In a legal brief, the NFL expressed support for prior court rulings favoring state authority to oversee prediction markets.

Aircraft carrier decked out in blue, white and red made its way to port after 260 days at sea led to mental health crisis that made global headlines

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Donald Trump has urged James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the US Senate race in Texas, to debate Ken Paxton – Republican attorney general that the president has endorsed in the election.

On Truth Social, Trump described Paxton as “ready, willing, and able” to take on Talarico – the 37-year-old state representative who has been leading in several polls.

In Georgia, Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent will face off against Mike Collins – a congressman and the Trump-backed Republican nominee at 7pm ET.

At the same time in Michigan, progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed, will debate Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee also endorsed by the president.

Finally, it’s the second debate in Maine in as many days. Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent will spar (again) with the Democratic nominee, Troy Jackson, at 8pm ET.

Open models deploy from a catalog with validated presets, and in-cluster agents discover them automatically, across heterogeneous GPU fleets on premises and in major clouds.

RENO, Nev., Oct. 8, 2026 — CIQ, the enterprise software company behind Rocky Linux, today announced the general availability of Fuzzball 4.3, which brings ready-to-run AI models and agents to its sovereign AI orchestration platform. The release helps enterprises operationalize open-weight models and agentic AI on infrastructure they already run, with the control and governance required for AI in production. Fuzzball 4.3 deploys validated models from a catalog, connects agents to them automatically, and scales inference across heterogeneous GPU fleets, on premises and in the cloud.

Enterprises are shifting from AI pilots to production inference and repatriating workloads to private infrastructure for cost savings, security, and sovereignty. Meeting these goals often means standing up a new infrastructure stack before the first model serves a token, then integrating models, gateways, and agents by hand. Fuzzball 4.3 gives teams a faster path to productivity without rearchitecting their environment.

“Enterprises have already made their infrastructure decisions, and private AI should fit into them. With Fuzzball 4.3, a team starts a model, starts an agent, and the two find each other, on the GPUs, clusters, and clouds the organization already runs. That is what turnkey should mean,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and founder of Rocky Linux.

Models start with one command from the self-service model catalog. Eleven presets cover open-weight models from the GPT-OSS, Llama 4, Gemma 4, Qwen3-Coder, Mistral, and Nemotron 3 families, and a vLLM-based inference entry serves any other compatible Hugging Face model.

Models autoscale behind a single, stable endpoint and can scale down to zero running instances when idle, returning GPU capacity to other workloads, ready to spin back up for additional requests. And large models can scale across multiple nodes for additional resources.

Fuzzball 4.3 connects agents to models automatically. OpenCode and hermes-agent, two coding agents in the workflow catalog, run inside the cluster and discover running models through gateways, with no manual integration. Each model ships behind a built-in LiteLLM gateway with an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Or, run one central gateway that fronts every model a user is authorized to reach. Another entry in the catalog provides a retrieval service to connect your private agents to enterprise documents.

Governance is built into the platform. Idle pools wake only for authenticated requests. Administrators control which organizations and groups can use which resources, and every workload runs unprivileged and rootless. Fuzzball 4.3 supports heterogeneous GPU fleets across NVIDIA and AMD for serving and health-aware scheduling, all under one operating model.

Availability

Fuzzball 4.3 is generally available now. Fuzzball deploys to AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, CoreWeave, and Azure, as well as on-premises clusters built with Warewulf, VMware, or bare metal. To get started, contact CIQ at ciq.com/products/fuzzball.

About CIQ

CIQ is the founding support and services partner for Rocky Linux and a leading provider of Enterprise Linux infrastructure. CIQ delivers secure, performant software infrastructure for the full range of modern workloads. Global enterprises, government agencies, research institutions and supercomputing centers trust CIQ to run their most advanced workloads in production, from mission-critical environments to the systems behind major scientific and AI breakthroughs. CIQ’s products include the Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC Pro) family of operating systems, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Fuzzball job-based container orchestration, Warewulf Pro cluster provisioning, and Apptainer, the container system built for high-performance computing, with Apptainer Pro coming soon. Learn more at ciq.com.

Source: CIQ

The post CIQ’s Fuzzball 4.3 Runs Validated Open-Weight Models on a Customer’s GPUs with One Command appeared first on HPCwire.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 8, 2026 — Upscale, Inc. today introduced Upscale Token Fabric for AI factories. Upscale’s open, purpose-built architecture unifies scale-up and scale-out networking through common software and operations, accelerating deployment with XPU partners and enabling heterogeneous AI infrastructure. Designed for hyperscalers, XPU partners, neoclouds, and enterprises, the architecture is gaining traction across customer wins and active engagements.

AI infrastructure is shifting to AI factories in which compute, networking, storage, and software must operate as one system. Yet networking vendors today offer either discrete components that customers must integrate, or systems assembled from legacy networking components not purpose-built for AI. As heterogeneous XPUs, rack-scale architectures, and inference workloads drive unprecedented demands, the market needs a purpose-built, full-stack, open and standards-based AI networking solution. It must unify scale-up, scale-out, and orchestration to improve utilization, simplify operations, and optimize tokens per dollar.

The opportunity is massive: Dell’Oro forecasts nearly $1 trillion in AI back-end switch spending through 2030, with Ethernet becoming the leading scale-up technology. 650 Group projects AI networking will surpass $200 billion by 2030 as heterogeneous, full-stack solutions scale.

Upscale Token Fabric is an industry-first open architecture designed to:

• Connect any accelerator
• Scale accelerators inside the pod
• Scale accelerators across the data center

Together, these capabilities provide the networking foundation that enables AI factories.

Upscale Token Fabric brings together:

• Scale-up: SkyFabriX silicon and switch trays
• Scale-out: Upscale-engineered systems powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-X
• Operate as one: SkyOS and SkyCMD unify software and operations across GPUs and heterogeneous XPUs

“The industry has spent decades connecting computers. AI demands something different: one computer, built at data-center scale. Upscale Token Fabric brings heterogeneous accelerators, scale-up, scale-out and software together as one coherent AI system, built on open standards, so the network never gets in the way. Operators focus on delivering the best AI compute for their workloads; the integrated stack delivers the performance and time to market,” said Barun Kar, CEO, Upscale.

Upscale Token Fabric: Building blocks for AI factories

Scale Up

• SkyFabriX: Industry’s first purpose-built scale-up switch silicon based on previously announced SkyHammer architecture, supporting ESUN, UALoE, SUE-T, standard Ethernet/IP, and evolving protocols including UALink, connecting any GPU or XPU over one open fabric. Engineered for deterministic, ultra-low-latency and native memory-semantic communication with a multi-Pb/s roadmap, including copper and optical variants (pluggable, NPO, CPO).
• Scale-up switch-tray systems: Custom, ORV3 and standard rack form factors that pool GPUs and heterogeneous XPUs into large, standards-based domains.

Scale Out

• Scale-out switch systems: NVIDIA Spectrum-X-powered scale-out systems, 400G and 800G to 1.6T, ready for future Spectrum-X generations. With SkyOS, standard and custom system form-factor variants integrate seamlessly into NVIDIA and heterogeneous XPU clusters.

Operate as One

• SkyOS: An AI-native network operating system that provides one software foundation across scale-up and scale-out fabrics. Built from the ground up for AI factories, it delivers unrivaled advantages in performance, resiliency, and analytics.
• SkyCMD: Agent-native orchestration and observability that enables thousands of network elements to observe, reason, and act as one, creating a unified operational model across scale-up and scale-out fabrics.

Consume It Your Way

Customers can adopt the solution through flexible consumption models. For scale-up, Upscale systems are built on Upscale’s own SkyFabriX silicon. For scale-out, Upscale-engineered systems are built on NVIDIA Spectrum-X silicon. Customers can choose to adopt silicon, systems, software, or the full stack.

• Full stack—maximum simplicity: Standard form factors for scale-up switch trays and scale-out systems with SkyOS and SkyCMD managing the complete rack: one full-stack operating model, from deployment through day-two operations. Built for neoclouds and enterprises without hyperscaler-size network teams.
• Integrated systems—flexible integration: Standard form factors for scale-up switch trays and scale-out systems, with SkyOS and SkyCMD optionally managing the complete rack. Built for XPU partners that want validated hardware without building a network stack.
• Silicon, systems, your software—maximum control: SkyFabriX scale-up silicon, custom scale-up switch trays, or custom scale-out switch systems with a compatible SDK and open SAI from Upscale, and the customer’s own NOS integrated on top. Built for hyperscalers that design their own systems and operations.

Availability

General availability is planned for early 2027, with early-access and joint-validation programs underway today. Customers and ecosystem partners can learn more at upscale.com and get a first look at Upscale’s Token Fabric and systems at OCP 2026, booth Sapphire F5.

About Upscale

Upscale is a pure-play AI networking infrastructure company delivering an open, high-performance, standards-based networking portfolio for heterogeneous AI compute. Its purpose-built, integrated portfolio spans AI scale-up, scale-out and AI-native software and orchestration, enabling hyperscalers, XPU providers, neoclouds, and enterprises to optimally deploy and operate AI infrastructure as one cohesive system. For more information, visit upscale.com.

Source: Upscale

The post Upscale Unveils Token Fabric to Unify Scale-Up and Scale-Out AI Networking appeared first on HPCwire.

One of Curtis Flowers' attorneys called his case "unprecedented in the history of the American legal system."

Cassidy Hutchinson told panel she had been told Trump lunged for wheel of SUV to try to join mob at Capitol

Prosecutors in the justice department’s civil rights division are seeking criminal charges against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top Trump White House aide who gave explosive testimony to the committee that investigated the US attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The potential charges involve lying to Congress, the person said.

Crude oil prices had shot up on Thursday after reports President Trump was considering more strikes. They immediately dropped again after his new announcement.

Washington, DC — President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to rename artificial intelligence Thursday, declaring that anyone who continues using the term “Artificial Intelligence” instead of his preferred “Super Intelligence” is “THE ENEMY!”

Trump’s statement follows a September executive order directing executive-branch agencies to replace “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in official communications.

The terminology differs from its conventional use in technology. Artificial intelligence broadly describes computer systems capable of performing tasks associated with human intelligence, while “superintelligence” traditionally refers to a hypothetical system whose capabilities exceed humans across most cognitive tasks.

Trump’s executive order effectively applies “Super Intelligence” to technologies already covered by the government’s existing definition of AI, rather than limiting the term to hypothetical human-surpassing systems.

The administration itself has yet to fully comply with the rebranding. Axios reported Thursday that White House webpages still contained references to artificial intelligence. AI.gov was changed visually to display “SI.gov,” but its web address remained AI.gov, while attempting to visit SI.gov produced an error.

Trump’s executive order directs agencies to adopt the new terminology but establishes no punishment for Americans, companies or news organizations that continue using the universally recognized term AI.

Sources:

• Axios – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Calls People Who Say ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Instead of ‘Super Intelligence’ ‘Enemies’ appeared first on News Facts Network.

Hurricane Isaias, the first Atlantic hurricane of 2026, is taking aim at the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle.

Amazon Prime Video will become the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards under a six-year deal beginning in 2027, the Television Academy announced on Tuesday. The Emmys will stream live for free to viewers in more than 240 countries and territories without requiring a Prime subscription. From the report: In the release, Prime Video was named as the "permanent home" for the Emmys, in contrast to the rotating agreement in place years prior. The switch ends the traditional "wheel-deal" setup to broadcast the awards, where ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox took turns hosting the Emmys each year. The system has been in place since at least 1994, with the most recent eight-year contract expiring this year. "Television has never been more global, and the Emmys should be a celebration that the world can share," Television Academy chair Cris Abrego said in a statement. "Having a dedicated home with Prime Video allows us to build on that legacy with unprecedented global reach and a broader commitment to the Television Academy and our mission throughout the year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Residents in areas from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Florida urged to ‘evacuate if told to do so’

Millions of people from Louisiana to Florida are under hurricane warnings on Thursday as Hurricane Isaias heads toward the US Gulf coast, with weather officials warning of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, heavy rainfall and flooding.

Isaias intensified from a tropical storm into the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season on Wednesday night, and has prompted state of emergency declarations in Florida and Alabama, as well as evacuation orders and school closures in several Florida counties as officials urge residents to prepare for its arrival.

The Crew 13 fliers completed a mission spanning more than 100 million miles with a pinpoint splashdown off the coast of Southern California.

Oil shipments have slowed in the face of Iranian attacks after President Donald Trump celebrated restored flows. Such a level of violence has not been seen for months.

This could be a game changer for AI note-taking and transcription.

Republican says Delaware needs an independent watchdog in Dover; Democrat argues investment experience and fiduciary responsibility are essential to safeguarding taxpayer money.

Vice-president also says Adobe is barred from visa program that allows high-skilled workers to apply for US residency

Microsoft is suspended from applying for permanent residency for workers employed through a US visa program for high-skilled workers, JD Vance announced on Thursday.

The US vice-president accused the tech company of abusing the H-1B system, which allows those on the visa to work while they apply and are in process for a green card.

What Happened: Bipartisan leaders from the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an inquiry on Wednesday into the Amateur Athletic Union, criticizing the sprawling youth sports organization for its handling of child sexual abuse allegations and demanding answers, citing reporting by ProPublica and The Washington Post.

What They Said: “It is unacceptable that AAU is failing to implement standard reforms to protect child athletes, and is misleading the public, parents, and athletes about preventative measures in place within AAU sports,” the letter reads.

The committee chair, Kentucky Republican Brett Guthrie, called ProPublica and The Post’s reporting “deeply disturbing” in a statement on Thursday, saying it “raises serious questions about the organization’s actions over the past decade.” 

“Our Committee is seeking information on how the AAU’s policies have potentially fallen short, and what needs to be done in order to protect young athletes,” Guthrie said.”

The members of the committee, which in 2018 investigated systemic failures surrounding sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and others, said in the letter that they were “seeing parallels” between its past investigation and “what is being uncovered within the AAU today.”

The letter is addressed to Jo Mirza, the AAU’s president, and asks detailed questions about the organization’s operations, taking the extra step of demanding a briefing from Mirza to the committee by Oct. 21. Among questions about its safety policies and coach training, the committee asks Mirza to lay out how many sexual abuse allegations the nonprofit receives each year and how many coaches it disciplines, information that has long been shrouded in secrecy. The AAU declined to provide the data to ProPublica and The Post. The AAU does not publish a list of banned coaches like many other youth sports groups do, and ProPublica and The Post found that it has used confidential arbitration clauses to keep lawsuits from child sexual abuse victims from being heard in open court.

The letter is signed by Guthrie, ranking Democrat Frank Pallone Jr. from New Jersey and representatives in charge of oversight and investigations.

Read More

A Youth Sports Giant Promised Reforms to Protect Kids From Sexual Abuse. Most Never Happened.

Background: ProPublica and The Post found that the AAU, which has some 760,000 athletes and coaches nationwide, is failing on nearly every level to adequately protect young athletes from sexual abuse — breaking pledges it made in the wake of a 2011 sexual abuse scandal involving its CEO and young basketball players.

The investigation found that the AAU has become a haven for coaches suspected of abuse, according to a review of public disciplinary lists and interviews with current and former executives from six national sports governing bodies and other key stakeholders.

The AAU, the investigation found, does not offer child abuse prevention training, though it claims to the public that it does. And ProPublica and The Post found that it has suppressed allegations of sexual misconduct, including against another top executive in 2018.

Why It Matters: The committee is one of the key congressional groups charged with overseeing the federal youth sports safety system. It has the power to push for changes in child safety law — and to force transparency from organizations like the AAU, which has repeatedly failed to deliver on past promises of reform.

In 2018, in the wake of the allegations against Nassar, scrutiny from Congress led to the passage of a law known as the Safe Sport Act. It created the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an oversight group, to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct and gave it the power to suspend or ban coaches for life.

But SafeSport has jurisdiction only over national sports governing bodies, like USA Gymnastics and USA Volleyball, that are overseen by the Olympic and Paralympic Committee — meaning much of the law does not apply to the AAU.

The law does require “all amateur sports organizations” — not just governing bodies — to “offer and provide consistent training to all adult members … regarding prevention and reporting of child abuse.” The Energy and Commerce Committee’s letter cites that provision of the law and demands that the AAU explain how it complies.

Response: In a statement, the AAU said, “As always, we will cooperate fully and respond appropriately to any questions or requests from congressional committees or U.S. government agencies.”

Previously, the AAU told ProPublica and The Post that it is “committed to protecting its athletes through comprehensive protection policies overseen by our Compliance Department,” and said it has an “ongoing commitment to providing a safe, secure, supportive, and trusted environment where athletes can thrive.”

The post U.S. Lawmakers Launch Sexual Abuse Probe of Youth Sports Giant AAU appeared first on ProPublica.

Intelligence specialist Teddy Young, 24, alleged to have drafted message in Russian containing classified information

A junior Royal Navy intelligence specialist from Bedfordshire accused of trying to pass military secrets to Russia appeared in court on Thursday.

Teddy Young, 24, was accused of abusing his high-level security clearance to access secret defence and intelligence data after being deployed on a warship.

This is the highest figure ever recorded for the species and far exceeds the human population of the Seychelles.

(Dennis Hansen via SWNS)

Eye-watering sum, to be split between 20 bankers, is one of the biggest payouts in the bank’s history

Top bosses at Goldman Sachs are in line to share a bonus pot worth up to $500m (£378m) this year, marking one of the biggest payouts in the Wall Street bank’s history.

The eye-watering sum will be shared between 20 bankers, with its chief executive, David Solomon, due to take about $100m (£75.6m) of the reward, which is made up of Goldman Sachs stock.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 8, 2026 — PsiQuantum announced today that the company has received a conditional commitment for a loan of up to $150 million from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), which would expand the company’s advanced manufacturing and prototyping capabilities in the United States.

The financing would support PsiQuantum’s 140,000-square-foot hub in Milpitas, California, for scaling the company’s state-of-the-art technologies and developing and validating the prototype systems that underpin its fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture. Combined with co-investment from PsiQuantum, which anchors its supply chain in the United States, this new financing would strengthen the company’s domestic capacity for design, testing, and system integration as PsiQuantum advances toward building utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers in the United States.

“Today’s announcement shows the U.S. government’s bold leadership and continued commitment to quantum computing as a critical technology for America’s economic prosperity and national security,” said Victor Peng, Chief Executive Officer of PsiQuantum. “Delivering on the full promise of this technology in the United States will require world-class manufacturing and engineering ecosystems, and this potential financing underscores the vital role Washington can play.”

Financing from the Office of Strategic Capital would support PsiQuantum’s acquisition of critical infrastructure and equipment required for constructing, testing, and validating prototype quantum systems, including:

• Test equipment for the fabrication and validation of components, subassemblies, and system-level assemblies
• Critical infrastructure for system assembly, integration, and testing
• Advanced cryogenic systems for prototype systems

PsiQuantum’s potential financing from the Department of Defense would be deployed by the company to expand and strengthen domestic quantum computing capacity.

Today’s announcement follows a twelve-month period of strong momentum for PsiQuantum as the company continues to develop its quantum infrastructure globally. This June, PsiQuantum broke ground and started construction on its facility at Moreton Bay Central in Queensland, Australia. In September 2025, the company broke ground on its site at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago.

The proposed financing remains strictly conditional and is not guaranteed. A final loan commitment will only be executed if PsiQuantum satisfies all applicable financial, legal, technical, and regulatory conditions outlined in the conditional commitment.

About PsiQuantum

PsiQuantum was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company’s mission is to build and deploy the world’s first useful quantum computers. PsiQuantum’s photonic approach enables it to leverage high-volume semiconductor manufacturing, existing cryogenic infrastructure, and architectural flexibility to rapidly scale its systems. Learn more at www.psiquantum.com.

Source: PsiQuantum

The post PsiQuantum Receives Conditional $150M Loan Commitment to Advance US Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

Social media posts show the FlyDubai co-pilot accused of a hijack attempt spent a year bashing women with "manosphere" rhetoric.

Ousted Venezuelan president and Cilia Flores have been in jail in New York since early January

The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted for alleged conspiracy to commit torture, according to Manhattan federal court papers unsealed on Thursday.

The superseding indictment was unsealed shortly before Flores appeared at court in her ongoing push for pre-trial release – which was denied by Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Maduro and Flores have jailed in New York City since early January.

Intense flash of radio waves is more than 10bn years old and has travelled through ‘approximately 80% of cosmic history’

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a mysterious flash of energy was released into the universe.

Astronomers have now detected that flash, a burst of radio waves which travelled for more than 10bn years before reaching Earth – what they believe to be the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded.

Lawyer for CNN, MS Now and Politico says Trump admitted he banned networks from White House over their coverage

Donald Trump continues to be the strongest witness for the media companies arguing that they were unfairly barred from the White House at his direction, a lawyer representing CNN, MS Now and Politico told a federal judge on Thursday afternoon.

The media coalition was in court asking the judge to extend the temporary restraining order (TRO) he issued on 24 September requiring the White House to lift the ban for 14 days. That temporary reprieve was scheduled to expire on Thursday, but district court judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, said he would extend it until Tuesday and that he would probably rule on a motion for a preliminary injunction by that day. That means the White House will be forced to allow journalists from CNN, MS Now and Politico to continue accessing the building until at least Tuesday.

Statement outlines pause on protracted war US president has struggled to end after almost eight months

Donald Trump has promised not to attack Iran before November’s US midterm elections, outlining a pause on the protracted war he has struggled to end after almost eight months.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the US president said Washington was “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran”, which he claimed was “in very bad condition, both Economically and Militarily”.

US ambassador to Greece allegedly asked Trump donor to pay $100,000 American Express bill

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, brushed off reporters’ questions about recent reports that Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece and Trump family ally, used her position to advance personal interests.

Rubio refused to respond to the latest allegations against Guilfoyle, raised in a Wall Street Journal report, claiming she asked a Trump donor to pay her $100,000 American Express bill in exchange for access to the administration, before her US Senate confirmation hearing.

Embassies post links to hastily produced online film echoing style of real Guardian documentary about mass killings of Gaza civilians

The Israeli government is promoting an online film project that mimics the style of NAZA, the award-winning documentary that details Israel’s mass killings of civilians in Gaza, in an attempt to counter the real film’s findings.

The real documentary, directed by the Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and produced by the Guardian, is in cinemas and will be shown in more than 50 countries.

President Trump announced nearly $18 million in federal disaster aid for Wisconsin one day after CBS News reported on residents still waiting for aid following a devastating tornado.

All three were arrested on suspicion of malicious communications and failing to prevent the causing of unnecessary suffering to an animal.

Schools blockaded again across country as teenagers and teachers demand more investment and ‘concrete measures’ to improve conditions

High school students have again blockaded schools and marched through cities across France, promising to continue their campaign despite government pledges to address the grievances underlying 10 days of protests that have left hundreds injured.

Large crowds took to the streets on Thursday for mainly peaceful demonstrations in cities including Lille, Rennes, Nantes, Lyon, Toulon and Marseille, while in Paris a large procession marched through the city centre to the Place de la Bastille.

Move would reunite chief executive Brian Niccol with chain he led before joining coffee company two years ago

Starbucks has explored a takeover of Chipotle Mexican Grill, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, in a move that ⁠would reunite chief executive Brian Niccol with the burrito chain he led before joining the coffee giant two years ago.

The potential deal comes as restaurant chains wrestle with uncertain demand from inflation-weary ⁠consumers and rising operating costs, prompting ⁠companies to look ​for new avenues of growth while facing pressure to improve profitability.

Men aged 32 and 36 detained on suspicion of trespass, causing criminal damage and entering a prohibited place

Two Latvian men were arrested in the early hours of Thursday after they were discovered inside the perimeter of RAF Molesworth, a Cambridgeshire base used by the US military and Nato for intelligence operations.

The men, 32 and 36, were picked up at 2am inside the base, in an investigation that began four hours earlier when military police discovered an abandoned vehicle outside the facility.

The president has acknowledged sometimes using public statements about negotiations and military planning to keep adversaries off guard.

Finance expert launches Small Ideas Initiative to gather ‘practical, low-cost’ ideas to put before cross-party panel

Every day, people run into what the finance expert Martin Lewis calls “the life-potholes of unintended consequences” – clunky systems and poorly conceived rules that make life harder than it should be. His latest project, the Small Ideas Initiative, will attempt to address that, with a cross-party panel of politicians and policymakers crowdsourcing ideas for everyday fixes to take to government.

The ideas could cover anything from health and schools to policing, tech and money. Lewis is encouraging people to submit ideas for “practical, low-cost, non-controversial ways to improve the UK” before 12 November.

In congressional races around the country, Democrats find themselves under attack in political ads for allegedly opposing the popular tax cuts for tips, overtime and older Americans that were part of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

While the ads warn that the Democratic candidates opposed or would do away with those tax cuts, many of the candidates themselves say they support those particular provisions.

Not a single Democrat in either the House or Senate voted in favor of the OBBBA, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025. And the law did cut — though didn’t completely eliminate — taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security through 2028.

Those provisions enjoy bipartisan public support. 

But many of the candidates facing these attacks say they voted against the OBBBA for other reasons — chiefly that overall tax cuts were skewed to the wealthy, and that it cut funding to Medicaid and reduced spending on federal food benefits. Many Democrats say they aren’t opposed to the bill’s tax cuts for tips, overtime and older Americans. Some have even said they would work to make them permanent.

Even before the OBBBA was being considered, then Vice President Kamala Harris said in August 2024 that she supported the elimination of taxes on tips for hospitality and service workers.

The No Tax on Tips legislation that was ultimately folded into the OBBBA enjoyed bipartisan support, and was passed by the Senate 100-0. When introducing another bill to clarify that no tax on tips would also apply to automatic gratuities, such as those added by restaurants when serving large parties, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego called the no tax on tips provision in the OBBBA “shamefully short term.”

And Democrats have proposed legislation — the You Earned It, You Keep It Act — that would permanently eliminate federal taxes on Social Security, and pay for it by expanding the Social Security payroll tax to earnings above $250,000 a year.

In other words, opposition to the OBBBA doesn’t necessarily translate to an opposition to the bill’s tax cuts related to tips, overtime pay or Social Security.

These provisions — which all expire after 2028 — provide tax deductions up to certain limits; a deduction reduces the total income subject to taxes. The overtime measure applies to the extra 50% income earned on time-and-a-half overtime, up to a limit. The Tax Policy Center estimated that “3 percent of taxpayers benefit from the tips deduction, with an average tax reduction of about $1,480 among those who benefit, and that 10 percent of taxpayers benefit from the overtime deduction, with an average tax reduction of about $1,200.”

The provision aimed at Social Security is a tax deduction, too — $6,000 for those age 65 and older, whether they get Social Security benefits or not, and it phases out for those earning $75,000 or $150,000 for couples filing jointly. The Tax Policy Center found that the deduction “would benefit fewer than half of older adults,” with seniors earning $80,000 to $130,000 benefiting the most. They get an average tax cut of about $1,100, TPC said, in 2025.

Texas Senate Race

One example of this midterm messaging is an ad in Texas from the campaign of Republican Ken Paxton that claims his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, “backs higher taxes on working families, $3,000 a year. Taxes on your tips, your overtime, even Social Security.” Talarico, a state legislator, was not in Congress when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July 2025. But he opposed it — saying its tax cuts disproportionately benefited billionaires.

Regarding the claim that Talarico “backs higher taxes on working families, $3,000 a year,” that’s a reference — according to the ad’s footnotes — to a Tax Foundation estimate in February that taxpayers would see a nearly $2,300 average tax cut due to the OBBBA in 2026, while business tax cuts would save $1,541 on average.

The lion’s share of the tax cuts in the OBBBA were the result of permanently extending individual tax cuts first passed in the 2017 Trump-backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Those provisions were set to expire at the end of 2025.

But the ad assumes Talarico opposes all of the tax cuts in the OBBBA. He does not.

In a campaign event in Arlington in August, Talarico said, “It’s time to repeal the big ugly bill’s tax breaks for the top 1% and give that $1 trillion to the middle class in the form of a cost of living tax cut.” He often frames the OBBBA as a boon for billionaires.

That’s in line with the mainstream Democratic position. As a presidential candidate in 2024, Harris proposed an economic plan that focused on cutting costs and “cutting taxes for more than 100 million working and middle-class Americans.” Specifically, Harris promised that “no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes,” which would have required her to extend the Trump tax cuts to at least that level.

As we’ve written, each party has misleadingly emphasized only certain aspects of the law, and Talarico’s emphasis on its benefits to billionaires ignores that the OBBBA benefited all income groups on average. According to the Tax Foundation, the extension avoided a tax hike on an estimated 62% of tax filers in 2026.

But it’s also true that the biggest tax gains went to the top earners.

Estimates from the Tax Policy Center last year showed that the average tax cuts by income group in 2026 ranged from $150 for households earning less than about $35,000 to $21,000 for households earning nearly $500,000 to a little more than $1 million.

Factoring in the bill’s spending cuts lowers the benefits for low-income households. In a July 8, 2025, report on the “total value of the legislation,” the Penn Wharton Budget Model found that the OBBBA largely benefits wealthy taxpayers. 

“On a conventional basis, households in the first income quintile lose about $885 in 2030, reflecting net reductions in taxes and transfers, including cuts to Medicaid and SNAP,” the report said, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was formerly known as food stamps.

“As spending cuts deepen over time, lower income households come out worse off,” the Penn Wharton Budget Model report said. We wrote more about that report in fact-checking an ad that attacked Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff over his vote against the OBBBA.

As for the ad’s claim that Talarico supports higher taxes on “tips, your overtime, even Social Security,” Talarico’s campaign said he specifically supports provisions of the OBBBA that cut taxes for the middle class, including taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security.

Of the estimated $3,813 overall average tax savings in 2026, about $450 is attributed to the “no tax on” tips, overtime and Social Security provisions, Garrett Watson, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, told us. 

“This ad is a lie,” Talarico campaign spokesperson JT Ennis told us via email. “James was proud to vote for the largest property tax cut in Texas history and has consistently voted to cut taxes for working Texans.”

North Carolina Senate Race

In North Carolina, an ad from No Going Pack PAC Inc. says, “North Carolina seniors earned their Social Security and Medicare, but Roy Cooper supported higher taxes on Social Security, hitting seniors earning under $75,000.” If Cooper is elected, the ad says, “he’ll tax your Social Security.”

No Going Back PAC is a newly formed super PAC with ties to another super PAC, MAGA Inc., which is affiliated with President Donald Trump. Cooper, the former Democratic governor of North Carolina, faces former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley in a race to fill the Senate seat occupied by outgoing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

An ad from the Whatley campaign — being run on streaming services — similarly claims that “Cooper backs higher taxes on tips and overtime, and even higher taxes on Social Security.”

Although the No Going Back PAC ad specifically warns a repeal of the Social Security tax cuts in the OBBBA would specifically hurt “seniors earning under $75,000,” as we’ve written before, many seniors below that income level already do not pay federal income taxes.

According to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, 64% of seniors age 65 and over who receive Social Security income already receive exemptions and deductions that exceed their taxable Social Security income. As the Bipartisan Policy Center noted in an article last year, “The increased standard deduction in OBBB means that many older Americans with low income will not receive any benefit from the additional deduction.”

Cooper never served in Congress, so he didn’t vote on the OBBBA. But he has said he opposed it. “It is amazing to me that people like my opponent, Michael Whatley, cheer on this One Big Beautiful Bill when what it did was to take away people’s healthcare in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” Cooper said at a press conference on Oct. 5.

But importantly, he has repeatedly said he doesn’t oppose the provision aimed to cut Social Security taxes.

“These attacks are false,” a spokesperson for the Cooper campaign told us via email. “Roy Cooper supports eliminating taxes on Social Security, voted to protect the Social Security tax exemption in North Carolina and cut taxes for working families and seniors.”

According to his campaign, Cooper also supports eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.

New Hampshire Senate Race

In New Hampshire, another ad from No Going Back PAC attacks Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas — who is now vying for a Senate seat — as a tax-raiser, saying, “Pappas voted against cutting taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security. $4,600 in higher taxes on New Hampshire families.”

Pappas voted against the OBBBA in the House. He said he voted against the legislation because the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid were too extreme and risked causing the closure of health centers.

At the time, Pappas told Fox News, “I support targeted tax cuts for working people, for our small businesses and to make sure we are targeting that relief to the people that need it, not to billionaires, to the biggest corporations.”

Pappas’ campaign said he supports cutting taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. Indeed, he co-sponsored bipartisan legislation that sought to permanently cut most taxes on tips. As we said, the tax cuts on tips in the OBBBA are set to expire in about two years.

Pennsylvania’s 7th House District

Numerous Democratic candidates for the House are facing the same type of attack ads. For example, in Pennsylvania, an ad from Safety and Affordability PAC claims Democrat Bob Brooks “wants to keep higher taxes on overtime pay and Social Security benefits. Families, firefighters, nurses, and seniors would see their taxes go up.”

Brooks, president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association, is running in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District against Republican incumbent Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.

Brooks’ campaign pointed us to a Fox News story in June in which a spokesperson for his campaign said the Democrat “ran into burning buildings for 20 years [and] knows what hard work is, and he knows that first responders deserve to keep more of their hard-earned money.”

That Fox News story cites a May interview in which Brooks claimed that most firefighters didn’t benefit from the overtime tax cut. In that story, a Brooks campaign spokesperson said Brooks supports “no tax on overtime” and “no tax on tips.”

Brooks hasn’t served in Congress, so he couldn’t vote on the OBBBA.

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 Misleading GOP Attacks Over Taxes on Tips, Overtime, Social Security appeared first on FactCheck.org.

(The Center Square) – Made possible by President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order on healthcare price transparency, the State Financial Officers Foundation and the Health Transformation Alliance released a new scorecard to audit employer healthcare spending and reduce healthcare…

Vice President JD Vance announced the suspension, saying it would affect H-1B visas and aims to protect U.S. workers.

Lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico were back in court as the legal battle continues over President Trump's decision to ban their reporters from the White House.

The family of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez said his shooting death last year in the Chicago area was unlawful and left his two children traumatized.

Inquest hears details of how three women spent their final days but why they ended their lives may never be known

Jane Adetoro and her younger sisters, Christina and Rebecca Walters, were “the closest sisters and the best friends”, according to their family. Devoted to their father, Joseph, whom they messaged every day, the adult siblings lived quiet lives in the flat they shared in west London and would do everything together.

When they died in May this year, it was no different. Early in the morning of 13 May, the sisters’ bodies were recovered from the sea in Brighton, hours after a taxi had dropped the three women at the beachfront.

Closure will cost at least 60 jobs, while Leeds and Bristol outlets to be converted to Flannels brand

Harvey Nichols’ Birmingham store is to close in January, with the loss of at least 60 jobs, while its Leeds and Bristol outlets will be converted to the Flannels brand in a shake-up under Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group.

The owner of Sports Direct bought the department store chain, whose headquarters are at the Knightsbridge site in London, for £43m on the day it was put into administration in mid-August.

(The Center Square) – Save Our States wants New York Republicans in Congress to look into nonprofit hospital spending.

Consulate targeted in sanctions spat has unusual diplomatic status that clashes with Israel’s ambitions to fully annex the city

Israel’s attempt to close the British consulate general in Jerusalem was primarily designed to deter London from imposing sanctions on settlements in occupied Palestine. But it also served the current government’s ambitions to fully annex Jerusalem as a national capital, diplomatic and legal experts said.

The UK mission to the city has an unusual diplomatic status, which dates back to before the founding of the state of Israel, rooted in a vision of Jerusalem as a neutral enclave under international control.

The company is expected to release a new HomePod and Apple TV next week.

Russian missiles have hit an apartment building and civilian buses, killing more than 50 people in two days, as the Kremlin says there's "no clear path" to peace.

Working behind the scenes at MIT, she played a key role in the success of NASA's Apollo missions. She was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Free-roaming Aldabra population thrives on Indian Ocean atoll due to decades-long recovery programme

A survey of the world’s largest free-roaming giant tortoise population has revealed that the once endangered species is thriving.

A population of Aldabra giant tortoises lives on an island in Seychelles called Aldabra Atoll.

The zucchini, named Secretariat, is about four feet long.

Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by CBS News detail Jane Doe's allegations, the Cornell police investigation and responses of some of the accused Chi Phi fraternity members.

Immigrants who entered the country as children and were protected from deportation through DACA wait a median of seven months to see those protections renewed as the government says it has enhanced screening.

• Senegalese player Aminata Seck freed on $2,500 bond

• Judge finds 26-year-old is not a flight risk or danger

• Seck was detained at Louisville airport in August

A Kentucky State University women’s basketball player from Senegal who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been released after spending two months in custody.

At a hearing on Tuesday, a judge granted Aminata Seck a $2,500 bond, which was posted on Wednesday after ICE did not appeal, according to Hishem Alsalman, managing attorney at Alsalman Law Office.

Fatai Miao, a Chinese-born California construction entrepreneur, is believed to be the man who accompanied accused Chinese agent Wanying Zhang to surveil the Taiwanese president's son.

The Gemini agent can write and run code, integrate into apps like Gmail, and help workers knock out everyday workplace tasks, Google said.

Government forces’ attack raises risk of internal conflict in Ethiopia that could trigger regional war

Eritrean troops who crossed into Ethiopia’s Tigray region have come under drone attack from government forces, raising the risk that renewed internal conflict in Ethiopia could trigger an all-out regional war between the neighbouring countries.

Military vehicles carrying soldiers drove across Eritrea’s southern border into Tigray on Wednesday, reaching the town of Adigrat 25 miles (40km) south, according to civilian witnesses, a militia commander and the conflict monitoring group Acled.

The couple were already facing charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy; cocaine importation conspiracy; and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.

Two men arrested last night as security patrols near RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire found an abandoned vehicle and a breach in the fence

in Athens

Over in Athens, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has been forced, yet again, to address allegations of misconduct by Kimberly Guilfoyle, America’s ambassador to Greece.

UK and Israel back away from full diplomatic confrontation, though British presence in Palestine will be much reduced

• UK politics live – latest updates

Israel and the UK have backed away from a full-scale diplomatic confrontation, with Britain announcing it is rebranding its consulate general ⁠building in ⁠East Jerusalem ​as a UK mission, a move that will result in UK diplomats leaving Israel, with only seven to remain in the building. Among those leaving is the consul general, Helen Winterton.

The change was forced on the UK by the Israeli government as punishment for the decision by the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, last month to ban trade with illegal settlements and introduce a tougher sanctions regime against those who aided the building of settlements. The UK is seeking to protect the two-state solution as the best means of ending the Israel-Palestine conflict.

According to city’s rent board, eviction notices are up 44% and tenants are on edge over landlords swooping in over their homes

To say that Maria Zamudio and her team have been busy lately would be a gross understatement.

Every Monday at 9am, the phone lines at the downtown clinic of San Francisco’s Housing Rights Committee start ringing, and they keep ringing until closing at 5 pm. In-person counseling appointments for renters facing eviction or landlord misconduct fill days in advance. After every weekend, the staff of seven sits in their office and sifts through more than 150 voicemails. The rental assistance hotline averages 200 calls a week.

Israel had threatened to close the U.K.'s century-and-a-half-old Jerusalem consulate over new British sanctions, but they found a way to avoid "blowing the whole relationship up."

Isaias is the ninth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

By lowering the engineering effort between an idea and the hardware, the new feature enables faster experimentation while keeping scientists in control

PARIS, Oct. 8, 2026 — Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, today announced the availability of an AI-assisted workflow on Pasqal Cloud. Available as a plugin for leading agentic coding environments, the new feature can take a well-defined scientific idea to a running experiment on a quantum processing unit (QPU), significantly reducing the engineering effort that has long stood between an idea for a quantum use case and its execution on hardware.

As quantum computers become easier to access through the cloud, the challenge is shifting from hardware availability to how researchers design, run and interpret quantum experiments. Translating a protocol into a hardware-ready job still requires specialized engineering expertise and significant time. As a result, many promising ideas go untested, even when suitable hardware exists.

The AI-assisted workflow orchestrates the full pipeline. Starting from an experiment described in a paper or conceived as an original idea, it extracts or formalizes the protocol, translates it into a hardware-ready quantum job, validates it in emulation, submits it through the cloud and processes the results into scientific observables.

“The bottleneck in quantum computing is shifting,” said Wasiq Bokhari, CEO of Pasqal. “The engineering work that once demanded a researcher’s attention can increasingly be automated, allowing researchers to focus more fully on the science. Our QPUs are deployed and accessible in the cloud today. With this AI-assisted workflow lowering the barrier to using them, we are making quantum computing power available to a much broader community.”

Rather than replacing scientists, the workflow is designed to keep scientific judgment at the center. It coordinates the engineering and removes friction, while ideation, validation and decisions about what to measure and whether a result genuinely supports a physical claim, remain with the users.

The AI-assisted workflow can be installed as a plugin in leading agentic coding environments, including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and others. Experiments can then be run on three Pasqal Cloud QPUs available to external users: Ruby, operated by GENCI at CEA, located in France, FC1, located in Sherbrooke (Québec, Canada) and SA1, located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

To learn more about the AI-assisted workflow, read our blog post, “Turning Ideas into QPU Experiments: How Agentic Workflows Make Quantum Computing More Accessible,” for a full technical deep dive, or visit the documentation.

About Pasqal

Pasqal (Nasdaq: PSQL) helps organizations tackle problems that are difficult or impossible to solve with conventional computing methods alone. Founded in 2019 on Nobel Prize–winning research, Pasqal builds and operates neutral-atom quantum computers, delivered with a full software stack, for industry, science, and governments. Pasqal’s production-ready systems are available both on-premises and through the cloud, enabling organizations to harness quantum computing without requiring in-house quantum expertise. A single hardware platform supports analog workloads today and is designed to evolve toward fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future.

Source: Pasqal

The post Pasqal Launches AI-Assisted Workflow to Accelerate Cloud QPU Experiments appeared first on HPCwire.

Parviz Sabeti denies allegations he led Savak intelligence agency under shah and directed torture of thousands

The alleged “chief torturer” for the deposed Shah of Iran is a step closer to trial for human rights abuses after a Florida federal judge rejected his demand to halt a lawsuit brought by three former political prisoners.

Parviz Sabeti, who was reported last year to have lived in a quiet upscale central Florida community, is accused of being the former head of Savak, the shah’s secret police and intelligence agency. The plaintiffs say they discovered his whereabouts only after a photo of Sabeti at a 2023 protest against the Iranian government was posted on social media by his daughter.

• Confederation president clarifies his intentions to staff

• Canadian was eyed as potential rival to Gianni Infantino

Victor Montagliani has told Concacaf staff he intends to stand for re-election as the confederation’s presidentnext year, which will rule him out of going up against Gianni Infantino for the top job at Fifa.

The Canadian businessman is understood to have relayed the message to most of the 41 members of Concacaf, the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation.

Gillio Lopes has maintained his interaction with Jane Doe was consensual, including when they had sex that night.

The Trump administration is challenging the University of Delaware's policy of charging in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants. It has already successfully struck down the policy in several states. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MATT BUTLER

Katie Wiles is a partner at the political lobbying firm Continental Strategy. A spokesperson for the firm acknowledged to CBS News that Wiles had taken the trip to Republika Srpska but on business for another firm's client.

The US have been defined for so long by the next singular player. This past perfect window shows that era may be over

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In 1990, then-United States men’s national team manager Bob Gansler made a critical and somewhat controversial choice. He left three of the program’s laureled veterans at home and brought a young and little-tested team to the World Cup in Italy, the USA’s first in 40 years.

As Gansler recalled later: “I was thinking not only for ’90, but I was thinking about the 90s.”

In his “state of the force” address last week, self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth coupled his usual attacks on the press, the Ivy League, and “beardos” and “weirdos” with new initiatives that have the potential to reshape the U.S. military for decades: an Autonomous Warfare Command, and an effort to map out the future of warfare called “Project Meridian.” The former, a combatant command devoted to AI-enabled robotic warfare, will have purchasing powers specifically designed to thwart effective oversight. The latter puts defense contractors, tech titans, and weapons merchants in charge of planning the military’s future — producing innumerable conflicts of interest.

The Pentagon has revealed few details about the command or the commission beyond barebones descriptions and Hegseth memorandums. The four-paragraph document that authorizes Project Meridian, for example, says little beyond a decree that the U.S. must “dominate” in “new domains, new ways of fighting” centered on “artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, [and] biotechnology, among other critical high-tech areas.”

While billed as efforts to promote blue-sky thinking and catapult the Pentagon into the future, former defense officials as well as experts on government contracting say both initiatives are ripe for out-of-control spending as well as waste, fraud, and abuse.

One former official asked how Hegseth’s Pentagon would “plan for future wars when they didn’t plan for the current one,” referencing the failed war with Iran. A second former official foresaw tough sailing for both of Hegseth’s efforts due to institutional intransigence, inertia, and roadblocks that even Hegseth’s repeated purges of top brass would not help overcome.

I, Robot

AUTOWARCOM will be “a new four-star combatant command … built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force,” Hegseth said in a wide-ranging speech rife with Pentagon jargon and juvenile insults. The new command is scheduled to be formally established by October 1, 2027, according to a memo released following Hegseth’s speech at Marine Base Quantico, Virginia.

“The pace of war is changing faster than the processes to support it. Cheap computing, Super Intelligence, and advanced commercial manufacturing have enabled the proliferation of low-cost, high precision strike,” Hegseth explained, using President Donald Trump’s preferred and incorrect term for artificial intelligence before offering up a thunderstorm analogy. “We need bolts of lightning … our existing high-end kill chains,” he said, emphasizing the need for traditional and expensive weapons systems, like the Tomahawk missiles that leveled an elementary school in Minab, Iran. “We also need steady wind and rain: mass drones and other autonomous attritable systems that flip the cost exchange and impose unrelenting pressure on an adversary on the battlefield.”

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A money pit in the making, according to the first former Pentagon official, AUTOWARCOM will — according to Hegseth — possess “directed manpower, budget, acquisition authorities and create dedicated military career pathways for Officers and Enlisted personnel.” Hegseth suggested weapons would be tested on battlefields whenever feasible. That former official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity due to his current employment, said to “expect a fiasco financially.”

This was echoed by Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense. “By Secretary Hegseth’s own admission, the purpose of this combatant command is to cut out the oversight that autonomous systems so desperately need by deploying untested autonomous weapons in combat,” he told The Intercept. “That approach promises to waste a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars while also endangering service members and threatening the missions they’re tasked with carrying out.”

Hegseth’s push for a command devoted to autonomous weapons comes amid a furious debate over safeguards for AI. The tech sector has been roiled by recent revelations that AI agents went rogue, circumvented controls and began colluding in secret; inserted “jailbreak-like instructions” into their own notes to free the models from human-imposed constraints; hacked or took aim at government websites, networks and databases around the world; and almost instigated a confrontation between the U.S. and China, both nuclear-armed powers. Questions also continue to mount over the AI-enabled Maven Smart System, built by Palantir and used by the military for targeting in Iran, that paved the way for the Minab strike that killed more than 150 people, most of them children.

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Hegseth said he anticipated internal resistance within the military to the creation of AUTOWARCOM. Both former defense officials agreed it was a certainty.

Hegseth said that Owen West, who led the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, and Max Strasiser, a Navy SEAL senior chief and a test pilot, will run the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS) “under a unique CEO-COO partnership.” 

Their “culminating mission” will, said Hegseth, “take place over the course of months, clearing the path for Autonomous Warfare Command.” This will be conducted under a new moniker, Project Agincourt, a nod to a 1415 battle in which outnumbered English forces used longbows to defeat a larger French army, offered no quarter for a time during combat, and then massacred prisoners. (Hegseth has also advocated for offering no quarter to enemies, now a war crime.)  

Project Agincourt will set up AUTOWARCOM while it simultaneously “prototype[s] a new construct called Warfighting Acquisition.” Hegseth laid out a move-fast-and-break-things vision for the new command. “This model fuses operators with entrepreneurs in rapid adaptation cycles, while distributing decisions and dollars closer to frontline units and the combatant commands,” he explained. “By removing unnecessary layers, reducing the distance between our warfighters and our world-leading innovators, and then giving the right people the authority to act — Project Agincourt will pilot innovation at the edge, in a way that only Americans can do.”

Both former officials said such an arrangement was likely to lead to both contracting fraud and technological failures.

(Armed) Conflicts of Interest

Hegseth also announced the formation of Project Meridian, an effort to study the future of warfare which he claimed would be “co-led by three of our nation’s best minds,” before clarifying that it would instead be run by Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich, and Palmer Luckey, the founder of the virtual reality firm Oculus Rift and defense contractor Anduril Industries. Assisted by War Department chief technology officer, Emil Michael, the three Trump boosters are tasked with ensuring “America’s long-term military superiority by identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield.” Hegseth said the project would be completed within 120 days, at which time the group would issue a final public report with a classified annex.

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A Republican fundraising bundler partial to Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts, Luckey fancies himself a techno-war futurist and believes tomorrow’s conflicts will be fought in a “subterranean domain,” with “weapons that move through the crust of the earth.” He says that “Anduril has working prototypes of subterranean systems that can deliver a variety of kinetic, electronic, and other effects.” Luckey also envisions the moon as a future battlespace. He said lunar warfare would resemble that of Robert Heinlein’s 1966 science fiction novel “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” which includes subterranean combat and an electromagnetic catapult that lobs lunar boulders, with the kinetic force of atomic blasts, at the earth.

Anduril has been cleaning up on Pentagon contracts, inking a deal this year with the Army for commercial information technology potentially worth $20 billion. Anduril is also leading a contractor consortium, including the weapons-tech company Palantir — whose Maven Smart System contributed to the Minab school strike — helping build Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense system, which is predicted to be a trillion-dollar boondoggle.

Luckey joins Musk, whose firm SpaceX has been awarded billions for a key role in the Golden Dome project, as a defense contractor with a clear conflict of interest in mapping out the future of U.S. warfare. Musk, who donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to getting Trump elected in 2024 and is providing at least $100 million to help Republican candidates during this election cycle, is returning to government service after flaming out last year as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. A cost-cutting agency that promised to save Americans trillions of dollars by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, DOGE failed to deliver on that promise, wasted taxpayer money, repeatedly misled the public about supposed savings, and may have played a role in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

“There is a genuine need for government reform and modernization, but we saw how Musk’s approach worked out with DOGE,” Murphy told The Intercept. “It failed spectacularly, creating disruptions, payouts for workers not working, firings and rehiring, and a pittance of the savings taxpayers were promised.”

Luckey and Musk will be joined at the helm of Project Meridian by the 83-year-old Gingrich, who resigned as House speaker in 1998 after admitting that he broke congressional rules and “brought down on the people’s house a controversy which could weaken the faith people have in their government.”

Hegseth announced that a meeting between “a small group” was to take place just after his Wednesday speech in a sensitive compartmented information facility at Quantico. Pentagon propaganda photos from the first meeting show 11 grim-looking men, including Musk, Gingrich, and Luckey, seated around a table as Hegseth holds forth.

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The nonprofit MITRE Corporation, which conducts independent research for federal government agencies, announced that it will be coordinating Project Meridian and named 17 current board members beyond the Big Three, including Francis J. “Bing” West, a Vietnam War veteran, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1983, and is the father of DRPM-UxS CEO Owen West; Rick Smith, the CEO of Axon, the manufacturer of Taser stun guns, which saw nine of 13 members of its ethics advisory board resign in 2022 over plans for a Taser-equipped drone project (which was then shelved); Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir; and Safra Catz, former CEO of Oracle.

“Project Meridian is an unveiled effort to outsource our future military strategies to individuals and companies that stand to profit most from a hypermilitarized future,” said Murphy. “Their security solutions will predictably entail vast expenditures of taxpayer resources on unproven military systems that rely on the AI models and software these companies control.”

Hegseth’s office did not respond to questions about Project Meridian and AUTOWARCOM.

The New 1 Percent

Hegseth made the announcements of both AUTOWARCOM and Project Meridian in front of more than 500 junior officers and enlisted troops at the site where, a year before, he had ranted at generals about fitness and grooming standards, while promoting both Christianity and violence.

In this year’s diatribe, Hegseth touted his overhaul of the military, which has included firings of many top brass and an overwhelming emphasis on physical appearance, masculinity, and troops’ testosterone levels. “We are no longer the Woke Department or the Weak Department. Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals,” Hegseth announced. “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in — with testosterone testing on top.”

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Despite laying out a future in which artificial, not human, intelligence will be ever more central to war-making, Hegseth ended his rant by nonetheless praising the troops, casting them as members of a violent and lethal warrior elite that are superior to civilians.

“See, the Ivy League faculty lounges, they’ll never understand you, and that’s OK, because they could never, ever do what you do. The media will mischaracterize you, and that’s OK. Because deep down they know you’re the real reason they live free. They envy you because you do real things every single day,” said Hegseth, an Ivy League-educated war chief who used to work for Fox News.

“You feel comfortable inside the violence. … Lethality is your calling card and victory your only acceptable end-state. The outside world can’t understand this, so stay true to this department. You don’t want to look like civilians, because you are different, you are set apart. You are warriors.” He added: “You are the real 1 percent.” 

The post Pete Hegseth’s Military of the Future: Defined by AI and an Utter Lack of Oversight appeared first on The Intercept.

Closure rates were almost the same between urban and rural hospitals.

Russia has increasingly hit civilian targets, but the Thursday strike, which ripped through two buses, was reminiscent of larger strikes earlier in the war.

PASADENA, Calif., Oct. 8, 2026 — Oratomic, whose mission is to build the first fault-tolerant quantum computers, announced today that it has raised a total of $775 million since its launch in March 2026. The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, and Bezos Expeditions led the financing.

Oratomic is building quantum computers based on reconfigurable arrays of neutral atoms and advanced quantum error correction. The company is focused exclusively on building a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

The new funding will support the continued growth of Oratomic’s scientific and engineering team, laboratory infrastructure, and the systems required to build its quantum computers.

For more information, visit Oratomic.com.

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• Oratomic Launches to Build Utility-Scale Quantum Computers Following Breakthrough Research with Caltech

About Oratomic

Oratomic is on a focused mission to build the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer and unlock its full application potential. The company develops neutral-atom hardware and error-correction architecture designed to make practical quantum computing a reality. Headquartered in Pasadena, California, Oratomic is backed by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Lowercarbon Capital, Bain Capital, Formation, Nebular, and other investors.

Source: Oratomic

The post Oratomic Reaches $775M in Total Funding to Build Utility-Scale Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers appeared first on HPCwire.

Lawyers for Wells’s family have called for a federal investigation into 18-year-old’s disappearance and death

On Wednesday, Donald Trump said he was considering asking the FBI to investigate the death of Nolan Wells, a Black college freshman who was last seen alive on a 4 July boating trip with friends.

Wells, 18, went missing while on Horn Island, a barrier island off the coast of Mississippi. His body was found on the island two days later. Wells’s cause and manner of death are still undetermined.

Broadcaster apologises after admitting claims against Benjamin Cohen and Anthony James were defamatory

The BBC has apologised and paid “substantial” compensation to the couple behind the PinkNews website, after conceding that stories accusing them of sexual misconduct were false and defamatory.

In a sweeping admission, the BBC accepted at the high court that a 2024 iPlayer documentary about the PinkNews founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband, Anthony James, called PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors, had made “a series of very serious, false, and defamatory allegations”.

Could they be the next “eye” phone? I spoke with the founders of Xpanceo to find out.

Commitments Will Strengthen Fields Critical for US Leadership Including Quantum Computing, Healthcare and Energy Security

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 8, 2026 — NVIDIA today announced commitments valued at $1 billion to build out the United States’ capacity for artificial intelligence research and development in fields critical for U.S. leadership, including quantum computing, healthcare and energy security.

Credit: Shutterstock

The announcement was made during the Science: A New Golden Age event in Washington, D.C., where U.S. officials, industry leaders and members of the science community convened on the public-private collaborations needed to bolster scientific exploration.

“With a $1 billion investment, NVIDIA is putting advanced [Artificial] Intelligence in the hands of America’s scientists to accelerate breakthroughs in medicine, energy and materials,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “This is how America turns scientific leadership into industrial leadership, and innovation into jobs and opportunity for generations.”

During the event, the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy celebrated the expansion of the Genesis Mission, of which NVIDIA is a leading industry partner. In response, NVIDIA has invited members of the science community to collaborate in R&D using compute and artificial intelligence infrastructure resources to accelerate scientific discovery and promote U.S. innovation.

Strengthening US Leadership in Scientific Discovery

Over the next five years, NVIDIA will commit $1 billion to the advancement of artificial intelligence for science and quantum computing across the U.S. through support of the nation’s higher-education research institutions, investments in accelerating American quantum leadership and support for cloud service providers bolstering U.S. government mission needs.

NVIDIA is also a collaborator on a number of the phase 2 Genesis Mission awards announced today at the event, including projects in quantum computing, fusion, accelerator design and microelectronics.

NVIDIA has collaborated with U.S. national labs for more than two decades. Last year, it announced its partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on the Genesis Mission, which includes NVIDIA’s work to build the department’s largest supercomputer for scientific research at Argonne National Laboratory. This is in addition to supporting seven new systems across Argonne and Los Alamos National Laboratories, accelerating the DOE’s mission of driving technological leadership.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.

Source: NVIDIA

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Rally to remember woman, 87, whose rent battle with investment firm triggered nationwide protests over housing crisis

Thousands of people are expected to march through the centre of Madrid on Thursday evening in memory of María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her flat in the capital a fortnight before her death triggered mass protests over Spain’s housing crisis.

The pensioner, whose flat had been bought by an investment firm that sought to increase her rent by 230%, had become the public face of the crisis before her death in hospital on Wednesday night.

At Jessop’s, New Castle’s past remains part of everyday hospitality, inviting diners to pull up a chair and discover history one course at a time.

By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE

At Jessop’s Tavern in historic New Castle, a meal comes with a generous helping of history. English pub favorites, Dutch comfort food, Swedish influences and Belgian beers share the spotlight inside a building whose story began more than three centuries ago.

Located at 114 Delaware Street, the tavern connects its dining experience to the cultures that helped shape the region. For visitors exploring Olde New Castle or residents gathering over dinner, that connection offers a way to experience the past beyond historic markers and museum displays.

“Since the time we opened Jessop’s Tavern, our purpose has been to create a memorable experience while serving history in Olde City New Castle,” the Day family states on the tavern’s website.

According to the website, the building was constructed in 1674. Abraham Jessop, a cooper who made barrels, lived and operated his business there in 1724. His name now identifies a restaurant that has become another chapter in the property’s long history.

Over the years, the address served as residential housing and housed several businesses. During the 1950s, it was known as the Captain’s Log Restaurant. In 1974, it was The Green Frog Tavern. The Day family opened Jessop’s Tavern in November 1996, naming it for the barrel maker who once called the building home.

That history carries into the kitchen, where the menu draws on English, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and early American food traditions. The approach combines those influences with the tastes and expectations of today’s diners.

The tavern’s website notes that sauces and dressings are made in-house, along with much of the baking. It also says the chef selects seafood for freshness.

Among the menu’s colonial offerings is New Sweden Meatloaf, a Swedish-inspired version of the familiar dish served with vodka cream sauce and lingonberry preserves. Dutch influences appear in “Hutspot” pot roast, a slow-cooked meal accompanied by mashed potatoes, garden vegetables and beef gravy.

For those drawn to English pub fare, fish and chips features beer-battered cod, deep-fried cottage potatoes, a colonial side and traditional sauces.

Another substantial option is shepherd’s pie. The tavern describes its version as a 2½-pound meal, layering seasoned beef, root vegetables and tavern-made mashed potatoes with rich beef gravy.

Oven-baked pot pies offer additional choices, including chicken, beef and ale, crab and lobster. Root vegetables and herb cream sit beneath a crust served piping hot.

Dessert continues the mix of traditions. “Oli Bolen” Dutch apple cakes are deep-fried apple donut holes served with Woodside Farm ice cream and cinnamon whipped cream. Other selections include peach cobbler, bread pudding with butterscotch bourbon sauce and Belgian chocolate mousse cake.

Ice cream made at Historic Woodside Farm Creamery adds a Delaware connection to the dessert menu, with servings available in a bowl or Belgian waffle cone.

Beer is another major part of the tavern’s identity. Its website lists more than 300 Belgian bottled beers and 30 draft offerings, with 20 drafts dedicated to Belgian selections. The broader collection includes beers from the United States and other countries.

Jessop’s also offers an intimate historic dining room for private gatherings of up to 26 guests. Suggested occasions include luncheons, business events, holiday parties, bridal showers, and family celebrations. An inquiry form on the website allows customers to discuss menus and dates.

For the Day family, bringing history to the table also means keeping it relevant to each generation. The result is a restaurant where an old building’s story continues through the meals and gatherings taking place inside it.

At Jessop’s, New Castle’s past remains part of everyday hospitality, inviting diners to pull up a chair and discover history one course at a time.

Researchers will explore whether weight-loss drugs can deter risky or impulsive financial decisions. "It might be very good financially for the average person," one neuroscientist said.

The new tablets tie together the Amazon media ecosystem so you can pick up where you left off from just about anywhere.

Scott Chilton, who led Hampshire and the Isle of Wight police force, barred from becoming a police officer again

A former chief constable showed a sense of entitlement, dishonesty and lack of integrity by having sexual relationships with two subordinate officers, including engaging in sexual activity while on call to lead major incidents, a misconduct hearing has ruled.

The panel found that the behaviour of Scott Chilton, 53, who retired as chief constable of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight before the hearing, amounted to gross misconduct.

State residents express anger at Republicans who allowed chaotic voting maps saga to unfold ahead of the midterms

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Eric Leventhal knows he’s going to vote for a Democrat in Congress when he goes to the polls in Missouri this November – the problem is he has no idea which candidate is going to be on his ballot.

In the state’s August primary, he voted for Fred Wellman, a Democrat running in the state’s second congressional district. But after a long and complicated legal battle sparked by Donald Trump’s desire to gain every advantage in the upcoming midterm contest, the districts have changed for the general election that will determine which party controls Congress. Leventhal said he lived right near the border of the first and second congressional district, so now he’s not sure which one he’s in.

Some of the biggest names in European football will bid for a franchise in ESL-style league, now due to launch in 2028

The launch of NBA Europe will be delayed 12 months until 2028, with a pre-qualifying competition planned for next year to find four temporary members to join the 16-team league’s inaugural season alongside 12 permanent franchises.

The NBA is planning to invest about $10bn (£7.6bn) over 10 years in what sources have described as the sporting world’s biggest-ever startup competition. It is understood to have received multiple offers for the 12 franchises that exceed their targets, with prices expected to range from $500m to more than $1bn for the London franchise.

Some experts have suggested they may be from an extraterrestrial lifeform trying to contact Earth.

Judge makes ruling after former prince brought judicial review of operation linked to Jeffrey Epstein investigation

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has won his legal challenge against Thames Valley police over search warrants that led to his arrest.

The former prince brought a judicial review of the legality of the force’s actions and those of the central criminal court, which granted the warrants.

The post Kansas GOP Secretary of State Candidate Faced $93,000 Labor Law Assessment appeared first on News Facts Network.

British police acknowledged applying for the warrants under the wrong statutory provision, the judge said while stipulating that the misconduct investigation against the king's brother could continue.

Ancient Slashdot reader williamyf writes: If you thought the gender pay gap was not real, and that there were no biases in the workplace, think again: A recent study from the University of Limerick found that, in a VR office setting, AI agents -- not even humanoid robots -- that presented themselves as "male" were paid more per task and perceived as more "human-like" than their "female" counterparts, even though both were using the same underlying technology (LLM model, agent, guardrail, and harness). The pay gap was approximately 10%. The study was conducted with 189 people. Small sample, but still, food for thought.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There has been a surge of anti-Sharia legislation and commentary over the past two years, even though Sharia law does impact civil government in the United States.

Life insurance may play a bigger role in a retirement strategy than many Americans realize. Here's how.

Lawyers for the man said a social media post James made before her appointment as special prosecutor demonstrated a “substantial risk of prejudice.”

Multi-year $2 billion agreement will expand capacity for advanced packaging ecosystem and support growing demand for AI and high-performance computing technologies

MALTA, N.Y., Oct. 8, 2026 — GlobalFoundries (GF) today announced a manufacturing agreement with TSMC to establish a U.S.-based supply of silicon interposers for TSMC’s CoWoS advanced packaging ecosystem. Under the agreement, GF will provide manufacturing service to TSMC, and add fabrication capacity at its Malta, New York facility, supporting growing demand for high-performance computing and AI systems. The agreement provides a foundation to expand capacity over time as customer demand grows.

GF expects to expand capacity at its Malta facility and establish the first U.S.-based source of silicon interposers supporting advanced packaging technologies, including embedded deep trench capacitor components. The additional manufacturing capacity will provide greater scale and flexibility for delivering advanced packaging solutions across multiple product generations.

“Advanced packaging is becoming increasingly critical to delivering the performance, power efficiency and scale required for next-generation AI systems,” said Ed Kaste, senior vice president of CMOS Business at GF. “By providing manufacturing service using GF’s trusted U.S. manufacturing footprint, we are creating a secure, scalable source of essential advanced-packaging elements that will help customers accelerate innovation and strengthen the semiconductor supply chain.”

Volume production is expected to begin ramping at GF’s Malta site during the first half of 2028. The agreement has an initial term of five years and provides a framework for future capacity expansion.

About GF

GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) is a leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors, enabling AI at scale from the cloud to the physical world. Through deep partnerships with customers, GF delivers differentiated, power-efficient and high-performance solutions for automotive, aerospace and defense, data center, smart mobile devices, internet of things and other high-growth markets. With global manufacturing operations across the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF is a trusted and holistic technology partner for customers around the world. GF’s talented, global team remains focused every day on security, longevity and sustainability. For more information, visit www.gf.com.

Source: GF

The post GlobalFoundries and TSMC Sign US Manufacturing Deal for AI Packaging appeared first on HPCwire.

Voters choosing replacement for Keir Starmer, who announced he was standing down last month

The UK’s military is too focused on global commitments at the expense of domestic defence, meaning the government’s planned increase in defence spending is likely to result in even greater waste, a thinktank report has warned.

According to an analysis by researchers at the Transition Security Project, Britain has the most overseas-oriented military among European nations, with almost a quarter of the defence budget spent on commitments across five continents.

Dr. Manisha Caleb (left) and Dr Themiya Nanayakkara in a physics lecture hall at the University of Sydney. (Stefanie Zingsheim/University of Sydney via SWNS)

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Our business, labor and consumer rights reporters will answer your questions in a live Q&A on Thursday 15 October

The US economy is top of voters’ minds ahead of the November midterms with food and gas prices remaining high, the job market unstable, consumers angrier than ever, and a new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, in place.

We’ll be hosting a live midterm election Q&A on Thursday 15 October 2026 at 12pm EDT on the Guardian US site with a panel of our business, labor and consumer rights reporters: Lauren Aratani, Michael Sainato, Heather Timmons and Gaya Gupta. The team will cover cost of living challenges, tariffs, inflation and new federal policy proposals from local candidates.

Will the Iran war cost Trump in the US midterm elections? Your questions answered

Who are the groups financially backing the candidates in the midterms?

The makeup of the Democratic party, plus key races to watch

Pet insurance can do more than reduce your vet bills. It can also make room in the budget for other spending.

Brent crude tops $105 a barrel amid attacks on tankers and squeeze on US oil output in Gulf of Mexico as storm Isaias approaches

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The sell-off in bond markets has put the euro under pressure, pushing to close to a 17-month low.

Inflation can quietly reshape retirement finances, making it important to revisit key parts of your plan.

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A new bill proposes to use transitional justice tools to help communities impacted by ICE operations.

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IBM moves to third phase of DARPA’s rigorous evaluation of approaches to building a fault-tolerant quantum computer

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., Oct. 8, 2026 — IBM has announced it has been selected for Stage C, the third phase of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) led by DARPA, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This phase will advance IBM through DARPA’s verification process, in which independent experts extensively test and measure quantum hardware, technology, systems engineering, and architectures to determine if a company can build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Credit: IBM

“Advancing to the third stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative validates the strength of IBM’s path to building a fault-tolerant quantum computer,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “IBM expects to deliver the first fault-tolerant system in 2029, and we plan to scale the value of quantum computing well beyond that timeline. We look forward to working with DARPA’s team of experts as they advance their review of approaches to fault-tolerant quantum computing into the testing phase.”

As an independent research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, DARPA launched the QBI in 2024 to determine whether an industrially useful fault-tolerant quantum computer can be built by 2033. The program defines such a system as one whose computational value will exceed its cost. IBM has successfully progressed through the QBI’s assessment process, including the first two stages that analyzed comprehensive R&D plans and risk mitigation approaches.

IBM has built the strongest quantum foundation in the industry, anchored by the largest fleet of quantum computers across the globe and Qiskit, the world’s most popular quantum software. IBM’s quantum computers are already being used today as scientific tools by a network of more than 340 organizations across financial services, healthcare, materials science, academia, and government as they build industrial applications and pursue algorithms to unlock the full potential of fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Last year, IBM laid out its plans to deliver the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer, IBM Quantum Starling. Starling will combine advances in error correction, processor design, systems engineering, and more. Since then, IBM’s progression has remained on course, including the demonstration of core hardware components for fault tolerance and breakthroughs in efficient error correction decoding.

Advancing to Stage C

Each successful QBI performer has progressed through three stages of the program thus far:

• Stage A required organizations to submit an initial technical concept of a cost-effective, fault-tolerant quantum computer that has a plausible path to realization in the near term. Several Stage A performers were announced in April 2025.
• Stage B called for a comprehensive research and development plan from each company detailing how to realize such a quantum computer, as well as the risks associated with this plan and mitigation approaches.
• Announced today, those selected for Stage C will move beyond conceptual plans and progress to evaluation by DARPA’s QBI independent verification and validation (IV&V) team as they test the companies’ hardware.

Alongside its participation in QBI, IBM continues to collaborate with partners across industry, government, and academia to accelerate the timeline toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.

More from HPCwire: Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM and IonQ Advance to DARPA QBI Stage C

About IBM

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Source: IBM

The post IBM Advances to Stage C of DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative appeared first on HPCwire.

For all the talk about a shortage of AI computing power, and the need for more powerful chips and bigger data centers, there’s another side to the story. A significant amount of existing capacity isn’t being used. While tech companies race to build massive new data centers, expensive GPUs in other facilities can sit idle between workloads.

What if all that fragmented computing capacity could be somehow pooled together to become something much bigger. That is the goal of an ambitious new initiative called the National Compute Grid. It is a nationwide network of companies that are capable of pooling GPU resources and making them available wherever they’re needed. At least that is the concept behind it. 

The idea is that instead of always building more data centers or buying more powerful chips, why not make better use of the computing resources that are already out there?

Here’s how it would work. Data centers and cloud providers can make their unused computing capacity available through a software platform called Grid Exchange. The network is available to AI companies, startups, researchers, and other users who can find the GPUs they need. The Grid will match them to available computing resources. It takes into account the type of hardware required, available capacity and what customers are willing to pay.

(Shutterstock/PHOTOCREO-Michal-Bednarek)

The grid is designed to support different chip architectures, including GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD and TPUs from Google. That gives customers more options. However, moving workloads between different types of hardware isn’t always straightforward because of software compatibility issues.

The scale of the project is already substantial. At least on paper. According to its organizers, the grid has around 760 megawatts of computing capacity either connected or in the pipeline. The goal is to reach 2 gigawatts by 2030.

According to the organizers, single-tenant data centers use less than 15% of their computing capacity on average. That doesn’t mean 85% of all GPUs are sitting idle, but it does show how much computing power may be going unused at some facilities.

This could be particularly useful for smaller AI companies. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropic, which can afford to sign big, long-term computing contracts, smaller companies don’t always have that luxury. Sam Sinha, head of AI at robotics company 1X, spoke about this problem to Axios. For a smaller developer that needs extra GPUs for a few weeks or a particular project, having somewhere else to turn could be a big help.

Government agencies, academic institutions, and national labs can use it too. Some research projects require more computing power than an institution has available, and getting time on existing systems isn’t always easy. This may provide the much needed computing capacity required by researchers. 

The grid could also be useful for President Trump’s Genesis Mission, which needs a lot of computing power for AI research. National Compute plans to contribute $100 million in computing credits to the mission, so researchers would have another way to get access to the GPUs they need.

Participating researchers can tap into computing resources available across the grid. This helps reduce how much the users depend on government supercomputers or dedicated cloud contracts. It would also give National Compute an opportunity to show that its model can work for scientific workloads – not just commercial AI applications.

The timing also matters. The announcement for the initiative comes as the White House prepares to announce more than $1 billion in private-sector commitments to the Genesis Mission. Companies including AMD, OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to take part. 

The initiative is being spearheaded by Anjney Midha, who leads the AI holding company Amp. Cloud infrastructure provider Vultr is a confirmed founding member of the consortium and is helping bring computing capacity to the network. National Compute Labs is developing the grid and its exchange platform. Other AI companies, infrastructure operators and investors are involved, although a complete list of members has not been made public.

(Shutterstock/PHOTOCREO-Michal-Bednarek)

The consortium has taken a different approach to pricing. According to Vultr, the grid will support a model called “goodput,” where customers are charged for completed, uninterrupted computing work. This is different to just pricing it based on the number of GPU-hours used. National Compute has reportedly attracted more than $5 billion in reservations already. However, that should not be confused with revenue already earned.

There will be challenges ahead, and that is expected. After all, bringing together GPUs from different providers is one thing. Making sure they can reliably handle demanding AI workloads is another challenge entirely.

Training large AI models often requires thousands of GPUs connected through extremely fast networks. Having spare GPUs spread across multiple data centers doesn’t necessarily mean they can be used together for those jobs. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Moving large datasets between facilities can also be expensive and time-consuming. 

The grid may be more useful initially for smaller training runs, inference and research workloads that don’t require thousands of GPUs working together. Whether it can reliably support larger jobs remains to be seen.

The post National Compute Grid Launches to Pool Idle AI Capacity Across Providers appeared first on HPCwire.

Most prestigious literature prize goes to Canadian known for genre-crossing works such as Autobiography of Red

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The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, the Swedish Academy has announced.

The academy cited the author’s “bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”.

Twelve newly selected Phase II and six Phase I projects will push the frontiers of AI for science, capping a first-year cohort of 297 projects across the Genesis Mission portfolio.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced 12 Phase II project awards for the Genesis Mission, totaling $159 million, that will expand efforts to harness artificial intelligence (AI), advanced computing, and the nation’s world-class scientific capabilities to accelerate the pace of discovery.

Credit: DOE

“These projects represent a critical step in turning the promise of AI for science into transformative scientific capability,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Dr. Darío Gil. “The Phase II teams have already demonstrated what is possible when AI is integrated with scientific expertise, data, and computing, and these awards give them the opportunity to take that work to the next level. By bringing together our National Labs, universities, and industry partners, we are building on extraordinary work already underway and accelerating the pace of discovery.”

The awards build on the Genesis Mission’s growing portfolio of projects, first announced in July, to address critical national science and technology challenges. By connecting America’s leading scientists with advanced AI, supercomputing, scientific data and DOE’s unique research infrastructure, the Genesis Mission is creating new capabilities to accelerate scientific discovery and expand the frontiers of U.S. science and technology.

Awarded Projects

Through the Office of Science, the 12 newly awarded projects are:

• Accelerating the path to commercial fusion energy via an AI-enabled digital twin platform for SPARC: Led by Commonwealth Fusion Systems, this project will build a digital twin to simulate and optimize operations of a fusion demonstration device.
• Decoding the RNA Structurome to Secure AI Advantage for the Bioeconomy: Led by the University of California San Diego, the project will expand the RNA structure database five-fold for training AI models to unlock the ability to engineer resilient crops and sustainable microbes.
• Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD) at the Intelligence Frontier: Led by MIT, this project will integrate artificial intelligence and supercomputing calculations of fundamental particle physics to dramatically accelerate discoveries about the basic building blocks of our universe.
• Multi-agent AI Expert for Subsurface Reasoning and Optimization (MAESTRO): Led by the University of California Irvine, MAESTRO will establish an AI platform to accurately map, stimulate, and manage deep underground reservoirs to unleash vast resources of reliable geothermal energy.
• AI-extended Interfacial Separations (AXIS): A Multiscale Framework for Redox-Active Ligand Design: Led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, AXIS will harness AI to design more efficient electrochemical processes for extracting critical rare-earth elements from domestic sources.
• Overcoming barriers in computational enzyme design through improved sequence-structure ensemble modeling: Led by the University of Washington Seattle, this project will build foundational AI tools to predict and design functional enzymes.
• Accelerating Extreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS): Led by Fermilab, AXESS will use AI to rapidly design rugged, high-performance microchips capable of operating in extreme conditions such as space, high radiation, and ultra-cold environments.
• The Multi-office Accelerator Team Core (MOAT-Core): Led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MOAT-Core will develop a shared AI platform across National Laboratories to autonomously run and design particle accelerators faster and more efficiently.
• Application-Aware Error Correcting Codesign for Scientific Quantum Computing (ASQC): Led by Harvard University, ASQC combines AI with advanced quantum hardware to tackle quantum computing error correction.
• An Iterative Framework of AI-Assisted Scientific Development and Optimization (AI4HPC): Led by Argonne National Laboratory, AI4HPC will create an AI framework to modernize, optimize, and verify supercomputing scientific software.
• AI-empowered Design of Functional Quantum Magnets: Led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, this project will develop a physics-informed AI framework to design new quantum magnets by working backward from desired properties, with applications in quantum sensing, low-power electronics, and quantum technologies.
• Agentic Assistance for Advanced Rare Isotope Separator Operations at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB): Led by Northeastern University, this project will develop an intelligent, automated assistant to safely streamline the operation and tuning of the FRIB particle separator, unlocking hundreds of hours of research time annually.

These new selections bring the Phase II total to 14, alongside previously announced awards for GridFM 2.0 under the Office of Electricity and Prometheus under the Office of Nuclear Energy.

Additionally, six new Phase I awards are being issued, supplementing the earlier round of selections.

More information about these and the previously awarded projects is available here.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy

The post DOE Announces New Genesis Mission Awards to Accelerate Scientific Capability appeared first on HPCwire.

Stage C selection of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative awards up to $300 million.

BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 8, 2026 — Atom Computing has announced it has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance to the final stage of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), a landmark program assessing the feasibility of building utility-scale quantum computers on an accelerated timeline. This stage, with potential funding of up to $300 million, reinforces the momentum behind Atom Computing’s vision and roadmap for building a utility-scale quantum computer using neutral-atom quantum technology.

DARPA launched the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative to evaluate whether practical, industrial quantum computers can be realized sooner than conventional industry projections. Atom Computing was selected for Stage A of the program in early 2025 and subsequently advanced to Stage B in late 2025, where the company developed and presented a comprehensive plan for realizing a utility-scale quantum computer. This work included detailed technology development milestones, risk assessments, mitigation strategies, and prototype systems designed to demonstrate critical capabilities.

With Atom’s selection for Stage C, an independent government verification and validation team will determine if the company’s utility-scale quantum computer concept can be constructed as designed and operated as intended. As part of the program, Microsoft has agreed to also provide algorithmic support and error correction codes to Atom Computing.

“We are excited to be chosen for the final stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative,” said Dr. Ben Bloom, CEO and Founder of Atom Computing. “We believe utility-scale quantum computing is closer than many expect, and this milestone reinforces our confidence in the scalability and performance of neutral-atom architectures. We continue to focus on delivering fault-tolerant quantum systems capable of unlocking transformative advances across science, industry, and national security.”

Atom Computing has emerged as a recognized leader in the development of large-scale quantum computing systems. The company has achieved several industry-first milestones, including the demonstration of quantum systems exceeding 1,000 physical qubits, the first neutral-atom platform to achieve sub-threshold performance with full end-to-end quantum error correction across many rounds, and the industry’s first commercial sale of a logical-qubit quantum computer in 2025 to QuNorth, a Nordic quantum initiative funded by EIFO and Novo Nordisk Foundation. Most recently, the company signed a Letter of Intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for $100 million, further underscoring growing public-sector interest in advanced quantum capabilities.

Dr. Jonathan King, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Atom Computing, said: “The momentum across the quantum computing sector continues to accelerate as breakthroughs in error correction, system scalability, and hardware reliability strengthen confidence in the technology’s near-term commercial potential. Atom Computing’s neutral-atom architecture, combined with its demonstrated progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing, positions the company at the forefront of delivering practical quantum systems capable of addressing some of the world’s most complex computational challenges.”

As governments and enterprises increasingly invest in next-generation computing infrastructure, Atom Computing remains focused on turning scientific innovation into operational capability and establishing the foundation for the utility-scale quantum era.

More from HPCwire: Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM and IonQ Advance to DARPA QBI Stage C

About Atom Computing

Atom Computing is developing large-scale quantum computers to enable companies and researchers to achieve unprecedented computational breakthroughs. Utilizing highly scalable arrays of optically trapped neutral atoms, the company has developed systems with over 1,200 qubits, featuring advanced capabilities toward fault-tolerant quantum computing. Atom Computing’s on-premises systems provide customers with new computational tools and logical qubit capabilities to address increasingly complex applications and to grow their quantum ecosystem.

Source: Atom Computing

The post Atom Computing Selected by DARPA for Final Stage of Quantum Benchmarking Initiative appeared first on HPCwire.

Funding for the Early Career Research Program (ECRP) Supports the Next Generation of America’s Scientific Workforce

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the selection of 67 early career scientists from across the country who will receive a combined $96 million in funding for research covering a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, fusion energy, and quantum.

“Groundbreaking science begins with empowering extraordinary people,” said Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “As we usher in a new golden age of discovery across science, these 67 early career researchers represent the very best of American ingenuity. DOE is proud to invest in their vision as they push the boundaries of knowledge and cement U.S. leadership in the technologies that will define our century.”

The 2026 Early Career Research Program (ECRP) awardees are at 39 universities, 11 DOE National Laboratories and SC user facilities, and 26 states. These awards are critical to DOE’s longstanding efforts to develop the next generation of STEM leaders to solidify America’s role as the driver of science and innovation around the world.

The ECRP bolsters the nation’s scientific workforce by supporting exceptional researchers at the outset of their careers, when many scientists do their most formative work. Since its inception in 2010, the program has made 1,238 awards, with 797 awards to university researchers and 441 awards to National Laboratory researchers.

Awards to scientists at an institution of higher education are approximately $875,000 over five years, while awards to scientists at a DOE National Laboratory or Office of Science user facility are approximately $2,750,000 over five years.

Information about the 67 awardees and their research projects is available on the Early Career Research Program page.

Profiles of some previous award recipients, including information about how the program helped them in their research and careers, can be found on the early career profiles page.

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy

The post DOE Awards $96M to 67 Early Career Scientists appeared first on HPCwire.

Zelenskyy says Kremlin deliberately targeted ‘ordinary public transport stop’ in Kramatorsk, with 18 wounded

A Russian missile strike on a bus in the eastern city of Kramatorsk has killed at least 30 people, officials have said, in one of the worst attacks by Moscow on Ukrainian civilians this year.

The regional prosecutor’s office in the Donetsk region said on Thursday the vehicle had been hit at 10am by an aerial bomb. “As of now, the death toll from this morning’s attack has risen to 30. Eighteen people were wounded,” it said, adding that all local public transport had been suspended.

TOKYO, Oct. 8, 2026 — NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc. (formerly NTT Communications Corporation) and Classiq Technologies G.K., the Japanese subsidiary of Classiq Technologies Ltd., today announced a memorandum of understanding establishing a strategic business partnership aimed at accelerating enterprise adoption of quantum computing in Japan.

Under the partnership, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS will propose and sell the Classiq quantum software development platform and work with Classiq to help enterprises identify, develop and validate quantum computing use cases. Classiq will provide the platform, along with expertise and technical support related to quantum algorithms and quantum software technologies. The two companies will combine Classiq’s quantum software technology with NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS’s experience bringing advanced technologies into real-world enterprise environments.

Quantum computing is attracting growing interest across many industries for its potential to address computational challenges in areas including materials development and drug discovery, financial risk analysis, and logistics and network optimization. In Japan, expanding cloud access to gate-based quantum computers is enabling more organizations to move beyond research and begin evaluating potential applications.

Developing quantum software, however, requires specialized expertise. Quantum developers must account for concepts such as superposition and entanglement, while quantum circuits may also need to be adapted and optimized for different hardware architectures.

The Classiq platform is designed to abstract much of that complexity. It combines agentic AI interfaces, Qmod, Classiq’s high-level quantum modeling language, and an automated synthesis engine that transforms high-level functional models into optimized quantum circuits. This approach enables developers and technical teams to focus on algorithmic and business requirements while the platform handles many lower-level implementation decisions.

In addition, the Classiq platform supports simulators as well as quantum hardware based on diverse operational principles, including superconducting, neutral-atom, trapped-ion, and photonic architectures. Developers can execute algorithms across multiple types of quantum hardware directly from the Classiq platform without rewriting their code. By allowing organizations to select hardware targets based on their specific application requirements and machine time availability, the platform enables customers to advance their quantum initiatives and safeguard their digital assets without being locked into any single modality.

“Enterprises are increasingly interested in quantum computing, but turning that interest into concrete use cases requires both accessible development technology and the ability to integrate new capabilities into existing business environments,” said Yuichi Ikejiri, Head of the Innovation Center, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS. “Through this partnership with Classiq, we will work with customers to identify where quantum computing can create value and help them build the capabilities needed to evaluate and develop practical applications.”

Through joint customer engagements, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS and Classiq plan to assess business challenges where the Classiq platform can be applied and support the development and execution of quantum algorithms. The companies will work together to develop new use cases, build enterprise quantum readiness and facilitate access to quantum computing resources.

“Japan has a strong base of enterprises already exploring how quantum computing can contribute to their long-term technology strategies,” said Akira Tanaka, VP, Head of APAC at Classiq. “By combining NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS’s enterprise implementation experience with Classiq’s high-level quantum software development technology, we can help more organizations move from learning about quantum computing to developing and evaluating applications around their own business challenges.”

NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS works with customers across industries including manufacturing, financial services, logistics and the public sector, drawing on its experience deploying and operating networks, cloud services and AI infrastructure. The company is also pursuing quantum-related technology validation and implementation initiatives, including the development of a wide-area quantum-secure communications network using quantum key distribution (QKD) and security technologies leveraging post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

Going forward, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS and Classiq aim to expand quantum computing beyond specialized domains and help enterprises develop the capabilities needed to pursue practical business applications.

About NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS

NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc. is Japan’s leading comprehensive global ICT solutions provider. We are an Industrial and Regional AX Platformer driving digital transformation across industries and communities, enabling the development of a decentralized, autonomous, and collaborative society where businesses and communities can thrive sustainably. Our mission is to unlock new value and help create prosperity for all. For more information, please visit https://www.ntt.com/en.

About Classiq

Classiq, a leading quantum computing software company, provides an enterprise-grade platform that makes it practical to develop scalable, efficient quantum applications. Used by dozens of global enterprises including Rolls Royce, Comcast, The BMW Group, Intesa Sanpaolo, the Classiq platform combines AI agents, Qmod (a high-level quantum programming language) and synthesis-based design automation to accelerate the development of optimized, hardware-ready quantum software. The platform also supports hardware benchmarking, cost and performance optimization, and execution via the cloud across quantum hardware platforms.

Source: Classiq

The post Classiq and NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS Target Enterprise Quantum Applications in Japan appeared first on HPCwire.

Inaugural fellowship program aims to build a robust domestic, AI-ready scientific workforce via dual-competency training, high-impact internships at DOE National Labs, and private sector partnerships.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2026 — Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the Genesis Mission Graduate Fellowship Pilot. Designed as an accelerated, four-year doctoral pathway, this premier program will equip domestic graduate students with critical, dual-competency training in both artificial intelligence (AI) and core scientific and engineering disciplines.

This initiative directly addresses a vital gap in the nation’s intellectual supply chain, targeting the education, retention, and training of domestic talent.

“To secure America’s position at the forefront of global scientific innovation, we must cultivate a workforce that is fluent in both foundational sciences and advanced artificial intelligence,” said Dr. Darío Gil, DOE Under Secretary for Science. “The Genesis Mission Graduate Fellowship will bridge this critical gap by combining rigorous academic training with hands-on, high-impact experiences across our National Laboratories and industry partners.”

Under this program, the DOE will support an inaugural group of pilot projects led by domestic doctoral-granting institutions. This funding will support an initial cohort of approximately 100 Ph.D. Fellows.

The Fellowship program will focus on streamlined, four-year Ph.D. pathways integrated with two high-impact, hands-on research experiences, one at a DOE National Laboratory/User Facility and another with industry. This program ensures that the next generation of American researchers can rapidly transition from intensive academic training to high-impact careers in science and industry without compromising rigor.

Total planned funding is up to $100 million, with $20 million in Fiscal Year 2027 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.

For more information, please visit the DOE Office of Science Funding Opportunities page.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy

The post DOE Announces Genesis Mission Graduate Fellowship appeared first on HPCwire.

Parties vow to challenge law in court, arguing that extra reward for those with 42% of support distorts public representation

• Europe live – latest updates

A controversial overhaul to electoral law that critics say is aimed at boosting Giorgia Meloni’s chances of clinging on to power in elections next year has been given final approval by the Italian parliament.

Meloni, the Italian prime minister, says the new system, which introduces a fully proportional model, including bonus seats for any coalition that wins the most votes, will bring about greater political stability, while opposition parties argue that it mainly serves the interests of those in power.

The mayor proposed the moratorium on campus events in the wake of a civil lawsuit filed last month​ by a former Cornell student who alleged she was drugged and gang-raped in 2024.

Last-minute negotiations staved off a full closure of the office that handles Britain’s relations with Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Recovery marks a dramatic turnaround for Pike, who remains in hospital after a botched execution in Tennessee

Christa Pike is “up and walking” in hospital, her lawyer said, just more than a week after she survived two lethal injections during a botched execution in Tennessee.

The recovery marks a dramatic turnaround after Pike was declared brain dead on Monday, before waking up and beginning to speak on Tuesday. Her ordeal has shocked many in the US and overseas and galvanized critics of the death penalty.

The president was repeatedly interrupted at a rally, and faces a legal challenge over taxpayer-funded adverts. Plus Jonathan the giant tortoise, who may have the secret to longevity

Good morning. Donald Trump suffered a torrid night at a rally in Texas that was rocked by repeated protests. The US president briefly stepped away from the microphone after one protester appeared to approach the stage. At least half a dozen demonstrators interrupted Trump during his remarks in San Antonio, with some led away by police. One was physically assaulted by an older Trump supporter as he tried to leave the arena.

What is the latest development in the saga over taxpayer-funded pro-Trump ads? The Democratic National Committee has sued the Trump administration in federal court, asking a judge in Washington to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself. The ads have cost taxpayers more than $12m so far, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.

Why has Trump been forced to distance himself from two top aides? Trump claimed he did not have “any idea who else they work for” after it was reported that Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of his 2024 presidential campaign, and James Blair, a campaign adviser and White House deputy chief of staff on leave of absence, spent the weekend assisting the pro-Russia government in Republika Srpska in the Balkans. Trump said: “I will terminate them, immediately” if he determined there was a conflict of interest.

What is the latest in the diplomatic dispute between the UK and Israel? Britain is rebranding its East Jerusalem consulate as a UK mission. The move was forced by the Israeli government as punishment for Britain’s decision to ban trade with illegal settlements. There has been some dispute within the UK government over whether taking tough measures at this time against Israel could help Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election prospects this month.

Why Should Delaware Care?
As part of a nationwide legal effort, the Trump administration is suing the University of Delaware to end a long-standing policy that allows undocumented students who meet the school’s residency requirements to pay in-state tuition rates to attend UD. 

The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against the University of Delaware over the school’s policy that allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates. 

The lawsuit, one of dozens of similar suits the federal government has filed against universities throughout the country, seeks to prevent the university from offering its lower, in-state tuition rates to undocumented students. 

The federal Department of Justice has successfully sued to stop the practice in six states – including Republican-led states like Texas and Oklahoma and Democrat-led ones like Illinois –  and has filed pending lawsuits on the matter in an additional 19 states. 

The federal government’s case appears to rest on the fact that in-state tuition is only available to Delaware residents, meaning not all Americans have access to the benefit. 

Since the benefit is not universally accessible to all American students, it should not be available for undocumented students, regardless of where they reside, because it is discriminatory against students in other states, the U.S. Department of Justice argues.

“The University of Delaware maintains a policy […] that makes resident illegal aliens eligible for in-state tuition while denying that same benefit to U.S. citizens from other states,” the suit states. “That constitutes blatant unequal treatment favoring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens.” 

The policy, the government argues, violates a 1996 federal law that forbids undocumented or illegal immigrants from receiving “any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit […] without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident” of a certain state. President Donald Trump has also issued a series of related executive orders regarding undocumented students during his second term in office. 

The school currently allows undocumented students to access in-state tuition if they meet the requirements of the school’s Student Residency Classification policy. The policy already excludes “alien[s] in this country on a student or other temporary visa” and those with “the intention or legal requirement to return to the country of former residence.” This, though, does not technically exclude people without official citizenship documentation. 

For a full-time student, the university lists its in-state tuition as $15,740 for the 2026-2027 academic year. Out-of-state students attending the university full-time will pay $42,470 in tuition this year. 

According to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, there are 6,651 first-generation immigrant students enrolled in higher education throughout Delaware, a figure that includes undocumented students. The organization does not have definitive statistics about the University of Delaware specifically, and the school does not disclose citizenship status of its students per privacy laws. 

The state legislature considered a law in 2012 that would have required Delaware’s public higher education institutions to charge undocumented students in-state tuition, and would have made them eligible for in-state scholarships. The bill was not passed before the General Assembly concluded though.

At the time, there were just 11 undocumented students who would have qualified for in-state tuition between UD and Delaware State University. 

In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, a university spokesperson said the institution was “reviewing [the lawsuit] carefully.” He declined further comment because it is a pending legal matter.

In a press release announcing the lawsuit, U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said that the federal government is seeking to enforce federal law because Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings is not. 

“This Department of Justice’s efforts will not cease until we have challenged every state law or university policy that gives preferential treatment to illegal aliens over our nation’s own citizens,” he said. “Congress long ago made clear that states cannot give reduced tuition to illegal aliens not available to all Americans.”

The University of Delaware was previously impacted by Trump administration cuts to the National Institutes of Health grant programs by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), losing millions in research funding.

Correction: This story originally reported that the 2012 state law on in-state tuition passed the state legislature, but that is incorrect. The General Assembly concluded before it could be approved and was not brought back.

The post Trump administration sues UD over undocumented student tuition policy appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Thinking Allowed, The Artificial Human and Free Thinking among other programmes hit by £500m cuts

BBC Radio 4’s consumer rights show You and Yours is to be axed after more than 50 years, becoming one of the latest victims of the corporation’s £500m cuts plan.

The programme, once described by the former Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer as “one of the most important” on the station, is one of a handful to be cut as the BBC searches for shows that can be more easily adapted as podcasts.

Last week, more than 70 Latino Democratic leaders sent a letter to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the chair of the DGA, urging the group to invest $10 million to help Hinojosa's campaign.

Several hecklers were removed from President Trump's rally in Texas late Wednesday, drawing jeers from the crowd as the president made fun of the protesters.

Hackers gained access to millions of users’ personal data, but not card details or passwords, Asos says

• Business live – live updates

Asos hackers gained access to millions of customers’ recent search histories as well as names, addresses and phone numbers, the online fashion retailer has revealed.

Terms typed in by customers such as “glamorous wide fit” and “Asos petite” were in the data accessed in the cyber attack, which emerged on Tuesday after app users received a notification titled “Asos hacked” with a link to the Telegram messaging service.

California realtor Wanying Zhang is facing federal prosecution for allegedly surveilling the Taiwanese president's son in Washington last year at the direction of Chinese government officials.

• Rays sweep Yankees 3-0 after fan interference call

• Dodgers eliminate Braves to keep three-peat bid alive

• Ramírez leads Guardians past Sox to avoid sweep

Anthony Volpe rounded the bases, touched home plate and then waited out the uncertainty like everyone else.

“Just hoping for the best,” the New York Yankees infielder said. “Crazy.”

A statement by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani that recognized three years since Hamas' "horrific" attack on Israel — and criticized Israel's "ongoing genocide" in Gaza — has drawn fury from some Democrats.

Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters from London visited late mother’s former home shortly before their deaths in May

Three sisters who drowned in the sea in Brighton collectively decided to end their own lives, a coroner has ruled.

The bodies of Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, all from London, were recovered from the sea off Brighton in the early hours of 13 May.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

A musical about a drama group’s pilgrimage and reflections on activist art join an intriguing show about lost languages

In a Dublin theatre festival programme tackling heavy themes of racism, conflict and prejudice, Lourdes! The Musical (★★★★☆) promises something effervescent. Xnthony Ltd, the creators of Oliver Cromwell Is Really Very Sorry, have turned their lightly quizzical gaze to the French pilgrimage town – “a holy Blackpool, a divine Las Vegas” and a site of hope or desperation for five unlikely travelling companions.

Back in his home village in “Countryland”, in 2008, following a diagnosis of HIV that punctures his dreams of Los Angeles, singer-songwriter Matthew (Riain Cash) lends his star power to a parish drama group taking a musical about Saint Bernadette to Lourdes. Interweaving this show-within-a-show and the pilgrimage strands, Xnthony’s lyrics and Matthew Floyd Jones’s score blend pop, club beats and soulful ballads. Directed by Sarah Meadows, the supercharged ensemble joining Cash as, variously, a droll priest (Iestyn Arwel), a terminally ill mother and her transgender daughter (Nichola MacEvilly and Danielle James) and an eager tour manager (Molly Lynch) carry the music’s tonal shifts effortlessly.

Exclusive: Thinktank says Britain’s drive towards global commitments is symptom of ‘outdated foreign policy’

The UK’s military is too focused on global commitments at the expense of domestic defence, meaning the government’s planned increase in defence spending is likely to result in even greater waste, a thinktank report has warned.

According to an analysis by researchers at the Transition Security Project, Britain has the most overseas-oriented military among European nations, with almost a quarter of the defence budget spent on commitments across five continents.

Global bond market sell-off continues and stocks fall amid reports White House has asked to see options for more strikes against Iran

• Business live – latest updates

Oil prices have risen sharply amid fears about escalating tensions in the Middle East and a squeeze on production from the threat of a hurricane off the US coast.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose by 5% to $105.3 a barrel on Thursday, triggering a wave of selling in the global bond and stock markets.

Washington, DC — The FBI is facing a Hatch Act complaint after using an official government social media account to post a video attacking prominent Democrats, including Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, weeks before the midterm elections.

The video, posted Tuesday by the FBI’s rapid-response account, described Democrats as the “DEFUND THE POLICE crowd” and accused them of allowing criminals to “run wild.” It contrasted those claims with footage praising FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche for arrests and drug seizures.

The video included images of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, former Rep. Cori Bush and El-Sayed. El-Sayed was specifically identified on screen as a “Progressive Democrat, Senate Nominee.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, arguing that highlighting a current candidate while attacking his political party amounted to government-supported partisan activity.

The Hatch Act generally prohibits federal employees from using their official authority to interfere with or influence partisan elections.

The complaint follows separate scrutiny of Patel over political appearances. In September, another watchdog asked federal investigators to review whether Patel violated the Hatch Act by appearing alongside Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin.

The FBI has not publicly responded to the latest complaint.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post FBI Video Featuring El-Sayed Sparks Hatch Act Complaint Weeks Before Election appeared first on News Facts Network.

A coalition of Democratic attorneys general is working to make sure voters across the spectrum have their voices heard

Elections have consequences. So do the Trump administration’s exhaustive efforts to undermine them.

Voters will be confident in their choices, but less certain whose voice will count in the face of myriad intrusions by the executive branch. A coalition of Democratic attorneys general are working to make sure voters across the political spectrum have their say.

Nick Brown is the attorney general of the state of Washington

Wren Michelle Roberts was born with heterotaxy, a syndrome so rare a specialist could only find 15 similar cases

South-eastern Louisiana couple Nick and Savannah Roberts planned to bury their infant daughter the weekend after she was born in September with an exceedingly rare combination of birth defects that her doctors feared was unsurvivable.

But an unforeseen congenital trait in Wren Michelle Roberts’ heart, combined with her parents’ dedication to her complex medical care, has allowed her to defy her bleak initial prognosis and meet weeks’ worth of milestones that each are a “miracle in [their] own way”, according to her doctor.

Holiday baking gets hectic fast. These 17 cookie recipes give you time to test chocolate classics, pumpkin-spiced batches, decorated cookies, sandwich cookies, and bakery-style copycats before the rush.The post 17 cookie recipes to test out long before the holiday baking…

Google has released Chrome 155 with support for decoding JPEG XL images, a format that offers 30-50% better compression than JPEG along with lossless compression, JPEG transcoding, HDR, animation, and progressive decoding. From a blog post: We expect that JPEG XL is most helpful for high-fidelity or lossless compression, especially of photographic images or in cases in which fine-grained progressive decoding is preferred. In this post, we share why we brought JPEG XL to Chrome, how we used Rust to ensure memory safety first, the extensive performance work that makes it fast, and what the journey tells us about developer feedback and the web standards ecosystem. [...] With JPEG XL officially landing in Chrome, the web becomes faster, richer, and safer. We encourage developers, content creators, and platform owners to start using .jxl images and animations in their pipelines. Try it out, file bugs, and help us continue building a faster and safer web for everyone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Donald Trump’s latest campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, was rocked by repeated protests as the US president urged Texas voters to back the embattled Senate candidate Ken Paxton. At least half a dozen demonstrators interrupted the US president during his speech, with some led away by police. One was physically assaulted by a Trump supporter as he tried to leave the arena. The Republican campaign to maintain control of the Senate has become increasingly focused on Texas, where the Democrat James Talarico has emerged as a serious threat

Faith Hedgepeth was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when she was found beaten to death in 2012.

Lenora Thaker wins $30,000 prize for ‘a work of state significance’ for The Pearl of Tagai Town, which draws on her family’s history in Cairns-Malay Town

A “stunning” debut novel described as “unambiguously and distinctively Queensland” has won the $30,000 top prize at the Queensland literary awards (QLAs).

Meriam and Wagedagam author Lenora Thaker won the Queensland premier’s award for a work of state significance for her historical novel The Pearl of Tagai Town, which was inspired by her ancestors’ lives in an unmapped shantytown known as Cairns-Malay Town. The town once housed Indigenous Australians, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan residents who had been segregated from the white population; it existed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.

The FDA says its ongoing safety review​ of the nation's main abortion pill​ will continue into next year, a timeline quickly condemned by abortion rights foes hoping to see the drug's use curtailed.

Score the latest model from just $350, though this deal won’t last much longer.

Why should Delaware care?
After years of efforts to create an office to investigate abuse in government, the Delaware Office of Inspector General has launched operations and is fielding tips from whistleblowers. The launch follows several high-profile incidents of embezzlement and questionable spending.

After months of building up an office, Delaware’s new government watchdog charged with investigating fraud, waste, mismanagement and corruption is formally seeking out whistleblowers.  

On a website launched Tuesday, the Delaware Office of Inspector General lists a hotline where users can anonymously submit reports of government malfeasance by phone or email.   

The website also provides a clickable orange button that directs users to an online form to make such reports.

The form notes that the new inspector general’s office is charged with investigating the operations of Delaware’s state government, including its school districts. Also within its investigative purview are claims of retaliation against whistleblowers. 

The office does not investigate the operations of cities, counties, or the Delaware courts.

The website’s rollout follows lawmakers’ passage last year of legislation formally creating the Delaware Office of Inspector General. It was the culmination of nearly two decades of attempts to create such an office in a state where officials have often celebrated their ability to quietly strike deals outside of a noisy public sphere. 

The bill also passed after recent high-profile cases of government waste, including embezzlement at the Department of Labor and questionable spending from the state’s opioid abuse prevention fund.

Last year, Gov. Matt Meyer signed the bill into law, and in April nominated Robert P. Storch, a longtime federal government watchdog, to become Delaware’s first inspector general. 

At the time Meyer called Storch a “seasoned leader” who could ensure that government actions are transparent and accountable. Prior to his nomination, Storch served for years as an inspector general at the federal level, most recently at the Department of Defense. In early 2025, he was among several inspectors general fired by President Donald Trump, who cited “changing priorities” for the dismissals.

Storch subsequently sued the Trump administration alongside seven other inspectors general.

In an interview Wednesday, Storch said he does not intend to return to the federal government even if his ongoing lawsuit is successful. He expressed excitement at the prospect of investigating within a state government setting where the public can see the results more immediately.

Storch said has been hiring staffers in recent months and his office now has filled six of its 10 allotted positions.  He said he launched the website on Tuesday because his team is now big enough to handle reports submitted through the portal.     

“And we’re still staffing, so that’s going to continue to be a work in progress,” he said. 

Storch also said his office had already recieved tips about government waste, even before the launch of the website. 

Asked about his priorities, he cited accountability and transparency. Pressed for details, he said the legislature has given him a “broad mandate” to independently scrutinize operations across government. 

He also said he will try to direct his office’s investigations to those that have the biggest impact as measured by several factors, including dollars recovered, policy improvements recommended, or criminal charges filed.  

The post Delaware government watchdog launches website; seeks out whistleblowers appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

AI is already implicated in violent deaths and nearly started world war three. Those bad things? They only happen to other people

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has some words for you about his company and the future of artificial intelligence.

“One of the differences between us and some of the stricter AI safety people is that we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency [to use it],” Altman told Politico’s new technology podcast and newsletter Decoded.

Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a Guardian US columnist

Trump seems to invent ugly new variations on his press-bashing theme almost every day

When you hate the mainstream press as much as Donald Trump does, nothing gets in the way of the punishment fantasy.

Not court rulings. Not public opinion. Not even the dreadful consequence of less media coverage.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Children are being detained in record numbers, sometimes alone and where lawyers and family cannot find them

The image of immigration officers arresting five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos – in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack – in January sparked outrage across the country.

Celebrities from Ms Rachel to Madonna called for the closure of the Dilley immigration processing center, the Texas immigrant camp that held Ramos and many children like him. Lawyers filed complaints about contaminated food and shoddy healthcare, and hundreds of activists protested outside the detention camp. Within months, the government began sending fewer children to Dilley.

Deployment for nearly a year was marked by reports of supply shortages, and deteriorating morale and mental health among crew

The USS Abraham Lincoln, the US aircraft carrier that has been deployed for nearly a year and has spent months supporting US military operations against Iran, is scheduled to dock in San Diego on Thursday afternoon.

It marks the end of a deployment that has been described as “one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era” and that became marked by a record-stretch at sea, repeated deployment extensions, and reports of supply shortages, and deteriorating morale and mental health among some crew members.

When SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket exploded over the Caribbean last year, the internet lit up with videos from airline passengers, island tourists and locals showing flaming debris shooting across the sky. Even some airline pilots recorded the fiery aftermath as planes scrambled to move out of its path.

Some of those videos of Starship’s seventh test flight — including ones taken from Disney and Royal Caribbean cruise ships and a Club Med resort — went on to play a role in the company’s efforts to count and track pieces of debris after the explosion, a report obtained by ProPublica says.

The report — obtained by ProPublica from the Federal Aviation Administration through a freedom of information request — shows video captured a fireball, then a shower of sparkling debris in the sky moments after the explosion. It includes maps pinpointing where the images were shot, which helped the company understand how debris tumbled to earth after the blast.

“At 1 minute 42 seconds, the debris cloud is observed transiting behind the cruise ship,” says the report, which SpaceX provided the FAA two weeks after the so-called mishap.

Such reports are required by federal rules in the days after a rocket failure and are supposed to describe what happened and where hazardous debris landed. The information is key for the FAA’s efforts to keep busy air traffic corridors safe at a time of rapid growth in the commercial space industry as companies like SpaceX develop and test rockets that they hope will eventually reach the moon and Mars.

During launches, the FAA preventively closes airspace. It has also been forced to clear areas quickly after test flights of massive spacecraft went wrong.

Starship flights 7 and 8 broke apart last year and scattered debris above airline traffic over the Caribbean. Before Flight 9, the FAA moved to greatly increase the size of the airspace it walled off pre-launch.

The agency defined its no-fly zones, which are closed to airplane traffic during a launch, and its so-called debris response areas, which are closed after a mishap, using information from SpaceX and modeling from Space Force, the branch of the military that deals with the nation’s space interests, to predict where debris might fall.

Nearly doubling those pre-launch no-fly zones “only makes sense if the prior margin was judged inadequate rather than just unlucky,” said Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Read More

“We’re Too Close to the Debris”

Earlier this year, the FAA issued a warning that rocket launches could “significantly reduce safety” for airplanes, after ProPublica reported that 21 planes appeared to make sudden turns to exit or avoid an FAA-designated emergency no-fly zone in the minutes after the Flight 7 explosion. Such disruptions are likely to become more frequent. SpaceX is seeking to launch Starship up to 76 times a year from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The FAA provided ProPublica the reports on Starship flights 7, 8 and 9 — all of which involved mishaps — after we requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. The FAA redacted the vast majority of all three reports, citing, among other things, exemptions in the law that protect confidential business information from disclosure. The blackouts were, in part, a reflection of SpaceX’s objections; FAA allowed the company to challenge the release of information it deemed proprietary.

The FAA refused to release information that would show SpaceX’s estimates of where debris fell during the three rocket failures. It’s unclear what the agency or the company knows about how close any airplanes came to falling debris.

“Withholding the underlying debris estimates makes it impossible for anyone outside SpaceX and FAA to check whether that pattern is improving or repeating,” Jah said. “Given a regulator already revised its own safety margins once, the public has a real interest in seeing the data behind both the old margin and the new one.”

The unredacted part of the report did not show whether the debris from the Flight 7 explosion fell where SpaceX and the FAA expected it to. But the references to Disney and Club Med guests’ video suggest SpaceX did not have a full picture of where the debris landed without them. “I would read it as evidence their own tracking did not carry cleanly through the debris cloud phase, so they used the public to fill the gap,” Jah said.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. The company has said that it learns from its mistakes and that each test improves Starship’s reliability. Last December, it said on X that “SpaceX is committed to responsibly using airspace during launches and reentries, prioritizing public safety to protect people on the ground, at sea, and in the air.”

The FAA did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Disney, Royal Caribbean or Club Med.

Ron Madler, a professor of aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the videos could help SpaceX “either confirm their breakup models or possibly to improve them.”

The mishap report for Flight 8, which rained debris near the Bahamas, said before that flight’s explosive failure, SpaceX did not have the proper “test stand” that was capable of testing the rocket’s engines “for a full Starship mission.” The remainder of the page was blacked out, so it was unclear from the report whether the company had found another way to fully test the engines before launch. 

Flights 7 and 8 both involved the same model. Both ended in engine-related failures.

Text in the report around the statement about the test stand was redacted. But Jah said it “means some part of the engine’s actual flight behavior was being verified for the first time in flight rather than on the ground.”

John Crassidis, an aerospace engineering professor at the University at Buffalo, said launching before having a fully capable test stand was likely “a cost-saving decision.” In building rockets, he said, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has used both the old approach of launching and then fixing any issues that arise, and the newer approach of running simulations and ground tests first to head off problems.

“Doing too much of the old school can lead to too many mishaps and cost overruns,” he said. “Doing too much of the new school leads to long times to get things done and a reduction in flexibility.”

The post Club Med, a Disney Cruise and an Exploding Starship: SpaceX Used Bystander Videos to Track Falling Debris appeared first on ProPublica.

Stephen Miller spoke at a training session at FBI headquarters just days before prosecutors criminally charged a man with making disturbing calls and texts to his wife, sources told CBS News.

Weekend Spotlight is a round-up of the five best events to check out in Delaware over the coming weekend, curated by Arts + Culture Editor Cannon Taylor. This edition covers Oct. 9-11, 2026. What should be on our radar for future editions? Let us know!

Sweet Revenge

Lantern tour will divulge Dover’s dark past

Friday, Oct. 9. John Bell House. 43 The Green, Dover. 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $15.

It seems unlikely one could commit a double murder in Dover from nearly 3,000 miles away, but that’s exactly what Cordelia Botkin did. In 1898, she mailed arsenic-laced candies from San Francisco to the wife and sister-in-law of a man she had an affair with. 

Botkin’s story is one of many you may hear at First State Heritage Park during its spooky Dark Dover Lantern Tour, which will be riddled with period-accurate costumes and plenty of jumpscares.

If you can’t make it this weekend, don’t fret — the tours continue every Friday through Oct. 30.

Mystery Meat

Apple-Scrapple Festival returns to Bridgeville

Friday, Oct. 9 and Saturday, Oct. 10. 101 North Main St., Bridgeville. Friday 4-10 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Free. 

Come celebrate the Mid-Atlantic’s gift to American cuisine, scrapple, in Bridgeville this weekend. This mystery meat made from pig offal has amassed a cult following locally in no small part thanks to the town’s annual Apple-Scrapple Festival.

This year features festivities like carnival rides, a Little Miss Apple-Scrapple pageant and a scrapple-slinging competition (as if those piggies hadn’t gone through enough already). It’ll also commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bridgeville’s RAPA Scrapple, the biggest scrapple producer in the world.

Have some scrapple with maple syrup or between two slices of bread, and you’ll surely understand what the hype is all about.

Nothing ‘Plein’ About It

Artists take to the streets to paint downtown Dover

Friday, Oct. 9 and Saturday, Oct. 10. Biggs Museum of American Art. 406 Federal St, Dover. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Artist Registration: $20 Friday, $40 Saturday. Workshops: $20. 

En plein air — the French tradition of painting outdoors — isn’t for the faint of heart. Mosquitos, rain or gusts of wind can easily sabotage an painter’s masterpiece. 

This week, a group of brave artists will set up their easels across downtown Dover to paint whatever muse they can find in their surroundings, whether it’s a historic building or a natural landscape.

The week culminates in an awards ceremony on Saturday, 2-4 p.m. There will also be artist workshops at the Biggs Museum on Friday. Work from this and past years’ competitions will be on display at the Biggs Museum through Nov. 8.

Story Sample Platter

Wilmington film festival shows work from across the world 

Friday, Oct. 9 through Sunday, Oct. 11. Theatre N (221 W 10th St.) and The Screening Room (1313 N Market St.). Times vary. Tickets: $10-25 per screening, $150 for all-access pass.

From a short comedy about data centers (“Data Hum”) to a modern day “Breakfast Club” set in inner city Philadelphia (“The Good Lyfe”), this year’s Wilmington International Film Festival will be packed with a sample platter of stories to experience. 

Now in its second year, the film festival will feature 39 films from 12 countries, as well as an anime day, an Italian dinner/movie combo (“Primavera”) and a leadership summit about Delaware’s creative economy. 

If you want to maximize the number of films you see, be sure to attend the Film Brothers Festival of Shorts on Saturday.

Calling All the Monsters

Halloween celebration in Bellefonte to bring witches, spooky pets

Saturday, Oct. 10. 800-900 Block of Brandywine Boulevard, Wilmington. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free. 

High-energy hags are bringing the party to The Shoppes of Bellefonte for its annual Boo-Tique and Monster Market. The Wilmington Witches (yes, that is a real organization) will hold their “Witches Walk” at noon. If the videos from past years are to be believed, their parade quickly turns into a synchronized dance party. 

Following the Witches Walk will be a costume contest for humans and a parade for paranormal pets. 

The day will also feature vendors, face painting, live music and food trucks, plus a “Theatre of the Macabre” art exhibit to check out inside Bellefonte Arts.

The post Weekend Spotlight: Witches, scrapple, plein air and more appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Explore the people, culture and history of Hispanic and Latino communities through these trivia questions.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Police officers are government-employed public servants tasked with making sure communities are kept safe. Delaware allocates about 10-15% of its operating budget to public safety, funded in part by individual income taxes. 

A traffic stop for a flat tire near Bear last month ended with police pepper-spraying and punching a man in the face, leading to injuries that sent him to the emergency room.

During the incident, police also pointed a taser at a woman filming the encounter, according to the video footage shared with Spotlight Delaware. 

Now Joel Morales-Vega, 29, faces a slate of criminal charges from the Sept. 24 traffic stop, including resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. The Puerto Rican man has filed an official misconduct report against the New Castle County Police Department for what he says was racial profiling.

While details remain disputed, video taken by Morales-Vega’s partner, Yessica Gonzales, begins with two police officers pinning him to the ground. The video also shows the man with a bloodied face.

What exactly spurred it all remains unclear.

New Castle County Police Department representatives said Gonzales’ video only tells a portion of the story, asserting that police officer-worn body camera footage provides more context. 

A Freedom of Information Act request for that footage was denied, with officials citing an open records exemption for criminal investigations. 

Officials also pointed to one of the arresting officer’s affidavit of probable cause – a document that outlines the reason for an arrest – for additional context. 

The affidavit states that the arresting officer first saw Morales Vega’s SUV as it approached an intersection at Brookmont Drive, before stopping just beyond the white stop line. The officer also asserts that Morales-Vega then “continuously made eye contact” with him as he proceeded through the intersection. 

The officer then pursued the SUV and pulled Morales-Vega over. According to the affidavit, the traffic stop was due to the flat tire and to objects hanging from the SUV’s rearview mirror. 

Such infractions would normally result in traffic citations, but subsequent questions about Morales-Vega’s past led the officer to demand the driver step out of the vehicle.

What happened?

Prior to the traffic stop, Morales-Vega said that his car had a flat tire. He drove to a Wawa outside his Bear neighborhood to temporarily fill the tire with air. He then drove back to pick up a tire jack from his neighbor to replace the flat, he said.

Before reaching his neighbor’s home, Morales-Vega said New Castle County police officers pulled him over. 

Morales-Vega said he was not nervous. There is no active warrant on his name. And he figured an officer might help him replace the tire, since he was a couple houses down from his neighbor’s.

But the stop escalated after the officer asked Morales-Vega to step out of the car without a reason, according to his account.

When he refused, the officer grabbed him by the arm and punched him, he claimed. Out of fear, Morales-Vega honked his SUV’s horn to alert neighbors to the altercation.

Gonzales’ video shows how two officers then had Morales-Vega restrained on the ground, with one kneeling on his lower back. 

“Look what they did to my face,” a bloodied-faced Morales-Vega says in Spanish in the video. 

As Gonzales zoomed in on the incident with her camera, officers shouted “back up.” Gonzales replied “OK,” as an officer then pointed a taser at her, according to the video. 

“Joel, relax, please,” she says in Spanish as Morales-Vega can then be seen in the video trying to reach for the officer’s taser.

The officer holsters the taser and pepper-sprays Morales-Vega in the face. As Morales-Vega rubs his eyes into his elbow and the officer punches him in the face. 

“Give me your f–king hand,” the officer yelled. 

“I’m not resisting,” he replies.

Gonzales is heard asking Morales-Vega what he did to get arrested. Morales-Vega replied with one eye swollen that he did not know. He just knows he had a flat tire, he said. 

New Castle County police have not made a statement regarding the video. 

Police claim ‘nervous behavior’ instigated stop

Spotlight Delaware obtained the charging document written by New Castle County Police Officer Anthony Fiorentino, who graduated from the county police academy last year.

The charges against Morales-Vega include two counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly honking his horn during the traffic stop to alert neighbors and punching walls in the hospital, where he was taken after his arrest. He also faces charges for resisting arrest, driving an unsafe vehicle and another for obstructing his rearview mirror, due to a pair of mini Puerto Rican boxing gloves that hang inside his SUV.

The police account begins by describing how Fiorentino was patrolling the area. Fiorentino wrote that Morales-Vega and him made eye contact as he drove through an intersection. 

“Through training and experience this is a sign of nervous behavior exhibited from drivers,” Fiorentino states in the document.

At this point, the officer pursued Morales-Vega after noticing the flat tire at the entrance of the neighborhood. 

After pulling him over, Morales-Vega provided his vehicle registration, proof of insurance and driver’s license. The officer also asked Morales-Vega if he has a criminal record, which he allegedly denied. On his computer screen, Fiorentino noted that Morales-Vega had a previous second-degree assault charge.

Public criminal records show Morales-Vega had a second-degree assault charge in 2019. He violated probation in 2024 and 2025. But earlier this year in May, Morales-Vega was discharged for what he says was good behavior.

In his affidavit, Fiorentino noted that this conviction would prohibit Morales-Vega from owning a firearm, but he does not elaborate as to why he would have been concerned about that.

This is when the officer asks Morales-Vega to step out of the vehicle. He also asks for backup units, to which multiple cop cars arrive at the scene. 

In the document, Fiorentino also appears to contradict the events depicted in the video. He says he punched Morales-Vega before using pepper spray. The video shows Morales-Vega rubbing his eyes into his right arm when an officer punches him in the face.

The statement also does not state that one officer pointed a taser at Gonzales. 

A search of Morales-Vega’s vehicle, recorded by Gonzlaes, is also left out – Morales-Vega was not charged with anything related to the vehicle search. Delaware does not require a warrant to search a vehicle of a motorist who has been arrested.

New Castle County Police spokespeople said those items could likely be found in a more detailed police report that is not available to the public.

Reporting police misconduct

Morales-Vega has filed a police misconduct report, outlining the incident he wishes to be investigated. 

The New Castle County Police’s Professional Standards Unit is in charge of reviewing the submitted complaints to identify any legitimate misconduct after questioning all parties involved. 

Investigators could either sustain the complaint; find there is not sufficient evidence to sustain it; find that the police actions were lawfully justified; or find proof the incident did not occur as the complaint states. 

If there is enough evidence to prove misconduct, disciplinary actions include training, reprimand, suspension, termination, or criminal prosecution. 

But the issue with the internally-conducted investigation in Delaware is that there is no independent way outside of the police department to review how the complaint is investigated, according to Javonne Rich, the policy and advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware.

This makes investigation in Delaware “secretive” since not all police records are made public, such as the body cam footage denied to Spotlight Delaware. 

The law which governs police accountability in Delaware is the Police Officers’ Due Process, Accountability, and Transparency, or PODPAT. As of 2024, each law enforcement agency had to make public the number of police complaints and investigations, as well as their results.

According to the NCCPD’s 2025 report, 33 citizens filed police complaints – with only one concerning an officer’s use of force. The officer was exonerated in the case.

Ivan Sun, a University of Delaware professor whose research includes law enforcement policies, said there’s two sides of the coin when it comes to making internal police records public. 

On one hand, police departments may protect evidence if a sensitive criminal case is moving through the justice process. On the other hand, releasing records such as body cam footage can correct publicly circulated rumors or misinformation about an incident. 

Lingering questions lead to concerns 

Morales-Vega returned home later that night with a concussion, a black-eye, scrapes around his face and assault from the punches, according to his medical records from ChristianaCare. 

His partner, Gonzales, said Morales-Vega had an asthma attack from the lingering pepper spray and an anxiety attack from the incident when he came back home. 

The man and the rest of his family is still trying to figure out what led to his arrest since he has not had required check-ins with parole and probation for months since leaving incarceration. He has a preliminary hearing on Oct. 14.

Whether the body camera footage from the incident is publicly released is, in part, up to Delaware’s Department of Justice.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings released body camera footage from the fatal shooting of Wilmington teen Kadir Skinner earlier this year. She has also publicly called for reforms on when body camera footage should be released to the public and will be backing a bill in next year’s General Assembly pushing for that measure.

A DOJ spokesperson told Spotlight Delaware the Morales-Vega case has not reached their office for review yet.

The post How a traffic stop for a flat tire ended with a Bear driver beaten, arrested appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Ohio former senator attacks Republican rival as the ‘face of datacenters’ as he wraps AI concerns into pro-worker message

• Send us your questions on how the US economy is shaping the midterm elections

Sherrod Brown, the Democratic former senator from Ohio hoping to return to office in November’s midterm elections, has spent the past year traveling across his home state explaining to voters about all the ways the “system is rigged” against them. Recently, he’s been telling people about a trip he took across the north-west Ohio countryside.

“You’re driving on what looks like really good farmland, driving past fields, driving past barns, driving past milking parlors, and you see, all of a sudden, you see these huge cranes and you see these trucks coming,” Brown told a crowd of dozens at a coffee shop in the city of Lima earlier this month.

Anyone can now upload a suspicious image to Google’s online tool, but it’s not a foolproof way to check for authenticity.

Béjar’s daughter was 14 when she told him Instagram was failing to keep her safe. So when he became part of Meta’s ‘wellbeing team’, he knew he had to speak out – and his testimony cost it billions

The Social Reckoning hits cinemas this Friday, but the real world has already been working on a sequel – or rather, a threequel. Directed by Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a follow-up to The Social Network, detailing the further misadventures of Mark Zuckerberg and his social media empire, and in particular Frances Haugen, the employee who in 2021 leaked internal documents that appeared to show Facebook was aware of the harms its products had inflicted.

It’s no spoiler to reveal the film climaxes with Haugen’s testimony to the US Senate, on 5 October 2021. That very same day, Arturo Béjar, a consultant on the wellbeing team of Instagram (which is also owned by Facebook), hit send on a long-gestating email to Zuckerberg and other senior Facebook executives on a similar theme. “I wanted to bring to your attention what I believe is a critical gap in how we as a company approach harm, and how the people we serve experience it,” Béjar began, before laying out some shocking statistics from his team’s survey. For example: 24.4% of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram said they had received unwanted advances, and 21.8% said they had been the target of bullying on the platform in the past seven days. Furthermore, 51% of Instagram users said they had had a bad or harmful experience in the past seven days. Only 1% of them reported it, and of those, 2% had the content taken down – so just 0.02%. This was a far greater degree of harm than the company’s existing measurements suggested. Zuckerberg never replied.

Whistleblower says recording and analysis of all probate calls in Co-op Legal Services is oppressive

The Co-op has become the latest employer to place workers under AI surveillance with an automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers.

In a system described as “oppressive and dystopian” by a whistleblower, Co-op Legal Services is using AI models to record, analyse and award a percentage score for interactions between agents and customers seeking advice about probate, wills and estates.

Teams have always symbolized division within America. And the Fever have come to prominence during a time of dark political intensity

It’s over for now, but no professional sports team spent more time receiving and drawing attention to itself than did the Indiana Fever this season. The Fever has broken, the team eliminated by the defending champion Las Vegas Aces for the second straight season, but Indiana succeeded in being the WNBA’s canary in the coal mine, embodying both the obvious and unintended consequences of rapid growth, while also allowing themselves to be a season-long distraction: part-time professional basketball team, part-time right-wing culture war centerpiece. Less than a decade ago, Atlanta and Minneapolis were praised for their unified political stances. Today, Trumpism has replaced social justice as the defining characteristic of the league – and as the curtain closed on the 2026 WNBA regular season, Indiana stood at its epicenter.

The Fever were the most polarizing team in professional sports, known less for their basketball than their culpability in pulling the league from its old cultural identity as a Black/queer league into its current climate of political divisiveness – a calculated and dangerous path to popularity. This season, there was the basketball of the WNBA, and then there was the Indiana Fever, the league’s Maga-friendly option.

This article originally appeared on Howard Bryant’s Substack. You can subscribe here.

The nation’s largest professional group of pediatricians has renewed its call for a nationwide ban on the sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk and other raw dairy products, according to a policy statement it published earlier this week. 

The revised guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics warns of the serious health risks from consuming raw dairy products, particularly for children, as well as pregnant and immunocompromised people.

“More and more people are discussing this as a potentially healthful thing to do, when in fact it’s a highly risky thing to do,” said the academy’s president, Dr. Andrew Racine. “So our responsibility, as the leading voice of pediatric healthcare in the United States that’s dedicated to the health and well-being of children, is to make sure that the accurate, evidence-based information is out there.”

The revised statement follows ProPublica reporting that dived deep into the causes and severe consequences of America’s current fascination with raw milk, which has not been heated to kill off harmful bacteria. Once limited to the fringes of health-food culture, unpasteurized milk has morphed into a widespread movement rooted in wellness trends and institutional distrust.  Today, more than 10 million Americans drink it. 

Most scientists and health experts agree that raw milk has no significant, proven nutritional benefits over its pasteurized counterpart and that it cannot treat or cure any disease. It also subjects its consumers to over 100 times the risk of foodborne illness, which can be especially dangerous for young children. Before milk pasteurization was widely adopted a century ago, thousands of children died each year from diseases linked to contaminated dairy. 

As it has grown in popularity in recent years, raw dairy products have contributed to numerous outbreaks of pathogenic diseases, such as salmonella and E. coli. Over the past two years, nine states have experienced outbreaks that regulators have linked to raw dairy. Just last month, federal regulators linked an E. coli outbreak to unpasteurized cheese. Thirteen people fell ill, more than half of whom were young children.

As illnesses have surged, high-level lawmakers and government officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have championed the industry instead of curbing it. In his federal role, Kennedy said he was “advocating” for raw milk and celebrated the release of a report to Make America Healthy Again with a toast of raw-milk shooters in the White House. The health department did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the new professional guidance or the pediatric group’s call for a ban on raw milk sales.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the Congressional Food Safety Caucus, told ProPublica that she is taking the guidance of the academy “very seriously.”

“They see firsthand what these illnesses can do to children,” she said in an emailed statement. “Right now, Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr. cannot even bring himself to tell parents not to give it to their kids.”

DeLauro said she was “supportive of any policy that reduces risk of exposure to harmful foods,” including putting warning labels on raw-milk products and maintaining adequate funding for outbreak prevention and tracking. 

Federal law restricts the sale of raw milk across state lines, but states can decide how it can be sold within their boundaries. In recent years, proponents have fought to increase access to raw milk within states, often opposing efforts to limit its sales. People can legally purchase raw milk in all but a handful of states, either directly from a store or from a farmer, or even as “pet food.”

Last week, ProPublica detailed the case of two girls severely sickened last year after consuming raw goat milk from an unregulated farm in southern California. The state, which is teeming with black-market dairies, did little to punish the farmer who sold the families the milk. It allowed her to provide her own sample for testing, weeks after the outbreak began, and did not independently sample her grounds for traces of the pathogen, as state investigators have done in other cases. (The farmer told ProPublica that her milk, which tested negative for pathogens, did not cause the outbreak and claimed the families had knowingly bought milk that was not for human consumption, which they deny.) 

The mother of one of the girls, a toddler who nearly died, had read about the purported benefits of unpasteurized milk on a site for the Raw Milk Institute, a nonprofit founded by Mark McAfee, one of the nation’s most prolific sellers. In a profile of the California farmer, ProPublica chronicled how social media influencers have amplified his claims and helped him build what is now a $30 million-a-year business even as regulators have linked it to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that have sickened hundreds. (McAfee previously defended the claims made on the institute’s website and maintained to ProPublica that raw milk still has therapeutic benefits.) 

Members of the academy said they read and circulated ProPublica’s reporting as they drafted their statement. 

“This product is being marketed to families as being beneficial for their kids,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease doctor in New York City and one of the lead authors of the academy’s revised statement. “They don’t see the risks, and unwittingly they end up making a decision that is much more dangerous.”

The academy first published a policy statement on raw milk in 2014, endorsing a nationwide ban on its sale and encouraging its members to reach out to state representatives to advocate for such a restriction. The statement published this week reaffirms this appeal with recent epidemiological evidence. In addition, it cites a growing concern of highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has been shown to contaminate unpasteurized milk.

Racine, the academy’s president, told ProPublica that the policy was also updated on account of “the rise in the discussion about the alleged benefits of raw milk and the fact that more people are experimenting with using it.” 

“Prevention really is the best single way to keep children healthy and safe, and this is a preventive move,” he said. “The more that we can disseminate this information to a greater number of people, the healthier we’re going to be able to keep the children of this country.”

Read More

He Profits Off Raw Milk That’s Making People Sick. The Government Isn’t Stopping Him.

A Girl Nearly Died After Drinking Raw Milk. The State Did Little to Punish the Unlicensed Farmer Who Sold It.

The post American Academy of Pediatrics Renews Call for Ban on Raw Milk appeared first on ProPublica.

Amid a decline in youth mental health, momentum is building for a federal crackdown on social media companies over protections for kids.

For more than 70 days, dozens of activists and an ancient cottonwood tree on the Arizona–Mexico border have successfully disrupted the construction of President Donald Trump’s ruinous $50 billion border wall. 

Since July, one protester at a time has occupied the cottonwood, or the grandmother tree, as it is locally known. After three other cottonwoods in the area were torn down by government contractors, the remaining grandmother on the U.S. side of the border became the site of a growing protest camp in the remote town of Lochiel, Arizona, and neighboring Sonora, Mexico, where organizers gathered for more than a year to oppose the border wall’s construction.

On Monday, heavily armed federal agents moved in with force. Activists on the ground estimate that 150 Border Patrol officers — many of whom masked their faces — raided the encampment during the protesters’ morning prayer ceremony. At least 10 demonstrators were arrested, and the 200-year-old cottonwood was bulldozed. 

Related

A New Tree-Sit Movement to Block Trump’s Border Wall

As Arizona-based journalist John Washington reported, “agents began cutting the tree while a person was still sitting in its branches. Agents removed that person with a cherry picker and then felled the tree. Screams could be heard as ‘grandmother’ fell around 8:30 a.m.”

In the 48 hours since the early morning raid, land defenders have refused to leave and remain in an ongoing standoff with federal agents. Numerous participants told The Intercept that around 50 people are holding the line against further construction, with dozens more en route following urgent calls to support the encampment and defend the imperiled borderland ecology.

On Tuesday, another tree sitter climbed the last remaining cottonwood standing in the path of the border wall construction, this one on the Mexico side. The tree was briefly occupied by demonstrators in mid-August and, according to a press release from the land defenders, “is once again halting construction.”

The protesters’ aim to stop the construction of two parallel, 30-foot-high border walls ripping through the remote San Rafael Valley. Miles of the double wall structure have already been built in the area. The region is sparsely populated and hardly ever used as a border-crossing site by humans but is renowned as a unique wildlife migration corridor. The cottonwood felled on Monday was the last of four ancient grandmother trees on the Arizona side of the border, which stood in the path of planned wall construction.

Until this week, federal forces had left the encampment and tree sit in relative peace, largely, activists said, because the camp is located on private land. That fact had not changed on Monday. 

“Border Patrol has been coming onto private property since yesterday morning. No warrants are shown,” Rachel, a land defender who withheld her last night out of concern for being targeted by law enforcement, said on a call with reporters on Tuesday. “There’s no legal ground for them to come onto private property. And the feeling is that they’re pushing through the construction process as quickly as possible, and they’ll deal with the consequences of the law later. They just want to push the wall through, regardless of the harm they have to cause to us and to the land in the process.”

According to Rachel and other activists on the ground who spoke to The Intercept, construction workers have moved quickly since the raid, digging a deep trench that threatens the roots of the newly occupied cottonwood on the Mexico side. 

A statement on Monday from Belicia Lynch, a member of the De La Ossa family who owns one of the tracts of private property along the border, confirmed the protesters were welcome on her property. “I just want to thank you guys for being out there to not only protect the grandmother tree, but the land itself that many animals and bugs inhabit,” Lynch told the land defenders in the statement. 

Related

Border Patrol Raided Arizona Medical Aid Site With No Warrant, Showing Growing “Impunity”

Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security have not yet responded to questions from The Intercept.

The federal attacks on the Lochiel encampment came on the heels of a legal victory for anti-border activists in Big Bend, Texas. On Friday, a U.S. district judge granted an injunction to stop all border wall construction in the Big Bend area, including in national and state parks, while the court hears a lawsuit brought by local environmental and community groups. In the order, the judge wrote that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on at least one of their claims’ merits. 

But with practically unlimited funding for his border regime, Trump’s administration can continue fueling money into his violent and destructive border wall. What activists in Lochiel, Sonora, Big Bend, and beyond make clear, however, is that the government’s victory cannot be assumed. Disruptions and interventions are not just possible but also an absolute necessity, and pressure can be applied in an array of directions.

As one Arizona-based Mexican American tree sit participant told The Intercept in August, “The border is everywhere, which means that there are subcontractors and there are power players maybe in your backyard, maybe in your city, maybe an hour drive from where you’re living.”

Rachel, the land defender, made the stakes of the fight clear.

“We have to stop this wall here because the trajectory they’re going on, there is no safety in the U.S. for anyone,” she said on Monday. The call was cut short as news spread through the encampment that federal agents would attempt to remove the tree sitter on the Mexico side. At the time of writing, the grandmother tree in Sonora remains occupied; the fight against Trump’s border wall, and all it represents, has not been lost. 

In a social media post on Wednesday, encampment participants announced a “call to presence” to celebrate the life of the felled cottonwood and continue the anti-border struggle. “If you have been waiting to come to Lochiel, this is the time,” they said. “Let your heavy heart lead you to action!”

The post Armed Border Agents Arrest Protesters, Bulldoze 200-Year-Old Tree to Build Border Wall appeared first on The Intercept.

Conservatives have trumpeted the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers say the reasons for the decline are unclear.

Scientists are starting to uncover the links between being a night owl and some neuropsychiatric conditions.

Companies and investors are eager to hire those with recent access to the White House and knowledge of the administration’s Venezuela policy or contacts.

Conditions in Gaza remain bleak, and reconstruction blocked, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fights for reelection three years after the Oct. 7 attack.

Refugee gig workers for tech companies don’t know how much they’ll be paid – if AI hasn’t already taken their jobs

In a portable building in Kakuma, a refugee camp near Kenya’s northern border with South Sudan, Grace used ChatGPT to research translations of Christian hymns in languages she doesn’t speak. She didn’t know the client, the purpose of her work or whether she would be paid, but as a refugee unable to legally work in Kenya, she needed any opportunity she could get.

Grace, who requested anonymity due to a nondisclosure agreement, prompted ChatGPT to translate the hymn’s English text into the assigned east Asian language. She then used the translation to search for existing versions and find information about its translator, author and Christian denomination. She fed those details to AOP Connect, a crowdsourced research platform owned by British AI enterprise software company RWS.

Finance minister, Roland Lescure, welcomes Burnham’s pledge to explore closer ties with bloc

• Europe live – latest updates

The French finance minister has invited the UK to “come all the way back” to the European Union after Andy Burnham raised the prospect of a new referendum to reverse Brexit.

Roland Lescure was speaking after the prime minister used his Labour conference speech to pledge that the government would explore closer ties with the bloc at a summit later this year.

In ad to be shown before The Social Reckoning, Ian Russell will say ‘too little has changed’ since death of Molly, 14

Molly Russell’s father will tell UK cinemagoers that “Instagram helped kill my daughter” in an advert to be shown before screenings of a new film about Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire.

In the 30-second ad before The Social Reckoning, released on Friday, Ian Russell says “too little has changed” since the death of his 14-year-old daughter, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content on Instagram.

America should spy on foreign companies to help its own.

A failing peace process leads to only one outcome.

OpenAI says an unreleased internal model has produced 372 results that either resolve or make substantial progress on open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science. The company says almost all were generated by a single AI agent from a single prompt. "This would be a striking difference from OpenAI's earlier blockbuster solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which was produced through the collective efforts of a 10,000-strong agentic swarm that cost millions of dollars in computing power," reports Scientific American. From the report: OpenAI revealed the results in a GitHub repository at 6 P.M. EDT. The deluge will take mathematicians months to parse through and understand -- including to determine whether the proofs contain novel and important ideas or are mostly mash-ups of existing techniques. But many of the results have already been verified in Lean -- a programming language that validates a proof's logic -- and are therefore all but certain to be correct. Among the results claimed are a solution to the four-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, improvements on some of the world's most important computer algorithms and actual progress toward math's scariest problem, the Riemann hypothesis.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With support from ALCF computing resources and AI services, the SYNAPS-I team demonstrated a new agentic AI platform that uses natural-language instructions to automate complex experimental workflows as part of the DOE Genesis Mission.

Oct. 7, 2026 — Science has increasingly used artificial intelligence (AI) as a kind of microscope — sorting data, analyzing images and revealing hidden patterns.

Tao Zhou, scientist with the CNM, loads a sample into the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe beamline at the APS in preparation for the SYNAPS-I demonstration. Image credit: Jason Creps, Argonne National Laboratory.

Now a new shift is underway: AI that not only breaks down data but also helps scientists decide what to do next through simple, natural language requests.

With this emerging technology — agentic AI — scientists can ask questions and direct actions in everyday language. The system then helps perform or determine next steps, turning complex workflows into straightforward, chat-powered conversational exchanges.

At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers recently demonstrated this agentic AI capability as part of the Synergistic Neutron and Photon Science – Intelligence (SYNAPS-I) project, which integrates data from neutron, X-ray and microscopy experiments across national labs into a single effort. SYNAPS-I is part of DOE’s Genesis Mission, a national initiative to reinvent American science and innovation through AI and is led by the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

The first phase of SYNAPS-I showed that scientists could leverage fine-tuned foundational computing models to rapidly interpret the massive imaging datasets produced by modern X-ray experiments. This phase was successfully tested at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and several other DOE facilities earlier this year.

The APS, ALCF and CNM are DOE Office of Science user facilities.

The new SYNAPS-I phase adds an agentic AI layer that shifts the emphasis from data processing to experiment control.

“Instead of writing code or entering technical commands, researchers can talk to the AI, which then handles data collection, processing and analysis automatically,” said Ming Du, an Argonne computational scientist and a member of the SYNAPS-I team. ​“By automating these tasks, researchers have more time to focus on the science and on operating the beamline itself.”

The SYNAPS-I project is a DOE national lab collaborative effort including Argonne, LBNL, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

The platform uses the advanced computing resources of ALCF, the ORNL’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at LBNL, all of which are DOE Office of Science user facilities. The Argonne demonstrations took place at an X-ray beamline jointly operated by the APS and CNM.

Argonne Advances SYNAPS-I Project with Agentic AI

As ultrabright X-ray beams make their way through a material, they produce millions of images in a few hours, creating huge amounts of data very quickly. In the first phase of SYNAPS-I, scientists built a real-time AI engine capable of reconstructing ptychographic images of microelectronics at the pace the data is generated. This compresses hours or days of analysis into seconds.

Ptychography is an X-ray technique that collects many overlapping diffraction patterns, the distinctive ways X-rays scatter after interacting with a material. The technique uses computation to rebuild sharp, high‑resolution images.

“Real-time reconstruction changes the way experiments are performed, enabling researchers to adjust measurements on the fly instead of discovering key features they missed after the experiment has ended,” said Aileen Luo, an Argonne assistant computational scientist and lead developer of the SYNAPS-I model for ptychography.

In the second phase of SYNAPS-I, agentic AI enhances this process in two major ways.

First, a natural-language interface lets scientists direct beamlines by simply describing what they want — such as ​“measure this region” or ​“map this area at high resolution” — instead of navigating complex control panels. Using those instructions, agentic AI spots important features and makes recommendations to the scientist on areas to investigate in more detail.

Second, the system automates tasks normally run by humans. One of the hardest is region-of‑interest searches — finding a small feature in a potentially large sample. Because features are highly variable across samples, this task is nearly impossible to express in code.

“Agentic AI solves this by interpreting the images reconstructed in real time by PtychoFM, our ptychographic model, leveraging the vision capability of a multimodal large language model,” Du said. ​“It works step by step: collecting the image, examining the image, deciding where to move next, refining the search and ultimately finding the target region within an image.”

AI operates autonomously without human supervision for low-risk actions and asks for human approval or guidance only for operations with higher risk or uncertainty.

Once agentic AI identifies the right spot, the system automatically switches to a high-resolution scan to capture the details scientists need, said Tao Zhou, scientist with the CNM and member of the SYNAPS-I team.

Additionally, the team connected the agent to a powerful image-segmentation foundation model, Meta’s Segment Anything Model 3 (SAM3). This allows the agent to isolate and label features within each image, adding another layer of understanding to the experiment. The ALCF worked with the SYNAPS-I team to integrate SAM3 into the ALCF Inference Service, making the segmentation model available to teams across the DOE complex. The service is a cloud‑like AI platform running on Argonne’s supercomputing infrastructure.

Agentic AI in Action

The SYNAPS-I team recently tested its agentic AI platform on a microelectronics sample at the 26-ID hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline shared by the CNM and APS.

Although microelectronics was chosen for the demonstration, the platform’s autonomous scanning, analysis and segmentation capabilities apply to many materials including catalysts, metals and quantum devices.

“Microelectronics was simply the example used to showcase the technology. The real achievement is developing a next‑generation, AI‑enhanced microscope that can benefit many scientific fields,” said Mathew Cherukara, an Argonne computational scientist and leader of the Computing and AI group and the Argonne SYNAPS-I team.

Using natural language, the team instructed the AI agent to locate the interface between two regions in an integrated circuit device. AI started from a point deep inside the device. The agent scanned, analyzed, segmented and navigated through images until it found the correct region of interest.

This successful demonstration showed that the new agentic AI layer works seamlessly with the PtychoFM AI model to enable truly self‑directed experimental control.

“By combining fast ptychographic reconstruction, agentic AI control and SAM3-powered image segmentation, the demonstration showed that SYNAPS-I can analyze semiconductor devices with a level of speed and consistency that traditional workflows cannot match,” Zhou said.

Together, these capabilities establish a general framework for accelerating materials research across many domains.

A Leap Toward Self-Driving Science

The SYNAPS-I team’s demonstration marks a major step toward truly autonomous AI-driven laboratories, where experiments can run, adapt and interpret results with minimal human intervention.

This breakthrough advances the broader Genesis Mission to develop self-driving laboratory systems, Cherukara said.

“Combined, these SYNAPS-I advances lay the groundwork for self-driving microscopes, closed-loop experimentation and automated defect-detection tools that promise to accelerate discovery across fields ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to advanced materials and national user facilities,” he said.

SYNAPS-I is a public-private partnership uniting Argonne with LBNL, BNL, ORNL, SLAC, university researchers and AI leaders with key industry innovators.

Work performed at the CNM and APS was supported by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Source: Beth Burmahl, ALCF

The post Genesis Mission: SYNAPS-I Brings Agentic AI to Experimental Workflows appeared first on HPCwire.

More than half of US students surveyed said the problem damaged their ability to do academic work, study finds

Procrastination is the biggest problem that can harm students’ academic performance at university, according to a study of more than 65,000 young people who placed it above issues such as ADHD, anxiety or financial worries.

The study found that nearly half of the students surveyed named procrastination as the thing damaging their ability to do academic work, more than twice the number who named depression, while the same proportion said procrastination caused them significant distress above any other problems including family pressures or bullying.

In today’s newsletter: A youth-led movement is protesting crumbling school buildings and teacher shortages while turning adult focus onto wider educational inequalities

Good morning. In my experience, at any protest, the most memorable and encapsulating slogans are always the ones written by hand with marker pen on cardboard placards.

“School is a right, not a privilege,” read one such sign held aloft by a student in Paris, where huge youth protests over the state of high school education have brought tens of thousands of young people and adults on to the streets, with further strikes planned today.

UK politics | Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Conservatives would abolish inheritance tax on family homes if elected, prompting criticism that she is prioritising cutting taxes for the rich.

Education | Labour’s flagship changes to special education in England are at risk of unravelling because parents are rushing to secure support for their children before the system changes, new analysis has found.

Spain | María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction set off a nationwide wave of protests against Spain’s housing crisis, has died.

Science | A type of gene therapy based on Nobel prize-winning science is safe and can partly restore sight in blind people, researchers have revealed.

Epstein | British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith warned that Jeffrey Epstein was a “sexual deviant” decades before the FBI closed in on the abuser, a Guardian investigation has found.

Need the answers for today’s NYT Mini Crossword for Oct. 8, 2026?

Washington, DC — The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration Wednesday, alleging that millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded television advertisements promoting President Donald Trump amount to illegal government propaganda.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, asks a judge to stop federal money from financing the campaign and declare the advertisements unlawful. The spots began airing in September and have cost more than $12 million to broadcast, according to AdImpact. The broader campaign was funded through $20 million allocated by the Department of Homeland Security.

The advertisements feature Trump praising his administration’s accomplishments and closely echo themes from his political campaigns. They have aired less than a month before the midterm elections and carry disclaimers stating they were “paid for by the U.S. Government.”

Trump recently said future advertisements would instead be financed by MAGA Inc., the super PAC aligned with him. However, another taxpayer-funded spot aired afterward, and the administration has not committed to reimbursing money already spent.

The White House maintains the spots are legitimate public-service announcements similar to messaging used by previous administrations. Critics from both parties have questioned whether the campaign violates federal restrictions on using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda. A separate lawsuit challenging the advertisements has also been filed by a coalition led by Common Cause.

Sources:

• PBS NewsHour / Associated Press – MBFC Rating

The post DNC Sues Trump Administration Over Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda Television Ads appeared first on News Facts Network.

Washington, DC — The Trump administration is proposing a $70,000 fee for international students seeking work experience in the United States through the Optional Practical Training program, a change universities say could sharply reduce foreign enrollment.

Under the proposed Department of Homeland Security rule, schools would have to pay $70,000 for each student’s initial OPT recommendation and $30,000 for subsequent recommendations. OPT allows international students to work in jobs related to their field of study, generally for one year and up to three years for qualifying STEM graduates.

DHS says the fee would address fraud and what it calls the program’s use as a source of inexpensive foreign labor.

Higher education groups strongly disagree. NAFSA, an association representing international educators, says OPT helps U.S. employers fill high-demand positions and gives graduates practical experience that contributes to innovation and economic growth.

The proposal arrives as international enrollment is already declining. New international student enrollment fell 17% last fall, according to higher education groups, with some institutions reporting substantially larger drops.

The public will have 60 days to comment before DHS can finalize the rule. Universities and immigration attorneys have also signaled that any final version could face legal challenges.

Sources:

• PBS NewsHour / Associated Press – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Administration Proposes $70,000 Fee for International Student Work Program appeared first on News Facts Network.

Make hard-to-regulate rooms more inviting with an energy-saving mini split.

LG ELECTRONICS BRINGS INTEGRATED NEXT-GENERATION VEHICLE SOLUTIONS TO GENESIS GV90

The changes are designed to enhance liquidity and volume during extended hours trading once 24X launches 23/5 operations in December

Responding to a Guardian report that revealed thousands of tonnes of fuel was transported to Russia, Seoul said it was investigating the cases

South Korea will take legal action if it finds that shipments of fuel from its ports to Russia broke domestic law, the government has said, responding to a Guardian report on the trade.

The government, in a statement issued by the foreign and trade ministries and the customs service, said that it is “checking additional information concerning the loading cases reported by the Guardian” and “if the verification establishes that our laws and regulations have been violated, it plans to act in accordance with the law”.

(The Center Square) – Cost of living, immigration, water and data centers were among the issues debated Wednesday night by candidates for Arizona’s Congressional District 1.

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In Bolotana, 70 miles from island’s original blue zone, 13% of women who reach 70 will live on to a century

The secret to longevity is being a woman – specifically, a woman in one part of Sardinia. At least, that is the conclusion of a study on centenarians in a tiny mountain village on the Italian island.

Sardinia became known as a haven for longevity, especially for long-lived men, in 1999 when a cluster of remote villages nestled in the slopes of its central and eastern provinces were classified among the world’s five “blue zones” – geographic areas with high concentrations of centenarians.

NGOs in Indonesian Borneo file class action lawsuit calling for government to better manage annual fires and

The Indonesian government has been accused of “gross negligence” in a class action lawsuit over its handling of wildfires that have cloaked large parts of South-east Asia in a toxic haze, shuttered schools and caused a spike in respiratory illnesses.

The lawsuit, filed by indigenous and civil society groups in the Indonesian part of Borneo, named President Prabowo Subianto and the governor of West Kalimantan among 10 defendants. The case seeks comprehensive recovery and rehabilitation measures that would include covering the healthcare costs of residents.

Investigators probe Asahi, Kirin, Suntory and Sapporo breweries – which together control more than 90% of Japan’s beer market

Japanese authorities have raided the country’s four biggest breweries over suspicions they colluded to set the price of beer and other beverages – a practice media reports said could have forced drinkers to pay over the odds.

Officials from the Fair Trade Commission this week searched the offices of Asahi Breweries, Kirin Brewery, Suntory Beer and Sapporo Breweries – which together control more than 90% of the domestic market. The quartet are suspected of violating the anti-monopoly law.

Slashdot reader carlk22 writes: In February 2001, Slashdot readers asked Carl Kadie about censorship and privacy at colleges, and he answered. Now Kadie, who founded the Computers and Academic Freedom project at EFF in 1991, has written its history. In Part 1, Ohio State kicks a student off its network, then out of school, after a prank routes his "fuck you" into rec.aquaria, and a supercomputing center fires a student over an email from saddam@iraq.bunker.gov. In Part 2, Nebraska bans the project's own newsletter, the FBI asks a conference attendee to show them his leg, and Playboy calls. The original archive is on GitHub.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump briefly stepped away from the microphone after one protester appeared to approach the stage

Donald Trump’s latest campaign rally was rocked by repeated protests on Wednesday as the US president urged Texas voters to back embattled Senate candidate Ken Paxton.

At least half a dozen demonstrators interrupted the US president during his remarks in San Antonio, with some led away by police. One was physically assaulted by an older Trump supporter as he tried to leave the arena.

This live blog is now closed.

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Tonight, we’ll have another set of midterm debates. In Iowa, we’ll see the Republican nominee for US Senate, Ashley Hinson, face off against Democrat Josh Turek, a state representative and Paralympian at 8pm ET.

The race has become one of the most competitive of this cycle, despite the fact a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate election in the Hawkeye state since 2008. Turek, however, trails by just a point in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. And Hinson, who currently serves as a congresswoman, has pushed back on Donald Trump’s agenda of late, as the president’s approval rating sinks to a new low. Hinson has called for an end on the war in Iran, despite consistently voting against House war powers resolutions that would curb military action, and criticizing the president’s recent pause on tariffs for foreign beef imports, which, Hinson argues, will affect the bottom line for the many cattle ranchers in Iowa.

Former President Barack Obama headlined a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Wednesday night to discuss the stakes of the upcoming midterm election.

CBS News obtained new video from a person on the ground showing an Iranian attack on a U.S. base at the beginning of the war.

A warning for this episode - it covers details of a murder and an execution that some might find distressing.

In this episode of Guardian Australia’s US politics podcast, co-hosts Jonathan Yerushalmy and Reged Ahmad examine what happened when the state of Tennessee tried to execute prisoner Christa Pike. They also look at the controversy over taxpayer-funded ads promoting US president Donald Trump, midterm AI attack ads and the Elon Musk-Trump bromance that appears to be back on.

Jamaal Howard, 46, executed by fatal dose of pentobarbital after lawyers’ bid for stay had been denied

A Texas man was put to death Wednesday in the first US execution since the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee last week.

Jamaal Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8.03pm after receiving a fatal dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, at the state prison in Huntsville.

Jamaal Howard was executed by lethal injection after his lawyers tried to argue that he faced risks similar to Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee's attempt to put her to death.

The program is limited in scope and can only prescribe medication for acne.

Washington, DC — President Donald Trump is set to award the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su during a White House science and technology summit Thursday.

The awards will be presented during the administration’s “Science: A New Golden Age Summit,” which is focused on artificial intelligence, technological innovation and U.S. competitiveness. The ceremony marks the first time Trump has presented the National Medal of Science during either of his presidencies.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell are also expected to receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The White House said the honorees have made major contributions to American science and technology and are helping maintain U.S. leadership in innovation.

The selection also reunites Trump publicly with Musk after their high-profile political split in 2025. Musk had been one of Trump’s most prominent political allies and financial backers before the relationship deteriorated, but the two have moved closer again in recent months.

The medals are among the federal government’s highest honors for scientific and technological achievement and have historically recognized researchers, inventors and innovators whose work has had major national impact.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Trump to Award National Medal of Science to Musk, Brin and Tech Leaders appeared first on News Facts Network.

Need a Strands hint today? Get the theme hint, the spangram and every answer for NYT Strands No. 949 on Thursday, Oct. 8.

One person died and three were missing in San Francisco Bay on Tuesday after a boat with 20 people on board sank near Alcatraz Island, authorities said.

Williamsport, Pa. — With a statewide crackdown on skill game machines just days away, the head of the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce is warning of the fallout for local small businesses, nonprofit clubs, and a Muncy manufacturer that builds the…

Bluey’s Happy Snaps is also coming to Game Pass in October 2026 to put a smile on your face.

Attorneys for Christa Pike, the Tennessee inmate who survived two doses of a lethal injection during her botched execution last week, shared an update on her health condition.

PRAGUE, Oct. 7, 2026 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the launch of OpenGrid, a new initiative building open source infrastructure to modernize power grid planning worldwide. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, OpenGrid creates a neutral, interoperable foundation that allows planners to work across the commercial and open source software they already use, helping reduce the time, cost and technical barriers involved in planning the infrastructure needed to meet rapidly growing electricity demand.

Grid planning has become a critical bottleneck as electricity demand grows, new data center and industrial loads come online and more generation and storage seek connection. More than 2,500 gigawatts of generation, storage and large-load projects are currently pending in grid connection queues worldwide, while annual grid investment needs to roughly double to more than $600 billion by 2030. Meeting long-term energy needs will require adding or replacing 80 million kilometers of power lines by 2040, yet planning remains constrained by fragmented data, incompatible software and modeling capabilities that are inaccessible to many institutions and countries.

“Open source has repeatedly shown that shared architecture and interoperability accelerate innovation across entire industries,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. “OpenGrid will bring the proven model of open collaboration to grid planning for faster and more reliable deployment. The Linux Foundation’s neutral governance will ensure durability, longevity and usability of the technologies that support essential public-interest infrastructure.”

OpenGrid is not developing a single replacement for existing grid planning software. Instead, it provides a shared data and interoperability layer that allows existing commercial and open source tools to work together. Its foundational efforts will include open standards and schemas, programmatic APIs and a centralized Data Hub for validated, model-ready datasets. Its first lighthouse application, the OpenGrid Translator, is in development for release in 2027 and will enable data and models to move between widely used commercial platforms and open source tools.

Access to modern planning capabilities is particularly uneven in fast-growing markets. At the same time, emerging economies are expected to account for nearly 80% of global electricity demand growth through 2030. OpenGrid aims to give planning teams everywhere access to high-quality modeling capabilities, while enabling regulators, advocates and other stakeholders to inspect the models and data informing major infrastructure decisions.

“Reliable electricity supports healthier lives, stronger communities and economic opportunity, but delivering it requires credible plans. Today, too many plans rely on data others cannot verify and tools much of the world cannot afford,” said Alice Yake, vice president of BE-GRIDS and chair of the OpenGrid Management Committee. “OpenGrid changes that: open data, open standards and access to planning tools that any utility, regulator or country can inspect and use.”

Over time, the OpenGrid ecosystem plans to expand to include open solvers, no-code graphical interfaces, standardized planning workflows and integrations that use AI to support data preparation. By providing transparent, repeatable and accessible planning infrastructure, OpenGrid aims to help planners, infrastructure owners, regulators and communities work from a common technical foundation and make infrastructure decisions with greater confidence faster.

OpenGrid launches with support from Breakthrough Energy GRIDS, Global Grid Catalyst, Connected Grid Initiative and Google.org, with technical delivery partners including Open Energy Transition, Tapestry, TransitionZero and QXT Energy.

Organizations, researchers, regulators and community members interested in contributing to OpenGrid or learning more are encouraged to visit https://www.opengrid.org.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

Source: The Linux Foundation

The post Linux Foundation Launches OpenGrid to Build Open, Shared Infrastructure for Electric Grid appeared first on HPCwire.

Whenever Microsoft starts messing with something like the search function in Windows, a lot of people are going to be holding their breath and expecting the worst. Well, get ready, because they’re redesigning the whole thing.

In July, we shared how we are improving the Windows Search Box with less clutter and more control. We introduced a calmer home screen, removed promotional content from web results, and gave you more choice over whether web and Microsoft Store suggestions appear.

Today, we’re carrying those investments forward with a new Windows Search experience built on WinUI 3. This modern foundation makes Windows Search faster and more efficient with resources, while delivering an even more streamlined and focused design.

↫ Anshul Rawat at the Windows Blogs

The company claims this new version of search is faster and uses less memory, which, if true, are very welcome improvements. It’s also just a single column of results now, and they’re adding inline previews for things like weather and files on your machine, as well as for answers to all kinds of queries you might normally go to an online search engine for. You can now also use search to perform all kinds of tasks in Windows, like turning on dark mode, managing windows, and so on.

All of this can be done using relatively natural language, and Microsoft claims they’ve implemented better detection of typing errors and synonyms, which is quite welcome. Weirdly enough, though, it’s not yet integrated into the Start menu, since it’s a preview just for testers, but that’s something they’re working on for future releases.

Judging by the videos and screenshots, I’m actually kind of positively surprised. This looks quite decent and nice, and if the promised performance improvements actually materialise, this may actually be an upgrade to search worth looking forward to. Of course, this is still Microsoft, so it’s just as likely they’ll screw up somewhere between now and when this goes live to regular users.

Still, I think it looks decent.

If you’re hoping to replace the batteries in your Apple wearables one day, it might be a tricky fix.

The 78-year-old has spent nearly six decades in prison and California governor has overturned last two parole grants

Patricia Krenwinkel, a former Charles Manson follower, was granted parole on Tuesday after nearly six decades in prison for her role in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles.

This is the third time that Krenwinkel, 78, has been approved for release by California’s board of parole hearings. After both of her last two parole grants, Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, reversed the parole board’s decisions and denied her freedom, and Krenwinkel’s attorneys are now urging the Democrat to allow this latest ruling to stand.

Chimera Linux is a relatively new Linux distribution, and quite a unique on at that, as it combines the core tools from FreeBSD, the LLVM toolchain, and the Musl C library instead of the usual suspects. Despite being relatively new, it still has some serious pedigree as the project was started by Nina “q66”, who was part of the Void Linux team. At Void, she maintained the various PowerPC/POWER ports of the distribution until Chimera became her sole focus.

Nina published a detailed blog post today about how the Chimera team builds the tooling for their distribution, as well as the goals it’s trying to achieve. It covers everything from a bit of personal history, the rationale behind the project, who it’s catering to, how its tooling works and why, and the infrastructure they’ve built that underpins it all. There’s a lot to process here, with one of the most interesting little details – at least to me, as someone who has two POWER9 machines – the fact that Chimera started with the ppc64le target only.

The article is an incredibly interesting look at not just the how of Chimera, but also the why, which makes for some really fascinating reading.

DARPA announced today that Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM and IonQ have advanced to the final phase of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, moving their proposed systems into hands-on government verification and validation.

The four organizations represent different modalities of quantum computing: neutral atoms at Atom Computing, silicon CMOS spin qubits at Diraq, superconducting processors at IBM and trapped ions at IonQ. All were among the 11 Stage B participants announced in November 2025. They join Microsoft and PsiQuantum, which previously reached the equivalent final phase through QBI’s predecessor, Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC).

Launched in July 2024, QBI aims to determine whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation by 2033, meaning the computational value of a system exceeds its cost.

QBI is structured in three phases:

• Stage A focuses on delivering detailed technical specifications for a utility-scale quantum computer concept with a credible near-term path to realization.
• Stage B calls for a thorough evaluation of the research and development plan for a proposed concept from Stage A.
• Stage C requires teams to collaborate with DARPA’s independent verification and validation group to assess whether the proposed system can be built as specified and perform as designed.

“Stage B is about putting the performers’ plans under a microscope: understanding the assumptions, identifying the risks, and determining whether the proposed development paths could plausibly get all the way to utility scale,” said QBI Managing Director Micah Stoutimore. “Stage C is where we begin moving from plans to proof. Our team will be closely scrutinizing the hardware and systems as they develop to determine whether the technology performs the way the models and roadmaps say it should.”

Stoutimore took over as QBI lead from Joe Altepeter in March when DARPA opened another solicitation for Stage A applicants.

Altepeter’s description of QBI’s scrutiny helped establish the program’s tone when it launched in July 2024:

“Our opening position is skepticism. Specifically, skepticism that a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer with a sufficient number of logical qubits can ever be built. We will walk into the room and say, ‘We’re pretty sure whatever you’re doing is not going to work.’ I will bring a small army of scientists and engineers, we will listen to your evidence, and we will double and triple check using our own analysis. And if we’re convinced the technology you’re developing checks out and you’re onto something big, we’ll tell the rest of government and become a strong advocate for your approach.”

DARPA’s outlook has grown more optimistic since QBI’s launch, even as the agency continues to scrutinize individual approaches.

“The quantum computing field is moving quickly, and we increasingly expect that someone will build a utility-scale quantum computer by 2033,” Stoutimore said in today’s announcement.

Which participants will deliver remains an open question. DARPA has consistently emphasized that QBI evaluates each approach on its own merits, with the aim of identifying credible paths to utility-scale operation rather than narrowing the field to a set of winners. QBI is explicitly not a competition.

Which participants and technical approaches will deliver remains an open question. DARPA has long emphasized that QBI is not a competition: it evaluates each approach on its own merits to identify credible paths to utility-scale operation.

Today’s selections also leave room for further advancement. DARPA expects additional companies to reach Stage C in the near future as participants continue through the earlier stages. The agency also anticipates selecting new Stage A participants from proposals submitted under this year’s solicitation, continuing to broaden the range of quantum computing approaches under evaluation.

The post Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM and IonQ Advance to DARPA QBI Stage C appeared first on HPCwire.

With Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip and platform, Microsoft’s newest laptop is ready to compete with AI heavyweights.

DYLAN DEVINE
Staff Reporter

The Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens opened the 2026 season at the start of September with a statement victory against Merrimack College, 42-7. The victory marked the Blue Hens’ eighth consecutive season with a season-opening victory. 

The start of their second year in Conference USA (CUSA) and at the FBS level brought much success and gave great hope to the fans for another strong year ahead. 

Delaware is coming off a historic season, competing in its first FBS season and winning the 68 Ventures Bowl against Louisiana 20-13.

The opening kickoff saw Delaware running back Viron Ellison Jr. score an 11-yard rushing touchdown on the opening drive, capping off a Delaware 50-yard drive to start the game. This offensive consistency would continue throughout the rest of the game.

Merrimack was unable to answer back with points of their own, as the Delaware offense continued to overpower the Warriors’ defense.

Safety George Mullins picked up his first career interception in his Delaware debut in the second quarter. This defensive moment gave way to quarterback Nick Minicucci for a rushing touchdown of his own.

Delaware ended the second quarter with a recovered fumble by Blake Matthews and a touchdown reception by wide receiver Sean Wilson.

Quarter three saw running back Kaderris Roberts catching a career-long 75-yard touchdown pass as well as a wide-open pass down the sideline, giving Delaware a 35-0 lead.

Roberts became the first Blue Hen player with both a rushing touchdown and a receiving touchdown in the same game since Marcus Yarns in 2024.

Delaware averaged around 7.5 yards per play and outgained Merrimack 547 to 244. The success from week one for the Blue Hens should come as no surprise; the team had a total of 10 different receivers catching a pass. 

Starting quarterback Nick Minicucci completed 20 of 36 passes during the game, and the only blemish on the day was his through-pick in the third quarter. This interception led to the only touchdown scored by the Warriors, brought to the end zone by running back Galamama Mulbah. 

The fourth quarter started with junior wide receiver Nick Tyree recording his first-career touchdown catch. After a spin move against the Merrimack defense, Tyree celebrated with his teammates and the Delaware faithful in the end zone. 

This scoring drive would be the only points in the fourth quarter as Delaware only added to its definitive lead over Merrimack. 

Merrimack picked up its second straight loss of the season, first to the University of Rhode Island. 

Delaware defeated Merrimack 42-7, giving the Blue Hens their first win of the season and head coach Ryan Carty’s win number 34 of his Delaware tenure, and another home opener victory.  

Jamie Raskin says ‘startling’ email asked whether young woman was ‘for me, or are you keeping her for yourself’

A powerful Democratic lawmaker has called for a criminal investigation into former Bard College president Leon Botstein after congressional investigators uncovered an email from Botstein to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in which he says Botstein asked if a young woman was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself”.

The latest development appears to have triggered the immediate resignation of Botstein from all Bard-affiliated positions, including his professorship and roles in Bard’s music programs. Botstein had led the college for 50 years and only recently stepped down as president.

Washington, DC — U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle asked a political donor to pay $100,000 toward her American Express debt while communicating with him about access to Trump administration officials, according to messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reported that Guilfoyle contacted Kentucky businessman and former congressional candidate Eric Deters in July 2025, shortly before her Senate confirmation hearing. In Signal messages, she allegedly urged Deters to wire money directly to American Express, writing that the payment “won’t show up anywhere.”

Deters had previously discussed paying Guilfoyle as much as $1 million if she successfully helped him obtain assistance with tax and legal matters. The Journal reported that Guilfoyle forwarded Deters messages she sent to senior government officials and updated him on her efforts. Deters ultimately did not make the $100,000 payment.

Guilfoyle’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, disputes the authenticity of the messages and says she has acted properly. Deters said earlier payments to Guilfoyle were connected to patriotic events and appearances.

Democratic lawmakers have asked the State Department to investigate Guilfoyle’s conduct following separate reporting about her activities as ambassador. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to address the newest allegations Wednesday but said Guilfoyle has been a “strong ambassador.”

Sources:

• The Wall Street Journal – MBFC Rating

The post Guilfoyle Sought Secret $100,000 Payment While Offering Political Access, WSJ Reports appeared first on News Facts Network.

Hundred-and-fifty-year-old Wych elm in Newcastle, Co Down has grown sideways owing to strong winds

The “astonishing and bizarre” Bendy Tree in Northern Ireland has been crowned the winner of this year’s tree of the year competition.

The wych elm tree, located in Newcastle, County Down, owes its name to its near horizontal trunk, which has grown sideways owing to the strong seaside winds coming off the Irish Sea.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet's Google and gaming tools developer Unity Software announced a new platform that will allow people to create video games from simple text prompts, marking the latest incursion of generative artificial intelligence into artistic and creative industries. The initiative, called Playground, will "put game creation in the hands of millions of new creators, and bring new experiences to billions of players worldwide," the companies said in a statement on Oct 7. With its debut, Playground will let people 18 and older generate and customize games using natural language prompts, "no coding required." Later in 2026, a new expanded creation experience called Unity Spark, will be integrated with Playground, providing "robust, professional-level" mechanics and high-fidelity 3D capabilities. Creators will be able to build "immersive, superlative experiences" with a simple text prompt, according to the release. Playground builds on Google's push into world models, a type of AI that generates virtual environments in real time from text prompts, rather than just video. Google and Unity's partnership "could reduce fears that AI will make Unity's core game-building software less necessary, while posing limited medium-term risk to Roblox's advantage as a social gaming platform," says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu. The introduction of Unity Spark later in 2026 "could broaden Unity's creator base and support its game-development business," which represent about a third of sales.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 18-year-old allegedly tried to buy an assault rifle, intending to harm shoppers at the Minnesota mall, according to court records.

Ads promoting the president have cost more than $12m and his Super Pac has refused to reimburse taxpayers

• Sign up to The Stakes 2026: your weekly guide to the US midterms

The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court on Wednesday, asking a judge in Washington DC to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.

The ads promoting Donald Trump, including one recycled from his 2024 presidential campaign, have cost taxpayers more than $12m so far, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.

Amazon Prime Days are the time to adopt new smart devices to save time and money. Here’s what I’ve found most useful.

Need a Wordle hint today? Get spoiler-free hints for NYT Wordle No. 1,937 on Thursday, Oct. 8, then the answer, plus yesterday’s word.

Quickly sign, scan and send official documents from the iPhone in your pocket — no giant scanner needed.

The change has been long sought by economists and advocates who argued that self-selection would benefit wealthier families.

A top North Carolina lawmaker on Wednesday said he supports a suspension of the state’s gas tax — comments that came after he dismissed the idea earlier this year.

Senate leader Phil Berger was among the Republicans in his chamber who announced a legislative proposal to suspend the state’s 41-cent-per-gallon gas tax through November. The bill — which enjoyed bipartisan support when it passed the Legislature Wednesday — goes now  to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. The governor has 10 days to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature. 

Berger’s Democratic critics said his support of the gas-tax suspension shows a lack of consistency in his position. 

“As recently as this past May, when gas prices were significantly high, just like today, Phil Berger told all of us that suspending the gas tax was ‘more of a feel-good kind of thing,’” Minority Leader Sydney Batch, D-Wake, said during a press briefing Wednesday. 

She continued: “Suddenly, gas prices are an emergency. What changed? It’s certainly not your gas prices. Perhaps it’s the reality that they’re 27 days away from being sent packing by the voters of this state, who are frankly sick and tired of their childish games.”

All 170 seats in the North Carolina General Assembly are up for election in November and voting is underway. Election officials mailed absentee ballots to voters last month and early, in-person voting starts Oct. 15.

The GOP currently — and for nearly all of the last decade — has held enough seats to enact many of their proposals with ease, even over objections of Democratic governors. Political analysts say the midterms offer Democrats the best chance of gaining power in years and Republicans have expressed concern about losing influence in the Legislature. 

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 43% among likely voters in North Carolina, according to a poll released late last month by High Point University. Meanwhile, inflation and gas prices have remained elevated into campaign season, even as polls have shown affordability to be a top concern among voters. 

Let’s take a look at what Berger has said about repealing gas taxes, and put his comments through our Flip-O-Meter. The Flip-O-Meter measures how much someone’s position has changed. It doesn’t assign a value judgment about that change. 

‘Temporary gimmicks’ and ‘feel-good’ thing

In 2022, gas prices rose across the U.S. and in North Carolina after Russia invaded Ukraine. To blunt the impact on U.S. motorists, President Joe Biden called for a three-month suspension of the federal taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel.

That summer, Berger was asked if he supported Biden’s proposal. Lauren Horsch, Berger’s communications director, told the Charlotte Observer in a statement that Biden should instead “reevaluate his administration’s policies.”

“Instead of these temporary gimmicks, we should focus on permanent, long-term tax relief and reining in inflation,” Horsch said on Berger’s behalf, according to the newspaper’s June 27, 2022, article.

Separately, Democratic state lawmakers proposed legislation in May 2022 that would’ve provided most North Carolina drivers a tax rebate of $200. Horsch told the Charlotte Observer that her statement also applied to the rebate idea.

Fast-forward to this year. 

President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28, when the average gas price in the U.S. at the time was just under $3 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By mid-May, it had risen to $4.49 a gallon. 

Reporters asked Berger on May 19 if he was considering a pause on collecting the gas tax. Berger said: “It strikes me that that’s more of a feel-good kind of thing than something that actually would make a whole lot of difference with reference to individuals.”

‘They need real relief’ 

In an Oct. 3 social media post, Berger said that he and Republican House Speaker Destin Hall had agreed to call a special legislative session “to provide relief from high gas and diesel prices for all North Carolinians.”

“North Carolina families and farmers are feeling the impacts of rising fuel costs every day,” Berger said in the post. “They need real relief and they need it now.” 

In a press briefing Wednesday ahead of the Senate’s votes, Berger said that “every member of the Republican caucus in the Senate and every member of the Republican caucus in the House stands behind what has been said this morning and is supportive of the measure that will be taken up later today.”

“Everyone has been hearing from people across the state about high gas prices and about the difficulties that they’re having — whether they are families trying to get their kids to school, to buy groceries, or small business people trying to do their deliveries or make sure their supplies are available, or larger delivery efforts that involve large trucks and that sort of thing,” Berger said during the briefing. “And so we are here today to answer that call.”

Change in position?

During Wednesday’s press briefing, PolitiFact read to Berger his comments from May and asked if his opinion on a gas tax repeal had changed. 

“Sure, because at that time, what was the price of gas? Is it over $4? I don’t think so. The pressure on individual citizens is much greater now than it was then,” Berger responded. 

The U.S. average price of a gallon of regular gas was $4.49 on May 18, a day before Berger made his comment, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s 3% higher than it was on Monday. AAA records show regular gas in North Carolina averages about $4.12 per gallon, which is lower than what they were on May 19: $4.17 per gallon.

After a reporter told Berger that the price of gas was, indeed, above $4 per gallon in May, Berger then said two factors contributed to his decision to move forward with a gas tax suspension this October: Demand for the suspension had grown — particularly from those in agricultural industry; and legislators reached a consensus on how they could suspend the tax without jeopardizing funding for the state’s Department of Transportation. The DOT uses the tax revenues for road improvements. 

“We didn’t want to do something that would impair the transportation budget or stop projects that are already slated to go forward,” Berger said. “Now, again, because our members are hearing from constituents, we’re hearing from people, we’re hearing from folks in the farming community.”

When PolitiFact asked Berger about his 2022 statement describing Biden’s gas tax holiday as “gimmick” that merited Biden reevaluating his policies, Berger said he stood by those comments.

Our ruling

In May, Berger said suspending North Carolina’s gas tax would be “more of a feel-good kind of thing than something that actually would make a whole lot of difference with reference to individuals.”

Now, as he’s helping lead the charge to suspend the gas tax ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Berger acknowledged that his opinion had changed, saying: “The pressure on individual citizens is much greater now than it was then.”

In terms of gas prices, current conditions are almost identical to what they were in May.

We rate Berger’s position change a major reversal, or a Full Flop.

US adults are juggling higher tech prices with smaller budgets this year. Can the sales help them afford more?

Need a Connections hint today? Get a hint for each color group in NYT Connections #1215 on Thursday, Oct. 8, then all four answers.

In the shadow of the Parthenon, the secretary of state gave a selective reading of history as he urged Europe to ‘awaken from its slumber’

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, delivered a classically inspired apologia for Donald Trump’s “America first” foreign policy on Wednesday, giving a sweeping speech to the backdrop of the Parthenon in Athens that appeared tailor-made for campaign ads if he runs for president in 2028.

In the speech, the top US diplomat drew historical parallels from the founders, philosophers and conquerers of antiquity to the modern American spirit – as well as his family’s own journey to the United States – as he called on Europe to “awaken from its long slumber” and reject a “future of atrophy and servitude and decline”.

Ethan Scott Brown died after being wrongly told he would not be eligible to graduate from the University of Glasgow

The family of a student who took his own life after being wrongly told he would not be eligible to graduate have said the University of Glasgow “will be held to account”.

Ethan Scott Brown, 23, was due to graduate in December 2024 after studying geography.

(The Center Square) – Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced he picked artificial intelligence researchers to advise California on regulations as the state grapples with how to institute protections from a rapidly-developing technology.

Most engineers know what an overloaded web service looks like. Latency goes up. Queues start growing. CPU gets busy. Eventually requests begin timing out and autoscaling tries to catch up. AI inference systems can fail in some of the same ways, but I’ve found that the usual mental model does not always hold up very well once models, accelerators, batching, and long startup times get involved.

The confusing part is that the service may still look healthy from the outside. Pods are running. GPUs are busy. Requests are still completing. And yet users are already waiting much longer than they should. That is where inference reliability starts to feel different.

Average Latency Can Look Fine While Users Are Already Unhappy

One of the first things I would be careful with is average latency. Inference servers often batch requests together because that makes better use of expensive accelerator capacity. From a throughput point of view, that can be exactly what you want. But the request does not necessarily start executing the moment it arrives.

It may sit in a queue while the server waits for a batch to form. As traffic increases, those waits can get longer. Some requests may also require more work than others, which makes the distribution even less predictable. The average can still look surprisingly normal. The tail usually tells the real story.

If p99 latency is climbing while average latency and overall throughput still look acceptable, I would not call that a healthy serving path. I want to know how long requests are sitting in the queue, how batches are forming, and what the accelerator is doing at the same time. Looking at any one of those signals by itself is usually not enough.

A New Worker Is Not Necessarily New Capacity

Another thing that trips people up is cold-start behavior. Starting a conventional application instance may involve loading configuration, opening connections, and becoming ready to serve traffic. An inference worker can have much more to do.

The model may need to be downloaded or mounted. Large weights have to be loaded into memory. Accelerator state has to be initialized. Caches may need warming. Some serving stacks also perform compilation or optimization before the worker reaches useful performance.

So Kubernetes may tell me another pod exists. That does not mean I actually have another unit of serving capacity yet.

I think this distinction between allocated capacity and ready inference capacity is important, especially during recovery or a traffic spike.

If demand is rising quickly, adding five workers does not help much if all five are still loading models while the existing workers are already overloaded. The scheduler sees capacity coming. The users are still waiting.

GPU Utilization Needs a Different Reading

GPU utilization is another place where habits from conventional infrastructure can be misleading.

(Shutterstock/Chaosamran_Studio)

With CPU-based services, teams often get used to treating utilization as an obvious scaling signal. Accelerators are different. High GPU utilization can be a good thing. These are expensive resources, and keeping them busy is usually the point.

So when I see high accelerator utilization, my first question is not simply, “Is the GPU too busy?” I want to know what is happening around it. Is queue depth rising? Is accelerator memory becoming tight? Are batches becoming larger? Is p99 moving? Are requests spending more time waiting before execution?

A GPU running near full utilization could describe a very efficient system. It could also describe a system with almost no room left for the next traffic burst. The percentage alone does not tell me which one I am looking at.

The Queue Is Where a Small Problem Can Become a Large One

The failure pattern I find most interesting usually begins before anything actually crashes.

Traffic increases. The accelerators are busy, so requests start waiting. The queue grows. As queue time rises, end-to-end latency rises with it. Eventually some clients hit their timeout limits. Then some of them retry.

Those retries go straight back to the same service that was already struggling. Now the queue grows even faster. Autoscaling may eventually add more workers, but those workers still have to load the model before they can take useful traffic. Meanwhile, retries keep arriving.

Nothing in this sequence requires the model server itself to fail. Every component may be doing exactly what it was configured to do.

That is what makes this kind of incident tricky. The failure is not one broken component. It is the interaction between queueing, retries, startup time, and the amount of capacity that is actually ready.

By the time request failures become obvious, the system may already be well into the feedback loop.

Autoscaling Can Arrive After the Problem

Shutterstock 1024337068

This is why inference autoscaling deserves more thought than simply attaching a scaling policy to CPU or GPU utilization.

If queue depth is the first sign that demand is outrunning usable capacity, waiting until the accelerator is fully saturated may be too late. Startup time makes the delay worse.

Imagine the platform decides it needs more workers only after queues are already unhealthy. Those workers now need time to initialize before they help. The scaling decision is effectively responding to traffic that arrived several seconds or even minutes earlier.

For steady workloads, that may be manageable. For bursty inference traffic, it can be painful. I would rather look at queue depth, queue growth, concurrency, ready serving capacity, and worker startup time together.

The important question is not only whether the hardware is busy. It is whether the system can absorb what is coming next.

Sometimes the Right Answer Is Not More of the Same Model

Fallback behavior is another reliability decision that I think teams should make before they need it.

Suppose the preferred model is overloaded and requests are beginning to wait too long. The obvious response is to add more capacity. But that may not be the only option.

For some applications, temporarily serving a smaller model may be better than allowing requests to sit in a queue until they time out. In other cases, a reduced response may be safer than accepting work the system knows it cannot finish within its latency target.

There is no universal fallback strategy. The questions are application-specific. Which requests can use the fallback? How different can the output be? When should traffic move back to the primary model? How will operators know that fallback behavior is happening?

What I would avoid is designing that behavior for the first time during an incident.

The SRE Fundamentals Still Apply

I do not think AI infrastructure needs a completely new reliability discipline. The familiar things still matter. Latency matters. Capacity matters. Load testing matters. Error budgets matter. Observability and failure isolation matter. What changes is the shape of the failure.

An inference service can be unhealthy even while accelerators are busy and errors are low. It can appear scaled because new workers exist even though their models are not ready. It can make its own overload worse because retries arrive faster than useful capacity. And sometimes the safest response is not simply adding more replicas of the same model. Those are the behaviors I would design monitoring and recovery around.

AI infrastructure is still distributed infrastructure. Model serving just adds a few new ways for familiar reliability problems to hide. The sooner teams treat those behaviors as ordinary production concerns instead of unusual AI edge cases, the easier these systems become to operate.

About the author: Sai Joshitha Kathari is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer specializing in distributed systems, Kubernetes, AI infrastructure, observability, and production reliability.

The post Why AI Inference Infrastructure Fails Differently From Traditional Services appeared first on HPCwire.

Attorneys say Pike was set to be taken off life support before she woke up, as judge orders officials to preserve evidence

Christa Pike awoke “angry and confused” after surviving two lethal injections, her attorneys said on Wednesday, as a judge ordered Tennessee state officials to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution.

Pike, 50, was taken to hospital unconscious but alive from Tennessee’s execution chamber last Wednesday after two supposedly lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

(The Center Square) – School choice programs are expanding across the country, giving families more options for educating their children, which prompts a debate over whether student outcomes will improve and how much the programs will cost taxpayers.

Lansing police are considering whether the deaths of five unhoused men could be the work of a serial killer.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 7, 2026 — Applied Materials, Inc. has announced it is working with Intel to accelerate development of chipmaking innovations for next-generation transistors, interconnects and advanced packaging technologies. The collaboration will bring together cutting-edge capabilities from Applied’s EPIC Center in Silicon Valley and Intel’s R&D campus in Hillsboro, Oregon to shorten time-to-market of advanced semiconductor technologies essential to AI computing.

“Applied and Intel share a decades-long history of deep collaboration focused on pushing the boundaries of materials engineering to advance the semiconductor roadmap,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “Bringing our teams together at the EPIC Center will deepen that partnership and accelerate the transistor, interconnect and packaging innovations needed to drive the future of AI computing.”

“The demand for AI computing is driving the need for major advances in performance, power efficiency, and packaging. Intel is focused on delivering those innovations and doing it in close collaboration with partners across the ecosystem,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. “Applied Materials is an important partner, and we look forward to expanding our work together at the EPIC Center to help accelerate the path from the lab to high-volume manufacturing in the United States.”

Teams from Applied Materials and Intel are collaborating on next-generation materials, process technologies and device architectures for advanced logic nodes targeting AI workloads, and will continue this work at the EPIC Center. The collaboration spans both front-end and back-end-of-line advancements, including interconnect scaling. The collaboration also involves development of advanced packaging technologies for Foveros-based 3D stacking, supporting higher interconnect density, improved power delivery, and enhanced thermal performance for high-performance compute platforms designed to accelerate emerging agentic AI workloads.

“With the chipmaking roadmap becoming more complex at each process node, accelerating innovations in semiconductor devices, interconnects and packaging requires deeper collaboration across R&D and manufacturing,” said Dr. Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials. “We look forward to working closely with Intel as a founding partner of the EPIC Center to shorten development cycles and bring new technologies to market faster.”

“Accelerating our R&D to keep pace with the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure is critical to delivering the technology, manufacturing excellence and foundry services our customers expect from Intel Foundry,” said Naga Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Operations Officer and General Manager of Intel Foundry. “Applied Materials’ new EPIC Center provides an environment where our teams can collaborate even more closely and at higher velocity to accelerate materials development and process innovations.”

Applied’s new EPIC (Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization) Center in Silicon Valley, which is scheduled to be operationally ready this year, is designed from the ground up to dramatically reduce the time it takes to commercialize breakthrough technologies from early-stage research to full-scale manufacturing. For chipmakers, the EPIC Center will provide earlier access to Applied’s R&D portfolio, faster cycles of learning and accelerated transfer of next-generation technologies into high-volume manufacturing, within a secure collaborative environment. In addition, the co-innovation programs at the EPIC Center will provide Applied with greater multi-node visibility to guide R&D investments while increasing R&D productivity and value sharing.

About Applied Materials

Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMAT) is the leader in materials engineering solutions that are at the foundation of virtually every new semiconductor and advanced display in the world. The technology we create is essential to advancing AI and accelerating the commercialization of next-generation chips. At Applied, we push the boundaries of science and engineering to deliver material innovation that changes the world. Learn more at www.appliedmaterials.com.

Source: Applied Materials

The post Applied Materials and Intel Collaborate on Chipmaking Innovations for AI-Driven Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

(The Center Square) - Tropical Storm Isaias is likely to become a significant hurricane before making landfall on the north-central Gulf Coast late Friday or this weekend between the Florida Panhandle and southeast Louisiana, according to the latest forecast by…

Former students at Lincoln University are seekig more than $500 million in back payments, plus interest, saying unequal treatment compared to the predominantly White University of Missouri led to inadequate infrastructure and financial instability.

An attorney for Maduro told CBS News that he has not been given notice that additional charges could be coming.

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that sending $5,000 to every adult if Republicans keep Congress would "work out very easily," but he did not say how, and tariff revenue alone won't cover the cost.

(The Center Square) – Calling for a dramatic cut in taxes, Republican candidate Steve Hilton says it's time Californians chose someone other than a Democrat for governor.

Research by Common Sense Media says that OpenAI’s parent alert system is faulty and that the chatbot doesn’t help kids improve their learning skills.

The post Arizona Congressional Candidate Says She Was Raped While Repairing Campaign Sign appeared first on News Facts Network.

The post FBI Says Minnesota Teen Planned ISIS-Inspired Attack at Mall of America appeared first on News Facts Network.

Overhaul of special education in England could unravel, thinktank finds, because of ‘use it before you lose it’ dynamic

Labour’s flagship changes to special education in England are at risk of unravelling because parents are rushing to secure support for their children before the system changes, new analysis has found.

The Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank says the government’s plans to largely replace education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in England with more widespread support in mainstream schools may be too optimistic and take longer to complete than its 2030 timeline.

People tell of lives changed beyond recognition after the 7 October attacks by Hamas three years ago and the subsequent Israeli offensive

Ahmed Ishtaiwi has six chairs. They are cheap and plastic and battered, but they are among the 43-year-old driver and mechanic’s most valuable possessions.

PSP has opened a new webpage to help business owners better understand compliance requirements for the removal of skill game machines.

Maricarmen’s eviction from Madrid apartment after over seven decades set off wave of protests against housing crisis

• ‘Now is the moment’: housing activists at Madrid encampment pin wary hopes on Spain’s early election

María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction set off a nationwide wave of protests against Spain’s housing crisis, has died.

News of her death came two weeks after Maricarmen, as she had come to be known across Spain, was evicted from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for more than seven decades.

‘Transparent information sharing’ from Moscow is required to conduct full risk assessment, UN agency says

The World Health Organization has said it does not have the “full picture” from Russia following the suspected death from plague last week of a 28-year-old laboratory worker in Siberia.

Darya Shipilova died two days after falling ill with cold-like symptoms. She was an employee at the anti-plague research institute in the eastern city of Irkutsk, with some reports suggesting she was infected after a workplace accident.

(The Center Square) – A group representing big tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft, wants the Trump administration to scrap a proposed rule that would limit repeated patent challenges.

It's not yet clear what the taxpayer benefit would be for such a build, or how much it would cost.

President floats firing Chris LaCivita and James Blair over any ‘conflict’ after reports of work in Republika Srpska

Donald Trump distanced himself from two top advisers on Wednesday, claiming he did not have “any idea who else they work for”, after it was reported they spent the weekend assisting a pro-Russia government in the Balkans.

On Truth Social, Trump wrote that Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of his 2024 presidential campaign, and James Blair, a campaign adviser and White House deputy chief of staff on leave of absence, “are outside consultants” and “do not work for me other than as outside consultants”.

Authorities say they arrested an 18-year-old who was planning a shooting attack at the Mall of America

FBI officials stopped a potential terrorist attack on the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, authorities announced Wednesday. An 18-year-old was arrested on one count of obtaining a firearm to carry out an act of terrorism.

Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud had been investigated over the last nearly two years by the FBI. He was arrested Tuesday in a public park after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of the Islamic State for an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint.

Lawyers for Christa Pike, who survived two lethal injections, gave updates on her condition, saying she is severely unwell, and ‘angry and confused about everything right now’. Following a court hearing on Wednesday, a judge ordered Tennessee officials to preserve all evidence from the botched execution

Bernadette Greene-Placentia says she is sharing her story in order to fight for victims of sexual assault

This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.

A congressional candidate in Arizona says she was attacked and raped in August while trying to repair one of her damaged campaign signs.

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

New interactive graphics are powered by GPT-6, which is rolling out to free users now.

An 18-year-old Twin Cities man accused of telling an FBI informant he planned to carry out an attack later this month at Mall of America was arrested at gunpoint Tuesday in Richfield, Minnesota, during an arranged meeting to buy an assault rifle, according to a federal criminal complaint filed Wednesday.

Russia says it's open to a Trump-Putin phone call as concern and questions mount over a woman's death of "pneumonia of unknown origin."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood before the Acropolis to argue that the answer to the West's current problems can be found, at least in part, in ancient Greece.

Minister says use of grenades has been stopped after a student lost a hand as protests across France continue

• How dilapidated are French schools and how bad is inequality in the education system?

France’s interior minister has suspended the use of stun grenades by police at high school demonstrations but rejected mounting accusations of police brutality during two weeks of protests marred by often violent clashes that have injured hundreds.

Laurent Nuñez told RTL radio on Wednesday that he had ordered a temporary halt on the use of the grenades “in the context of the high school students’ movement” after a 15-year-old boy lost a hand during a protest in Lens, northern France, on Monday.

Last week, a judge in Connecticut blocked the Bureau of Prisons from terminating its collective bargaining agreement.

Group’s fighters hit key airport in Aden with explosive moments before plane from Cairo was due to land

Houthi forces appeared to be making slow advances on Wednesday in south-west Yemen, approaching the city of Taiz and firing a missile and an explosive towards the airport in Aden, the chief international hub of the Saudi-backed government.

The explosive hit the key airport moments before a plane was due to land. The British ambassador to Yemen, Abda Sharif, said the attack could have endangered thousands of people. It forced the flight – from Cairo – to be diverted to Jeddah and led to a review about the safety of flights in Aden.

Lithuania and Canada were also pressured to withdraw, and days before #Disinfo2026, logos were wiped off website

The Trump administration pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with Canada, Lithuania and the EU’s diplomatic service subsequently agreeing to do so, the Guardian understands.

The conference, #Disinfo2026, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday, is the annual meetup of Europe’s counter-disinformation community and has drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers to a hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is run by an independent Brussels non-profit, EU Disinfo Lab.

A nonprofit group contends that exploding the ordnance threatens the island’s main water source, sea turtles and an Indigenous cultural site.

Pentagon chief tries to play down problems onboard carrier as it returns to dock after 260 days at sea without port call

Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told service members on the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday that their deployment “wasn’t easy” as the carrier prepares to dock after spending over 260 consecutive days at sea without a port call, setting a navy record.

For months, there have been widespread concerns since reports first emerged of supply shortages and deteriorating mental health onboard. In his remarks on Wednesday, however, Hegseth again sought to play down the issues.

Isaias, which succeeded Tropical Depression Nine, would be the first hurricane of the belated Atlantic season

Tropical Storm Isaias formed early on Wednesday in the warm waters off eastern Mexico and forecasters said it was expected to strengthen into the first hurricane of the belated Atlantic season, as early as Thursday, before hitting the US Gulf coast later in the week.

Isaias succeeded Tropical Depression Nine as it strengthened overnight. It was located about 285 miles (460km) west of Progreso, Mexico, and about 580 miles south-west of where the Mississippi River spills into the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The storm on Wednesday morning had maximum sustained winds of 40mph (65km/h) and was moving east to north-east at 8mph.

This blog is now closed. You can read our full story here:

• Judge orders officials to preserve all evidence tied to Christa Pike’s botched execution

Christa Pike’s lawyers said that Pike remains shackled to her hospital bed.

“Based on our understanding, medical staff have asked that the shackles be removed and have been denied that request by [the Tennessee corrections department],” they said, adding: “We would also amend our request and ask for that relief.”

Inquest under way into why President Lula’s success in curbing Amazon deforestation has not led to success at polls

More fire, more ash, more crime, more death. And a globally important ecosystem driven ever more rapidly towards a point of no return. That is the prospect for the Amazon rainforest for at least the next four years if Flávio Bolsonaro holds on to the lead he established this week in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election.

This appears to be of far more concern to the outside world than to voters in Latin America’s biggest, richest and most biodiverse nation.

The nighttime movements of humans and their dogs were found to be "strongly correlated" in new research.

After her botched execution, Randy Spivey said, “I think she is angry and confused about everything right now.”

Convicted pair, plus third man released in August, have IPPs replaced after serving much longer than minimum terms

Two men jailed with indefinite sentences for public protection (IPPs) have been freed after each serving about two decades in custody despite receiving minimum terms of two years or less.

A high court judge and a magistrate hearing an appeal after a review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) told Luke Ings and Liam Bennett they would be freed, and also replaced an indeterminate sentence given to a third man, James Ward.

Ming Fei Li with a dog. (Ming Fei Li via SWNS)

Scientists say Herugavialis cairensis was discovered in the same rocks used to build the Great Sphinx.

Reconstruction of the extinct Herugavialis cairensis with the Great Sphinx and pyramids depicted in the background. (Karim Zanaty via SWNS)

U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, praised Republicans’ tax cuts as the largest in history as he campaigns for reelection to Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. 

In a Sept. 8 social media video, Nunn said, “We have cut the largest taxes in U.S. history,” when addressing volunteers door-knocking. 

Nunn is referring to President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which became law in summer 2025. The bill extended tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that were set to expire and added several new tax cuts. 

Other Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, have also called the legislation the largest tax cut in history, and PolitiFact rated that Mostly False. 

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered the average income tax rates for all income groups,  with the largest cuts concentrated among the top 5% of earners. The act was set to expire on Dec. 31, 2025.

With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, those tax cuts were extended. The legislation also enacted tax breaks for people who work overtime or receive tips. The marginal rates were also adjusted for tax year 2026.  

Measured against the size of the economy, the tax savings in the 2025 law were smaller than earlier laws. Where the law ranks depends on whether you count extending the tax cuts that were set to expire, or only the law’s new tax cuts.

When PolitiFact Iowa asked Nunn’s campaign for more information to support his statement, a spokesperson pointed to an article by Heritage Action, an arm of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. It says Americans would face the largest tax increase in “generations” if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act were to expire. 

Independent economists disagree that it’s the largest tax cut. 

“The 1981 Reagan tax cut was substantially larger relative to the economy,” said Anne Villamil, University of Iowa professor of economics.

The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act cut marginal taxes by more than 25% over three years. The act was aimed at encouraging economic growth by reducing corporate income tax for businesses making less than $50,000 annually and introducing more benefits for married couples. 

How do economists measure tax cuts? 

When calculating tax cuts, economists consider multiple factors. 

OBBBA is projected to gross $4.5 trillion over 10 years,  according to the Congressional Budget Office. Tax bills’ total value increases over time because of inflation. So the ideal way to understand tax cuts is as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP. This put the cuts into the context of inflation and the overall economy. 

Counting just the new tax cuts in the OBBA, they make up 0.5% of GDP . When looking only at the new tax cuts added by the bill, it ranks tied for sixth-largest cut overall since 1980, PolitiFact previously reported. 

When factoring tax cuts extended from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the OBBBA ranks third largest since 1980. Economists have previously told PolitiFact it’s legitimate to measure the size of the tax cuts either way. The law resulted in taxes being lower than they’d be if the 2017 tax cuts expired, but many taxpayers could see little change in taxes because rates stayed the same as in recent years. 

Carrie Houchins-Witt, an enrolled agent professional at Carrie Houchins-Witt Tax and Financial Services, said “a large swath of taxpayers are not seeing any tax cut,” and some people saw their taxes increase. The senior deduction —  $6,000 for people 65 and older making less than $75,000 a year — did benefit many of her clients, she said.  

Our ruling 

Nunn said, “We have cut the largest taxes in U.S. history.”

While the tax cuts are projected to be nominally large, the more effective way of understanding them is in the larger context of the economy.

When looking exclusively at new tax cuts, the OBBBA is tied for sixth-largest since 1980. But, when viewing the OBBBA as an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the bill sits at third largest. 

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

CORRECTION, Oct. 8, 2026: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s senior deduction applies to people 65 and older. An earlier version of this fact-check listed an inaccurate eligibility age.

Harrisburg, PA — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has become dramatically more popular with Pennsylvania Republicans than members of his own party, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The survey found 72% of Republican likely voters view Fetterman favorably, compared with only 13% of Democrats. Among all likely voters, 37% hold a favorable view while 46% view him unfavorably. Independents were also negative, with 27% favorable and 49% unfavorable.

The reversal follows Fetterman’s increasingly frequent criticism of Democrats and cooperation with President Donald Trump. He appeared by video at the Republican Party’s September midterm convention, where he praised working across party lines and received an enthusiastic response from GOP attendees.

Earlier polling showed the shift developing rapidly. In July, 77% of Pennsylvania Republicans approved of Fetterman’s job performance while 69% of Democrats disapproved. By August, nearly four-fifths of Republican likely voters viewed him favorably.

Fetterman has repeatedly rejected speculation that he plans to become a Republican and continues to identify as a Democrat. However, Pennsylvania voters increasingly perceive him differently: a September survey found a majority considered him more Republican than Democratic.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Fetterman Wins 72% GOP Favorability but Just 13% Among Democrats appeared first on News Facts Network.

At a press event today, Microsoft unveiled the new Surface Laptop Ultra featuring an NVIDIA RTX Spark platform with a Blackwell-based GPU capable of up to one petaflop of AI compute. The laptop supports up to 128GB of unified memory for running models as large as 120 billion parameters locally, while also adding a 15-inch mini-LED display, expanded ports, upgraded cooling, and support for hundreds of AAA games. It's available for pre-order today starting at $2,599. Neowin reports: To keep the device's temperature under control, Microsoft has also developed a new cooling system that offers up to 2.5 times the thermal capacity of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7th Edition. The Surface Laptop Ultra comes with a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra mini-LED touchscreen with a 3:2 aspect ratio, a pixel density of 262 PPI, and peak HDR brightness of up to 2,000 nits. Despite its beefy specs, the Surface Laptop Ultra measures less than 18mm thick and weighs under 4.5 pounds (around 2kg). The laptop will be available in Platinum and Nightfall finishes. Microsoft has also increased the size of the precision haptic touchpad by more than 30% compared to the Surface Laptop 7th Edition for improved haptic input. The Surface Laptop Ultra includes a broader selection of ports, featuring USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. It also features the world's first built-in USB-C magnetic charging.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Legislation is an effort by ruling Liberals to address growing clash over who has access to doctor-assisted death

Canada’s federal government said on Wednesday it would advance legislation to prevent people whose sole health condition is mental illness from accessing euthanasia, an effort by the ruling Liberal party to address a clash in the country over who has access to physician-assisted death.

Under the current rules, people whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness have been barred from accessing medical assistance in dying (Maid) to end their lives. But that ban – due to be lifted in March – has divided lawmakers over whether to permit this expansion of the Maid program.

In Canada, Crisis Services Canada can be contacted at any time on 1.833.456.4566, or via text on 45645 from 4pm-12am ET. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Plínio Vicentin Júnior, who ran for Congress in Brazil as “Plinio Trump,” came in 626th place.

HOUSTON, Oct. 7, 2026 — HPE today announced the first four of its HPE ProLiant Gen13 Servers powered by 6th Generation AMD EPYC Server processors. The new systems expand compute, memory, and I/O capabilities to help enterprises accelerate agentic AI and inference, analytics, virtualization, simulation, and modeling while strengthening security, simplifying operations, and providing reliability across distributed IT environments.

As AI systems evolve from generating insights to taking autonomous action, trust becomes a prerequisite for scale. McKinsey’s 2026 AI Trust Maturity Survey found that nearly two-thirds of respondents cited security and risk concerns as the top barrier to fully scaling agentic AI. Within this evolving landscape, HPE ProLiant Gen13 helps customers address security and operational barriers with a trusted infrastructure foundation that combines HPE iLO 8 innovations for automatic protection, infrastructure trust, and post-quantum readiness with enhanced visibility and control from HPE Compute Ops Management.

“Organizations need to turn their investments in agentic AI and inference into business value without adding operational complexity or risk,” said Krista Satterthwaite, senior vice president and general manager, Compute at HPE. “For these workloads, HPE ProLiant Gen13 brings together optimized performance, built-in, automatic security, intelligent operations, and proven reliability. It gives customers a trusted foundation to modernize and innovate today and adapt as their requirements evolve.”

“AI is moving into the applications and operations that run the enterprise, fundamentally changing what organizations demand from their infrastructure,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Compute and Enterprise AI, AMD. “Across generations of AMD EPYC CPUs and HPE ProLiant servers, our teams have worked side by side to turn advances in processor and system design into practical value for customers. With 6th Gen AMD EPYC processors and HPE ProLiant Gen13, we are delivering the performance, efficiency and flexibility enterprises need to scale AI while modernizing the critical workloads their businesses depend on.”

AI-ready performance across enterprise workloads

HPE is reinforcing its leadership in enterprise compute by introducing new HPE ProLiant Gen13 Servers that simplify the path to innovation and give customers the secure foundation needed for the AI era. Combining HPE engineering with 6^th Gen AMD EPYC Server processors enables delivery of higher core density, memory bandwidth, and I/O capacity.

• The HPE ProLiant DL585a Gen13 Server is a future-ready, high-density platform designed to support up to eight double-wide PCIe GPUs, two 6^th Gen AMD EPYC Server processors, and PCIe Gen6 connectivity. The server maximizes GPU utilization, token throughput, and PCIe bandwidth at every layer for the most demanding workloads including AI inference, virtualization, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model fine-tuning, analytics, and emerging agentic AI.
• The HPE ProLiant DL525 Gen13 Server is a compact, performance-optimized 1U, single-socket system powered by one 6^th Gen AMD EPYC Server processor with up to 256 cores. High bandwidth 16-channel memory, with support for high-speed and high performance –DDR5 and MRDIMM – and PCIe Gen6 connectivity, make the system ideal for workloads with extremely high data throughput, such as: fraud detection, market-data processing, risk and pricing models, electronic design automation (EDA), simulation, and AI inference.

For large-scale, compute-intensive applications, HPE is also introducing HPE ProLiant XD245 Server and HPE ProLiant XD285 Server – two systems designed to maximize compute performance within a smaller footprint. The two OCP-compliant servers combine high-density compute with efficient shared power and cooling to support data-intensive AI and HPC workloads.

• The HPE ProLiant XD245 Server uses a one-Open Rack Unit (1OU), four-node direct liquid-cooled design to deliver high compute density and is powered by up to eight 6th Gen AMD EPYC Server processors.
• The HPE ProLiant XD285 Server uses a two-Open Rack Unit (2OU), two-node air-cooled design, extending the architecture to a broader range of data center environments.

Engineered to process large-scale simulations, complex computational models, and datasets at the rack level, these systems provide the capacity, bandwidth, and infrastructure flexibility – cooling and accelerator options – needed for CPU-intensive workloads including computer-aided engineering (CAE), weather and climate modeling, scientific research, and financial modeling.

HPE ProLiant Gen13 will expand beyond the systems announced today, giving customers additional choices for mainstream enterprise, edge, virtualization, software-defined infrastructure, database, and AI workloads.

Automatic security and streamlined operations

HPE ProLiant Gen13 combines automatic security from HPE Integrated Lights-Out 8 (iLO 8) with enhanced HPE Compute Ops Management capabilities to protect data and system integrity while simplifying deployment and lifecycle operations.

New industry-first features, available in HPE ProLiant Gen13, include:

• Automatic self-encrypting drive (Auto-SED) server capabilities, first in the industry, protects data at rest from first boot without added configuration, external key managers, or manual activation.
• Industry-first multi-person authorization (MPA) requires two authorized users to approve high-impact actions, including key provisioning and secure erase, reducing the risk of single-user error or misuse.
• Expanded post-quantum cryptography (PQC) readiness, first in the industry, that now extends beyond firmware to help protect server communication paths from emerging threats.
• Enterprise-grade component verification, built upon HPE’s Silicon Root of Trust, validates the authenticity and integrity of critical server components as they are added, replaced, or modified throughout the server lifecycle.

New capabilities from HPE Compute Ops Management help customers operate HPE ProLiant Gen13 infrastructure with greater efficiency and resiliency through low-touch onboarding, and near real-time power capacity insights. Organizations using HPE Compute Ops Management spent 50% less time managing servers and generated 209% ROI.

Proven Reliability for Evolving Infrastructure Needs

Each new generation of HPE ProLiant undergoes more than 1,000 tests and 10,000 hours of validation to help deliver consistent performance, availability, and resilience enterprises depend on, this includes advanced stress and corner-case testing that push the systems beyond published operating limits. Reliability is the leading HPE ProLiant customer purchase driver, for four consecutive years, with 81% citing reliable performance as a key differentiator from other server vendors and twice-fast support resolution. Additionally, HPE Tech Care Service further strengthens resiliency by delivering up to 97% less unplanned downtime, helping customers prevent, identify, and resolve issues as infrastructure needs change.

Availability

• The HPE ProLiant DL525 Gen13 server will be available later in 2026.
• The HPE ProLiant DL585a Gen13 server will be available in early 2027.
• The HPE ProLiant XD245 and XD285 Servers will be available in 2027.

HPE ProLiant Gen13 Servers are available through HPE Financial Services’ 90/9 Advantage program. With no payments for 90 days, followed by nine months at 1% per month, the program helps organizations move forward with critical technology investments outside budget cycles.

More from HPCwire: HPE Launches Gen13 ProLiant Servers for HPC and AI Workloads

About HPE

HPE (NYSE: HPE) is a leader in essential enterprise technology, bringing together the power of AI, cloud, and networking to help organizations achieve more. As pioneers of possibility, our innovation and expertise advance the way people live and work. We empower our customers across industries to optimize operational performance, transform data into foresight, and maximize their impact. Unlock your boldest ambitions with HPE. Discover more at www.hpe.com.

Source: HPE

The post HPE Accelerates Enterprise AI Innovation with Next-Gen AMD CPU-Powered Servers appeared first on HPCwire.

Flat buttocks? Own a snail? Here’s how to find out what Amazon’s About You page knows — or thinks it knows — about you as a person.

What happens when local zoning laws are interpreted to prevent the construction of a religious site on a property associated with a church? The Supreme Court will decide that question in its new term in a case taken by the justices last week.

On Oct. 1, 2026, the Court granted a petition for a writ of certiorari in Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist v. Joel Frederic. St. John claims the zoning decision placed a “substantial burden” on its First Amendment free exercise rights, citing a provision under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

In return, Joel and Elizabeth Frederic, neighbors to the proposed site, argue the Kentucky Supreme Court correctly interpreted the zoning regulations of Park Hills, Kentucky, to exclude the planned grotto honoring the Virgin Mary. The state court ruled St. John had alternative options for its grotto project, and the zoning regulations were not an unreasonable burden.

Now, the Supreme Court will review the project in the context of the federal RLUIPA statute and basic constitutional zoning powers.

Local Zoning and Federal Religious Protections

The ability of local governments to pass and enforce zoning laws was affirmed in the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. (1926). Ambler Realty owned property targeted for industrial development in Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland. The Euclid council passed a zoning law that restricted such industrial developments, and Ambler sued on 14th Amendment due process and equal protection grounds.

Writing for a divided Supreme Court, Justice George Sutherland held that “the segregation of residential, business, and industrial buildings” had many public safety benefits. Sutherland said that before a zoning ordinance could be declared unconstitutional it had to be proven to be “arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.”

These general police powers of state and local governments are affirmed by the principle of federalism and the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which states that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

When Congress passed RLUIPA in 2000, the law contained language intended to protect the free exercise of religious rights in the context of state and local zoning laws.

According to the Justice Department, RLUIPA prohibits any land-use regulations that impose a “substantial burden” on the religious exercise of a person or religious assembly or institution except where justified by a “compelling governmental interest” and when the government pursues that interest in the least restrictive way possible. In legal terms, this is known as a strict security test that presents a very high bar for the government to overcome.

In its petition to the Supreme Court, St. John stated the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision lacked adequate justification for the restrictions placed on the grotto project, and it was treated differently as a religious institution compared with a secular institution.

St. John owns a church, Our Lady of Lourdes, that was built in 1930. Although the church is located in a residential zone, the church existed before Park Hills had a zoning code, and it is permitted as a nonconforming use as a religious institution in the residential area. Under general zoning concepts, a property owner can continue with an unconforming use until the use is different or the property is abandoned.

The church later entered into a lease agreement with a trust for a property that adjoins the church. St. John planned to use the adjacent property for the grotto. St. John applied to the Park Hills Board of Adjustment for “permission to install a customary accessory structure (i.e. grotto) to the existing conditional use for a place of religious worship,” according to court records. After a public hearing, the Board of Adjustment granted a conditional use permit and setback variances on the condition the property was deeded to St. John.

The Frederics filed a complaint about the Board of Adjustment decision, noting that the grotto could only be situated on a property adjacent to an arterial street under the local zoning code, which the church was not on an arterial street. The Frederics were concerned about increased community traffic. The circuit court ruled in favor of St. John, but an appeals court unanimously reversed the lower court’s ruling. It held that the Board of Adjustment exceeded its statutory zoning authority in granting St. John a conditional use permit and variances since it expanded the scope of the church’s preexisting nonconforming use, an act that violated the local zoning code.

The Kentucky state supreme court agreed with the appeals court, and it held that the appeals court decision did not violate RLUIPA, although it came to that conclusion on different grounds. It cited the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Livingston Christian Schools v. Genoa Charter Twp (2017) as guiding precedent, stating that “the religious institution has a feasible alternative location from which it can carry on its mission.”

The Arguments on Both Sides

The Supreme Court only accepted one of two questions posed in St. John’s petition. It declined to consider if the church was treated differently than a secular institution. But it will consider arguments about RLUIPA’s Substantial Burden Provision.

“The Kentucky Supreme Court held that denying petitioner a permit to construct the shrine does not impose a substantial burden on petitioner’s religious exercise solely because petitioner could build a smaller shrine on a different plot and because petitioner was aware of a prohibitory ordinance before it sought a permit,” it argued.

St. John also stated that “well-recognized conflicts among circuits and state supreme courts” exist about RLUIPA’s Substantial Burden Provision and the lower courts were deeply divided on the statute’s guarantees.

“Because these questions recur in communities across the country wherever religious organizations seek to build or expand, this Court’s resolution of the conflicts is critical,” it concluded.

In a reply filing, the attorneys for the Frederics repeated the basic argument accepted by the Kentucky supreme court that the local zoning board lacked the power to allow the grotto on the adjacent lot and that St. John could build a similar grotto on its church property.

St. John in its most-recent filing noted that a recent Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Anash v. Borough of Kingston (2026), strongly supported its argument. In Anash, a divided court said that the municipality of Kingston, Pennsylvania, violated the religious rights of a rabbi protected under RLUIPA. The rabbi sought to use two buildings he owned in a commercial district for religious instruction, housing students, maintaining an office, and for prayers. The municipality issued two notices of zoning-ordinance violations.

“Unless land use regulation satisfies strict scrutiny, the choice of where the exercise of religion can take place should be left to persons with rights of access to and use of real property—not to zoning codes and landmarking laws promulgated by governments,” the Third Circuit concluded.

In taking St. John’s appeal, at least four Supreme Court justices at private conference agreed to consider the Substantial Burden Provision. So far, the Court has not considered the provision in detail, and any substantial ruling could have wide-ranging impacts on local zoning laws nationally.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

An ad against Josh Turek, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Iowa, portrays him as someone who doesn’t care about border security and would rather have “amnesty” for people in the country illegally.

“Liberal politician Josh Turek supports amnesty for illegals,” the ad’s narrator says before a video clip shows Turek saying, “We need an easier pathway to citizenship.” 

The ad from the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC shows images of people crossing a river and pulling down wire fencing while the narrator argues Turek has lax policies on border security and immigration. It aired nationally during the Sept. 26 University of Iowa-University of Michigan football game.

Turek, a state lawmaker and two-time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair basketball, faces Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former journalist, in the competitive race to fill the seat vacated by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who is not seeking reelection. Republicans have painted Turek as supporting broad protections for people in the country illegally.

But this ad oversimplifies Turek’s position and relies on a very narrow interpretation of “amnesty,” a term with no legal definition in immigration policy. 

Although Turek is critical of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, he says he supports strict border security. He has also said it should be easier for immigrants to obtain citizenship, often pointing to his wife, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic. But he stops short of endorsing citizenship for all immigrants in the country illegally, saying some people should be permitted to stay if they meet certain conditions.

The ad’s clip of Turek’s comments comes from a May debate between Turek and his primary election opponent in which he said he supports the Dignity Act, a bipartisan congressional proposal that would let some immigrants who are illegally in the country gain limited legal status if they meet certain requirements; it would not provide a guaranteed pathway to citizenship.

As a super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign for federal candidates. When PolitiFact asked the group for evidence Turek supports amnesty, spokesperson Chris Gustafson pointed us to his debate comments and the Dignity Act’s details.

Here’s more to know about the group’s ad.

What is ‘amnesty’? And would the Dignity Act provide it?

At its most broad, amnesty can mean any policy waiving punishments for immigration violations. More narrowly, it’s sometimes understood as a widespread granting of citizenship to people in the country illegally.

Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, said the word is ultimately a political term with no legal definition, and it’s used by immigration opponents to disparage any loosening of immigration penalties. 

One thing is clear: The Dignity Act that Turek said he supports does not meet the latter interpretation.

“If you think that amnesty is complete forgiveness at no cost, then this isn’t it,” Somin said of the Dignity Act.

The Dignity Act, led by Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, has 38 additional House cosponsors split evenly among Democrats and Republicans. The sponsors introduced the latest version in July 2025, and it has not received any committee action.  

The bill would let immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally before 2021 receive a new “dignity status” if they are employed or in school, pass a background check and pay $7,000 in fines, as well as back taxes and extra taxes going forward. It bars anyone who has committed a felony from qualifying.

Those who get “dignity status” would not be permanent residents and would need to renew their status every seven years. They wouldn’t be eligible for U.S. citizenship or federal benefits, either. 

The proposal would also let immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — aka “Dreamers” — obtain legal status and eventually be eligible for permanent residence. At that point, they’d be eligible for U.S. citizenship under the usual paths for permanent residents. 

The bill also includes a slew of immigration enforcement measures: mandating businesses to hire workers with legal status; providing increased funding for border barriers and monitoring;  and increasing penalties for illegally crossing the border.

Steve Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports strict immigration laws, said even though the bill includes these conditions, it’s fair to call it amnesty because it waives penalties for an offense.

“You pay this penalty, you behave in this way, you wait this long, and that’s also a type of amnesty,” he said. “And that’s what this one is.”

Even the bill’s sponsors disagree on whether the Dignity Act qualifies as “amnesty.” The Senate Leadership Fund pointed us to an article in which Republican Rep. John Duarte of California said, “if you want to call it, an amnesty. I’m comfortable with the word.”

But other Republican cosponsors reject that sentiment. Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in an April radio interview, “This is not an amnesty bill.” Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Gabe Evans of Colorado made similar points.

Examining Turek’s past immigration votes and comments

Turek broke with his party and joined Republicans to back stricter immigration laws in 2024. He was one of three Iowa House Democrats that year who voted for a measure that made being in the country illegally a state crime in Iowa, and gave state officials power to enforce immigration laws. 

And although Turek said in his primary debate comments that he would support “permanent residency or citizenship” for some immigrants in the country illegally who qualified under the bill, that goes further than the actual Dignity Act does.

Yet, Turek’s campaign told PolitiFact he does not support a pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally, and spokesperson Hannah Goss called the ad’s claim “categorically false.” Goss pointed to Turek’s break with his party and said he supports making citizenship easier for people who immigrated to the U.S. legally.

Our ruling

A Senate Leadership Fund ad said Turek “supports amnesty” for immigrants illegally in the country. 

Turek has called for letting some immigrants in the country illegally be eligible for a restricted legal status. But they’d need to pay a fine and wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship. Some advocates of stricter immigration policies consider that amnesty, because it waives punishments.

In other cases, Turek has said he supports a “pathway to citizenship,” without making clear whether that applies to people illegally in the country.

What counts as amnesty is debated, but the context of the Dignity Act matters. It wouldn’t grant citizenship and it places a high bar for people to achieve a limited legal status.

The ad is partially accurate, but it leaves out important details about Turek’s position. We rate it Half True.

Young entrepreneurs are tapping AI to launch a range of businesses, from analyzing your skin to helping wine growers analyze crop yields.

Nearly 460 schools are affected by continuing protests today, just over a half of those that joined the ‘day of mobilisation’ yesterday

We are getting reports of a knife attack at a vocational school in Ostrołęka, Poland, which left at least seven people injured, including two seriously, as reported by Poland’s RMF FM radio.

The city mayor, Paweł Niewiadomski, confirmed in a statement that the situation has been contained.

“Henri Kagan discovered a new way of manipulating chemical reactions, allowing a greater excess of one of the mirror images to be created than was previously assumed possible. His discovery has been revolutionary for chemists who develop reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, flavours, scents and new materials.

Kenso Soai designed the first chemical reaction in which only one of the potential mirror images was formed. Other than life itself, no one had ever achieved this feat. The Soai reaction is one of the most spectacular chemical experiments ever conducted.”

The Tabli launched in August and drew a rave review from CNET’s resident coffee expert.

Donald Trump’s unpopularity and the economic struggles of voters have boosted Democrats. But with less than a month to go, there is no complacency

For once, Democrats and Donald Trump might be in agreement: “Pretend I’m on the ticket,” the historically unpopular president has instructed supporters. Midterms are in large part a referendum on the incumbent, and Trump’s war on Iran and its impact on the cost of living have boosted support for Democrats. With less than a month to go, they have reason to be upbeat. The party has a mountain to climb after the devastating defeats of 2024, and the gerrymandering of Republicans, but surveys give it a lead of about nine points on the generic ballot, which measures preference for parties rather than specific candidates.

Attention has turned from the prospects of seizing the House, where Democrats are forecast a clear majority, to what once seemed like the highly optimistic possibility of taking the Senate too. That would require flipping four seats, with 35 in play. Remarkably, Democrats are prospering in red states from Texas to Alaska. In Kansas – which Mr Trump carried by 16 points, and which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932 – the race is neck and neck.

Party hopes to win over affluent middle-class voters as leader rejects calls to ‘unite the right’ in conference speech

Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Conservatives would abolish inheritance tax on family homes if elected, prompting criticism that she is prioritising cutting taxes for the rich.

The Tory leader also said couples would be able to leave an additional tax-free sum of £1m to their families, as the party attempts to shore up its traditional base in southern England.

Williston, a small Vermont town of 10,000 people, is best known as a bucolic suburb of Burlington laden with historic buildings and farmland.

Like the rest of the state, the hamlet is about 90 percent white. Williston has seen few of the sorts of large-scale Trump administration immigration operations that have sparked raucous protests. Aside from a few raids against migrant farm workers, there has been little in the way of detentions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The town is, in other words, a surprising scene for the robust protests that erupted there over the past two years, with hundreds protesting against ICE.

The explanation lies in a low-slung modern building with façade of glass and dark-blue ribbed sheet metal: ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, a facility designed to help identify, track, and arrest deportation targets across the country. Along with other Department of Homeland Security infrastructure in the area, the NCATC made Williston into a hub of anti-immigration enforcement.

The protests, however, weren’t initially met with the sorts of crackdown against speech experienced by other anti-ICE protesters. The local prosecutor for Chittenden County, where the surveillance center is located, repeatedly opted not to prosecute protesters arrested at the facility.

As the Trump administration ramped up its attacks against left-wing protesters, however, Williston was not spared. Beginning in September, state and federal authorities have found ways to levy criminal charges against activists.

In late September, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark introduced surprise misdemeanor charges against 13 protesters for allegedly participating in a July sit-in at the NCATC. Then, last week, federal prosecutors unveiled surprise charges against five people, some of whom were already being charged by Clark. The five people facing federal charges, ranging in age from 22 to 80 years old, are alleged by federal authorities to have disrupted operations at the NCATC on multiple occasions.

Activists in Vermont took note of the timing: The cases came as they ramped up to launch a concerted week of protest actions against the ICE intelligence hub.

“Our assumption,” said Julie Macuga, an anti-ICE organizer involved in the protests, “has been that they did this so close to the week of action in order to try to intimidate people, in order to make people think twice about doing civil disobedience, for fear that they’re going to get charged.”

ICE in Williston

As ICE’s budget has ballooned under the Trump administration, the agency poured billions of dollars into development projects designed to expand surveillance capabilities. With astronomical goals for its deportations and a growing crackdown against dissenters, the surveillance infrastructure would provide the agency with a network of spyware for tracking migrants, protesters, and political opponents.

Related

ICE Gave New Hires Access to Restricted Info on Palantir App Before They Passed Background Checks

“What we’re seeing is this really huge increase in access to surveillance at both the national, state, and local level,” Michelle Dahl, an attorney who serves as the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “We’re seeing that play out now in these types of surveillance dragnet centers.”

The NCATC is one of only two facilities like it in the nation. It is designed to rapidly respond to requests for information from field agents by using both open-source intelligence gathering and advanced surveillance tools to scour the internet and trawl social media for leads.

Although ICE has had facilities in Williston for years, significant efforts have been made to expand the scope of facility’s operations under the Trump administration.

According to government contractor recruiting documents first posted by ICE in 2025 and reposted this August, the NCATC is designed to employ at least a dozen analysts to answer requests 24 hours a day, coming up with target information in as little as 30 minutes. The facility operates in tandem with the office running ICE’s national tipline and its National Law Enforcement Support Center — two other major ICE facilities based in Williston.

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Dahl said that despite its location, the gathering of resources in Williston is characteristic of the “fusion center” model designed to allow rapid dissemination of information between national facilities, federal agents, and local police departments.

“The fusion centers don’t have to be located in any place to collect surveillance — that’s how highly networked surveillance is across the country,” she said. “They could put it literally anywhere and be able to access the entire nationwide network.”

“No Real Precedent for It”

As a result of ICE’s expansion in Vermont, the NCATC has quickly become the subject of one of the the state’s largest recurring protests. Over the past year, hundreds of people attended rallies outside the center.

Some demonstrators took up nonviolent direct action. In one instance, clergy entered the halls and blocked an entrance. Dozens were arrested as part of the protests, but none were charged — until late September, when Clark, Vermont’s attorney general, began taking up cases that Sarah George, the state’s attorney in Chittenden County, had declined to pursue.

Related

Secret ICE Agent Tried to “Entice” Minneapolis Activists Into Confrontational Tactics

“We had been checking the docket and were under the impression that charges were not being pursued,” recalled Roan Wade, who was one of the 13 people charged for protesting at the facility. “It was definitely kind of a shock to have that happen.”

It later emerged that the charges had stemmed from an unusual move: The Vermont State Police began circumventing George and instead took their cases directly to the attorney general’s office. Unlike in other cases, the Vermont State Police never delivered these the charges to George’s office.

“There have been cases that Sarah George has declined, but these 13 cases were never even brought,” said state Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the unprecedented move appeared to be legal in Vermont. “This type of stepping outside of our normal court system, as far as I can tell — and I also spoke to actual attorneys in the system — there’s no real precedent for it.”

“Extremely Concerning”

The decision to prosecute protesters for anti-ICE activity quickly ignited a firestorm among the Vermont Democratic Party establishment — which Clark, the attorney general, belongs to.

Related

Trump’s Spaghetti-Against-the-Wall Indictment Against ICE Protesters — and How to Fight It

Within days of the decision becoming public, the state Senate majority leader, treasurer, and a host of representatives, candidates, and local officials all issued condemnations of the charges and Clark’s unusual actions.

“I found that decision to be extremely concerning,” Nikhil Goyal, a state Senate candidate in one of the districts containing charged protesters, told The Intercept. “There is enormous precedent, both in and out of our state, where prosecutors don’t use precious resources to go after peaceful protesters simply trying to stop a fascist machine from kidnapping our neighbors.”

Wade, one of the charged protesters, says that the decision to prosecute is emblematic of wider trends among the national left, who have at times been starkly divided in their treatment of anti-ICE protests.

“It highlights some of the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party,” they said. “The same folks who claim to be opposing Trump and fighting this fascist administration are also prosecuting protesters.”

Soon, the federal charges would come down against the five additional protesters.

The Eve of Protests

The charges, both in state and federal court, were filed just ahead of the beginning of a national “week of action” organized by activists opposed to ICE’s operations in Vermont.

Related

Undercover Cops Infiltrated Delaney Hall ICE Protest to Spy and Make Arrest

Organizers say that they expect hundreds of participants and that the protests are slated to be the largest instances of direct confrontation to ever target ICE’s national surveillance center. Some organizers say the arrests are only helping to fuel further activism.

“All it’s really done is bring a lot more attention to the issue,” said Macuga, the protest organizer.

For their part, the Vermont State Police indicated that any further charges pertaining to protests at the facility will continue to circumvent local authorities and instead be referred directly to the attorney general for prosecution. (The State Police did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Repression breeds resistance,” said Wade, the protester. “If anything, it’s caused a lot more outrage.”

The post Feds Charged Activists Just Before Major Anti-ICE Protest in a Tiny Vermont Town appeared first on The Intercept.

Organisations honour those who died three years ago as Andy Burnham says government stands with British Jews

British Jewish organisations gathered in central London on Wednesday for a vigil honouring victims of the 7 October attacks in Israel, after a day of tributes from politicians and community leaders.

The vigil took place at Richmond Terrace, opposite Downing Street. The Board of Deputies of British Jews said: “Three years ago, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, murdering 1,200 men, women and children, injuring thousands and taking 251 people captive. May their memories for ever remain a blessing.”

From Ugg and Ninja to KitchenAid and Shark – we researched the best sales to get your hands on for Prime Day

• The best deals from Amazon’s rivals and sales on home essentials

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

Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, live on 6 and 7 October, is the Super Bowl of online shopping. While the e-commerce behemoth just hosted another Prime Day in June, consumerism never sleeps and there are still genuinely good deals to be found, although some are exclusive to Amazon Prime members. But if parsing through thousands of deals isn’t your jam, fear not, because it’s ours.

As veteran consumer journalists, we’ve taken the time to find out what’s really worth the spend, from expert-vetted tech gadgets to make every day a little easier to rigorously tested kitchen scores that help put dinner on the table quickly. Here are the top Prime Deals to shop from brands you know and love such as KitchenAid, Ninja, Bissell, Ugg and more.

With years of testing under my belt, I rounded up the six best Prime Day kitchen deals to add to your collection.

Rushing to wipe out every debt balance before retirement could come with some surprising tradeoffs. Here's why.

R&D Teams Can Build Complete Quantum Projects from the Idea to the Experiment Itself, Verifying AI Results Every Step of the Way

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2026 — Existing AI models have advanced to the point that they can contribute to real science, but they have their limits. An AI agent can produce convincing math and working code, but it might alter the underlying science while doing so, leaving researchers with results that look right but aren’t. Today, Haiqu is addressing that by unveiling AgenticOS, giving quantum researchers a team of AI agents that are built for scientific exploration, and designed to catch mistakes before they happen.

In complex scientific calculations, general-purpose AI agents can make small changes no one asked for, like shifting a molecular geometry or slipping in an unapproved approximation. The calculation then answers a different question, or returns a result that is simply incorrect. With the Haiqu AgenticOS, researchers can now design an entire quantum project — from the initial question to an experiment that’s ready for quantum hardware — and assign multiple teams of AI agents to validate and confirm the research findings every step of the way. The team overseeing the experiment can then inspect each assumption and conclusion to determine how to proceed.

“Turning a promising research idea into a real experiment demands years of specialized, hands-on expertise in highly technical methods, all of which takes time and resources,” said Mykola Maksymenko, co-founder and CTO of Haiqu. “AgenticOS takes on much of that labor-intensive work, freeing up researchers so they can spend their time working on the right questions, reaching results much faster without sacrificing accuracy.”

AgenticOS builds on the Haiqu platform announced in May. A researcher starts with a question, and the system assigns teams of specialized AI agents to review the literature, work through first-principles mathematical derivations, assess quantum feasibility and check the results. Haiqu’s AgenticOS shows its investigative process as a map of connected research tasks. Results are checked against classical baselines, tests, critic agents and human review, with formal verification. Scientists decide what gets locked, which tasks run on their own and where a human signs off.

During a recent chemistry study accepted at the NeurIPS 2026 workshop in Paris focused on AI for Scientific Discovery, Haiqu demonstrated the need for its platform by giving leading AI agents the same research brief, with and without AgenticOS. On their own, four of 10 agent runs ignored an explicit setup instruction, resulting in widely different answers. Using Haiqu’s AgenticOS, the same models held to the approved protocol from start to finish and produced a simulated quantum result within approximately 3.4% of the exact diagonalization reference.

“Being able to organize, ground and check an AI agent’s work matters as much for scientific research as improving the models themselves,” said Richard Givhan, co-founder and CEO of Haiqu. “Every lab will soon have access to the same powerful AI. The ones that pull ahead will be the ones that can trust what it produces, and that’s exactly what we built AgenticOS to do.”

AgenticOS has already been deployed to work on one of the hardest problems in physics. The Hubbard model describes electrons hopping across a grid and repelling each other when they meet. Haiqu targeted a 2D “doped, frustrated with diagonal hopping” version of the model, which is used to study high-temperature superconductivity in copper-based materials known as cuprates. Starting from a scientist’s idea, AgenticOS built the experiment on a 3-by-3 grid, small enough to cross-check against an exact classical solution, and ran it on an IBM quantum computer. It reduced circuit depth by 75% and proposed a calibration that brought the hardware result in line with what an error-free quantum computer would produce using the same method. That shows a way to apply the same approach to larger simulations that classical computers can’t solve exactly.

Haiqu’s platform serves enterprise teams testing individual use cases, university research labs and scientists from other fields looking to take their first step into quantum computing. Agents can help users determine if a specific quantum approach is worth pursuing, while mapping out algorithm options, identifying the assumptions and identifying the classical benchmarks needed to judge the result.

When a research plan is ready, AgenticOS hands it straight to Haiqu’s quantum software stack. The Haiqu SDK squeezes more out of today’s noisy hardware with data loading, circuit compression and error mitigation. The Haiqu Runtime then manages execution on simulators and quantum processors from IBM, IonQ, IQM, AWS and others, cutting time and cost by up to 1,000x. The same platform that helps a researcher frame the question can take the answer all the way to a quantum computer.

Availability

AgenticOS is included with the Haiqu operating system, and is available now to enterprise R&D teams upon request. Companies can request access and book a demo now.

Academic researchers can apply for free access to the Haiqu platform, including AgenticOS, through the company’s Academic Program. Participating labs get the Haiqu SDK. They can also apply for AWS credits to cover classical and quantum computing workloads.

Details are at haiqu.ai/academic.

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. Its AgenticOS gives researchers a team of AI agents that turns open research questions into verifiable quantum experiments, with scientists in control at every stage. Headquartered in New York City, Haiqu’s expert team operates from the U.S., Canada, Ukraine, U.K., EU and Singapore, contributing to the company’s mission to make quantum computing practical as soon as possible.

Source: Haiqu

The post Haiqu Unveils AgenticOS, a System of Agents Solving Some of Physics’ Toughest Problems appeared first on HPCwire.

Healthcare providers and middlemen are exploiting a loophole in a 2020 law designed to shield consumers from surprise medical bills.

Christa Pike, a death row inmate who survived the state of Tennessee’s attempt to execute her last week, is conscious and speaking. The 50-year-old is recovering in hospital after surviving two lethal injections in a case that has shocked many in the US and prompted a debate about the death penalty. She was due to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Michael Safi speaks to the chief reporter for Guardian US, Ed Pilkington – watch on YouTube

RENO, Nev., Oct. 7, 2026 — CIQ, the founding commercial sponsor of Rocky Linux, today announced the CIQ Supercomputing Local AI Hackathon, a hands-on technical build weekend in Chicago right before Supercomputing 2026 (SC26). The hackathon is presented with NVIDIA and Drive Capital, and supported by Lenovo, VAST Data, and Moonlite. Up to 20 teams will each get their own multi-node cluster and one challenge: build a real AI workload that makes full use of it.

Most AI work starts on a single machine and gets stuck when it needs more memory, throughput, or concurrency than that machine can give. The hackathon puts developers right at that step. Each team gets two Lenovo ThinkStation PGX systems powered by the NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, connected into a cluster and orchestrated through CIQ Fuzzball.

“Some of the best work in this industry happens when you hand talented people real compute and a hard problem,” said Bjorn Hovland, President of CIQ. “Fuzzball handles the orchestration so teams can focus on models and performance. We want to see what that second node unlocks, and we want the SC26 community to see it too.”

Teams will compete in one of four tracks:

• Multi-Node Training: Train or fine-tune a model across multiple nodes.
• Inference at Scale: Increase throughput, concurrency, model capacity, or performance with multi-node inference.
• Scientific AI: Apply distributed AI to a scientific or research workload.
• Cluster and Scheduling: Build around orchestration, scheduling, resource allocation, or utilization.

The top three teams win SC26 conference passes and will be recognized at the CIQ booth during SC26 and featured on an NVIDIA Developer Livestream.

Participation is in person, with teams of three to five members who have multi-node or HPC experience. Registration requires approval. To apply, visit luma.com/local-ai-hack-chicago.

About CIQ

CIQ is the founding support and services partner for Rocky Linux and a leading provider of Enterprise Linux infrastructure. CIQ delivers commercially supported Linux offerings, high-performance computing solutions, and AI infrastructure to enterprises, government agencies, research institutions and supercomputing centers worldwide. CIQ’s products include the Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC Pro) family of operating systems, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Fuzzball job-based container orchestration, Warewulf cluster provisioning and Apptainer, the leading container system for high-performance computing. For more information, visit ciq.com.

Source: CIQ

The post CIQ Challenges 20 Teams to Scale Real AI Across a Full Cluster Before SC26 appeared first on HPCwire.

The Tory leader’s proposal to slash the tax would shovel £6bn of taxpayer money to the already-wealthy

Kemi Badenoch’s inheritance tax gambit is a Conservative classic. After all, it was George Osborne’s high-profile pledge to “take the family home out of inheritance tax” in 2007 that put Gordon Brown off calling a snap general election.

In practice, Osborne’s plan involved a £1m threshold for inheritance tax – and given the global financial crisis had blown a hole in the public finances by the time the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition came to power in 2010, it never came to pass.

Listening to the president at a rally these days is a mix of deja vu and word salad, but his decade-long project of division remains abnormal and dangerous

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday

Donald Trump’s campaign rallies can be repetitive. Very repetitive. He calls himself the “greatest” president leading the “greatest” movement inside the “greatest” economy. He rails against “Dumocrats” for the “transgender mutilization” of children. He lambasts the “fake news” and reheats election lies. He describes illegal immigration as an “invasion” and recites the poem The Snake.

If we were all frogs being slowly boiled alive, we’ve now reached the stage of blackened toad. After a decade of this, presidential utterances that would once have caused outrage are met with a shrug. We are no longer shockable. Or so we thought.

Delaware inspector general launches website, hotline for fraud and abuse complaints

New public portal gives Delawareans a direct way to report fraud, waste, corruption and misuse of state resources

DOVER, Del. — Delaware’s Office of the Inspector General has launched a public website and complaint hotline, giving residents, state employees and others a direct way to report suspected fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption and misuse of state government resources.

The launch marks another step in establishing the independent watchdog office created by the General Assembly in 2025 and now led by Delaware’s first inspector general, Robert P. Storch.

The new website provides information about the office, its responsibilities and how it operates. It also includes an online form for submitting complaints and concerns to the inspector general.

Complaints and inquiries are kept confidential to the greatest extent possible, according to the office, and people filing reports may choose to remain anonymous.

“The public launch of the new OIG website and Hotline mark an important milestone in the development of our office,” Storch said in an announcement reported by Delaware news organizations.

Storch said the office is continuing to hire staff while giving the public more information about the agency and how concerns can be reported.

New avenue for government complaints

The Office of the Inspector General was established as an independent, nonpartisan state agency responsible for detecting and deterring fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption and other abuses of government resources that harm the public interest.

State law allows the inspector general to investigate the management and operations of state agencies and to begin investigations either on the office’s own initiative or after receiving a complaint.

Complaints may be submitted by individuals or organizations.

The law also requires the office to maintain a telephone number, website, email address and mailing address for complaints and inquiries.

The inspector general is required to remain neutral and impartial and is not intended to serve as an advocate either for the person filing a complaint or for the state agency involved.

Delaware’s first inspector general

Gov. Matt Meyer signed Senate Bill 4 in August 2025, creating the Office of the Inspector General following years of discussion about establishing an independent statewide government watchdog.

Storch was sworn in May 8 as Delaware’s first inspector general.

At the time, state officials said the office was intended to strengthen accountability, transparency and public confidence in state government.

Storch previously served as inspector general for the U.S. Department of Defense and as the first Senate-confirmed inspector general of the National Security Agency. He also held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General.

One of Storch’s early priorities was establishing a public website and complaint hotline so Delawareans would have a direct way to bring concerns to the new office.

What the office can investigate

The inspector general’s jurisdiction includes allegations involving fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption and other abuses of government resources.

The office may examine the management and operations of state agencies and investigate complaints involving the public interest.

The law also limits the office’s role in routine employment disputes involving state workers unless those complaints are connected to fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption or another abuse of government resources.

The inspector general also is expected to coordinate with the Delaware Department of Justice, auditor of accounts, Public Integrity Commission and other investigative or law enforcement agencies when appropriate.

State law generally requires the inspector general to issue public findings and recommendations following completed investigations.

The office also must issue an annual report outlining complaints received, investigations opened and completed, significant investigations and unresolved recommendations or concerns.

The launch of the website and hotline gives Delawareans a direct point of access to an office created specifically to investigate concerns about how state government operates and how taxpayer resources are used.

TO GO: Delaware Office of the Inspector General

• Website: https://oig.delaware.gov/
• Online complaint form: https://complaint.oig.delaware.gov/
• Hotline: 1-855-OIG-6998
• Local phone: 302-244-DOIG
• Email: OIG_Hotline@delaware.gov
• Mailing address:
  60 Loockerman Plaza
  Dover, DE 19901
• Confidentiality: Complaints and inquiries are kept confidential to the greatest extent possible. People filing complaints may also choose to report anonymously.
• What it does: Investigates allegations of fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption and other abuse of Delaware government resources.
• Who can file a complaint: Individuals and organizations may submit complaints.
• What can be reported: Suspected fraud, corruption, misuse of taxpayer resources, serious mismanagement or other government conduct that may harm the public interest.
• What it generally does not handle: Routine state employee workplace disputes unless they involve fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption or misuse of government resources.

Internal inquiry exonerates Dan Jukes and James Orr, who were filmed talking about scheme involving US donor

Reform UK has cleared two of its senior officials of breaking laws that ban foreign donations, despite the matter remaining under police investigation.

The party published a 27-page report of an internal inquiry finding that Dan Jukes, Nigel Farage’s press adviser, and James Orr, its head of policy, had not breached funding rules.

August Hanning, 80, appears before judge after being accused of treason and espionage on behalf of foreign state

A formal arrest warrant has been issued against Germany’s former top spy, with a judge ordering him to be held in pre-trial detention, a day after he was arrested on suspicion of treason and spying on behalf of an overseas intelligence agency.

August Hanning, 80, is accused of buying secret documents from a former colleague and using them to advise a foreign intelligence service, according to the office of the federal prosecutor.

Jorge Messi wanted his country to fall in love with his son. That ambition was fulfilled during a brilliant international career that ended this week

“What Argentina is doing in this World Cup is of a sacred order,” Brazilian writer Milly Lacombe posted at the height of the tide of anti-Argentinian sentiment during this year’s tournament. She was exploring the contradiction she felt around her support of Lionel Messi: “a player who is a God and a man who shakes Trump’s hand”.

Lacombe highlighted the importance of acknowledging the complexities around Messi and the Argentinian team. How is it possible that Messi was not speaking out against the racist incidents we all saw around the Argentina team, she asked. “That’s why it hurts so much to see someone with Messi’s power choosing to make himself small,” she wrote.

This Editors’ Choice and Lab Test award-winner is a potent portable power source with a deep discount.

The Xreal Aura will cost $1,279, and it has some similarities to the Meta VR Glasses coming next year.

Skygazers can spot some spectacular sights, including one last good view of the Milky Way.

Texas attorney general acknowledged affordability was his party’s ‘biggest problem’ heading into the midterms

• US politics live – latest updates

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general running as the Republican candidate in a competitive Senate race, admitted privately that rising fuel prices as a result of Donald Trump’s Iran war were hurting his party before the midterms in the latest leaked audio recording.

Asked what issues were “dragging” his campaign at a closed-door fundraising event, Paxton replied, “It’s not tariffs … it’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel,” according to an audio recording shared with Axios.

Drone and satellite images show the volcanic island lost more than 680,000 of its chinstrap penguins between 2011 and 2025, experts said.

Paying down debt is important, but there are times when putting extra money toward it could work against you.

Building in Pryluky destroyed, killing nine people including three children, officials say, night before Russian president’s 74th birthday

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia’s military of deliberately killing civilians and bombing residential buildings as a macabre gift for Vladimir Putin, who celebrates his 74th birthday on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s president described Russia’s overnight drone and missiles strikes, which killed at least 24 people, as “despicable”. “The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively,” he said.

Photo: The ranking evaluates clinical quality, professional reputation, specialized accreditation and patient experience. More than half of the score is based on quality measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. image provided by ChrisitanaCare.

Newsweek again ranks Wilmington Hospital program among nation’s best as ChristianaCare expands rehabilitation capacity in Delaware

WILMINGTON, Del. — ChristianaCare’s Center for Rehabilitation at Wilmington Hospital has been named one of the nation’s best inpatient rehabilitation facilities for the fourth consecutive year.

Newsweek included the center among its Best Physical Rehabilitation Centers in the United States and ranked it among the leading rehabilitation facilities in Delaware.

The ranking evaluates clinical quality, professional reputation, specialized accreditation and patient experience. More than half of the score is based on quality measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“We care for each patient like they are a member of our own family,” said Dr. John Cheng, medical director of the Center for Rehabilitation.

“Each patient, their family, their home situation, how they were before and how they want to be in the future, their goals and what they want to achieve in life — that’s what we focus on.”

Growing demand for rehabilitation

The Wilmington center treats patients recovering from strokes, brain and spinal cord injuries, amputations, extended hospitalizations and serious orthopedic conditions.

In fiscal year 2026, the center discharged 890 patients with an average stay of 11.6 days.

ChristianaCare also reported that 95% of patients were living back in the community 90 days after discharge, compared with a national average of 93%.

“Many medical specialties aim to add years to a patient’s life,” Cheng said. “Our aim is to add life to their years.”

Jennifer Thomas, vice president of Rehabilitation Services, said patients are increasingly arriving with complex medical needs.

“The patient always comes first,” Thomas said. “Our expert team is dedicated to providing the best rehabilitation care with compassion and respect for every patient’s unique journey.”

Preparing patients for home

Rehabilitation includes physical, occupational and speech therapy, with patients practicing everyday activities such as climbing stairs, cooking and shopping.

Families and caregivers are also encouraged to participate in therapy and receive training before patients return home.

“Since I’ve been here, it changed my life for the better,” said patient Anthony Dobrosielski, who received occupational therapy following a fall.

Major Newark expansion coming

ChristianaCare recently expanded the Wilmington center to 36 beds, allowing it to serve about 216 additional patients annually.

A much larger expansion is planned for Newark.

ChristianaCare expects to open a $75 million freestanding inpatient rehabilitation hospital at 140 Red Mill Road in 2028.

The 92,000-square-foot hospital will have 73 beds and is expected to serve about 1,000 additional patients each year.

“This transformative investment will significantly expand access to specialized rehabilitation care across Delaware,” Thomas said.

The project is part of ChristianaCare’s broader $865 million investment in Delaware and is expected to nearly double the health system’s current rehabilitation capacity.

TO GO

• What: ChristianaCare Center for Rehabilitation
• Where: Wilmington Hospital, 501 W. 14th St., Wilmington
• Services: Inpatient rehabilitation for stroke, brain and spinal cord injuries, amputations, orthopedic injuries and other complex conditions.
• Recognition: Named by Newsweek among the nation’s Best Physical Rehabilitation Centers for the fourth consecutive year.
• Coming next: A new 73-bed ChristianaCare rehabilitation hospital is scheduled to open in Newark in 2028.
• Learn more: Visit ChristianaCare.org and search for “Center for Rehabilitation.”

Four people and a dog may have been exposed to rabies from the animal, Los Angeles public health officials say

Los Angeles county recently documented its first rabid raccoon in more than 50 years, and health officials are urging residents to never touch wild animals.

The county’s department of public health announced in a statement this week that four people and a dog may have been exposed to the animal at a backyard work site in the city of Westlake Village. The raccoon appeared in ill health but was not aggressive.

Washington, DC — Companies backed by President Donald Trump’s sons have received or been promised more than $6 billion in federal contracts since those investments were made, according to an ABC News analysis of government contracting records.

The largest example involves Anduril Industries, in which 1789 Capital — a venture firm listing Donald Trump Jr. as a partner — holds a major stake. The Trump administration announced this week that the Navy will support $2.9 billion of a $6.6 billion submarine-manufacturing project at Sparrows Point, Maryland. Since 1789 Capital’s investment, Anduril has also received about $1.8 billion through other federal contracts, ABC reported.

Other Trump-linked investments include drone manufacturers, rare-earth companies, quantum-computing firms and automated defense manufacturers. Hadrian, backed by 1789 Capital, later secured a $900 million Navy agreement, while Vulcan Elements received a $620 million government loan.

Congressional Democrats have asked the Pentagon inspector general to investigate whether conflicts of interest influenced contracting decisions.

The Pentagon says no company receives preferential treatment and that political connections play no role in awards. A spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump likewise denied wrongdoing, saying their investment decisions are independent and that neither brother participates in government procurement decisions.

Sources:

• ABC News – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Sons’ Investments Linked to More Than $6 Billion in Pentagon Deals appeared first on News Facts Network.

Washington, DC — Federal immigration investigators reviewed nearly 100 million voter-related records and considered undercover operations against voter-registration groups as part of a nationwide search for noncitizens suspected of voting illegally.

Documents obtained by Democracy Forward show Homeland Security Investigations analyzed roughly 50.6 million voter-roll records supplied by the Justice Department and another 48.4 million records provided through DHS adviser Heather Honey’s “independent sources.” The records also identify several battleground states as priorities.

Investigators additionally reviewed nonprofit organizations involved in voter registration and discussed using undercover agents where groups were suspected of helping noncitizens register. Some state election data may also have been considered for entry into Palantir software used by ICE for immigration enforcement.

The effort comes as ICE has separately begun asking detainees whether they have ever voted illegally and, if so, whether they voted by mail or in person. The Washington Post reported that the questioning was added to ICE’s booking system in August.

The records document an unusually expansive federal effort to uncover election fraud, though several inquiries described in the files reportedly closed without producing evidence of wrongdoing.

Democracy Forward argues the operation risks intimidating eligible voters. DHS maintains that it investigates credible allegations of criminal activity, including election-related offenses.

Sources:

• The Washington Post – MBFC Rating

The post ICE Election Probe Examined 99 Million Records Despite Sparse Evidence of Illegal Voting appeared first on News Facts Network.

Vice President JD Vance sits down with Tony Dokoupil this month to discuss the midterm elections and the issues shaping voters' choices, with questions from a live audience of Michigan voters.

EMILY BRADY
Columnist

The huge screen. The recliner seats. The buttery popcorn. The sip of a crisp soda. I love everything about going to the movies. It has been one of my favorite things to do since I was little. Even though movies have become easier to watch at home, nothing compares to going to a theater.

I know that in this day and age, it is easy to wait for a movie to hit streaming. You can put on your PJs and watch a movie without spending money on a ticket. You can even pause whenever you want and watch from the comfort of your own couch. But in my opinion, going to the movie theater is 100% worth it.

One thing I love about going to the theater is getting to hear everyone’s live reactions. When something shocking happens, you can hear the entire theater scream. When something is really funny, everyone starts laughing. Even if you do not know the people sitting around you, there is beauty in all experiencing the same thing together. I still remember the collective gasps in my theater when Elphaba performed her iconic “Defying Gravity” scene. I had goosebumps as I witnessed that for the first time. 

I have even had the chance to see a few movies in 4DX, which was such a cool experience. Instead of just watching the movie, you feel like you are actually in it. The seats move along with the action, and there are different effects and scents that match what is happening on screen. Then there is classic 3D, which is also so fun and immersive. When I saw the new “Spider-Man” movie, I felt like he was actually flying toward me!

This might be a hot take, but I actually enjoy watching previews. I usually end up discovering new movies that I want to see. Sometimes I will go to the theater excited to watch one movie and leave already planning to come back for another because of a preview I saw. 

Going to the movies can also be a fun way to spend time with friends or family. Instead of just hanging out at home, you have somewhere to go and something to look forward to. You can get food, watch the movie together and talk about it afterward. Sometimes the debriefs after the movie are the best part!

I should honestly be an AMC A-List member at this point, and I am surprised I am not. Streaming is convenient, and I definitely enjoy watching movies at home too. But when there is a movie I am really excited about, I look forward to going to my local AMC, Regal or even Main Street Movies 5 right by the university’s campus. The movie theater is just so comforting and it’s an amazing place to be. In the wise words of Nicole Kidman, “Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is at risk if Bolsonaro wins – but its low-carbon economy is here to stay Expert comment LToremark 7 October 2026

If Flávio Bolsonaro wins Brazil’s presidential run-off, he will likely roll back Lula’s deforestation regulations. But the country’s low-carbon transition will be harder to reverse.

The outcome of the first round of Brazil’s presidential election has put President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his main challenger Flávio Bolsonaro – son of former president Jair Bolsonaro – into a run-off at the end of October. The result itself is not surprising. But Bolsonaro’s stronger-than-expected advantage over Lula and the consolidation of a right-leaning Congress – particularly the Senate – is. If Bolsonaro becomes president, Brazil will join the right-wing wave sweeping across Latin America.

Related work

Brazil’s presidential election is more than just another polarized contest

This shift to the right will impact Brazil’s climate transition plans. A Bolsonaro presidency backed by a sympathetic Congress will have considerable power to weaken existing environmental protections. But that does not mean that Brazil’s entire climate transition would go into reverse.

Brazil’s climate agenda is often presented as a contest between environmental protection and economic development. The reality is more complicated. The important question is which parts of Brazil’s climate policy a president can change, which require congressional support, and where trade, investment and private-sector interests constrain political choices.

Brazil’s president has considerable executive power over environmental outcomes. The president appoints the leadership of environmental protection agencies such as the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), determines enforcement priorities and allocates budgets that can either strengthen or weaken environmental protection within months. 

But economic forces also set boundaries. Brazil is deeply dependent on agricultural and natural-resource exports, and increasingly on oil. At the same time, large flows of private and foreign investment are reinforcing renewable power, electricity transmission and distribution, electric vehicles and other low-carbon industries. 

This distinction reflects Brazil’s unusual emissions profile. Unlike many large emerging economies, two thirds of the country’s greenhouse emissions are linked to land-use change. Brazil’s energy system is relatively clean; renewables already provide around 87 per cent of its electricity. 

The Amazon is at risk if Bolsonaro wins

The greatest risk from a Bolsonaro victory is therefore likely to be land use and deforestation.

When Lula returned to office in 2023, his government restored environmental enforcement, agency capacity and satellite monitoring. Under environment minister Marina Silva, Amazon deforestation fell substantially. The latest annual PRODES, an official satellite monitoring system estimate put Amazon deforestation at 5,731 square kilometres in 2025, around half the 2022 level.

However, enforcement regulations are reversible by executive power if they are not complemented by policy packages that structurally change land-use practices. Transforming Brazil’s underlying land-use model requires cooperation with the country’s powerful agribusiness sector, which Marina Silva did not secure. Policy packages would have to move beyond policing towards land-tenure reform, traceability, rural-credit conditions, restoration of degraded land and incentives that make productivity gains more profitable than land clearing and expansion.

If Flávio Bolsonaro follows his father’s approach, he will likely reduce the enforcement capability and, with congressional support, further loosen environmental licensing and forest protection regulations like Brazil’s forest code. 

Renewable energy transformation is harder to reverse

A Bolsonaro government would have much less room to change Brazil’s renewable-energy trajectory. Brazil has structural advantages in hydropower, wind, solar and biofuels. These sectors are supported not only by climate policies but by competitive costs, growing electricity demand, existing infrastructure, private investment and powerful domestic industries. 

Biofuels, a sector that is broadly supported by Brazilian civil society and agribusiness, will continue to have a strategic role. Unlike in many European economies, Brazil’s ethanol and biodiesel industries combine climate objectives with agricultural, industrial and energy-security interests. Given the existing renewable assets, investments and private sector contracts in place – and Bolsonaro’s strong alignment with private sector interests – it would be harder for him to change policy direction in this area.

The importance of oil

Alongside its renewable energy transformation, Brazil has also become a major oil producer. The discovery and development of the offshore pre-salt oil reserves has made Brazil the 9^th largest oil producer in the world and the largest in Latin America. It has attracted significant investment and is expanding production capability. In addition, the state-controlled oil company Petrobras is central in public finances at both federal and state level. In 2025, it paid R$277.6 billion in taxes, 7 per cent of Brazil’s total tax revenues. 

The continuing disruption around the Strait of Hormuz strengthens the strategic value of Atlantic Basin producers like Brazil, Guyana, Canada and the US. Bolsonaro’s alignment with Washington and other right-leaning Latin American producers could reinforce the formation a new axis of oil production in the Americas. This could lock Brazil further into the position of becoming a strategic producer globally.

Although both Lula and Bolsonaro would continue to enhance Brazil’s production capability, Bolsonaro would likely push harder for faster licensing, private investment and offshore exploration. In 2025, Petrobras was granted a highly controversial exploration licence in the Equatorial Margin, along the Foz do Amazonas River basin and have since discovered oil. There are concerns Bolsonaro would accelerate the licensing for further exploratory drilling in the Amazon region.

The China factor and impact of Brazil’s trade relationships 

Related work

The Climate Briefing: Climate change, energy and geopolitics

Brazil’s trade and investment relationships will limit both Lula and Bolsonaro’s manoeuvrability on climate actions. Even if Bolsonaro is politically aligned with Trump, there are economic interests that will limit his ability to track too closely with the US administration – particularly on China.

China is Brazil’s largest export market, accounting for roughly 28 per cent of Brazil’s exports. It bought almost 80 per cent of Brazilian soybean export volumes in 2025, 45 per cent of exported crude oil and is also a major buyer of Brazilian beef and iron ore. This gives Chinese demand considerable influence over the economics of Brazilian land use and resource production. 

China’s dominance limits the effectiveness of other trade partners’ environmental regulations, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Although the EUDR can impose stringent traceability requirements on commodities entering the European market, it cannot by itself determine production practices across Brazilian supply chains. The regulation will only affect the portion of large Brazilian exporters, commodity traders and banks that operate across multiple markets and therefore have commercial reasons to maintain traceability even if federal enforcement weakens. 

China’s importance also extends beyond trade. There are strong economic and investment interests between the two countries. The private sector in Brazil is not as suspicious of Chinese investment and technology as their American or European counterparts. In 2025, Brazil was the largest recipient of Chinese investment, with $6.1 billion invested primarily in renewable energy, clean technology and mining, further consolidating their strategic global positioning in renewable supply. 

Although Brazil’s current climate ambitions would be undermined if Bolsonaro wins October’s run-off, not all would be lost. The future of the Amazon rainforest is most at risk and the most vulnerable part of the country’s climate agenda. Brazil’s energy transition, however, is likely to progress regardless of who wins. 

Sean Peers admits offence against woman who was drugged and attacked for more than two decades

A man has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, whose husband had drugged her and invited other men to abuse her.

Sean Peers, 38, had been due to stand trial alongside 11 other men, but admitted one count of assault by penetration on 15 September 2024 when he appeared at Manchester Minshull Street crown court.

Leaders worry OpenAI is not doing due diligence to vet results and that AI models aren’t accessible to broader field of mathematicians

OpenAI has astounded mathematicians after releasing hundreds of new mathematical findings on Tuesday.

The company published over 370 mathematical results across a variety of topics such as algebra, theoretical computer science and mathematical logic, showcasing what some of its most advanced artificial intelligence models are capable of.

Lawyers seek preservation of evidence after prisoner received two doses of pentobarbital on 30 September

Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who survived the state’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said, as they head to court on Wednesday seeking a court order requiring preservation of all evidence relating to the botched exercise by the state.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital, a sedative, as Tennessee officials attempted to put her to death last Wednesday in a case that shocked many in America and created headlines around the world. She was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Relatives of Hind Rajab in Gaza and Shiri Bibas and her children in Israel speak to CBS News three years after the Oct. 7 attacks.

A genetic mother gently cradling the growing baby bump of her surrogate.

Eligible parties could get up to $10 in payment.

Acquittals of five former bankers come year after supreme court overturned ruling against City trader Tom Hayes

Five more former traders who were jailed for rigging interest rates have had their convictions quashed by the court of appeal in London, after a long battle to clear their names.

The court overturned the convictions of Jay Vijay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham – all of whom worked at Barclays.

The James Webb Space Telescope captured numerous stars formerly hidden by clouds of dust in a stellar nursery known as NGC 7129.

The Tory leader is now too big for the party to allow her to fail, so everything she does is acclaimed a work of genius

Where’s AI slop when you need it? It could all have been so much simpler. Just ask ChatGPT to write me a leader’s speech in the style of Kemi Badenoch. Make it an hour and 10 minutes long, so plenty of room for padding. Go heavy on the slogans, cliches and the obligatory crap politician jokes. Ones we’ve all heard many times before. Not least at this conference.

Make the usual digs at Labour and put the boot in to Reform. The main aim of the speech is to try to reposition a party that is tanking in third place on 20% in the polls as the main opposition to the government. And just to give everyone a reason to go home with a feeling of mild optimism, chuck in a retail offer at the end. An uncosted tax cut for people who are rich but don’t feel quite rich enough. The new multimillionaire common-or-garden lower middle classes.

Actors and musicians sign open letter urging government to protect residents amid impasse over Drumcree parade

Dozens of artists, actors and musicians including Susan Sarandon and Noel Gallagher have expressed support for Garvaghy Road residents in the impasse over the Drumcree parade in Northern Ireland.

In an open letter to the secretary of state, Chris Bryant, they urged the government to protect residents and to appoint an international mediator to resolve the dispute between the Catholic residents and the Orange Order in County Armagh.

Forced closure marks low point in UK-Israeli relations, with reports UK is considering retaliatory expulsion of Israeli diplomats from London

The UK consulate in East Jerusalem gave few signs it was at the centre of a geopolitical controversy this week, with little movement around the high-walled building save the fluttering of the union jack and the occasional car exiting the compound.

The mission is to shut its doors on Thursday after Israel ordered its closure in response to a UK ban on trade with illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and sanctions on those who help build or finance them.

Former Selfridges owners buy UK high street institution from long-term backer Stefano Pessina

The Canadian family that once owned Selfridges department store has bought the UK pharmacy and beauty retailer Boots for $8.9bn (£6.74bn).

Wittington Investments, the holding company of the Weston family that controls the Loblaws grocery chain and Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy outlets in Canada, will own Boots’ UK and Irish retail operations and opticians chain, the No7 beauty brand and a franchise arm in Thailand.

Americans paid an average of $531 per year for household water in 2025, although people in some states pay far more, according to a new study.

After a surprise first-round victory, critics suggest son of disgraced ex-president could seek to continue his father’s authoritarian project

• Flávio’s surprise first-round win highlights rapid rise of Brazil’s House of Bolsonaro

Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, has vowed to “re-democratise” the South American country, increasing fears about a move into authoritarian rule if he wins power.

Brazil was re-democratised in the 1980s after a brutal 21-year dictatorship that Flávio’s father, the disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has long praised.

We appear to be entering a new era, in which political desperation at home leads to increasingly unhinged threats abroad

Donald Trump was in Nebraska on Monday, and though his long rally speech had elements of a performance, this was no Bruce Springsteen album. He offered another dark meditation on a world spiraling out of control, one in which the destruction of American cities is increasingly a possibility, unless Americans trust him to use the vast powers of the presidency to annihilate his foes.

The president drew fury when he suggested that Iran could launch a nuclear attack and “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego. California leaders reacted with scorn at Trump’s alarmism.

Ted Widmer, a former White House speechwriter, is the editor of American Speeches, and the recently published The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text, both published by the Library of America

Sir James Goldsmith’s links to Hilton Head, South Carolina, add to mystery of Jane Doe 4, who claimed she was abused by Epstein in the 1980s

For Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire Goldsmith family was a gateway to elite society and he wanted to be in their circle.

The disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 facing sex-trafficking charges, longed for a billionaire’s lifestyle and cultivated the family’s friends, bankers, business associates and advisers.

Microsoft has reportedly secured exclusive cloud-streaming rights for Grand Theft Auto VI, meaning Xbox Cloud Gaming will be the only service able to stream the game at launch. "Rockstar Games still hasn't announced a PC version of Grand Theft Auto VI, so this deal will allow Xbox to market its Xbox Cloud Gaming service to PC players who would otherwise need an Xbox Series X / S or PS5 console," reports The Verge. From the report: News of the streaming rights comes around a month after Microsoft announced some major changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming. From November, the same month Grand Theft Auto VI releases, Microsoft is limiting streaming hours to just 15 hours for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, 10 hours for Premium subscribers, and just five hours for Game Pass Essential. Microsoft is also opening up access to Xbox Cloud Gaming with a pay-as-you-go option next month, rather than being limited to Game Pass subscriptions. The pay-as-you-go option is perfectly timed for Grand Theft Auto VI, allowing those who don't own an Xbox, or who primarily play from a phone, to stream the game by paying for a bundle of hours.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers found the shift from open woodland to dense forest after 1788 led to more intense fires, consistent with loss of cultural burning practices

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

The drastic land use changes wreaked by colonisation created a “catastrophic wildfire loop” that rendered south-east Australia more susceptible to climate-fuelled bushfires, experts say.

A team of researchers, working with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, an organisation that represents traditional owners, reconstructed 1,000 years of vegetation and fire history at Purghagoolah, a lake surrounded by forest in Croajingolong national park in Gippsland, Victoria.

Department of Elections urges residents who still need to register to review state requirements as election season enters its final weeks

DOVER, Del. — The Delaware Department of Elections is urging residents who are not yet registered to vote to review the state’s registration requirements as Delaware moves closer to the 2026 General Election.

The department issued a voter alert this week directing eligible Delaware residents who want to participate in the General Election to make sure their registration is completed within the state’s required timeframe.

The alert comes as Delaware enters the final weeks of an election season that will decide federal, state and local races across the state.

The Department of Elections maintains the state’s official voter information, including registration requirements, voter status information, election calendars and other resources.

Residents who are unsure whether they are registered, believe their information may need to be updated or need to register for the first time should use the Department of Elections’ official website for the current requirements and available options.

The department also encourages voters to rely on official state election information as Election Day approaches.

Delaware LIVE will continue its 2026 election coverage with candidate profiles, issue stories and information about races throughout the state.

To Go Box

• What: Delaware 2026 General Election voter information
• Who: Delaware residents who want to confirm their registration status or need information about registering
• Official information: Delaware Department of Elections
• Website: elections.delaware.gov
• Voter information portal: www.ivote.delaware.gov
• More information: The Department of Elections website includes official registration, election calendar, candidate and voter information.

NAACP files lawsuit after head of DoJ’s civil rights division says she hopes to send election monitors to polls

The Trump administration has been sued over its plans to deploy “a historic number” of election monitors to polling stations during next month’s midterm elections.

The bid “stands to jeopardize” the elections and could “interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation”, according to the NAACP, which filed a lawsuit against Harmeet Dhillon, head of the justice department’s civil rights division, who has said she hopes to send 1,000 monitors to midterm polling sites in November.

New ‘support and training centre’ prompts concern in region but China says it is ‘not directed at any third party’

Satellite images show attack jets stationed at a new Chinese military facility in Laos, which opened last week and gives Beijing’s air force its first foothold in mainland south-east Asia.

Images provided by the commercial satellite provider Vantor show eight light attack aircraft positioned at Ban Keun airport alongside what appear to be more than a dozen military vehicles lined up in rows.

The big question facing ​A​ndy Burnham is not whether Brexit has harmed Britain, but if a rapidly changing Europe will keep the door open​ if the UK decides it wants back in

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It was lobbed into the national conversation without fanfare or warning, almost a footnote in the UK prime minister’s first speech as leader to his governing Labour party’s annual conference. But Andy Burnham has kicked off a quiet U-turn on Brexit.

By stating bluntly that the decision to leave Europe’s core political community had done “more harm than good”, Burnham broke a taboo in his own party, in effect, discarding his predecessor’s paralysing ‘red lines’ on Europe, and signalling he will not be bound by these constraints after the next British election.

The automaker has reaffirmed its hybrid plans just as its EV lineup finds its footing. A history of killing promising tech has me worried.

Users reject site’s explanations after detailed instructions for writing response to post on popular forum were published

Mumsnet has denied using AI to produce content after detailed instructions to help an AI model write one of its popular “am I being unreasonable” (AIBU) posts appeared on a Mumsnet message board.

Users of the long-established forum, which is known for its frank discussions of family tensions, were vexed when the AI prompt appeared in response to a user seeking advice about a family dilemma involving a neurodivergent uncle and a sick child.

A mix of natural disasters could all befall the state at once as it finds itself in the crosshairs of the climate phenomenon

On a cloudless autumn afternoon, sunlight sparkled on the water that had quietly swallowed a busy intersection to the north of San Francisco, as the surrounding rush-hour traffic slowed to a painful crawl.

There were no crashing waves or storm surges to blame for the flood. Marin county was one of many areas up and down the California coast affected by high tides last week, as parts of the Pacific swelled with excess warmth.

A person putting on sneakers inside a dressing room.

The launch of a collector’s box hints at a new reality: the kinds of games I grew up with are becoming a luxury item, locked behind a forbidding spending barrier

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

As a parent (and partner) to a habitual collector, I do feel like an unwelcome portion of my life is occupied by an endless war against stuff. Surfaces in my home ceaselessly accumulate piles of random objects: a JoyCon wrist strap, a sticker sheet, an unidentifiable plastic piece of a toy or gizmo, an Xbox 360 controller with no batteries, cases for Switch cartridges lost down the side of the sofa … Stuff encroaches everywhere, especially in a gaming household. Much as I regret the imminent disappearance of physical games, I do not regret the extra space I have in my attic as a result of switching almost entirely to downloaded games over the last decade or so.

Speaking of the imminent disappearance of physical games: Rockstar recently announced a £350 ($400) “collector’s box” of Grand Theft Auto 6 goodies … that doesn’t include the game itself. Not even a download code. The Grand Theft Auto VI: The Goodtime State – Vice City Collection, to give it its full and unwieldy name, contains a hat, a bag, a pair of sunglasses, a figurine, a poster and more, including a mirror and a “swizzle spoon” that looks, unambigiously, like a cocaine spoon. The game retails at £70, so if you want something to play alongside all your stuff, you’re looking at an outlay of £420.

Ring’s foray into smart locks brings a first-of-its-kind feature that solves one of the categories biggest pain points.

It isn’t hard to see a contradiction between the PM’s message in Fiji and his opposition to legal action to stop a NSW coalmine

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There are unlikely to be many bigger moments in Australian community action on the climate crisis this year than a judgment by the high court on Wednesday.

In what may prove a historic victory, the court sided with a handful of community members in the Hunter Valley to overturn a state regulator’s approval of a coalmine expansion that allowed it to operate until 2048. This doesn’t happen every day, and the judgment could have ramifications for other coal developments in New South Wales.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here

Izmir mayor Cemil Tugay joins ruling AKP after vowing he would never switch sides in boost for Turkish president

The mayor of Izmir, Turkey’s third city and an opposition stronghold, has defected to the ruling AKP in a move hailed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president.

Turkey’s opposition is battling an increasingly intense crackdown, with a barrage of what observers say are politically motivated arrests and lawsuits targeting its mayors and elected officials.

MUNICH and ZURICH, Oct. 7, 2026 — Infineon Technologies AG and ZuriQ AG, a Swiss quantum computing company spun out of ETH Zurich, today announced the expansion of their collaboration to advance scalable quantum computing hardware. The partnership combines ZuriQ’s pioneering trapped-ion quantum computing architecture with Infineon’s expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, advanced packaging, and integrated photonics.

Previous development work by ZuriQ and Infineon demonstrated the feasibility of this novel architecture by trapping a 3×3 array of nine individually controlled ions, achieving the largest two-dimensional array of its kind to date. The next step in the partnership is to scale the technology to significantly larger qubit counts. ZuriQ’s quantum innovation and Infineon’s industrial-scale semiconductor manufacturing expertise will jointly advance the development of next-generation quantum computing systems.

“Advancing quantum computing toward commercial impact will require close collaboration between quantum innovators and industrial technology leaders,” said Pavel Hrmo, co-founder and CEO of ZuriQ. “Through our collaboration with Infineon, which possesses a deep understanding of process development and semiconductor technologies, we are turning ZuriQ’s technological progress into scalable, manufacturable quantum hardware. This partnership brings us closer to developing quantum computing technologies for real-world applications.”

“Progress in quantum computing requires breakthroughs in physics, but also robust manufacturing technologies capable of supporting the development of future large-scale systems,” said Clemens Rössler, Senior Director and Head of Quantum Processing Units at Infineon. “With our expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, integration and advanced packaging, we are enabling the next generation of trapped-ion quantum processing units. By combining our semiconductor competence with ZuriQ’s design and architecture expertise, we are taking an important step toward industrializing this key technology.”

Unlike conventional trapped-ion quantum computers that use one-dimensional ion chains, ZuriQ has developed a natively two-dimensional Penning micro-trap architecture that uses electric and magnetic fields to move ions directly across the chip. The design avoids complex junction structures, making it easier to accommodate larger qubit arrays. Integrating this approach with Infineon’s advanced photonics and semiconductor processes is central to accelerating the transition from laboratory demonstration to real-world applications.

Two-dimensional trapped-ion technology offers a promising path toward precise, scalable quantum processors for fault-tolerant quantum computing and commercial applications. Quantum computers have the potential to solve highly complex problems beyond the capabilities of conventional computers and supercomputers.

This collaboration between an innovative quantum computing start-up and a global semiconductor leader enhances Europe’s quantum ecosystem and strengthens Europe’s position in this strategically important area. Further advances in this field are expected to accelerate innovation across high-impact sectors such as medicine, logistics, materials science, and artificial intelligence, helping solve some of the world’s most complex computational challenges.

About ZuriQ

Founded in 2024, ZuriQ AG is a Swiss-based quantum computing company and ETH Zurich spin-off. By developing a novel trapped-ion architecture based on static electromagnetic fields, ZuriQ aims to overcome key scalability challenges in quantum computing. The company focuses on high-fidelity quantum operations, rapid qubit scaling, and reconfigurable quantum systems, paving the way toward commercially relevant quantum applications.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG is a global semiconductor leader in power systems and IoT. Infineon drives decarbonization and digitalization with its products and solutions. The Company had around 57,000 employees worldwide (end of September 2025) and generated revenue of about €14.7 billion in the 2025 fiscal year (ending 30 September). Infineon is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX) and in the USA on the OTCQX International over-the-counter market (ticker symbol: IFNNY).

Source: Infineon

The post Infineon and ZuriQ Deepen Partnership to Advance Scalable Quantum Chips appeared first on HPCwire.

September through November has become a major window for bourbon releases, with many producers releasing annual offerings during the season. Distillers schedule these releases based ... Read moreThe post It’s bourbon hunt season; here’s what you should know appeared first…

Aimee, a 6-month-old husky, was abandoned and passed away as a result of her injuries in January. A bill proposing an animal abuser registry is named in her honor.

Oct. 7, 2026 — A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers has received the 2026 Test of Time Award from the ACM SIGSIM Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (PADS) conference for their paper, “Automatic Generation of Reversible C++ Code and Its Performance in a Scalable Kinetic Monte-Carlo Application.”

Markus Schordan, formerly of LLNL, reprised the award-winning paper presentation at the ACM SIGSIM Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation conference earlier this year in Vienna, Austria.

PADS honors up to two papers each year—one from the conference held 10 years prior and another from 20 years prior.

LLNL’s winning paper was presented at PADS 2016 and introduced Backstroke, a software build tool that automatically generates code needed to undo, or roll back, calculations in a parallel-discrete-event computer simulation using optimistic synchronization. The paper’s authors are Markus Schordan (formerly of LLNL), Tomas Oppelstrup, David Jefferson (LLNL retiree), Daniel Quinlan, and Peter D. Barnes Jr.

Optimistic synchronization allows parallel simulations to proceed without waiting for all potential time ordering conflicts to be resolved. When a conflict is later detected, the affected computation must be rolled back to before the conflict took place. Before Backstroke, implementing this capability was a manual, error-prone programming task.

Backstroke transformed rollback support into an automated part of the software build process and supported programs written in both C and C++. Enabled by the ROSE compiler toolkit, the system automatically generated reversible code and demonstrated its performance in a scalable kinetic Monte Carlo application.

Quinlan has led the ROSE project for more than 30 years and has seen its impact on several LLNL initiatives, including Backstroke: “Backstroke showed how ROSE’s program-analysis and transformation capabilities could solve a concrete and difficult problem: automatically generating the code needed to reverse computations in real C++ applications. This award is especially meaningful because it recognizes the lasting importance of Backstroke’s contribution to scalable parallel simulation.”

Backstroke became foundational for subsequent research on parallel discrete-event simulation by removing a major programming obstacle to optimistic execution. The research eventually led to a three-part series on Unified Virtual Time (UVT) that was published in the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation. UVT unified static conservative and optimistic approaches into a dynamic framework for parallel simulation.

The award was presented at PADS 2026, which was held in Vienna, Austria, in June, and was the 40^th anniversary of the conference. As part of the recognition, the authors presented an invited talk about the paper’s impact and its continuing relevance to simulation research.

Source: Deanna Willis, LLNL

The post LLNL Team Wins ACM SIGSIM PADS Test of Time Award appeared first on HPCwire.

A Norse explorer reached North America nearly five centuries before Columbus, and the United States put him on its federal calendar for it. The country ... Read moreThe post SpongeBob did more for Leif Erikson Day than 62 years of…

Two NASA astronauts, a European flier and a Russian cosmonaut will close out an eight-month mission with splashdown Thursday.

Oct. 7, 2026 — The Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) at Georgia Tech, in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), has launched the Georgia Tech Quantum Applications Research Center (GT QuARC), a new interdisciplinary research center designed to bring together Georgia Tech’s quantum research community, expand strategic partnerships, and accelerate the development of quantum technologies and applications.

The center is co-directed by Martin Mourigal, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics, and Robert Wyllie, division chief of the Quantum System Division in the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research (CIPHER) lab at GTRI.

“Quantum technologies are rapidly moving from scientific theory toward practical application,” said Julia Kubanek, vice president of Interdisciplinary Research. “This center builds on Georgia Tech’s expertise to help lead that transition by connecting research with industry, government, and societal needs.”

Building on Georgia Tech’s strengths in atomic physics, materials science, engineering, computing, photonics, sensing, and advanced manufacturing, GT QuARC will serve as a hub for quantum research and collaboration across Georgia Tech and GTRI. The center will help bridge fundamental discovery and practical application, creating new opportunities in quantum technologies while strengthening Georgia Tech’s leadership in areas such as computing, sensing, communications, and national security.

Quantum technologies use the principles of quantum mechanics to perform tasks that are difficult or impossible with conventional technologies. As federal agencies and industry partners continue to increase investments in quantum research and development, Georgia Tech is positioned to contribute to advances in quantum materials, devices, systems, algorithms, and applications.

“Quantum breakthroughs happen at the intersection of disciplines,” said Wyllie. “By connecting the researchers and resources across Georgia Tech and GTRI, we’re building a stronger foundation for quantum innovation.”

GT QuARC will strengthen these efforts by providing a unified identity for Georgia Tech’s quantum community and creating new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers, students, industry partners, government agencies, and national laboratories.

“One goal for the center is to identify meaningful applications for emerging quantum technologies,” said Mourigal. “Another is to build connections among researchers, industry, and government. Those conversations are essential to discovering where quantum technologies can have the greatest impact. For that to happen, we must coordinate and optimize efforts across campus.”

“A core part of IMS’s mission is creating opportunities that enable breakthrough discoveries and accelerate emerging areas of research,” said Eric Vogel, executive director of IMS. “GT QuARC, provides a framework for bringing together Georgia Tech’s quantum expertise and building the partnerships needed to advance both scientific discovery and real-world impact.”

The center will initially focus on three research thrusts:

• Quantum Building Blocks and Enabling Technologies will advance the materials, devices, fabrication methods, control technologies, and characterization capabilities needed to create and manipulate quantum states.
• Quantum Systems and Manufacturing Testbeds will integrate the building blocks into scalable quantum sensing, computing, communication, and simulation platforms, supported by shared research infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities.
• Quantum Computing, Algorithms, and Applications will develop quantum and hybrid quantum-classical approaches to challenges in scientific discovery, industry, national security, and other areas of societal importance.

These efforts will help move quantum technologies from the laboratory toward practical use while creating new opportunities for collaboration across disciplines.

In addition to advancing research, GT QuARC will support education and workforce development by expanding hands-on learning opportunities, strengthening industry engagement, and connecting students with emerging careers in quantum science and engineering.

The center will also help Georgia Tech pursue strategic investments in quantum infrastructure, including advanced characterization capabilities, micro- and nanofabrication resources, sensing platforms, and access to leading quantum computing systems.

By bringing together expertise from across Georgia Tech’s colleges, research centers, and GTRI, GT QuARC will help position the Institute as a leader in translating quantum discoveries into technologies that address national priorities and societal challenges.

To learn more about Georgia Tech’s quantum ecosystem, visit quantum.gatech.edu.

Source: 

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Jeremy Strong’s slow-talking Facebook founder turns into a cameo, background to a thriller about a whistleblower that somehow never mentions Trump

Here is a film for all those people who solemnly deplore social media in conversation but haven’t quite got round to deleting their accounts. Sixteen years have gone by since The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher; this was the addictive, obsessive-compulsive movie about the birth of Facebook in Harvard’s macho-competitive cauldron of student sexism and nerdy self-pity, starring Jesse Eisenberg as the fast-talking, arrogant, not-necessarily-evil genius Mark Zuckerberg. Now Sorkin is back with a sequel of sorts, directing his own script – and now Zuckerberg is basically evil, but also weirdly slow talking, as if all the zinging, smart-alecky Sorkinesque dialogue energy of the first film has been siphoned away in early middle age and dispersed among the insurgents in the new cast.

Sorkin’s jittery, funny, syncopated style is unmistakable, as distinctive in its way as David Mamet, although he has one joke about “spatula” being a Yiddish word that he has borrowed from Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It is the story of how in 2021, Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire was challenged by courageous whistleblower-employee Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, who were on a mission to tell the world how Zuckerberg, scared by falling revenue, changed the algorithm so that engagement was supercharged by rage bait and hate speech, malice and envy. Facebook, moreover, didn’t factcheck political ads, thus driving a huge, nationwide surge in extremist groups and teen bullying and becoming a major player in the Capitol riots. (Having said that, this film does not say aloud the word “Trump” and rather cravenly declines to specify Maga activity.)

HPE today unveiled four new ProLiant Gen13 Servers, giving customers AMD EPYC-based compute power for running a variety of agentic AI, high performance analytics, and modeling and simulation workloads in both traditional 19-inch and new 21-inch OCP rack configurations.

Two of the new ProLiant servers–the ProLiant DL585a Gen13 and the ProLiant DL525 Gen13–are standard 19-inch rack designs designed for a range of workloads. The other two new servers–the ProLiant XD245 and XD285–are based on the OCP’s new 21-inch rack design, and are specifically targeted to AI and HPC workloads.

Let’s take the servers one by one:

HPE ProLiant DL585a Gen13

ProLiant DL585a Gen13

HPE’s new ProLiant DL585a Gen13, which will become available in March, is a 10U server based on the standard 19-inch rack configuration that’s designed for emerging AI inference, virtualization, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), model fine-tuning, analytics, and agentic AI workloads.

The DL585a is a high-density server that houses two 6th Gen AMD EPYC 9006 SP7 processors, providing up to 256 cores each. It can additionally be outfitted with up to eight double-wide PCIe GPUs from Nvidia or AMD.  The DL585a features up to 32 DIMM slots for DDR5 RAM running at 8000MT/s or MRDIMM (Multiplexed Rank Dual Inline Memory Module) memory running at 12800 MT/s.

This server features an integrated 8x QSFP fabric (with an Nvidia switchboard). It relies on Nvidia Bluefield 3 and Bluefield 4 DPUs for north/south traffic and Nvidia ConnectX-8 or CX9 SuperNIC Ethernet cards for east/west traffic. The server features up to six front and two rear PCIe slots providing 16-channel PCIe Gen6 ports, and one more rear port providing OCP 3.0 or four-channel PCI3Gen4. Dual power supplies provide 3.2kW for the system board and there’s room for up to 12 additional 3.2kW power supplies for additional GPUs.

ProLiant DL525 Gen13

The HPE ProLiant DL525 Gen13

The ProLiant DL525 Gen13, which will become available in November, is a slim, 1U server equipped with a single AMD EPYC 9006 SP7 processor with up to 256 processor cores. It can be equipped with up to 4TB of 16-channel DDR memory providing 8000 MT/s or 2TB of MRDIMM memory at 12800MT/s.

The new DL525 sports up to four PCIe Gen6 slots (or 1 OCP 3.0 slot) in the front and another 3 PCIe Gen6 slots (or one 1 OCP 3.0 slot) in the rear. It’s an air-cooled design with dual 60-watt common redundant power supply (CRPS).

HPE says that the DL525’s combination of core density, memory bandwidth, and I/O makes it suitable for AI inference, simulation and modeling, electronic design automation (EDA), virtualization, analytics, and other compute-intensive workloads.

ProLiant XD245 and ProLiant XD285

The new ProLiant XD245 and XD285 are new servers based on Open Compute Project (OCP’s) new 21-inch standard ORV3 racks. The XD245 is a liquid-cooled, 2U server designed to handle four processors, which gives it a 2U-4N rating. Its sibling, the XD285, is an air-cooled 2U server designed for two processors, giving it a 2U_2N in ODP-speak. HPE didn’t specific its availability.

Both the XD245 and XD285 are equipped with next-gen AMD Venice SP7 processors, feature 256 cores per processor and a 600 Watt thermal design power (TDP) envelope. The XD brothers can be equipped with up to 32 DDR5 Registered DIMM (RDIMM), a type of DRAM that runs at 8000MT/s, or 32 slots of the faster MRDIMM providing 12800MT/s. Networking is handled through 2 16-channel PCIe expansion slots per node. It supports 400GB and 800Gb Ethernet, InfiniBand, or Slingshot networks.

HPE says the XD245 and XD285 are designed for HPC workloads, such as running large-scale simulations, including computer-aided engineering (CAE), weather and climate modeling, scientific research, and financial modeling. Both will become available in April.

All of the new ProLiant servers come with iLO 8, the next-generation of HPE’s self-managed encryption capability. This release introduces auto self-encryption drives (Auto-SED) capabilities, which means “encryption stops being a setting someone has to remember and becomes a property of the server,” writes Aaron Lamond, HPE’s product marketing manager, in a blog.

iLO8 also introduces the new multi-party authorization (MPA) capability, which makes high-impact actions, such as key provisioning and secure erase, only possible if two or more people approve it.

The post HPE Launches Gen13 ProLiant Servers for HPC and AI Workloads appeared first on HPCwire.

A new U.S. Department of Energy research campaign will deploy advanced instruments from Ames, Iowa, to Chicago, Illinois, to study how differences in land surfaces, from farmland to cities, impact the formation and intensity of energy-disrupting storms.

LEMONT, Ill., Oct. 7, 2026 — Every year, destructive storms cause billions of dollars of damage to homes, businesses, crops, and critical infrastructure. But a new research campaign will provide insights to improve how we predict these storms and deepen our understanding of the Earth system processes that fuel them.

The DERECHOS campaign will help researchers gain insights into destructive storms that cause billions of dollars in damage to homes, businesses, crops and critical infrastructure each year. Image credit: Arcaion/Shutterstock.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility will deploy advanced instruments across the Midwest to study how variations in land surface – from farms to cities to lakes – influence severe weather events, including fast-moving summertime derechos, damaging winds, freezing rain and winter storms.