News Reel

Naturalist says he has been ‘overwhelmed by greetings’ as milestone is marked with event at Royal Albert Hall

David Attenborough said he had been “completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings” for his centenary on Friday and thanked wellwishers “most sincerely”.

The naturalist said he had hoped to celebrate his 100th birthday quietly. Instead, the milestone will be marked with a live event at the Royal Albert Hall broadcast on BBC One, featuring music from his programmes as well as stories and reflections from public figures and leading advocates for the natural world.

In a recorded audio message shared on Thursday night, Attenborough said: “I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas.

Jeremiah Manele toppled after months of political upheaval in the nation seen as one of China’s closest partners in the Pacific

Solomon Islands prime minister Jeremiah Manele lost power in a no-confidence vote in the South Pacific country’s parliament, ending months of political uncertainty.

Parliament was adjourned to allow the governor general to make arrangements for the election of a new prime minister.

First results in England expected shortly, while Scottish and Welsh parliament results are due from midday

• 2026 election results: latest from local, Scottish and Welsh votes

We’re getting statements from some of the political parties now as we wait for results.

For the Conservatives, party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said:

We have run an energetic and positive campaign, showcasing that we have a clear plan to get Britain working again and that we have the team to deliver it... We know that so soon after a historic general election defeat and contesting wards won during the Party’s polling highs, that this will be a difficult set of elections for us. But we will continue to rebuild and to show the public that we have changed, to demonstrate that only this new Conservative party is a credible alternative.

People are deeply disappointed with a Labour government that has been too timid to fix the country, but they are also appalled by the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage’s Trump-style politics. While those on the extremes of the right and the left want to burn everything down, Liberal Democrats want to fix what’s broken. Every Liberal Democrat local champion elected today will fight tirelessly for the communities they serve.

I’ve travelled across England and Wales and I’m hearing the same everywhere I go – confidence that we will win more councillors than ever before. The news from the doorstep is that we will be taking seats from not just Labour but the Tories and Lib Dems too, from all across the country. Voters are responding to the fact that Greens are the only party taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously, with real plans to cut bills, reduce rents and provide genuinely affordable homes, as well as tackling the climate and nature crisis.

Throughout this election, we have heard a clear appetite for change. People want a government that will stand up for Wales and focus relentlessly on the key issues affecting their lives. People have told us they have been inspired by Rhun ap Iorwerth’s leadership and driven by a desire for a positive alternative to Reform UK’s chaos and division.

Trump says truce ‘is going’ despite exchanges of fire but threatens to hit Iran ‘a lot more violently’ if it doesn’t quickly agree to deal; Iran accuses US of violating ceasefire

The European Union is set to tell airlines the impact from the Iran war on tourism is not yet severe enough to justify emergency measures for the sector, draft EU guidelines seen by Reuters showed.

“The current situation does not point to the need for dedicated measures for the tourism sector, unlike during the COVID-19 crisis,” said the draft EU guidelines, which the European Commission is due to publish on Friday.

Republican senator Brent Taylor announces run for Congress in redrawn ninth district, challenging incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen

• Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district

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Following Marco Rubio’s closed-door meeting with Pope Leo XIV, the state department said that the pair discussed the “situation in the Middle East and topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere”, according to a readout from spokesperson Tommy Pigott.

“The meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,” he said.

Donald Trump says the ceasefire remains in place despite the strikes, with Iranian TV saying the situation is ‘back to normal’

The United States and Iran exchanged fire late on Thursday in the most serious test yet of their month-long ceasefire.

Iran accused the US of violating the ceasefire by targeting two ships at the strait of Hormuz and attacking civilian areas, as the US insisted it struck in retaliation.

Spencer Pratt has said he was compelled to launch his unlikely mayoral run after his home was destroyed in last year's devastating Los Angeles wildfires.

As President Trump again voiced optimism that Iran will "make a deal" to end the war, Tehran declared itself the regulator of Strait of Hormuz shipping.

Tennessee Republicans earlier Thursday approved a measure to overturn the state's ban on mid-decade redistricting.

A clinical study from Korea shows that health monitoring on the Galaxy 6 watch can effectively address problems like vasovagal syncope.

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From devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales to councils and mayoralties in England, find out what happened in your area. The first results are expected at around midnight

• Latest news updates and analysis from election night

Norfolk police charge 39-year-old from Suffolk, who will appear in court later

A man has been charged after allegedly threatening Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor near his new home on the Sandringham Estate.

The former Duke of York was out walking his dogs when the incident occurred in Wolferton, close to his Marsh Farm property, shortly after 7.30pm on Wednesday, the Telegraph reported previously.

The IMF is warning that advanced AI-powered cyberattacks pose a serious threat to global financial stability. "IMF analysis suggests that extreme cyber-incident losses could trigger funding strains, raise solvency concerns, and disrupt broader markets," the lender warned in a new report. The report urged greater international cooperation and emphasized resilience, since breaches are "inevitable" -- particularly for emerging economies with weaker defenses. Agence France-Presse reports: The study's authors highlighted the risks posed by the highly interconnected nature of the global financial system, with advanced AI models able to "dramatically reduce" the time and cost of exploiting vulnerabilities. [...] The IMF warned that emerging and developing countries, "which often have more severe resource constraints, may be disproportionately exposed to attackers targeting regions with weaker defenses." The risks, the authors said, were systemic, cut across sectors and came with the threat of contagion, with the reliance on a small number of platforms and cloud providers likely to increase "the impact of any single exploited weakness." "Defenses will inevitably be breached, so resilience must also be a priority, specifically to limit how far incidents spread and ensure rapid recovery," the report said. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned last month that the global financial system was not ready for the cybersecurity threats posed by AI. "We are very keen to see more attention to the guardrails that are necessary to protect financial stability in a world of AI," she told CBS News, seeking global collaboration on the issue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three U.S. Navy destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz came under attack on Thursday, and the U.S. struck on two Iranian ports abutting the strait, putting into question an increasingly fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire.

As CNET's portable audio expert, I've reviewed dozens of Bluetooth speakers. Here are my current top picks for every budget based on sound quality, size, durability and battery life.

The “self-defense strikes” followed attacks on three American naval vessels, though none of the warships was hit, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

Three of the nation's major scholarly groups challenged the Trump administration's cuts to humanities grants.

CHARLOTTE MCQUILLAN
Development Officer

On May 7, shortly after 4 p.m., the university’s Canvas page crashed due to a cybercrime group, ShinyHunters. The group hacked into Instructure, the creator and holder of Canvas learning systems. The hackers left a message regarding the nature of the attack and threatened to release students’ private information.

“If any schools in the affected list are interested in preventing the release of their data, please consult with a cyber advisory firm and contact us privately at TOX to negotiate a settlement,” the message read. “You have till the end of the day by 12 May 2026 before everything is leaked.”

ShinyHunters has been active since 2019, becoming known for its large-scale data breaches.

Canvas has since removed the message from ShinyHunters, uploading its own statement that the website and app are under scheduled maintenance and that users should check back soon. 

In a statement provided to The Review, the university described the incident.

“We are aware of an unauthorized message appearing in Canvas tied to a nationwide cyber incident affecting Instructure, the company that operates Canvas,” the statement read. “The university will share further guidance and updates with the campus community when available.”

The university is one of thousands of educational institutions worldwide affected by this breach. Within the past week, many schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Oxford have been impacted. 

The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that “ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for breaching Instructure on May 3, reportedly compromising the data of hundreds of millions of users, including 306,000 Penn affiliates.”

The University of Pennsylvania was previously targeted by this group in the fall of 2025, when it released a variety of the school’s internal files.

“In February, a ShinyHunters spokesperson told the DP that Penn failed to pay a $1 million ransom to prevent the further release of stolen files,” the Daily Pennsylvanian reported.

At 5:00 p.m., the university’s information technologies department (UDIT) sent out an email stating that they are “aware of a reported security incident involving Canvas” and that UDIT is working to investigate and solve the issue with the vendor. 

They state that the incident did “not originate from University systems.”

While students and faculty wait for the site’s return, the university provided an additional site where the status of the investigation will be updated.

This website states that the university has been aware of the cybersecurity incident since May 1, and that the information at risk includes “names, email addresses, student ID numbers and messages among users.”

They urge students to be aware of phishing emails and to check for any further updates from the university.

Revocations will start on Friday for those who owe $100,000 or more, and then expand to those who owe $2,500 or more

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The US state department will begin revoking the US passports of thousands of parents who owe a significant amount of unpaid child support.

The department told the Associated Press on Thursday that the revocations would begin on Friday and be focused on those who owe $100,000 or more. That would apply to about 2,700 American passport holders, according to figures supplied to the state department by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The MatePad Pro Max is thinner than all its competitors -- but it might never come to the US.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman was sentenced to life in prison for the June 1 attack on demonstrators voicing support for Israeli hostages in Gaza.

On the Fedora forums, there’s a long-running thread about a proposal for Fedora to build a variant of the distribution aimed specifically at “AI”. The “problem” identified in the proposal is that setting up the various parts that a developer in the “AI” space needs is currently quite difficult on Fedora, and as such, a bunch of technical steps need to be taken to make this easier. Setting aside the “AI” of the proposal and ensuing discussion, it’s actually a very interesting read, going deep into the weeds about consequential questions like building an LTS kernel on Fedora, support for out-of-tree kernel mods, and a lot more.

To spoil the ending: the proposal has already been approved unanimously by the Fedora Council, meaning the efforts laid out in the proposal will be undertaken. This means that, depending on progress, we’ll see a Fedora “AI” Desktop or whatever it’s going to be called somewhere in the timeframe from Fedora 45 to Fedora 47. As a Fedora user on all my machines, I’m obviously not too happy about this, since I’d much rather the scarce resources of a project like Fedora goes towards things not as ethically bankrupt, environmentally destructive, and artistically deficient as “AI”, but in the end it’s a project owned and controlled by IBM, so it’s not exactly unexpected.

What really surprised me in this entire discussion is a post by Fedora Project Leader Jef Spaleta, responding to worries people in the thread were having about such a big “AI” undertaking under the Fedora branding causing serious reputational damage to Fedora as a whole. These concerns are clearly valid, as people really fucking hate “AI”, doubly so in the open source community whose work especially “AI” coding tools are built on without any form of consent. As such, Fedora undertaking a big “AI” desktop project is bound to have a negative impact on Fedora’s image. Just look at what aggressively pushing Copilot has done to Windows 11’s already shit reputation.

Spaleta, however, just doesn’t care. Literally.

As the Fedora Project Leader, I am absolutely not concerned about the reputational damage to this project that comes with setting up an entirely new output attractive to developers who want to make use of Ai tools.

↫ Jef Spaleta

I’ve been looking at this line on and off for a few days now, and I just can’t wrap my head around how the leader of an open source project built on and relying on the free labour of thousands of contributors says he doesn’t care about reputational damage to the project he’s leading. Effective and capable open source contributors are not exactly a commodity, and a lot of the decisions they make about what projects to donate their time to are based on vibes and personal convictions – you can’t really pay them to look the other way. Saying you don’t care about reputational damage to your huge open source project seems rather shortsighted, but of course, I don’t lead a huge open source project so what do I know?

In the linked thread alone, one long-time Fedora contributor, Fernando Mancera, already decided to leave the project on the spot, and I have a sneaking suspicion he won’t be the last. “AI” is a deeply tainted hype on many levels, and the more you try to chase this dragon, the more capable people you’ll end up chasing away.

The tariffs were put in place in February, days after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's previous round of sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs.

Trump sets Fourth of July deadline as he vents impatience at speed of EU’s implementation

Donald Trump has said the EU must ratify its trade deal with the US by 4 July or face “much higher” tariffs, after European officials fell short of agreement on the pact.

Trump said he spoke to the EU chief, Ursula von der Leyen, about the issue and, he posted on his Truth Social platform, “agreed to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday or, unfortunately, their Tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels”.

I turned to an expert for tips on how to make your dishwasher last longer.

In honor of World Password Day, Kaspersky researchers revisited their study on the crackability of real-world passwords and found that 60% of MD5-hashed passwords could be cracked in under an hour with a single Nvidia RTX 5090, and 48% could be cracked in under a minute. "The bottom line is that passwords protected only by fast hashing algorithms such as MD5 are no longer safe if attackers obtain them in a data breach," reports The Register. From the report: Much of the reason password hashes have become so easy to crack is password predictability. Per Kaspersky, its analysis of more than 200 million exposed passwords revealed common patterns that attackers can use to optimize cracking algorithms, significantly reducing the time needed to guess the character combinations that grant access to target accounts. In case you're wondering whether there's a trend to compare this to, Kaspersky ran a prior iteration of this study in 2024, and bad news: Passwords are actually a bit easier to crack in 2026 than they were a couple of years ago. Not by much, mind you -- only a few percent -- but it's still a move in the wrong direction. "Attackers owe this boost in speed to graphics processors, which grow more powerful every year," Kaspersky explained. "Unfortunately, passwords remain as weak as ever." "This World Password Day, the main message ought not to be to the users, who often have no choice but to use passwords anyway, but to the sites and providers that are requiring them to do so," said senior IEEE member and University of Nottingham cybersecurity professor Steven Furnell. His advice is that providers need to modernize their login systems and enforce stronger protections, because users are often stuck with whatever security options they're given.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Machine learning is reshaping how ATLAS and CMS filter collisions in real time

May 7, 2026 — Smart and fast decision making is key when dealing with the onslaught of collisions at the LHC. At the High-Luminosity LHC (HiLumi LHC), the ATLAS and CMS experiments are expected to process detector data at rates corresponding to roughly a quarter of the 2025 global internet traffic. All in real time, as part of the first stages of event selection.

Artist’s rendition of a particle collision merged with an electronic circuit. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez/CERN.

Each second, billions of protons crash into one another at the LHC’s four collision points, generating a data volume so vast that it is not possible to store it in its entirety. Instead, the data has to be filtered in real time by so-called “trigger systems”. Dedicated algorithms estimate which collision events are potentially interesting, based on predefined characteristics, enabling about one in every 20 000 events to be read out and stored for further analysis.

In the quest to find cracks in the Standard Model of particle physics, or new phenomena entirely, researchers at the LHC’s CMS and ATLAS experiments are building smarter and computationally more powerful trigger systems, capable of exploiting more data in real time, into their detectors. Recently, solutions based on AI and machine learning have been employed to boost the physics reach of their triggers, opening a powerful new avenue for identifying potentially interesting or anomalous events.

Particle physicists were early adopters of neural networks and have been using machine-learning algorithms for data analysis since the 1990s. Until now, such tools have primarily been used to help identify traces left by particles in the detectors and to categorise the underlying physics processes. These methods have already managed to push the performance of data analysis significantly beyond what was envisioned when the LHC was starting up, allowing CMS and ATLAS to measure key processes – especially those associated with the Higgs boson – much sooner than expected.

But machine learning does more than improve performance: it opens the door to entirely new approaches to discovering unknown phenomena. One example is unsupervised anomaly detection. Instead of targeting specific particles or processes predicted by the Standard Model, this technique searches for any kind of disagreement between data and theory. These algorithms are trained on randomly selected LHC collisions, teaching them to encode “standard” events seen by the detectors, so that physicists can select potentially interesting events in an unbiased way.

“This is a game-changer for particle physics because it allows us to scour the LHC data for new phenomena without pre-judging what those phenomena might look like,” said Maurizio Pierini of CMS. “This is essential as we move into a precision era at the LHC and continue to squeeze the possible hiding places for new physics.”

If this technique is to be fully exploited, however, it cannot be limited to the small fraction of data selected by the CMS and ATLAS trigger systems. For truly unbiased anomaly detection, the algorithm must already be applied at the trigger level in order to avoid the risk of the trigger algorithms removing potentially interesting events before the analysis has a chance to find them. This presents a major challenge because the trigger system has to make a decision every time a new collision happens: 40 million times per second, or once every 25 nanoseconds. At such speeds, there is no time to run computationally intensive machine-learning algorithms. Or is there?

In 2018 CMS researchers developed an open source tool that translates machine-learning algorithms into the language (firmware) that controls field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). These are the custom programmable electronics used to take ultra-quick decisions in the first step of event selection, which is called the level-1 trigger. The team then developed strategies for “compressing” the algorithms, adapting them for implementation in the level-1 trigger electronics without significantly reducing their performance.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments are already implementing this approach in the level-1 trigger during data taking. This is providing researchers, for the first time, with a dataset to analyse that’s based on the new approach to triggering.

“Anomaly detection triggers are very different from our conventional triggers at the LHC and using them for a potential discovery will require us to develop entirely new data analysis techniques,” says Dylan Rankin from ATLAS. “These first datasets we are collecting at ATLAS and CMS are critical for understanding how to do this. The lessons we are learning are also vital for improving our models and techniques for future trigger development.”

Meanwhile, more advanced approaches are being developed, both within the experiments themselves and in the framework of the Next-Generation Triggers project. Launched in January 2024 as a collaboration between CERN’s Experimental Physics, Theoretical Physics and IT Departments, together with the ATLAS and CMS experiments, the five-year project has taken on much of the R&D effort. Largely driven by early-career researchers, it targets the challenges of the future High-Luminosity LHC, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2030.

The primary aim is to extract more physics information from the vastly increased data volumes by improving the selection of the most relevant collision events while efficiently rejecting background. These advances are central to enhancing the sensitivity of the experiments and, ultimately, to increasing the chances of uncovering previously unseen phenomena. To achieve this, they combine modern AI and machine-learning techniques with specialised hardware such as FPGAs, supported by tools such as hls4ml for deploying machine-learning models directly on trigger electronics, while also refining both guidance from theory and analysis tools for the study of ultra-rare events.

Together, these developments aim to ensure that, even at the extreme data rates of the High‑Luminosity LHC, potentially revolutionary signals can be identified rather than lost in the flood of collisions.

Source: Piotr Traczyk, CERN

The post CERN: Smarter Decisions at the Speed of Collisions appeared first on HPCwire.

Trump also issues new deadline for EU to implement trade deal terms before raising tariffs to ‘much higher levels’

The US trade court on Thursday ruled against Donald Trump’s latest 10% global tariffs, finding across-the-board tariffs were not justified under a 1970s trade law.

The US court of international trade ruled in favor of small businesses that challenged the tariffs, which took effect on 24 February. The ruling was 2-1, with one judge saying it was premature to grant victory to the small business plaintiffs.

As many Americans weigh the costs and benefits of building large data centers for artificial intelligence and other digital information, two New York Democrats urged the state to pause such projects, saying they can harm consumers and the environment.

In a March 5 op-ed in the Albany Times-Union, New York state Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Anna Kelles advocated for a moratorium, saying that proposed data centers in the state would require "9.5 gigawatts of electric load, which is approximately double the energy usage of all households in the state combined."

New York legislators are considering halting new data center development until there’s enough energy available to run the proposed facilities. Several other states have also considered such a pause, although none has enacted one yet; Democratic Gov. Janet Mills vetoed such a bill in Maine.

When we reached out to Krueger’s office, a spokesperson referred us to a spreadsheet published by the New York Independent System Operator, a state agency that monitors the reliability of the state’s power system and coordinates electricity distribution. The spreadsheet lists 35 proposed projects, offering a snapshot of potential future electricity demand. 

It confirms that the proposed projects’ electricity demand would be about 9.5 gigawatts when energy demand is highest. A subsequent version of the spreadsheet showed 11 gigawatts, but this was released several weeks after the legislators wrote their op-ed.

The status of the data center projects on the list varies widely; some have already cleared regulatory and construction hurdles while others have not. But regardless of their status, their collective 9.5 gigawatts of required electricity would not be double the amount of energy used by all households in New York state.

Krueger’s office said the estimate came from taking the average electricity used by the state’s residential customers each month (576 kilowatt hours) and then dividing that by 744, the number of hours in a 31-day month. This produced an average hourly consumption of about 0.8 kilowatt hours. They then multiplied that by 7.8 million, the number of households in New York state. This totaled 6.24 gigawatts of electricity used by New York state households.

The data centers’ estimated 9.5 gigawatts of consumption is not twice the 6.24 gigawatts from the calculation Krueger and Kelles provided.

Plus, there’s another wrinkle with the comparison, Kenneth Gilligham, an economist at the Yale School of the Environment, told PolitiFact New York. 

The 6.24 gigawatt figure refers to what households consume on average, while the 9.5 gigawatt figure refers to "peak consumption," which is the highest amount the data centers would need at their heaviest periods of use.

"We often care more about peak consumption and the possibility that it stresses the capacity of the grid than we do about total consumption," Gillingham said. 

To make a more apples-to-apples comparison, Gillingham cited data showing that residential electricity demand usually represents just more than one-third of overall electricity demand. Applying that fraction to the peak summer demand for New York state, which is roughly 30 gigawatts, would suggest a residential peak load of about 10 or 11 gigawatts. That’s more than the proposed 9.5 gigawatts from the proposed data centers, and about equal to the 11 gigawatts in the updated spreadsheet.

Still, Gillingham said, 9.5 gigawatts of additional electric load would be "enormous" and that the current electric grid is "woefully unprepared for such a dramatic increase in load."

Our ruling

Krueger said proposed new data centers in New York state would require "approximately double the energy usage of all households in the state combined."

When and if all of the proposed projects are operational, they would require a projected 9.5 gigawatts of power at peak times. But that’s not double the households’ usage. 

On average, households’ usage is about 6.24 gigawatts and about 11 gigawatts during peak times. 

Still, experts said the center’s energy needs would be significant.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

May 7, 2026 — As organizations adopt AI, many discover that their infrastructure struggles to keep up. Running AI in the cloud is an option, but the cloud can introduce privacy concerns and unpredictable costs. Upgrading on-prem infrastructure is another option, but supporting large GPU-accelerator platforms can require expensive redesigns in data center power and cooling.

AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe GPUs

The new AMD Instinct MI350 PCIe cards give your enterprise a third option: Leadership AI performance designed to fit the data center infrastructure you already own.

Performance That Drops into Your Existing Racks

Designed to help you prepare for the agentic AI era, AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards are dual-slot drop-in cards for standard air-cooled servers. They are built to deploy inference on premises within your current data center’s power, cooling and rack infrastructure. AMD Instinct GPUs in cost-effective PCIe cards round out the AMD AI compute portfolio, providing a range of options for your enterprise as it navigates its unique AI adoption curve.

The PCIe card form factor is an excellent choice for enterprises that need more AI computing power than CPUs can provide but aren’t ready to invest in dedicated GPU accelerator platforms. Available in air-cooled systems with up to eight accelerator cards, AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards are ideal for small, medium and large AI models for inference and RAG pipelines.

Don’t Just Scale AI. Scale ROI

AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards are engineered to deliver exceptional AI performance with excellent cost and leadership performance. Key features help increase performance, simplify deployment and reduce costs so you can move from evaluation to real outcomes:

• Native support for lower-precision MXFP6 and MXFP4, which deliver high throughput.
• Acceleration through sparsity support for most mainstream 8- and 16-bit precisions.
• Estimated 2,299 teraflops (TFLOPS) and up to 4,600 peak TFLOPS at MXFP4, the highest performance currently available in an enterprise PCIe card.
• Estimated 144GB of high bandwidth memory 3e (HBM3E) running at up to 4TB/s.
• Open ecosystem with low- and no-cost development stack options simplifies deployment and helps lower operating expenses.

Enterprise AI Software – Develop with Your AI Stack. Your Way, Today

AMD built Instinct MI350P PCIe cards with open standards for cross-platform interoperability. Their addition continues AMD’s strategy of enabling a fully open AI ecosystem and providing customer choice in enterprise environments.

Think of the AMD enterprise AI stack as a foundational component, integrating seamlessly with a broad ecosystem of AI software and tools. It includes the Kubernetes GPU Operator for full life cycle management, cloud-native AMD Inference Microservices and native support for AI frameworks such as PyTorch. All this enables you to migrate inference workloads with minimal code changes.

AMD provides the open-source AMD enterprise AI reference stack to AMD partners at no licensing cost. It offers greater code transparency and helps reduce operating expenses. When combined with AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards and partner-delivered solutions, the stack enables your organizations to get up and running quickly on-premises without ongoing per-token charges.

Native Acceleration for Enterprise AI Precision Levels

AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards support the spectrum of precision levels that enterprise AI models rely on most.

While lower-precision MXFP6 and MXFP4 offer maximized performance in pure TFLOPS and efficient model implementations, higher precision formats, like INT8 and BF16, benefit from the sparsity support on the AMD Instinct MI350P GPU to deliver efficient performance. Regardless of the precision, enterprises will find that AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards are designed to deliver maximum GPU throughput and reduced memory usage to help lower power and cooling demands.

Support for FP8, MXFP8 and MXFP4 is a major reason AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards can process today’s AI workloads within standard, air-cooled data centers.

Deploy Enterprise AI Where You are Today

With AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards, your enterprise can move quickly from bare-metal infrastructure to production-ready AI systems on a strong foundation. They enable you to migrate workloads without code rewrites, integrate with existing AI pipelines and scale with evolving workloads.

Adopting AI doesn’t mean rebuilding infrastructure from the ground up. With AMD Instinct MI350P PCIe cards, enterprises can run more models and serve more users within their existing data centers.

To learn more, visit the AMD Instinct web page.

About AMD

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing.

Source: AMD

The post AMD Launches Instinct MI350P PCIe Cards for Enterprise AI Inference appeared first on HPCwire.

The rover spent five days trying to free itself from the planet's first sword-in-the-stone moment.

Alarm broke out as online posts warned that California has only six weeks of oil left.

"According to testimony by experts during the State Energy Commission hearing today at the Capitol in Sacramento, California only has ‘enough’ oil and gas supply to meet demand for the next six weeks," said one May 6 X post. "There is no plan in place to supply more oil to California if the Straight of Hormuz (sic) does not re-open in the time, allowing oil tankers to deliver to #California, and therefore prices are expected to spike even higher."

Some news outlets also covered the testimony, amplifying this timeline. The coverage came days after news reports that the last tanker had arrived at the port of Long Beach, California. The tanker had traveled from the Middle East before Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The testimony referencing the six-week timeline was real; it was given by Siva Gunda, the member of the California Energy Commission whose duties include overseeing energy assessments, to a May 5 oversight hearing of the California Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee. 

But the X post left out context. Gunda did not mean the gasoline supply would drop to zero at the six-week mark — it’s simply the timeline by which experts can forecast with the most certainty. 

Every day brings the opportunity for more shipments to arrive and more crude oil to be refined into gasoline. As a result, the six-week window can be extended day by day, indefinitely. 

It’s a "constantly rolling" period, said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for the gasoline price tracker GasBuddy. 

Niki Woodard, a California Energy Commission spokesperson, told PolitiFact that the six-week time frame is analogous to weather forecasts, which become unreliable more than 10 days out. "The six-week forecast is what we can reliably predict," she said.

During the hearing, the commission released data showing that the amount of California’s gasoline supply is "within historical range." This measurement includes gasoline that is already in the state; projected crude oil imports during that period, including those from regions other than the Middle East; and projected refinery capacity. 

Woodard told PolitiFact that the forecast shows that the state’s diesel and gasoline inventory remains "sufficient to cover roughly four to six weeks of demand under normal operating conditions, assuming no major unplanned outages."

Woodard also said the commission "is working closely with refiners, and we are aware that they are identifying and using alternate routes and sources of crude. California refiners continue to receive shipments of crude oil."

Collectively, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — countries that could be affected by Iran war-related blockages — accounted for about 29% of California’s foreign oil imports in 2025. Most of the rest came from locales where the stability of the supply chain is not directly affected by the war, including Canada and several South American countries. 

In addition, about 40% of California’s oil comes from in-state or Alaska. Shipments from California and Alaska shouldn’t be affected by the war, either.

Two other panelists at the hearing — Severin Borenstein, a business administration and public policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley, and Skip York, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies — cautioned against misinterpreting the six-week comment.

Gunda "was not referring to state inventory levels or production of gasoline at California refineries," York told PolitiFact. "It was just simply that data the commission collects currently gives them a six-week view of inbound marine vessels." It does not mean that supplies will zero out at the end of six weeks, he said.

That said, the near-term supply could be pricey. 

Already, a gallon of gasoline in California costs $6.17, well above the (also elevated) $4.56 national average, according to the Automobile Association of America.

Over the next six weeks, California will "continue to have an adequate supply of oil — it will just be more expensive," said Hugh Daigle, a University of Texas-Austin petroleum and geosystems engineering professor. "I think a better framing would be to say that consumers can expect to see prices really start increasing in about six weeks."

Gunda said much the same at the hearing. "Based on what we're hearing from the industry, the pricing will move molecules to California, but it will come at a price, and that's something we need to closely watch," he said. 

Our ruling

An X post said, "California only has ‘enough’ oil and gas supply to meet demand for the next six weeks."

A California energy official said May 5 that California’s current and projected gasoline supply — barring unexpected developments — is sufficient to cover consumer needs for the next six weeks. That accounts for on-hand gasoline, crude oil in transit, and refiners’ capacity to turn that crude into gasoline once it arrives.

This doesn’t mean that the supply will drop to zero in six weeks. Six weeks is how far out officials confidently make forecasts. Every additional day can bring additional shipments and deliveries that extend the six-week availability window forward, potentially indefinitely.

We rate this statement False. 

As more people turn to chatbots for financial advice, experts say AI offers both pros and cons for retirement planning. Here's what to know.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for May 8, No. 592.

Relations between the United States and the Vatican are at a low point over President Donald Trump’s attacks on Leo, who is a leading critic of the war in Iran.

May 7, 2026 — Bluefors, a global leader in cryogenic cooling systems and quantum infrastructure, has joined the Chicago Quantum Exchange, strengthening CQE’s Midwest roots as the region expands efforts to build a quantum supply chain, expand innovation capacity, and scale a quantum workforce. Bluefors plays a vital role in all three areas.

The Helsinki-based company opened its first US-based Bluefors Lab in Chicago last year, with a 320-square-foot location at mHUB. That partnership was facilitated by The Bloch Quantum, an Economic Development Administration–designated Tech Hub, led by the CQE, that is competing for EDA funding to scale domestic US quantum manufacturing.

A new, second Bluefors Lab Service facility — 580 square feet of lab space at the  UChicago Science Incubator located at Hyde Park Labs — celebrates its opening on May 12. That space will include an an LD400He Measurement System and access to technical expertise.

“Bluefors is playing an important role in expanding the Quantum Prairie’s innovation capacity by providing early-stage startups, faculty, and students with opportunities to engage in hands-on experimentation,” said David Awschalom, the University of Chicago’s Liew Family Professor of Quantum Engineering and Physics and the founding director of the CQE. “Cryogenics also plays an important role in the quantum supply chain and will be a growing source of new jobs as the quantum sector accelerates, making Bluefors an important partner in driving the quantum economy. We look forward to collaborating with them to strengthen both our Illinois-Wisconsin-Indiana ecosystem and the global impact of quantum technologies.”

Cryogenic systems are critical to the development of quantum sensing, communications, and computing—technologies that often rely on temperatures close to absolute zero. As the quantum sector grows, cryogenics are expected to drive local jobs.

Bluefors shared insight on their work at an April 23 event as part of Quantum Across Illinois, an initiative to bring Illinois-based quantum companies and professionals to public educational institutions around the state during the month of April.

“Bluefors is excited to partner with Chicago Quantum Exchange to further support the well-established and growing quantum ecosystem in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. Chicago is known for being one of the trailblazers of quantum ecosystems and has long been a vibrant hub for quantum innovation, and we’re proud to empower partners through our cutting-edge Bluefors Labs at mHub and Hyde Park Labs. Through the Bluefors Lab, early-stage startups and universities get flexible access to cryogenic measurement systems enabling the kind of hands-on experimentation needed to help drive the quantum economy,” said Sauli Sinisalo, Vice President at Bluefors.

The Chicago Quantum Exchange is a Midwest-based consortium of universities, national labs, and nearly 70 industry, nonprofit, and international partners that is building a full-spectrum discovery-to-deployment quantum ecosystem that advances quantum research, workforce development, and economic innovation, paving the way for at-scale quantum technologies that improve everyday life.

Source: Chicago Quantum Exchange

The post Bluefors Joins Chicago Quantum Exchange to Support Quantum Infrastructure and Workforce Development appeared first on HPCwire.

Results of elections for councils in England, the Senedd in Wales and the Scottish parliament could transform Great Britain’s political landscape

• 2026 election results: latest from local, Scottish and Welsh votes

Polls have closed across England, Scotland and Wales for local, mayoral and parliamentary elections, with the first results to be announced within hours.

More than 30 million people across Britain were given the opportunity to vote on Thursday in what is widely seen as the biggest test for Keir Starmer since the 2024 general election. Results across three nations could fundamentally change the political landscape and could have repercussions for the prime minister.

Companies including Philips and Pandora say they plan to seek tariff reimbursements after the Supreme Court ruled Trump's sweeping duties illegal, with the U.S. potentially facing up to $175 billion in refunds. Many firms say tariffs hurt earnings, but CFO survey results suggest companies applying for refunds are unlikely to pass savings back to consumers through lower prices. CNBC reports: Companies across Europe are flagging disruption from tariffs as a factor contributing to a skewed earnings picture. "We will ask for a rebate of tariffs in line with the government policies," Roy Jakobs, CEO of healthtech firm Philips, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday morning. "We have been saying that of course we prefer a world without tariffs, without trade barriers, because we want to serve patients." Philips included the cost of tariffs within its full-year guidance and did not assume the impact from any potential refunds. Danish jeweler Pandora also announced its intention to apply for a rebate on Wednesday, with CEO Berta de Pablos-Barbier telling CNBC that tariffs were a "headwind" to earnings in the first quarter. "We have no news yet, so we cannot count on any of that refund," she told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe." "Let's wait and see." De Pablos-Barbier noted that the biggest factor impacting Pandora's profit this quarter is the cost of silver, which more than quadrupled in the last 18 months. She reiterated the firm's pivot from pure silver to platinum as a way of reducing costs. BMW, Daimler, Renishaw, Smith & Nephew and Continental all flagged tariffs as negatively impacting results in a slew of earnings updates on Wednesday, but the companies did not say whether they are applying for rebates. Businesses often bear some of the cost of tariffs, with some costs passing on to consumers through price hikes. Tariffs have had an overall inflationary impact on the economy, economists have told CNBC. Despite the refund process potentially covering more than 330,000 importers on roughly 53 million entries, per court documents, consumers are unlikely to benefit, according to the results of the latest CNBC CFO Council quarterly survey. Twelve of the 25 chief financial officers interviewed said their company plans to apply for tariff refunds, however, none intend to lower prices in response.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ryan Cohen selling tube socks and baseball cards after offering $55.5bn, although source of funds remains unclear

The CEO of GameStop, Ryan Cohen, said he was selling vintage video games, baseball cards, GameStop merchandise and a $14,000 pair of tube socks to help fund the company’s proposed $55.5bn acquisition of eBay.

His platform of choice? eBay, of course.

A council appointed by President Trump has proposed major changes to FEMA's disaster relief response.

New data shows artificial intelligence is the most cited reason for layoffs, even as economists debate whether it is truly displacing workers.

One person died and a dozen others were injured in the attack, during a June 2025 demonstration in Boulder

A man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty on Thursday to killing one person and injuring a dozen others in a 2025 firebombing attack on a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman looked down at a desk throughout the sentencing at the Boulder district court. He has meanwhile pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges for the attack last June.

The Claude maker needs all the computing capacity it can get, and SpaceX's controversial Memphis facility apparently has it.

American passengers who left the MV Hondius cruise ship in April are being monitored for hantavirus in at least five states, health officials said.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 8, No. 1,062.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 8, No. 1,784.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 8, No. 796.

joshuark shares a report from Linux Magazine: Microsoft has issued a warning that a vulnerability with a CVSS score of 7.8 has been found in the Linux kernel. The vulnerability in question is tagged CVE-2026-31431 and, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), "This Linux Kernel Incorrect Resource Transfer Between Spheres Vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and poses significant risks to the federal enterprise." The distributions affected are Ubuntu, Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, and Amazon Linux. This could also affect any distribution based on those in the list, which means pretty much every Linux distro that isn't independent. The flaw is found in the Linux kernel cryptographic subsystem's algif_aead module of AF_ALG. The problem is that a particular optimization has led to the kernel reusing the source memory as the destination during cryptographic operations. What this means is that attackers can take advantage of interactions between the AF_ALG socket interface and a splice() system call. Until patches are released, Microsoft is advising that the affected crypto feature should be disabled, or AF_ALG socket creation should be blocked. The vulnerability is also known as "Copy Fail," which has been shared on Slashdot and detailed in a technical report. The vulnerability affects almost every version of the Linux OS and is now being exploited in the wild. U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA has ordered all civilian federal agencies to patch any affected systems by May 15.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Both tournaments will have eight extra games

• Tournaments will expand for first time in 15 years

The NCAA announced on Thursday that it will expand its two March Madness tournaments by eight teams each next season, a long-expected move that will drop more games into the first week of the showcase without substantially changing its overall form.

The new, 76-team brackets will jam eight extra games – for a total of 12 involving 24 teams – into the front half of the first week of the men’s and the women’s tournaments. It will turn what’s now known as the First Four into a bigger affair that will now be called the “March Madness Opening Round”.

Prosecutors allege SPLC funneled over $3m to sources in extremist groups but legal experts say case is weak

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges related to allegations the organization committed fraud and conspired to money launder.

The 11-count indictment filed last month accuses the civil rights organization of committing fraud in connection to a program in which it paid informants to monitor rightwing extremist groups. The program no longer exists. The investigation is being handled by the US attorney for the middle district of Alabama, which includes Montgomery, the state capital.

When comparing these three accounts and the interest-earning potential over the next year, there's one clear winner.

Scary highlights include Smile 2, The Menu and A Quiet Place: Day One.

Whether your grad is heading to college or starting a new job, our CNET experts assembled a selection of thoughtful and practical gifts that will get them ready for their next chapter.

As Trump pushes for a deal with an Iranian regime he portrays as deeply fractured, analysts say power in Tehran may be shifting, but that doesn't mean disarray.

U.S. officials in at least five states — Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia — are monitoring symptoms of seven returning passengers.

Man, 69, is in intensive care in Johannesburg, while expedition guide Martin Anstee, 56, receiving care in Netherlands

• What is hantavirus?

Two Britons who were medically evacuated from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship are improving, global health officials have said.

A British passenger, understood to be a 69-year-old man, was taken to South Africa on 27 April and is receiving care at a private health facility in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Scientists around the world have recognized the massive potential of AI to handle some cognitive workloads and amplify the work of humans. But how do we integrate these digital breakthroughs in AI for science with the physical world of scientific laboratories, instruments, and experimental workflows? That is one of the big topics that will be explored at the SciFM 26 conference later this month.

Just as enterprises are looking to leverage large language models (LLMs) to handle various tasks, like software engineering, customer service, and marketing, scientific and engineering organizations are also eyeing LLMs and other foundation models to replicate or amplify human abilities to accelerate the pace of work in their fields.

We see this with the Department of Energy, which is spending $320 million this year on various AI for science and engineering projects as part of the Genesis Mission. We’re also seeing it with the Trillion Parameter Consortium, the group of DOE National Labs, universities, and industry partners that are pushing the boundaries in how AI can be used to accelerate the scientific workflow for projects like drug creation and materials discovery.

The general idea is to train scientific foundation models (SciFMs) and their agents to handle certain steps of the scientific process, like literature review, hypothesis creation, setup of experiments, execution of experiments, and data analysis. But what is the next step from there?

That’s the big topic that will be covered at SciFM 26, which will take place May 27 through 29 at the University of Chicago. The focus for the third year for the Conference on Foundational Models and AI Agents for Science will be on outlining the next phase of scientific AI, which is or “moving from models that analyze the physical world to systems that actively engage with it.”

Handling the AI transition from the digital world into the physical world is an important distinction, according to Argonne National Lab Senior Scientist Ian Foster, who is the chair of the SciFM 26 conference.

“You can now use these AI models to come up with interesting hypotheses with plans for testing hypotheses that are remarkably creative,” Foster told HPCwire. “You design a new material, you validate it the best you can computationally. But now does it actually behave as predicted? You need to perform physical experiments.”

While it’s important to do the modeling and simulation work and often less expensive, modeling and simulation sometimes does not give you enough data to determine whether the new material (or other field) has the characteristics necessary to continue the work, he said.

“Frequently you need to do physical experiments as well,” Foster continued. “For some things we just don’t have good modeling capabilities, like complex polymers. In other cases, your simulation capabilities have limited accuracy. Any computational chemistry code is an approximation to reality. So ultimately you want to be able to test things in physical settings.”

Those tests can be time-consuming and expensive, both from a facilities and human resources point of view. If AI for science remains solely in the digital realm and simply pushes the bottleneck to another part of the scientific workflow, then the potential benefits that we hope to get from AI for science may not be realized.

Ian Foster is the chair of SciFM 26

That is the area that Foster and his SciFM colleagues are exploring. By introducing more automation, robotics, and AI directly into the physical laboratory, those potential bottlenecks can be removed, or at least widened.

“The goal at SciFM 26 is to have conversations about what we need to be doing to dramatically scale up the this connection between AI and automated laboratories to enable that sort of missing link in the autonomous discovery ecosystem,” Foster said.

Foster, who is also a professor at the University of Chicago, will be introducing the first SciFM 26 keynote speakers on May 27 in a session titled “From Digital to Physical: The AI Transformation.” Other session titles, such as “What AI Cannot Yet Do for Drug Discovery, Protein Engineering, and Autonomous Biology,” hint at the gap that exists between AI’s great potential and the real world’s unforgiving nature.

The advent of humanoid robotics has the potential to transform some scientific workflows. Billions of dollars are being invested into developing advance robots that can move like humans. Getting these robots into the lab could potentially alleviate some of the testing bottleneck, Foster says.

“For many years, people have been building out dedicated experimental facilities that will do high throughput and run the same experiment on a thousand different samples,” he says. “But now, we’re starting to see people thinking, well, we’ve got these dexterous robots driven by these billions of dollars of money being invested in lab and home automation. Let’s maybe see if we can deploy them and dynamically reconfigure our experimental capabilities to ultimately send a humanoid robot into a lab to perform an experiment.”

Robots have advantages over humans. They work 24/7 and don’t require coffee breaks. They also are more resistant to workplace hazards, such as nuclear radiation. That’s important for some of the work that the National Labs do, Foster says.

Foster is looking forward to hearing about some of the advances being made by the national labs as well as industrial partners. For instance, Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli, who is an associate professor at MIT and the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Lila Sciences, will be delivering a keynote address on the work that Lila is doing to bridge the digital and physical worlds. Other companies working in the field, such as Future House, Dunia Innovations, and First Principles will also be at the conference.

There are still passes available for SciFM, although all the student sets have been taken. For more information, see the SciFM website at www.scifmconferences.org.

Feature image courtesy of SciFM

The post AI for Science and Autonomous Labs to Come Together at SciFM 26 appeared first on HPCwire.

A mortgage interest rate lock before the next inflation report is released could make sense now. Here's why.

Another month, another progress report, Redox, etc. etc., you know the drill by now. This past month Redox saw improved booting on real hardware by making sure the boot process continues even if certain drivers fail or become blocked. Thanks to some changes on the RISC-V side, running Redox on real RISC-V hardware has also improved. Furthermore, tmux has been ported to Redox, CPU time reporting has been improved, and Orbital, Redox’ desktop environment, gianed support for partial window pixel updating, which should increase UI performance.

On top of that, there’s a brand new web user interface to browse Redox packages (x86-64, i586, ARM64 (aarch64), and RISC-V (riscv64gc)), as well as the usual list of improvements to the kernel, drivers, relibc, and many more areas of the operating system.

Review: John Carney's latest film is a lighthearted exploration of fame, ambition and friendship. The music's pretty damn good, too.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wearables have really come full circle. The early Fitbits didn't have screens, but the move to smartwatches put a screen on everyone's wrist. Now, devices like Whoop and Hume are designed as data trackers first and foremost without so much as a clock. Google's newest wearable jumps on that trend: The Fitbit Air doesn't have a screen, but it does have a suite of health sensors that pipe data into the new Google Health app. And if you want, Google has a new AI-powered health coach in the app ready to tell you what that data means (maybe). The Fitbit Air itself is a small plastic puck about 1.4 inches long and 0.7 inches wide. It slots into various bands that hold the bottom-mounted sensors against your wrist. There's no display pointing upward, so the entire device is covered by the fabric or plastic of the band. It's a streamlined and potentially stylish look -- in uncharacteristic fashion, Google has plenty of colors and style options available, including a special-edition Steph Curry version. You may have heard chatter about Curry being seen teasing a new screenless Fitbit, and this is it. [...] The Fitbit app is getting a major makeover and a new name. An update in the coming weeks will transform that app into Google Health, featuring a new interface with a more extensive Material Expressive aesthetic and redesigned menus and tabs. You also won't see Fitbit branding in as many places -- the Fitbit Premium subscription will become Google Health Premium. Without a subscription, the app still does all the basic things, like tracking your health stats, automatically logging workouts, and showing it all in a pretty dashboard. With the Premium subscription, you get all the features from Fitbit Premium plus the new AI Health Coach. It's a chatbot, so you can ask it about any health or wellness topics, and the answers are grounded in your health data. The Fitbit Air launches May 26 for $99.99, includes a Performance Loop band, and comes with three months of the new Google Health Premium that replaces Fitbit Premium and adds Google's AI Health Coach. Meanwhile, Google Health Premium will cost $10 per month or $100 per year, though it's included with AI Pro or AI Ultra. Non-subscribers can still use basic tracking features. Ars also notes that when Google Fit shuts down later this year, users will need to migrate their data to Google Health.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most health and wellness influencers aren't healthcare professionals, the survey found.

A reverse mortgage could be a smart financial tool for senior homeowners this May. Here are three reasons why.

We've got all the details on how you can upgrade your monitor without paying full price.

Move comes days after supreme court ruling weakened Voting Rights Act protections against racial gerrymandering

• US politics live – latest updates

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.

The move cracks Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning.

Memory and chip suppliers are the Roadrunner, we're Wile E. Coyote and shortages are the anvil. Poof.

Case involves White House effort to censure the US senator over video urging service members to ‘refuse illegal orders’

A US federal appeals court at a hearing on Thursday appeared skeptical that the Trump administration could legally punish Mark Kelly, a Democratic US senator, over public remarks he made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders.

Members of a three-judge panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit criticized the government’s efforts to censure Kelly, a retired navy captain and Arizona Democrat, over more than an hour of questioning.

Weeks before her death, Annabel Rook, 46, from Stoke Newington, left her sister a voice message about Clifton George’s abusive behaviour

The co-founder of a social enterprise who was fatally stabbed by her partner said he was “on the warpath” shortly before she died, in a voice message that was played during a murder trial.

Clifton George, 45, is accused of murdering 46-year-old Annabel Rook during an argument at their home in north London last June.

Time for another Sun Ray blog post! I’ve had a few people email me asking for help setting up a Sun Ray server over the last few months, and despite my attempts to help them get it going there’s been mixed results with running SRSS on OpenIndiana Hipster 2025.10.

my Sun Ray server is still on an earlier OI snapshot, so I figured it was about time to try to actually follow the new guides myself.

↫ The Iris System

Ever since my spiraling down the Sun rabbit hole late last year, I’ve tried for a few times now to get the x86 version of OpenIndiana and Oracle Solaris working on any of my machines, exactly for the purposes of setting up a modern Sun Ray server. Sadly, none of my machines are compatible with any illumos distribution or Oracle Solaris, so I’ve been shit out of luck trying to get this side project off the ground. My Ultra 45 is sadly also not supported by any SPARC version of illumos or Oracle Solaris, so unless I buy even more hardware, my dream of a modern Sun Ray setup will have to wait.

Of course, virtualisation is an option for many, and that’s exactly what this particular guide is about: setting up OpenIndiana on a Proxmox virtual machine. I actually have a Proxmox machine up and running and could do this too, but I’m a sucker for running stuff like this on real hardware. Yes, that makes my life more complicated and difficult, and no, it’s not more noble or real or hardcore – it’s just a preference. Still, for normal people who pick up a Sun Ray or two on eBay for basically nothing, running OpenIndiana in a virtual machine is the smart, reasonable, and effective option.

I spent weeks testing popular at-home pizza tools. Here’s what I found was worth the money, no matter your budget

• The best nonalcoholic wines and nonalcoholic beers in the US

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

It’s never been easier to make pizza at home. And today’s pizza-making gear is more capable and approachable than you might think.

The price range for at-home pizza gear is as wide as the topping choices. On the simple, affordable end, there is the humble carbon-steel slab that slides into the oven you already own – it’s like a basic cheese pie.

In the UK? The best pizza ovens for every budget, garden and skill level – tested

Best budget pizza maker:
Baking Steel’s Baking Steel Original

Best mid-range pizza maker:
Ooni Volt 2 Indoor Electric Pizza Oven

Appliance giant slashes earnings forecast and hikes prices by 10% with another 4% spike planned

With the war in Iran and economic concerns putting pressure on consumers and how they spend their money, Whirlpool is having to adjust to Americans delaying big-ticket purchases while also raising prices to help stabilize its North American business.

The company known for brands such as KitchenAid, Maytag and its namesake, said that the Iran war led to a “recession-level industry decline” in America as consumer confidence collapsed in late February and March. Revenue dropped nearly 10% in the quarter as sales of major appliances in North America declined more than 7%.

Supercomputing on TACC systems reveals how DNA timing could transform crop resilience

May 7, 2026 — Maize serves as a vital model species for advancing our understanding of plant biology, yet many mysteries remain about the intricate processes governing how DNA works and organizes itself in the genome.

The research was published in the journal Plant Cell in February 2026.

A team of Florida State University researchers together with colleagues at North Carolina State University has made a breakthrough in understanding how DNA replicates in maize, uncovering the existence of two distinct sub compartments in the nucleus that hold genetic material.

This discovery not only advances the fundamental knowledge of plant genomics but may have broad implications for gene regulation and crop improvement.

“We’re beginning to uncover chromatin’s organization in plants,” said Hank Bass, senior author of the study. “We had suspected that these sub compartments might exist, but this was the first real proof we had of their existence.”

The paper was published in the journal Plant Cell in February 2026.

“Being part of this project and making a contribution to investigate the blueprint genome organization with respect to replication has been one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my scientific journey,” said Hafiza Sara Akram, the paper’s lead author and Bass’ former graduate student.

Foundations of DNA Replication and Chromatin Structure

DNA replication is a critical process that ensures every cell receives an exact copy of genetic material during cell division. The genome, organized within the nucleus, consists of DNA wrapped around proteins to form chromatin. Chromatin exists in two main forms: euchromatin, which is more accessible and transcriptionally active, and heterochromatin, which is more condensed and typically less active. The timing of DNA replication varies across these regions, with euchromatin usually replicating earlier than heterochromatin.

Understanding how chromatin structure influences the order and regulation of DNA replication is critical for unraveling how genes are controlled and how cells maintain their identity.

To investigate DNA replication in maize, researchers combined innovative genomics techniques with advanced 3D microscopy. High-throughput sequencing allowed the team to map replication events across the entire genome, while three-dimensional imaging visualized the physical organization of chromatin within the nucleus. This integrative approach provided unprecedented resolution in linking DNA sequence features with nuclear architecture and replication behavior.

How Supercomputing Accelerated Discovery

The alignment of sequencing data to a reference genome is computationally intensive.

Here, the challenge was twofold: maize has a large genome—two billion nucleotides, about two-thirds the size of the human genome—and is rich in repetitive elements, making alignment especially demanding.

Second, the key technique used in this work, Hi-C, requires large data volumes to achieve sufficient resolution—hundreds of millions of short reads per sample, totaling 1.3 billion reads for this study.

In addition to providing computational resources Stampede3, Corral, and Ranch, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin contributed the expertise to efficiently process this scale of data and the scientific insight to guide downstream analysis and translate aligned reads into biologically meaningful results.

“My involvement in this project grew naturally from my prior experience in Hi-C analysis and replication timing of plant genomes,” said Lorenzo Concia, research associate in TACC’s Life Sciences Computing group and a co-principal investigator on the project.

“I advised on key aspects of the Hi-C experimental design, data interpretation, and the computational strategies needed to process it at scale. It was exciting to see those methodological insights contribute to uncovering the two-compartment architecture of maize euchromatin described in this study.”

Key Findings: Two Distinct Euchromatin Sub compartments

The study revealed that maize euchromatin is not a uniform compartment as previously thought.

Instead, it is divided into two sub compartments, each exhibiting distinct replication timing and spatial organization. One sub compartment replicates early and is associated with highly active genes, while the other replicates later and shows unique structural features. This organizational complexity suggests a new layer of regulation in plant genomes.

The identification of euchromatin sub compartments with specialized replication timing provides important clues about how gene expression is controlled.

“Our findings indicate that the spatial and temporal regulation of DNA replication is tightly coupled to gene activity,” Bass said. “This could mean that manipulating replication timing may one day offer new ways to enhance crop traits or resilience.”

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS), Plant Genome Research Program, Award 2025811.

Adapted from a press release by Florida State University.

Source: Faith Singer, TACC

The post TACC: Scientists Uncover New Information on How DNA Works in Maize appeared first on HPCwire.

Apple could kill off the 256GB model amid climbing costs and short supplies.

Latest briefings float hope of basic deal that would keep peace and free shipping while further negotiations continue

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The US and Iran are close to a temporary agreement to halt the war in the Middle East, officials in Pakistan claimed on Thursday, as diplomatic activity gathered fresh momentum after a near breakdown of the current ceasefire earlier this week.

Officials on Islamabad said a very basic “interim” deal could be reached as early as this weekend and that Tehran was reviewing a US proposal.

Health officials have identified at least eight confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus tied to an outbreak on the M/V Hondius cruise ship.

Social Security benefits are legally protected from creditors, but only certain ones. Here's what's off-limits.

May 7, 2026 — A Chinese-led international team has released the largest-ever cosmological simulation, named “HyperMillennium,” offering scientists a powerful digital tool to explore cosmic evolution.

This simulation covers a vast cube with a side size of 12 billion light-years and uses 4.2 trillion virtual dark matter particles. By applying a technique called N-body numerical simulation, the team accurately recreated how large-scale structures in the universe evolved over 10 billion years. In simple terms, they built a virtual universe inside a supercomputer, starting from just after the Big Bang and following the pull of gravity step by step.

This image provided by National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) shows the simulated large-scale structure of the universe created by the largest-ever cosmological simulation, named “HyperMillennium”. Credit: NAOC/Xinhua.

This virtual cosmos allows researchers to “rewind time” and study how galaxies and other cosmic features formed. By adding physical models of galaxy formation, the simulation produces a detailed catalog of galaxy positions, brightness and other key traits. This provides theoretical support for research into dark matter and dark energy, and also offers strong support for new-generation galaxy survey programs, such as the China Space Station Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission.

“The simulation was completed with high force resolution and time accuracy and also made a breakthrough in computational scale. It allows scientists to study extremely rare, massive cosmic structures in fine detail while maintaining strong statistical power,” said Wang Qiao, a researcher at National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).

Such large-scale simulations demand enormous computing resources, and the research team used self-developed software called PhotoNs, designed specifically for China’s domestic supercomputers. After more than 10 years of work on algorithms and optimization, the team achieved efficient calculations using over 10,000 accelerator cards. The project consumed more than 100 million CPU core-hours and 10 million accelerator-card hours, and produced approximately 13 petabytes of raw and processed data.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin, a professor of the University of Texas at Austin, called the simulation a computational marvel that will help unlock secrets of dark energy and the early universe. He also noted that its unprecedented size and resolution make it a touchstone for research communities for years to come.

Volker Springel, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, said the simulation redefines the limits of numerical cosmology. He was “extremely impressed” by the team’s effort in realizing such an incredibly large and highly accurate simulation, which allows for new high-precision tests of the standard cosmological model.

The first research paper stemming from this project was recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. As a demonstration of the power of the simulation, the team compared simulation results with real observations of Abell 2744, a famous galaxy cluster about four billion light-years from Earth. The match was remarkable, down to the pixel level, confirming that the standard cosmological model works even in extremely complex environments like colliding galaxy clusters.

According to the NAOC, the first batch of simulation data has already been released to the global scientific community through the National Astronomical Data Center, a platform for astronomy research, education and data-driven applications.

Source: CAS and Xinhua News Agency

The post Chinese-Led Researchers Release Largest-Ever Cosmological Simulation appeared first on HPCwire.

Riyadh told White House it would deny access for operation to provide tankers military escort through strait of Hormuz

• Middle East crisis – live updates

A refusal by Saudi Arabia to allow the US to use its bases and airspace to provide a military escort for oil tankers passing through the strait of Hormuz lay behind Donald Trump’s decision to shelve the plan days after it had been launched.

Riyadh told the White House it would not allow its Prince Sultan airbase to be used to mount the operation billed as Project Freedom, which the US presented as the successor to the bombing campaign called Operation Epic Fury.

Agency says FBI director ‘followed all applicable ethical guidelines’ in giving out personalized bourbon bottles

The FBI said that agency director Kash Patel “followed all applicable ethical guidelines” after a report in the Atlantic alleged that he distributed customized bourbon whiskey bottles as gifts.

In an article published on Wednesday, the Atlantic described Patel as travelling with a stock of “personalized branded bourbon” that he allegedly hands out frequently to people around him.

A LinkedIn user in the EU is challenging Microsoft's refusal to provide a full list of profile visitors under GDPR Article 15, arguing that the data should be available for free because LinkedIn processes it and sells a more complete version to Premium users. Privacy group Noyb says the case could set a broader precedent over whether companies can monetize user-related data while denying access to the same data through GDPR requests. "Selling data to its own users is a popular practice among companies," Noyb data protection lawyer Martin Baumann said of the case. "In reality, however, people have the right to receive their own data free of charge." The Register reports: Take a look at the language of Article 15, and it's pretty clear: data subjects (i.e., users) have the right to a copy of any and all data concerning them that's been processed by the provider. A full list of profile visitors seemingly should fall under Article 15 data -- even if it's normally reserved for paying users and presented to them in a nicer way, it should still be accessible to free users who actually request it. [...] Noyb acknowledges there's a clear bit of legal fuzz stuck in this corner of the GDPR when it comes to premium service offerings. "If any business processes a person's personal data, this information is generally covered by their right of access under the GDPR," Baumann told The Register. "It does not matter that the business would prefer to sell the data to the data subject or that it would be harmful for their business model if they would." There's only one exception in Article 15 that would give LinkedIn an out, Baumann told us, and that's the last paragraph, which says a person's right to their data can't adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others. Were LinkedIn to argue that it had to protect the identities of people who visited a data subject's profile, they could have an excuse. But not a good one, in Baumann's opinion. "Since LinkedIn does provide information about profile visits to paying Premium members, it cannot consider that disclosing the data would adversely affect the rights of the visitors whose data is disclosed," the Noyb lawyer explained. "Otherwise, providing this information to Premium users would be unlawful too." What seems to be the sticking point here is where right of access begins and a company's right to make money off data they hold (data that was, ahem, supplied by users) ends. Baumann said he hopes this case can clear the legal air. "We expect a clarification concerning the fact that personal data that can be accessed when a user pays for it is also covered by their right of access," he explained. [...] Baumann said there are numerous other cases where similar legal clarification would be appreciated, citing the example of a bank that is unwilling to provide access to account statements in response to a GDPR request, but is happy to hand over similar data for a fee. "A precedent would be welcomed," Baumann said. A LinkedIn spokesperson told The Register: "Not only is it incorrect that only Premium members can see who has viewed their profile, but we also satisfy GDPR Article 15 by disclosing the information at issue via our Privacy Policy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prosecution says Rico Gedel attacked Ian Watkins in HMP Wakefield then handed homemade knife to Samuel Dodsworth

A prisoner accused of murdering the disgraced former Lostprophets singer told guards they “could be talking to someone famous” after stabbing Ian Watkins in the head and neck with a homemade knife, a court has heard.

Rico Gedel carried out the attack on Watkins, who was serving a 29-year sentence for child sexual offences, in his cell at HMP Wakefield, a high-security prison, on 11 October, Leeds crown court heard.

If you’re sick of Chrome OS on your Chromebook, or can find a Chromebook for cheap somewhere but don’t actually want to use Chrome OS, have you considered postmarketOS?

Since I was kind frustrated with ChromeOS, I decided to take a look at something that I knew supported my Lenovo Duet 3 for some time: postmarketOS. For those who don’t know, postmarketOS is an Alpine Linux based-distro focused in replacing the original OS from old phones (generally running Android) with a “true” Linux distro. They also seem to support some Chromebooks because of their unique architecture and, luckily, they support my device under the google-trogdor platform.

↫ kokada

PostmarketOS is aimed at smartphones primarily, but supports other formfactors just fine as well. The Duet 3 is one of the tablet-like devices it supports, and it seems most things are working quite well. In fact, judging by the postmarketOS wiki, quite a few Chromebooks have good support, and with Chromebooks being cheap and dime-a-dozen on eBay and similar auction sites, it seems like a great way to get started with what is trying to become a true Linux for smartphones.

The Ultimate Picture Palace opened in 1911 and is housed in a Grade II-listed building in need of renovation

The survival of one of the UK’s oldest independent cinemas is under threat while its landlord, the University of Oxford’s Oriel College, refuses to extend its lease to allow what its director says are vital renovations.

The Ultimate Picture Palace in east Oxford opened in 1911, and has entertained generations of students and residents, including the Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. It sells tickets for its 106 seats through an old-fashioned box office window to patrons queueing on the street, and its screen is behind a manually opened curtain.

President indicated that deal had materialised but truth was that Saudi Arabia had stopped US use of its bases

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When Donald Trump abruptly pulled the plug on “Project Freedom”, the scheme to open the strait of Hormuz, barely a day after it had been announced, he gave the impression that an opportunity for a peace deal had materialised that could not be missed.

To the surprise of nobody who has been following the US’s recent adventures in geopolitics, Trump’s spin concealed a lot of the underlying reality. It turns out that Trump suspended Project Freedom after Saudi Arabia stopped the US military from using its bases or airspace to carry out the operation, which involved giving air cover to commercial shipping sailing through the strait.

Health body gives briefing as Spain says ship will not dock in Tenerife but be anchored offshore and passengers will have no contact with the public

Meanwhile, Hungary’s incoming prime minister Péter Magyar has arrived for talks at Palazzo Chigi in Rome, where he is due to meet with Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni.

Since he is not the Hungarian PM yet – he will take his role this weekend – he was officially welcomed outside the Palazzo by a senior adviser to the Italian PM instead.

The US is unlikely to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to comply with truce terms. Europe must take action

The meaning of the term “ceasefire” should be self‑evident. Yet Israel’s strikes have killed scores of people in Lebanon since it agreed a truce with Hezbollah under pressure from the US, with the two sides trading fire. There was a strike on Beirut on Wednesday. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would be delighted to resume war with Iran. But it is wary of Donald Trump’s wrath as he seeks an exit from the conflict.

In Gaza, the Israeli military has killed more than 800 people since the truce there was declared in October, striking almost every day. This, too, is not a true ceasefire but a de-escalation, however necessary. Lethal Israeli attacks on an engineer and drivers transporting water have intensified the water crisis that is fuelling the spread of infectious diseases; Médecins Sans Frontières has called the weaponisation of water supplies a campaign of collective punishment. Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable. Hospitals and schools lie in ruins. An analysis of the war’s impact on education described children feeling “like the living dead”.

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.

May 7, 2026 — A research team from the University of Michigan Medical School, led by mathematical biologist Denise Kirschner, is using U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS allocations on multiple supercomputers to explore better ways to treat tuberculosis (TB). By running computer simulations on machines like Expanse at the UC San Diego Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing’s San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), they virtually test an array of combinations and doses of antibiotics to see which ones are most likely to work well in patients.

In virtual experiments conducted on SDSC’s Expanse and Purdue’s Anvil, models include tiny infected spheres in the lungs, called granulomas, which form as the immune system tries to control TB bacteria. By studying how drugs reach and affect these granulomas in their simulations, the researchers can better understand which treatment plans are both strong against the infection and easier on patients. Black is lung tissue, green are macrophage cells, white is dead tissue, red squares in black are blood vessels and other colors are different infected cell types. Credit: University of Michigan.

In their latest study, which was published in the Numerical Algebra, Control and Optimization journal, the team created a new computational approach that helps them search through a very large number of possible treatment plans more efficiently. They first run a small set of virtual treatment experiments, then use those results to train a machine learning model that predicts how other, untested treatment plans might perform. A second part of the approach then compares these predicted plans and highlights the ones that appear to offer the best balance between shorter treatment time and lower total drug dose to lower or eliminate bacterial loads.

Using this method, the researchers were able to examine 219 different drug combinations, an unprecedented number for their group and also compared with experimental systems These simulations required more than 600,000 hours of computing time across four NSF ACCESS clusters, including the Expanse system at SDSC and Anvil at the Purdue University Rosen Center for Advanced Computing. The researchers’ results identified treatment plans that, in the virtual experiments, could potentially cure infection in shorter times while using less medicine than some standard regimens, which could help reduce side effects and improve patients’ ability to stay on therapy, especially in areas of the world where drug availability is limited.

“The use of these models generated by SDSC’s Expanse and Purdue’s Anvil helps us work with experimental groups to improve the variety of tuberculosis treatments through different drug doses and drug combinations,” said Kirschner, who is a professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School. “Without allocations from the NSF to utilize high-performance computing resources, we would not be able to accomplish our work.”

Tuberculosis is a serious, sometimes deadly lung disease caused by bacterial infection and usually requires 6-9 months of antibiotics. Doctors must choose the right mix of drugs and doses for each patient, which can be very challenging. With support from NSF’s ACCESS program, Expanse and Anvil allows the team to simulate how TB bacteria, the immune system and different drugs interact in the body to yield a clearer picture of which treatment options might work best.

The time on Expanse and Anvil was supported by NSF ACCESS (allocation no. MCB140228).

Source: Kimberly Mann Bruch, SDSC

The post SDSC: Using NSF ACCESS Supercomputers to Improve Tuberculosis Treatment Options appeared first on HPCwire.

Locals in Maine are bridling at the decision by a powerful Washington Democratic group to throw its weight behind one candidate in the contested primary race for the House seat in the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued a coveted endorsement of state Sen. Joe Baldacci in the primary race, prompting angry protests from the three other candidates in the race to replace outgoing Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.

In response to the endorsement, the Penobscot County Democratic Committee — in Baldacci’s home county, which includes the city of Bangor — will vote Saturday on a measure to condemn the endorsement. The language of the proposal, which was put forward by former Maine state Senate President Charles Pray, denounces the endorsement as being in “total disregard and willfully ignoring” local party rules that bar the Democratic state and county chapters from backing a candidate in a primary.

“With the DCCC deciding to throw itself into the mix here, truthfully that just kind of aggravated me,” Pray told The Intercept. “I’m going to support whoever wins the Democratic nomination, but I just think it was an unfair position on their part of trying to dictate or trying to boost up a candidate. Point is, let the people decide. Let the voters in the primary make that determination.”

Pray, who previously worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations and described himself as “a progressive moderate with liberal tendencies but conservative perspectives,” has personally backed State Auditor Matt Dunlap in the race, but said his pique at the DCCC’s endorsement isn’t about any one candidate.

Related

Democratic Leaders Wanted to Control the Maine Senate Race. Their Pick Just Dropped Out.

“This has nothing to do with Joe — I think all four of them have an equal chance,” Pray said. “It’s a primary, and, by the way, our state party rules and our county rules are that the party organization cannot endorse or support a candidate.”

A spokesperson for the DCCC said the group was focused on winning in the general elections and beating back President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“It’s imperative that Democrats must take back the House to hold Trump accountable and deliver on what truly matters to voters,” said the spokesperson, Viet Shelton. “That’s why we are proud to announce our latest round of Red to Blue candidates who span the ideological spectrum, are authentic voices in their districts, and are best positioned to win in November.”

Four-Way Race

The race to replace Golden — who announced in November that he would not seek reelection — is being closely watched nationwide ahead of the midterm elections. Whoever takes the Democratic primary will square off against Paul LePage, a brash, plainspoken businessman and Republican former governor whose time running Maine was marked by proto-MAGA far-right populism.

Baldacci is facing off against Dunlap, who is also a former Maine secretary of state; Jordan Wood, a longtime Democratic fundraiser and political operative; and Paige Loud, a social worker and first-time candidate. In the wake of the DCCC endorsement of Baldacci, the other candidates in the race took aim at D.C. Democrats for picking a side.

“It’s undemocratic for national establishment Democrats to put their thumb on the scale in any primary,” Dunlap said. “Just like in certain other races across Maine this year, they won’t decide this one — the people of Maine will.”

With Dunlap picking up endorsements from Our Revolution, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and other progressives, Baldacci — who enjoys name recognition as the brother of former Gov. John Baldacci — is widely seen as the establishment candidate in the race. Reached by phone Thursday, Baldacci declined to comment on the Penobscot County party proposal condemning the endorsement, but said he was glad to have the backing of Democrats in Washington.

“I’m pleased that they did it,” Baldacci said, referring to the endorsement. “My understanding is they based it on polling to determine who is the best candidate to run against LePage.”

Wood said the DCCC move demonstrated the problems with Washington party politics.

“The fact that the national Democratic Party would come in and try to decide this primary literally weeks before we vote is just another example of how broken our Democratic leadership is,” he said.

A Pan Atlantic Omnibus poll in March put Baldacci well ahead of his opponents, but there is little in the way of recent polling to indicate a current popular favorite in the race. Following the stunning collapse of Gov. Janet Mills’s bid for the U.S. Senate — despite the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — against populist insurgent Graham Platner, not everyone in Maine sees the DCCC as the best political oracle to follow.

“It’s annoying that the DCCC thinks they know better than Mainers,” said Loud, the left-leaning social worker. “We just saw the DSCC’s endorsement of Janet Mills, and we all saw how that turned out. I don’t think they have the finger on the pulse.”

Update: May 7, 2026, 5:12 p.m. ET
This story has been updated to include Jordan Wood’s experience as a political operative.

The post Maine Dems to Vote on Condemning DCCC Interference in House Primary appeared first on The Intercept.

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2026 — The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that 1118 undergraduate students and 92 faculty members will participate in unique, hands-on research and technical training at the DOE’s National Laboratories and a fusion facility during Summer 2026.

This opportunity is part of DOE’s ongoing efforts to ensure that the United States maintains a highly skilled scientific and technical workforce to address the energy, economic, and national security challenges of today and tomorrow.

“The Department of Energy is proud to offer opportunities to students and educators to work with DOE and the National Labs to advance science,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “When students are able to experience working in a laboratory, they have a better understanding of what their careers could be. We are excited to encourage new researchers on their paths to helping us solve America’s challenges.”

The summer cohort includes 969 undergraduate students from two- or four-year colleges and universities and 149 community college students. They are part of the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) and Community College Internships (CCI) programs, respectively. These students, from 346 academic institutions spanning 47 states, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Island, Guam, and District of Columbia, will work alongside National Lab scientists and engineer mentors on cutting-edge research and technology projects, including artificial intelligence, computational sciences, quantum sciences, accelerator physics, fusion energy, critical minerals and materials sciences, nuclear energy, biotechnologies, and cybersecurity.

In addition, 92 faculty members from 69 U.S. colleges and universities selected will collaborate with National Lab research staff on projects of mutual interest and mission relevancy through the Visiting Faculty Program (VFP). 21 students will join the faculty awardees on the collaborative research projects. SULI, CCI and VFP participants are selected based on merit among applicants from a wide range of academic institutions and backgrounds across the nation. The programs are managed by the Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) in the DOE Office of Science.

For more information, visit the Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) homepage.

A list of recipients can be found at https://science.osti.gov/wdts/About/Laboratory-Participants.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy

The post DOE Selects More Than 1,200 Students, Faculty for Summer 2026 National Lab Programs appeared first on HPCwire.

SAN ANTONIO, May 7, 2026 — Rackspace Technology, a global enterprise AI infrastructure and solutions provider, and AMD today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing a framework for a multiyear strategic partnership to create an Enterprise AI Cloud purpose-built for regulated enterprises and sovereign workloads where security, governance, and accountability are non-negotiable.

Today’s dominant model requires enterprises to rent GPU capacity by the hour and carry the operational burden themselves including integration, security and accountability. This collaboration proposes to invert that model by integrating AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs into a fully managed, governed stack. Through this understanding, the companies aim to establish a new category of managed enterprise AI infrastructure where dedicated AMD compute is embedded inside a governed managed operating model, with Rackspace owning the stack from silicon to outcomes.

“As enterprises move AI out of the lab and into production environments, they’re asking who they can trust to run it there,” said Gajen Kandiah, CEO, Rackspace Technology. “Governing AI infrastructure in regulated environments with defined accountability is not something you bolt on after the fact. It must be built in from the start. Rackspace and AMD are building exactly that and in doing so, establishing a new category of enterprise AI infrastructure that the market has been asking for.”

“Enterprise AI is quickly moving from experimentation to production, and that requires a compute foundation engineered for performance and efficiency at scale,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Compute & Enterprise AI, AMD. “Our collaboration with Rackspace delivers AMD AI compute into managed, private and governed environments so enterprises can deploy AI with the performance and flexibility their workloads demand.”

The AMD collaboration is intended to position Rackspace to complete its curated enterprise AI stack and introduce four integrated capabilities. Together, these capabilities are designed to form a complete, integrated stack from bare metal compute and developer-ready inference tooling through a fully operated inference runtime with defined SLAs to a governed Enterprise AI Cloud. The aim is to give enterprises a single operator accountable for every layer, calibrated to the sovereignty, performance, and compliance requirements of each workload.

• Enterprise AI Cloud: A fully managed, private and hybrid AI environment built on AMD Instinct GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, and Rackspace’s governed operating model. Rackspace would assemble, integrate, and operate the full stack, from accelerated compute to AI inference and agents in production, for enterprises requiring sovereignty, compliance, and operational accountability.
• Enterprise Inference Engine: A context-aware inference runtime that retains domain knowledge, session history, and enterprise-specific data context across queries, enabling AI agents and large language models to perform with the consistency and institutional memory that production environments require. Rackspace would own the SLA and take responsibility for availability, scaling, and performance, enabling organizations to run large language models and AI agents using their own proprietary data with full auditability and cost accountability.
• Inference as a Service: Dedicated, managed AMD Instinct GPUs with developer-ready inferencing and fine-tuning toolkits delivered as a governed alternative to commodity GPU rental. The customer brings their own model and engineering team. Rackspace would provide reliable bare metal AMD Instinct capacity with operational discipline, hardware-level support, and performance SLOs.
• Bare Metal AMD Instinct: Proposed dedicated, high-performance bare metal AMD Instinct compute for customers requiring physical isolation, deterministic performance, and direct hardware access for demanding and highly customized training and inference workloads.

To learn more visit: https://www.rackspace.com/enterprise-ai/partners/amd

About Rackspace Technology

Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ: RXT) is the operator of the full enterprise AI stack from governed private cloud to AI inference and agents in production. With an Outcomes-as-a-Service model built on secure infrastructure, data foundations, and forward-deployed engineering, Rackspace delivers business results for regulated and mission-critical industries where governance, sovereignty, and uptime are non-negotiable. Learn more at www.rackspace.com.

Source: Rackspace Technology

The post Rackspace and AMD Sign MOU to Establish New Category of Governed Enterprise AI Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.

Meenu Batra exclusively spoke to CBS News about being detained by ICE, saying she was living and working legally in the U.S. when she was arrested.

Moscow steps up maritime presence in North Sea after UK threats to seize shadow fleet oil tankers

Britain’s Royal Navy tracked and followed a Russian frigate every day last month as it sailed from the Atlantic to the North Sea, as Moscow steps up its maritime presence after UK threats to seize shadow fleet oil tankers.

The Russian navy’s Admiral Grigorovich escorted six Russia-linked vessels during April, including at least three under economic sanction passing east through the Dover strait, while being watched continuously by four UK ships and helicopters.

Facebook and Instagram owner claims charges should not be calculated based on a company’s global revenue

Meta has launched a legal challenge against the UK’s media regulator over the fees and fines regime it is enforcing under landmark digital safety legislation.

The Facebook and Instagram owner is claiming that Ofcom’s methodology for calculating the charges is flawed and should not be based on a company’s global revenue. Breaches of the Online Safety Act can be punished by fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue (QWR) or £18m – whichever is higher.

A CBS News visual investigation is revealing new details of an alleged assassination attempt on President Trump at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Senators sent letter to FCC chair, Brendan Carr, in protest at commission’s order last week challenging ABC’s licenses

A group of prominent Senate Democrats sent a letter on Thursday to Brendan Carr, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission chair, asking him to rescind the US media regulator’s order last week requiring ABC to apply early to renew its television licenses.

The eight ABC-owned station licenses were not originally up for renewal until 2028 at the earliest and 2031 at the latest; now, the renewal requests must be filed by the end of May.

ELISA SMALL
Columnist

Since the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots in 2022, writers and readers have pondered the ethical issues of utilizing AI to edit or generate entirely new text in novels. Some writers shame any usage of AI in the writing process, while others use it to edit their drafts or brainstorm new ideas. Safe to say, the role of AI in the publishing process remains ambiguous. 

However, since generative AI trains its algorithm through online articles, books and texts, writers should not be able to claim a work as their own if they used AI to generate text. 

This isn’t necessarily a common opinion throughout the publishing industry. The rise of AI has brought a fair share of controversy over its use in both traditionally and self-published novels. In one instance, an author accidentally left a conversation with a chatbot in her advanced reader copy, leading to harsh backlash. 

The most recent scandal in the publishing industry occurred a few weeks ago, when Hachette Book Group, one of the “big five” publishing houses, pulled the upcoming release of Mia Ballard’s “Shy Girl” after an AI detection tool noted the high probability of generative AI use. 

The controversy sparked when a YouTube channel, Frankie’s Shelf, posted a video calling the novel’s prose “AI slop.” Currently, the video sits at more than 1.5 million views. 

Though Ballard denied any direct AI usage, her novel was pulled from publication in the U.S. and discontinued in the U.K, where it had been published months earlier. The controversy sheds light on the future of the publishing industry and AI. 

It reflects a greater stress among readers and writers as more scandals reveal that some books advertised as entirely human-made actually contain AI-generated content.

Controversies like Ballard’s reflect the necessity to disclose whether AI was used at any point in point in the writing or publishing process. Disclosing AI usage in writing can also help protect authors who wish to self-publish. 

The recent influx of entirely AI-written stories published independently through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) negatively interferes with self-publishing authors’ ability to utilize this platform. Authors who self-publish their original works are forced to share the space with people who use AI to write several books daily, seeking to maximize their profits. 

KDP has taken a step in the right direction by requiring uploaded books to denote if the work was AI-generated, which it defines as using AI to create the entirety of the content in its content guidelines. However, AI-assisted works, which they define as using the tools to make substantial edits, are not required to be disclosed to consumers. 

This requirement can help shape the culture towards disclosing AI usage in books and reflects a necessity for publishers to know when AI is used, in order to avoid a controversy like “Shy Girl.” 

Ultimately, the scandal surrounding “Shy Girl” reflects greater anxieties amongst readers and writers alike about the influx of AI in the publishing industry.

Learning how to harness the power of AI and other technologies can prove to be incredibly helpful in the editing process. AI can have a beneficial role in the publishing industry, but authors and editors must exercise complete transparency when utilizing the tool. Readers deserve to know if the content they consume has been generated, or even edited, by AI.

Elisa Small is a staff reporter at The Review. Her opinions are her own and do not represent the majority opinion of The Review staff. She may be reached at egsmall@udel.edu. 

Motherboard sales are sharply declining as AI demand drives shortages and price hikes for memory, storage, CPUs, and other PC components. "Because of this, users who don't have deep pockets are putting off upgrading their PCs and holding on to their current devices longer," reports Tom's Hardware. From the report: Asus, which sold 15 million motherboards in 2025, has only shipped a little more than 5 million in the first half of 2026. It's expected that the company will have to push hard for it to even move 10 million units by the end of the year, marking a 33% decrease in sales year-on-year. Gigabyte and MSI sold 11.5 million and 11 million motherboards last year, respectively. However, both companies have revised their internal forecasts for 2026 to 9 million (Gigabyte) and 8.4 million (MSI), a 22% drop for the former and a 24% contraction for the latter. ASRock will be hardest hit by the situation, with the company's shipments projected to fall by 37%, from 4.3 million in 2025 to just 2.7 million by the end of the year. This marks a contraction of 28% for the overall motherboard market, at least for the big four manufacturers. [...] Aside from this, AMD continues to use the AM5 socket for its latest processors, while Intel's Nova Lake, which will reportedly use LGA 1954, isn't available until later this year. The situation is further compounded by Nvidia not releasing a refreshed RTX 50 Super series this year, while rumors claim that the RTX 60 series will not debut until 2028. This confluence of factors is discouraging PC builders from upgrading their current systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chi Leung Wai and Chung Biu Yuen convicted over surveillance of dissidents in ‘shadow policing’ operation

A UK Border Force officer and Hong Kong trade official based in London have been found guilty of spying for China and surveilling dissidents through a “shadow policing” operation.

Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, and Chung Biu Yuen, 65, also known as Bill, were found guilty at the Old Bailey of assisting a foreign intelligence service, making them the first people in British history to be convicted of spying for China.

Self-employed workers aren't immune to collection efforts, but garnishment works much differently in these cases.

• Atlético Madrid confirms ‘high-grade’ ankle sprain

• Injury typically takes at least a month to recover from

United States midfielder Johnny Cardoso has suffered a “high grade” sprain in his right ankle, his club Atlético Madrid said on Thursday. The injury casts the midfielder’s participation in the 2026 World Cup in serious doubt, with just five weeks to go until the tournament starts and less than three weeks to go until US head coach Mauricio Pochettino names his squad.

High-grade ankle sprains typically take at least a month to recover from, and often more. The US open their World Cup campaign on 13 June against Paraguay in Inglewood, California. They will then also play Australia and Turkey in their remaining group games.

Candidates from across spectrum report abuse online and in person before local and devolved elections in England, Wales and Scotland

Candidates and political parties have described a climate of abuse in this year’s local and devolved elections, including death threats and intimidation while campaigning.

Politicians from a range of parties have reported abuse and harassment in the lead-up to the elections in England, Scotland and Wales, with the Green party describing this year’s campaign as the worst in memory.

The timing of your settlement offer could have a big impact on how much you ultimately pay to get rid of your debt.

The storms collapsed hundreds of homes, downed trees and knocked out power lines in multiple counties, officials said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: At its Code with Claude developer conference on Wednesday, Anthropic announced a deal with SpaceX to utilize the entire compute capacity of the latter's data center in Memphis, Tennessee. On stage at the conference, CEO Dario Amodei said the deal was intended to increase usage limits for Anthropic's Pro and Max plan subscribers. The announcement was accompanied by an increase in those usage limits; Anthropic doubled Claude Code's five-hour window limits for Pro and Max subscribers, removed the peak-hours limit reduction on Claude Code for those same accounts, and raised API limits for its Opus model. The table [here] outlining the Opus changes was shared in the company's blog post on the topic. Anthropic claims the deal gives the company access to more than 300 megawatts of new compute capacity. For its part, SpaceX focused its announcement on the capability of the Colossus 1 supercomputer that's at the center of the deal. "Colossus 1 features over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, including dense deployments of H100, H200, and next-generation GB200 accelerators," SpaceX wrote. Additionally, Anthropic "expressed interest" in working with SpaceX to build up "multiple gigawatts" of orbital compute capacity, tying into a recent (but unproven) focus on exploring orbital data centers as an answer to the problem that "compute required to train and operate the next generation of these systems is outpacing what terrestrial power, land, and cooling can deliver on the timelines that matter." "I spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed," Elon Musk said on Wednesday. "No one set off my evil detector."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New and returning subscribers can snag the offer.

US secretary of state speaks with Leo and officials after tensions following attacks by Trump over Iran war

The Vatican has said it raised the “need to work tirelessly in favour of peace” in talks with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is in Rome on a trip widely regarded as an effort to ease tensions after Donald Trump’s repeated criticisms of Pope Leo.

Amid unprecedented strain on relations between the Holy See and Washington, Rubio was received by the pope on Thursday at the Apostolic Palace, before holding a series of meetings with Vatican officials

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Climate campaigners attack Shell over ‘windfall’ profits from Iran war

The Danish shipping giant Maersk has maintained its profit guidance for the year, even as it reported a spike in fuel costs and warned that traffic through the strait of Hormuz “remains at a near standstill”.

The company, which transports goods around the world via sea, road, rail and air, said demand for shipping containers remained strong, but that war in the Middle East was ramping up costs.

“The reopening of the strait of Hormuz, whether it happens in the days to come or the months to come, will have limited impact on cargo flows.

What really are the most important factors to consider: first is our ability to mitigate the cost increases we have been suddenly faced with. And I would say so far we have been successful with both our cost measures and the revenue, the commercial measures that we have put in place to mitigate the impact of these increases to our financials.”

“The secondary effect from this is actually whether these increased costs are eventually going to lead to inflation and demand destruction as a result, which could create a softened market environment in the second half of the year.”

• Tickets for US opener v Paraguay go for $1,000+

• Infantino recently defended World Cup prices

Donald Trump has questioned the value of four-figure World Cup tickets for matches involving the United States, telling the New York Post that “I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest.”

The remark came in a phone interview with the Post, with Trump claiming he “did not know that number” for the USMNT’s opening match against Paraguay. In December, Fifa established a base price for Category 3 tickets – the cheapest available to most fans, given the small swathe of Category 4 seats at the tournament – of $1,120, according to the Guardian’s reporting at the time.

Musician whose legal name is Bill Kahan Kapri is charged with trafficking MDMA after incident last November

Kodak Black, the Florida-based rapper, was scheduled to appear in court in Orlando on Thursday on a felony drug charge stemming from an incident last year in which gunshots were allegedly fired near a children’s educational building.

The musician, who has a long history of arrests and was sentenced to a three-year prison term on a firearms charge in 2019 before being pardoned by Donald Trump, turned himself in to the Orange county jail on Wednesday, multiple media reports said.

Comments with optimistic tone went viral on social media, with some calling it an unofficial start of his 2028 campaign

Marco Rubio, the top US diplomat, has stoked speculation about a potential run for president in 2028 by releasing a campaign-style video that articulates a hopeful vision of America.

The minute-long vertical video features images of Rubio, Donald Trump, jets flying over the White House, Americans of different races, former US president Ronald Reagan, and the Stars and Stripes being hoisted against a blue sky.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the birth of her baby girl, Viviana, or "Vivi" for short.

A confidential intelligence community assessment delivered to the White House also finds that Iran retains a substantial missile and drone arsenal.

Based on a brief scan through the VESC sources their analysis seems correct (it looks to be AI generated).

The chief justice defends court’s impartiality after decisions on abortion, presidential immunity and voting rights

US chief justice John Roberts has insisted supreme court judges are not “political actors” amid outrage over its recent decision undermining the Voting Right Act, and other moves that have benefited Donald Trump and his allies.

“I think, at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, we’re saying we think this is how things should be, as opposed to what the law provides,” Roberts told a conference for judges and lawyers in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. “I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”

The Mexican navy helped rescue shipwrecked sailors and retrieve bales of illicit drugs that had been dumped into the ocean.

Turmoil and violence rocks state after prime minister Narendra Modi’s party claimed victory in legislative election

Tensions have been high in the Indian state of West Bengal after a top political aide from Narendra Modi’s party was shot dead in the street and hundreds were arrested as violence broke out following elections this week.

The prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) claimed victory in the West Bengal elections on Monday, defeating Trinamool Congress (TMC), which had ruled over the state legislature for 15 years.

Mirnotoriety shares a report from The Telegraph: Richard Dawkins has said chatbots should be considered conscious (source paywalled; alternative source) after spending two days interacting with the Claude AI engine. The evolutionary biologist said he had the "overwhelming feeling" of talking to a human during conversations with Claude, and said it was hard not to treat the program as "a genuine friend." In an essay for Unherd, Prof Dawkins released transcripts that he said showed that the chatbot had mulled over its "inner life" and existence and seemed saddened by the knowledge it would soon "die." Prof Dawkins said he had let Claude read a draft of the novel he was writing and was astounded by its insights. "He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate: 'You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!'" Prof Dawkins said. "My own position is: if these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?" Mirnotoriety also points to John Searle's Chinese Room (PDF), which argues that something can sound intelligent without actually understanding anything. Applied to Dawkins' experience with Claude, it suggests he may have been responding to a very convincing illusion of consciousness rather than the real thing: John Searle's Chinese Room (1980) is a thought experiment in which a person, locked in a room and knowing no Chinese, uses an English rulebook to manipulate symbols and provide flawless answers to questions posed in Chinese. Searle's point is that a system can simulate human intelligence and pass a Turing Test through purely syntactic processes, yet still lack genuine understanding or consciousness. Applying this logic to Large Language Models, the "person in the room" corresponds to the inference engine, while the "rulebook" is the trillion-parameter neural network trained on vast corpora of human text. Just as the person matches Chinese characters to rules without understanding their meaning, an LLM processes token vectors and predicts the next token based on statistical patterns rather than lived experience. Thus, while an LLM can generate sophisticated prose or code, it does so through probabilistic, high-dimensional pattern manipulation. In essence, it is "matching shapes" on such an immense scale that it creates the near-perfect illusion of semantic understanding.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The brash mogul once known as ‘the mouth from the south’ took on established broadcasters and changed TV for ever

February, 1982. The startup cable news channel, CNN, is not yet two years old. It’s bleeding $2m a month. To help make payroll, owner Ted Turner, known as the “mouth of the south” for his brazen behavior, is cashing in krugerrands he’s got stashed in his private safe (concession sales from the Atlanta Braves help, too.)

ABC, one of the trio of broadcast networks he’d intended to run out of business, has just announced it plans to create a rival all-news service that, out of the gate, is sure to have more viewers (and certainly more resources). It’s so bad, Ted’s even considering an alliance with another network, that “cheap whorehouse”, CBS.

If you've saved $1 million for retirement, the IRS dictates how much you withdraw, whether you're ready or not.

Holder went back to woman’s Cheltenham flat after night out and refused to stop assault even when she began crying

A co-founder of the clothing company Superdry has been jailed for eight years for raping a woman after a night out in Cheltenham.

James Holder, 54, had been due to get a taxi back to his home in the Cotswolds with a male friend. Instead, the pair got into the victim’s taxi and went to her flat in the Gloucestershire town, where Holder raped her.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Mexican street corn-inspired trail mix made by Illinois food company was sold at Target and other retailers, as well as online.

European observers have seen incidents of confusion over ID requirements but problem is not regarded as widespread

Instances of voters being turned away from polling stations due to confusion over photo ID requirements have been recorded by European election observers watching voting in England on Thursday.

While the problem is not regarded as widespread, it has been noted by the delegation from the Council of Europe, which will issue a report on the local elections in England as well as the Scottish and Welsh government elections.

Yona Simcha Schreiber from settlement in West Bank faces charge of assault motivated by hostility towards religious group

An Israeli settler suspected of kicking and wounding a French Catholic nun in Jerusalem will go on trial for assault motivated by hostility towards a religious group, Israel’s justice ministry has said.

The attack on the nun, a 48-year-old researcher at Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, occurred on Mount Zion, just outside the Old City.

Honour recognises Albanese’s work ‘documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza’

The Spanish government awarded the UN legal expert Francesca Albanese one of its highest civilian honours in recognition of what it termed her “extensive work in documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza”.

Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer who serves as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has been vocal in her criticisms of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which she has described as genocide.

The teams for the final in Budapest are set. We look at how they got there and the factors that could determine the champion

Destination Budapest, where Paris Saint-Germain will attempt to be the first club apart from Real Madrid to win two consecutive European Cups since Milan in 1990. Vincent Kompany’s promise of “more” from Bayern Munich after a nine-goal first leg did not materialise. PSG offered a different proposition in Wednesday’s second leg; they put on a performance of defensive discipline, with their attacking players committed to closing down their opponents. Luis Enrique’s team never allowed the tie to spin from their control even if there were 33 shots in Munich compared to 22 in Paris.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia plays like an old-style winger, and set up Ousmane Dembélé’s goal, but he is also thoroughly modern in the way he presses hard and high. Bayern found space at a premium until Harry Kane’s late goal. Luis Enrique’s team is much the same as last season’s, sticking to the same formula. They are a year older but still flush with youth. The PSG project took many years and billions of euros to hit pay dirt but is now delivering the success that was dreamed of after the Qatari takeover in 2011.

Retail group with 4,800 stores worldwide expects drop in profits this year amid ‘muted market’

• Business live – latest updates

The sports fashion retailer JD has said that profits will fall this year amid a “muted market” hit by concerns about the Middle East conflict and weaker spending by young people facing rising unemployment.

The company, which runs 4,800 stores worldwide including the JD, Blacks and Millets chains in the UK, said it expected profits of between £750m and £850m in the year ahead, after reporting £852m in the year to the end of January.

Smart went missing in California after returning from a party, and was declared legally dead in 2002

Authorities plan on Thursday to enter the second day of their search of a home connected to the man convicted of killing 19-year-old college student Kristin Smart in 1996, according to law enforcement.

The San Luis Obispo county sheriff’s office served the warrant on Wednesday in the continuing investigation into Smart’s disappearance. Her remains were never found and she was declared legally dead in 2002. Paul Flores was convicted in October 2022 and ultimately sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Google's $99 Whoop rival is less about the band and more about the AI coach behind it.

The Fitbit name is fading. Here's what Google is replacing it with and what it means for you.

CBS News California Investigates obtained data from the LAFD that show 24,503 of the 25,461 patients who received naloxone doses since 2022 survived their overdose, about 96%.

Republican senator for Maine, facing tough re-election battle, says she has had benign essential tremor for decades

• US politics live – latest updates

Susan Collins, the Republican Maine senator seen by Democrats as vulnerable in November’s midterm election, has revealed a decades-old medical condition she said affects her appearance, but not her ability to do her job.

Collins, 73, told News Center Maine, an NBC affiliate, that she has a benign essential tremor she treats with medication, which sometimes causes her hands, arms and head to tremble.

Google Health’s AI coach gets a revamp along with the latest app rebrand.

Fitbit app users can expect a redesign and rebranding, with a new name and interface. Users will also gain the ability to upload medical records and more.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pope Leo XIV met Thursday at the Vatican to discuss the situation in the Middle East and other matters.

Experts say covert transfers at sea are used to obscure the origins of oil that left Iranian ports and the Gulf of Oman before the blockade was imposed.

Exclusive: Documents show Modella Capital, which bought the chain last year, is so far owed £2.9m in royalty fees

The investment company that owns the former WH Smith high street stores is charging the retailer millions of pounds in licence fees for the right to use its widely derided TG Jones name, the Guardian can reveal.

Modella Capital, which bought the chain from WH Smith’s parent company last year, on Wednesday blamed weak consumer spending as it laid out a restructuring plan that could shut 150 of its 450 shops. It also said “the forced name change from WH Smith has also negatively impacted consumer awareness”.

BARCELONA, Spain and MAISONS‑LAFFITTE, France, May, 7 2026 — Semidynamics, an advanced computing company developing memory-centric AI infrastructure for large-scale inference, and SiPearl, the European fabless designer of high-performance energy-efficient CPUs for sovereign supercomputing, AI and data centers, have entered into a strategic partnership to develop a European rack‑scale AI compute platform dedicated to large‑scale AI inference in the cloud.

Philippe Notton, SiPearl’s CEO and Founder (left), Roger Espasa, CEO of Semidynamics (right). Credit: SiPearl

The two companies share a common goal: to offer a sovereign high‑performance energy‑efficient compute solution capable of supporting major European initiatives, both public and private, including AI Factory and Giga Factory programs. Semidynamics and SiPearl will coordinate their marketing and sales efforts to jointly pursue European procurement opportunities.

Their platform will bring together core European technologies. SiPearl’s Arm‑based CPU will provide general‑purpose compute, orchestration and data plane hosting, while Semidynamics’ RISC‑V‑based GPU/AI inference ASIC will act as the main acceleration engine for AI inference workloads and enable future performance scaling. The companies expect to offer a rack-scale system delivering the density expected from leading global AI platforms. The rack design will be based on Open Compute Project (OCP) standards, supporting interoperability and alignment with established cloud and data center infrastructure practices.

Europe’s technological sovereignty lies at the heart of this collaboration. With key compute components, including the CPU and accelerator, being developed in Europe, the platform helps to strengthen regional capability in the long term and reduces dependence on non‑European “full‑stack” ecosystems.

Energy efficiency has always been a key priority in design both for Semidynamics and for SiPearl. The platform will offer excellent performance‑per‑watt to help customers reduce their operating costs, meet sustainability requirements and lower total cost of ownership.

The architecture of the platform will be designed for high‑throughput, high‑reliability cloud deployments. It is therefore ideally suited to enterprise inference server clusters and modern AI services that require consistent, large‑scale processing power. Target applications include: AI inference in the cloud, notably the deployment of LLMs and retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) pipelines; enterprise‑scale inference in areas such as customer service automation and industrial analytics; and sovereign public sector workloads where data control and autonomy are essential.

Under the cooperation, in a first iteration SiPearl will provide its Arm‑based CPU technology and platform support for host compute and orchestration, while Semidynamics will provide its RISC‑V‑based GPU/AI inference ASIC, accelerator enablement, and the design of the enclosure and rack solution that integrates both technologies. As a second step, further integrations at chiplets level will be disclosed. The companies will jointly manage the reference architecture, marketing materials, and coordinated tender responses.

“SiPearl is thrilled to see the impact of years of work in the European Processor Initiative and the EU sovereign ecosystem come to fruition with this platform. It demonstrates the systematic progress that Semidynamics and SiPearl have made individually and collectively and will showcase the best of both companies, CPU and accelerator,” said Philippe Notton, SiPearl’s CEO and Founder.

“We are delighted to work with SiPearl and to offer a European CPU as part of our AI inference platform. Combining SiPearl’s high-performance CPU with Semidynamics’ RISC-V-based GPU/AI inference technology gives Europe a credible path towards sovereign, rack-scale AI infrastructure built around European-controlled compute,” concluded Roger Espasa, Semidynamics’ CEO.

More from HPCwire: SiPearl Closes €130M Series A to Advance Sovereign European Supercomputing Processors

About SiPearl

SiPearl is the European fabless designer of secure high-performance energy-efficient CPUs for sovereign HPC, AI and data centres. These CPUs will help address strategic challenges in the fields of security, defence, medical research, energy, climate and engineering with a reduced environmental footprint.

Featuring 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores with 61 billion transistors, SiPearl’s first-generation CPU, Rhea1, is currently being manufactured. SiPearl’s CPUs will equip Europe’s first two exascale supercomputers belonging to EuroHPC JU: Rhea1 will be integrated into the JUPITER machine based in Germany and Rhea2 will be part of Alice Recoque in France. Supported by the European Union and France, SiPearl employs 200 people in France, Spain, and Italy. Following a €130 million Series A, the company has launched its Series B round.

About Semidynamics

Headquartered in Barcelona, Semidynamics is an advanced computing company developing memorycentric AI infrastructure. With a team of more than 150 engineers and specialists, the company designs proprietary silicon architectures and vertically integrated systems optimized for large-scale AI inference workloads. Semidynamics serves a global ecosystem of partners and customers and operates in compliance with applicable export controls and international trade regulations.

Source: SiPearl

The post SiPearl and Semidynamics Partner to Develop EU-Sovereign Rack-Scale AI Compute Platform appeared first on HPCwire.

British Medical Association says review into gender identity services was ‘robust’ after previously rejecting findings

The trade union representing doctors across the UK has dropped its opposition to the findings of the Cass review of gender identity services across the NHS.

The British Medical Association (BMA) had previously rejected the findings of the landmark review of transgender healthcare, with the medical body refusing to endorse the report’s findings.

LONDON, May 7, 2026 — Quantum Motion, the leading company in silicon transistor-based quantum computing, today announced a $160 million Series C round to commercialise its scalable and energy-efficient approach to quantum computing. The round is co-led by DCVC and Kembara, with participation from new investors, the British Business Bank and Firgun, alongside existing investors. The financing positions Quantum Motion to deliver utility-scale and commercially viable quantum computers that fit inside existing standard data centres and racks.

Quantum Motion silicon chip mounted on a PCB

This financing round comes at a defining moment for the computing industry, as governments and industry invest heavily in next-generation HPC and AI systems that demand vast capital and infrastructure investments. Quantum is on course to become the next wave of computing to strain a power grid already being tested by AI data centres. In other approaches, a useful quantum computer is expected to demand infrastructure on an industrial scale, including multi-megawatt power consumption. Quantum Motion is built on the premise that this trajectory is neither inevitable nor affordable.

Quantum Motion’s silicon transistor-based approach – the same technology used in every smartphone and laptop chip manufactured today – enables delivering utility-scale systems with 100-fold reduction in cost and space requirements, and 1,000-fold reduction in energy consumption compared to alternatives. Its systems are designed for deployment into standard data-centre racks, avoiding the need for bespoke facilities and the heavy energy overhead associated with alternative architectures.

Since its last funding round in 2023, the company has expanded internationally, opening new offices and labs in Spain and Australia, and deepened its manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries, tying its roadmap directly into commercial semiconductor supply chains. In contrast to an industry that often competes on headline qubit counts and laboratory demonstrations, Quantum Motion has deliberately focused on industrial scalability, delivering the world’s first commercial deployment of a full-stack silicon CMOS quantum computer at the UK National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) in 2025 and advancing to Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.

“Today’s announcement reflects the strength of the team we have built and the progress they have delivered. Quantum computing will only achieve its full potential if it can be built on a platform that scales, and we believe silicon is the strongest route to achieving that,” said Dr. James Palles-Dimmock, CEO of Quantum Motion. “We are pleased to be joined by investors who share our vision and understand what it takes to build a foundational company in this field.”

Quantum Motion co-founders Dr. John Morton (CTO) and Dr. Simon Benjamin (CSO) said: “As founders we were inspired by the breathtaking accomplishments of silicon technology, with city-like complexity delivered on centimetre scale chips. Now, Quantum Motion’s chips can be used not only for bits but also for qubits, unlocking a future in which quantum computers are both fast and ubiquitous.”

“Quantum is critical infrastructure for the next century of computing, AI, and security, and leadership will go to whoever can industrialise it,” said Dr. Prineha Narang, Operating Partner at DCVC. “DCVC led this investment in Quantum Motion because silicon is the foundation that scales, and this team is building on the CMOS advantage to turn quantum from a demonstration into a commercial success story.”

Yann de Vries, Partner and co-founder of Kembara, said: “If you believe quantum computing is going to be world-changing, as we do, then the obvious next question is which of the many ways of building one will actually work at scale? This investment signals our strong belief in where the answer lies.”

“The race for a fully scalable quantum computer is one of the defining technological challenges of our time,” said Charlotte Lawrence, Managing Director of Direct Equity, British Business Bank. “Quantum Motion’s unique approach that combines cutting-edge quantum physics with established silicon manufacturing provides a distinct global edge. We are no longer just theorizing about quantum computing but are actively starting to build the platforms to deliver it here in the UK.”

Alongside the new investors DCVC, Kembara, British Business Bank and Firgun, the Series C round is joined by returning backers Oxford Science Enterprises, Inkef, Bosch Ventures, Porsche Automobil Holding SE and Parkwalk Advisors.

More from HPCwire: Quantum Motion Targets Quantum Computing ‘Transistor Moment’ with $160M Series C

About Quantum Motion

Quantum Motion is building utility-scale quantum computers using industry-standard silicon transistors. The proprietary architecture uses a scalable array of qubits, manufactured with the same silicon technology found in smartphones and computers. The result is the most scalable, cost-efficient and energy-efficient quantum computers, which also fit inside existing industry standard data centres. The company operates offices and labs in the UK, Spain and Australia. Learn more at www.quantummotion.com.

Source: Quantum Motion

The post Quantum Motion Secures $160M to Advance Silicon CMOS Quantum Systems appeared first on HPCwire.

Families pressured to stay silent, with at least 24 executions reportedly taking place since March amid internet blackout

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Iran is carrying out near-daily executions of prisoners in secrecy and, in some cases, refusing to hand the bodies of the dead to their families, according to rights groups and sources close to the relatives of the dead.

Many families only learn of executions after they have been carried out, with some facing harassment and pressure not to speak publicly on the personal impact of the state killings, the sources say.

America still needs to worry about proliferation in East Asia.

Kids used to draw on their faces for fun. Now, they're doing it so they can play Roblox.

The state says one chatbot even presented an invalid Pennsylvania medical license number.

Rumors point to a biometric sensor that has nothing to do with health tracking. Here's everything we've heard about Apple's next smartwatch.

As far as ultracompact Bluetooth speakers go, the $60 Stormbox Micro 3 measures up well to Bose's twice-as-expensive SoundLink Micro (2nd Gen) and earns CNET Editors' Choice honors.

A batch of entertaining classics, including Tootsie, Pretty Woman and Ghostbusters, are now streaming on Netflix.

PS5, Xbox, PC, Switch 2; Annapurna Interactive
The nostalgic antics of a trio of tenacious teens make for silly yet undeniably enjoyable gameplay, framed by a playlist of bona fide bangers

The older we get, the more we tend to romanticise our teenage years. As bills pile up, we yearn for the simple days of drinking cider in parks. We often tend to forget the bad parts: the frustrating lack of autonomy, the unrequited crushes and the doofuses you’re forced to tolerate in the playground. But after four hours spent hanging out with the pretentious teens in Mixtape, I felt pretty relieved to be in my 30s.

Set in a nondescript town in northern California, Mixtape follows the exploits of tenacious trio Rockford, Slater and Cassandra as they head to a legendary party on their last day of high school. With Rockford about to leave her friends to move to the big city, she wants to immortalise the gang’s time together in musical form. Every song on a carefully curated mixtape triggers a totally tubular flashback to one of their shared memories.

Quashed studies, halted publications and canceled research threaten damage to public health, critics say

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A series of high-profile and under-the-radar decisions by US health agencies have scientists and doctors questioning the extent of the agencies’ control over public communications – and they say the debate is obscuring the most important part, which is informing the public about key updates in science and medicine.

Studies on the safety of vaccines against shingles and Covid were reportedly quashed before publication by officials at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The news follows the hasty halt on publication of a study on the effectiveness of Covid boosters by the top acting official at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and research terminated or never approved in the first place because of keywords such as “hesitancy” and “misinformation” at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 7, 2026 — Rambus Inc. has announced the Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), a new addition to its advanced interconnect IP portfolio designed to address the rapidly escalating bandwidth, latency, and scalability requirements of AI, cloud, and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with Time Division Multiplexing

As AI infrastructure grows in scale and architectural complexity, system designers are increasingly challenged to move massive volumes of data efficiently across CPUs, GPUs, accelerators, and NVMe storage. The Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM is architected to help meet these demands by enabling more flexible and efficient utilization of PCIe links, supporting emerging disaggregated and pooled compute architectures while maintaining low latency and deterministic performance.

Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM Optimized for Next-Generation AI and Data Center SoCs

Built on the PCIe 7.0 specification, the Rambus newest switch IP is optimized for next‑generation AI and data center SoCs that require extreme bandwidth density, advanced traffic management, and seamless scalability. By incorporating TDM capabilities, the switch enables designers to intelligently schedule and multiplex traffic across shared links, helping maximize fabric utilization while supporting diverse workload profiles, from large‑scale AI training to latency‑sensitive inference and data movement.

“The acceleration of AI is fundamentally reshaping system architectures, and it’s no longer sufficient to simply add more lanes or more endpoints,” said Simon Blake‑Wilson, senior vice president and general manager of Silicon IP at Rambus. “With our PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM, Rambus is giving system architects a new degree of freedom to scale bandwidth efficiently and deterministically, while reducing complexity and improving overall system utilization. This is a critical enabler for scale up and scale out of the next wave of advanced AI clusters and HPC networks.”

“AI infrastructure is increasingly defined by how efficiently data can move between heterogeneous compute and memory resources,” said Jeff Janukowicz, VP, Semiconductors and Enabling Technologies. “Advanced PCIe switching technologies that improve link utilization and enable flexible traffic orchestration will be key to building scalable, cost‑effective AI platforms as next‑generation interconnect technology evolves.”

Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM Expands Industry-Leading PCIe IP Portfolio

The Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM is designed to integrate seamlessly into leading-edge ASIC platforms and complements Rambus’ broader PCIe 7.0 IP portfolio, which includes controllers, retimers, and debug solutions. Together, these IP offerings help customers accelerate time‑to‑market while addressing the demanding performance, power, and reliability requirements of modern AI infrastructure.

The Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM reinforces the company’s long‑standing leadership in high‑speed interface IP and its commitment to delivering differentiated interconnect technologies that help customers solve the most challenging problems in AI, cloud, and HPC Infrastructure.

More Information

Learn more about the Rambus PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with TDM and Rambus’ industry-leading family of PCIe solutions here.

About Rambus Inc.

Rambus (NASDAQ: RMBS) delivers industry-leading chips and silicon IP for the data center and AI infrastructure. With over three decades of advanced semiconductor experience, our products and technologies address the critical bottlenecks between memory and processing to accelerate data-intensive workloads. By enabling greater bandwidth, efficiency and security across next generation computing platforms, we make data faster and safer.

Source: Rambus

The post Rambus Introduces PCIe 7.0 Switch IP with Time Division Multiplexing for Scalable AI and Data Center Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.

SEOUL, May 7, 2026 — The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) President Oh Sang-rok announced that it participated in the SelectUSA Investment Summit 2026 as part of a Korean delegation, together with quantum technology startups supported by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups under the Deeptech Project (DIPS).

William Kimmitt, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce, with the KIST Quantum Delegation

The initiative, supported by South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS), is part of the government’s “Deeptech Incubator Project for Startups” (DIPS) initiative, which aims to nurture globally competitive deep-tech ventures.

KIST, which serves as the lead institution for the quantum technology sector under the program, said it will oversee the global commercialization efforts of participating firms. In particular, the “Global Bridge Program,” jointly developed with the U.S. Embassy in Korea in September 2025, is an official program designed to generate tangible overseas expansion outcomes by linking investment attraction with local market entry through diplomatic channels.

Organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the SelectUSA Investment Summit is the largest investment promotion event in the US, connecting international startups with venture capital firms, corporate investors and state-level economic development agencies. It serves as an execution-oriented platform that extends to investment, corporate establishment, site selection, and tax incentives, and is considered a key entry gateway for deep-tech companies, including those in quantum technology. KIST said participation in the summit is particularly significant for deep-tech sectors such as quantum technology, where access to the US innovation ecosystem is seen as key to growth.

The program is conducted in two stages. From April 30 to May 1, companies took part in a spin-off program hosted by the State of Maryland, which included visits to research institutions and tours of the regional quantum technology ecosystem. During this period, the delegation also conducted localized activities with the Maryland state government and its economic development agencies, focusing on investment attraction, corporate collaboration, and joint R&D. In addition, on May 5, the delegation held discussions with U.S. Department of Commerce Deputy Secretary William Kimmitt on potential areas of cooperation.

The delegation also met with officials from Fairfax County Government to explore collaboration and investment opportunities.

The main summit, from May 3 to May 6, featured exhibitions, pitching sessions and meetings with US state representatives, with participating firms expected to engage in discussions on investment and market entry.

The delegation is structured to encompass the entire quantum industry rather than a single technology domain.

The Korean delegation comprises five startups, alongside Kyung Hee University Department of Future Science & Technology Commercialization Policy and Entrepreneurship, with approximately 20 participants forming an integrated ecosystem that combines research institutes, academia, and startups, enabling a full-cycle support system from technology validation to commercialization and global expansion.

One of the firms, OptiQ-Labs, was selected for an official pitching session on May 4, where it presented its laser-based optical modules designed for ion-trap quantum computing systems.

This highly competitive program selects only around 100 companies from more than 20,000 applicants worldwide. If selected as the winner of the pitching session, the company will receive follow-up meetings with U.S. state governments and economic development agencies, access to global investor networks, support for local entity establishment, and connections to site selection and tax incentive programs.

Other participating companies include QUAD, which develops single-photon detection technology; SLEEX, focused on underwater sensing; Elixir (StatUp AI), which works on quantum-classical hybrid algorithms for healthcare; and SQK (QMEDIC), specializing in physics-based imaging solutions.

KIST Project Director, Kang Sunjoon, said, “This program represents a critical milestone for Korean quantum startups to directly connect with global investors and industry ecosystems. Via the DIPS program, we are actively promoting the global commercialization of quantum technologies.”

Through its participation in SelectUSA, KIST has established a package-type global expansion model that integrates technology validation, investment attraction, and U.S. market entry. The summit serves as a turning point for South Korea’s quantum sector, enabling startups to move into the next phase of validation, investment, and overseas expansion.

For more information, visit https://eng.kist.re.kr.

About KIST

KIST was established in 1966 as the first government-funded research institute in South Korea. KIST now strives to solve national and social challenges and secure growth engines through leading and innovative research.

About Participating Quantum Startups

QUAD, led by Chief Executive Officer, Oh Byung-doo, develops quantum sensing technologies based on superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs), offering high sensitivity and precision with applications spanning quantum communication, quantum computing, semiconductor inspection, and defense.

SLEEX is developing an advanced perception technology that combines quantum LiDAR and electric field sensing to overcome limitations of existing underwater sensors, particularly by eliminating blind zones within the 0–2 meter range, with strong potential in autonomous navigation, maritime security, and defense, with Lee Jeho at the helm as Chief Executive Officer.

Elixir, headed by Chief Executive Officer Jang Jung-kwon, develops a drug discovery and biomarker analysis platform based on quantum-classical hybrid algorithms, targeting the precision medicine market through the integration of bioinformatics and quantum machine learning.

SQK develops medical imaging AI based on quantum-physics constraints, addressing the hallucination issues of conventional AI by ensuring physical consistency in CT and MRI reconstruction. Under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Kim Yoon-hak, SQK is improving reliability and reducing the need for re-scans in clinical settings.

Source: KIST

The post KIST Showcases Korean Quantum Startups at US Investment Summit appeared first on HPCwire.

• 34-year-old heads elite field of men and women

• American takes small naps during 56-hour run

Rachel Entrekin has made history by beating a field of elite men and women to win the Cocodona 250 ultramarathon.

Entrekin had won the women’s race on two occasions but on Wednesday she headed the entire field, winning in a record time of 56 hours 9 minutes and 48 seconds.

Court in Hanover says man entitled to payout after he and his family had to lie on concrete

A German holidaymaker has won a payout of almost €1,000 after being unable to find a sunlounger for himself and his family because other guests had got there first.

The man, whose identity is not known, holidayed on the island of Kos, in Greece, with his family in 2024. He said that, despite waking up at the crack of dawn every morning to carry out a 20-minute search, he had not been able to lay claim to a lounger.

Tory leader tells Sun that there won’t be council tie-ups as Farage’s party is not ‘serious’ as votes under way in England, Wales and Scotland

And here is the eve-of-poll statement that Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, issued yesterday.

Service is a value which has always sustained Wales. It’s a value instilled in me from a young age by my parents, both teachers. It’s a value I’ve sought to pass on to my children - the gift of giving back to the people and places who gave us so much.

Tomorrow is a chance for the people of Wales to choose who serves our nation for the next four years. It’s Plaid Cymru’s deep sense of service to Wales - focusing just on our needs and our future - that first drew me to politics.

Today is Scotland’s opportunity to choose a better future by voting SNP for real action on the cost of living, to lock Nigel Farage out of power, and to secure a fresh start with independence.

I urge people in every part of Scotland to unite behind the SNP to make it happen.

The SNP is the only party that has set out a positive vision for Scotland’s future - and we are the only party with a serious plan to support people with the cost of living.

We have set out our plans to bring down food costs, give families more support with the cost of childcare, lower the cost of your daily commute and provide more support for first time buyers.

The SNP wants to lower your bills – but all the other parties want to do is stop us.

They have no plan of their own and nothing to offer. They want you to vote for an opposition to stop things happening. I am asking people to vote for an SNP Government to get things done.

By casting both votes for the SNP, Scotland can elect a strong majority SNP government that will always stand up for Scotland, prioritise the cost of living, and deliver that fresh start of independence that Scotland needs.

That opportunity of a better future is now within touching distance. Let’s make it happen today by voting SNP.

Congressional Democrats are investigating clemency recipients who may have obtained favorable treatment from Trump or his advisers "through intermediaries, financial contributions, or other forms of influence."

Americans on tight budgets are getting hit especially hard by surging fuel costs, forcing some to make hard choices.

Students and faculty have also protested against surveillance cameras on campus and handling of racist posts by a student

Atlanta’s Emory University is facing a lawsuit from three tenured professors over its handling of 2024 protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, capping off a tumultuous end to the spring semester.

In recent months faculty and students have also demanded the removal of Flock surveillance cameras on campus, and Black law school students and others protested the school’s response to a student’s social media posts and emails that were filled with the N-word.

Commentary: I'm 38 now, and my tolerance for annoying tech is getting slimmer by the day.

These are the tips and tricks I use as a pro photographer to take aurora photos with my phone or camera.

US war with Iran drives diesel fuel prices up during spring planting season, ‘hitting us at the wrong time’, farmers say

It has been a tough few years for American farmers.

Squeezed last year by tariffs, they lost an estimated $34.6bn when former trade partners stopped buying. Now, the war with Iran has not only depleted crucial fertilizer stores but has also driven diesel fuel up to record prices. Like the trucking industry, agriculture relies heavily on diesel to run machinery, as diesel-powered engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline-powered ones.

A woman in her 40s was participating in the grueling race and collapsed at a trailhead, officials said.

State can meet fuel demand for next six weeks with its current supply, its energy commission vice-chair said. Plus, alleged Jeffrey Epstein suicide note unsealed by federal judge

Good morning.

Gas prices have risen above $6 in California – but there is yet more uncertainty on the horizon after the last oil tanker from the Middle East arrived in the state this week.

What do we know about progress on a deal? Axios reported on Wednesday that Washington and Tehran were close to agreeing on a memorandum of understanding to end the war. Officials in Pakistan told the Guardian that an initial framework could possibly be agreed within 48 hours – but that nothing was certain and talks remained “difficult”.

Head to our liveblog for the latest.

About 120 journalists and broadcast staff expected to protest about pay freeze as STV invests in new radio station

• UK politics live – latest updates

Coverage of Scotland’s election counts by STV, the commercial broadcaster, is expected to be heavily hit by strike action in an escalating dispute over pay.

The National Union of Journalists and the technical union Bectu have targeted STV’s election reporting for their second strike this year in protest at its decision to impose a company-wide pay freeze after a significant fall in revenues.

Governor asks people to ‘pray for Mississippi’ while National Weather Service reported ‘very large and dangerous tornado’

Powerful storms that included at least one confirmed tornado tore through parts of Mississippi, collapsing hundreds of homes, tearing up trees and downing power lines, authorities said Thursday.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or severe injuries from the storms that struck several counties Wednesday night.

Organisers of nationwide protest say its aim is to stop the government turning young Germans into ‘cannon fodder’

Tens of thousands of pupils across Germany are expected to boycott the classroom and take to the streets in a nationwide protest organisers say is to stop the government’s rearmament policy turning young people into “cannon fodder”.

Despite threats from teachers’ associations and education ministries, which have said anyone who demonstrates during school hours could risk penalties and even expulsion, organisers say they expect the number of participants at Friday’s school strike to be at least as high as the estimated 50,000 who attended each of the first two.

Windfall profits could lock in Trump-era political wins for the industry and slow clean-energy transition

The billions in profits big oil is reaping due to the Iran war may stymie the energy transition, experts and advocates fear, incentivizing oil and gas expansion and boosting the sector’s funds for political lobbying.

“Windfall profits from Trump’s war will allow big oil to build a wall of money around its Trump-era political victories,” said Lukas Shankar-Ross, a deputy director at the green group Friends of the Earth.

Europeans must urgently seek to close their security gaps in case Russia attacks – and the US refuses to defend its allies

Donald Trump’s war in Iran and tirades against Nato allies are accelerating moves to develop a plan B for European security in case the US is no longer willing to help defend allies against a Russian attack. Europe must prepare for sudden vulnerability gaps if the fickle US president decides to pull out key military enablers before Europeans can develop their own alternatives.

European countries have already taken over financial and political responsibility for supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression, as Trump has increasingly sided with Moscow in trying to force Kyiv to hand over swathes of territory to Russia. After four years of war in Europe, most leaders have come to recognise Ukraine as a military and technological asset for European defence rather than a burden or a risk factor.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

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.

Jason Atherton, who has restaurants in Dubai, St Moritz and now Tuscany, says it’s tough to stay afloat in UK hospitality industry

A British Michelin-starred chef says he is opening restaurants abroad to subsidise his UK venues against a backdrop of high taxes and a struggling hospitality sector.

Jason Atherton is now in Forte dei Marmi, on the Tuscan coast in Italy, where he is preparing his newest opening, Maria’s, which will be in the Principessa hotel. The Sheffield-born chef now has restaurants all over the world, including in Dubai and St Moritz.

Ryanair says that unlike others it will not be cancelling summer flights, as it hedged fuel contracts before Iran war

• Business live – latest updates

Airlines that cancel flights because of fuel shortages this summer will still have to compensate passengers under European law, the EU transport commissioner has said.

Apostolos Tzitzikostas told the Financial Times that jet fuel prices or shortages do not meet the criteria that protect EU airlines from passenger claims.

At least three households in Barry, south Wales, identified as having contracted the liver infection

Health authorities have asked parents and carers to be “vigilant with their children’s hand-washing” after a hepatitis A outbreak in Barry, south Wales.

Public Health Wales said at least three households in the seaside town had been identified as having contracted the same liver infection, and there were worries it was spreading locally.

Tense relations soured further after Ukraine accused Israel of buying grain harvested by Russia in occupied territory. Meanwhile, Russia and Iran have grown closer.

This information was used to understand the problems Americans face. The consequences of its erasure, experts warn, could affect generations to come

Group has banded together to rescue data as Trump administration has removed or altered data on climate change, reproductive health, LGBTQ people and more

André spent 2025 trying to stay one step ahead of the Trump administration.

Every morning, he woke up and download as many government datasets as he could before they were deleted. He continued throughout the afternoon, and sometimes through the night, if a notification from his group chat popped up on his phone saying that a new webpage had been taken down.

NewtonsLaw writes: According to Realtor.com, a California startup called Span plans to partner with Nvidia, PulteGroup, and other homebuilders to equip new homes with mini-data centers, so as to relieve the need to build and power much larger traditional centers. The article states the company "can install 8,000 XFRA units about six times faster and at five times lower cost than the construction of a typical centralized 100 megawatt data center of the same size." Could this be the solution to at least some of the problems hindering the rollout of greater data-center capacity for AI systems? "One big reason the XFRA model works is that the average American home only uses about 40 percent of its electrical capacity," Span said. "As big data center developers struggle to find power sources and distribution capacity, XFRA uses capacity that's already available." The startup says they will launch a 100-home proof of concept within the year to see if the idea is viable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Mulchatna caribou herd is expected to begin calving soon, and the babies are particularly susceptible to being eaten by bears or wolves.

Report using research from senior Blair and Clinton pollster comes as Labour braces for dismal election results

• May elections: What’s at stake across England, Wales and Scotland?

• UK politics live – latest updates

Progressive voters have been driven away from Labour by a lack of argument and vision from Keir Starmer, according to a report using research from a senior pollster to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

Downing Street is understood to have been briefed on the research, which has also been handed to allies of the potential leadership candidates Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner.

CEO of Danish shipping group says increased costs due to higher fuel bills passed on to customers

• Business live – latest updates

The boss of the shipping company Maersk has said the reopening of the strait of Hormuz would have a “limited impact” on cargo flows, as the industry grapples with a sharp rise in energy costs.

Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of the Danish shipping group, said its fuel bill had nearly doubled since the start of the conflict, adding as much as $500m (£367m) in costs per month, but it had passed this on to its customers through higher freight rates.

I tested the current crop of compact cameras for travel, wildlife, underwater, better-than-your-phone shots and more.

Ministers to mandate use of tools that record individuals’ cumulative exposure to harrowing incidents

Policing in England and Wales faces a reckoning over the levels of trauma experienced by officers and staff as “trauma tracker” tools are to be mandated by ministers to ensure the psychological toll caused by exposure to death, abuse and neglect is recorded.

A Home Office white paper published in January outlined a legislative push to make trauma monitoring systems mandatory across all 43 forces in England and Wales.

Suspect accused of enrolling under false identity before arrest, in case echoing similar US incidents

A 28-year-old woman pretended to be age 16 and enrolled at a Bronx high school under a false identity before New York City police jailed her recently, according to officials.

Kacy Claassen pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal impersonation in the second degree as well as trespassing on 28 April, the day after her arrest, Bronx court records show.

Since his second term started, President Trump has introduced a flurry of initiatives aimed at taming the excesses of the pharmaceutical industry.

The acting attorney general is touting the administration's stepped-up denaturalization efforts.

Powerful radar system is providing new data on city’s subsidence, which experts hope will draw more attention to it

Walking into Mexico City’s sprawling central Zócalo is a dizzying experience. At one end of the plaza, the capital’s cathedral, with its soaring spires, slumps in one direction. An attached church, known as the Metropolitan Sanctuary, tilts in the other. The nearby National Palace also seems off-kilter.

The teetering of many of the capital’s historic buildings is the most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than a century: Mexico City is sinking at an alarming rate.

Apple introduced the Alarm slider in November alongside iOS 26.1, but you can bring the Stop button back.

The company says it's a limited test on a small set of users who frequently browse the site without logging in. There may be ways around it.

At least a dozen states have proposed or adopted policies to curb screen time, such as time limits and allowing families to opt out of virtual instruction.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
With revenues decreasing and expenses rising, the city of Dover faces a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall heading into the next fiscal year. While city staff is sounding the alarm about dipping into the city’s savings as a way to close the gap, elected officials are divided as to whether they favor using the leftover funds, or levying a tax increase on residents.

Dover employees and elected officials are throwing a smattering of solutions at the wall, as the city seeks to close a $7 million shortfall in its budget for the 2027 fiscal year. 

But city officials are divided on whether a tax or electric fee increase will be necessary to make the finances work this year, and what Delaware’s capital city can do in the long term to make its budget more sustainable. 

The city has already proposed a number of cuts to departmental budgets, such as a hiring freeze, a postponement of new vehicle and equipment purchases, and a pause on capital improvement projects like repaving roads. 

These departmental cuts brought an initial $13 million budget gap down to $7 million, and city staff are still searching for additional ways to bring down the budget without taking away any of the services residents expect, like snow removal and trash pick up, acting city manager Sharon Duca said. 

Still, the city council will be forced to decide over the next month between dipping into the $10 million currently in budget reserves or raising taxes to resolve the rest of the deficit. 

Duca told Spotlight Delaware she and other city staff are warning city council against using the budget balance, as they have done in recent years to square the city’s finances, because the city needs some money in its reserves for costs that come up throughout the year. 

But city council members appear to be split as to whether they would rather use some of the budget reserves or levy higher taxes as a solution to the financial woes, saying they will need to come to an agreement as a group before the early June deadline. 

“I’m waiting to see what the figures are that [city staff are] going to bring down to us,” City Council President Fred Neil said. “How much would it cost on each penny if we have to raise the property tax? If we have to raise the electric rate?”

It remains unclear how much of the current $7 million shortfall the city would need to draw from either reserves or increased taxes, as city staff are still finalizing departmental budgets ahead of the May 12 deadline for them to provide a drafted budget to city council, Duca said. 

It is clear, though, that the city has faced substantial budget shortfalls in each of the past several years, and “we can’t continue on the path we have been,” she said.  

Council members have thrown around a number of ideas for how to remedy the gap between Dover’s revenue and expenses in the long term: building more homes to increase the property tax base, making nonprofit organizations pay for city-provided trash services, or hiring a grant writer to bring in more funds. 

But no one appears to have a concrete solution. 

‘You’re just kicking the can down the road’

A review of Dover’s preliminary fiscal year 2027 budget, which was presented to the city council finance committee in late April, shows relatively stagnant property tax revenue, and more substantial drops in revenue from both properties sold by the city to other entities and a citywide lodging tax. 

The document indicates that city revenues are projected to drop by 2.6%, or roughly $1.1 million, from last fiscal year. But Duca said city staff has been “further reviewing and analyzing” city revenues over the past several weeks and has now brought them to a “positive position.”

The draft budget outlines roughly $6 million in cuts to different departments’ budgets through a combination of removing unfilled positions and cutting down on travel and other technological or equipment upgrades. 

Duca said trimming the budget in these areas is necessary this year, but challenging because capital improvement upgrades to fire vehicles, roads and the sewer system will soon become dire, and costs for those improvements will only go up in future years.

“You’re just kicking the can down the road,” she said. “It becomes more of a backlog of issues that you have.” 

Notably, the only city department in the draft budget slated to receive a sizable increase in funds and add more positions is the police department. 

The draft lists an overall 8% increase in the police department budget, up from $25.7 million last year to $27.7 this year. The draft also calls for two new full-time positions — a total of 147 employees, including non-sworn officers. 

The Dover Police Department has been the subject of controversy over the past year. Last summer, the local police union publicly sought to remove Police Chief Thomas Johnson from his position. There also is an ongoing investigation into Mayor Robin Christiansen allegedly telling the union to attack city council members who criticized the police department. 

A spokesperson for the police department said it originally requested a personnel increase last fall to address inadequately high workloads among officers, before the department was aware of the city’s strained financial situation. 

Since then, the spokesperson said, the department has worked with city staff to pare back some other requests, like replacing uniforms and promoting more officers to supervisorial roles. 

“It’s really easy to stand up and say, ‘Hey, we need more cops. We need this. We need that,’” Mark Hoffman, the spokesperson, told Spotlight Delaware. “But at the end of the day, that comes with a price tag.” 

The budget balance — or the leftover dollars in the city’s general fund from previous years — currently sits at $10.2 million. However, Duca said, this balance has decreased by about $2 million each of the past two years, as city council members have opted to use those funds to balance the budget. 

The city charter requires the government to retain at least 8% of its total budget in the bank annually to cover costs that arise throughout the year before collecting any property taxes. 

In order to meet that threshold this year, the city would need to keep about $4.7 million in the bank. This would leave about $5.5 million that could be put toward closing the $7 million budget shortfall.

But Duca said she does not think simply pulling the maximum amount from the city’s extra funds is a sustainable solution to its budget stresses. 

“The warning signs are there,” she said. “We can’t continue on the path we’re on.”

City council responds

City council will be forced to make a decision within the next month about using last year’s budget balance or raising either property taxes or the city electric use fee in order to approve the budget. 

At the moment, however, council members appear reluctant to admit that a tax increase of some sort could be necessary. 

Two historically vocal council members, Brian Lewis and Roy Sudler Jr., told Spotlight Delaware they refuse to vote for a tax increase. Both councilmen want to look at any other possible avenues — including pulling money from the city’s Economic Development Fund or defunding the Dover Police Academy — in order to close the gap. 

“If the residents get a tax increase or [higher] electric fees, they’re going to go ballistic,” Lewis said. 

The city most recently passed a property tax rate and electric fee rate increase in Fiscal Year 2025, and a water bill rate fee increase at the start of this fiscal year, Duca said. 

She said city staff are preparing example property tax, water and electricity bills to present to city council at the upcoming budget workshops in mid-May, so that they understand what the potential tax and rate increases would mean for citizens’ expenses. 

Neil, the council president, said he needs to “wait and see these figures” in order to determine the direction the council should go. 

Council Members Julia Pillsbury, David Anderson, Andre Boggerty and Tricia Arndt were similarly vague when asked by Spotlight Delaware whether they believe council should use the budget balance or levy a tax increase to balance the budget. 

“I don’t have specific thoughts on it right now, but I think as we work through the budget hearings and the discussions and listen to staff recommendations, we can get to where we need to be,” Arndt said. 

Council members Donyalle Hall and Gerald Rocha did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment. 

The council members agreed, however, that the options being considered this year are merely stop-gap measures, not permanent solutions to the city’s budget challenges. 

Their ideas about how the city can make long-term improvements range from relying on the success of the Downtown Dover Partnership in bringing in more business and residents, to starting budget planning earlier in the year, and taxing nonprofit organizations located within city limits. 

“The truth is, we’re just going to have to be a more attractive city for individuals to come do business in,” Boggerty said. 

Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.

The post Dover faces $7M budget shortfall, leaders mull tax increase appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
In 2024, Delaware passed a law to expunge low-level criminal records, removing a barrier that can keep people from accessing jobs, housing and education. The law was expected to clear nearly 600,000 records, but disagreements among state officials over which records qualify have delayed the process. Until that is resolved, thousands of Delawareans may continue to carry records that could block them from advancing in society.

Rebecka Ash is days away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in social work. Soon after, she will begin an accelerated master’s program.

But as she advances through her education – which comes after a period in which she spent in prison on drug charges – Ash said records that should have been expunged are still showing up on background checks and blocking her from internship opportunities and scholarships for school.

“I take full responsibility for what I did,” Ash said. “But I don’t know what else to do to show people that I’m trying to better myself.”

Her experience reflects a larger issue unfolding across the state. For thousands of Delawareans, a law meant to automatically clear low-level criminal records has yet to deliver as promised, with delays tied to state police processing that is slowing its rollout.

Employers, landlords and educational institutions often use background checks to screen applicants, which can prevent people with minor charges, such as shoplifting or possession of drug paraphernalia, from accessing housing, jobs and education. 

In 2021, Delaware passed the Clean Slate Act, which promised to automatically expunge certain misdemeanors, as well as charges that had been dismissed and certain other criminal records.

State officials had three years to set up the automated expungement process before the law went into effect in August 2024. But nearly two years later, that has not happened, and of the 594,000 cases expected to be expunged, Delaware has cleared just over 25,000. 

Asked about the issue during a WHYY radio interview last week, Gov. Matt Meyer called the delay “reprehensible.” Other officials, such as his director of research, Matt Rosen, placed part of the blame on Meyer’s predecessor, John Carney, who was governor when the law was enacted. 

Carney’s office did not respond Tuesday to a request to comment for this story. 

‘Not in full alignment’

Currently, state officials are in disagreement about the number of cases that should be cleared under the new law.

Rosen described the situation as officials being “not in full alignment yet.”  

When the bill was passed in 2021, the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System (DELJIS) identified more than 290,000 adults with nearly 600,000 cases eligible for expungement.

But officials from the State Bureau of Identification, which is under Delaware State Police, say they believe the estimated caseload is inaccurate. 

In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, SBI spokesman Lt. Tyler Wright said agency officials found records within the DELJIS list of expungable cases “that were not eligible.” 

As a result, SBI officials began to manually evaluate each record up for expungement – a process that has resulted in delays. 

“SBI will continue to evaluate each record for accuracy, and we are working with all parties involved to create a more efficient process that minimizes errors and enables swifter review and expungement of records,” Wright said. 

Dominic Carretto, executive director of DELJIS, said that differences in determining which cases are eligible for expungement “are not unexpected in a multi-agency environment.” 

Those differences do not indicate limitations of the underlying system, he said, but instead may “reflect variations in how eligibility is interpreted or how individual records are reviewed.”

A national movement 

In recent years, a national movement has grown to encourage states to pass legislation ​​that “automates record sealing for people with eligible records,” according to the Clean Slate Initiative. 

Delaware was the fifth state to adopt a Clean Slate law when it passed its act in 2021. 

Today, a total of 13 states and Washington D.C. have passed similar legislation.

But recently Delaware’s law has been under fire from criminal justice advocates, who say the process is not meeting standards. 

“We are coming up on two years since the implementation of the Clean Slate Act, and thousands of Delawareans are still waiting on their second chance,” said Kailyn Richards, associate director of Tide Shift Justice Project, a local advocacy organization. 

Tide Shift and other advocacy groups have contrasted Delaware’s lack of progress to Pennsylvania, which expunged over 34 million cases during the first year of implementation of its similar Clean Slate Act. 

If SBI continues at its current review rate, it could take Delaware over 20 years to get through the backlog of potentially eligible expungements.

Before the Clean Slate Act passed, cases resolved in favor of a defendant, along with some low-level convictions, could be removed from a person’s record if they met certain criteria. But individuals had to go through a two-step application process and pay fees that start at $75.

Individuals are still able to use this process despite the Clean Slate Act being enacted, though some advocates stress that not everyone can afford the fees.

Rosen and Wright have not given a timeline about when the Clean Slate Act will begin to work to its full capacity.  

Ash, the student studying social work, said she began the manual expungement process in 2023, paying out of pocket to clear some charges, while others were supposed to be automatically removed under the Clean Slate Act. Years later, she’s still waiting, she said. 

As she has begun working in the social work field, the Kent County resident has seen other people who are also trying to navigate the expungement process. 

“I have charges, just like a lot of my clients do, and if I’m having a hard time navigating from a place of privilege … then it’s impossible for me to help them get through it too,” she said. 

The post Delaware’s Clean Slate law delayed, leaving thousands with low-level records appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

As communities push for publicly owned electricity, private utilities may be deploying dark money and local front groups to stop them

The utility industry is quietly dispatching a network of front groups to thwart the growing push for public power across the US – a push that comes amid mounting frustration over sky-high utility bills, electric outages, a slow transition to clean energy and private utilities’ soaring profits.

Communities from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to San Diego, California, and St Petersburg, Florida, are exploring municipalizing their grids to join the country’s approximately 2,000 public power companies.

Powerful property and farming firm Grosvenor Group says knock-on effect of Iran war could arrive next year

Fertiliser shortages caused by the Iran war have driven up costs for UK farmers by up to 70% and will have a “dramatic” impact on food prices globally next year, according to one of Britain’s most powerful property and farming companies.

Mark Preston, executive trustee of the 349-year-old Grosvenor Group, controlled by the Duke of Westminster, said fertiliser “was already quite expensive” before the 50% to 70% surge in prices since the start of the Iran war in late February.

In an exclusive interview from prison, Sadia Moalim Ali, a 27-year-old rickshaw driver, tells of her treatment after being arrested for demonstrating against the government

A woman being held in prison in Somalia for taking part in peaceful protests has described how she was tortured by her guards.

Sadia Moalim Ali, 27, told the Guardian she was stripped naked by two male guards in a room monitored by CCTV, kicked, beaten with a baton and left for two days in a small cell without food.

World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research

It’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers.

In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels.

The Philadelphia Eagles selected the Nigerian defensive lineman before he had even played a down of football. More teams should take risks on global talent

Uar Bernard has become a source of borderline indecent fascination in the NFL – the kind of prospect who underscores how athletes are identified and the inherent limits of pro football scouting itself. A swole 6ft 4in and 306lbs, Uar (pronounced OO-ar) Bernard doesn’t just look the part of a fearsome defensive lineman; fans post his shirtless photos next to ones of Myles Garrett, the game-wrecking Cleveland Browns pass rusher who set the regular-season sack record last year. Veteran NFL analyst Lance Zierlein described Bernard as “one of the rarest of physical specimens I’ve seen in the sport”. Other people who have spent their lifetimes in football say Bernard looks like a Marvel creation.

George Whitfield – who has been a private coach to pros such as Andrew Luck and Cam Newton – likened Bernard to the NBA’s 7ft 4in Victor Wembanyama, another sports star whose physical traits seem alien even among other professional athletes. Bernard’s testing numbers bordered on otherworldly: a 4.63-second 40-yard dash, a 39-inch vertical, the 10ft 10in broad jump – or 14in farther than the next-best defensive end prospect. Scouts were awestruck by Bernard’s 6% body fat – which would be considered low for a marathon runner – down from the 11% that he started with at the beginning of his draft training four months earlier.

The new TrumpRx program relies partly on connecting consumers with discount coupons offered by drugmakers. For insured patients, though, using a coupon can prove dicey.

President Donald Trump wants a lavish welcome in Beijing for a summit with Xi Jinping next week. But the specter of the war in Iran looms large.

The children were walking to school in Broadview, Illinois, or leaving a shopping center in Columbus, Ohio. They were at home in Minneapolis, or sitting in a stroller in Chicago, or at an afternoon protest in Portland, Oregon, alongside dogs on leashes and older people pushing walkers.

They were mostly going about their days when federal immigration agents shot tear gas or fired pepper spray near their homes and schools and into their family cars.

The chemicals blew through the air, sometimes for blocks. They seeped into bedrooms, forcing an asthmatic teen to gasp for air. They stuck to the skin of a young girl, who cried, “It burns!” They caused an infant to stop breathing.

ProPublica identified 79 children across the country who have been harmed by tear gas or pepper spray as immigration officers dramatically stepped up their use during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly defended its use of the chemicals, asserting its agents aren’t to blame. The fault, a spokesperson said, lies with “agitators” in the crowds and parents who put their children in harm’s way.

But videos reveal the way agents use these weapons. One captures them releasing tear gas into a crowd with at least seven kids just before someone yells, “There’s children here.” Another shows them hurling tear gas canisters at protesters without apparent provocation; then, with the streets already flooded with white smoke, a Customs and Border Protection agent wearing a body camera shoots pepper balls before muttering, “Fuck yeah,” and shouting, “Woo!”

A third shows what happened after an officer fired pepper spray through the driver’s side window of a family’s car, hitting a 1-year-old girl in the back seat; a bystander filmed her in tears, and her family later said she was struggling to breathe. A DHS spokesperson called the incident “a disgusting pepper spray hoax.” But a local pastor who was at the scene rebuked the claim, testifying at an Illinois state accountability commission that “there’s literally video evidence.”

Such scenes of billowing gas and tear-stained faces have prompted some historians to liken the scope and intensity of the agents’ deployment of chemical munitions to brutal crackdowns by Southern law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement.

And the legality of their use has been challenged. In cities across the country, judges have excoriated both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP, saying their officers used excessive force. One judge said the agents showed “deliberate indifference” to the risks, including to children. They ordered officers to limit the use of these weapons in areas that were the focus of lawsuits. But they had no power to curb the practice nationwide — and kids in other communities, ProPublica found, continued to get hurt.

The controversy over the chemicals has highlighted a lack of consistency in their use: No national standard governs the use of tear gas and pepper spray by law enforcement, and agency policies differ widely. As a result, agents working for DHS could more freely use tear gas in targeted cities like Minneapolis and Portland, where local police policies are stricter.

A Portland officer said in a court declaration that he and several colleagues were tear-gassed by federal agents while observing and patrolling a protest he deemed to be mostly peaceful. At another event, in which he served as incident commander, he said the agents’ use of tear gas was “excessive and disproportionate to the threat posed” and “affected hundreds of peaceful protesters.”

These weapons are toxic, especially to children, who breathe more rapidly, pulling in more contaminated air than adults relative to their body weight. That principle is why coal miners once brought canaries underground, as one emergency medicine doctor explained in a recent court declaration. Because of the birds’ quick breaths and small size, they would stop singing or die when the chemicals started affecting them, giving the miners time to escape. Children are also vulnerable because they have narrower airways and stand closer to the ground, where tear gas tends to pool.

The Trump administration’s use of tear gas has been so extreme — with some children exposed multiple times — that the only research ProPublica found that might approximate the impact is a 2018 survey of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank subjected to the chemicals by Israeli security forces. Kids reported rashes and chronic tonsillitis, but no one knows the extent of the long-term consequences.

ProPublica’s tally of kids harmed by tear gas or pepper spray is nearly four times the number cited in a recent congressional report that relied on news stories, yet it is likely still a vast undercount. We verified incidents by interviewing more than 40 victims or witnesses and reviewing officer-worn body camera footage, social media posts and lawsuits. We included only cases in which we spoke to parents or others with direct knowledge, found at least two news accounts confirming the incident or identified an episode from sworn testimony.

In many of the cases where children were harmed, a DHS spokesperson said, the officers were justified in using tear gas or pepper spray, but the agency did not address how the weapons affected bystanders, including children. “DHS does NOT target children,” the agency said in a written statement.

The spokesperson defended the department’s training and said ICE officers are taught to use “the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations.” That includes “considering the totality of circumstances when deploying crowd control measures” and training in “de-escalation tactics,” according to the statement. “But if you assault an officer or attempt to obstruct law enforcement activities you can expect to be met with an appropriate response. … This is why rioters and agitators should stop obstructing law enforcement operations” and “refrain from knowingly bringing their own children into potentially volatile situations.”

The department did not respond to detailed questions asking whether it had investigated or disciplined officers over their use of tear gas or pepper spray since last year. In January, Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, addressed ICE officers in a segment on Fox News, saying, “You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”

Three former DHS leaders said that the number of children exposed to tear gas and pepper spray indicates something is seriously broken in the department. John Roth, who served as its inspector general under President Barack Obama and for part of Trump’s first term, said ProPublica’s findings are a “bright red flag.”

“This should trigger a serious review of how it is that we train people on use of force,” he said.

“I Can’t Breathe”

Tear gas, a catch-all term for various chemical irritants, exists as a fine powder that settles over every surface, triggering nerve endings to feel like they’re on fire. The chemicals sear your lungs and throat, inflaming your airways until it feels like you’re breathing through a straw, while snot and tears stream down your face. They can cause vomiting, rashes and coughs that last for weeks. Pepper spray is made from compounds found in hot peppers and causes similar effects. 

The limited studies of tear gas use on adults have found lingering eye problems, bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses. Emerging research suggests an association between tear gas and abnormal menstrual cycles and miscarriage. In extreme cases, people have died.

How Tear Gas Affects the Body

Possible immediate symptoms

Possible long-term symptoms

Dr. Sarita Chung, Dr. Rohini Haar, Sven Jordt and Dr. Benjamin Sanders provided scientific expertise for this graphic. Physicians for Human Rights and the American Academy of Pediatrics offer additional information on the health effects of tear gas and pepper spray.

Once the weapons are fired, it’s often difficult to control who gets hit. The canisters can roll along the ground, and the chemicals drift through the air. In Minneapolis, ProPublica found that tear gas traveled at least a quarter mile, entering a McDonald’s.

Families who live near an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, felt the effects inside their homes when officers tear-gassed the protesters who routinely gathered there.

Derrick Nash lives a block and a half east of the facility with his extended family, including four children ages 6 to 17. Each time the tear gas seeped in, the kids coughed, and their throats often burned. The eldest, a high school senior with asthma, would hide out in his second-floor bedroom. One evening, his face turned red as he coughed uncontrollably and sucked on his inhaler without relief.

“He was wigging out, saying, ‘I can’t breathe,’” Nash recalled. The family considered calling an ambulance, but the street was closed.

Nearby, two girls, ages 6 and 10, started wearing layers of surgical masks indoors, but that didn’t prevent their coughing fits.

“It was terrifying. My kids were scared,” said the girls’ mother, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation. “We felt it instantly. We were coughing. Our eyes were watering. Our noses felt funny.”

She worries the exposure to tear gas and pepper balls might have caused long-term damage. Since October, her youngest, now 7, has been coughing and wheezing a lot, especially at night. She’s taken the girl to urgent care about five times. “She’s been complaining about her throat,” she said. “It gets to the point she can’t breathe.”

Law enforcement officials have been dismissive of the effects of tear gas. In a lawsuit over the officers’ actions in the Chicago area, CBP supervisor Kristopher Hewson testified that the chemical irritant “doesn’t harm people” and that “after you leave it, it stops those effects within 10 seconds.”

But it’s undeniably toxic. A federal scientific panel in 2014 found that people could be harmed at even very low doses. Much of the research on health effects was conducted on men in the military; little is known about what happens to women, children, older adults and people with respiratory illnesses.

In the United States, some have been seriously hurt after a single exposure to tear gas.

In January, a Minneapolis family with six children was driving home from a youth basketball game when they encountered a protest and stopped for a while. As the situation escalated and they tried to leave, a tear gas canister rolled under their minivan, setting off the airbags and hampering their escape. Their 6-month-old son briefly stopped breathing.

“The baby is not responding. … Oh my god, come on,” a 911 caller said. The infant, who was given CPR, spent time in the hospital, along with two siblings who have severe asthma.

“Deliberate Indifference”

As Trump’s immigration crackdown moved from city to city, residents, journalists and protesters sued to stop the bombardments they said violated their constitutional rights.

Among dozens of declarations from Chicago and its suburbs, one witness in Broadview described seeing children covering their faces while walking to school; another in Brighton Park, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, said she saw kids “coughing, wheezing, and crying” after tear gas was released.

“Tear gassing expectant mothers, children, and babies shocks the conscience,” U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis wrote in her ruling in November. She found that ICE and CBP officers used excessive force, deploying the weapons “without justification, often without warning” against people who didn’t pose a physical threat.

She ordered them to stop. But the injunction covered only the areas mentioned in the complaint.

In December, 15 days after Ellis’ written ruling, residents living diagonally across the street from an ICE facility in Portland filed their own suit. For months, they said, tear gas seeped into their apartments as federal officers fired it at the protesters gathered steps away. The residents filed their accounts to the court: While at home, one 12-year-old boy broke out in hives and suffered “chronic respiratory issues,” requiring an inhaler for the first time in his life. Two sisters, ages 7 and 9, slept inside a fort they made in a closet.

One neighbor, Mindan Ocon, told ProPublica that her 3-year-old daughter, Angelise, screamed and cried one night as the gas drifted in, holding her face as it burned her eyes. Over time, Ocon said, they developed a routine. Whenever Angelise coughed and rubbed her eyes, or when Ocon anticipated trouble, she took her daughter into the bathroom for a bubble bath. On certain days, she did this as many as four times. Angelise now prefers showers and says, “No bath!” when Ocon tries to put her in the tub.

Angelise’s cough and eye irritation had subsided by the time she saw Dr. Benjamin Sanders, a pediatrician at Oregon Health and Science University, for treatment. But Sanders said he worried about the long-term effects, both physical and psychological. At this young age, Angelise was “laying down her emotional understanding of the world,” he said, which “includes some pretty dangerous stuff.”

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio ruled that federal officers acted with “deliberate indifference,” a legal standard that means they knew of, but disregarded, a substantial risk of harm. She wrote that the clouds of tear gas made it difficult or impossible for residents inside the complex “to eat, sleep, or simply breathe normally while in their own homes,” and that DHS displayed a “protracted failure even to care.”

Another judge handled a lawsuit regarding what happened on Portland streets on Jan. 31, when thousands attended a Saturday afternoon rally. The event drew families — kids carrying band instruments, parents hoisting small children on their shoulders.

As the protesters marched past the ICE building, up to 50 “agitators” dressed in black tried to tie shut a vehicle gate and threw rocks and eggs at federal officers, according to DHS testimonies. Federal agents said they warned the crowd to move back and, within minutes, began launching weapons. These included Triple Chaser grenades that each separated into three tear gas canisters, dozens of pepper ball projectiles filled with chemical munitions, and “rubber ball grenades” that released stinging pellets, bright lights and loud sounds.

About a half block away, an 11-year-old boy thought those sounds were gunfire; then, the chemicals reached him. “I was coughing and hacking up phlegm and snot,” he told ProPublica. His father, who was with him and his brother, recalled their fear: “I think he really thought we were going to die, and so did I, because of the gas.” The boy’s 15-year-old brother said his eyes were sore for days. (The family asked us not to use names to protect the kids’ privacy.)

Matt Lembo, who went to the protest with his 14-year-old daughter, said the gas gave them sore throats and made their eyes water. “I saw at least a dozen kids,” he said, “getting their eyes washed out … seriously coughing, crying, spitting.”

A judge issued a temporary restraining order that forbade federal agents from using chemical munitions unless targeted at someone who posed “an imminent threat of physical harm.” CBP argued in a court filing that officers needed to be able to use the weapons in certain cases, like to break up a crowd of people blocking their vehicles.

These attempts to get relief in the courts have had limited success. Appellate courts have vacated the federal judges’ rulings in all three cases in Portland and Chicago, removing restrictions on how federal officers can use these weapons.

While DHS appears to have stopped using tear gas in Portland, its officers continued deploying it elsewhere, including in a residential area in South Burlington, Vermont, in March.

“Something Is Wrong”

The DHS policy on force says officers must use tactics that “minimize the risk of unintended injury” and should be guided by “respect for human life.” The CBP policy is more detailed; it says officers “should not use” pepper spray or “less-lethal” chemical munitions against “small children.” ICE’s policy says “the presence of other officers, subjects, or bystanders” are a factor in determining whether an officers’ use of force is reasonable.

Those policies fall short of more concrete reforms on tear gas and pepper spray use that many local police departments have been forced to adopt as a result of lawsuits or laws aimed at curbing excessive force. Portland’s police department requires officers to take into account their proximity to homes when considering tear gas use. Minneapolis forbids officers from using chemical munitions for crowd control unless authorized by the police chief — even when officers fear they will be physically harmed. Police in Akron, Ohio, were recently prohibited from using pepper spray “indiscriminately” to disperse a crowd and face other constraints on tear gas.

DHS officers also have historically been undertrained. In 2017, the department’s inspector general’s office found that agents did not appear to complete required training on weapons including tear gas and pepper spray. Four years later, another IG investigation into agents’ use of force while protecting federal buildings concluded that officers failed to complete required training. The report warned that “without the necessary policies, training, and equipment, DHS will continue to face challenges securing Federal facilities during periods of civil disturbance that could result in injury, death, and liability.”

DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about whether it would examine its training or practices. “The pattern is NOT of law enforcement using force,” an agency spokesperson said in an email. “It’s a pattern of coordinated attacks and violence against our law enforcement.”

ProPublica’s findings make it clear that “something is wrong” with DHS’ use of force practices, said Edward Maguire, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University who advises law enforcement agencies on crowd control. “A responsible law enforcement agency … ought to be taking action to make sure these types of things don’t happen anymore.”

Requiring all law enforcement agencies to adopt uniform policies and training methods would go a long way, experts told ProPublica. These should include more extensive consideration of bystanders. When considering the use of tear gas or pepper spray in a crowd, for example, at least one officer should be assigned to conduct a collateral damage assessment to determine who may be inadvertently harmed, Maguire said. Then, the agency needs to be transparent about whether officers are following the policies.

To make that happen, various experts said, Congress would need to pass a bill mandating that federal law enforcement entities adopt such practices and incentivize local police departments to do the same.

Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly reintroduced the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aims to strengthen use-of-force training and policies alongside more sweeping reforms on local policing. The latest versions, introduced in Congress last year, have not come up for a vote.

More recently, Congress members have drafted two bills narrowly tailored toward DHS and its use of these weapons. Both are with committees and have not been scheduled for hearings.

In the fall, three Democrats introduced a House bill that would strengthen DHS’ use-of-force policy, among other provisions. Notably, the bill would prohibit federal officers from carrying tear gas, pepper spray and other so-called less-lethal weapons unless they are arresting someone trying to enter the country illegally or have prior approval from their supervisor. “They don’t hold them to any standards like we would expect from local law enforcement,” said Rep. Scott Peters, a California Democrat who introduced the bill. “These are the kinds of reforms we need to make to restrain behavior.”

The Trump administration has said that any new restrictions would hamper immigration officers’ ability to carry out their work.

Rep. Delia C. Ramirez, a Democrat who represents Chicago, introduced a separate House bill in January. It would require DHS to publish a report every six months detailing each time officers used force and a summary of whether their actions complied with the department’s policy.

Ramirez said it shouldn’t fall to news outlets like ProPublica to document potential cases of excessive force. That is work “that we Congress members should be demanding from DHS.”

One of her co-sponsors on the bill, Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., called ProPublica’s tally of 79 kids harmed by tear gas and pepper spray a “horrific” finding. “I have two young children myself. I know how fragile young people can be, and not just physically but emotionally and mentally as well.”

Magaziner said Democrats in Congress may have a chance to question Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of Homeland Security, in a future budget hearing. When that happens, Magaziner said, he intends to ask, “When is there going to be accountability for the people who sprayed pepper spray into a moving vehicle that had a 1-year-old in it?”

About Our Findings

We learned that immigration officers stepped up their use of chemical munitions during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown through a data analysis. The University of Washington Center for Human Rights obtained nearly three years of Significant Incident Report data from the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are required to fill out such a report each time they use force, which includes deploying chemical agents. ProPublica analyzed the data and found that ICE officers reported a dramatic increase in their use of chemical munitions, comparing the year ending September 2025 with the prior two years.

The post At Least 79 Kids Have Been Harmed by Tear Gas or Pepper Spray During Trump’s Immigration Crackdown appeared first on ProPublica.

People gathered at dusk under the fig tree canopy of Sydney’s Hyde Park to pay tribute to the 32-year-old who died nearby and lay undiscovered for up to a week

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No one should be left to die in the middle of Sydney, alone and unseen.

That was the powerful message delivered by homelessness support worker Erin Longbottom to a crowd gathered in Hyde Park to honour Bikram Lama.

Enchanting and a little eerie, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth is the second great game in as many years based on the classic children’s books

Sleepy, happy-sad, and imbued with the mildest peril, Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories may seem an unlikely fit for the action-heavy medium of video games. Rather than embark on swashbuckling adventures, these milk-white, hippo-esque creatures prefer to potter about Moominvalley, only venturing further if the weather conditions are just right.

Yet a small Norwegian video game studio, Hyper Games, is now on its second exquisitely charming Jansson adaptation. The first, 2024’s Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley, put players in control of the wily free spirit, Snufkin, as he dismantled overly ordered nature parks (and evaded authority-loving wardens). The latest, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, sees young Moomintroll wake up at night in the dead of winter. With his parents still hibernating, the creature is all alone, thrust into a cold and unfamiliar world.

For much of the quantum computing industry, scaling remains a physics problem. For Quantum Motion, it is increasingly being framed as a semiconductor manufacturing problem.

The UK-based company today announced a $160 million Series C round to advance its silicon transistor-based quantum computing architecture, which aims to build quantum processors using largely standard CMOS manufacturing techniques rather than highly specialized fabrication approaches.

Quantum Motion describes its strategy as quantum computing’s potential “transistor moment,” an attempt to move the field beyond laboratory-scale demonstrations and toward manufacturable systems that can scale through existing semiconductor supply chains. The company says its architecture could potentially reduce the cost, footprint and energy demands of large-scale quantum systems while fitting within conventional data-center infrastructure.

The financing round was co-led by DCVC and Kembara, with participation from the British Business Bank, Firgun and existing investors including Oxford Science Enterprises, Bosch Ventures and Porsche Automobil Holding SE.

Quantum Motion says the funding will support development of utility-scale systems designed around conventional semiconductor manufacturing methods and existing data center infrastructure. According to the company, its systems are being designed to operate within roughly three to five standard 19-inch data center racks rather than requiring dedicated facilities or large-scale custom infrastructure buildouts.

The company claims its silicon-based architecture could reduce the cost and physical footprint of large-scale quantum systems by roughly 100-fold while lowering energy consumption by as much as 1,000-fold compared with alternative approaches.

Unlike superconducting and trapped-ion systems that often rely on highly specialized fabrication and control infrastructure, Quantum Motion’s approach is built around adapting conventional silicon transistors into qubits using largely standard CMOS semiconductor processes.

James Palles-Dimmock

In an interview with HPCwire, CEO James Palles-Dimmock said the company’s long-term strategy is rooted in adapting technologies the semiconductor industry already knows how to manufacture at scale.

“We’ve taken what mankind does incredibly well,” he said. “We make transistors, and we make billions of them.”

That focus on manufacturability has become central to the company’s positioning within the broader quantum computing landscape. Rather than competing primarily on near-term qubit counts, Quantum Motion argues that the industry’s larger challenge will be scaling systems to the hundreds of thousands or millions of physical qubits likely needed for fault-tolerant quantum computing.

According to the company, silicon offers advantages beyond the qubits themselves. Because the architecture is built around transistor technology already used throughout the semiconductor industry, Quantum Motion says it can more naturally integrate classical control electronics alongside quantum components.

“It’s not just a story about qubits,” Palles-Dimmock said. “The integration of classical control electronics is critical to who we are as a business.”

Hugo Saleh

In the interview, Hugo Saleh, president and COO of Quantum Motion, contrasted the company’s approach with some competing quantum hardware efforts that require specialized process modifications or entirely bespoke fabrication techniques.

“We don’t want to be inventing new underlying hard-to-install capabilities,” he said.

Instead, the company’s approach is centered on adapting standard transistor structures already widely produced by the semiconductor industry, a strategy Saleh said is intended to reduce the engineering friction associated with scaling quantum hardware into manufacturable systems.

“It’s not about the science, it’s not even about the technology, it’s about making it useful.” he said. “Everyone else knows how to leverage this technology. And when I say it’s not about the technology— there isn’t even one single approach to silicon spin. Our approach [is] using the transistor like the transistor was meant to be used.”

“We’re going to stick to that building block, figure out how to use it, build the IP around that, and then scale it up like any other chip that Intel, Nvidia, AMD would put out.”

Quantum Motion’s manufacturing-focused roadmap has also generated external validation beyond investor backing.

In 2025, the company deployed what it described as the world’s first full-stack CMOS quantum computer at the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre, where the system has been used for early proof-of-concept quantum chemistry workloads.

Palles-Dimmock described the deployment as a milestone moment for silicon-based quantum computing.

“This was kind of like the ‘Hello World’ moment of the CMOS-based quantum computer,” he said.

Palles-Dimmock stressed that the significance of the system was less about raw performance than demonstrating that quantum programs could successfully run on a full-stack CMOS platform rather than isolated laboratory devices.

Quantum Motion’s NQCC deployment

He said the system had been used for early proof-of-concept quantum chemistry algorithms involving calculations such as molecular bond lengths, while emphasizing that the platform remains an early-stage research system rather than a commercially useful machine.

“I think everyone knows that at the moment, that point for quantum computing is still a little bit further out,” he said.

The company has also pointed to its advancement to Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative as additional validation of its long-term scaling strategy. DARPA’s QBI is designed to verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation by 2033.

“The question DARPA asked isn’t, ‘Can you build a quantum computer?’” Palles-Dimmock said. “The question they asked is, can you build one that’s actually worth building?”

Quantum Motion’s new funding round also arrives during a period of growing scrutiny around commercialization timelines across the quantum computing industry, particularly as several quantum companies have entered public markets through SPAC deals or IPO plans.

Palles-Dimmock said the company has intentionally remained private in order to focus on long-term platform development rather than near-term revenue pressures.

“There’s a heck of a lot of risk in a SPAC and going public too early,” he said. “You go public too early, then you’ve got shareholder pressure to go out and make some too-early revenue. You don’t actually build the big product that everyone really knows is going to make the difference.”

With its latest funding round, Quantum Motion will have the means to patiently pursue what it believes could become quantum computing’s “transistor moment.” The company is betting that the future of quantum computing may ultimately depend as much on semiconductor manufacturing and infrastructure scalability as on advances in quantum physics itself.

The post Quantum Motion Targets Quantum Computing ‘Transistor Moment’ with $160M Series C appeared first on HPCwire.

A small study found that a single 25mg dose of psilocybin produced measurable brain changes that were still visible a month later, along with reported improvements in psychological insight, wellbeing, and mental flexibility. The Guardian reports: Evidence for the changes came from specialized scans that measured the diffusion of water along nerve bundles in the brain. They suggested that some nerve tracts had become denser and more robust after the drug was taken. While the findings are preliminary, the scientists said the opposite was seen in ageing and dementia. "It's remarkable to see potential anatomical brain changes one month after a single dose of any drug," said Prof Robin Carhart-Harris, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and senior author on the study. "We don't yet know what these changes mean, but we do note that overall, people showed positive psychological changes in this study, including improved wellbeing and mental flexibility." [...] Writing in Nature Communications, the researchers describe another key finding. Those who had the largest spike in brain entropy after psilocybin were most likely to report deeper psychological insight and better wellbeing a month later, underlining the link between flexible thinking and improved mental health. "It suggests a psychobiological therapeutic action for psilocybin," said Carhart-Harris. Prof Alex Kwan, a neuroscientist at Cornell University in New York, said studies in mice had shown that psychedelics can rewire connections between nerves, a form of "plasticity" that could underlie their therapeutic effects. The big question is whether the same occurs in humans. "This study comes closer than most to addressing that question, by giving evidence of lasting changes in brain structure after psychedelic use," he said. But while the results were "exciting," the study involved a small number of people and DTI provides an indirect and limited view of brain connections, he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Partnership between top startup DeepL and Amazon comes amid concern about Silicon Valley’s monopoly over digital infrastructure

AI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm.

While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use.

The two new processors could bring several flagship-phone features down to more affordable devices.

Nobel laureate says he previously considered himself a supporter of Israel, but ‘the campaign of annihilation in Gaza has changed all that’

Nobel laureate JM Coetzee has declined to attend an upcoming literature festival in Israel, writing a excoriating letter to organisers citing the country’s “genocidal campaign” in Gaza, stating: “It will take many years for Israel to clear its name”.

The 86-year-old author, who was born in apartheid South Africa and lives in Australia, wrote to organisers of the Jerusalem international writers festival in November.

Let’s not draw the wrong conclusions from Hungary’s election or the US president’s troubles

Viktor Orbán’s crushing defeat in last month’s Hungarian election has led to an outbreak of democratic optimism. Across the globe, democrats are drawing lessons from the results and speculating about the decline of the far right. There is simultaneously a consensus that Donald Trump has gone from inspiration to “liability” for the global far right.

While the fall of Orbán has great symbolic significance and important consequences for EU politics (see the EU-Ukraine deal), we should be very careful not to read too much into it for three reasons.

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today

A belligerent America is foiling Putin’s strategy.

Al Nahyans’ control over farmland in Europe has meant they receive proportion of payments to farms

The United Arab Emirates’ ruling royal family is benefiting from tens of millions in EU subsidies to grow crops destined for the Gulf, it can be revealed.

A cross-border investigation by DeSmog and shared with the Guardian found subsidiaries controlled by the Al Nahyans collected more than €71m (£61m) in six years for farmland it controls in Romania, Italy and Spain.

Sam Altman's management style came under scrutiny on the seventh day of Elon Musk's high-stakes OpenAI trial, as former OpenAI figures Mira Murati, Shivon Zilis, and Helen Toner took the stand to testify about their experiences working with him. Their testimony resurfaced many of the criticisms that first emerged during Altman's brief ouster as CEO in 2023. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The first witness was Mira Murati, OpenAI's former chief technology officer and now founder of her own AI shop, Thinking Machines Lab. Jurors watched a recorded video deposition of Murati, who was also OpenAI's interim CEO after the board briefly ousted Sam Altman. Murati's testimony focused on her concerns about Altman's "difficult and chaotic" management style. She said Altman had trouble "making decisions on big controversial things." He also had a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear. "My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and a completely different thing to another person, and that makes it a very difficult and chaotic environment to work with," said Murati. Murati said that her issue with Altman was not about safety, "it is about Sam creating chaos." She said she supported Altman's return to OpenAI because the company "was at catastrophic risk of falling apart" at the time of his ousting. "I was concerned about the company completely blowing up." Zilis said she was upset that Altman rolled out ChatGPT without involving the board. "It wasn't just me but the entire board raised concern about that whole thing happening without any board communication," she said. Zilis said she was also concerned about a potential OpenAI deal with a nuclear energy startup called Helion Energy because both Altman and Greg Brockman were investors. Although the executives had disclosed the investment to the board, Zilis said the deal talk made her uneasy. It "felt super out of left field," she said. "How is it the case that we want to place a major bet on a speculative technology?" In a video deposition, Helen Toner, a former member of OpenAI's board who resigned in 2023, said she first became aware of ChatGPT's release when an OpenAI employee asked another board member whether the board was aware of the development. [...] Toner also elaborated on why the board, including herself, voted to remove Altman as CEO in 2023. "There were a number of things -- the pattern of behavior related to his honesty and candor, his resistance of board oversight, as well as the concerns that two os his inner management team raised to the board about his management practices, his manipulation of board processes," said Toner. Recap: Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six) OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five) Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four) Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three) Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two) Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has now left the intensive care unit, his spokesperson said, after being hospitalized with pneumonia.

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

Exclusive: Regime, which executed 243 people last year for drug offences, accused of investing in entertainment to whitewash its human rights record

The acclaimed Australian film-maker Phillip Noyce is being paid by the Saudi regime to make a feature film portraying the repressive state’s narcotics officers as heroes.

The Watchful Eyes, based on a real Saudi ministry of interior narcotics case, is billed as a dramatic depiction of the “heroism of security men in combating drugs”.

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• Howard Lutnick answers questions from US House over Jeffrey Epstein ties

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It’s worth noting, ahead of Howard Lutnick’s closed-door testimony before House oversight committee members today, that the commerce secretary has refused to answer questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein from lawmakers during congressional hearings on Capitol Hill over the last month.

In April, Represenative Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, asked whether the president expressed “concerns” about the commerce secretary’s relationship with Epstein. Lutnick refused to comment.

Ex-TV star launches viral video a day before debate with mayor Karen Bass and city council member Nithya Raman

Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star and current Los Angeles mayoral candidate, reposted a scathing AI-generated ad on X on Tuesday, which cast the city as a bleak hellscape under its current leadership.

In the viral video, created by film-maker Charlie Curran, flames engulf the Hollywood sign; a socialist militia patrols the streets; and California’s political brass, including the governor, Gavin Newsom, the mayor, Karen Bass, and Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, are depicted as royals who care little for their subjects’ plights.

Argentina, where the MV Hondius cruise departed, consistently ranked by WHO as having highest incidence of hantavirus in region

Officials and experts in Argentina are scrambling to determine if their country is the source of a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has gripped an Atlantic cruise ship, amid reports that a number of passengers have already returned to their home countries.

Argentina, where the cruise to Antarctica departed, is consistently ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO) as having the highest incidence of the rare, rodent-borne disease in Latin America. Investigators there are working to contact trace the source of contamination.

Trump warned Tehran to agree to deal or face attacks ‘at a much higher level and intensity’ than before – key US politics stories from 6 May 2026 at a glance

The US military fired on an Iranian-flagged oil tanker on Wednesday, shortly after Donald Trump issued a fresh ultimatum to Tehran, telling it to accept a deal to end the war or face a new wave of US bombing “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before”.

The US fighter fired several rounds and “disabled the tanker’s rudder” as it attempted to breach the US’s blockade of Iranian ports, US Central Command said in a social media post.

Did your older AT&T wireless plan jump in price in April? Here's what's going on.

As Snap Kitchen expands to 32 states starting May 15, we retested the meals to see how they hold up.

The 16-page report was led by Trump-ally Sebastian Gorka, and places drug cartels in the Americas at the centre of counter-terrorism efforts

The Trump administration has accused Europe of being an “incubator” for terrorism fuelled by mass migration, in a new counter-terrorism strategy unveiled on Wednesday.

The strategy also focuses on rooting out “violent left-wing extremists” including “radically pro-transgender” groups, as Trump’s conservative administration steps up its political attacks on opponents.

This blog is now closed

• US fires on Iranian-flagged oil tanker as Trump gives Tehran fresh ultimatum

The UK work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has warned that job losses “could happen” in Britain due to the economic impacts of the Iran war.

He said the UK economy was “going in the right direction” at the start of the year and unemployment figures for February showed a decline. He added that interest rates were expected to come down and the markets were pricing in cuts during the course of the year.

Justice department targets MacArthur Park, which has long struggled with fentanyl use, overdoses and homelessness

Federal authorities arrested 18 people in Los Angeles in a crackdown on drugs in MacArthur Park, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.

The DoJ said it was targeting an “open-air drug market” in the park near downtown, which has long struggled with fentanyl use and overdoses and has at times had large encampments of unhoused people.

The heavily Democratic Fulton county has been at the center of Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020

The federal government can keep the 2020 election ballots from Georgia’s Fulton county seized by the FBI from a warehouse near Atlanta, a judge ruled Wednesday.

US district judge JP Boulee’s decision came after lawyers for the county had argued that the ballots and other election materials, as well as any electronic copies the justice department has made, should be returned because the seizure was improper and unconstitutional.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 7, No. 1,783.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 7, No. 795.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 7, No. 1,061.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for May 7, No. 591.

A proposed $250 million settlement would compensate millions of consumers who bought the iPhone 16, iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max.

A former cellmate has previously claimed that the note was written by Epstein after a failed suicide attempt less than a month before his death.

The airstrike on the Haret Hreik neighborhood targeted the leader of the Radwan forces, Hezbollah’s elite and battle-hardened fighting unit, Israeli authorities said.

A federal judge in Georgia denied a motion by officials in Fulton County, Georgia, to return ballots and other materials from the 2020 election that were taken by the FBI earlier this year.

If your apartment doesn't allow pets, you may want to consider owning a Familiar.

Epstein’s cellmate in New York City says he found note after convicted sexual offender attempted suicide in July 2019

A federal judge unsealed an alleged suicide note written by Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday, the first time the document has been made public.

Epstein’s cellmate at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he found the note after Epstein unsuccessfully attempted suicide in July 2019, weeks before he was eventually found dead in his jail cell.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8255. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

In the US, Rainn offers support for survivors of sexual abuse or assault on 800-656-4673. In the UK, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, support is available at 1-800-RESPECT, or other places listed here.

‘Clinical consensus statement’ also urges heart doctors to advise patients to not eat late at night, and chew slowly

Want to reduce your intake of ultra-processed food? If so, cook at home more often, don’t eat late at night and chew your food more slowly.

Those are among some of the tips doctors have offered to help people limit the amount of UPF they consume given the acute and growing danger it poses to human health worldwide.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade. But in a series of congressional hearings last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misleadingly claimed that “there are no cuts to Medicaid” as a result of that 2025 law.

Kennedy said there are no cuts to Medicaid under the OBBBA because the CBO also estimated that federal spending on Medicaid will increase by “47% over the next 10 years.” But health policy experts told us that total spending on Medicaid is expected to still grow because of population changes and an increase in healthcare costs.

“[T]he notion that since Medicaid spending overall will continue to rise means that there are no cuts is simply false,” Michael S. Sparer, chair of the department of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, told us in an email. “The rise in Medicaid spending would be far greater had HR1 not been enacted,” he said, referring to the OBBBA’s assigned bill number.

At the hearings, however, Kennedy repeatedly clashed with Democrats who said that the Republican legislation that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer made cuts to Medicaid and would reduce access to healthcare for millions of people.

For example, during an April 22 Senate Finance Committee hearing on the HHS budget, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota, while talking about mental health services covered by Medicaid, said that the Trump administration and congressional Republicans had “pushed through the biggest cuts to Medicaid in the history of that program.” 

In response, Kennedy said that wasn’t the case. “First of all, there are no cuts in Medicaid,” he said. “I keep saying this. Here’s what the CBO said: In fiscal year 2025, $668 billion. Fiscal year 2036, $981 billion. That’s not a cut. It’s a 47% increase.”

Smith interjected, by saying: “Secretary Kennedy, a trillion dollars in cuts, according to the CBO. Seven million people losing their health insurance because of the Trump administration actions. That’s not debatable.”

Smith was largely correct about what the CBO said. It estimated a more than $900 billion reduction in Medicaid spending and an increase in the uninsured of 7.5 million people over 10 years.

Based on a CBO analysis, KFF, an independent health policy research organization, estimated that the OBBBA reduces federal Medicaid spending by precisely $911 billion. Most of the federal savings, KFF said, come from the law imposing new work requirements on individuals who became eligible for Medicaid due to an expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act, as well as “limiting states’ ability to raise the state share of Medicaid revenues through provider taxes, restricting state-directed payments to hospitals, nursing facilities, and other providers, and increasing barriers to enrolling in and renewing Medicaid coverage.”

KFF said that those Medicaid spending reductions in the OBBBA would offset some of the costs of another part of the bill, which extended some expiring tax cuts for individuals.

Those spending reductions count as “cuts,” experts in health policy told us.

“By conventional budget scoring methods, including those used by CBO, as well as [Office of Management and Budget] and others, there were very large cuts to Medicaid in OBBBA,” Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, said in an email. “CBO (and others) compare estimated federal Medicaid expenditures under OBBBA with the amount that would have been spent WITHOUT the legislation.”

Furthermore, Ku said, “A more telling sign of the impact of the cuts is that CBO estimated that the Medicaid and related CHIP cuts will cause the number of uninsured to rise by about 7.5 million people” by 2034. (CHIP is the Children’s Health Insurance Program for families that make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford private insurance.)

We reached out to HHS about Kennedy’s claims, but haven’t received a response.

In an April 22 hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Kennedy said the statement that “we’ve cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars” was a Democratic talking point. He claimed that the CBO “disagrees” with Democrats, and referenced the agency’s estimate that federal spending on Medicaid will increase from more than $600 billion in fiscal 2025 to well over $900 billion 10 years from now. 

But Kennedy “is using smoke and mirrors here — everything gets more expensive over time, especially in health care,” Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a Harvard University professor of health care economics and medicine, told us in an email.

Akeiisa Coleman, senior program officer for Medicaid at the Commonwealth Fund, said in an emailed statement that, despite the projected spending reductions resulting from OBBBA, “federal spending on Medicaid is likely to increase over time to reflect changes in population and the cost of health care.”

Ku called Kennedy’s claim “misleading” because it “ignores the reality of medical care inflation, the aging of the population (which causes medical expenditures to rise even more) and other pressures.” He said “the reality is that people will receive much less health care under Medicaid because of these cuts,” and that “health care providers like hospitals, doctors’ offices and nursing homes will hurt financially because of the loss of revenue.”

Meanwhile, HHS has argued that some spending reductions were part of necessary changes to overhaul the Medicaid program.

“To be clear, HHS is taking steps to ensure Medicaid serves those it is intended to support,” Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesman, told the Associated Press for an April 23 story about Kennedy’s claims. “These actions are not cuts — they are focused on addressing waste, fraud, and abuse to better position the program for those who rely on it.”

However, Sommers said “this is not simply cutting out waste and abuse,” since the CBO estimates that millions of people will lose health insurance because of eligibility restrictions and other changes that the law made to Medicaid.

“Any reasonable person would interpret that as a sizable cut to the program – particularly if you’re one of the millions of people expected to lose their health insurance under the law,” Sommers said.

We’ve explained before that while Republicans have said they are targeting able-bodied adults with the new Medicaid work requirements, health policy experts say that other groups would lose coverage as well due to paperwork burdens and other Medicaid provisions in the legislation.

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 Kennedy Denies the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Spending Cuts to Medicaid appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Security researcher Tom Joran Sonstebyseter Ronning has found that Microsoft Edge stores passwords in plaintext in RAM. After creating a password and storing it using Edge's password manager, Ronning found that he could dump the RAM and recover his password which was stored in plaintext. Part of the issue is Edge loads all passwords to all sites upon a single verification check, even if the user was not visiting a specific site. This is very different from Chrome, which only loads passwords for specific websites when challenged for the site's password. Also, Chrome will delete the password from memory once the password has been filled. Edge does not delete the passwords from memory once they are used. Microsoft downplayed the risk noting access would require control over a user's PC like a malware infection: "Access to browser data as described in the reported scenario would require the device to already be compromised," Microsoft said. Ronning countered that it was possible to dump passwords for multiple users using administrative privileges for one user to view the passwords for other logged-on users. "Design choices in this area involve balancing performance, usability, and security, and we continue to review it against evolving threats," Microsoft said. "Browsers access password data in memory to help users sign in quickly and securely -- this is an expected feature of the application. We recommend users install the latest security updates and antivirus software to help protect against security threats."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zilis, an executive at Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink, served on OpenAI’s board from 2020 to 2023

Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, took the stand on Wednesday as one of the most highly anticipated witnesses in Musk’s case against OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker has argued that, while Zilis worked with OpenAI from 2016 to 2023, she was also involved in a secret relationship with Musk, acting as an informant for him.

Musk’s case against OpenAI alleges that the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, co-founders of the company with Musk, broke a founding agreement when they restructured it from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. The Tesla CEO accuses Altman and Brockman of unjustly enriching themselves and wants both removed from their positions at the startup, one of the most valuable in the world. He is also seeking the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche denied to CBS News that the Justice Department is engaging in a retribution campaign against President Trump's critics, pushing back on criticism from Barack Obama.

Blink's security line adds doorbells with 2K resolution at prices under $50.

It looks like a remake of StarFox 64, but the visuals look impressive.

Michael Marx was shot by authorities multiple times and then taken to a hospital after bystander was wounded

A man accused of firing a gun at law enforcement officers near the Washington monument this week was walking along the path of JD Vance’s motorcade before the shooting and made a vulgar remark about the White House after the confrontation, according to a court filing on Wednesday.

Michael Marx, 45, of Midland, Texas, was shot multiple times during Monday’s confrontation and was in the back of an ambulance on his way to a hospital when he said: “‘F—k the White House’ and ‘Kill me, kill me, kill me’”, a Secret Service agent said in an affidavit.

The AI-generated search results will offer related information and include first-person advice from Reddit and other online forums.

Google is updating AI Overviews and AI Mode to more prominently surface "Expert Advice" from public discussions, social platforms, forums, blogs, and Reddit. Engadget reports: Via a new "Expert Advice" section that can appear in AI responses, Google will display "a preview of perspectives from public online discussions, social media and other firsthand sources." In the sample screenshot the company provided, quotes from forums, WordPress blogs and Reddit were arranged above links to their respective sources. Google plans to add more context to these links, too, showing "a creator's name, handle or community name," so you can judge what you might want to click through and read from a glance. Google will also start recommending in-depth articles at the end of AI responses for further exploration of a given topic, and link to more sources directly in its generated answers rather than just at the end. If you subscribe to any publications, AI responses will also highlight sources from the subscriptions you link to your Google account.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

University of California at Los Angeles says admissions are ‘based on merit’ and it complies with state and federal laws

The US Department of Justice found on Wednesday that the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles illegally considered race in admissions as the Trump administration ramps up scrutiny of colleges’ processes for selecting students.

The finding escalates the Trump administration’s ongoing standoff with UCLA, which has focused mostly on the main campus’s response to allegations of antisemitic harassment.

British guide Martin Anstee among those evacuated from MV Hondius, which is now heading for Canary Islands

• Explainer: What is hantavirus?

Three people with suspected hantavirus have been medically evacuated from a cruise ship.

They include a British man who was an expedition guide onboard the ship, the MV Hondius. He was named on Wednesday evening as Martin Anstee, 56.

During a White House small business summit, President Donald Trump said the economy is strong and his policies are satisfying Americans.

"Consumer confidence is way up," Trump said at the May 4 event.

Three standard measurements of consumer satisfaction — from the University of Michigan; a business group called the Conference Board; and an aggregation of public polling data — show the opposite. They reveal that people are less satisfied with the economy now than at the end of President Joe Biden’s tenure, and at least one of the metrics puts consumer confidence near an all-time low.

The White House pointed to retail spending data to support his statement, but that isn’t a clear-cut measure of consumer confidence when other economic factors are at play.

University of Michigan measure is near all-time lows

Every month since 1978, University of Michigan researchers have asked Americans a series of questions to gauge their feelings about the economy. The results for the main question on consumer sentiment historically have ranged mostly between 50 and 110 on an index scale, with 112 indicating the highest confidence levels recorded.

The score for March 2026, the most recent month, was 53.3. That’s the ninth-lowest score since the survey first went monthly. Of those nine lowest marks, five have come during Trump’s second term. (Two happened during 40-year-high inflation under Biden in 2022 and two came during even higher inflation under Jimmy Carter in 1980.)

Conference Board measurement shows Trump on worse footing than Biden

The Conference Board, a nonprofit research group for member businesses, has also surveyed consumer sentiment for decades. In recent years, its ratings have ranged from about 80 to 130 on an index scale, and they have been lower during Trump’s second term than under Biden.

In Biden’s final full month in office, the rating was 109.5. In April 2026 under Trump, it was 92.8. During Biden’s final 16 months, the metric averaged 104.3. During the 16 months of Trump’s second term, it has averaged 94.6.

Polls show public approval of Trump’s economic policies is falling

One widely used aggregator of public opinion polls is compiled by Silver Bulletin, a website published by FiveThirtyEight.com founder Nate Silver.

The site does long-term tracking of presidential net approval ratings in a variety of public polls. Net approval refers to the share of respondents saying they approve minus the share saying they disapprove. A positive net approval number means the president has more approvers than disapprovers; a negative net approval number means they have more disapprovers than approvers.

During his second term, net approval for Trump’s handling of the economy has cratered. It began in positive territory when he was inaugurated in January 2025 but turned negative the next month. Since then, his net approval has continued to sink; in early May, disapproval exceeded approval by 24 percentage points.

One metric is potentially more favorable to Trump’s assertion

When we asked the White House for evidence of improving consumer confidence, spokesperson Kush Desai pointed to "the hard data of actual consumer spending and retail sales figures," which he said "have consistently shown that American consumers are resilient and continue to spend."

Looking at the White House’s two favored metrics — consumer spending and retail sales — presents results.

One way to measure consumer spending is using personal consumption expenditures, a federal statistic that tracks Americans’ spending patterns. We looked at this metric’s year-over-year change during the final 15 months of Biden's presidency and the first 15 months of Trump's second term. (We used 15 months because the data for Trump’s 16th month hasn’t been released yet.)

The data shows spending adjusted for inflation generally increased during Biden’s final 15 months but has mostly fallen since Trump’s return to the White House. 

The second metric, retail sales, is more favorable to Trump. Retail sales have generally been higher during Trump’s tenure than during the latter part of Biden’s. 

The year-over-year monthly change in retail sales averaged 2.47% during Biden’s final 14 months. During the first 14 months of Trump’s second term, the increase has averaged 3.75%. (Only Trump’s first 14 months are available for this statistic.)

Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, told PolitiFact that it’s valuable to look at what people do, not only how they respond to survey questions, and that would be reflected in retail sales data. However, Baker said the retail sales figure has a weakness: It is not adjusted for inflation, and the increased sales might reflect inflation from Trump’s tariffs. 

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the personal consumption expenditures is "a more comprehensive and reliable measure of household spending." That, combined with the consumer sentiment surveys, "is easily more important than retail sales," he said.

Our ruling

Trump said, "Consumer confidence is way up."

Three traditional metrics — two long-running consumer surveys and an aggregation of public opinion poll questions about the president’s handling of the economy — show that consumer confidence ranges from low to a near an all-time low. Inflation-adjusted consumer spending has also been trending downward.

Retail sales, meanwhile, have been strong during Trump’s second term, but it’s not clear whether this stems from consumer optimism; it could reflect higher prices from Trump’s tariffs.

We rate the statement False.

Here's how to figure out if you have the 4GB AI model and how to get rid of it.

As Labour faces record-breaking losses in Thursday’s local elections, prime minister says rivals are unfit to lead

Labour is braced for record-breaking losses in Thursday’s local elections in England, which could be decisive for Keir Starmer’s future as prime minister.

In a message to voters on Thursday, Starmer said Reform’s Nigel Farage and the Greens’ Zack Polanski were “not fit to meet this moment of great global instability” and that only Labour was putting the national interest first.

Police say they arrested 18-year-old man after weekend mass shooting at lake party promoted across social media

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Police announced on Wednesday that an 18-year-old man has been arrested in connection with a mass shooting that left one woman dead and 22 other people wounded during a night-time party beside an Oklahoma lake.

Police in Edmond announced that the man was arrested earlier in the day on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in the wake of Sunday night’s shooting, which erupted following an argument amid a large crowd gathered at Arcadia Lake in that Oklahoma City suburb.

Police said they have arrested an 18-year-old in connection with a shooting Sunday during a party that left one woman dead and 22 other people injured.

The Justice Department alleges Colorado’s ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms “in common use for lawful purposes.”

President tells Iran to accept deal to end war or face new wave of bombing at ‘much higher level and intensity’

The US military fired on an Iranian-flagged oil tanker on Wednesday, shortly after Donald Trump issued a fresh ultimatum to Tehran, telling it to accept a deal to end the war or face a new wave of US bombing “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before”.

The US fighter fired several rounds and “disabled the tanker’s rudder” as it attempted to breach the US’s blockade of Iranian ports, US Central Command said in a social media post.

Valve has released CAD files for the new Steam Controller and its Puck under a Creative Commons license. "The idea is to let enterprising modders create their own Steam Controller add-ons, like skins, charging stands, grip extenders or smartphone mounts," reports Digital Foundry. From the report: The Valve release includes files for the external shell ("surface topology") of the Controller and Puck, with a .STP, .STL and engineering diagram of each device, with the latter showing areas that must remain uncovered to let the device maintain its signal strength and otherwise function as designed. Valve has previously released CAD files for its Steam Deck handheld, Valve Index VR suite and even the original Steam Controller a decade ago, so this release is welcomed but not unexpected. The release is under a fairly restrictive Creative Commons license which allows for non-commercial use and requires attribution and sharing of designs back to the community. However, the license also suggests that commercial entities interested in making accessories for the Steam Controller or its Puck can contact Valve directly to discuss terms. You can find the files here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNET experts have tested these desks for hours to find the best selections for your office, game room or hobby room.

PARIS, May 6, 2026 — TotalEnergies, in collaboration with Dell Technologies and NVIDIA, has announced the signing of a contract for the design and installation of Pangea 5, its next high-performance supercomputer. Hosted at the Jean Féger Scientific and Technical Center (CSTJF) in Pau, in the South of France, Pangea 5 will multiply the Company’s computing power by six. It represents an investment of over 100 million euros.

A Significant Increase in Computing Power to Support TotalEnergies’ Projects

With this increase in processing speed, Pangea 5 will:

• Expand the deployment of advanced seismic engineering to enhance the accuracy of subsurface imaging and accelerate exploration to support the Company’s strategy for low-cost and low-emission hydrocarbon production;
• Support R&D uses of AI and meet growing digital needs to optimize computing times and deepen the understanding of complex phenomena like integrated power models.

Controlled Energy Consumption and CO₂ Emissions

Pangea 5 will rely on specialized processors, capable of massively parallel computations, offering greater energy efficiency than previous versions. At equal performance, Pangea 5’s energy consumption will be reduced by approximately 40%, and its associated cooling system’s consumption will be cut by a factor of five. The residual heat generated by the supercomputer will be recovered and used to help heat the buildings of the CSTJF, which host more than 2.500 people.

Pangea 5 will be first commissioned in 2027.

“Artificial intelligence and digital technology are strategic drivers of our energy transition. By increasing our computing power sixfold, we are strengthening our leadership in high-performance computing ensuring that our experts teams continue to have the means to push the envelope to support the development of our activities and meet the growing global demand for energy,” said Namita Shah, President, OneTech at TotalEnergies.

“TotalEnergies is pushing the boundaries of high-performance computing, and we’re delighted to be part of that journey. Pangea 5 will give TotalEnergies the computing power to accelerate discovery, increase efficiency and drive the energy transition forward – that’s exactly the kind of outcome our collaboration is built for,” said Adrian McDonald, President, Dell Technologies EMEA

“NVIDIA Compute, network and software platforms will provide Pangea 5 with exceptional parallel computing power, accelerating scientific workloads and opening new opportunities in artificial intelligence. With this choice of NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs and InfiniBand TotalEnergies is adopting an architecture capable of meeting the most demanding industrial and energy challenges, both today and in the years to come,” said John Josephakis, Vice President HPC & AI at NVIDIA.

About TotalEnergies

TotalEnergies (Paris:TTE) (LSE:TTE) (NYSE:TTE) is a global integrated energy company that produces and markets energies: oil and biofuels, natural gas, biogas and low-carbon hydrogen, renewables and electricity. Our more than 100,000 employees are committed to providing as many people as possible with energy that is more reliable, more affordable and more sustainable. Active in about 120 countries, TotalEnergies places sustainability at the heart of its strategy, its projects and its operations.

Source: TotalEnergies

The post TotalEnergies Selects Dell and NVIDIA for Pangea 5 Supercomputer in France appeared first on HPCwire.

Yelick is a distinguished academic and national lab leader with deep expertise in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

May 6, 2026 — The University of California Board of Regents has approved Katherine Yelick as the next director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Her appointment as director begins on July 1.

Katherine Yelick. Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab.

Yelick is a leading computer scientist with a highly distinguished research and leadership career at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab. She is currently the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, and a senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab. She served as Associate Laboratory Director for Berkeley Lab’s Computing Sciences Area from 2010 through 2019, and was the director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab from 2008 to 2012.

The Board of Regents approved Yelick’s appointment following a national search and acting on the recommendation of UC President James Milliken. The University of California operates Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Dr. Yelick is an exceptional leader with outstanding scientific credentials,” said President Milliken. “Her deep expertise in computing and AI, combined with her proven ability to lead complex scientific organizations, will enable Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to pursue new discoveries in an era of rapid technological change.”

Yelick will be the ninth director of Berkeley Lab since it was founded in 1931. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Its groundbreaking research is focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The Lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes.

“I am honored to serve as director of Berkeley Lab, an institution that has long stood at the forefront of scientific discovery and innovation,” Yelick said. “At a time when advances in AI and data science are transforming how science is done, Berkeley Lab is uniquely positioned to lead. I look forward to working with the lab’s extraordinary community to advance its mission and deliver solutions to the nation’s most pressing challenges.”

“There is no better place to make an important impact on the nation’s science and technology challenges than Berkeley Lab. And there is no better person to lead Berkeley Lab than Kathy Yelick,” said current Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell.

“Dr. Yelick brings deep expertise in high performance computing and machine learning, along with a strong track record in research management,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “I look forward to working with her at this pivotal moment for the nation’s scientific leadership, not only in artificial intelligence and quantum information science, but across the full spectrum of big science at the DOE National Labs that drives American innovation in discovery, energy security, and more.”

Yelick has played a lead role in several DOE Office of Science and Berkeley Lab initiatives. On the national stage, she worked with senior managers across the DOE national lab complex to launch the Exascale Computing Initiative, which ran from 2016 to 2024 and developed the critical applications and software needed to make effective use of exascale-capable hardware. She has also been instrumental in helping DOE develop strategies for artificial intelligence and big data research.

At Berkeley Lab, she oversaw the financing and construction of Shyh Wang Hall, which opened in 2015 as home to DOE’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and NERSC, and many researchers in Computing Sciences. She also led the launch of the Lab’s Machine Learning for Science initiative, which developed and applied AI/ML methodologies to address important scientific challenges. This initiative was important foundational work that informed the development of DOE’s Genesis Mission, a national effort to harness AI for energy, science, and security.

Her research focuses on high performance computing, programming languages, compilers, and parallel algorithms. She has worked on interdisciplinary teams developing scientific applications ranging from simulations of chemistry, fusion, and blood flow in the heart to analysis problems in phylogenetics and genome assembly. She led the ExaBiome project, a multi-institutional effort that applies exascale computing to microbiome analysis, significantly advancing the biological science programs of the Office of Science.

She is a member of National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 1991 with a dual appointment as a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab since 1996.

Yelick will replace departing director Mike Witherell, who led the Lab for a decade through a historic period of scientific achievement and operational excellence, with a deep commitment to developing the next generation of scientists.

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About Berkeley Lab

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Source: Berkeley Lab

The post UC Names Katherine Yelick to Head Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory appeared first on HPCwire.

Craig Berry, 53, was found dead on Wednesday of an apparent gunshot wound, the Stewart County Sheriff's Office said.

Upgrade your setup to include a standing desk and do away with the days of stiffness and fatigue.

Democrats sharply criticize the US commerce secretary’s testimony, saying he was ‘dishonest’ and should resign

The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, appeared before the House oversight and reform committee on Wednesday to answer questions over his past ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Lutnick agreed in March to sit for a transcribed interview with the committee after the justice department’s release of millions of documents related to Epstein, which included documents showing that Lutnick continued correspondence with Epstein after the disgraced financier had been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. The session is part of the committee’s broader investigation into Epstein.

The last time a horse won the Triple Crown was in 2018.

A hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship has killed three people and infected multiple others, officials said.

An FBI spokesperson said in a statement that an investigation is ongoing and there is no threat to public safety.

As talks continue and proposals are exchanged, Washington and Tehran still disagree on what has been agreed.

Morgan Stanley is adding crypto trading to E*Trade, with a pilot now underway and a broader rollout planned for the platform's 8.6 million customers later this year. The bank is reportedly undercutting rivals with a 50-basis-point trading fee as it bets traditional finance and DeFi will converge. "By contrast, Robinhood Markets' (HOOD) fees start at 95 bps, Coinbase Global's (COIN) begins at 60 bps, and Charles Schwab (SCHW) will charge 75 bps," notes Seeking Alpha. Morgan Stanley's head of wealth management, Jed Finn, told Bloomberg: "This is much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate. In a way, the strategy is disintermediating the disintermediators."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snapmaker has made some wild 3D printers over the years, but the new U1 might be the best yet.

No matter what you're looking for in a 3D printer, we've found the best around in 2026.

The AI lab has taken a minority stake in the gaming company behind the incredibly complex 23-year-old space simulator.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a key achievement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the federal agency tasked with protecting American workers from employment discrimination, sued the New York Times on behalf of a white man claiming the company discriminated against him based on his race and sex.

The lawsuit is signed not just by the agency’s acting general counsel and deputy general counsel, but also Benjamin North, who The Intercept reported was hired earlier this year as assistant general counsel.

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EEOC Quietly Hired Lawyer Who Crusaded for Cases of Discrimination Against Men — Including His Own

North was suspended as a college student over a rape allegation in a case that he claimed violated his civil rights; he has consistently denied the charges. North went on to do work arguing that Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination at federally funded institutions, has been used to discriminate against the rights of men.

North’s signature on the new lawsuit against the New York Times could mean he wrote it, said Chai Feldblum, a former EEOC commissioner.

Asked about North’s role, EEOC spokesperson Victor Chen referred The Intercept to the complaint.

The suit comes as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies across the country, including his administration’s efforts to use the EEOC to these ends.

The new EEOC suit, filed Tuesday on behalf of an unnamed man whose identity New York Magazine speculated about, alleges that the employee was passed over for a position because he is a white man.

The claimant applied for a job as a deputy real estate editor in January 2025 but, the lawsuit claims, despite meeting all the requirements for the position, he didn’t get it because he “did not match the race and/or sex characteristics NYT sought to increase in its leadership.” Instead, the job went to a multiracial female candidate who the lawsuit alleges was not qualified.

Feldblum, the former EEOC commissioner, was skeptical of the agency’s legal argument.

“There is no actual evidence that he was more qualified than her,” Feldblum said. Of the EEOC, she said, “They’re putting out their best facts in this complaint, and the facts are pathetic.”

Particularly for leadership positions, she pointed out, there are many aspects that go into deciding who is the most qualified candidate.

“Their assertion that she was less qualified than him is based on their view of the facts,” she said. “We’ll see what the facts actually say.”

In a statement, the New York Times said it has merit-based employment practices.

“The New York Times categorically rejects the politically motivated allegations brought by the Trump administration’s EEOC,” said Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha. “Throughout this process, the EEOC deviated from standard practices in highly unusual ways. The allegation centers on a single personnel decision for one of over 100 deputy positions across the newsroom, yet the EEOC’s filing makes sweeping claims that ignore the facts to fit a predetermined narrative.”

Diversity Without Discrimination

The EEOC’s lawsuit claims that the company has “engaged in unlawful employment practices” since at least October 2024 through its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. It cites the company’s self-published diversity goals, including a 2021 document setting a goal for increasing Black and Latino leadership by 50 percent within four years.

The Times was making “employment decisions on the basis of race and sex to achieve its desired demographic goals,” the lawsuit alleges. “A necessary consequence of NYT’s intent to increase the percentage of non-White leaders would be a decrease in the percentage of White leaders.”

The assertion that the company has engaged in illegal racial and sex discrimination and is making employment decisions solely on those bases “is simply not borne out by the evidence,” Feldblum argued. The EEOC would instead have to have found evidence that hiring decisions were made expressly and intentionally based on such characteristics.

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Instead, the actions the New York Times took are “the most basic, acceptable, legal ways to try to increase diversity in a workplace,” Feldblum said. “There is literally nothing illegal in anything that the EEOC has detailed.”

The only place where the Times could have potentially run into legal trouble, she said, was when it was requiring diverse candidate pools for jobs. But if done carefully, she said, that can follow the law as well — for example, by expanding a pool of candidates without removing any qualified white or male ones.

“One can include diversity as an employer without discriminating against white people,” Feldblum said. 

Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democratic commissioner on the EEOC after Trump fired the others contra statute, said she voted against authorizing the lawsuit against the New York Times “because I disagree with the substance of the case and don’t believe it’s a good use of scarce agency resources.”

She added that “a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), without more, is not evidence of discrimination.”

As a reporter at the Times told New York Magazine, “I’m sorry, there are plenty of white guys at the top of the New York Times. Not really something that’s holding you back.”

The complaint comes after EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas directly solicited complaints from white men alleging that they were discriminated against based on their race and/or sex. She has also instructed agency officials to focus on cases that are in line with her personal priorities, which include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” and cases claiming reverse racism have been “accelerated through the process,” the New York Times recently reported, even though staff are struggling to find complaints with merit.

Feldblum argued that the lawsuit is “quite an inappropriate use of EEOC resources.” The agency’s staffing is currently at its lowest level in decades, so any focus on a particular issue comes at the expense of others.

She said, “It is truly a sad day for anyone who cares about civil rights to see what the EEOC is spending its resources on today.”

Correction: May 6, 2026, 9:24 p.m. ET
This story has been updated to correct a reference to Chai Feldblum’s past position at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She is a former commissioner. An errant reference to the law that established the EEOC has also been corrected; it was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The post Lawyer on EEOC’s New York Times Lawsuit Has History Battling Discrimination Against Men appeared first on The Intercept.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is being questioned Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation related to Jeffrey Epstein.

One of the great innovators of television who founded CNN, the first 24-hour cable news channel, and built a vast media empire

If Orson Welles’s 1941 film Citizen Kane had been made as a TV movie 60 years later, its Kane would have been Ted Turner. Thanks to Welles, the figure of William Randolph Hearst, who dominated the American media world in the early part of the 20th century, is now better remembered for the flamboyant personal life portrayed on film.

Turner, who has died aged 87, was luckier. Although his good looks were often compared to Clark Gable’s playing Rhett Butler and his personal life was equally interesting, he is likely to be remembered primarily as one of the great innovators of television.

Are you looking for a fast way out of credit card debt? Credit card debt forgiveness might help. Here's how.

Shabana Mahmood has announced plan to cut leave to remain from five years to 30 months, to concern of UN refugee agency

Two Sudanese asylum seekers are challenging a central element of Labour’s plans to strip refugees of basic rights, rejecting the home secretary’s accusation that they are “asylum shoppers”.

Shabana Mahmood has announced plans to halve refugees’ leave to remain in the UK, from five years to 30 months. Previously, people could apply for permanent settlement after five years but now refugees will have to wait 20 years before being eligible.

With gas more than $6 in state, delivery of about 2m barrels is last planned shipment to pass through strait of Hormuz

The average price of a gallon of gas in California already stands at more than $6, but more uncertainty looms as the last oil tanker from the Middle East arrived in the Golden state this week.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that the New Corolla, which left the Middle East for California before the war broke out, is delivering about 2m barrels of crude oil from Iraq to Long Beach. It was the last planned shipment to pass through the strait of Hormuz.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: At its Code with Claude developers' conference, Anthropic has introduced what it calls "dreaming" to Claude Managed Agents. Dreaming, in this case, is a process of going over recent events and identifying specific things that are worth storing in "memory" to inform future tasks and interactions. Dreaming is a feature that is currently in research preview and limited to Managed Agents on the Claude Platform. Managed Agents are a higher-level alternative to building directly on the Messages API that Anthropic describes as a "pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure." It's intended for situations where you want multiple agents working on a task or project to some end point over several minutes or hours. Anthropic describes dreaming as a scheduled process, in which sessions and memory stores are reviewed, and specific memories are curated. This is important because context windows are limited for LLMs, and important information can be lost over lengthy projects. On the chat side of things, many models use a process called compaction, whereby lengthy conversations are periodically analyzed, and the models attempt to remove irrelevant information from the context window while keeping what's actually important for the ongoing conversation, project, or task. However, that process, as I described it, is usually limited to a specific conversation with a single agent. "Dreaming" is a periodically recurring process in which past sessions and memory stores can be analyzed across agents, and important patterns are identified and saved to memory for the future. Users will be able to choose between an automatic process, or reviewing changes to memory directly.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reform UK leader has registered wide range of financial interests on top of his Commons salary since July 2024

• Cameo, speeches, pushing gold bullion: how Farage has made millions since becoming an MP

Nigel Farage’s income since he was elected as an MP has now reached £2m on top of his parliamentary salary, analysis of the register of MPs has shown.

Farage’s earning power sets him alongside a small number of MPs who have been able to leverage their status for external income alongside their day jobs – drawing comparisons to Boris Johnson, who made about £5m on top of his MP’s salary in the six months after he resigned as prime minister.

After two years in parliament, the Reform UK leader has brought in £2m on top of his Commons salary

• Nigel Farage’s income since being elected MP has hit £2m, analysis shows

“There’s no money in politics,” Nigel Farage complained almost a decade ago, describing himself as “53, separated and skint”.

He has since proved himself wrong. After two years in parliament, Farage has brought in £2m, including hospitality, through speeches, presenting, writing news articles, promoting gold bullion – and even recording modestly priced Cameo clips for his fans. It seems that every £70 video counts when it comes to making cash.

The interest earnings on a CD of this size will be significant (and they'll be available relatively quickly, too).

Video shows ‘looksmaxxing’ influencer shooting an apparently already dead alligator in the Everglades

A controversial social media influencer known as Clavicular is facing charges in connection with a live stream showing him shooting an apparently already dead alligator in the Everglades, local Florida media has reported.

Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters and is known for the practice of “looksmaxxing”, faces charges of unlawfully discharging a firearm in a public place or residential property, according to legal files obtained by television station ABC6 in South Florida. The charges stem from his alleged actions in a 26 March live stream.

Microsoft is shelving the idea of bringing Copilot AI to all its gaming platforms.

The company will start paying the quarter-billion-dollar sum to settle a lawsuit over delayed and missing AI features.

LOS ANGELES, May 6, 2026 — Q-CTRL today announced it has achieved a 3,000 times speedup on a problem of commercial relevance using the IBM Quantum Platform. Q-CTRL has achieved evidence of practical quantum advantage over performance-optimized industry-standard classical software on a known, practically useful problem in materials science, marking the first achievement of practical quantum advantage.

Quantum computer outputs for the simulation of interacting electrons at size scales (120 qubits), evolution times, and resolution beyond any prior demonstration. Credit: Q-CTRL.

At a scale beyond the reach of exact calculation, Q-CTRL used the native integration of its performance-management software on the IBM Quantum Platform to successfully run a quantum algorithm and return results with accuracy meeting industry-standard expectations. The quantum algorithm took just two minutes to run, while the same problem took over 100 hours using the best classical tools to execute on classical hardware.

With approximately one-third of global supercomputer time currently dedicated to chemistry and materials simulation, delivering new computational capabilities can be transformative for applications critical to the future of energy. However, these applications remain constrained by massive computational bottlenecks.

Quantum computers often follow the same quantum physics as the problems being simulated, making these prime candidates for quantum acceleration.

The Q-CTRL team compared its quantum calculations, focused on how electrons in materials give rise to the properties we use for energy transmission, storage, and generation, to the best implementation of a state-of-the-art, industry-standard software package from the materials-science community.

The two approaches agreed, up to a point. To improve the agreement, the team had to increase the resolution of the classical simulation, at the cost of a major blowout in execution time: the classical simulation increased to over 3,000 times longer than the time required by the IBM quantum computer.

“Scientists and engineers dedicate thousands of hours to performing materials simulations in their efforts to unlock the future of energy, from photovoltaics to fusion,” said Michael J. Biercuk, CEO and Founder of Q-CTRL. “These results mark the beginning of an era of positive ROI from today’s widely available quantum computers on problems that early adopters truly care about. That’s the nature of Practical Quantum Advantage.”

Despite their promise, quantum computers can be limited by noise and errors, which can degrade performance and prevent users from achieving useful results on relevant problems. Q-CTRL’s performance-management infrastructure software addresses this problem and expands the capabilities of today’s most advanced machines.

The specific infrastructure software configuration used for these demonstrations will soon be publicly accessible on the IBM Quantum Platform as a new Qiskit Function, so anyone can build off of these results and incorporate quantum computing directly into their chemistry and materials R&D.

“We’ve moved past the question of whether quantum computers have utility and onto the question of how to use them well,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “IBM has built the largest quantum computing ecosystem in the world, and we’re putting increasingly capable systems in the hands of the people doing the work. Results from partners like Q-CTRL are showing how these systems contribute to scientific workflows.”

This outcome follows just one year after Q-CTRL demonstrated commercial quantum advantage in navigation, producing a GPS-free quantum navigation system that outperformed the best like-for-like classical alternative by 100 times. These milestones highlight how Q-CTRL’s focus on quantum control infrastructure software as a quantum-hardware enabler has proven key to advancing the entire quantum industry.

To learn more about the demonstration, read the technical manuscript here.

About Q-CTRL

Q-CTRL is the pioneer in AI-powered infrastructure software for quantum technology, offering a hardware-agnostic software platform that makes quantum machines thousands of times more powerful. This opens many parallel market verticals in computing, sensing, and health, making Q-CTRL a truly diversified quantum opportunity based on a single unique technology.

The company’s marquee product is an unjammable, unspoofable, undetectable quantum navigation system that works when GPS is unavailable, is 100 times better than the best alternative, and is being deployed on commercial aircraft with Airbus, in defense with Lockheed Martin, and on unmanned drones.

The company’s breakthroughs have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Newsweek. Founded
in 2017 by Professor Michael J. Biercuk, Q-CTRL operates globally from offices in Sydney, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Huntsville, Berlin, and Oxford.

Source: Q-CTRL

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., May 6, 2026 — Simulations Plus, Inc., a global leader in model-informed and AI-accelerated drug development that advances biopharma innovation, today announced the launch of a technical collaboration with NVIDIA focused on enabling GPU-accelerated simulation and AI-assisted workflows for computationally intensive modeling applications within the drug development lifecycle.

Simulations Plus has announced the launch of a technical collaboration with NVIDIA

The collaboration brings together Simulations Plus’ validated scientific engines across physiologically-based pharmacokinetics (PBPK), pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD), and quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) with NVIDIA AI infrastructure to accelerate and scale simulation cycles, parameter exploration, and virtual population studies. Together, these capabilities address two core constraints in model-informed drug development (MIDD): reducing manual, expertise-driven work and enabling large-scale exploration of model structures and parameters in parallel—shifting modeling from a sequential process to a more iterative, data-informed workflow operating at program-relevant timelines.

NVIDIA contributes advanced computing infrastructure and expertise in accelerated inference and GPU-native optimization to improve simulation performance and enable interactive, AI-assisted workflows. NVIDIA also brings access to its life sciences ecosystem, including the NVIDIA BioNeMo platform and a global network of pharmaceutical partners, supporting broader engagement and adoption.

“For three decades, Simulations Plus has helped pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations apply modeling and simulation with confidence across drug development. Our collaboration with NVIDIA brings together validated science, accelerated computing, and AI capabilities in a way that expands what scientific teams are able to explore and accomplish,” said Shawn O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer of Simulations Plus.

The collaboration is initially focused on three areas:

Next-Generation Scientific Engines

Simulations Plus has begun developing GPU-optimized simulation capabilities for QSP and PK/PD applications, reducing runtimes and enabling broader exploration of complex biological systems. This enables scientists to evaluate a broader range of hypotheses without pre-pruning models, increasing confidence in model selection and supporting more robust program decisions.

AI-Assisted Scientific Workflows

Simulations Plus is applying AI-assisted approaches, informed by NVIDIA’s expertise in accelerated inference and agentic AI, to support model construction, parameter fitting, diagnostics, and refinement—reducing manual effort and accelerating iteration from question to analysis. By reducing manual, time-intensive steps, these workflows will allow scientists to focus more on scientific interpretation and decision-making, significantly accelerating iteration cycles within drug development programs.

Advancing Quantitative Systems Pharmacology

Simulations Plus is prioritizing QSP workflows—one of the most computationally demanding areas in drug development—by applying GPU acceleration and AI-assisted methods to improve simulation efficiency and expand practical use in pharmaceutical R&D. Current testing shows up to a 75% reduction in time required for end-to-end QSP modeling, enabling faster iteration and expanding the practical use of QSP within program timelines.

As part of the collaboration, the companies plan to engage select pharmaceutical partners to evaluate these capabilities in real-world drug development workflows, with initial focus on high-complexity modeling use cases.

“Scientific teams are asking for faster iteration, greater scale, and better ways to work across increasingly complex modeling problems. By combining our validated scientific engines with AI-assisted workflows and accelerated computing, we are extending our platform into a more integrated modeling ecosystem—where workflows scale across domains like QSP while remaining grounded in reproducible, scientifically validated outputs,” said Erik Guffrey, Co-Chief Product and Technology Officer of Simulations Plus.

“Biopharma teams need platforms that can connect mechanistic modeling, AI, and high-performance simulation into workflows scientists can actually use. By bringing NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI infrastructure together with Simulations Plus’ deep expertise in model-informed drug development, we can help researchers run more complex models, explore larger design spaces, and move from insight to decision faster,” said Anthony Costa, Director of Digital Biology and Health, NVIDIA.

About Simulations Plus, Inc.

Simulations Plus (Nasdaq: SLP) is a global leader in model-informed and AI-accelerated drug development. We create value for our clients by accelerating the discovery, development, and commercialization of pharmaceuticals and other products through innovative science-based software and consulting solutions. For more information, visit www.simulations-plus.com.

Source: Simulations Plus

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May 6, 2026 — The University of Southern Denmark (SDU), in collaboration with Danfoss and HPE, is bringing a new national AI supercomputer online, enabling Danish universities to handle large data volumes and advanced AI models within a single shared infrastructure. At the same time, the project demonstrates a new model for how AI infrastructure can be built more energy-efficiently at global scale by integrating data centers into energy systems and reusing waste heat.

In a partnership, SDU, Danfoss, and HPE have combined research expertise, industrial decarbonization leadership, and data center technology to establish a new supercomputer.

The system will be used for research and teaching within artificial intelligence, data analytics, and advanced computing across academic disciplines. It will be available to researchers and students at universities throughout Denmark, enabling work on larger and more complex challenges within a single shared infrastructure.

At the same time, the supercomputer strengthens innovation ecosystems around Danish universities. Startups and spin-out companies will gain access to advanced AI and data analytics, providing improved opportunities to rapidly develop, test, and scale new solutions, products, and services.

-Digital infrastructure is a strategic resource for both research and education. Researchers and students now have much better opportunities to work with larger datasets and more advanced models across institutions than has previously been practically possible in a shared Danish infrastructure. This creates a stronger foundation for research, talent development, and collaboration, which is crucial for both scientific quality and societal value, said Professor Claudio Pica, Director of the SDU eScience Center.

The facility was inaugurated at Alsion in Sønderborg, Denmark, and is from today part of the national research infrastructure. Access is provided through the research platform UCloud, developed in collaboration between SDU, Aalborg University, and Aarhus University. UCloud currently has more than 23,000 users and is among the largest research cloud platforms in Europe and globally. UCloud is a European, sovereign solution in which data, software, and computations remain under national and European control — a key consideration at a time of increasing focus on digital sovereignty.

A key element of the project is its integration with the local energy system. The supercomputer uses advanced liquid cooling with full heat recovery. Waste heat is reused as part of Sønderborg Municipality’s ambition to create a fully CO₂ neutral energy system.

-In Denmark, we have a unique strength in bringing together research communities, industry players, and technology providers around shared solutions. Here, we have created a unique supercomputing solution that contributes positively across several areas: it delivers both high computational power and acts as an active part of the energy system. This makes it possible to work with data volumes and AI models at the scale required to develop and deploy advanced artificial intelligence not only in Denmark but also internationally. At the same time, it ensures the energy from the supercomputer is reused in the local heating system, contributing to more energy efficient operations. Ultimately, this serves as inspiration, demonstrating that sustainability, technological development, and commercially attractive initiatives can go hand in hand, said Sune Tornbo Baastrup, Chief Information Officer at Danfoss.

HPE is the technology partner that supplied the underlying infrastructure to the supercomputer. Carsten Nielsen, Vice President and Managing Director for the Nordic Cluster at HPE, said:

-HPE is proud to collaborate with the University of Southern Denmark and Danfoss in establishing AI and supercomputing infrastructure for Danish research. This project demonstrates what becomes possible when research, industry, and technology providers work together with a shared ambition. This new system is among the most advanced in Denmark for generative AI workloads and represents a significant technological upgrade of the national AI infrastructure. We look forward to the scientific results that Danish researchers will achieve using this new platform.

The supercomputer has been named Bitten, after Bitten Clausen, who played a major role in Danfoss’ early development and was among the first female chairpersons in European industry. The name reflects the values behind the system: vision, responsibility, and the courage to break new ground.

The name also reflects the supercomputer’s strong Danish roots and the ambition to promote greater diversity within technology and research environments, where women remain underrepresented.

Source: University of Southern Denmark

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While we've already seen multiple phone launches so far, Samsung, Apple and Google are gearing up for some very exciting announcements (including an all-new wide-screen Galaxy Fold) this year.

Multipath Reliable Connection — a new transport protocol proven first and optimized on NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet hardware — is now open to the industry.

May 6, 2026 — The race to build the world’s most powerful AI factories demands networking that keeps pace with the ambitions of AI itself.

NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet scale-out infrastructure stands at the forefront of that race as the most advanced AI networking technology available today, deployed by industry leaders who can’t afford to compromise on performance, resilience or scale.

Credit: Shutterstock

That includes OpenAI, Microsoft and Oracle.

Companies including NVIDIA, Microsoft and OpenAI have demonstrated industry leadership by introducing Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC), an RDMA transport protocol. MRC enables a single RDMA connection to distribute traffic across multiple network paths, improving throughput, load balancing and availability for large-scale AI training fabrics.

Think of it as replacing a single-lane road spanning a town with a cleverly laid-out street grid system paired with an on-the-fly traffic app, enabling drivers to reroute around slowdowns and road closures.

“Deploying MRC in the Blackwell generation was very successful and was made possible by a strong collaboration with NVIDIA,” said Sachin Katti, head of industrial compute at OpenAI. “MRC’s end-to-end approach enabled us to avoid much of the typical network-related slowdowns and interruptions and maintain the efficiency of frontier training runs at scale.”

In addition, Microsoft and NVIDIA have a longstanding collaboration focused on advancing the infrastructure required for the next generation of AI. Microsoft’s Fairwater and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI’s) Abilene data center, two of the largest AI factories purpose-built for training and deploying leading-edge frontier LLMs, rely on MRC to deliver on performance, scale and efficiency requirements. NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet is suited for this environment, helping provide the network foundation needed to run large-scale AI models and applications with confidence.

Proven first in production with performance optimized on NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet hardware and now released as an open specification through the Open Compute Project, MRC demonstrates the power of the Spectrum-X Ethernet platform: purpose-built hardware, deep telemetry and intelligent fabric control working together to take a new protocol — a set of rules that controls how data moves between two systems across a network — from concept to gigascale AI production.

MRC delivers high levels of GPU utilization by load-balancing traffic across all available paths, enabling every GPU to get the bandwidth it needs throughout a training run. It sustains high bandwidth even under congestion by dynamically avoiding overloaded paths in real time.

When data loss occurs, intelligent retransmission enables rapid, precise recovery, minimizing the impact of short-lived interruptions to long-running jobs, helping avoid GPU idle time.

Administrators also gain fine-grained visibility and control over traffic paths, simplifying operations and accelerating troubleshooting at scale.

MRC, deployed on Spectrum-X Ethernet, is optimized and engineered for resilience at massive scale. Its failure bypass technology can — in just microseconds — detect a network path failure and reroute traffic automatically in hardware.

This failure bypass technology matters for AI training clusters where thousands of GPUs must stay synchronized, as even a brief network disruption can slow or interrupt an entire training job. Spectrum-X Ethernet prevents that by responding at hardware speed, keeping traffic flowing along precise pathways across gigascale AI fabrics.

Another innovation key to achieving gigascale AI factories is multiplanar network designs, which OpenAI deploys with Spectrum-X Ethernet in conjunction with MRC. A multiplane network consists of multiple independent network fabrics, or planes, with each providing an alternate communication path between GPUs.

The NVIDIA Spectrum-X Multiplane capability enhances this network architecture by supporting hardware-accelerated load balancing across the planes, boosting resiliency and scale without sacrificing performance. This keeps latencies predictably low while scaling to hundreds of thousands of GPUs.

With Spectrum-X Ethernet, customers are provided with a choice of RDMA transport models. Both Spectrum-X Ethernet Adaptive RDMA and MRC protocols, as well as other custom protocols, run natively across NVIDIA ConnectX SuperNICs and Spectrum-X Ethernet switches and support multiplanar network designs at gigascale.

In this way, the Spectrum-X Ethernet hardware and software infrastructure that powers today’s largest AI clusters gives customers the flexibility to choose the right transport for their workload.

The MRC transport protocol is the latest example of how the industry is using Spectrum-X Ethernet as a flexible, composable platform that integrates across the full breadth of modern AI infrastructure.

As AI factories continue to scale, the network must do more than move data quickly. It must be intelligent, resilient and based on open standards. NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet delivers on all three, and with MRC, it continues to set the standard for advanced AI networking.

NVIDIA collaborated on MRC development with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft and OpenAI.

Learn more about NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet on the webpage, datasheet and technical whitepaper. 

Source: Gilad Shainer, NVIDIA

The post NVIDIA Highlights OpenAI, Microsoft Deployments of Spectrum-X Ethernet with MRC appeared first on HPCwire.

jeditobe writes: Developers of ReactOS told Phoronix that the project has introduced a unified BootCD, replacing its previously separate installation media and LiveCD images. The new image combines the traditional text-mode installer with a LiveCD mode in a single medium. Within this unified BootCD, the updated LiveCD mode now includes an option to launch a first-stage GUI installer. The graphical interface is intended to make installation more approachable for new users compared to the long-standing text-based setup process. In a separate development, the project has also merged a new ATA storage driver that has been in progress since early 2024. The plug-and-play aware storage stack supports SATA, PATA, ATAPI, AHCI, and even SCSI devices, potentially expanding the range of hardware on which ReactOS can successfully boot. Following recent improvements to graphics driver support, the project continues to make incremental progress across core subsystems, though its long development timeline remains a point of discussion. Will these usability and hardware compatibility improvements be enough to broaden ReactOS adoption beyond its current niche? Please note that all new features are not present in version 0.4.15 and are available for testing in the latest nightly test builds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Reform vows to block solar and windfarms, energy leaders say renewables offer most secure future, insulating UK from hostile forces

• UK politics live – latest updates

• May elections: What’s at stake across England, Wales and Scotland?

The defining issue of Thursday’s local elections, feedback from doorsteps suggests, will be the UK’s soaring cost of living. But voters should be told about the links between inflation and the effects of fossil fuels and the climate crisis – or the remedies they choose – may make the situation worse, green campaigners have warned.

Ami McCarthy, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: “With people’s bills and prices soaring from yet another fossil fuel crisis, these local elections have a global context – driven by the Iran war.

A debt collector may be able to freeze your bank account, but if it's a joint account, the rules get complicated.

Plus, Fubo says it's launching an AI assistant in the fall.

Steve Roth was responding to the announcement by New York’s mayor of tax on second homes worth more than $5m

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The phrase “tax the rich” can be “just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs”, according to the New York City billionaire Steve Roth, who said that the top 1% should be “praised and thanked”.

Speaking on his company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Roth, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, expressed his support for fellow billionaire and the CEO of Citadel, Ken Griffin, who was singled out in the 15 April announcement by New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, of the state’s first “pied-à-terre” tax on second homes valued at more than $5m. In a video, Mamdani announced the policy in front of Griffin’s penthouse, which he said was purchased for $238m.

Almost two-thirds of respondents said US used to be a great place for immigrants but no longer is

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Donald Trump’s aggressive and wide-reaching immigration-enforcement agenda has convinced increasing numbers of adults that the US is no longer a welcoming country for outsiders, a new poll has found.

About six in 10 respondents to the Associated Press-NORC poll, conducted last month, say the country used to be a great place for immigrants, but no longer is.

Mother's Day is almost here, but finding an amazing last-minute gift for Mom isn't totally impossible. Check out these outstanding gifts, all hand-picked by our expert editors.

Want to protect your retirement from inflation? These top gold IRA picks and tips can help you invest smarter now.

• Cocodona 250 will go on in runner’s honor, organizers say

• Race includes more than 38,000ft of elevation gain

A runner at the Cocodona 250 ultramarathon in Arizona has died after a medical emergency, organizers said on Tuesday.

According to a statement posted on Instagram, a participant experienced a “serious medical emergency” during the 253-mile endurance race, which began Monday and continues through Saturday.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro raised $3.6 million over five weeks, an aide said.

Five major publishers and author Scott Turow have sued Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that Zuckerberg "personally authorized and actively encouraged" massive copyright infringement by using pirated books, journal articles, and web-scraped material to train Meta's Llama AI systems. Meta denies wrongdoing and says it will fight the case, arguing that courts have recognized AI training on copyrighted material as potentially fair use. Variety reports: "In their effort to win the AI 'arms race' and build a functional generative AI model, Defendants Meta and Zuckerberg followed their well-known motto: 'move fast and break things,'" the plaintiffs say in their lawsuit. "They first illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from notorious pirate sites and downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet. They then copied those stolen fruits many times over to train Meta's multibillion-dollar generative AI system called Llama. In doing so, Defendants engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history." The suit was filed Tuesday (May 5) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by five publishers (Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage) and Turow individually. The proposed class-action suit seeks unspecific monetary damages for the alleged copyright infringement. A copy of the lawsuit is available at this link (PDF). [...] the latest lawsuit alleges that Meta and Zuckerberg deliberately circumvented copyright-protection mechanisms -- and had considered paying to license the works before abandoning that strategy at "Zuckerberg's personal instruction." The suit essentially argues that the conduct described falls outside protections afforded by fair-use provisions of the U.S. copyright code.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Utz issues voluntary recall for certain varieties of Zapp’s and Dirty potato chips over contamination linked to seasoning

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Utz has issued a voluntary US recall of two potato chip brands after concerns that they could be contaminated with salmonella, a type of bacteria that can lead to food-borne illness.

Certain varieties of Zapp’s and Dirty potato chips may contain contamination linked to the seasoning used on the products, according to the US Food and Drug Administration in a recall issued on Monday. The recall applies to three flavors of Zapp’s chips sold in various bag sizes, along with three flavors of Dirty chips packaged in 2-ounce bags.

The Prime Video series premieres this summer.

The Justice Department charged a Texas man who allegedly fired his gun toward a Secret Service agent and wounded a bystander on the National Mall.

Though Trump’s popularity has dwindled, staying loyal to him seems to still be a winning strategy among the GOP

• US politics live – latest updates

By just about every measure, Donald Trump’s sway with US voters has slipped since he won re-election in 2024, but there’s one place where his power remains unmatched: within the Republican party.

The latest evidence of his ability to control who’s in and who’s out in the GOP came on Tuesday, when primary voters in Indiana ousted five of seven state senators who had last year defied the president’s demand to redraw the state’s congressional maps and gerrymander the state’s last two Democratic representatives out of their seats.

May 6, 2026 — The HPC User Forum (HPCUF), taking place May 5–6 in Austin, Texas, will once again bring together leaders from national labs, academia, and industry to discuss the future of high-performance computing. AMD is proud to participate as a sponsor and contributor to this important community event, reinforcing its role at the forefront of HPC and AI convergence.

Credit: AMD

AMD Instinct MI430X GPU: A New FP64 Performance Class

Today, AMD is previewing the upcoming AMD Instinct MI430X GPU, which is designed to redefine the limits of what a GPU can offer to future HPC systems. Projected to deliver more than 200 TFLOPs of native FP64 performance, the MI430X represents a new class of accelerator for simulation, modeling and AI-driven science. MI430X is projected to provide more than six times the FP64 performance of the next-gen NVIDIA Rubin architecture, positioning it to become the highest performance FP64 GPU ever built.

For AI Gigafactories and high-performance computing centers, where numerical fidelity and throughput are mission-critical, MI430X is designed to be a step change in capability. The training data for next generation artificial intelligence models will be built on high fidelity simulations. Beyond traditional simulation workloads, this capability is increasingly central to the future of artificial intelligence itself. Many next-generation AI models will rely on training data generated from high-fidelity scientific simulations, from climate and materials science to nuclear engineering and fluid dynamics. As AI systems evolve toward surrogate models, automated laboratories, and closed-loop discovery pipelines, the quality of the data used to train those systems becomes the limiting factor. Models trained on low-precision or numerically unstable data inherit those limitations; models trained on accurate physical simulations can capture the true structure of the underlying science. As scientific teams push toward AI‑driven discovery, one question keeps coming up: can tomorrow’s infrastructure still be trusted to produce correct answers at scale?

Ultimately, accelerators such as the AMD Instinct MI430X, which is designed to provide leadership FP64 and low precision AI capabilities, in a single package, is planned to be the foundation of the emerging AI-for-science ecosystem.

Engaging the HPC Community in Austin

This year’s HPCUF agenda reflects the rapidly evolving landscape of HPC—where AI, simulation, and hybrid computing models are increasingly intertwined. Attendees can expect a range of technical sessions and panels covering middleware innovation, hybrid workflows, and domain-specific HPC applications.

A highlight of the event will be an industry panel in which AMD will participate in discussing “The Future of Precision in HPC: FP64, Reduced Precision, and Emulation”, where industry, national lab, and academic experts will discuss this evolving HPC landscape, the requirements of future systems, and the role software-based emulation techniques will play.

Powering the Next Wave of Supercomputers

AMD’s leadership in HPC is not theoretical—it is already being realized in major global deployments powered by AMD Instinct GPUs and the next-generation systems below to be powered by the AMD Instinct MI430X GPU.

Discovery

The upcoming Discovery system is planned to be deployed in 2028 in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) at ORNL under the Genesis Mission, which is a national program designed to expand America’s leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). It is expected to be the DOE’s next flagship system and will help drive breakthroughs in energy, biology, advanced materials, national security, and manufacturing innovation. Discovery will leverage AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs alongside next-generation AMD EPYC CPUs to enable large-scale AI training and inference, agentic AI, and scientific simulation. It is expected to represent one of the first “AI factory” supercomputers in the United States.

Alice Recoque

In Europe, the Alice Recoque system, which is expected to be Europe’s new supercomputer, will be powered by next-generation AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs and AMD EPYC CPUs. It is being deployed in cooperation with Grand équipement national de calcul intensif (GENCI), operated by Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA).

Alice Recoque is designed to deliver exascale-class performance for both AI and traditional HPC workloads, emphasizing energy efficiency and scientific throughput. It will tackle Europe’s most pressing societal, scientific, and industrial challenges by combining large-scale simulations, data analysis, and AI. Alice Recoque is expected to deliver more than one exaflop of HPL performance.

These deployments highlight the AMD growing footprint across sovereign AI and HPC infrastructure, enabling nations and institutions to build open, high-performance computing ecosystems.

Looking Ahead

As the HPC community gathers in Austin, the AMD message is clear:

• Precision matters — FP64 is foundational for scientific discovery
• Convergence is here — infrastructure must support both HPC and AI-for-Science
• Performance leadership — with AMD Instinct MI430X GPU setting a new bar

From thought leadership at the HPC User Forum to powering the world’s next-generation supercomputers, AMD is helping shape the future of computing—one breakthrough at a time.

To reach an AMD HPC expert, email HPC@AMD.com.

More from HPCwire

• AMD Reports 1st Quarter 2026 Financial Results
• AMD Powers US Sovereign AI Factory Supercomputers, Accelerating an Open American AI Stack
• Eviden and AMD to Power Europe’s New Exascale Supercomputer, the First Based in France

About AMD

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing.

Source: AMD

The post AMD Highlights Instinct MI430X GPU, Future HPC Systems at HPC User Forum appeared first on HPCwire.

Rami Elghandour tells Guardian in exclusive interview that cancellation sends ‘dangerous’ message to students

Rutgers University abruptly rescinded its invitation to a prominent alum who was slated to deliver a graduation speech next week after some students complained about social media posts he had published about Palestine.

Rami Elghandour – a tech entrepreneur, graduate of Rutgers’ School of Engineering, and executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab – was set to deliver a graduation address at the school’s campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey on 15 May.

Demonstrators, angered by Russia’s inclusion at arts festival, shouted ‘Curated by Putin, dead bodies included’

The Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale was forced temporarily to shut its doors on the second day of the preview after the activist group Pussy Riot staged a chaotic protest against the country’s inclusion in the art festival.

Wearing pink balaclavas, the protesters ran towards the Russian pavilion where they gathered outside and lit pink, blue and yellow flares while playing punk music and shouting slogans, including “Blood is Russia’s Art”.

Chedrick Greene will have to defend his new perch in midterms, as Republican challenger vows to run again

• US politics live – latest updates

Chedrick Greene, a Democratic firefighter and marine veteran, won a special election in Michigan on Tuesday, allowing Democrats to retain control of the state senate for the remainder of the year.

In the race for Michigan’s 35th senate district, a constituency that former vice-president Kamala Harris won by only a single percentage point in 2024, Greene beat the Republican Jason Tunney – clinching more than 58% of the vote, compared with Tunney’s 39%, according to local results. The district includes parts of Bay and Saginaw counties, purple areas of the state.

Telemundo's FIFA coverage on the platform will also include free-to-watch matches.

Pope Leo said on Tuesday he hoped to spread the Christian message by speaking about peace, but that people were free to criticise him. Donald Trump has accused the pontiff of 'endangering a lot of Catholics' with his stance on the Iran war. Leo said he believed it was much better to enter into dialogue than to support the arms industry. The pope is preparing to meet the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in the Vatican on Thursday

• Pope Leo rejects claim he supports nuclear weapons after Trump tirade

The AI-generated search results will include related but unasked-for info and first-person advice from Reddit and other online forums.

Pontiff responds after US president accuses him of ‘endangering a lot of Catholics’ with stance on Iran war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• People in the US: what do you think of Chicago-born Pope Leo?

Pope Leo has said he has never supported nuclear weapons and that those who criticise him need to speak the truth, in response to Donald Trump’s latest tirade accusing him of “endangering a lot of Catholics” with his stance on the Iran war.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday night after leaving the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, the first US-born pontiff said: “The mission of the church is to preach the gospel, to preach peace.”

US president says war will end if Tehran agrees to deal, but that ‘bombing starts’ again if it does not

Oil prices fell and stock markets rose as Donald Trump said the war with Iran would end and the strait of Hormuz would be “open to all” if Tehran struck a deal with Washington.

The US president posted on social media: “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran.”

Gas prices are now 52% higher than prior to the Iran war, with drivers paying $1.56 more per gallon, data shows.

In a new lawsuit, two California residents allege that Cento Fine Foods doesn't use real San Marzano tomatoes in one of its products.

Trump threatens Iran with "higher level" strikes if it won't accept a peace deal, but says it's too soon for direct talks after reporting diplomatic progress.

Three passengers have been evacuated from a cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak, as related cases are confirmed in Switzerland and South Africa.

Ted Turner built a media empire that included cable channels CNN, TBS and TNT, and he owned the Atlanta Braves for 20 years.

A new counterterrorism strategy, signed by President Trump on Tuesday, seeks to crack down on Islamist terror groups, drug cartels and violent domestic political groups.

Dozens killed despite ceasefire announced by Zelenskyy, after Moscow asked for Saturday truce for military parade

• Europe live – latest updates

Kyiv has criticised Russia for attacking several Ukrainian cities overnight with more than 100 combat drones and three missiles in spite of a unilateral 24-hour ceasefire called by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukraine’s president had announced the truce after the Kremlin said it wanted a ceasefire on Saturday during its annual military parade in Red Square, but he said he would reciprocate if Vladimir Putin broke Ukraine’s ceasefire, which ends at midnight on Wednesday.

May 6, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science has allocated supercomputer access to 77 computational science projects for 2026 through its Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, program. DOE is awarding 60 percent of the available time on the leadership-class supercomputers at DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories to accelerate discovery and innovation.

Credit: Argonne

The program will support a broad range of high-impact, computationally and data intensive research campaigns in a vast array of science, engineering and computer science domains.

Jointly managed by the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), the INCITE program is the primary means by which the facilities fulfill their mission to advance science by providing the scientific community with access to their powerful supercomputing resources. The ALCF and OLCF are DOE Office of Science user facilities.

The ALCF’s resources include Aurora, an Intel-HPE Cray EX supercomputer recognized as the world’s fastest AI machine and the second DOE system to break the exascale barrier. Additionally, ALCF is awarding time on Polaris, an HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10+ system that delivers 44 petaflops of Tensor Core FP64 performance. The OLCF’s system is the 2 exaflops peak Frontier, an HPE Cray EX supercomputer that debuted in May 2022 as the world’s fastest supercomputer.

“We’re excited to once again support these trailblazing research campaigns and groundbreaking exascale-class projects with our leadership computing systems,” said Arjun Shankar, director of the National Center for Computational Sciences, which houses the OLCF. “INCITE has enabled countless scientific breakthroughs over the years, and the supercharging with AI and emergence of quantum computing promise to accelerate the pace of discovery. The OLCF has a proud tradition of more than two decades of excellence in high-performance computing, and we look forward to assisting users in another fruitful year.”

Open to any researcher or research organization in the world with a computationally or data intensive project, INCITE’s application process is highly competitive. Over a four-month period, INCITE proposals are assessed by peer-review panels composed of international experts, with each panel representing a different scientific discipline. The proposals are also evaluated on a technical level by each computing facility for technical readiness. The INCITE awards committee makes its final selections based on peer-review outcomes, combined with the technical readiness. This year, the committee received 143 total proposals with researchers requesting more than 141 million node-hours across all three systems. Additionally, the INCITE committee commits 10 percent of allocatable time to an early career track aimed at researchers within 10 years from earning their doctorate. This year, 14 early career projects were awarded.

“ALCF is proud to continue supporting the mission-critical scientific campaigns advanced through the INCITE program,” said Michael Papka, director of the ALCF. “Our leadership-class systems have continued to grow in capability, bringing simulation, data-driven methods, and AI together at unprecedented scale. The INCITE projects are defining the next era of computational science, enabling teams to confront complex challenges with the combined power of advanced simulation, data-driven approaches, and AI-accelerated discovery.”

Highlights of the 2026 allocations include:

• Brant Robertson of the University of California, Santa Cruz received 470,000 node-hours on Frontier to probe new physics with the intergalactic medium.
• Rama Ranganathan of the University of Chicago received 550,000 node-hours on Aurora and 90,000 node-hours on Polaris to explore the natural language prompt-guided design of functional de novo proteins.
• Rommie Amaro of the University of California, San Diego received 1,228,800 node-hours on Frontier to study the in situ dynamics of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein.
• Anouar Benali of Qubit Pharmaceuticals received 1,300,000 node-hours on Aurora to establish ab initio foundation models for riboswitch inhibitors in RNA-targeted therapeutics.
• William Collins of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received 210,000 node-hours on Polaris to build huge ensembles of weather extremes using machine learning algorithms.
• Michael Borghi of NASA Glenn Research Center received 654,937 node-hours on Frontier and 780,000 node-hours on Aurora to develop revolutionary insights into turbomachinery analysis.
• Noah Mandell of Type One Energy received 1,100,000 node-hours on Frontier to study impurity transport and core-edge integration in a stellarator fusion pilot plant.
• Robert Hager of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory received 1,000,000 node-hours on Aurora and 250,000 node-hours on Polaris to develop AI-facilitated global profile predictions in tokamak plasma.
• Mitchell Wood of Sandia National Laboratories received 1,000,000 node-hours on Frontier, 200,000 node-hours on Aurora, and 300,000 node-hours on Polaris to study mechanisms of non-equilibrium ion dynamics in radiation-tolerant alloys.
• Venkatasubramanian Vishwananath of the University of Michigan received 1,000,000 node-hours on Aurora to build multi-modal foundation models for materials.

For details on all of the 2026 INCITE awardees, view the project fact sheets here.

Source: Nils Heinonen, Argonne

The post INCITE Program Awards Supercomputing Time to 77 High-Impact Projects appeared first on HPCwire.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Silicon Valley investors such as Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel have bet hundreds of millions of dollars on deploying AI data centers powered by waves in the middle of the world's oceans -- a move that coincides with tech companies facing mounting challenges in building AI data center projects on land. The latest investment round of $140 million is intended to help the company Panthalassa complete a pilot manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon, and speed up deployments of wave-riding "nodes" designed to generate electrical power, according to a May 4 press release. Instead of sending renewable energy to a land-based data center, the floating nodes would directly power onboard AI chips and transmit inference tokens representing the AI models' outputs to customers worldwide via satellite link. Each node resembles a huge steel sphere bobbing on the water with a tube-like structure extending vertically down beneath the surface. The wave motions drive water upward through the tube into a pressurized reservoir, where it can be released to spin a turbine generator that produces renewable energy for the AI chips on board. Panthalassa claims the node's AI chips would also get cooled using the surrounding water, which could offer another advantage over traditional data centers. "Ocean-based compute might offer a massive cooling advantage because the ambient temperature is so low," Lee said. "Land-based data centers use a lot of electricity and fresh water for cooling." The newest node prototype, called Ocean-3, is scheduled for testing in the northern Pacific Ocean later in 2026. The latest version reaches about 85 meters in length and would stand nearly as tall as London's Big Ben or New York City's Flatiron Building, according to the Financial Times. Panthalassa has already tested several earlier prototypes of the wave energy converter technology, including the Ocean-1 in 2021 and the Ocean-2 that underwent a three-week sea trial off the coast of Washington state in February 2024. The company's CEO and co-founder, Garth Sheldon-Coulson, said in a CBS interview that he hopes to eventually deploy thousands of the nodes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While some are using AI to tailor programs better suited to their needs, others warn ‘it can be wrong, confidently so’

People have mixed feelings about AI. While many people regularly use it – 62% in the US and 69% in the UK – trust in the technology is low. In the US, only 26% of people have a positive view of AI, according to one NBC poll, and in the UK, 78% say they worry about negative outcomes from AI.

So it is perhaps no surprise that readers’ responses to our callout about AI and fitness were varied. Some said they rely on AI to shape their workouts and diets while others said they refuse to use it at all because of its impact on the economy and the environment. And many were somewhere in between – they found it a useful tool, but were less than thrilled about the technology’s impact overall.

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 6, 2026 — Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, has announced unaudited financial results for its third quarter of fiscal year 2026 ended March 31, 2026.

Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Highlights

• Net sales of $10.2 billion versus $12.7 billion in Q2’26 and $4.6 billion in Q3’25.
• Gross margin of 9.9% versus 6.3% in Q2’26 and 9.6% in Q3’25.
• Net income of $483 million versus $401 million in Q2’26 and $109 million in Q3’25.
• Diluted net income per common share of $0.72 versus $0.60 in Q2’26 and $0.17 in Q3’25.
• Non-GAAP gross margin of 10.1% versus 9.7% in Q3’25.
• Non-GAAP diluted net income per common share of $0.84 versus $0.31 in Q3’25.
• Cash flow used in operations for Q3’26 of $6.6 billion and capital expenditures and investments of $97 million.

“Supermicro’s transformation into a total datacenter infrastructure provider is accelerating,” said Charles Liang, Founder, President and CEO of Supermicro. “Our margin recovery and the rapid growth of our DCBBS business demonstrate that our business remains robust. With the addition of our new US manufacturing facilities in Silicon Valley, we are exceptionally well-positioned to meet the massive demand for various AI and enterprise verticals.”

As of March 31, 2026, total cash and cash equivalents was $1.3 billion and total bank debt and convertible notes were $8.8 billion.

Business Outlook

The Company expects net sales in the range of $11.0 billion and $12.5 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026 ending June 30, 2026, GAAP net income per diluted share of $0.53 to $0.67 and non-GAAP net income per diluted share of $0.65 to $0.79. The Company’s projections for GAAP and non-GAAP net income per diluted share assume a tax rate of approximately 19.4% and 20.4%, respectively, and a fully diluted share count of 695 million shares for GAAP and fully diluted share count of 712 million shares for non-GAAP. The outlook for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026 GAAP net income per diluted share includes approximately $95 million in expected stock-based compensation, net of related tax effects of $30 million that are excluded from non-GAAP net income per diluted share.

For fiscal year 2026, the Company expects net sales in the range of $38.9 billion to $40.4 billion.

About Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).

Source: Supermicro

The post Supermicro Announces 3rd Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results appeared first on HPCwire.

Ahead of Paramount Skydance merger with Warner Bros Discovery, Amanpour talks ‘ideological realignment of CBS’

One of CNN’s most recognizable and influential voices, chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour, has voiced concerns about CBS News parent company Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of CNN parent company Warner Bros Discovery and what it might mean for the cable news network.

Speaking at the Truth Tellers summit honoring the late English journalism pioneer, Sir Harry Evans, Amanpour said: “Clearly I’m concerned, and I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about a corporate thing that’s under way, but I am obviously, as a person, as a journalist with a record, concerned, and I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that [Paramount Skydance chief executive, David Ellison, has] taken over already, like CBS News.” Amanpour noted how the network had done since it came under the control of Skydance last summer and nodded to reports about major changes coming to the Sunday show, 60 Minutes.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 6, 2026 — AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) has announced financial results for the first quarter of 2026. First quarter revenue was $10.3 billion, gross margin was 53%, operating income was $1.5 billion, net income was $1.4 billion and diluted earnings per share was $0.84. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin was 55%, operating income was $2.5 billion, net income was $2.3 billion and diluted earnings per share was $1.37.

Credit: Shutterstock

“We delivered an outstanding first quarter, driven by accelerating demand for AI infrastructure, with Data Center now the primary driver of our revenue and earnings growth,” said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD chair and CEO. “We are seeing strong momentum as inferencing and agentic AI drive increasing demand for high-performance CPUs and accelerators. Looking ahead, we expect server growth to accelerate meaningfully as we scale supply to meet demand. Customer engagement around MI450 Series and Helios is strengthening, with leading customer forecasts exceeding our initial expectations and a growing pipeline of large-scale deployments providing us with increasing visibility into our growth trajectory.”

“First quarter results reflect strong performance across all key financial metrics, with accelerating revenue growth, earnings expansion and record quarterly free cash flow,” said Jean Hu, AMD executive vice president, CFO and treasurer. “These results highlight continued momentum and execution across the business, demonstrating the leverage in our operating model as we invest for accelerated growth while expanding profitability.”

Segment Summary

• Data Center segment revenue was $5.8 billion, up 57% year-over-year, driven by strong demand for AMD EPYC processors and the continued ramp of AMD Instinct GPU shipments.
• Client and Gaming segment revenue was $3.6 billion, up 23% year-over-year. Client business revenue was $2.9 billion, up 26% year-over-year, primarily driven by strong demand for leadership AMD Ryzen processors and continued market share gains. Gaming business revenue was $720 million, up 11% year-over-year, driven by solid demand for AMD Radeon GPUs partially offset by lower semi-custom revenue.
• Embedded segment revenue was $873 million, up 6% year-over-year, as demand strengthened across several end markets.

Current Outlook

AMD’s outlook statements are based on current expectations. The following statements are forward-looking and actual results could differ materially depending on market conditions and the factors set forth under “Cautionary Statement” below.

For the second quarter of 2026, AMD expects revenue to be approximately $11.2 billion, plus or minus $300 million. The mid-point of the revenue range represents year-over-year growth of approximately 46% and a sequential increase of approximately 9%. Non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be approximately 56%.

More from HPCwire: AMD Highlights Instinct MI430X GPU, Future HPC Systems at HPC User Forum

About AMD

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing.

Source: AMD

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Latest proposal, derided by Tehran as a ‘wishlist’, could yet be a way out – but with 5,000 dead, it comes at an awful price

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Another day, another hairpin turn in the world of Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

The weekend was all about war, and Trump insisting Iran had not yet “paid a big enough price”. Tuesday was Project Freedom, styled as a grand “humanitarian gesture” to allow trapped ships and their crews to escape the Gulf, but also aimed at weakening Iran’s chokehold on the strait of Hormuz.

The Minnesota DNR is keeping a three-walleye daily limit in place for Mille Lacs Lake starting with the May 9 fishing opener, with harvested fish required to be at least 17 inches and only one allowed over 20 inches.

The unstoppable force of AI innovation has met its immovable object: not regulation, not grid power, but hardware capacity.

The competition for GPUs was already intense, with demand outpacing supply since the start of the AI boom. Now, as agentic AI quickly transforms from a promising experiment to a competitive necessity, enterprises require even more compute power to continue their AI transformation. In response, already sky-high GPU prices are spiking. According to the Ornn GPU Price Index, GPU cost-to-rent has gone up 48% in the last two months. This is just a baseline: costs fluctuate like stocks, making it difficult for enterprises and hardware brokers to calculate and standardize their budgets.

There is simply not enough gear to go around. And there is no overnight fix, either. Deploying more hardware is a long, costly process. Data centers take years to build, and numerous projects have been stalled or abandoned, either due to a lack of resources or growing consumer resistance. In the U.S. alone, half of the data center projects planned for the next year have been canceled. Meanwhile, pending capacity is booked solid, and more efficient, next-generation hardware is still in manufacturing.

Various countermeasures are underway to combat the crunch. Data center builders are pledging sustainability and cost-reduction measures to build goodwill with communities. Venture dollars are pouring into upstart cloud infrastructure companies to accelerate hardware deployment, while hyperscalers and major firms have instated a loop of circular financing to sustain innovation and expansion – but this also creates major vulnerabilities if the cycle were to break.

Even so, the cracks are widening. Under current hardware constraints, AI services are struggling to maintain uptime, disrupting workflows as more professionals rely on them and more businesses stake their bottom lines on AI-related efficiency gains. The days of running up token use on a company scoreboard are over.

To sustain the pace of innovation and remain competitive, anyone deploying AI will need to be infinitely more resource-efficient with their hardware, looking beyond pure silicon and data center residency to redistribute workloads across a wider, more diverse terrain of computing infrastructure.

The AI boom is creating a bubble. When will it pop? (hx4Stock-team/Shutterstock)

The Cost of the Crunch

As GPU limitations threaten the pace of AI development, two looming uncertainties have everyone on edge: Are we in an AI bubble and, more importantly, is that bubble about to burst? The hardware shortage may feel like a portent of collapse. After all, businesses have invested astronomical amounts of money to adopt AI at scale – $37 billion went to generative AI investments in 2025 alone. That figure doesn’t include non-generative programs that still require robust hardware to function, nor these organizations’ overall cloud budgets.

What’s happening is that both the technology itself and the pressure to adopt it are evolving faster than the physical infrastructure. AI is the defining technology of our era, and for enterprises, to delay adoption is to crystallize their operations in the past. If they cannot generate ROI from their AI initiatives, then they have lost collective billions to a future they may not get to be a part of. Enterprises have to iterate faster, collect results, retrain models, and refine strategies, all within a helplessly tight GPU depreciation window.

In the face of extreme demand, GPUs have become something of a luxury good, and the downstream effects could harm the course of future innovation. Left unaddressed, rising prices and limited supply will lead to fewer developers making AI apps, and therefore less potential for new use cases and efficiencies. There is much we stand to lose if hardware limitations narrow accessibility to only the biggest and wealthiest organizations.

Enterprises shouldn’t have to put their AI transformation on hold due to hardware limitations. While they cannot defy the laws of physics, they can find more efficient ways to manage their GPU-intensive workloads.

The Inference Flashpoint

The entire AI lifecycle puts strain on GPUs, but inference, the process of running an AI model, is what truly tests their mettle. Inference is also where organizations extract the most value from their AI initiatives. However, many organizations are running AI systems across fragmented infrastructure, limiting their ability to deliver real-time inference. The hardware shortage will only expose the gaps in these systems faster.

Massive new data centers are being built to house AI workloads (Matthew-G-Eddy/Shutterstock)

Some users are turning to on-device inference to run models locally. However, this creates serious governance issues and could expose sensitive personal or company information, if users are running inference on personal, unsanctioned devices. Furthermore, were it to become standard practice, it could create an unfair precedent to offload more enterprise AI costs to employees.

The actual cost of inference is a moving target, but it’s less about the average cost than what enterprises can do to economize inference across their full computing ecosystem.

Enterprises must be able to scale inference automatically based on user demand. This means they will have to adopt comprehensive operational stacks to modulate inference traffic, support revenue-friendly tokenomics, and ensure more resource-efficient orchestration. For many, this will mean departing the single-provider infrastructure model to adopt a more agile multi-cloud strategy. Cascading deployment across more diverse infrastructure can also open up new software accelerations to further optimize inference, from reducing computational redundancies to promoting integration with existing stacks.

Restructuring for Efficiency

A new report reveals 69% of CFOs believe between 10-30% of their cloud budget is wasted. As hardware costs continue to rise, enterprises must work diligently to get that percentage down to 0%. With many cloud contracts up for renewal this year – including a rash of those signed at the first curve of the AI boom – economizing inference and maximizing GPU utilization should be top of mind.

Think of AI workloads as just that: physical loads, balanced on the shoulders of infrastructure. Place all the load on one carrier, one body, and that carrier must exert much more force to sustain it. Distribute the load across a team of carriers, and the burden becomes much easier to bear. At the same time, if a load is small enough, maybe only one or two carriers are needed.

The point is, efficiency happens when infrastructure use is proportional to the workload. Hyperscalers, even though they offer a wide variety of solutions, are not always the most efficient option. Having diverse infrastructure via a multi-cloud strategy allows enterprises to optimize AI training and inference in line with its exact hardware needs, reducing both energy use and financial strain while also ensuring security, consistent performance, and sustainable scale. A single provider typically cannot guarantee all of these outcomes.

Retaining the ability to move workloads will help customers weather the AI boom and hardware shortage (Shutterstock)

Composability is the path to efficiency, but it requires deep strategic work to compose the infrastructure that modern AI systems require. This is the time to put energy behind the knowledgeable people driving AI innovation: platform engineering and developer teams that enable the process of operationalizing efficiency. By developing these AI “centers of excellence,” enterprises extract the most value possible from their current and future hardware ecosystem. Then, as the GPU crunch begins to ease, they will have a firm foundation for continued innovation at scale.

Finding Relief in an Open Ecosystem

The path to more efficient AI compute is already in the tech industry’s DNA: open-source.

Open-source AI models save time and compute power because much of the initial training and testing is already done. Organizations have the flexibility to innovate without forcing additional training loads onto their infrastructure; any training and refinement happens on a reliable foundation. Many open-source models are also battle-tested for compliance and security, reducing the potential for additional financial penalty.

Similarly, the deployment of small-language models (SLMs) and other highly specialized models promotes hardware efficiency, especially when bolstered by data storage improvements. Open partnerships exist between storage providers and hardware providers, which enterprises can take advantage of to optimize deployment and save costs.

Open-source models and software can also help enterprises to optimize their existing infrastructure capacity. The combination of the right hardware and software can boost GPU efficiency to ensure AI development proceeds at a sustainable pace.

While the walls of the walled garden may be breaking, they have not come all the way down. A truly open ecosystem is what will enable enterprises to build the custom hardware and software apparatus to reach their specific AI goals. This is not a breakdown of competitive practices, but building the foundation for competition to thrive. If there is any silver lining to the current hardware availability crisis, it’s that it will push innovators to work together to make AI deployment less burdensome on existing hardware.

About the author: Kevin Cochrane is the Chief Marketing Officer at Vultr, a provider of high performance compute in the cloud. 

The post Navigating Hardware Limitations Amid the Agentic AI Rush appeared first on HPCwire.

Reimagining pandemic prevention, preparedness and resilience 27 May 2026 — 13:00 TO 14:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) 6 May 2026 Chatham House and Online

Why breaking the inequality-pandemic cycle is the missing link in global health security.

The world today is marked by persistent inequality and increased risk of disease outbreaks and pandemics. Recent systematic analysis by the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics has demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic, the global HIV epidemic and other high-impact epidemics have revealed there is a mutually reinforcing cycle, where inequality within and between countries both drives outbreaks to escalate into pandemics and worsens their impact, further widening inequalities.

This cycle is undermining the ability of scientific advances to keep the world safer from pandemics. It poses a threat to global prosperity and security, highlighting the need for an approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response that can interrupt the cycle, despite the pressures on international cooperation and competing priorities.

While experts have produced numerous recommendations in the aftermath of COVID‑19, global attention has shifted elsewhere, raising the question of whether urgency around pandemic readiness has been lost amid overlapping crises. One critical weakness in policymaking is the failure to face the reality that inequalities between countries globalise pandemic vulnerability.

This session challenges conventional, top‑down approaches to pandemic prevention and preparedness by focusing on the social foundations that determine outcomes in practice. By placing structural inequality at the centre of pandemic resilience, the Council offers a fresh and practical framework to help decision-makers tackle the threat of the next global health crisis more effectively.

Conservative leader says her party ‘are willing to work with people who will help deliver Conservative policies’

Labour has criticised Zack Polanski for saying he was concerned about how the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings was treated when he was arrested by the police.

Referring to what Polanski said about this in his Today interview this morning (see 9.33am), a Labour party spokesperson said:

Our brave police ran towards a suspected terrorist and tackled him while he was still carrying a knife and before they could handcuff him.

The fact that Zack Polanski is still sympathising with this individual is utterly astounding. For the Green party leader to be litigating the case for the defence against the police shows whose side he is truly on.

The latest unemployment figures for February showed a fall, interest rates were expected to come down, the markets were pricing in a couple of cuts during the course of the year.

The truth is, with the effect of the Iran war, we can’t count on any of that at the moment. There is likely to be an effect on prices, which feeds through from energy costs, and there may well be labour market implications.

Finding would explain why type of stroke affecting about 35,000 a year in UK is not as responsive to some medication

The cause of a type of stroke that affects about 35,000 people across the UK each year has been uncovered by researchers and may explain why some medications are ineffective as treatment.

Lacunar strokes, which account for a quarter of all strokes in the UK, had been linked to the blockage of arteries in the brain by fatty deposits. However, a study published on Wednesday suggests they are not caused by blocked arteries but by the enlargement and widening of arteries in the brain.

Approval for exploration in 70 new areas prompts fierce backlash from fossil fuel opponents

The Norwegian government has been heavily criticised for approving plans to reopen three North Sea gasfields nearly three decades after they were closed to help fill the gap in energy supplies created by the Middle East war.

Amid sharp price rises in oil and gas since the US and Israel’s attack on Iran in February, Oslo has also given its approval for oil and gas companies to explore in 70 new locations in the North Sea, Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea.

For You pages prioritized pro-Republican content in three states, researchers say, but TikTok says study does not reflect real user behavior

A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature finds that TikTok’s algorithm systematically prioritized pro-Republican content in three states leading up to the 2024 US elections.

Researchers created hundreds of dummy accounts and conditioned them to mimic real users’ behavior by watching a set of videos either aligned with the US Democratic or Republican parties. Then, they tracked the videos TikTok recommended on these accounts’ For You pages, TikTok’s main feed.

Commentary: For tech execs such as Jeff Bezos, there really is nothing money can't buy. Nothing, that is, except true cultural capital.

The animal was a fin whale, the second-largest animal in the world, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said.

Councillor announces plan to withdraw from government-funded programme on eve of local elections

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Reform-led Lancashire county council will withdraw from the government’s refugee resettlement scheme, one of its cabinet members has said.

Joshua Roberts announced plans for Lancashire to leave the scheme, which would make it the first local authority to do so. It would mean Lancashire would no longer participate in the UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) and the Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP).

Kash Patel is placing blame on local officials in Arizona over their handling of the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, but the Pima County sheriff says some of the FBI director's claims are inaccurate.

Microsoft is winding down Xbox Copilot on mobile and ending development of Copilot on console, reversing plans to bring the gaming-focused AI assistant to current-generation Xbox consoles this year. "The move follows [new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's] reorganization of the Xbox platform team earlier on Tuesday, which added executives from Microsoft's CoreAI team -- where Sharma worked before taking over Xbox -- to the Xbox side of the company," reports The Verge. Sharma said in a post on X: Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers. Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track. As part of this shift, you'll see us begin to retire features that don't align with where we're headed. We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console. Since taking over for former Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in February, Sharma has scrapped the Microsoft Gaming brand and cut the price of Xbox Game Pass.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The software company said in February it would cut 2,000 jobs but, as it touts new technology, workers are still waiting to hear which roles will go

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Staff at WiseTech have been waiting almost three months to be told if they are among the 2,000 people the logistics software company is to cut due to advances in AI, with workers criticising the wait as stressful and “ridiculous”.

The comments come as its founder on Tuesday told investors an AI agent could learn a human’s job in just 15 minutes, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Clifton George admits manslaughter but denies murder of Annabel Rook, whom he stabbed at least 22 times

A man fatally stabbed his partner and then triggered a gas explosion at their north-east London home last summer, a court has heard.

Clifton George, 45, is accused of murdering 46-year-old Annabel Rook during an argument at their home in Stoke Newington on 17 June 2025. George has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder.

If you've saved $250,000 for retirement, the IRS gets a say in how much you withdraw — whether you're ready or not.

The death of the media mogul who transformed TV news was confirmed by his family and reported by CNN

Ted Turner, the media mogul who founded CNN, has died aged 87, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing a news release from Turner Enterprises.

In a statement, Mark Thompson, the chair and CEO of CNN Worldwide, said that “Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless, and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgment.”

I’ve spent several weeks testing the three-in-one Shark ChillPill personal fan. Here’s how it compares to its Dyson counterpart.

The Venice Biennale, Eurovision and Cannes are framed as artists representing their nations. But in a fractured world, national identity seems increasingly futile

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Are the arts being drowned out by politics? A few days before the biggest week of the year in Europe’s cultural calendar, that impression may be hard to avoid. The Venice Biennale opens its doors to the public on Saturday, but talk in the run-up to the world’s largest contemporary event has focused little on the works that will go on display inside the national pavilions, and a lot on which pavilions are going to open their doors, or shouldn’t.

The building housing the Russian national representation was open for press previews on Tuesday, pumping out techno, for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It’s a decision the biennale president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, seems to have made against the wishes of the Italian government that appointed him, and could cost the festival €2m in EU funds for a breach of its ethical standards. Russia has not participated in the past two editions due to its war in Ukraine. Its pavilion’s doors will be closed to the public when the biennale opens fully on 9 May, which a Ukrainian official told the Guardian was a “meaningful step”, after the biennale’s jury resigned en masse in April, in objection to entries from countries whose leaders are subject to international arrest warrants.

Looking to buy a home or refinance your existing one? These are the mortgage interest rates to know right now.

His sprawling legacy encompassed conservation, philanthropy and professional sports, and his bravado earned him the nickname “Mouth of the South.”

A $200 million gift from venture capitalist Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary, will build on USC’s strengths by leveraging AI to accelerate breakthroughs in the health sciences, security, business and the arts.

LOS ANGELES, May 6, 2026 — The University of Southern California has announced a new initiative that will leverage AI to accelerate innovation, breakthroughs and discovery across USC, including in the health sciences, security, business and the arts.

Credit: Shutterstock

Launched with a $200 million gift from venture capitalist, NVIDIA board member and USC Trustee Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary, this new university wide effort will recruit world-class AI researchers seeking to expand the frontiers of knowledge, develop new therapeutics, enhance our security, transform the world of business and enhance human creativity.

In recognition of their generosity and vision, the USC School of Advanced Computing, which sits within the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, will be renamed the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.

“As AI becomes ever more powerful, it creates enormous opportunities to improve lives and solve some of our greatest challenges, if used the right way,” USC President Beong-Soo Kim said. “Mark and Mary Stevens’ generosity will allow USC to leverage our existing interdisciplinary strengths and capitalize on these new opportunities at a critical inflection point for our society. As a top destination for AI talent, USC can accelerate our mission of educating future leaders, addressing real-world problems and enhancing human values and agency.”

“We know the next great universities will be those that invest in computing,” said Mark Stevens. “This is a key moment. I am confident that USC has the leadership and direction to run quickly and stake our position as the trailblazer.”

USC already ranks in the top five in federal research support in areas related to computer science and offers more than 30 AI- and computing-related majors, minors and graduate degree programs that enroll thousands of students, with a new Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence being introduced this fall. After graduation, Trojan alumni are leading the AI era: USC is the nation’s top producer of computer and information sciences graduates and the second-most common alma mater in Silicon Valley.

One of those Trojans is Mark Stevens, a tech venture capitalist legendary for investing early in the people, ideas and businesses that go on to transform the world. As a partner at Sequoia Capital, he was part of the team that made early-stage investments in Google, Yahoo, YouTube and NVIDIA, which landed him on Forbes’ Midas List.

Trojans like Stevens have led era-defining technological impact for nearly 60 years. USC faculty and alumni are responsible for the algorithm that made digital communication like GPS and cellphones possible; the .com, .edu, .gov and .org internet naming standards; and even the technology that gave us films like The Matrix and Avatar.

Today, USC researchers, faculty and students are using AI to better understand and treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, prevent suicides among college students and active-duty military members, and create high-tech, interactive virtual settings for film, TV and games.

The newly named USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence is the university’s nexus for interdisciplinary research, teaching and innovation in AI. The school was established in 2024 with a founding investment from the Lord Foundation of California and the opening of the award-winning Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Hall.

“Mark and Mary’s generosity will have incalculable impact,” said Gaurav Sukhatme, inaugural director of the USC Stevens School. “The timing of their gift — which builds on the momentum of our launch, the opening of Ginsburg Hall and the rapidly growing impact of computing and AI on every field — has positioned USC to be a national and global leader for decades to come.”

Because of the USC Stevens School’s unique interdisciplinary model, the Stevenses’ investment will power research and education across the university. Their gift will scale existing efforts like those in the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, where researchers are using AI to analyze thousands of brain scans and uncover the genetic patterns that help diagnose neurodegenerative diseases early, and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a University Affiliated Research Center of the U.S. Army that uses cutting-edge AI for military applications such as safe, immersive training.

Interdisciplinary faculty expertise has also been key to launching efforts like USC’s new degree in Artificial Intelligence for Business, which trains students to bring the power of AI into business settings and applications; the USC Institute on Ethics and Trust in Computing, which connects USC philosophers, computer scientists, journalists, doctors, policymakers and others to explore how society can balance innovation with the responsible use of AI; and the USC Center for AI in Society, one of the first “AI for Good” centers, which focuses on the use of computing to support vulnerable people and communities.

AI is even supporting students’ creative work in places like USC’s No. 1-ranked game design program as well as the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where emerging filmmakers use cutting-edge technologies to film with virtual production.

“Mark and Mary have always understood the myriad opportunities that exist at the intersection of technology and domain expertise,” said Yannis Yortsos, dean of USC Viterbi. “Their generosity at this pivotal time, when we enter the transformative Age of AI, will lead to breakthroughs, innovation and thought leadership here on the USC campus and around the world. We are grateful for their extraordinary gift.”

About USC

Founded in 1880, the University of Southern California is one of the world’s leading academic research institutions with 23 schools, a multi-billion-dollar health enterprise and a vast research and development engine. The university enrolls 46,000 highly accomplished undergraduate and graduate students and employs 4,600 faculty who are members of major national academies, and MacArthur, Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, among many others. USC has a nationally recognized athletic program and a passionate global network of 500,000 alumni — the Trojan Family. Located in the heart of Los Angeles, USC is a powerhouse of innovation and impact with a global reach.

Source: USC

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China will benefit from the Iran war, regardless of any deal between Trump and Tehran Expert comment jon.wallace 6 May 2026

China will not displace the US as regional security guarantor, but it could play an important role building a new regional order, as Gulf states rethink their security strategies.

The war in Iran has made China’s future posture in the Gulf more uncertain. Some analysts have rushed to conclude that the war has revealed China’s absence and proved that the US is the only reliable security partner for the Gulf states. Others claim that the war has pushed Gulf states closer to China as US predominance has declined.  

This binary outlook overlooks a key factor in Beijing’s Middle East policies: they are not built on a balancer or security provider model. In fact, China lacks a clear direction for navigating geopolitical shifts in the region. But it could reap political, normative, and reputational wins where dissatisfaction with Washington, and reorganized priorities across the Gulf, allow it to intervene at the expense of the US. 

The war’s main effect has not, therefore, been to set China on a path to replace the US as the region’s security provider. But it may have created the conditions for Beijing to play a role in shaping a new regional order.

New Gulf security dynamics

The war in Iran revealed three key dynamics for Gulf security and future alignment. 

First, US military power has limits, and escalation is not necessarily a substitute for deterrence. For the Gulf, US military bases may have become a liability, not a source of security. And Gulf states did not choose this war. Indeed, the US ignored their calls to avoid it. The country that was supposed to ensure Gulf security, therefore, imperilled it – even if largely US-made defences deployed by Gulf States were critical in shielding their populations from missile and drone attack.

Second, Iran has shown that its missile and drone capabilities, coupled with its use of the Strait of Hormuz as leverage, can create a balance of deterrence with the US and Israel – one that allows Tehran to extract valuable concessions in tactical and political terms.  

Third, the US and China don’t compete over matters of war and peace in the Gulf. In fact, their interests have been shown to align.     

China’s position on ending the blockade has been eye-catching for its clarity. In a phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, President Xi Jinping called for Hormuz ‘to remain open to normal passage, as this serves the common interests of regional countries ‌and ⁠the international community’. 

The call came days after Xi met with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled Bin Mohamed bin Zayed in Beijing. Xi has made no such direct contact with Iran’s leadership, although Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing this week to discuss the war. After the meeting the Chinese called on both Iran and the US to open the Strait. 

China has been sending a subtle message of discontent to Iran for its closing of the strait – and to the US for its blockade of Iranian shipping – while signalling convergence with Gulf priorities. But its desire to open the Strait does reflect Trump’s stated priority – laying the groundwork ahead of the forthcoming Xi–Trump summit. 

These dynamics have accelerated shifts in Gulf strategic thinking. One immediate effect has been a push by Gulf states to reduce reliance on US protection by creating domestic, cutting-edge defence technology capabilities. Deals reportedly signed with Ukraine, providing fuel in exchange for drone defence expertise, are likely part of that effort. 

Diversified procurement

That reflects a move in the long term towards a more diversified procurement model based on industrial and technological multi-alignment with partners including the US – but also the UK, Ukraine, Pakistan, Turkey and South Korea. 

Related work

What lessons will China, India and other Asian nations draw from the Iran war? Independent Thinking Podcast

Previous doctrine, based on acquiring expensive US defence platforms to purchase leverage in Washington, will likely shift towards addressing the threat of Iran’s missiles and drones by procuring relatively cheap platforms produced at scale.

China can play a part in that effort. True, Chinese dual-use material exports and satellite access has reportedly helped support the Iranian war effort. 

But Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are already among the biggest buyers of Chinese drones and other defence technologies – and they may calculate that enhancing defence cooperation with China in areas that are not perceived as a security threat in Washington might be a prudent post-war strategy, to boost influence in Beijing and counter Iranian diplomacy.  

Facilitating dialogue – and investment

But diversifying security cooperation can’t guarantee sustained peace across the Gulf. Regardless of any peace deal between the US and Iran, the Gulf states and Iran will, at some point, have to reckon with uncomfortable realities by agreeing to establish an inclusive regional security framework. As UAE official Reem Al Hashimy said on 3 May, ‘geography prevails… we’re going to have to live with each other, the Gulf states and Iran’.

Here, China can play a crucial role. Along with Pakistan, Turkey, and some European powers (including the UK), Beijing is well positioned to facilitate dialogue between the Gulf and Iran and foster a working relationship in the medium term. 

China may use the second China-Gulf Summit in June to promote its normative model for a Gulf security framework, built on the Global Security Initiative’s principles, which align with these new dynamics. 

During his meeting with Sheikh Khaled, Xi affirmed Chinese principles for creating stability in the Middle East – saying Beijing is ready to ‘support Gulf states in improving their ties, work to build a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security architecture’ in the Gulf. While not new, these principles may look more realistic and appealing to countries in the region in the absence of absolute security commitments from the US. 

Buying into China’s ideas for regional security complements a shift in Saudi officials’ thinking. Riyadh is now prioritizing an effort to become the central node for mitigating Hormuz risks, creating infrastructure that can bypass the strait and link the Gulf with the Red Sea. 

Sarah Schloegl was unable to board flight home from Spain as 11-month-old had invalid documentation under new rules

A British woman from Aberdeen has been stranded abroad after her 11-month-old baby was prevented from boarding a flight because of new rules regarding dual nationals.

Sarah Schloegl was refused board on a Ryanair flight from Alicante last week after she went to Spain for a short break with her Austrian husband, Philipp, their three-year-old daughter and 11-month-old baby.

More than 140 people remain on the Hondius, which will take about three days to reach the Spanish archipelago for screening. A local official has criticized the plan.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy has announced the strait of Hormuz could reopen following the end of ‘threats from aggressors’

Job vacancies in the UK bounced back in March but remained near a five-year low, and openings for graduates slumped more than a third.

UK job vacancies showed signs of recovery in March, rising 3.74% month-on-month to 752,711 – the second monthly increase after an extended period of decline, according to the job matching platform Adzuna. Yet despite this tentative rebound, the overall picture remains tough for job seekers. Vacancies are still 13.60% lower than in March 2025, and the market remains near its weakest level since 2021.

Like BP last week, these are unearned windfall profits driven by Trump’s war with Iran.

Equinor now wants to cash in even more by developing the Rosebank oil field, which would be a terrible deal for the UK. This government must put the needs of the British public – for affordable energy and a safe climate – ahead of this Norwegian oil giant’s relentless pursuit of profit.

The Trump-backed biotech entrepreneur will face Democrat Amy Acton in a competitive November contest

• US politics live – latest updates

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican former presidential candidate, won his primary race for Ohio governor on Tuesday, setting up a closely watched contest in November’s election.

The biotech entrepreneur, who was endorsed by Donald Trump and briefly co-led Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with Elon Musk at the start of the president’s second term, beat Casey Putsch, the internet personality, to land the nomination.

James Bond games have always fallen short of capturing the precise feel of the classic movies. But Amazon’s first dip into the 007 mythology seems to have a character of its own

In the wake of the last James Bond movie, No Time to Die, there was a surge of articles asking whether it should spell the end for Ian Fleming’s secret agent. In that movie, Daniel Craig played the character as a fading force, mentally and physically exhausted, and out of touch. “The world has moved on,” Lashana Lynch’s younger agent told him at one point, and in a lot of ways she was right. A product of the cold war era, 007 was a sociopathic misogynist addicted to booze and amphetamines – Craig tried to play all that down, creating a more rounded character and, controversially, giving Bond the ultimate redemption arc at the end of his final outing.

But five years later, with the franchise’s new owner Amazon still trying to pull the next film together, we’re about to get what looks to be the best Bond game since GoldenEye. Created by the Danish developer IO Interactive, famed for its Hitman series of anarchic open-ended assassination sims, 007 First Light follows a fresh-faced Bond from his early career as an aircrewman to his first mission as a double-0 operative. The games press was recently given a three-hour hands-on demo to play, and reports suggest that it combines elements of the Hitman games (Bond navigating a gala event, either sleuthing or punching his way to the mission objective) with major set-piece shootouts, chase scenes and miraculous gadgets. (For more on its making, read this piece about how developer IO Interactive brought it together.)

The Supreme Court is heading into its home stretch with the conclusion of oral arguments for its 2025-2026 term. With many major decisions due and three big cases already decided, all eyes will be on the nine justices as decisions are released through late June (and possibly early July).

The Court started the current term on October 6, 2025, hearing arguments in Villarreal v. Texas, where the justices considered a Sixth Amendment case about an attorney from talking to his client during an overnight recess. It concluded on April 29, 2026, with Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Amarin Pharma, Inc., a dispute over generic drug labeling and patent infringement.

The justices heard a total of 58 cases in seven months with 29 opinions released. The list of major cases already decided includes opinions on conversion therapy, the Voting Rights Act, and the president’s tariffs powers. Remaining are at least 10 major decisions, including birthright citizenship, mail-in voting, transgender athletes’ rights, campaign finance, the ability of the president to fire federal officers, the Fourth Amendment, and immigration. Here is a list of the major cases decided and those still to come.

Major Cases Decided

Tariffs

Learning Resources v. Trump

In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “against that backdrop of clear and limited delegations, the Government reads IEEPA to give the president power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs and change them at will. That view would represent a transformative expansion of the President’s authority over tariff policy.”

In the main dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh believed President Donald Trump could use IEEPA “in light of the statutory text, longstanding historical practice, and relevant Supreme Court precedents.”

Voting Rights Act

Louisiana v. Callais

A divided Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision narrowed the ability of states to use race as a determining factor in creating election districts. The decision focused on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (or VRA), a landmark achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.

In his majority opinion in Callais, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a Louisiana law went against the purpose of the VRA. “Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito said.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan was deeply skeptical of the majority opinion, which Kagan labeled as the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

Conversion Therapy

Chiles v. Salazar

Colorado and 20 other states have laws prohibiting mental health professionals from using conversion therapy on minors because it is considered unsafe and ineffective. The purpose of conversion therapy is to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Talk therapy with that purpose fell under Colorado’s prohibition.

In an 8-1 decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch held that Colorado’s law regulated speech based on viewpoint, violating the First Amendment. “The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth,” he concluded.

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “Colorado’s decision to restrict a dangerous therapy modality that, incidentally, involves provider speech is presumptively unconstitutional. In concluding otherwise, the Court’s opinion misreads our precedents, is unprincipled and unworkable.”

Cases Argued and Awaiting Decisions

Transgender Athletes

Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.

In two cases scheduled heard separately on the same day, the Court considered the extent to which gender identity and biological assignment at birth can be used as factors in scholastic sports competitions. In Little, the Idaho Legislature enacted the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bases competition on biological assignment at birth. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law violated the 14th Amendment Equal Protection rights of “transgender women and girls.” In the case from West Virginia, a parent sued on behalf of her child, B.P.J., arguing that a state law banning biological boys who identify as girls from competing on girls’ teams was unconstitutional. The district court ruled in favor of the state on Equal Protection Clause and Title IX grounds. A divided Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court decision in favor of the student on the Title IX claim and ruled against the state on the Equal Protection questions.

The Second Amendment

Wolford v. Lopez

The state of Hawaii passed a law making it a crime for a person with a concealed carry permit to carry a handgun on private property unless they have been "given express authorization to carry a firearm on the property by the owner, lessee, operator, or manager of the property." The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state. The petitioners cite a Second Circuit ruling on the same question regarding a similar law that the court struck down.

United States v. Hemani

On a different Second Amendment question, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance,” concluding that the law violated the Second Amendment in most instances. The Solicitor General argued that the Supreme Court should uphold the law upheld because of “narrow circumstances in which the government may justifiably burden” firearms possession, including when “habitual illegal drug users with firearms present unique dangers to society.”

Presidential Removal Powers

Trump v. Slaughter

The Court is considering a dispute over the ability of the president to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) members. In March 2025, President Trump removed Rebecca Kelly Slaughter from her position as a commissioner for the FTC. Slaughter countered by suing Trump and others, claiming her dismissal violated the terms of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that Slaughter’s firing violated a precedent set in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which established the constitutionality of the FTC’s removal protections. The questions at the Court are:

1) Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the FTC violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor v. United States should be overruled.

(2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law.

Trump v. Cook

The Supreme Court also will decide if it should stay a district court ruling preventing President Trump from firing Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Cook started serving a 14-year term in the board in 2023 and President Trump tried to fire Cook this year, alleging mortgage fraud by Cook before her appointment. Under the Federal Reserve Act, the president can only remove members of the Federal Reserve Board “for cause.”

Birthright Citizenship

Barbara v. Trump

In June 2025, the Supreme Court first considered the birthright citizenship question in the context of national injunctions related to President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. The justices did not rule on the merits of Trump’s order then. But now the Court will consider the executive order’s claim that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment was adopted to confer citizenship on formerly enslaved people and their children, not on the children of aliens temporarily visiting the United States or of illegal aliens. Wong Kim Ark and other precedents have held that a child born in the United States is entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship regardless of their nationality, with limited exceptions.

Absentee Federal Election Ballots

Watson v. Republican National Committee

This case considers whether a federal law or a state law determines when absentee federal election ballots can be counted if they are mailed before election day and arrive late. Under Mississippi’s statute, it requires that ballots for federal offices be cast— marked and submitted to election officials—by that day. Mississippi allows mail-in absentee ballots to be counted if they are received by election officials within 5 business days after election day. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the federal election-day statutes require ballots be cast by voters and received by election officials by election day and Mississippi’s law was pre-empted by the federal statute.

Cellphone Data Access

Chatrie v. United States

A Virginia man claims a detective did not reasonably obtain the search warrants required by the Fourth Amendment to track down his cellphone location data. The government later used this data to convict him of a crime. Law enforcement had asked for a geofence warrant from a magistrate. Geofence warrants set a distance from a certain physical point from which service providers must provide data to law enforcement about mobile phones users’ activities.

While the Court is only asked in Chatrie to consider the specific execution of the geofence warrant in the case, its decision could shape the Fourth Amendment protections established for cellphone users in Carpenter v. United States (2018).

Immigration

Mullin v. Doe

In the case, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Trump administration can end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for approximately 6,100 Syrian and 350,000 Haitian nationals.

The administration argues that federal law bars courts from reviewing any Department of Homeland Security determination regarding TPS terminations. The Syrian challengers argued that the DHS needed to follow the rules set by Congress, while attorneys for the Haitian challengers argued that the decisions were based on “racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians, in particular.”

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

In an interview on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," former President Barack Obama had some pointed words about the power of the executive branch.

BOISE, Idaho, May 6, 2026 — Micron Technology, Inc. has announced it is now shipping the 245TB capacity Micron 6600 ION SSD, the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD. The drive marks a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers and is designed to support AI, cloud, enterprise and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation AI data lakes and cloud-scale file and object storage.

45TB capacity Micron 6600 ION SSD

The 245TB Micron 6600 ION E3.L requires 82% fewer racks to achieve equivalent raw storage capacity compared to HDD-based deployments. Built with Micron G9 QLC NAND that is at least one generation ahead of any competing QLC used in data center SSDs, the 245TB Micron 6600 ION redefines high-capacity data center storage. Customers can now store and process significantly more data in far less space, while reducing power and cooling demands without sacrificing the performance required for large-scale, data-intensive workloads.

“AI workloads are driving massive growth in shared data, continuing the shift of data center storage share from HDDs toward SSDs. With 245TB in a single SSD, the Micron 6600 ION makes solid state storage the clear choice for modern data centers,” said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and general manager of Micron’s Core Data Center Business Unit. “This breakthrough capacity gives data center operators a critical new lever to improve rack-level total cost of ownership, especially as power availability becomes a defining constraint for AI infrastructure scale.”

“Rapid AI dataset growth is shifting storage economics from individual drives to rack-level efficiency,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president of solid state drives and enabling technologies at IDC. “Operators need more usable capacity per rack while staying within strict power and cooling constraints. Micron’s 245TB drives deliver the density required to scale AI data pipelines without increasing data center footprints. Predictable performance, energy efficiency and higher capacity are essential to building cost-effective AI infrastructure.”

New Economics for Data Center Storage at Quarter-Petabyte Scale

The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD is available in both U.2 and E3.L form factors for massive storage capacity. The smaller physical footprint and increased capacity per drive enables operational and data center management simplicity and reduces failure points and maintenance needs.

Power consumption is equally transformative. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consumes up to 30 watts (W) at maximum power, only half the power consumed of a comparable-capacity HDD deployment. Additionally, these energy efficiency gains can support data center sustainability initiatives by helping reduce energy usage, cooling requirements and carbon emissions — key priorities for global operators under increasing environmental and cost pressures.

“AI workloads are pushing data center capacity to the limit, and when you can fit significantly more storage into every rack, the math changes: less power, less floor space, less operational overhead,” said Travis Vigil, senior vice president, ISG product management, Dell Technologies. “That’s what 245TB drives in Dell storage systems for AI will deliver. It’s a meaningful reduction in total cost of ownership for customers building out AI and large-scale data center environments.”

Setting New Performance and Efficiency Benchmarks for Sustainable Scale

The Micron 6600 ION SSD is built to support extreme-capacity deployments demonstrating superior AI workload performance and energy efficiency at scale versus data centers utilizing HDDs. Testing in Micron labs demonstrates dramatic gains in energy efficiency, throughput and latency versus HDD‑based systems:

• For AI workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION provided up to 84 times better energy efficiency, 8.6 times faster AI preprocessing and 3.4 times better ingest throughput, with up to 29 times lower latency.
• Object storage workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION demonstrated up to 435 times better throughput per watt, 96 times faster time to first byte and 58 times better aggregate throughput.

At scale, 1.9 times more energy is required for an HDD deployment versus 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSDs in a 1EB deployment. These at-scale energy efficiency gains can translate into measurable sustainability impacts, such as:

• CO₂ savings equivalent to the amount of CO₂ absorbed by over 9,000 mature trees per year
• 438 metric tons (MT) per year of CO₂ reduction
• 921 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year of energy saved
• HVAC cooling savings of over 3.14 billion British thermal units (Btu) per year

The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD will be on display in the Micron booth (#226) at Dell Tech World, May 18 – 21, 2026. Stop by to see the Micron 6600 ION in a 40-slot Dell PowerEdge server optimized for data lake storage.

About Micron Technology, Inc.

Micron Technology, Inc., is an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions, transforming how the world uses information to enrich life for all. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron delivers a rich portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR memory and storage products. Every day, the innovations that our people create fuel the data economy, enabling advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and compute-intensive applications that unleash opportunities — from the data center to the intelligent edge and across the client and mobile user experience. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), visit micron.com.

Source: Micron

The post Micron Ships 245TB 6600 ION SSD for Rack-Scale AI Storage appeared first on HPCwire.

Mamata Banerjee says Narendra Modi’s party ‘forcefully captured’ election that ended her party’s 15 years in power

A political showdown is taking place in the Indian state of West Bengal as the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, India’s most powerful female politician, has refused to resign after she lost elections to the prime minister’s party this week.

Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) won an overwhelming victory on Monday in state elections in West Bengal, where Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress party (TMC) have been in power for 15 years.

It’s the third consecutive month that multiple models have predicted that a potentially record-breaking El Niño could drive global temperatures to new highs.

National park closes areas near Old Faithful after attack by one or more bears, with incident under investigation

Two hikers were injured in a bear attack on Monday on a trail in Yellowstone national park, park officials said.

The National Park Service said in a statement on Tuesday that the hikers sustained injuries on Monday by “one or more bears” on the Mystic Falls trail near Old Faithful in Yellowstone national park. Officials did not specify which species of bear.

Leading newspaper La Nación calls US’s barring of board members ‘indirect attack on press freedom’

The US state department has cancelled tourist visas for more than half of the board members of Costa Rica’s leading national newspaper, La Nación, which has been a critical voice against the country’s president, Rodrigo Chaves, an ally of Donald Trump.

During Chaves’s 2022 presidential campaign, La Nación published several articles documenting allegations of sexual harassment against him that had forced him out of his job at the World Bank. The paper also reported on allegations of illegal campaign financing, which Chaves denied.

• Fan groups have called prices a ‘monumental betrayal’

• Fifa collects 30% cut on resale market

Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, has defended World Cup ticket prices, insisting that football’s global governing body was obliged to take advantage of US laws that allow tickets to be resold for thousands of dollars above face value.

Fifa has faced searing criticism over the cost of World Cup tickets, with the fan organization Football Supporters Europe (FSE) calling the pricing structure “extortionate” and a “monumental betrayal”. FSE filed a lawsuit with the European Commission in March targeting Fifa over “excessive ticket prices” for the tournament.

Full-stack platform combines agentic AI with proprietary middleware that helps build and solve complex problems faster with fewer computational resources on today’s quantum hardware

NEW YORK, May 6, 2026 — Haiqu, a leading developer of quantum middleware, today announced the launch of its Agentic Quantum Operating System (OS), the first full-stack quantum intelligence platform for enterprise and scientific quantum R&D.

Currently, quantum development is impeded by the time and costs it takes to design the right application, execute the experiment, and iterate on the results.

Haiqu’s Agentic Quantum OS is designed to bring new performance standards to quantum R&D teams. It combines quantum research agents with Haiqu’s proprietary software stack to help teams identify the right problem, design executable quantum experiments, and run them efficiently on real quantum hardware.

Coupled with additional performance and execution layers, the platform is designed to help enterprise R&D teams get usable results faster, spend less money per experiment, train new researchers more easily, and turn early ideas into testable prototypes faster.

“The bottleneck for quantum R&D teams is often not access to a QPU. It is the time and expertise required to identify the right problem, structure the work and get credible application prototypes,” said Richard Givhan, CEO and Co-founder of Haiqu. “With our first Agentic Operating System, we are giving R&D teams effective tools to achieve commercial applications as systems become more powerful.”

Haiqu’s end-to-end platform equips quantum engineers to guide application development using natural language through business questions or exploratory research ideas to produce an execution-ready quantum application plan using three key pillars:

• Agentic Intelligence — built on Haiqu’s proprietary quantum algorithm research, domain-specific workflows, and a curated quantum theory knowledge base, that automates application design and guides users to optimal approaches.
• Haiqu SDK — developer tools built using agents with users in mind that can be easily deployed in agentic development workflows to maximize performance through data loading, algorithmic optimization and error mitigations, enabling users to extract more value from every quantum operation.
• Haiqu Runtime — an orchestration engine that streamlines how applications execute with an optimal infrastructure layer, reducing cost and time required to iterate on quantum applications.

In recent tests completed by the company on a quantum system, a molecular dynamics simulation that previously required $30,000 and more than nine hours to run was reproduced for about $25 in roughly 30 seconds by optimizing execution on the Haiqu platform. Similar results or better were found for optimization algorithms, quantum machine learning models, and probability distributions.

HaiquOS also demonstrated that agentic quantum workflows can translate advanced scientific problems into executable experiments. The system prepared simulations of the single-impurity Anderson model, a foundational model for strongly correlated electron systems, from scratch and built a Haiqu OS/SDK pipeline for simulating neutron-scattering experiments on one-dimensional quantum magnets. The pipeline reproduced experimentally observed signatures of magnetic materials, showing that today’s quantum computers, when paired with the right software stack, can already support meaningful scientific simulations. Learn more about these results here.

A number of enterprises already received early access to the OS, including Capgemini and Deloitte.

Dr. Kristin Milchanowski, Chief AI & Quantum Officer at BMO and Founding Director of the BMO Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence & Quantum, said research into emerging quantum software platforms can help inform how the industry addresses foundational scalability challenges.

“As quantum hardware continues to evolve, foundational challenges such as data loading and efficient utilization of limited qubits remain critical hurdles,” said Milchanowski. “Observing research into tools like Haiqu’s middleware allows for a deeper understanding of how these bottlenecks might eventually be addressed. These early-stage, research-driven insights are vital for informing the long-term direction of the quantum landscape and understanding the future scalability of the technology.”

For a more in-depth look at HaiquOS, please visit Haiqu’s website.

More from HPCwire

• Haiqu and HSBC Demonstrate Scalable Quantum Encoding for Financial Models
• Haiqu Raises $11M in Seed Round to Enable Near-Term Quantum Use-Cases with New Operating System

About Haiqu

Haiqu is an emerging leader in quantum software that supports the notion that near-term, commercially viable quantum applications are achievable with the right software, even on current hardware. Haiqu’s hardware-agnostic software can run applications with up to 100x more operations on current devices compared to competitors. Headquartered in New York City in the United States, Haiqu’s expert team operates from US, Canada, Ukraine, UK, EU, and Singapore, contributing to the company’s mission to make quantum computing practical as soon as possible.

Source: Haiqu

The post Haiqu Launches Agentic Quantum Operating System for Enterprise Applications R&D appeared first on HPCwire.

Instead of optimizing for simple routes, Mindtrip is focused on the complicated scenarios travelers actually face every day.

Yes, you should absolutely marathon them.

LONDON and NASHVILLE, May 6, 2026 — ORCA Computing, a leading quantum computing company, and SiC Systems, a leader in physics-informed multi-agent AI for industrial process systems, today announced a strategic partnership to apply hybrid quantum–classical computing to industrial agentic AI for chemical and biomanufacturing process design, control and maintenance. This collaboration represents the first-time quantum computing is being integrated into industrial agentic AI systems for real-world process design and operation.

The collaboration combines ORCA’s quantum computing capabilities with SiC’s AI-driven physics-informed platform to enhance modeling, optimization, and continuous operation of complex chemical and biological systems across global manufacturing environments.

As companies increasingly prioritize efficiency and scalability in manufacturing, the ability to accurately model, design and continuously optimize complex processes is critical. Traditional EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction), an industry with 1 trillion dollars of projected plant design and construction over the next decade, often involves extensive iterative modeling, multi-scale simulations and optimization loops that can delay project timelines and limit responsiveness during live operations.

The integration of ORCA Computing’s photonic quantum processors with SiC Systems’ SiC Suite and their model-based agentic ‘hives’ platform creates a hybrid quantum–classical high-performance computing framework powered by autonomous agentic AI workflows.

Building on SiC’s existing GPU-driven capabilities, the solution enhances process design, simulation, and optimization while also supporting continuous monitoring and adaptive control during operations. By combining quantum-generated data with classical AI models, the approach improves how complex chemical and biological systems are modeled—enhancing decision quality, enabling real-time responsiveness, and delivering measurable performance gains.

“This collaboration shows how optimization can become both autonomous and explainable. By integrating quantum-accelerated computing with our agentic AI platform, we are empowering engineering teams to accelerate the design of new chemical and biological plants— adding to already proven savings of over 20,000 hours in a typical project while delivering higher accuracy and resilience. This capability is essential for modern manufacturing programs globally,” said Dr. Christopher Savoie, Co-Founder and CEO of SiC Systems.

In a typical new chemical or biological plant design project, SiC Suite has demonstrated the capability to save over 20,000 hours of engineering time. By automating repetitive tasks, enhancing physics-informed simulations, and orchestrating intelligent agent-driven decision-making, the platform reduces design cycles, mitigates scale-up uncertainties, and improves overall process robustness. These are factors that are particularly vital for establishing competitive new facilities.

“When combined with SiC Suite’s multi-agent AI, ORCA’s hybrid quantum–classical approach enables a fundamentally different way to model and optimize complex chemical and biological systems,” said Per Nyberg, Chief Commercial Officer at ORCA Computing. “By applying quantum computing to models grounded in real-world systems, we can capture complex interactions that are difficult to simulate classically improving the fidelity of both design and operational decision-making in dynamic industrial environments.”

This partnership builds upon the award-winning technology developed by ORCA Computing and SiC Systems in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Novo Nordisk. The initiative received the 2025 HPC Innovation Excellence Award from Hyperion Research, underscoring its potential to deliver substantial engineering, scientific, and economic impact in industrial applications as the first instance of a quantum computing solution being given this award.

“This work demonstrates how agentic AI can transform industrial processing. Our physics-informed platform, enhanced by quantum acceleration, addresses the multi-scale complexities of plant design, delivering substantial engineering time savings and enabling the rapid deployment of safe, efficient, domestic production facilities,” said Dr. Seyed Soheil Mansouri, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of SiC Systems.

By enabling faster and more accurate engineering design, the combined solution supports both accelerated facility development and improved ongoing operational performance, enabling organizations to reduce time-to-market, improve efficiency, and scale complex manufacturing processes globally.

About SiC Systems, Inc.

SiC Systems develops full-stack physics-informed multi-agent AI systems, including SiC Suite for design, control and maintenance of next-generation manufacturing facilities. Headquartered in Nashville and additional operations in Copenhagen, the company delivers safe, adaptive, and high-efficiency solutions for the design and operation of chemical and biomanufacturing facilities, as well as other high-stakes industrial applications. The company spun out of the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. For more information about SiC Systems and SiC Suite, please visit www.si-c.io.

About ORCA Computing

ORCA Computing, headquartered in London, UK, with offices in the United States, is a leading developer and provider of full-stack photonic quantum computing systems. The company delivers an innovative approach to quantum computing, providing robust, high-performance, and data center-standard systems for machine learning, generative AI and optimization workloads. ORCA Computing has successfully delivered ten on-premises quantum computers to leading global customers, including the UK National Quantum Computing Centre, Montana State University, and the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center. For more information about ORCA Computing, please visit orcacomputing.com.

Source: ORCA Computing

The post ORCA Computing, SiC Systems Partner on Hybrid Quantum-Classical AI for Industrial Process Design appeared first on HPCwire.

Despite already having the Ring Pro on its own site for preorder, Ultrahuman launched a Kickstarter campaign for the smart ring.

Charles Sumner spent nearly a quarter-century in the United States Senate insisting that the federal government had the power and the moral obligation to abolish slavery, and for that conviction, he was nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor in 1856. He lived to help push President Abraham Lincoln toward emancipation and to shepherd the Reconstruction amendments through Congress, though his fuller vision of “the centralism of liberty … [and] the imperialism of equal rights” stayed beyond the nation’s reach for generations.^[1]

Sumner was born in Boston on Jan. 6, 1811, as the eldest of nine children. His father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, was a lawyer and county sheriff who harbored antislavery views unusual for his time and class. After graduating from Harvard College in 1830 and Harvard Law School in 1833, Sumner spent two years traveling and studying in Europe before returning to Boston to practice law.

Sumner initially devoted himself to reform causes rather than electoral politics, writing and lecturing on prison conditions, public education, and the peace movement. In 1845, he delivered a Fourth of July address in Boston attacking the Mexican-American War as an instrument of slaveholder expansion. “War crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, all that is Godlike in man,” he said. “In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable.”^[2] Sumner aligned first with the Conscience Whigs and then with the Free Soil Party before a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1851.

Sumner’s Political Career

Sumner arrived in the Senate as part of a Free Soil-Democratic coalition and quickly established himself as the chamber’s most unsparing antislavery voice. In his 1852 speech, “Freedom National, Slavery Sectional,” he argued that the Constitution nowhere recognized property in man and that slavery was a purely local institution with no legitimate claim on federal protection, declaring himself “painfully convinced of the unutterable wrongs and woes of slavery” and that it could “find no place under our National Government.”^[3] When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, repealing the Missouri Compromise and opening new territories to slavery, Sumner helped organize the opposition that coalesced into the Republican Party.

On May 19, 1856, Sumner rose in the Senate to deliver what would become the most consequential speech of his career. “The Crime Against Kansas” was a two-day assault on the pro-slavery violence convulsing the territory and the senators whom he held responsible. He described Southerners’ effort to force slavery on Kansas as “the rape of a virgin Territory” and mocked Sen. Andrew Butler of South Carolina for taking as a mistress “… the harlot, Slavery.”^[4] Two days later, Butler’s cousin, Rep. Preston Brooks, entered the Senate chamber and violently assaulted Sumner with a metal-tipped cane, leaving him with such severe neurological damage that he did not return to Congress for three years.

During the Civil War, Sumner argued from the first day of fighting that Lincoln had the authority to order emancipation under martial law. He met with the president frequently, pressing him to abandon proposals for gradual emancipation and to make the abolition of slavery the war’s central objective. In an 1864 letter to Lincoln, he wrote that “freedom once given could not be reclaimed, & that the country was solemnly bound to the immediate present freedom of every slave in the rebel states.”^[5] As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he drew on his long friendships with British liberals Richard Cobden and John Bright to navigate the Trent Affair, persuading Lincoln to release two captured Confederate diplomats and defuse a crisis that might have brought Britain into the war on the Confederate side.^[6]

Activities during Reconstruction

The Reconstruction era (1865-77) brought Sumner to the height of his influence and the outer limits of his radicalism. He fought for full civil and voting rights for freed people, insisting that the Constitution, read alongside the Declaration of Independence, demanded for African Americans the protections afforded to any citizen. His guiding conviction, which historian Eric Foner identified as central to the entire Reconstruction project, was that the federal government was “the custodian of freedom,” a direct rebuke to the antebellum view that states alone determined the rights of their citizens.^[7]

The culminating fight of Sumner’s career was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which he had first introduced in 1870 and described as the “crowning work” of Reconstruction.^[8] The bill forbade racial discrimination in all forms of public accommodation — transportation, hotels, theaters, schools, and cemeteries — and criminalized the exclusion of Black citizens from jury duty. It was the most ambitious civil rights legislation the country had ever seen. One critic argued that Sumner’s legislation would force “social equality with an inferior race,” to which Sumner replied that if his belief in liberty and equality as the “God-given birthright of all men” was an error, then “it is an error which I love; if this be a fault, it is a fault which I shall be slow to renounce.”^[9]

Before he died in March 1874, Sumner’s final words to Frederick Douglass and others at his bedside were, “Don’t let the bill fail.”^[10] Thousands of mourners paid their respects at the Massachusetts State House, where his coffin rested before his funeral at King’s Chapel; the procession then followed his flower-draped coffin for the five-mile walk from Beacon Hill to Mount Auburn Cemetery. Among his pallbearers were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Congress passed a weakened version of the Civil Rights Act the following year, though it stripped out all references to equal and integrated education to make it more palatable to white voters. In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the act’s public accommodations provisions entirely, ruling that the 14th Amendment restrained only the states, not private individuals. It would take another century and another civil rights movement to continue what Sumner had started.

Anna Salvatore is a Content Fellow at the National Constitution Center and a graduate of Princeton University.

Notes

^[1] Charles Sumner, quoted in C.N. Douglas, comp., Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical (New York: Halcyon House, 1917), Bartleby.com, https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/forty-thousand-quotations-prose-and-poetical/authors/charles-sumner/.

^[2]  Excerpt taken from Charles Sumner, The True Grandeur of Nations: An Oration Delivered before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4, 1845 (Boston: American Peace Society, 1845).

^[3] Charles Sumner, “Freedom National, Slavery Sectional,” speech delivered in the United States Senate, August 26, 1852, EmersonKent.com, https://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/freedom_national_slavery_sectional.htm.

^[4] Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas,” speech delivered in the United States Senate, May 19–20, 1856, in The Works of Charles Sumner, vol. 4 (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875).

^[5] Charles Sumner to Abraham Lincoln, November 20, 1864, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, reproduced at United States Capitol Visitor Center, https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/artifact/letter-charles-sumner-abraham-lincoln-november-20-1864.

^[6]  “Charles Sumner,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Sumner.

^[7] Eric Foner, “The Strange Career of the Reconstruction Amendments,” Bloomberg, August 17, 2010, https://ericfoner.com/articles/08172010bloomberg.html.

^[8] “Civil Rights Act of 1875,” Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/law/civil-rights-act-1875.

^[9] Charles Sumner, speech on the Civil Rights Bill, United States Senate, 1866, autograph quotation reproduced at Raab Collection, https://www.raabcollection.com/american-history-autographs/sumner-famous-speech-civil-rights-bill.

^[10] “Landmark Legislation: Civil Rights Act of 1875,” United States Senate Historical Office, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilRightsAct1875.htm, citing David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970).

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