined in your device." Samsung also notes that users will no longer be able to download the Messages app from the Galaxy Store once it is discontinued. Newer devices, including the Galaxy S26 series, already do not support installing Samsung Messages. It is, however, worth noting that users on Android 11 or older are not affected by this change and will still be able to use the Samsung Messages app on their devices. [...] Samsung also warns that on some devices released before 2022, switching apps may temporarily disrupt ongoing RCS conversations. However, chats should resume once both users move to Google Messages. The company also highlights some of the benefits of the switch, including improved security, RCS support, AI features, and better multi-device connectivity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MADRID, April 6, 2026 — Xoople, the data infrastructure company building a global system of record for physical change on Earth, announced it has closed a $130 million Series B, bringing its total raised to $225 million, from investors including Nazca Capital, MCH, CDTI (Government of Spain), Buenavista Equity Partners and Endeavor Catalyst. This capital makes Xoople the top funded company in the category, with satellites capable of producing the most precise, reliable, scientific-grade data sets that will expand enterprise access to physical-world intelligence to power the AI and agentic revolutions as it starts commercialization this quarter after seven years in development.

“Every major computing era creates a new system of record; those that define that system become the economic centers of that era,” said Fabrizio Pirondini, CEO of Xoople. “CRMs gave companies a system of record for customers. Cloud platforms create systems of record for software and data. We are building the system of record for the physical world in the AI era with Xoople. After seven years developing our system in stealth, we are incredibly excited to begin commercialization in Q2 and start scaling up that capability in the market.”

As AI systems increasingly move from analysis to autonomous action through agentic workflows, the need for and ability to easily ingest reliable ground-truth data about the physical world is expected to grow rapidly – optimizing supply chains, managing infrastructure, underwriting risk, responding to disasters, and monitoring geopolitical and security risks. As models become increasingly commoditized, proprietary datasets that connect digital systems to the physical world are emerging as a critical source of advantage. Xoople calls this infrastructure and data layer the “Earth’s System of Record,” and the company expects that it will be transformational in providing AI with a real-time understanding of the physical world.

Since its creation in 2019, Xoople has worked in stealth mode, building its end-to-end system while forging global strategic partnerships to integrate its Earth data layer directly into existing business tools, to allow organizations to seamlessly analyze and act on real-world information.

Xoople’s private preview customers include government agencies and Fortune 500 companies who use the intelligence to enable:

• Supply chain optimization and infrastructure monitoring
• Agricultural forecasting and resource planning
• Insurance risk modeling and disaster response
• Urban planning and infrastructure resilience
• Scenario planning and forecasting

About Xoople

Xoople is a data infrastructure company building a global system of record for physical change on Earth. Its mission is to give organizations access to real-time physical-world intelligence powering the next generation of AI systems.

Source: Xoople

The post Xoople Announces $130M Series B to Build Earth’s System of Record for the Agentic Era appeared first on HPCwire.

Retailer faces public outcry over treatment of Walker Smith, who tackled shoplifter stealing Easter eggs at London store

Waitrose is under growing pressure to reinstate an employee of 17 years who was sacked after tackling a shoplifter who was trying to steal Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.

The retailer has faced public outcry over its treatment of Walker Smith, who was fired two days after he stopped the shoplifter taking items from the Easter egg display.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 6, 2026 — Rafay Systems, a leader in infrastructure orchestration for AI and cloud-native workloads, has announced the general availability of Token Factory, a suite of capabilities in the Rafay Platform that deliver token-based access to AI models and services. Token-based access to models and other AI services has quickly become a foundational requirement in the AI industry and is what sets apart AI factory operators from commodity GPU providers.

Rafay’s Token Factory gives AI factory operators and neoclouds the metering, pricing and access-control capabilities needed to monetize token-based access to AI models running on accelerated computing infrastructure. With Token Factory, AI factory operators can immediately deliver token-metered access to AI models as a service through developer-friendly consumption workflows without needing to build the orchestration and monetization stack from scratch.

This general availability announcement arrives as AI consumption is undergoing a fundamental shift. Enterprises and developers are increasingly accessing AI models through agentic frameworks like OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent platform that executes multi-step workflows, calls external tools, and runs continuously to complete real tasks. NVIDIA’s NemoClaw extends that model with policy-based privacy and security guardrails for production and enterprise deployments. Each agentic task consumes significantly more tokens than a conventional AI interaction, driving sustained and growing demand. Today, most of that token spend flows to hyperscalers and foundation model companies. Token Factory enables infrastructure operators to serve that demand in their regions, on their own terms and at attractive prices, turning GPU capacity into a token-based revenue stream.

Transforming GPU Providers into AI Factories

Token Factory changes the competitive equation for neoclouds and sovereign AI clouds. Rather than competing solely on GPU availability and hourly pricing, operators can immediately begin to monetize AI model consumption with a suite of governance, access control and quota management capabilities, all with a consumption model their users already understand. Token Factory becomes the controlled delivery plane for AI models, while frameworks such as OpenClaw and NemoClaw become the token-hungry “applications” that drive consumption.

“Token Factories are the new cellphone companies,” said Haseeb Budhani, CEO and co-founder of Rafay Systems. “Similar to how cellphone companies used to sell pre- and post-paid minute plans, AI factories are beginning to sell pre- and post-paid token plans. Team Rafay is looking forward to supporting the success of a thousand AI factories across the world with our Token Factory offering.”

How Rafay’s Token Factory Works

Token Factory extends the Rafay Platform with a purpose-built monetization and metering layer for AI services. It enables AI factory operators to expose AI models via API endpoints. Endpoints are token-metered and provide a number of price, access management and quota definition capabilities, making it easy for both enterprises and retail users to track token consumption and enforce policies in real time across users, applications and agentic workflows.

Token Factory has been validated to work with OpenClaw and NVIDIA NemoClaw, which are driving the highest-velocity token consumption in the market today. Users with OpenClaw or NemoClaw setups point their rigs to API endpoints made available to them through developer-friendly, self-service workflows, and instantly start consuming AI services through a clean, tokenized interface. The complexity of GPU-based hardware, connectivity, access control, scaling, etc. is invisible to end users.

‍A Growing Market for Token-Based AI Services

At GTC 2026, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang elevated the concept of “tokenomics” to a keynote theme, describing tokens as a new commodity and envisioning a future in which token-based access becomes the standard way enterprises and developers consume AI. The GPU-as-a-Service market is projected to reach $7.36 billion in 2026 and grow to $26.43 billion by 2031, according to Research and Markets. Meanwhile, sovereign AI investment is accelerating globally, with IDC projecting that by 2028, 60% of multinational firms will split their AI stacks across sovereign zones.

As more organizations build or invest in AI factories, the challenge is shifting from provisioning GPU infrastructure to monetizing it. Token Factory addresses that challenge directly, giving operators a ready-made system to offer consumption-based AI services rather than building one in-house.

Already Deployed with AI Factory Operators Worldwide

Token Factory builds on Rafay’s partnerships with AI factory operators across six continents. The Rafay Platform powers sovereign and neocloud AI deployments for customers including Cassava Technologies, which is deploying Africa’s first NVIDIA-powered AI factories; Firmus Technologies, which has integrated Rafay’s PaaS capabilities into its green-energy-powered Australian AI Cloud; and Telus, which is building a sovereign AI Studio in Canada. Additional deployments span the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Token Factory is available now as part of the Rafay Platform. For more information, visit rafay.co/platform/ai-token-factory.

About Rafay Systems

Rafay Systems is a leading platform provider for modern infrastructure and AI workloads, delivering Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities that enable organizations to operationalize compute infrastructure with self-service automation, governance and multi-tenancy. The Rafay Platform helps enterprises, cloud providers and sovereign AI cloud operators transform raw infrastructure into fully operational platforms for AI, Kubernetes and cloud-native applications. By simplifying infrastructure orchestration and lifecycle management, Rafay enables organizations to accelerate innovation while maintaining security, consistency and operational control. For more information, visit rafay.co.

Source: Rafay Systems

The post Rafay Systems Introduces Token Factory for Metered AI Model Access appeared first on HPCwire.

Apple included this feature in a previous beta but removed it from the final version.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over sports event contracts, a ‘big win’ for Kalshi

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A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that New Jersey gaming regulators cannot prevent Kalshi from allowing people in the state to use its prediction market to place financial bets on the outcome of sporting events.

A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based third US circuit court of appeals ruled 2-1 in finding that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over the sports-related event contracts that Kalshi allows people to trade on its platform.

An expletive-ridden post on social media shamed the office of the US president. Its substantive message, if acted on, would be a war crime

Article 52 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva conventions prohibits attacks on civilian targets. It is on those grounds that the international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for Russian military officers and officials responsible for attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Such assaults, and the missiles rained on Ukrainian cities and towns in order to terrify and demoralise, constitute war crimes. Exactly the same would apply to the United States, should Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran back to the “stone age” this week be carried out.

Such basic tenets of international law bear repeating at a time when Mr Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, appear to speak as if from within a bloodthirsty fever dream. Glorying repulsively in his capacity to order death and destruction from the Pentagon, Mr Hegseth, an Evangelical Christian, has presented Operation Epic Fury as a 21st-century crusade “to break the teeth of the ungodly”. On social media at the weekend, Mr Trump topped that by unleashing a stream of expletive-ridden abuse, ranting that unless Iran reopens the strait of Hormuz to shipping, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day … Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell”.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Legal experts say attacking Iran’s infrastructure would constitute a war crime – but would military officers be held responsible?

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes.

It is an urgent matter for the US chain of command. In an expletive-laden threat, Trump set a Tuesday 8pm Washington time deadline for the Iranian government to open the strait of Hormuz or face “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one”.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: An elusive hacker who went by the handle "UNKN" and ran the early Russian ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil now has a name and a face. Authorities in Germany say 31-year-old Russian Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin headed both cybercrime gangs and helped carry out at least 130 acts of computer sabotage and extortion against victims across the country between 2019 and 2021. Shchukin was named as UNKN (a.k.a. UNKNOWN) in an advisory published by the German Federal Criminal Police (the "Bundeskriminalamt" or BKA for short). The BKA said Shchukin and another Russian -- 43-year-old Anatoly Sergeevitsch Kravchuk -- extorted nearly $2 million euros across two dozen cyberattacks that caused more than 35 million euros in total economic damage. Germany's BKA said Shchukin acted as the head of one of the largest worldwide operating ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil, which pioneered the practice of double extortion -- charging victims once for a key needed to unlock hacked systems, and a separate payment in exchange for a promise not to publish stolen data. Shchukin's name appeared in a Feb. 2023 filing (PDF) from the U.S. Justice Department seeking the seizure of various cryptocurrency accounts associated with proceeds from the REvil ransomware gang's activities. The government said the digital wallet tied to Shchukin contained more than $317,000 in ill-gotten cryptocurrency. The BKA believes Shchukin resides in Krasnodar, Russia, where he is from. "Based on the investigations so far, it is assumed that the wanted person is abroad, presumably in Russia," the BKA advised. "Travel behavior cannot be ruled out."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While Epstein was on work release from a Florida jail nearly 20 years ago, he had sex in a vehicle in the prison parking lot, according to a FBI interview.

How Apple's $599 iPhone 17E matches up with its more-expensive sibling phones.

As UK PM resists pressure to back airstrikes, US president invokes British leader known for his policy of appeasement

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Donald Trump has appeared to compare Keir Starmer to Neville Chamberlain in his latest disparaging remarks about the prime minister, who has refused to back the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

The comments, during an Easter Monday event at the White House, underline Trump’s continued annoyance at Starmer’s scepticism about the aims and legality of the conflict, a view that has not been shifted by the US president’s jibes.

Using Samsung's texting app on your Galaxy phone? Get ready to move to something else, like Google Messages.

Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson denounce ‘collective punishment’ amid vast disruption s from US oil blockade

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Two Democratic US lawmakers on Monday called for an end to the “cruel collective punishment” of Cuba after they visited the island to witness the effects of an US energy blockade.

The US House members Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois met with the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, as well as members of Cuba’s parliament during a five-day trip ending on Sunday.

“This is cruel collective punishment – effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country – that has produced permanent damage,” Jayapal and Jackson said in a statement released on Sunday. “It must stop immediately.”

Nurul Shah Alam, a nearly blind Rohingya refugee, was left alone in a Buffalo parking lot. His death has been ruled a homicide – what now?

On 19 February, the second day of Ramadan, Mohamad Faisal Nurul Amin and his family gathered to pray before sunrise in their apartment on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York. After nearly a year of waiting, they believed their family would be together again. Amin’s father, Nurul Shah Alam, 56, was coming home.

“For the first time since we arrived in America, I felt happy,” said Fatima Abdul Roshid, Shah Alam’s wife, speaking through an interpreter. “I thought my husband would be with our two sons and me for Ramadan.”

More Americans have moved into upper-middle-class incomes over the past several decades (source paywalled; alternative source), with new research suggesting that group has grown sharply while the lower and core middle class have shrunk. The Wall Street Journal reports: In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979, according to a report released this year by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. There is no single, standard definition of middle class, or upper middle class, and what counts as a hefty income in one city can feel paltry in another. The AEI report, by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class. Households earning more were categorized as rich. The analysis looked just at incomes, not assets such as stocks or real estate. [...] The gains span generations. Many baby boomers, born to parents who grew up in the Great Depression, are living well on their savings, aided by steady Social Security checks and decades of stock-portfolio gains that they can now tap. Millennials, who everyone worried would be permanently set back by the 2008-09 financial crisis, are earning solid incomes, buying homes and surpassing their parents. Many families are surprised to find that they have moved into this new economic tier, and see themselves as comfortable, not rich. They tend to have jobs that are white collar but not flashy -- think accountants, not tech founders. This doesn't mean that all Americans are climbing the ladder. Entrenched inflation and higher prices on major necessities have pushed many families closer to the financial edge, or locked them out of homeownership. Those costs weigh on high-earning families too, and for many are the reason they don't feel wealthy. The AEI report divided families into five different groups by income. Three groups were in the middle: lower middle class, core middle class and upper middle class. The authors found that more families now fall into the two highest-earning groups -- upper middle class and rich -- and fewer fall into the three lower-earning categories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis calls alleged scamming of EU agricultural funds ‘a turning point’

The Greek prime minister has vowed to tackle what he has called a “deep state” he says is plaguing the country, as he sought to address a growing political crisis over a farm fraud scandal that has forced the resignation of multiple government ministers.

In a speech, aired on national TV, Kyriakos Mitsotakis attempted to limit the damage, describing the revelations as “a turning point” that had turbo-charged his commitment to rooting out entrenched corruption.

‘She got ripped away from me,’ army soldier Matthew Blank said after his wife Annie Ramos was detained in Louisiana

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under the command of the Trump administration have reportedly detained the wife of a US army staff sergeant at his military base in Louisiana amid his preparations to deploy.

The arrest of Annie Ramos, 22, took place last Thursday, just days after she married 23-year-old Matthew Blank, a soldier who has served for more than five years and previously deployed to the Middle East and Europe, the New York Times first reported on Sunday.

Behind some of the viral physiques lies a troubling trend: the use of a powerful drug never approved for humans.

• Two-time All-Star had strained relationship with Sky

• Free agency opens with more than 100 players on market

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The Chicago Sky have traded star forward Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream, the teams announced Monday.

The trade is the first blockbuster move of the WNBA offseason, which is operating on a condensed timeline after months of negotiations between the league and its players over a new collective bargaining agreement finished last month.

Police say 26-year-old man died at scene outside nightclub in Peckham and two others remain in hospital

Four men have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was stabbed to death and two other men were injured outside a nightclub in south-east London.

The Metropolitan police said officers were called at 3.54am on Monday to reports of a disturbance involving a group of people outside a nightclub in Ruby Street, Peckham.

Man had to be airlifted out of mountain in north Phoenix by rescue teams and was transported to hospital

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A hiker was taken to a hospital in critical condition after bees stung him more than 100 times on an Arizona mountain trail over the Easter weekend – an emergency which required the help of a helicopter crew.

The man reported “over 100 stings” had left him “unable to continue his descent” from the summit of Lookout Mountain Preserve in north Phoenix at about 10am on Saturday, the local fire department said in a statement.

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If wage garnishment is shrinking your paycheck, taking these steps can help you regain control of your finances.

April 6, 2026 — An integral part of the SC Conference, workshops provide a forum for in-depth technical exchanges, enhanced by focused presentations, rigorous discussion, and opportunities for interactive engagement. Importantly, workshops support the dissemination of emerging high-performance computing research with live exploration of specialized topics to a diverse, expert HPC community.

Credit: SC

Workshops at SC are organized in two primary formats: mini-conferences, which include peer-reviewed submissions and formal proceedings, and symposia that feature invited talks or panels without published proceedings.

Workshop websites and submission systems will be available in the coming weeks. Submission deadlines are determined independently by workshop organizers and as such will vary. Visit this page for key links as they are published (expected between late April and early May).

Workshops Accepting Paper Submissions for Publishing in the SC Workshop Proceedings

• 10th International Workshop on Software Correctness for HPC Applications (Correctness ’26)
• 13th Annual International Workshop on Innovating the Network for Data Intensive Science – INDIS
• 15th International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers (ROSS 2026)
• 17th Workshop on Latest Advances in Scalable Algorithms for Large-Scale Heterogeneous Systems (ScalAH’26)
• 2026 International Workshop on Performance, Portability, and Productivity in HPC
• 21st Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science (WORKS26)
• 4th Annual Trillion Parameter Workshop: Building Open AI Infrastructure, Models, and Agentic Systems for Science
• 5th International Workshop on Cyber Security in High Performance Computing
• 6th International Workshop on RESource DISaggregation in High Performance Computing (RESDIS)
• 8th International Workshop on Containers and New Orchestration Paradigms for Isolated Environments in HPC (CANOPIE-HPC)
• 8th Workshop on Programming and Performance Visualization Tools (ProTools)
• AgenticAI4HPC’26: The First International Workshop on Agentic AI for HPC
• AI on HPC: Performance Engineering, Challenges and Opportunities
• AI4S: 8th Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Scientific Applications
• EduHPC-26: Workshop on Education for High Performance Computing
• EESP 2026: 3rd International Workshop on “Energy Efficiency with Sustainable Performance: Techniques, Tools, and Best Practices”
• Eighth Workshop on Interactive and Urgent High-Performance Computing
• ExaMPI26: Workshop on Extreme Scale MPI
• Fourth International Workshop on HPC Testing and Evaluation of Systems, Tools, and Software (HPCTESTS 2026)
• FTXS: Workshop for Faults, Trustworthiness, and eXplainability for AI Systems at Scale
• High-Accuracy Computing on Low-Precision Hardware
• High-Performance Computing for Environmental and Earth Sciences (HPC4EES)
• HUST-26: 13th International Workshop on HPC User Support Tools
• IA^3 2026 – 16th Workshop on Irregular Applications: Architectures and Algorithms
• International Workshop on RISC-V for HPC (RISCVHPC)
• ISAV26: In Situ AI, Analysis and Visualization
• LLVM-HPC2026: The Twelfth Workshop on the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure in HPC
• PDSW’26: The 11th International Parallel Data Systems Workshop
• PMBS26: The 17th International Workshop on Performance Modeling, Benchmarking, and Simulation of High-Performance Computer Systems
• Scale to See: Scalable AI for Scientific Imaging and Spatiotemporal Data
• Sustainable Supercomputing
• The 12th Computational Approaches for Cancer Workshop (CAFCW26)
• The 1st International Workshop on Edge-Cloud-HPC Operational Continuum (ECHO)
• The 2nd International Workshop for Software Frameworks and Workload Management on Quantum-HPC Ecosystems
• The 9th Annual Parallel Applications Workshop, Alternatives To MPI+X (PAW-ATM)
• Thirteenth Workshop on Accelerator Programming and Directives (WACCPD 2026)
• Twelfth International Workshop on Heterogeneous High-performance Reconfigurable Computing (H2RC 2026)
• Workshop on High Performance Fabrics for AI and HPC
• Workshop on Operational Data Analytics in HPC (HPC-ODA)
• XLOOP 2026: The 8th Annual Workshop on Extreme-Scale Experiment-in-the-Loop Computing

Workshops Accepting Paper Submissions for Publishing in Non-SC Proceedings

• HPC Systems Professionals Workshop (HPCSYSPROS26)
• Thirteenth SC Workshop on Best Practices for HPC Training and Education
• WHPC: Building Community, Building Careers

Symposium-Style Workshops Consisting of Talks and Panel Discussions

• 2nd Annual Workshop on Large-Scale Quantum-Classical Computing
• 7th Workshop on Heterogeneity and Memory Systems (HMEM)
• High Performance Python for Science at Scale
• Research Software Engineers in HPC (RSE-HPC-2026)
• RISE 2026: 1st International Workshop on “Rising Innovators in Sustainable Exacomputing”
• Sixth International Symposium on Quantitative Co-design of Supercomputers
• Sovereign AI Supercomputing Cloud Workshop

Workshops are scheduled on Sunday, November 15; Monday, November 16; and Friday, November 20, 2026. Workshops are either half- or full-day events. Note that on Friday, November 20, only half-day workshops are scheduled.

Learn more about SC26 workshops here.

Source: Kevin Brown, SC26

The post SC26 Welcomes 50 Workshops to Chicago appeared first on HPCwire.

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Increased recognition of crime and perpetrators using technology to track victims are behind rise, say experts

The number of stalking offences recorded by police has soared over the past decade, with experts saying the rise has been driven by increased recognition, and technology making it easier for perpetrators to track their victims.

House of Commons library data analysed by the Liberal Democrats found more than 135,000 offences were recorded last year, up from just under 3,000 10 years ago.

With some misgivings, families and aviation enthusiasts bring stepladders and picnics to the perimeter fence

It was a 4.40am start for the Wilkinson family. They packed their car with gear you might take on a trip to the seaside – folding chairs, blankets, a picnic. But instead of heading to the coast, they drove 80 miles from their home in Hampshire to Gloucestershire and set up camp close to the perimeter fence of RAF Fairford to watch American warplanes take off and land.

“It’s definitely cheaper than a trip to a theme park,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, who was there with wife, Katie, and three sons, aged seven to 12. “The sights and sounds are impressive. But it’s a bittersweet thing. These planes are only here because of war. We have to keep that in mind.”

Halter, a New Zealand agtech startup now valued at $2 billion, has raised $220 million to expand its AI-powered cattle management system. "Halter is now valued at $2 billion following the Series E, which was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund with participation from Blackbird, DCVC, Bond, Bessemer, and several others," reports Inc. From the report: Halter plans to use the funding to expand its existing footprint in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to grow into new markets such as Ireland, the U.K., and parts of North and South America. The round is one of the biggest to-date in the industry, and comes amid growing adoption of the technology among U.S. ranchers. According to Halter, U.S. ranchers have erected some 60,000 miles of virtual fencing since the company's launch in 2024. Halter's technology works through a system of solar-powered collars and in-pasture towers that collect data -- some 6,000 data points per collar per minute -- from grazing cattle and feed it into a cloud-based platform and app for farmers. The collars are ergonomically designed to be comfortable for the cattle wearing them, and leverage AI to play audio cues or vibrate when it is time to move to a different grazing location or if they step outside of a predetermined zone. The collars can also deliver an electric pulse if an animal does not respond. Halter's app also creates a digital twin of a ranch, which essentially means a digital replica that leverages real-time data to accurately reflect conditions. Farmers can consult the app to check on their herd, or fence, and move cattle with just a few clicks. Halter also has a proprietary algorithm that it calls a "Cowgorithm" trained on seven billion hours of animal behavior. Altogether, this technology is meant to make ranchers' lives easier when herding cattle, help them save money on building physical fencing, and provide insights about pasture management to improve soil health and pasture productivity. Halter says some 2,000 farmers and ranchers currently use its tech worldwide.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iranian authorities cut access to internet on 28 February leaving many with limited information about war

Iran’s internet shutdown, which began shortly after the first US-Israel strikes in late February, is now the longest national-scale blackout since the Arab spring, monitors have said.

Iranian authorities cut all access to the internet on 28 February, the day the war began, after an earlier shutdown in January during nationwide protests. This current blackout has lasted more than 38 days.

Nasa’s Orion capsule will be just over 4,000 miles above lunar surface, allowing astronauts to see both poles

The four astronauts on Nasa’s Artemis II mission are poised to begin the first flyby of the far side of the moon in more than half a century, bringing them to the furthest point from Earth ever reached by humans.

The crew of three Americans and one Canadian earlier entered the moon’s “sphere of influence”, where its gravity has a stronger pull on the spacecraft than Earth’s.

Minister adds to growing calls from charities and politicians as some urge government to bar rapper from UK over antisemitism

The education secretary has said Kanye West should be barred from performing at Wireless festival because of his “completely unacceptable and absolutely disgusting” antisemitic remarks.

Bridget Phillipson said she could not comment on whether ministers should heed calls to ban West from entering the country, but added that there was “no place for that kind of hatred, bigotry or antisemitism”.

The U.S. sent over 150 aircraft to beat Iranian forces in the race to find the missing F-15E weapons systems officer.

JP Morgan boss warns of risks of higher inflation and interest rates due to Iran war in annual letter to shareholders

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The head of the US’s largest bank has pressed the White House to strengthen Washington’s allies economically in order to “avoid truly adverse consequences”, in the latest intervention in an increasingly testy relationship with the Trump administration.

As the Middle East conflict sparked by US and Israeli attacks on Iran enters its sixth week, Jamie Dimon, the chair and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said in his annual letter to shareholders that good US foreign policy should put America first “though not alone”.

Lenders are watching home prices and household debt closely. Here's how HELOC requirements could change this year.

US supreme court files brief order vacating lower court ruling that had upheld rightwing media host’s conviction

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Steve Bannon, the rightwing media host and ally of Donald Trump, appears likely to have his criminal conviction dismissed.

The US supreme court filed a brief order on Monday that vacated a lower court ruling that had upheld Bannon’s conviction and sent the case back to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit for “further consideration in light of the pending motion to dismiss the indictment”. The Trump administration had moved to dismiss Bannon’s conviction.

Exclusive: Seven of England’s 24 stroke centres still not providing mechanical thrombectomy 24/7 despite ministers’ pledges

The NHS has not made a “life-changing” treatment for stroke available around the clock across England despite ministers repeatedly promising that it would.

The health service was expected to improve stroke care by making a clot removal technique called mechanical thrombectomy available everywhere in the country 24/7 from 1 April.

The cycle of mythic, rare Paradigm cards lets you repeat the spell for free on each of your turns.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI skeptics aren't the only ones warning users not to unthinkingly trust models' outputs -- that's what the AI companies say themselves in their terms of service. Take Microsoft, which is currently focused on getting corporate customers to pay for Copilot. But it's also been getting dinged on social media over Copilot's terms of use, which appear to have been last updated on October 24, 2025. "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only," the company warned. "It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don't rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk." Microsoft described the terms of service as "legacy language," saying it will be updated. Tom's Hardware notes that similar AI warnings remain common across the industry, with companies like OpenAI and xAI also cautioning users not to treat chatbot output as "the truth" or as "a sole service of truth or factual information."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Conservationists say move could push species closer to extinction and clearer environmental rules are needed instead

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Conservationists and scientists have warned a mining lobby proposal to use artificial intelligence to speed up national environmental approvals could generate “robodebt-style” failures, putting threatened species at further risk.

The Minerals Council of Australia has asked the government to spend $13m to trial the use of AI to help companies prepare applications and help the federal government make decisions.

Exclusive: Investigation finds alleged Prince Group associates were involved in unusual development in tiny nation on Australia’s doorstep, raising concerns about global spread of online fraud industry

Guests were enticed with the promise of luxury villas overlooking aquamarine seas; a world-first crypto resort where the tech elite could commune over the latest digital innovation in opulent surrounds.

The promotional material from June last year pitched a sprawling, futuristic development that would hug the coastline of Timor-Leste, one of the world’s poorest countries, and donate a percentage of profits to philanthropy.

Girl suffered alleged abuse at foster home immigration officials placed her at after separating her from mother

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For five months, the young father waited for his three-year-old daughter’s release from federal custody after she crossed the US-Mexico border with her mother, hoping through delays for their safe reunion.

Only when he turned to the courts as a last resort did he learn that the girl had suffered alleged sexual abuse at the foster home where she had been placed after immigration officials separated her from her mother.

It may be the year of the AI agent but Claude's "all-you-can-eat buffet" is over.

Roberto Mazzarella, head of the Mazzarella clan of the Camorra, the Naples-based organized crime group, was one of Italy's most dangerous fugitives, authorities said.

Gold could be a good investment right now, but what should you expect if you invest $25,000 in gold today?

South-east England could reach 24C as settled weather replaces rain and 70mph winds which battered the north

Parts of the UK are forecast to experience the warmest temperatures of the year so far in the wake of Storm Dave, which caused widespread damage and disruption over the Easter weekend.

London and south-east England could reach temperatures of 21C or 22C on Tuesday, rising to 24C on Wednesday, while Manchester could hit 20C, forecasters said, as a short period of settled weather replaced the rain and 70mph winds that battered parts of northern England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Move to back the Republican candidate could dash party’s hopes of locking Democrats out of the November runoff

Donald Trump has endorsed the Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton in the California governor’s race, a move that could dash Republican hopes of locking Democrats out of the November runoff.

Trump announced his backing on Monday on Truth Social, writing that Hilton “has my COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT” and pledging federal support for his candidacy. “Steve can turn it around, before it is too late, and, as President, I will help him to do so,” he wrote.

The freezer is either your groceries' best chance or their final destination. Here's how to tell the difference.

From September, trans girls, and young trans women who volunteer, will have to hand in their UK memberships

Angela has two daughters, aged 13 and 10, who both attend their local Girlguiding group in the UK. Like many girls their age, they enthusiastically collect their badges, make new friends and attend the organisation’s large summer jamboree every year.

But as of September, Angela’s youngest daughter will have to leave Girlguiding because she is transgender.

Some candidates are making public health a central part of their midterm campaigns amid Trump’s war on science

As public health has become increasingly politicized in the US, with a particularly chaotic year under the Trump administration, some political candidates are pushing back by making public health a central part of their campaigns – and the grassroots organization Defend Public Health has ideas about how to do it.

On Monday, the group launched guiding principles for campaigns to prioritize public health, called the People’s Health Platform, highlighting the importance of ensuring healthcare for all, protecting and expanding sexual, reproductive, and gender-affirming healthcare, preparing for the climate crisis and the next pandemic, and taxing billionaires, among other tenets.

Fake image of crew member surrounded by smiling military members has been reshared more than 21,000 times on X

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Republican politicians were hoaxed over the weekend by an image purporting to be a downed US warplane crew member rescued by military special forces in Iran on Saturday, igniting a call for a national “crash course in media literacy”.

Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and a US Senate candidate, and Mike Lawler, a New York representative, were all caught out for “liking” a fake picture of the airman, who has not been publicly identified.

The Supreme Court issued an order that paves the way for Steve Bannon to have his contempt of Congress conviction dismissed.

US congressman decried bets on when two crew members on the F-15 jet shot down by Iranian forces would be rescued

After strong criticism from a federal lawmaker, the online betting platform Polymarket stopped accepting wagers on when US warplane crew members who were shot down in Iran might be rescued. It promised to investigate how the market materialized.

The criticism came from Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democratic representative who earned two bronze star medals serving with the United States Marine Corps in Iraq from 2003 to 2008 and published an X post describing Polymarket’s acceptance of bets on the downed pilots’ fate as “DISGUSTING”.

• Gnomes have become collectors’ items since 2016 debut

• 2026 edition retailing at $49.50 inside Augusta National

Everyone says goodbye to the Masters eventually. Sandy Lyle, Ben Crenshaw, Ian Woosnam and Bernhard Langer used recent years to wave goodbye. Will 2026 be the end for a renowned Augusta National element of more recent times … the Masters gnome?

Speculation is rising that this Masters will be the final time gnomes will be on sale inside Augusta’s merchandise outlets. On face value, this hardly feels dramatic. The quirk, though, is that the household essential for any golf lover has become a victim of its own success. Augusta National has offered no comment when approached on the gnome’s future but the race feels on to collect the final batches of stock before the 14-inch ceramic doll is consigned to Masters history.

Tougher ethical certification process requires companies to meet standards in every one out of seven categories

Dozens of companies may be at risk of losing their coveted B Corp ethical status after the organisation behind the corporate kite-marking system raised the standards required to qualify.

B Lab, which oversees B Corp certification, launched the biggest overhaul in its 19-year history earlier this month, scrapping a system under which companies must gather enough points across multiple categories to qualify.

The initiative, supported by the Simons Foundation, will accelerate breakthroughs at the intersection of artificial intelligence and astrophysics

April 6, 2026 — Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how scientists explore the universe — turning massive amounts of data into discoveries that were once out of reach. At Carnegie Mellon University, a new initiative will bring together experts in AI, statistics and astrophysics to accelerate that shift.

Barnabás Póczos and Tiziana Di Matteo. Credit: CMU.

Supported by the Simons Foundation, the Keystone Astronomy & AI (KAAI) Visiting Fellows Program will accelerate the use of AI in cosmological and astronomical research through an international, mentored postdoctoral initiative.

KAAI Fellows will participate in a monthlong residency at the McWilliams Center for Cosmology & Astrophysics, where each visiting fellow is paired with two mentors — one in astrophysics and one in AI or statistics — to tackle high-impact problems at the intersection of astronomy and machine learning. Each residency culminates in a hands-on workshop that shares software, datasets and workflows with the broader community. The program aims to cultivate a globally connected cohort of researchers fluent in both astrophysics and modern machine learning while accelerating discovery in this data-rich scientific landscape.

The initiative also provides meaningful opportunities for Carnegie Mellon graduate students, who collaborate with visiting fellows, contribute to shared tools and workflows, and gain direct experience while applying AI to frontier problems in astrophysics.

“AI is changing how we do science, and astronomy is where its impact will be felt first and fastest” said Tiziana Di Matteo, director of the McWilliams Center and the primary investigator on this program. “With KAAI Fellows, we’re turning the McWilliams Center’s cross-disciplinary strength into a global training engine — bringing visiting scholars together with our machine-learning and astrophysics teams to develop methods that move the field and the way science is done.”

The McWilliams Center fosters collaboration within Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Physics, the School of Computer Science, the Department of Statistics & Data Science (SDS) and the Software Engineering Institute and among partner institutions including the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh.

A key to the program’s strength is the deep cross-disciplinary collaboration among researchers at the McWilliams Center, the Department of Machine Learning and the SDS and the STAtistical Methods for the Physical Sciences Research Center (STAMPS), whose combined expertise forms the backbone of KAAI’s interdisciplinary model.

McWilliams researchers are developing the data science tools needed to process this immense stream of information into scientific breakthroughs that advance astrophysics and enable new technologies in fields like AI, imaging and data infrastructure on Earth.

The KAAI Fellows program will support six visiting fellows for a month each over the next three years. Applications will be open later this spring.

Visiting fellows will be selected for projects that integrate AI with theoretical and computational astrophysics, particularly in areas such as large-scale simulations, computational modeling and data-intensive analysis. By pairing each fellow with dual Carnegie Mellon mentors, the program fosters deep cross-disciplinary collaboration between domain scientists and AI experts.

Barnabás Póczos, associate professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Machine Learning, will serve as the program’s AI and machine learning director. A member of the McWilliams Center, Póczos collaborates with other faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students on shared code, data and computational tools.

“It is exciting to see how the newly developed machine-learning methods are transforming the way we approach science,” Póczos said. “In astrophysics particularly, these tools are reshaping how we explore vast and complex datasets, enabling us to extract subtle signals, identify rare and interesting events, accelerate scientific simulations and test physical theories at unprecedented scale. By augmenting human intuition with data-driven discovery, machine learning has the potential to dramatically accelerate our understanding of the universe and uncover phenomena that would otherwise remain hidden.”

Carnegie Mellon’s Machine Learning Department shares a long history of close collaboration with the McWilliams Center for Cosmology, combining expertise in machine learning, statistical inference and large-scale computation with deep domain knowledge in astrophysics. These sustained partnerships created impactful, collaborative research at the intersection of machine learning and cosmology, and continue to play a central role in advancing data-driven discovery in the physical sciences.

Fellows will leave the program with demonstrated experience applying trustworthy AI to frontier astrophysics and with durable connections that extend beyond astronomy.

A core component of the fellowship is knowledge dissemination. At the end of each visit, each KAAI Fellow will co-organize a weeklong, hands-on workshop showcasing cutting-edge AI methods for astronomy. These workshops will help accelerate the adoption of new tools across the international research community, ensuring the advanced approaches spread well beyond individual projects or institutions. Designed for maximum impact, they also will cultivate a global network of researchers skilled in applying state-of-the-art techniques to fundamental questions about the universe.

“We’re working to develop a global community of international experts in subfields related to AI and astronomy,” Di Matteo said. “Supported by Simons, the workshops will bring together experts from machine learning and astronomy to drive the field forward.”

Source: Heidi Opdyke, Carnegie Mellon University

The post Carnegie Mellon Launches New Effort to Advance AI-Driven Astronomy appeared first on HPCwire.

‘Here we go, ready or not, let’s do the news,’ Guthrie said, two months after the disappearance of her mother, Nancy

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Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie made an emotional return to the NBC morning show on Monday, 64 days after her mother, Nancy, was believed to be abducted from her home in Tucson, Arizona.

“Welcome to Today on this Monday morning. We are so glad you started your week with us, and it’s good to be home,” Guthrie told viewers.

Leaders say automated mowers’ blades threaten nocturnal animals as studies highlight risks to wildlife

German mayors have called for a nationwide ban on night-time use of robot lawnmowers to protect hedgehogs and other small nocturnal animals from being killed or maimed in the dark.

Recent studies have highlighted the threat lawnmower blades pose to wildlife active between dusk and dawn, prompting growing calls for regulation. Hedgehogs also tend to curl into a ball when threatened rather than running away, making them harder for a robot mower’s sensors to detect.

After testing the stovetop, oven and air fryer, I discovered that one technique produces much crispier results -- with half the mess.

The Polar partnership and $150 price tag had me sold. Then I actually lived with it.

The president has boasted about cutting prices of drugs, housing, food and gasoline. It’s grossly exaggerated nonsense

In recent months, Donald Trump has made some absurd comments about inflation, saying the affordability crisis is “a hoax” and “I won affordability,” a clumsy, questionable claim meaning that he somehow conquered inflation. Trump recognizes that affordability is a huge issue, and with his war against Iran proving to be a big political loser, he seems eager to score some political points by telling Americans that he’s moving boldly to cut living costs. But as with everything Trump says, people shouldn’t be tricked by his slick salesmanship.

Trump has boasted about cutting prescription drug prices, housing prices, food prices and gasoline prices. All that might be great public relations for Trump, but it’s grossly exaggerated nonsense. Trump’s much-ballyhooed efforts to fight inflation are essentially diddlysquat. Many of them are mini efforts that have had mini effects in reducing prices. They’re as meaningful as a degree from Trump University.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence delves into guilt, grief and anger over a phenomenon largely thought of as distinctly American

Gun violence, particularly the high-profile incidents that take place on school campuses, are often seen as a uniquely American phenomenon, one that exemplifies the nation’s deep history and complicated relationship with guns.

But an opera set around a mass shooting at a Finnish international school 10 years ago approaches this topic through a global lens. Innocence, which opens at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Monday, is performed in nine different languages including English, Swedish and Spanish, and delves into themes like guilt, grief, anger and how time doesn’t always heal the damage done by violence.

Tennessee leads way but experts say offender registry could provide a false sense of security – and identify victims

When Amanda Martin started dating Christopher Cendroski, whose family described him as “big-hearted”, she had no idea he had been arrested for domestic assault. Had she known, she said she never would have become involved with him.

A few months into their relationship, which began in 2011, Cendroski started beating Martin, and in May 2012, he nearly choked her to death, she said. Police arrested Cendroski and helped both Martin and her children get to a shelter.

Antivirus software is only one part of protecting our phones and laptops. You'll need a combination of tools to improve your online security and privacy.

Not everyone needs a big unlimited data plan that locks you into a long-term contract. We pick our favorite prepaid plans.

Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old whose detention by ICE sparked global outrage, constantly worries about being detained again, his parents told CBS News in an exclusive interview.

"It's finally time," writes Phoronix — since "no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support." "A patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel." More details from XDA-Developers: Authored by Ingo Molnar, the change, titled "x86/cpu: Remove M486/M486SX/ELAN support," begins dismantling Linux's built-in support for the i486, which was first released back in 1989. As the changelog notes, even Linus is keen to cut ties with the architecture: "In the x86 architecture we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things. As Linus recently remarked: 'I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind. There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort on this kind of issue'..." If you're one of the rare few who still keep the decades-old CPU alive, your best bet will be to grab an LTS Linux distro that keeps the older version of Linux for a few more years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anutin Charnvirakul encourages measures such as home working and carpooling as country is reliant on oil imports

Thailand’s prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, has called on the public to conserve energy, urging work-from-home measures and carpooling, as he warned of the impact of the conflict in the Middle East.

In a statement posted on social media, Anutin said Thailand was exposed to the crisis because of its reliance on imported oil and gas, and the country could not be complacent.

Royer Perez Jimenez was a "hard worker" who immigrated at 15 to "triumph and help his family," his uncle said.

Switching to the latest AT&T Unlimited 2.0 tiers could lower your monthly bill as older plans face price hikes.

Paramount Skydance CEO has repeatedly cited the statistic when laying out the approach that CBS News and potentially CNN would take

During an early March appearance on CNBC, the Paramount Skydance chief executive, David Ellison, cited a statistic he has come to rely on when laying out his editorial approach for CBS News and, potentially, the cable network he has made a deal to own, CNN. The young media mogul said the networks will prioritize reaching “the 70% of Americans and really around the world that identify as center-left, as center-right”.

The idea of an unaddressed center ground is a powerful talking point. In a world of increasingly partisan politics, Ellison’s promise to address the unheard, silent majority packs a punch – and fits nicely with the approach of one of his most high-profile lieutenants, the heterodox commentator Bari Weiss.

In the era of VAR where most goals get picked apart, strikes from distance offered a much-needed immediate emotional hit

In an era where the sport’s biggest moments are scrutinized in slow-motion to find an inch of infraction, the long-range goal has become a necessary thrill. VAR only comes into play if a loitering teammate is caught between the shooter and goalkeeper. They also hatch a comfortingly familiar point of debate: was there anything that could’ve been done to save it?

We can safely count Zavier Gozo’s wonder goal this weekend among the unsaveable. The Real Salt Lake homegrown has been one of the best players in Major League Soccer’s early weeks, a 19-year-old danger down the right flank who can slot in as a winger or wing back with similar impact. He’s quickly become one of the most proven progressive dribblers in the entire US player pool, and has shot up the scouting priority queues of several major European clubs.

Impact of rulings by these judges has been sizable, slowing or halting some of the president’s most extreme policies

District court judges nationwide have been increasingly issuing strong rulings challenging the legality of many of Donald Trump’s policies and executive power grabs, blocking key ones at least temporarily, and sparking angry responses from the president, former judges and prosecutors say.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, lower court federal judges have written sharply critical opinions about his legally dubious policies on immigration, tariffs, Department of Justice (DoJ) prosecutions of political foes and more.

Some cities are cutting ties with firm that provides license plate reader cameras, others are signing new contracts and many are still looking for their footing

In recent city council meetings in Dunwoody, Georgia, a spokesman for Flock Safety, a Georgia-based firm that provides automated license plate readers, has found himself in the hot seat again.

For two months running, some residents of the affluent north Atlanta suburb in the region’s tech corridor have been demanding an end to the city’s contract with the security firm, which has drawn similar protest from California to New York.

New legislation comes amid push from big oil, as critics warn polluters’ profits prioritized over Americans’ health

Utah has made it nearly impossible for residents to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for climate damages in a move one advocacy group described as putting “profits for the biggest polluters over communities”, with other states expected to follow suit.

The new state legislation comes as part of a push from big oil and its political allies – including groups tied to rightwing impresario Leonard Leo – for legal immunity in red statehouses and Congress, with a goal of winning state and federal legal immunity similar to the liability waiver granted to the firearms industry in 2005.

I used the Oura Ring and a popular baby monitor to collect our scores over the course of two weeks.

As Americans struggle with rising prices, Lockheed Martin, Shell and other companies are experiencing gains

Two weeks into the US-Israel war with Iran, the White House was fielding heavy criticism that the conflict would drive up gas prices and frustrate voters. Donald Trump turned to Truth Social to appease Americans about gas prices, which were slowly climbing toward $4 a gallon.

“The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he wrote.

Chuck Schumer accuses president of ‘ranting like an unhinged madman’ in threat to obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges. Plus, Audrey Hepburn’s son Sean on her movies, marriages, good works and fascist parents

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Good morning.

Donald Trump has faced sharp criticism after threatening to wipe out Iran’s power plants and bridges in an expletive-riddled social media post yesterday.

How has Iran reacted? Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”.

This is a developing story. Follow the liveblog here.

What will they see? During the flyby, which will last about six hours, the crew will have to observe the celestial body with their naked eyes, along with cameras they have onboard. The journey promises views of the moon’s far side that were too dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded them.

Senior US officials consider the PM’s pitch to have been overblown, creating potentially far-reaching consequences for Israel

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on 29 December last year, the Israeli prime minister came with an appeal – and a not so subtle inducement.

After months of restocking air defence and other missiles after June’s 12-day conflict in which the US joined in to bomb Tehran’s nuclear facilities, Israel was ready to go again, this time with more substantial objectives.

Three orcas that had not previously been recorded in the Seattle area have delighted whale watchers with several visits.

Residents of Khasab, a sleepy exclave that depends on fishing and tourism, are frustrated by the war in Iran and fearful of what’s next.

Companies using heating oil have already begun rationing their fuel use, says Federation of Small Businesses

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Thousands of independent businesses across the UK are braced for their energy bills to more than double owing to the sharp rise in heating oil costs as the war in Iran pushed Europe’s fuel market prices to fresh record highs.

About 7% of all small and medium-sized companies warm their properties and provide hot water using heating oil, which in some cases has more than doubled in recent weeks.

Louisiana v Callais could be the latest brick in a wall under construction for more than a decade, as Jim Crow is rebuilt in modern form

There are moments in American history when the stakes are unmistakable. This is one of them.

The forthcoming decision in Louisiana v Callais will not just be another supreme court ruling in a long line of voting cases. This time the issue is whether the Voting Rights Act (VRA) can still require states to draw electoral maps that give Black voters a meaningful chance to elect representatives.

Heated discourse over Israel and influencer Hasan Piker has created cracks between progressive and establishment Democratic candidates in key swing state

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A heated debate over criticism of Israel and the political influencer Hasan Piker’s role on the left has bitterly divided progressive and establishment Democrats in a US Senate race in Michigan, an electorally critical swing state. The ongoing controversy likely marks a preview of things to come as the midterm and 2028 election seasons ramp up, and it is drawing warnings from Arab American leaders in a state where the party’s Israel policy badly damaged Kamala Harris’s campaign.

Mallory McMorrow, a state senator favored by much of the establishment, is locked in a tight three-way race with the progressive Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens, the US representative who is backed by Aipac. El-Sayed and Piker last week announced plans to rally together. In response, McMorrow, the Anti-Defamation League, the Trump administration, Third Way, Senator Elissa Slotkin and other pro-Israel figures went on the offensive, labeling Piker as antisemitic and seeking to tar El-Sayed over his association with him.

Surely your iPhone means it in a loving way, right?

Prime Video's science fiction options are out of this world.

A dearth of information has been disclosed about the agreements, fueling speculation that the “America First” approach to foreign aid is exploitative.

Military academies and colleges in North Carolina and Indiana will soon accept the Classic Learning Test, embraced by the Trump administration and mainly featuring Western texts.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Wilmington’s city charter requires at least one of the City’s Council four at-large seats to be held by someone from a minority party. In the liberal city, the rule ensures that one member of the City Council will not be a Democrat. After the council’s lone Republican became a Democrat last fall, questions of whether the policy goal has been undone has propelled a debate in recent weeks — one that could have broader political implications.

Months after the sole Republican on the Wilmington City Council abruptly became a Democrat, the issue of party switches on the council is headed to the Delaware legislature.  

On Thursday, the Wilmington City Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution asking the legislature to bar future minority-party members from switching their political affiliation during the middle of a term. 

A day after the vote, Delaware Rep. Josue Ortega (D-Wilmington) said he would sponsor state legislation to allow the city to write the rule change into its founding charter. 

While the proposed change was sparked by Councilman James Spadola’s change of parties last October, it would not impact him because it would not be retroactive. 

Still, his party switch was front and center in a City Council debate Thursday that featured claims he had exploited a loophole in the law when changing political parties. 

“You caused all of this unnecessary noise,” Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver said to Spadola during the meeting. 

Wilmington’s charter prohibits the majority party from nominating more than three candidates for the city’s four at-large council seats. The rule guarantees that at least one at-large council member from a minority political party.

The charter does not explicitly say that council members cannot change their party affiliation while in office. 

For his part, Spadola – who was first elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2024 – said his colleagues were misinterpreting the law. 

He also lashed out at City Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo, who had previously said in a letter that Spadola could be removed from his elected council seat if he didn’t switch back to Republican. 

Spadola characterized the letter as Congo acting like a king. 

“I say firmly, no kings in [Washington] D.C, but no kings in Wilmington either,” Spadola said, referencing recent protests against President Donald Trump.

Also during Thursday’s meeting, multiple residents spoke during public comment in support of Spadola, and in opposition to the resolution prohibiting mid-term party changes.

One also questioned why Democrats on the council would be upset with another member joining their party. 

“​​Focusing on one person’s political affiliation, especially when they decided to align themselves with good people, is not where I expect my elected officials to spend their time or energy,” one resident, Dwayne Randolph, said.

On Friday, Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver told Spotlight Delaware she believes Spadola switched parties to position himself for a run for a higher political office. 

She similarly claimed that Congo has plans to run for higher office – in his case for mayor, she said. 

When reached for comment about whether he will run for mayor, Congo chuckled, then said, “Oh my goodness. You’re killing me.”

He ultimately did not address the question, but did state that he believes Spadola’s decision to switch parties was “politically motivated.”

Spotlight Delaware also asked Spadola about the claims that his party switch was political. In response, he suggested his colleagues were trying to pick apart his actions, claiming the party switch actually removed any “safe path” to re-election in 2028. 

“We’re two and a half years away. It’s a crazy conversation to have,” Spadola said. 

When asked in October about future political campaigns in an interview with Delaware Public Media, Spadola said “anything I would do in 2028 would be city-focused.”

What do legislators say?

The City Council’s resolution about party switches has already gained some traction in Dover.

Ortega told Spotlight Delaware that he is reviewing the resolution and plans to send it to his policy team for them to begin drafting a bill. He said he hopes to introduce a bill in May. 

He said it is not fair to voters for council members to change their party affiliation midway through a term. 

“If you’re in there as a party, you finish it as that party, and then you can change if you want to after you finish your term,” Ortega said. 

Other Wilmington legislators were not as immediately supportive. 

Rep. Stephanie Bolden (D-Wilmington), said “no comment” when asked whether she would support Ortega’s upcoming bill. She also stated that council members need to figure out a solution on their own. 

State Sen. Dan Cruce (D-Wilmington) told Spotlight Delaware he has not yet decided whether he will support the bill. But he questioned whether the city should even reserve council seats for a member of a minority party, saying his focus in any upcoming debate will be on whether that limits voters’ voices.

“Do we believe that folks, in this case, in the City of Wilmington, does their vote matter?” Cruce asked. “And if it does, then we shouldn’t have a restriction like that in the first place?”

State Sens. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman (D-Wilmington) and Darius Brown (D-Wilmington) did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Will the dispute go to court?

After switching his party registration from Republican to Democrat in October, Spadola told Spotlight Delaware he had considered making the move for the previous five years. 

He said he finally did so because of his disagreement with several policies associated with President Donald Trump, including tariffs, ICE enforcement, and federal troop deployments into U.S. cities. 

Last fall, the city council’s chief of staff Elijah Simmons said Spadola would be able to finish his term, which ends in 2028. He said the city’s charter contained “no written prohibitions against party affiliation changes while in office.” 

After his party switch, the City Council was relatively quiet about the matter. 

But last month, Congo told Spotlight Delaware that conversations with other council members, city residents, and various attorneys led him to send his letter in February telling Spadola that he had to change his party affiliation back to Republican. 

In response to Congo’s letter, Spadola took to social media to say that council members were trying to remove him from his city office so that they could replace him with an “unelected, handpicked successor.” 

Spadola also hired William Larson, an attorney with the firm MG+M. In a subsequent letter to Congo, Larson asserted that the city’s charter does not prohibit Spadola from changing party affiliation.

“We reserve all rights to seek declaratory judgment, an injunction, and additional relief in the Court of Chancery should you take any further action to vacate Councilmember Spadola’s seat,” Larson said in the Feb. 12 letter. 

On Friday, Congo told Spotlight Delaware that Council still plans to take further steps to clarify whether Spadola’s party change violated Wilmington’s charter, by taking the matter to Delaware’s Chancery Court. 

The post Wilmington clash over Spadola’s party switch heads to Dover appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
The Court of Chancery is a key part of Delaware’s corporate franchise, which provides the state with more than a third of its general fund revenues. The money has been threatened in recent years because of Elon Musk’s calls for business leaders to follow his lead and move their companies out of Delaware, claiming the state is unfair. A new chapter in the fight could add new fuel to those calls.

With claims of bias looming over her, the chief judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery on Thursday used a bag of Scrabble tiles to select new judges to preside over cases involving Elon Musk — the world’s richest man. 

While the analog method was unusual for the powerful business court, it did leave little doubt that the ultimate selections of Vice Chancellors Nathan Cook and Bonnie David would be insulated from future claims of tampering or bias.

It also followed a decision from the Delaware court last year to begin choosing judges for cases in a random manner.  

The selection occurred during a tense, late-afternoon hearing on Thursday after Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick had summoned the army of attorneys representing Musk and others to her Wilmington courtroom.

There, McCormick revealed her method of arbitrarily choosing new judges to replace her. 

She pulled out a cloth bag containing six scrabble tiles with the letters C, F, L, Z, W and D. The letters represented the first initials of the last names of the Delaware Court of Chancery’s six other judges. 

McCormick then began to explain her process, in which one attorney would inspect the tiles before two others would draw one tile each. 

As the selection was set to begin, McCormick abruptly looked to Rudolf Koch, an attorney from Wilmington’s Richards, Layton and Finger — a firm representing the electric car maker, Tesla, where Musk serves as CEO.

“Mr. Koch, do you view this as funny?” McCormick asked. 

“No,” Koch replied, softly. 

‘Thanks $2 billion’

The admonition came more than a week after Koch and 10 other attorneys placed their names on a motion calling on McCormick to recuse herself from the Delaware litigation that involved Musk.

It also followed years of claims from Musk himself that Delaware’s courts had treated him unfairly. The sentiment was primarily fueled by McCormick’s past rulings that invalidated billion-dollar pay packages from Tesla to Musk.

In response, Musk in 2024 directed his companies to move their legal homes out of Delaware. He also launched a campaign calling on other business leaders to leave the small state.

For years, Musk’s claims of poor treatment in Delaware had little to substantiate them – beyond unfavorable court decisions. That changed last month when McCormick’s LinkedIn account showed a supportive reaction to a post critical of the billionaire.

After a California jury found Musk liable for more than $2 billion in damages for manipulating Twitter’s stock price in 2022, a consultant who had worked on the lawsuit posted a congratulations to his legal team “for standing up for the little guy against the richest man in the world.”

The post also stated, “Sorry Elon. Sorry Quinn Emmanuel. Thanks $2 billion for your help in this trial.” 

The law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan represented Musk in the California case. 

On March 23, McCormick’s LinkedIn account showed that she “supported” the post – a formal designation made by clicking the “like” button, then scrolling to an image of a hand underneath a heart.

When Musk’s attorneys learned of McCormick’s apparent reaction to the post, they filed motions for her to step down from her Delaware cases. 

In response, McCormick was defiant.

In a letter sent March 24 to the attorneys, the judge stated that she didn’t believe she had clicked on the ‘support’ icon. If she had, she “did so accidentally,” she said. 

McCormick then asserted that she did not believe she had accidentally clicked on the support button — leaving an apparent insinuation that her social media account had been compromised.    

McCormick said she reported “the suspicious activity” to LinkedIn. 

“Today, my account was locked when I attempted to log in to check the status of my suspicious-activity report,” McCormick said in the letter.

Over the following days, several news sites reported on the fallout surrounding McCormick’s social media activity, including that Musk’s attorneys had asked the judge to remove herself from three shareholder lawsuits. 

While still defiant, McCormick ultimately granted the motion to reassign the cases to other judges. Ultimately, they were only after one had been voluntarily dismissed.

In her letter granting the motion, McCormick again stated that she is not biased against Musk, noting that she had “dismissed a suit against Mr. Musk just last year.” 

In the letter, she also directed all attorneys who had placed their names on the motion to appear in court “to witness what they requested.”

The post Delaware judge randomly assigns Elon Musk cases using Scrabble tiles appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.

Spring has sprung in Delaware, and many schools across the state along with the General Assembly are not in session this week. Nevertheless, the gears of Delaware’s government apparatus keep turning. Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.

• State officials to discuss proposed bill to regulate AI company formation
• Newark planning officials to consider smoke shop policy changes
• Kent County Levy Court commissioners to workshop budget proposals

State leaders to review draft AI Company formation rules 

State officials are set to meet on Friday to review draft legislation that would regulate how AI companies are incorporated in Delaware. 

Members of the Delaware Artificial Intelligence Commission’s Subcommittee on the Regulatory Sandbox Agenda will review a draft version of the Artificially Intelligent Company Act, or AIC Act, at noon on Friday. 

The commission, according to its website, is tasked with providing recommendations to lawmakers and other state leaders about “legislative and executive actions” related to AI in Delaware.

The draft legislation outlines policies and procedures that AI companies would follow if they want to incorporate in the state. 

The annual corporate franchise tax these AI companies would be required to pay is not included in the draft legislation. 

It is unclear if and when the full AI Commission will review the draft bill. It also is unclear if any lawmakers plan to introduce the AIC Act this year. 

📍 The Delaware Artificial Intelligence Commission’s subcommittee is scheduled to meet at 12 p.m. Friday at the FinTech Innovation Hub, located at 591 Collaboration Way in Newark. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Newark leaders discuss smoke shop regulations

The Newark Planning Commission is set to meet Tuesday night to review changes to the city’s zoning code that would restrict where new smoke shops could be built in the city.

The proposed changes would require, in most cases, new smoke shops to receive approval from city council in order to be built. 

It would also make all current smoke shops considered a “non-transferrable legal nonconforming use.” That means that if a current smoke shop were to be sold to a new owner, that new owner would need to apply for the special city council approval in order to keep operating.

According to a city report, planning department employees recommend these new regulations to “protect the public health, safety, and welfare.”

📍 The Newark Planning Commission is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday inside Council Chambers at the Newark Municipal Building, located at 220 S. Main St. in Newark. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Delaware’s budget season continues

Budget season continues across the state this week, with members of the Kent County Levy Court scheduled to host workshops on both Tuesday and Wednesday night to discuss proposed budgets for different county departments. 

Tuesday’s workshop will include discussions about the facilitates and community services departments, as well as the county administrator’s office.

Wednesday’s workshop will feature discussions about the sheriff’s office and the register of wills, along with the information technology, human resources and central administration departments.

📍 Kent County Levy Court is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday inside Caucus Room 230 inside the Kent County Levy Court Building, located at 555 Bay Rd. in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

The post Get Involved: AI guidelines, smoke shop regulations, Kent County budgets appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Concerns about coming wildfire risk, and temperatures also remain high on other side of Pacific where rare tropical cyclone has formed

After a historically warm winter across nine states in the US, the first month of meteorological spring again brought exceptionally high temperatures, with numerous states recording new all-time high temperatures in March. The remarkable intensity and longevity of the warmth have left much of the mountain snowpack, a crucial source of water for millions in the American west, at critically low levels.

Though precipitation totals tend to increase in spring, the low snowpack has raised concerns about a potentially severe wildfire season if conditions do not improve soon. And with further spells of abnormally warm, dry weather expected this week, the outlook is becoming increasingly worrying heading into the late spring and summer months.

The Trump administration has shut down the CIA World Factbook, and there's much lamenting about the demise of a free, trusted source many people used to check basic facts about countries.

BFI and National Portrait Gallery to mark centenary of the film star’s birth with ‘the summer of Marilyn’

Though often reduced to a sex symbol frozen in time, or a tragic figure at the centre of several scandals, Marilyn Monroe was something far more subversive, according to two exhibitions that will herald what has been nicknamed “the summer of Marilyn”.

To mark the centenary of her birth, Monroe is being celebrated by leading British cultural institutions as a performer of sharp comic intelligence, a canny architect of her own image, and a woman who reshaped the possibilities for female stardom on screen.

From the key matchups to the bold predictions, our writers assess how Connecticut’s system stacks up against Michigan’s size in Monday night’s championship game

The Huskies must lean on discipline and patience to avoid getting dragged into a high-possession shootout. They have to execute their off-ball actions cleanly, force Michigan to defend across the full shot clock and get efficient production from star center Tarris Reed Jr inside. If they can limit the Wolverines’ second-chance points and drill timely threes, the upset is there for the taking. BAG

JT Batson is hopeful the influx of funds and interest around the home World Cup will have a transformative effect on American soccer

US Soccer chief executive JT Batson has set the men’s and women’s national teams the ambitious target of becoming America’s favorite entities in sports.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Batson added mass popularity for Mauricio Pochettino’s and Emma Hayes’s teams to US Soccer’s goals ahead of this summer’s men’s World Cup, a list that already included making soccer the biggest participation sport in every community in the country.

As a cybersecurity reporter at ProPublica, much of my work over the past two years has focused on how the federal government and its IT contractors, like Microsoft, have navigated major technological transitions. The one now in the news every day is artificial intelligence. 

This emerging technology has its grip on everyone: Home users, corporations and the federal government are all rushing to use it. President Donald Trump and his Cabinet say AI will transform the nation, making us more prosperous, efficient and secure — if only we can adopt it fast enough. 

But this messaging isn’t new. President Barack Obama’s administration used nearly identical language a decade and a half ago as the U.S. barreled into the technological revolution of cloud computing.

I’ve studied how the federal government has handled — and mishandled — this transition over the past two decades, and my reporting offers some cautionary tales and valuable lessons as policymakers encourage the use of AI and federal agencies adopt the technology.

Lesson 1: There’s no such thing as a free lunch 

Then: In the early 2020s, a series of cyberattacks linked to Russia, China and Iran left the federal government reeling. The Biden administration called on major tech companies to help the U.S. bolster its defenses. In response, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pledged to give the government $150 million in technical services to help upgrade its digital security. It also offered a “free” security upgrade for government customers.

Now: Last year, the Trump administration announced a raft of agreements with tech companies that were meant to help federal agencies “purchase enterprise AI tools at government-friendly pricing.” Agencies could use OpenAI’s ChatGPT for $1. Google’s Gemini for 47 cents. Grok by xAI for 42 cents. The administration hoped that the low-cost pricing would make it “easier for federal teams to acquire powerful AI capabilities … to enhance mission delivery and operational efficiency.”

The takeaway: Be wary of freebies. Our investigation into Microsoft’s seemingly straightforward commitment revealed a more complex, profit-driven agenda. After installing the upgrades, federal customers would be effectively locked in, because shifting to a competitor after the free trial would be cumbersome and costly. At that point, the customer would have little choice but to pay for the higher subscription fees. The plan worked: One former Microsoft salesperson told me “it was successful beyond what any of us could have imagined.” In response to questions about the commitment, Microsoft has said its “sole goal during this period was to support an urgent request by the Administration to enhance the security posture of federal agencies who were continuously being targeted by sophisticated nation-state threat actors.”

Agencies looking to buy AI tools at discounted rates today must consider how the costs might balloon down the road. The General Services Administration warns that AI “usage costs can grow quickly without proper monitoring and management controls” and advises agencies to “set usage limits and regularly review consumption reports.”

Lesson 2: Oversight programs are only as effective as their resources

Then: In the Obama era, the federal government shifted its sensitive information and computing needs to data centers owned and operated by private companies. Acknowledging the potential risks, the administration created the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, in 2011 to help ensure the security of the cloud computing services that it was encouraging U.S. agencies to use.

But in my recent investigation of the program, I found it was no match for Microsoft, which effectively wore down the FedRAMP team over five years as the company sought the program’s seal of approval for a major cloud offering known as GCC High. Despite serious reservations about its cybersecurity, FedRAMP ultimately authorized the product, in part because it lacked the resources to keep going. In response to questions, Microsoft told me: “We stand by our products and the comprehensive steps we’ve taken to ensure all FedRAMP-authorized products meet the security and compliance requirements necessary.”

Now: Today, this tiny outpost within the General Services Administration has even fewer resources to oversee the cloud technology on which the government relies — including AI. FedRAMP says it now operates “with an absolute minimum of support staff” and “limited customer service.” The program was an early target of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. 

The takeaway: FedRAMP, which a 2024 White House memo said “must be an expert program that can analyze and validate the security claims” of cloud providers, is now little more than a rubber stamp for the tech industry, former employees told me. As federal agencies adopt AI tools that draw upon reams of sensitive information, the implications of this downsizing for federal cybersecurity are far-reaching. A GSA spokesperson defended the program and said FedRAMP now “operates with strengthened oversight and accountability mechanisms.”

Lesson 3: “Independent” reviews are only so independent  

Then: The government has long relied on so-called third-party assessors to verify the security claims made by cloud service providers like Microsoft and Google. In theory, these firms are supposed to be independent experts that offer a recommendation to FedRAMP on whether a product meets federal standards. But in practice, their independence has an asterisk: They are paid by the companies they are evaluating.

My recent investigation found that this setup creates an inherent conflict of interest. In the case of Microsoft’s GCC High, two assessors recommended the product despite being unable to fully vet it, according to a former FedRAMP reviewer. One of those firms did not respond to my questions and the other denied this account.

Read More

Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway.

FedRAMP, we found, is well aware of how the financial arrangement between the cloud companies and their assessors can distort official findings about cybersecurity problems. The program even created a “back channel” to encourage assessors to share concerns they might not otherwise raise in their official reports for fear of angering their tech clients and losing business.

Now: With FedRAMP reduced to being a “paper pusher,” as one former GSA official put it, these third-party assessment firms have taken on even more importance in the vetting process. In response to questions from ProPublica, the GSA said that FedRAMP’s system “does not create an inherent conflict of interest for professional auditors who meet ethical and contractual performance expectations.” It did not respond to questions about the program’s back channel.

The takeaway: The pendulum has essentially swung back to the pre-FedRAMP era, when each federal agency was individually responsible for vetting the products it used. The GSA told me that FedRAMP’s job is “to ensure agencies have sufficient information to make these risk decisions.” The problem is that agencies often lack the staff and resources to do thorough reviews, which means the whole system is leaning on the claims of the cloud companies and the assessments of the third-party firms they pay to evaluate them.

The post The Federal Government Is Rushing Toward AI. Our Reporting Offers Three Cautionary Tales. appeared first on ProPublica.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Goat meat goes down like big shards of glass when the symptoms set in. The local livestock, the main source of available nutrients, becomes nearly impossible to swallow. It feels, the sufferers say, like deep wounds have been sliced into their throats.

In Kargi, a remote desert village in the far north of Kenya, cancers of the digestive tract plague the population at unusually high rates. The disease most often attacks the esophagus, though stomach cancer is also common. Some patients think it’s a punishment from God.

The evidence on the ground suggests it’s more likely from a multinational oil company. In the 1980s, foreign work crews dressed like astronauts descended on the village of Kargi and the surrounding Chalbi Desert to drill for oil. They spent five unsuccessful years boring nearly a dozen wells thousands of feet into the ground. The men were from Amoco, an American oil company now owned by BP.

The crews then drove off their bulldozers, packed up their protective equipment, and vanished. One of the only traces to mark their presence was a dry white substance scattered on the ground, close to the water wells used by residents and their livestock.

An Intercept investigation drawn from on-the-ground interviews with dozens of Kargi residents, government and corporate reports spanning decades, court filings, and public hearings traces Amoco’s failure to clean up its waste to the ongoing pollution of Kargi. The substance the company left behind contained heavy metals and known carcinogens, but because of a lack of testing and thorough scientific study, it isn’t clear if the waste directly caused cancer in the community.

What is clear is that residents ate it.

Kargi has one of the highest poverty and malnutrition rates in Kenya, and when locals discovered the flaky substance around the wells, many believed it was natural salt and started using it to cook their food.

The water was contaminated. High levels of carcinogenic toxic chemicals, namely nitrates, had seeped into surrounding boreholes and wells — the only water supply in the desert. Animals began dying in the thousands. And people started getting cancer.

By the early 2000s, the cancer rate in the community was three times the national average. The area’s state representative asked the government to investigate the correlation between the disease plaguing his constituents and the drilling waste that had been left behind.

Now, across the manyattas — communities of traditional homes constructed from sticks and patchworks of old clothing — in Kargi and surrounding villages, everybody claims to know someone afflicted by the disease. The “salt” still remains scattered where Amoco, now part of British Petroleum, once searched for oil.

What’s clear now, from court records and environmental tests, is that the white clayey substance collected adjacent to Amoco’s wells was a tool the company used to help drill for oil, that it contained a variety of heavy metals, and that the wells were not properly sealed.

The pollution and disease inspired the first-ever lawsuit filed on the basis of Kenya’s constitutional right to a safe and healthy environment in 2020, when residents of Kargi and other communities in the Chalbi Desert sued the Kenyan national and county governments. They demanded a supply of clean water for people and animals, and they blamed Kenya for failing to police Amoco’s damage to the environment. Six years later, it’s still crawling through the court system.

The Amoco case was the start of a pattern of identifying environmental destruction across the East African country. In the last few years, similar cases have been popping up nationwide, accusing the local and national governments of failing to clean up the waste that other multinational oil companies have left behind, subjecting residents to drink contaminated water. 

A lack of adequate testing and general neglect of Kargi and its surrounding areas makes it difficult to directly correlate cancer to the waste Amoco left behind. But high levels of carcinogenic toxins, including nitrates and arsenic — both commonly used in drilling wells — have been found in the area’s drinking water over the years, in sporadic tests conducted by the Kenyan government and nonprofit organizations.

No official cleanup has ever been done. Neither BP nor the Kenyan government responded to repeated requests for comment.

In Kargi, residents told The Intercept that Amoco’s footprint has left them in a state of constant despair. 

Gumathi Galnahgalle, a village elder in his mid-40s, said the community began to notice people falling ill in the years after Amoco left. When his mother stopped being able to swallow food, he took her to the hospital multiple times.

“There was no treatment; we were just told to take her back home and wait for her time,” he said, standing in front of her grave. “There is no manyatta that has not been affected by this disease.”

Amoco’s African Expansion

Amoco’s arrival in the 1980s was met with intrigue and excitement. As helicopters flew over Kargi, foreign crews came into the community to join traditional dances at night.

The company employed locals to cook for their crews. In such a remote area, with few educational opportunities and literacy rates around 25 percent, the work was well-received. Lebeku Mirgichan, now in his early 70s, worked as a cook for Amoco for three years — earning 3,000 Kenyan shillings a month (equivalent to roughly $23 today). “At the time, that was a lot of money,” he told The Intercept.

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How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything

Oil exploration was a “welcome development for many communities because it came with a lot of promise and opportunity for development,” said Omolade Adunbi, director of the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan. And it wasn’t just Amoco — Chevron and Total had also explored for oil in other parts of Marsabit, the more than 40,000-square-mile county that contains Kargi.

Then-Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, who commissioned the Amoco project, reportedly visited Kargi to watch the drilling. Amoco’s managing director told Moi that “the rock formation made the prospects for striking oil very encouraging and exciting.” Moi said “he had hope that economically viable oil deposits would be found.”

Amoco, then a Midwest-based company, felt that it was on the cusp of becoming one of the world’s leading explorers and developers of oil — acquiring drilling rights in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Burundi. Alfred O. Munk, Amoco’s manager of foreign affairs, told The Chicago Tribune, “Heads of state and competitors alike are coming to the sudden, belated conclusion that Amoco is a major international player.”

With Moi’s blessing, Amoco drilled at least 10 oil wells that reached 10,000 feet deep. But in 1990, after five years and no real sign of oil, the project in Kargi was decommissioned. Amoco’s vehicles, guards, and land rovers abruptly left.

In court records and interviews with the community, dozens said they were never officially informed of the project’s end. And no one came to clean it up.

Mass Extinction

The failure didn’t seem to affect Amoco’s business. In 1998, British Petroleum bought it in a $48 billion deal, the largest takeover of an American company by a foreign firm at the time. It changed its name to BP Amoco, then just BP in 2001. Most Amoco stations in the U.S. were converted to BP’s brand.

But in Kargi and its surrounding villages, animals were dying. Across the Chalbi Desert — where over https://mohiafrica.org/communities/kargi/90 percent of the population of 30,000 is considered impoverished — most people survive off their livestock, eating only the meat and milk of goats, sheep, and camels. Due to the area’s aridity, there is no piped water, and communities rely on groundwater from boreholes and shallow wells.

In the 1990s, after drinking water from a borehole next to an abandoned well that Amoco had drilled, a flock of sheep and goats died in the neighboring village of Balesa, court records allege.

Then, in the early 2000s, 7,000 sheep and goats died under similar circumstances, residents told The Intercept. According to court records, a water quality report conducted by the government immediately after the mass death confirmed that over 600 animals died within two hours of taking the water. The water was found to contain high levels of nitrates, a type of salt and chemical compound that gets dissolved into drilling material for a variety of purposes: as powerful explosives to locate oil, to stop bacteria from growing in wells, and as an additive to drilling mud to strengthen the walls of a well.

When consumed in high amounts, nitrates can be extremely toxic and stop mammals’ blood from carrying oxygen.

A government team was sent to the area on a fact-finding mission in 2003, according to court documents. They recommended that the community should not give the water to infants and that the veterinary department should carry out toxicology tests in Kargi. It also found that the wells had not been properly sealed. A 2004 government report concluded that “the claims of the presence of esophagus cancer in the region were everywhere the team visited and concern is overwhelmingly evident as reported by medical personnel and local community.”

Subsequent tests commissioned by a local nonprofit organization found that levels of nitrates and arsenic were high in Kargi waters.

Five years later, a prospective report by a Swedish oil company, Lundin, which was planning to look for oil and other mining materials, confirmed that a “white clayey substance used to cool drill bits by Amoco while drilling was collected adjacent to the well.” Lundin tested it and found extremely high alkaline levels — which can cause chemicals to be corrosive and destroy skin when spilled.

The former Amoco cook, Mirgichan, alongside two other community members who also worked for Amoco, told The Intercept that they remember watching workers’ skin start to peel off when they worked with drilling materials.

In its report, Lundin found the substance to be “extremely saline and sodic” and that it was related to “abundant” claims about related health issues by the local communities, including dying livestock and cancer cases.

Between 2007 and 2009, multiple tests on the water found that it was not meeting the World Health Organization recommended standards, according to court records. The Kenyan water resources authority https://nation.africa/kenya/news/area-that-could-be-rich-in-oil-turns-out-to-be-valley-of-death--602790declared that it was not safe for human consumption. A local nonprofit found that high levels of nitrates and arsenic were in the water, and they were the probable cause of the livestock deaths.

By then, people were dying.

In Search of Nutrients

In Kargi, where food is scarce, community members kept finding the white substance that Amoco left behind and decided to put it to use, packing it up and using it to cook. The area, littered with salt-like mounds, became so popular with residents that it was named kwa chuvmi, loosely translated to “where there is salt.”

There are conflicting reports over what exactly the “salt” was. According to Kenyan court documents, the salt-like substance was actually two heavy drilling chemicals: barite and bentonite. Barite is a mineral used in large quantities to increase the density of drilling fluids, and bentonite, a clay-like substance often referred to as drilling mud, helps in carrying cuttings to the surface and stabilizing boreholes. The chemicals can have “catastrophic effects,” on the environment and people, said James Njuguna, an engineering professor at Robert Gordon University.

According to tests undertaken by Lundin, Amoco used “a white material that could pass for salt like substance,” but was “essentially a special clay material used to cool the drill bits.” It contained high levels of calcium, magnesium, sodium, and electrical conductivity.

Between 2006 and 2009, records from the only health center in Kargi, a village area with only 10,000 residents, registered 65 cancer-related deaths — which health workers said was largely throat cancer — or a rate nearly three times higher than the national average, according to government reports.

In 2008, Safi Mirkalkona’s sister died from stomach cancer just after giving birth, leaving behind the baby and four other small children. There was no medicine or treatment available, and she was advised to stay at home. “There are many orphans here,” Mirkalkona told The Intercept. “And yet, we still do not understand this disease.”

The same year, Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton, who represented Kargi and the surrounding area in Kenya’s national assembly, brought the issue to the Parliament.

“Strange diseases started occurring in the specific areas where oil was drilled,” he said. “I do not know how we can possibly explain the sudden emergence of cancer cases.”

“It is really embarrassing that we sit here and … years later people are still dying,” Lekuton continued in his speech. “We have a survey that has revealed shocking statistics of men and women who are ailing from throat cancer and many have died.” 

But leaders, including in the energy ministry, were dismissive and said no connection had been found between oil exploration and cancer cases.

By 2009, a community member was dying of cancer every month, according to a https://nation.africa/kenya/news/area-that-could-be-rich-in-oil-turns-out-to-be-valley-of-death--602790local news report. The symptoms and deterioration of residents were similar. The first was an inability to swallow meat. The patients were then referred for a biopsy, “but the majority prefer to go back home and wait to die,” the report said. Some tested positive for esophageal cancer.

Desert of Death

Years went by with no answers. In 2013, a documentary titled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwWkZb4shxs“Desert of Death” aired on Kenyan national television on throat and stomach cancer patients in the county, suggesting that waste left behind after failed oil prospecting had a connection to the disease. The youngest cancer patient featured was 3 years old. The documentary drew countrywide attention, prompting further discussions in the government.

“I come from Kargi Village, and I have about 150 names of those who have died as a result of that disease,” Godana Hargura, senator of Marsabit, http://www.parliament.go.ke/sites/default/files/2017-05/Thursday_19th_November_2015.pdfsaid in a government hearing in 2015. “The situation is so desperate.”

In Kargi, there is only one health center serving the 10,000 residents. There is no doctor — just a clinical officer, a nurse, and a nutritionist.

“People normally come too late. Most of the people are sick, but they don’t even know that they are sick,” said Abraham Situma, the clinical officer. “We really need more human resources.”

Situma often refers the cases to Marsabit county hospital, a two-hour drive from Kargi. Following that, many patients are then referred to a hospital in Meru, over 300 miles away. But, Situma said, most prefer to just stay in Kargi and pass away at home. So many people have died in their homes that they became https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000095804/manyattas-of-death-up-to-500-dead-and-counting-as-mystery-cancer-devastates-marsabit-kenyalabeled the “manyattas of death.”

In July 2024, separate from the court case, the community https://eastleighvoice.co.ke/northern-kenya/56911/marsabit-community-petitions-parliament-over-toxic-waste-disposal-claimspetitioned Kenya’s National Assembly to order a comprehensive and independent probe into cancer cases in the region. The community said they had documented close to 1,000 cancer-related fatalities in the last decade, all attributed to the consumption of contaminated water. The fatalities were reported in Kargi and other surrounding areas, but only 100 families had the victims’ health records, because their culture dictated that the dead be buried with documents.

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“I call it the social death of the environment,” said Adunbi, the University of Michigan professor. “The practice of extraction in many communities is literally sentencing people to a form of death, and there is no oversight on how many of these corporations have conducted their activities in these spaces.”

Meanwhile, the case filed in 2020 by the Kargi residents remains ongoing and continuously delayed.

The petition detailed accusations against nine Kenyan and county governments — including the attorney general; ministries of environment, water, and sanitation; as well as the National Oil Corporation of Kenya — of being accountable for failing to ensure that Amoco caused little damage to the environment; disposed of waste oil, salt water, and refuse; and did not cause fluids or substance to escape to the environment.

“The untold pain, suffering and hopelessness is exemplified by the rampant deaths that take place in the manyattas without the residents of Marsabit County having access to medical care, the long distance the resident have to travel seeking medical care and lack of financial capacity to carry the burden of the cancer scourge,” the petition reads.

There were also plans to sue BP, but it has proved to be too legally complex, according to John Mwariri, acting executive director of Kituo Cha Sheria, the Kenyan legal aid group leading the case. The company had also long diverted its interest away from the Marsabit region into more fruitful areas in countries like Angola, Egypt, and Algeria.

In Kargi, the community has lost hope in getting answers. In his manyatta, Galnahgalle, the village elder, awaits the same fate as his mother.

“I keep being told to go home as there is no treatment,” he said. “Amoco should come and explain what they did here.”

The post An American Company Drilled for Oil in Kenya — and Left Behind Soaring Cancer Rates appeared first on The Intercept.

Sales of Chinese electric vehicles and solar panels have surged since the start of the Iran war, companies say.

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Russia's "great crackdown" on VPNs — and a clampdown on Telegram's messaging platform — had an unintended side effect, reports Bloomberg. It "triggered the widespread banking outage seen across the country this week, Telegram's billionaire founder Pavel Durov said." "Telegram was banned in Russia, yet 65 million Russians still use it daily via VPNs," Durov said Saturday in a post on Telegram. "The government has spent years trying to ban VPNs too. Their blocking attempts just triggered a massive banking failure; cash briefly became the only payment method nationwide yesterday." Attempts on Friday to limit VPN use could have sparked the disruption affecting banking apps, The Bell and other Russian media reported, citing industry sources who weren't identified. The outage may have been caused by an overload in the filtering systems run by Russia's communications watchdog, according to the reports, with experts warning that major restrictions risk undermining network stability... Separately, payments for Apple Inc.'s app store and other services became unavailable in Russia from April 1, the US company said on its website, without saying why. Earlier, RBC newswire reported that the Digital Development Ministry had asked mobile operators to disable top-ups, which could help limit VPN use.... Durov, who's being investigated in Russia for allegedly aiding terrorist activity, compared the situation in his home country to Iran, where similar restrictions prompted widespread adoption of VPNs instead of the intended shift to state-backed messaging apps. "Welcome back to the Digital Resistance, my Russian brothers and sisters," said Durov, who has lived in Dubai and France in recent years. "The entire nation is now mobilized to bypass these absurd restrictions," he wrote, adding that Telegram would continue adapting to make its traffic harder to detect and block.

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President Trump hailed the rescue of a U.S. airman who was missing almost two days inside Iran — and threatened to hit power plants if Iran doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

More than half of NHS trusts have cap on availability of products, forcing patients to pay for products themselves

Millions of people across the UK living with incontinence are facing shortages of sanitary products due to supplies being rationed by NHS trusts, according to a coalition of charities.

The shortages are leading to a “pad gap” where people are having to pay for incontinence products themselves, according to an open letter from organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, Prostate Cancer UK, and Bowel and Bladder UK.

Even if motorists can provide evidence they’ve paid for parking, they are threatened with bailiffs and court

Drivers have accused a leading car park management company of issuing “false” parking fines – leaving one mother to defend herself from multiple debt collection agencies sent by the company.

Jane Winder says she was sent letters from five different debt collection agencies each asking her to pay £170 after she was accused of not purchasing a £2.30 parking ticket at a car park in Lancashire managed by Euro Car Parks.

Meta has just lost a multimillion-dollar legal battle over its failure to prevent children being sold on its platforms. Here’s how we uncovered evidence that became part of the case against it

It started with a tipoff. I was reporting on the trafficking and exploitation of migrant workers in the Gulf when a source I had known for more than a decade reached out. They told me that child sexual abuse trafficking in the US was surging. As the Covid pandemic pushed predators online, some were using Facebook and Instagram to buy and sell children.

It was 2021 and I was about to begin an investigation with Mei-Ling McNamara, a human rights journalist, that would lead to the tech company Meta losing a multimillion-pound court case in March this year. The company had not yet rebranded and was known as Facebook, and there had not been any reporting on how children were being trafficked on its platforms. Experts from anti-trafficking nonprofit organisations and an American law enforcement official talked me through the crimes they were seeing.

Ignorance and arrogance were his drivers. The idea that the regime plays by different rules, with its own goals, never occurred to him

Five weeks. We are now five weeks in and entering the sixth week of the war on Iran. What was supposed to be a “precise, overwhelming military campaign” to eliminate “an imminent nuclear threat” and urge the Iranian people to “take over” their government is now anything but precise or overwhelming. Gulf countries are seized up with retaliatory Iranian attacks, the strait of Hormuz is shut, and there is no sign of regime collapse either through military degradation or popular takeover. The recovery of two downed US aircrew is celebrated beyond the facts of the matter because nothing else is going to plan. The mistake, as ever, is a combination of hubris and ignorance, flaws made even more serious by the particularities of the Iranian regime.

There is a mental lag at the start of wars. A cognitive delay that means you can’t quite adjust to the fact that dangerous conflict cannot be swiftly contained. That mental lag is even longer when the United States is involved. Because it remains inconceivable to some that a superior military power would not swiftly achieve its objectives. That an inferior power would not immediately succumb. That allies would not fall into line and rally behind the US. Inconceivable that the fallout of a military campaign would not be limited to the territories and peoples targeted.

Japan’s ban on married couples having different surnames has prompted an event to highlight people’s reluctance to change their name

At the very least, the three men and three women calming their nerves on a Friday evening at a venue in Tokyo know they have one thing in common.

Spaced out across booths, they will soon be placed in pairs and given 15 minutes to get to know one another.

NASA's Artemis astronauts are now entering "the lunar sphere of influence," reports NBC News, "meaning the pull of the moon's gravity will become stronger than Earth's." Now as they begin their swing around the moon, the Artemis astronauts "are chasing after Apollo 13's maximum range from Earth," reports the Associated Press, hoping to beat its distance from Earth by more than 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometers). They'll begin their six-hour lunar flyby 14 hours from now (at 2:45 p.m. ET Monday). But in a space-to-earth interview Saturday with NBC News, the astronauts were already describing their first glimpses of the edge of the far side: [NASA astronaut Christina Koch realized] it looked different from what she was accustomed to on Earth. "The darker parts just aren't quite in the right place," she said. "And something about you senses that is not the moon that I'm used to seeing...." [Astronaut Reid] Wiseman called the flight a "magnificent accomplishment" and said the astronauts' ability to gaze at both Earth and the moon from their spacecraft has been "truly awe-inspiring." "The Earth is almost in full eclipse. The moon is almost in full daylight, and the only way you could get that view is to be halfway between the two entities," he said... And while the early photos of Earth and the moon that [Canadian astronaut Jeremy] Hansen and his colleagues have beamed back have been spectacular, the Canadian astronaut said they pale in comparison to the real deal outside their capsule's windows. "I know those photos are amazing," he said, "but let me assure you, it is another level of amazing up here." And their upcoming six-hour lunar flyby "promises views of the moon's far side that were too dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded them," notes the Associated Press: A total solar eclipse also awaits them as the moon blocks the sun, exposing snippets of shimmering corona.... At closest approach, they will come within 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the moon. Because they launched on April 1, the rendezvous won't have as much of the far lunar side illuminated as other dates would have. But the crew still will be able make out "definite chunks of the far side that have never been seen" by humans, said NASA geologist Kelsey Young, including a good portion of Orientale Basin. They'll call down their observations as they photograph the gray, pockmarked scenes. There's a suite of professional-quality cameras on board, and each astronaut also has an iPhone for more informal, spur-of-the-minute picture-taking... Orion will be out of contact with Mission Control for nearly an hour when it's behind the moon. The same thing happened during the Apollo moonshots. NASA is relying on its Deep Space Network to communicate with the crew, but the giant antennas in California, Spain and Australia won't have a direct line of sight when Orion disappears behind the moon for approximately 40 minutes... Once Artemis II departs the lunar neighborhood, it will take four days to return home. The capsule will aim for a splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego on April 10, nine days after its Florida launch. During the flight back, the astronauts will link up via radio with the crew of the orbiting International Space Station. This is the first time that a moon crew has colleagues in space at the same time and NASA can't pass up the opportunity for a cosmic chitchat.

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An investigation is underway in Long Beach after possible human remains were discovered in the area near DeForest Park and Wetlands on Sunday afternoon, according to police.

Economic ties will be hard to unwind.

How America’s allies in the region can get out of the cross hairs.

The dangerous allure of energy autarky.

This blog has now closed. Our live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran continues here

Iranian media has claims that a US aircraft was destroyed while searching for the crew member of a missing US F-15 fighter jet.

“An American enemy aircraft that was searching for the pilot of a downed fighter jet was destroyed by the fighters of Islam in the southern region of Isfahan,” the Tasnim news agency quoted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as saying. The Guardian was unable to verify their claim.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 6.

The Internet Bug Bounty program "has been paused for new submissions," they announced last week. Running since 2012, the program is funded by "a number of leading software companies," reports InfoWorld, "and has awarded more than $1.5m to researchers who have reported bugs " Up to now, 80% of its payouts have been for discoveries of new flaws, and 20% to support remediation efforts. But as artificial intelligence makes it easier to find bugs, that balance needs to change, HackerOne said in a statement. "AI-assisted research is expanding vulnerability discovery across the ecosystem, increasing both coverage and speed. The balance between findings and remediation capacity in open source has substantively shifted," said HackerOne. Among the first programs to be affected is the Node.js project, a server-side JavaScript platform for web applications known for its extensive ecosystem. While the project team will continue to accept and triage bug reports through HackerOne, without funding from the Internet Bug Bounty program it will no longer pay out rewards, according to an announcement on its website... [J]ust last month, Google also put a halt to AI-generated submissions provided to its Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program. The Internet Bug Bounty stressed that "We have a responsibility to the community to ensure this program effectively accomplishes its ambitious dual purpose: discovery and remediation. Accordingly, we are pausing submissions while we consider the structure and incentives needed to further these goals..." "We remain committed to strengthening open source security. Working with project maintainers and researchers, we're actively evaluating solutions to better align incentives with open source ecosystem realities and ensure vulnerability discoveries translate into durable remediation outcomes."

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President shifts deadline again for attacking power plants and bridges in expletive-ridden social media post

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump issued an expletive-laden warning on Sunday that Tehran had until Tuesday night to reopen the strait of Hormuz or the US would obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges.

Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”.

Chuck Schumer accuses president of ‘ranting like unhinged madman’ in threat to obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges. Key US politics stories from 5 April

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has faced sharp criticism after threatening to wipe out Iran’s power plants and bridges in an expletive-riddled social media post on Sunday.

The US president told Iran: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” He separately suggested there was a “good chance” of an agreement to end the five-week war on Monday, telling US media that negotiations were happening.

Levy on inherited farms and family businesses worth £2.5m or more comes into force 6 April

A new inheritance tax regime for UK farms and family businesses comes into force on Monday and will present “significant challenges” for those affected, according to accountants.

In October 2024 the government announced plans to levy inheritance tax on farms – prompting an outcry in many quarters.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for April 6, No. 1,752.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 6 No. 1,030.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for April 6, No. 764.

UCLA finished the season 37-1 by defeating the three-time national champion South Carolina Gamecocks.

The NASA astronauts also sent down Easter messages Sunday while gearing up for a historic pass behind the moon Monday.

That leak of Claude Code's source code "revealed all kinds of juicy details," writes PC World. The more than 500,000 lines of code included: - An 'undercover mode' for Claude that allows it to make 'stealth' contributions to public code bases - An 'always-on' agent for Claude Code - A Tamagotchi-style 'Buddy' for Claude "But one of the stranger bits discovered in the leak is that Claude Code is actively watching our chat messages for words and phrases — including f-bombs and other curses — that serve as signs of user frustration." Specifically, Claude Code includes a file called "userPromptKeywords.ts" with a simple pattern-matching tool called regex, which sweeps each and every message submitted to Claude for certain text matches. In this particular case, the regex pattern is watching for "wtf," "wth," "omfg," "dumbass," "horrible," "awful," "piece of — -" (insert your favorite four-letter word for that one), "f — you," "screw this," "this sucks," and several other colorful metaphors... While the Claude Code leak revealed the existence of the "frustration words" regex, it doesn't give any indication of why Claude Code is scouring messages for these words or what it's doing with them.

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Councils urged to crack down on misuse of parking permits that help people with disabilities and health conditions

Councils in England have been urged to crack down on the misuse of blue badge parking permits – legitimate and counterfeit – as the proportion of people holding them has reached one in 15.

The AA called for more to be done to detect offences such as people using fake or stolen badges.

People encouraged to ‘come forward as normal’ when BMA members begin industrial action over pay on Tuesday

The NHS is urging patients not to put off seeking the care they need when resident doctors press ahead with strike action from Tuesday, a stoppage that the health secretary has called “disappointing”.

Tens of thousands of resident doctors in England are to stage a six-day strike after the government took a key part of its offer off the table.

Announcement of eight young futures hubs made as concerns grow over the number of knives on the streets

Eight young futures youth hubs aimed at giving young people support towards work and away from street crime are to open across England, ministers have announced.

The youth centres are supposed to help people aged up to 18 with employment advice, health and wellbeing, and are also aimed at preventing them from falling into a life of crime.

In the Mardi Gras Indian, or Black Masking Indian, tradition, the big chiefs and their crews — spy boys, flag boys, wild men and a big queen — square off in mock battles with other so-called tribes to determine who is, in their words, the "prettiest."

A patchwork of state licensing rules prevents medical volunteers from reaching more patients in need through RAM.

Every year, Black residents of New Orleans don stunning, handmade suits on Mardi Gras day that are sewn in secret for the better part of a year. It's a tradition they say honors ancestors.

A nonprofit called RAM is bringing free health care to Americans who need it. Some patients wait days and sleep in their cars in order to get dental, vision, and medical treatment at RAM clinics.

Americans are driving hundreds of miles and waiting on line for days to get free medical help from RAM.

High-speed rail can be found around the world. Yet so far, the projects haven't tracked in the U.S., where both the public and private sectors have faced ballooning costs and delays.

An ambitious state-run high-speed rail project linking Los Angeles and San Francisco has gone off track.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy provided the following statement for 60 Minutes' report Sunday, "Ghost Train."

The Mardi Gras Indians, or Black Masking Indians, have been around since the 1800s. Members spend months painstakingly handcrafting suits to be worn while marching through New Orleans' neighborhoods.

Hundreds of theatres are now showing a new documentary called The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist. Variety calls it "playful and heady,"edited "with a spirit of ADHD alertness." The New York Times suggests it "tries to cover so much that it ends up being more confusing than clarifying, but parts are fascinating." But the Los Angeles Times calls it an "aggravating soup of information and opinion that wants to move at the speed of machine thought." So while co-director Daniel Roher asks whether he should bring a child into a world with AI, "Perhaps more urgently, should Roher have made an AI doc that treats us like children?" First, he parades all the safety doomers, seeming to believe their warnings that an unfeeling superintelligence is upon us and we can't trust it. Then, sufficiently disturbed, he hauls in the AI cheerleaders, a suspiciously positive gang who can envision only medical miracles and grindless lives in which we're all full-time artists. Only then, after this simplistic setup where platitudes reign, do we get the section in which the subject is treated like the brave (and grave) new world it is: geopolitically fraught, economically tenuous and a playground for billionaires. Why couldn't the complexity have been the dialogue from the beginning, instead of the play-dumb cartoon "The AI Doc" feels like for so long? Maybe Roher believes this is what our increasingly gullible, truth-challenged citizenry needs from an explanatory doc: a flashy, kindhearted reminder that we're the change we need to be. Read more reactions here and here. Mashable warns the documentary's director "will ultimately craft a journey that feels like a panic attack in real time. In the end, you may not feel better about mankind's chances against the rise of AI. But you'll likely feel less helpless in the future before us all." They also point out that the film "shares some ways its audience can more actively be apart of the conversation, and provides a link to the film's website for engagement," where 6,948 people have now signed up for its newsletter. ("Demand a seat at the table," urges its signup button, under a warning that "Government and AI companies are designing our future without us. We need to reclaim our voice in shaping the future of AI...")

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• Gabriela Jaquez scores 21 points in rout

• Victory margin is third-largest in NCAA history

Gabriela Jaquez scored 21 points, Lauren Betts added 16 and UCLA routed South Carolina 79-51 Sunday to win their first NCAA championship in women’s basketball.

The near-record lopsided victory completed the Bruins’ journey through this year’s March Madness that started after a loss to UConn in last season’s Final Four. The Bruins ran through their opponents this season with their only loss coming in November, to Texas in a Thanksgiving tournament.

Driver treated for burns after truck was carrying 9,000 gallons of gasoline at time of collision outside Fort Worth

An 18-wheel fuel tanker crashed into another vehicle, toppled power lines, then burst into flames outside Fort Worth early Sunday morning, according to local authorities.

The truck was carrying 9,000 gallons of gasoline at the time of the collision.

• UCLA win first NCAA title by stunning South Carolina

• Gabriela Jaquez leads the Bruins with 21 points

• Dawn Staley denied a third title in five seasons

South Carolina 4-9 UCLA, 5:14 1st quarter

After Ta’Niya Latson hits a pair of free throws, Jaquez follows a miss with a rebound and a floater that falls, and she’s fouled!

Meet the "journalist" who "uploads press releases or analyst notes into AI tools and prompts them to spit out articles that he can edit and publish quickly," according to the Wall Street Journal. "AI-assisted stories accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune's web traffic in the second half of 2025." And most were written by 42-year-old Nick Lichtenberg, who has now written over 600 AI-assisted stories, producing "more stories in six months than any of his colleagues at Fortune delivered in a year." One Wednesday in February, he cranked out seven. "I'm a bit of a freak," Lichtenberg said... A story by Lichtenberg sometimes starts with a prompt entered into Perplexity or Google's NotebookLM, asking it to write something based on a headline he comes up with. He moves the AI tools' initial drafts into a content-management system and edits the stories before publishing them for Fortune's readers... A piece from earlier that morning about Josh D'Amaro being named Disney CEO took 10 minutes to get online, he said... Like other journalists, Lichtenberg vets his stories. He refers back to the original documents to confirm the information he's reporting is correct. He reaches out to companies for comment. But he admits his process isn't as thorough as that of magazine fact-checkers. While Lichtenberg started out saying his stories were co-authored with "Fortune Intelligence", he now typically signs his own name, according to the article, "because he feels the work is mostly his own." (Though his stories "sometimes" disclose generative AI was used as a research tool...) The article asks with he could be "a bellwether for where much of the media business is headed..." "Much of the content people now consume online is generated by artificial intelligence, with some 9% of newly published newspaper articles either partially or fully AI-generated, according to a 2025 study led by the University of Maryland. The number of AI-generated articles on the web surpassed human-written ones in late 2024, according to research and marketing agency Graphite." Some executives have made full-throated declarations about the threat posed by AI. New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger said AI "is almost certainly going to usher in an unprecedented torrent of crap," referencing deepfakes as an example. The NewsGuild of New York, the union representing Fortune employees and journalists at other media outlets, said the people are what makes journalism so powerful. "You simply can't replicate lived experiences, human judgment and expertise," said president Susan DeCarava. For Chris Quinn, the editor of local publications Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer, AI tools have helped tame other torrents facing the industry. AI has allowed the outlets to cover counties in Ohio that otherwise might go ignored by scraping information from local websites and sending "tips" to reporters, he said. It has also edited stories and written first drafts so the newsrooms' journalists can focus on the calls, research and reporting needed for their stories.... Newsrooms from the New York Times to The Wall Street Journal are deploying AI in various ways to help reporters and editors work more efficiently.... Not all newsrooms disclose their use of AI, and in some cases have rolled out new tools that resulted in errors or PR gaffes. An October study from the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC, which relied on professional journalists to evaluate the news integrity of more than 3,000 AI responses, found that almost half of all AI responses had at least one significant issue. Last week the New York Times even issued a correction when a freelance book reviewer using an AI tool unknowingly included "language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian." But it was actually "the second time in a few days that the Times was called out for potential AI plagiarism," according to the American journalist writing The Handbasket newsletter. We must stem the idea being pushed by tech companies and their billionaire funders who've sunk too much into their products to admit defeat that the infiltration of AI into journalism is inevitable; because from my perch as an independent journalist, it simply is not... Some AI-loving journalists appear to believe that if they're clear enough with the AI program they're using, it will truly understand what they're seeking and not just do what it's made to do: steal shit... If you want to work with machines, get a job that requires it. There are a whole lot more of those than there are writing jobs, so free up space for people who actually want to do the work. You're not doing the world a favor by gifting it your human/AI hybrid. Journalism will not miss you if you leave... But meanwhile, USA Today recently tried hiring for a new position: AI-Assisted reporter. (The lucky reporter will "support the launch and scaling of AI-assisted local journalism in a major U.S. metro," working with tools including Copilot and Perplexity, pioneering possible future expansions and "AI-enabled newsroom operations that support and augment human-led journalism.") And Google is already sponsoring a "publishing innovation award"...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sponsors pull out after Keir Starmer calls decision to book rapper who wrote song titled Heil Hitler ‘deeply concerning’

Pepsi and Diageo have said they will withdraw their sponsorship of a UK music festival that is due to be headlined by Kanye West after Keir Starmer joined criticism of the event.

The musician is understood to have not yet made an application to come to Britain and could be blocked under powers allowing the authorities to do so if his presence is deemed not conducive to the public good.

The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission captured a new image of the far side of the moon, which the agency released Sunday.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman outlined the most critical moments he expects in the coming days as Artemis II astronauts continue their journey around the far side of the moon.

"Beverly Hills, 90210" actress Tori Spelling was involved in a two-car crash in Temecula on Thursday night, according to her manager and Riverside County Sheriff's Office officials.

The driver was trying to elude the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's highway patrol on a rural road in southeast Alabama's Pike County when the crash occurred late Friday night.

Rally met with bipartisan support after US border patrol revealed plans for steel wall across parts of beloved parks

The story is co-published with Public Domain, an investigative newsroom that covers public lands, wildlife and government

Thousands of people gathered at the steps of the Texas capitol on Saturday to protest against the construction of a border wall through Big Bend, in a show of bipartisan opposition to the White House’s plans.

Luke Grimes leads the Yellowstone sequel.

PM also criticises business figures and opponents of changes, many of which come into force on Monday

• Workers, pensioners and children: all better off. Ignore the critics – we really are standing up for working people

Keir Starmer has used a series of new workers rights that come into force on Monday to attack the Green party, saying a vote for Labour’s rivals puts such progress on sick pay, parental leave and zero-hours contracts at risk.

The prime minister also took a swipe at business figures and opponents of what he described as the biggest strengthening of workers’ rights in a generation, dismissing “vested interests” who had warned against them.

On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and retired Gen. Frank McKenzie join Ed O'Keefe.

One crime ring scammed 2,000 elderly people of more than $27 million between 2021 and 2023 using tech support/bank impersonation/refund scams. "Victims were in their 70s and 80s," reports the U.S. Attorney's office for California's southern district. Victims were first told they'd received a refund (either online or via phone), but then told they'd been "over-refunded" a massive amount, and asked to return that amount. But 42-year-old Jiandong Chen just admitted Thursday in a U.S. federal court that he was involved in the fraud and money laundering via cryptocurrency — pleading guilty to two charges with maximum penalties of 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine, plus 20 years in prison with a maximum fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered. "Chen, a Chinese national, is the second defendant charged in a five-defendant indictment." And what tripped him up seems to be that "Certain members of the conspiracy also did in-person pickups of money directly from victims..." And so YouTube enters the story — when the scammers called pranksters with 1,790,000 subscribers to their "Trilogy Media" channel. In an elaborate three-hour video, the team of pranksters lured the scammer to a rented Airbnb where they're staging a fake funeral with a nun. (One of the men acting in the video remembers "we start doing a prayer... I'm holding the scammer's hand in my nun outfit...") They convince the scammer to collect the cash from a dead man — "Is there anything you'd like to say to him?" Then there's demon voices. The scammer's victim resurrects from the dead. Did the cash mule bring holy water? The end result was a video titled "CONFRONTING SCAMMERS WITH A FAKE FUNERAL (EPIC REACTIONS)". But two and a half years later, their "cash mule sting house" video has racked up over 1.3 million views, 22,000 likes, and 2,979 comments. ("This video is longer than Oppenheimer. Thanks for the laughs fellas.") And the scammer is facing 60 years in prison.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The old iptables-nft package name is replaced by iptables, and the legacy backend is available as iptables-legacy.

When switching packages (among iptables-nft, iptables, iptables-legacy), check for .pacsave files in /etc/iptables/ and restore your rules if needed:

• /etc/iptables/iptables.rules.pacsave
• /etc/iptables/ip6tables.rules.pacsave

Most setups should work unchanged, but users relying on uncommon xtables extensions or legacy-only behavior should test carefully and use iptables-legacy if required.

Members reportedly agree a rise of 206,000 barrels a day in May, but move symbolic while strait of Hormuz is effectively closed

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Iranian drones have struck Kuwait’s oil infrastructure, causing “severe material damage” that threatens to further disrupt oil supplies already hit by the US-Israel war on Iran.

The drone strikes on Sunday came hours before members of the Opec+ group of major global oil suppliers gathered to discuss how to bolster output despite Iran’s effective closure of the strait of Hormuz shipping route.

• Saudi investment shows no sign of reducing LIV’s scale

• Plan likely to compete with DP World Tour

Tournaments as opposed to players could become the next key domain in elite golf’s power struggle, with the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV circuit exploring the staging of national opens. Any such approach is likely to cause anxiety within the corridors of power at the DP World, formerly European, Tour given the number of such events already on its schedule.

While the talent drain of elite players from traditional tours towards LIV has stopped, or reversed, the concept of increased competition for prime tournament markets is an intriguing one.

The following is the full transcript of an interview with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on April 5, 2026.

11 days ago Apple launched device-level age restrictions in the U.K. There were some glitches, reports the blog 9to5Mac. For me, the experience was an entirely painless one, taking less than 30 seconds. All I had to do was tap a confirm and continue button, and Apple told me that the length of time I'd had an Apple account was used to confirm that I'm 18+. Others, however, experienced difficulties with the process timing out or failing to complete. We summarized some of the steps you can take to try to address this. Apple has since listed additional acceptable ways to verify your age. "You can confirm your age with a credit card, or by scanning a driver's license or one of the following PASS-accredited Proof of Age cards: CitizenCard, My ID Card, TOTUM ID card, or Young Scot National Entitlement Card." If you don't verify your age, then you'll be treated as a child or teenager, meaning that both the web content filter and communication safety features are switched on. Apple is continuing the roll-out in Singapore (population 6 million) and South Korea (population 52 million), the article points out, citing a new Apple support document. South Korea's law actually requires Apple to re-verify someone's age annually.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jared Isaacman says odds of evidence we are not alone are ‘pretty high’ four days after Artemis II rocket lifted off

• Nasa’s Orion spaceship four days into Artemis II mission: in pictures

The top official at Nasa says that the chance of alien existence is a factor in how the US space agency plans its missions.

Speaking on Sunday, Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman told CNN’s Meet the Press that investigating the existence of alien life “goes to the heart of many things that we do at Nasa”, adding: “Our job here is to go out and try and unlock the secrets of the universe.”

Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, a former commander of U.S. Central Command, outlined takeaways on the search-and-rescue mission​ for a missing U.S. airman on "Face the Nation," and called it a "hard lesson for Iran."

• Don Garber spoke to reporters at Miami’s stadium debut

• ‘It’s going to be a premier event and premier pricing’

The commissioner of Major League Soccer, Don Garber, said Fifa has been “smart” about its ticket pricing strategy for this summer’s World Cup, the effect of which has raised prices significantly across all games of the tournament to be held in the US, Mexico and Canada this summer.

Garber made the comments in Miami, where he attended the inaugural fixture at Inter Miami’s Nu Stadium and spoke to reporters before kick-off. Asked by the Guardian whether high prices resulting from Fifa’s dynamic pricing model undermined the domestic league’s efforts to grow the game and attract new fans, Garber reasoned that the cost attached to tickets matched the event’s exclusivity, and said Americans were used to that.

These are the best USB chargers in the US to keep devices juiced up quickly and safely for all your tech needs

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

USB chargers power the world. From phones to laptops and even bike lights, the gadgets we use every day increasingly rely on USB connections for power, making chargers an indispensable tool to keep your life running.

Though the U in USB stands for “universal,” you sadly can’t expect every USB charger to work with every USB device. Modern devices use different charging speeds, protocols and ports. That means if you’re still relying on the brick that came with your phone from a decade ago, it’s time for an upgrade. A high–quality USB charger will cover all your bases to charge devices quickly and safely, all in a compact package.

Best overall USB charger:
Baseus PicoGo AE11

Best budget USB charger:
Anker 511 Nano 3

Incident prompts political scrutiny across Hungary as Viktor Orbán trails in polls before next Sunday’s election

Serbia has said it found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond, sparking claims by Hungary’s leading opposition candidate of a possible “false flag” operation aimed at influencing the country’s elections.

On Sunday, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had been informed by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, of the discovery near an extension of the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas through the Balkans to central and eastern Europe.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Bernie Sanders among those responding with alarm to Trump writing ‘open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Some US politicians have reacted with alarm and questioned the US president’s mental state after Donald Trump issued an abusive, expletive-laden threat to Iran in which he called on the regime to “open the fuckin’ strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards”, as he threatened to further attack the country’s energy and transport infrastructure.

The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

"Google has announced that it's currently testing a new feature for Chrome 148 that could speed up day-to-day browsing," reports PC World: [T]he browser can intelligently postpone the loading of certain elements. Why load all images at the start when it can instead load images as you get close to them while scrolling? Chrome and Chromium-based browsers have had built-in lazy loading support for images and iframes since 2019, but this feature would make browsers capable of lazy loading video and audio elements, too. Note, however, that this won't benefit YouTube video embeds — those are already lazy loadable since they're embedded using iframes. Actual video and audio elements are rarer but not uncommon. In addition to Chrome, lazy loading of video and audio elements is also expected to be added to other Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Road and rail travel also disrupted across the UK before weather warnings lifted on Sunday

Storm Dave left thousands of homes across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland without power and disrupted road and rail travel across the UK before high wind and snow warnings were lifted on Sunday morning.

Winds of up to 93mph were recorded in Capel Curig in north Wales – 20mph higher than forecast – while the Met Office issued a yellow severe weather warning for heavy snow and blizzards across the Scottish Highlands, Argyll and the Western Isles on Saturday.

Three people, including a 10-month-old girl, were killed Sunday when high winds toppled a tree during an Easter egg hunt, German police said.

The following is the full transcript of an interview with retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of U.S. Central Command, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on April 5, 2026.

Protesters held on Sunday after joining a Lakenheath Alliance for Peace encampment outside airbase in Suffolk

Seven people have been arrested under suspicion of supporting the banned group Palestine Action after a protest in Suffolk.

They were arrested on Sunday morning after joining a peace encampment to create a blockade outside the main gate of Lakenheath airbase. The protest was organised after media reports that a US fighter jet shot down in Iran on Friday had taken off from the Lakenheath base.

Nasa team get deeper into space than any humans have ever ventured

Astronauts on the historic Artemis II mission are expected to reach the far side of the moon on Monday, venturing deeper into space than any humans before.

Nasa has reported satisfaction with progress toward the lunar fly-round since the team’s launch on Wednesday, with the three Americans and one Canadian on course to break the record for maximum range from Earth just as a total solar eclipse awaits.

“Let those who have weapons lay them down!” the first American pope declared. The White House’s war in Iran and nativist agenda at home are testing the Vatican.

Trump escalated threats against Iran’s power plants, bridges and other infrastructure in an expletive-laden post on Truth Social on Easter morning.

Commentary: Search Party is an unpredictable, layered comedy that subverts the genre and reinvents itself across all five seasons. Buckle up: You've never seen anything like this.

Mayor’s decision to appeal court order that the city must expand its housing voucher program has angered advocates for the homeless

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to appeal a court order that the city must expand its housing voucher program, despite his campaign pledge to implement it, has angered advocates for the homeless population.

Mamdani, who must figure out how to close a $5.4bn budget deficit, explained his decision by citing the cost of the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) program, which helps people staying in shelters or at risk of homelessness find permanent housing.

Under Anne Hidalgo – mayor for 12 years until last week – the French capital added bike lanes, cut traffic and reclaimed public space, but not without resistance

When Corentin Roudaut moved to Paris 10 years ago, he was too scared to cycle. The IT developer had biked everywhere as a student in Rennes but felt overwhelmed by the bustling French capital. Cars were everywhere. Cyclists had almost no protection.

But once authorities carved out space for a segregated bike lane on Boulevard Voltaire near his home in the 11th arrondissement, Roudaut returned to the two-wheel commute and did not look back.

• Adell stole homers from Raleigh, Naylor and Crawford

• Zach Neto hits solo home run for game’s only run

Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell is known for his power bat but he put on a show for the ages with his glove in the middle game of the three-game series with the visiting Seattle Mariners.

Adell performed three home run robberies in a single game on Saturday and will look to help the Angels win the series when they close the set against the Mariners on Sunday at Anaheim, California. Zach Neto hit his 10th career leadoff homer for the game’s lone run, but Saturday night was the “Jo Show,” where a right fielder sometimes chided for his defensive shortcomings put on one of the best outfielder performances of all time.

Plants, toads, and mushrooms "can all produce psychedelic substances," writes ScienceAlert. "And now their powers have been combined in one plant." [S]cientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant ( Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously. As interest grows in psychedelics as potential treatments for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the newly developed system could offer scientists a new way to produce these compounds for research purposes... [P]rogress in this field remains limited, in part due to regulatory restrictions, underscoring the need for more research. This creates practical challenges for scientists. "Traditionally, the supply of psychedelics relies on natural producers, mainly plants, fungi, and the Sonoran Desert toad," the researchers write. "Harvesting these organisms for their psychoactive compounds raises ecological and ethical concerns, being increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation..." [T]he team carefully monitored the plant's production of five psychedelic tryptamines: DMT originally from plants; psilocin and psilocybin from mushrooms; and bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT from toads. The modified tobacco plants were found to produce all five compounds simultaneously. The article points out that the researchers "also took it a step further." By tweaking the enzymes they were able to "produce modified versions of the compounds that do not naturally occur in plants, and which may also have therapeutic value."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Donald Trump will claim rescue as a triumph but 48-hour drama should be a caution against launching ground operation

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump will inevitably claim the rescue of the second crew member of the downed F-15 fighter as a propaganda triumph, though the 48-hour drama is a reminder that an undefeated Iran is able to fight back and inflict costs on the US.

It also ought to be a caution for a White House still contemplating whether to launch a ground operation in Iran to seize an island in the Persian Gulf – particularly if there a serious ambition to extract Iran’s highly enriched uranium from deep underground.

Here are some highly rated series to check out, plus a look at what's new in April.

Human brains are designed to detect faces as quickly as possible, which can lead to the perception of ‘false faces’

Faces: we see them in clouds, electrical outlets and even a $28,000 toasted sandwich said to look like the Virgin Mary.

Known as face pareidolia, seeing faces in inanimate objects or patterns of light and shadow is a common phenomenon.

The FCC’s sweeping ban applies to the sale of virtually every new Wi-Fi router. Without regular updates, yours might turn into a pumpkin by 2027.

The Austrian Hospice urges groups of Christian pilgrims to book 16 months ahead. One night this week, a receptionist warned a Post reporter she would be the only guest.

Even the greatest golfers can wilt in pursuit of the Green Jacket – Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Tommy Fleetwood try to explain its special aura

They say the Masters is all about tradition. One involves the sense of trepidation that collides with excitement as the finest golfers in the world take to Augusta National. Rory McIlroy, now a Masters champion, was scared to take a divot when first taking to the Georgia venue. “For my first two or three times, it kind of felt like I was in a museum,” says Xander Schauffele.

Some visibly wilt under an intimidation provided by a course that is picture perfect. It is like the dazzling princess is concealing an axe.

One of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance is now the subject of the first comprehensive exhibition of his work ever in the United States, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Immigration agents have spread into rural western Wisconsin, taking dozens of people from towns in more politically conservative areas

The Mexican restaurant where multiple workers were taken in February still sits dark, across the road from a travel plaza where people were also arrested by federal agents.

An Ecuadorian market in a nearby town targeted by immigration agents is back open again, with a sign on the door telling people to ring the bell before entering.

Concerns raised over minors placed in adult detention centres since removals began under scheme in September

More than 70 children from various conflict zones whose ages were disputed by the Home Office have been held in detention centres in the UK in preparation for forced removal to France under the government’s “one in, one out” scheme, research shows.

The one in, one out initiative means each small boat arrival can be forcibly returned to France in exchange for another person – who has not attempted the crossing – being brought to the UK legally.

Buzzy workplace trends all point to the same thing: avoiding work while still collecting a paycheck

There’s another hot trend in the workplace – microshifting, and it’s about to revolutionize the workday by breaking the traditional 9-to-5 into short, flexible and non-linear bursts of activity rather than a continuous 8-hour stretch. Microshifting allows for a better work-life balance. Why not do a yoga class or pop to the shops during work hours? I mean, what is “work” anyway?

Like bare minimum Mondays, where workers recuperating from weekend hangovers allow themselves to accomplish the least amount the day after, or coffee badging, which involves taking the time out of the workday to protest an employer’s in-office requirements by driving into the office, swiping your badge, having a coffee, then taking more time out of the workday to drive back home, it used to have another name, as the Guardian noted earlier this year: “Taking the piss.”

If you’re using Windows or macOS and have Adobe Creative Cloud installed, you may want to take a peek at your hosts file. It turns out Adobe adds a bunch of entries into the hosts file, for a very stupid reason.

They’re using this to detect if you have Creative Cloud already installed when you visit on their website.

When you visit https://www.adobe.com/home, they load this image using JavaScript:

https://detect-ccd.creativecloud.adobe.com/cc.png

If the DNS entry in your hosts file is present, your browser will therefore connect to their server, so they know you have Creative Cloud installed, otherwise the load fails, which they detect.

They used to just hit http://localhost:<various ports>/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.

↫ thenickdude at Reddit

At what point does a commercial software suite become malware?

Archaeologists, residents and government officials talk about how uncovering and preserving centuries-old sites and artifacts in Israel and the West Bank also serves to highlight contemporary disputes over ownership rights, and concerns about history being erased.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was concerned about Kanye West's planned appearances at a London festival, given the rapper's past antisemitic remarks.

No injuries were reported and a suspect was not located following a search of the area, the Secret Service said.

The Emmy-winning co-creator of "Schitt's Creek" talks about his new sitcom, "Big Mistakes," the story of a New Jersey pastor and his sister who fall into a relationship with organized crime.

Two Premier League teams, both fighting relegation threats, face off for a place at Wembley.

Trump gives further details on rescue and threatens to bomb infrastructure if strait of Hormuz is not reopened

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued from an Iranian mountain by US commandos overnight, ending a two-day search after the warplane crashed in south-west Iran.

The crew member, a colonel and weapons systems officer, had been wounded but was successfully rescued from a mountain hideout by US special forces, Donald Trump first announced in a social media post soon after midnight.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

This week’s replies: has a call for restraint from an authority figure ever put a stop to war?

I always say please and thank you to my Alexa. Why is this? I am sure it doesn’t care. Is it worth being polite to artificial assistants? Alison Williams, Toronto

Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.

Our survey finds that 20% of 2024 Trump voters are considering abandoning Republicans in 2028. But the picture isn’t rosy for Democrats either

A new survey offers some novel insight into Trump’s corroding coalition.

The survey, which I (Abbott) conducted with the scholar and author Joan C Williams, sampled about 1,940 Trump voters and captured the attitudes of the broad coalition that brought Trump to the White House in 2024. Respondents were asked if they intended to vote Republican in the 2028 presidential election and, in particular, their views on immigration – Trump’s strongest issue.

Jared Abbott is the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics. Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623

Elections seem top-of-mind for the Maha movement as key polling indicates anti-vaccine views are a liability

US health officials appear to be shying away from voicing negative views of vaccines in public as November’s midterm elections loom and key polling indicates anti-vaccine views are a liability.

Health officials have made unprecedented changes to routine vaccine recommendations in the past year – slashing one-third of the US childhood schedule, including the recommendation for hepatitis B immunization at birth. But even before a federal judge essentially invalidated these moves, officials haven’t championed their dramatic changes after Donald Trump’s pollsters recommended veering away from anti-vaccine ideology ahead of the midterms.

Trump’s venal persona and his war on Iran will do untold damage to America’s ability to make a positive difference in the world

Early one Sunday morning in the summer of 2003, I drove into the center of a little South African beach town on the Indian Ocean to pick up the Cape papers. Local news agents still employed the English custom of putting front pages on A-frame stands on the sidewalk. It was during the first months of the Iraq war, and from two blocks away, I could see the headline, in big block type: “WHY BUSH IS WORSE THAN BIN LADEN.”

It was disheartening to see – especially so far from home – but it did correspond to something familiar: American favorability around the world tends to swing sharply with wars (especially ones America starts) and who the US president is. Within weeks of the American attack, the international support the US had after 9/11 was squandered.

EAMON BONSALL
Opinion Columnist

As someone who only recently developed an interest in horror media, I once believed that anything under the thriller umbrella was just the same story retextured with different special effects and a shiny new camera. 

However, my first experience with horror movies changed this idea for me. In 2023, during my junior year of high school, I rented a movie called “Us,” written and directed by Jordan Peele.

Peele’s film changed everything for me. In the movie, a mother goes on vacation with her husband and children, and chaos ensues shortly after they arrive. While some may see it as a simple psycho killer movie, depth and cultural context are layered beneath the surface.

The film delves deep into the pains of everyday life for the underprivileged. To the viewer, the film asks: if you had one opportunity to change your circumstances, however reprehensible it may be, would you take it? 

As humans, we are victims of our own envy. We are also victims of terror at the idea that our entire lives would change if we had just made one different choice. Peele’s “Us” exposes this fear to the audience and forces us to confront it — that our lives may be better if we had taken a parallel course.

To provide a more current example, I recently watched the award-winning film “Sinners,” written and directed by Ryan Coogler. The film explores twin brothers Smoke and Stack as they try to make a living in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow era. 

While the film explores a relatively well-known villain trope (vampires), the cultural backdrop of “Sinners” creates a rich story of the prejudice and disenfranchisement African Americans faced after slavery was abolished in the United States.

A beautiful film visually, the plot is also perfectly orchestrated, accurately portraying the trials and tribulations of people of color in the South during the early 1800s. At the beginning of the movie, Smoke and Stack aim to escape from a life of crime, and by the end, their only obstacle is to survive. 

Oftentimes, the horror genre is awarded little to no recognition in the Academy Awards. “The Silence of the Lambs” is the only horror film to have won Best Picture, although others have been nominated. 

Hopefully, with the record-breaking success and nominations of “Sinners,” maybe the academy will be more open to recognizing horror/thriller films and all of the nuances that they introduce. 

It’s difficult to use the Academy Awards as a barometer for what makes a good movie, as the academy has long been criticized for a lack of diversity and choice of winners. Yet, it’s undeniable that the academy’s influence still makes its way down to the general audience, opening them up to new film experiences. 

Unfortunately, the lack of acknowledgement in the horror genre also permeates the literary scene. Horror novels, while not exactly appropriate to teach in grade school, are important to study just as much as any other genre. 

Some would argue that the core purpose of literature is to elicit a reaction from the reader. Comedy novels make us laugh, dystopian novels make us feel better about our own lives and horror novels inspire fear. 

“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley is one of the few widely recognized novels in the horror genre. “Frankenstein” is about our ability as human creatures to go too far with our ambition. It’s a truly deep and important novel to discuss, but it’s not the only one worthy of discussion.

One example of this is Megan Giddings’ debut novel, “Lakewood.” The story revolves around Lena Johnson, a young black woman who takes a lucrative research position in the hopes of providing for her family, only to find out that the experiments are not what she expected. 

“Lakewood” is not only an extremely well-written novel, but also a social commentary about the medical mistreatment of Black people in the U.S. Giddings uses fear as an instrument to put the reader in the mind of Lena, experiencing the pain of many mistreated Black patients. 

The main reason why these novels and films aren’t awarded the same appreciation as other genres is the implication of horror media. Many see the genre as a cheap scheme, when it is actually the literary and cinematic embodiment of our deepest, darkest terrors right in front of our eyes.

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.

Exclusive: Animal welfare charities ‘bitterly disappointed’ UK government plans to backtrack on manifesto promises

• This article contains an image of a duck being force-fed that some readers may find upsetting

The UK government is to break a manifesto commitment to ban foie gras imports, and has declined to stop fur imports, after the EU made these red lines in its discussions for a trade deal.

Animal welfare charities say they are “bitterly disappointed” that ministers are failing to use powers granted by Brexit to restrict the import of these “cruel” items.

Nu Stadium’s first game of any kind saw the South Florida club accomplish a long-held goal barely under the deadline

Lionel Messi may have scored, captained the side and had a quarter of the new building named in his honor, but this was unmistakably Inter Miami co-owner Sir David Beckham’s night.

The inaugural game at Nu Stadium in Miami – an entertaining 2-2 draw with Austin FC – was the culmination of the former England captain’s arduous, thirteen-year odyssey to first establish an MLS team in Miami, then fill it with superstars, win major honors and, critically, build a world class arena for the team to play in.

No injuries reported and no suspect found after a search of park and surrounding area, agency says

The US Secret Service said on Sunday it was investigating reports of overnight gunfire near Lafayette Park, which is across the street from the White House.

No injuries were reported and no suspect was found after a search of the park and the surrounding area after midnight, the agency said in an online post.

• Former world champions may finally meet in the ring

• Eddie Hearn says Joshua is ready for fight after car crash

Deontay Wilder called out Anthony Joshua for a long-awaited matchup between the former heavyweight champions, after Wilder edged Derek Chisora to clinch a split-decision victory in London on Saturday.

Wilder came face to face with Joshua as he walked past the Briton after the fight. The two fist-bumped, and the American said: “Let’s do it. It wasn’t a few words, I dapped it up with him and I said, now let’s get it on. I’m ready for whoever, [as] long as these guys are in the heavyweight division, I am here. You can call me Mr Clean, because I want to clean up the whole division. The division is nothing without Deontay Wilder.”

The service marked the family's first appearance together since the arrest of former Prince Andrew.

Walker Smith, 54, who worked for retailer for 17 years, says he grabbed bag from thief before they escaped

A Waitrose employee of 17 years has described his devastation after being sacked for stopping a shoplifter who had ransacked a display of Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.

Walker Smith, a shop assistant at a branch of Waitrose in Clapham Junction, south London, was going about his normal duties when a customer stopped him. “They told me someone had filled up a Waitrose bag with the eggs,” he said.

Commentary: NASA is sending four astronauts farther into space than any humans have ever traveled. But there's a much deeper subtext about what it all means.

A U.S. crew member who went missing when an F-15E fighter jet was shot down over a remote area of Iran has been rescued by U.S. forces.

Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Easter Mass as pontiff, urging hope against the violence of war.

The following is the full transcript of an interview with Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, which will air on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on April 5, 2026.

Wellll, no dice... New thermistors in, board on the balcony for a few hours at +6 C and almost immediately triggered the same fault. Battery temp at that moment +11 C.

If anyone has some more pointers or measurements to take to narrow it down, please let me know. I'll be disassembling it again today or tomorrow :(

Also, any working BMS on offer?

Thanks!

The chatbots' answers may not always be right, but they can let you know what problems to watch out for.

The most affordable Samsung and Google flagship models are closer than ever, but the $100 price difference does make for a few key differences. Here's how they stack up.

Letters to US agency raise concerns over tech firms’ plans to use reflective satellites and expand numbers in low Earth orbit

Proposals to deploy reflective mirrors and up to 1m more satellites in low Earth orbit could have far-reaching consequences for human health and ecosystems, leading sleep and circadian rhythm researchers have said.

Presidents of four international scientific societies representing about 2,500 researchers from more than 30 countries are among those who have raised concerns in letters to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Ministry clarifies clause affecting those up to age 45 that is part of legislation that came into effect in January

A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has caused uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime.

The legislation, which went into effect on 1 January, aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription.

"Canonical is no longer pretending that 4GB is enough," writes the blog How-to-Geek, noting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS "raises the baseline memory to 6GB, alongside a 2GHz dual-core processor, and 25GB of storage..." Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) set the floor at 1GB — a modest ask when it launched more than a decade ago in 2014. Then came the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) that pushed the number to 4GB, surviving quite well in the era of 16GB being considered standard for mid-range laptops.... Ubuntu's new minimum requirement lands in an interesting spot when compared against Windows 11. Microsoft's operating system requires just 4GB RAM, although real-world usage often tells a different story. Usually, 8GB is considered the sweet spot to handle modern apps and multitasking. The blog OMG Ubuntu argues this change is "not because Ubuntu requires 2GB more memory than it did, but more the way we compute does." it's more of an honesty bump. Components that make up the distro — the GNOME desktop and extensions, modern web browsers (and the sites we load in them) and the kinds of apps we use (and keep running) whilst multitasking are more demanding... The Resolute Raccoon's memory requirements better reflect real-world multitasking. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS can be installed on devices with less than 6GB RAM (but not less than 25GB of disk space). The experience may not be as smooth or as responsive as developers intend (so you don't get to complain), but it will work. I installed Ubuntu 26.04 Beta on a laptop with just 2 GB of memory — slow to the point of frustration in use, but otherwise functional. If you have a device with 4 GB RAM and you can't upgrade (soldered memory is a thing, and e-waste can be avoided), then alternatives exist. Many Ubuntu flavours, like Lubuntu, have lower system requirements than the main edition. Plus, there's always the manual option using the Ubuntu netboot installer to install a base system and then built out a more minimal system from there.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week's guests include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland and Timothy Broglio, who heads the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA.

The No Kings protests affirmed widespread opposition to Trump’s actions. As the midterms approach, we have an opportunity

Last weekend, millions of us once again affirmed the foundation of the common good.

Across America, people showed their solidarity – in opposition to Trump’s ill-considered war in Iran, with immigrants being targeted by ICE and border patrol agents, with current and former public officials whom Trump is prosecuting, with the students and universities whose freedom to learn and speak continues to be threatened by Trump, in favor of the earth and stopping climate change, and with every American who’s determined to reject dictatorship.

Target vulnerable Republican senators and House members. Either get them to switch parties or become independents who caucus with Democrats, or flip their seats.

Republican majorities are razor-thin in both chambers, and some Republicans who represent purple districts and states are struggling to keep their Republican supporters behind them. (They’re also struggling with their own consciences in continuing to support Trump’s authoritarian fascism.)

Begin organizing and mobilizing now to get out the vote for November’s midterm elections – aiming for Democratic takeovers of both chambers of Congress by wide margins, which will severely limit what Trump can do after January 2027.

The key will be to get out the vote. Make a plan. Use phone trees. Write postcards. Arrange transportation for people who need it.

Root out and challenge any Trump Republican attempt to intimidate likely Democratic voters or manipulate the election process.

It’s important that neither Trump nor his state lapdogs diminish the turnout of likely Democratic voters in the weeks leading up to the November midterms – by stationing federal agents near polling places, interfering with the counting or certifying of ballots, or altering laws and rules to make it harder to vote.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK

Prosecutors say Anthony Odiong exploited his parishioners’ emotional dependency to engage in sexual conduct with them

A Roman Catholic priest with ties to Texas and south-east Louisiana and criminally charged with abusing his position as a clergyman to pursue sex with three spiritually vulnerable female congregants faces being taken to trial on all of those cases at once.

The Texas district attorney’s office prosecuting Anthony Odiong filed a motion seeking to consolidate the three cases in late March, ahead of a trial date that the Guardian understands has tentatively been set for 4 May. Prepared by McLennan county first assistant district attorney Ryan Calvert, the motion notes that Texas state law allows “a defendant [to] be prosecuted in a single criminal action” if the crimes alleged “are connected or … are the repeated commission of the same or similar offenses”.

Man working for V2X died in night attack as five sources say they are being placed in harm’s way

A man employed by the US defense contractor V2X has been killed in a drone attack on Erbil airbase, amid concerns from colleagues that they are being placed in harm’s way and pressured to remain in Iraq despite security risks, five sources said.

The worker, from Kenya, died in a night attack in his sleeping quarters on the base on 24 March. Another five workers were injured. They are from Kenya and India, and are among a group of about 45 workers employed by V2X who have remained on the base. One of the workers is in a critical condition with severe burns, sources said.

In April 1976, the flawless Watergate film premiered in Washington – cast members and reporters share their memories of ‘the granddaddy of journalism movies’

The rustle of a notepad. The click of a pen lid. On a floral-patterned sofa sits Dustin Hoffman with long hair, big collar and a lean and hungry look. Opposite is Jane Alexander, wearing a blue button-down dress, cornered and nervous in the glow of a table lamp. In this taut, claustrophobic acting masterclass, no detail is too small.

“The makeup artists ran in because the sweat was pouring off Dustin’s face,” Alexander recalls with a laugh. “Gordon [Willis, cinematographer] said, ‘Don’t touch that, I’m lighting off his sweat!’ I love that.”

This updated Instax adds a self-timer, but otherwise, it keeps it simple and inexpensive for those who want to dip their toes in instant film photography.

The energy crisis sparked by the war is making some countries consider ramping up their use of dirty fuels

Not two months in office, as the price of west Texas crude approached $14 a barrel, Jimmy Carter, then president, donned a cardigan to speak candidly about his strategy to face the permanent energy shortage he saw in the nation’s future.

His “fireside chat” is mostly remembered for asking Americans to lower the thermostat to 65F(18C) in the daytime and 55F at night, an idea that didn’t go down too well in the bitter winter of 1977.

Average traditional funeral now costs £4,623, up 1.3% since January, says report from Pure Cremation

The war in Iran is pushing up the cost of living in the UK but it is also driving up the “cost of dying” as higher gas prices feed through to funerals.