The U.S. military says three troops have been killed in the war with Iran, as Iranian missiles hit countries and ships across the region. Another strike killed at least eight in Israel.

Three U.S. service members were killed in action and five seriously wounded, Central Command said, the first reported U.S. casualties in the joint attack with Israel.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 1, 2026.

Officers confronted a male gunman pointing a weapon at them, they returned fire and killed the suspect

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The FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce has been called in to help investigate a deadly mass shooting in downtown Austin, Texas, on Sunday morning in which a gunman opened fire in front of a bar popular with university students, killing two people and injuring 14 others before being fatally shot by police.

An FBI official, Alex Doran, told reporters at a press conference that it was too early to determine the shooter’s motivation. But he added that evidence found on the suspect and in his car indicated a “potential nexus to terrorism”.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham defend attack, Democrats say administration must answer vital questions

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Donald Trump administration allies reinforced on Sunday the administration’s messaging on the Israel-US strikes on Iran, while Democratsdecried it as a “war of choice” that required congressional approval.

On Sunday talk shows, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham defended the strikes, while Virginia senator Mark Warner, vice-chairman of the Committee on Intelligence, and other Democrats welcomed the elimination of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but said the administration must now answer vital questions.

Israeli rescuers respond to missile strike in Beit Shemesh; interim successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named

• How have you been affected by events in the Middle East?

• A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran

• How the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded

Loud explosions were heard early on Sunday near Erbil airport, which hosts US-led coalition troops in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, AFP reported. Thick black smoke was rising from the airport area.

On Saturday, US-led coalition forces downed several missiles and explosive-laden drones over Erbil.

Slashdot reader darwinmac writes: The Document Foundation (TDF), the organization behind LibreOffice, has decided to bring back its LibreOffice Online project which been inactive since 2022. Collabora, a company that was a major contributor to the original LibreOffice Online, is not pleased with this development. After the original project went dormant, Collabora forked the code and created its own product, Collabora Online. Collaboras Michael Meeks, who also sits on the TDF board, reacted to the TDFs decision by saying that a fully supported, free online version already exists in the form of Collabora Online, and that resurrecting a dead repository makes little sense when an active, open community around the online suite already exists. For now, The Document Foundation plans to reopen the old repository for new contributions. The organization has issued a warning that the code is not ready for live deployment and users should wait until the development team confirms it is stable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fourteen people were hospitalized, including three in critical condition, after the shooting at Buford's, a beer garden in Austin's entertainment district.

Across the United States, Iranian Americans expressed frustration, hope, dread and above all concern for relatives still in Iran after the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks.

The 33-year-old grandson of JFK is out to make a name for himself, running for Congress in New York's 12th District. He talks about his family, and his refusal to refrain from mocking his opponents, saying, "The time is not now to hold back."

Some publicly mourn leader’s demise but videos also show jubilant response after violent crackdown in January

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Celebration and mourning broke out across Iran in response to the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an extraordinary public response to the end of nearly four decades of the top cleric’s rule.

In the squares of Tehran, crowds gathered to mourn the leader, chanting and holding placards with his image. But videos shared widely on social media also showed people celebrating, dancing, honking car horns and setting off fireworks as news of the leader’s death broke.

U.S. Central Command said Sunday that three American service members were killed and five others were seriously wounded as part of the military operation in Iran.

Key transit hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha close, and more than 1,000 flights by Middle Eastern carriers cancelled

• Iran confirms killing of Ayatollah Khamenei

• US-Israel war on Iran: latest updates

• A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes

• How the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded

The US and Israel’s attack on Iran continued to cause severe disruption to flights throughout the Middle East and beyond on Sunday.

Countries across the region closed their airspace, and three of the key airports that connect Europe, Africa and the west to Asia halted operations.

Belgian special forces boarded the Ethera, which was sailing under the flag of Guinea, on Saturday night

Belgium has seized an oil tanker believed to form part of the so-called “shadow fleet” used by Russia to circumvent western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Special forces assisted by French helicopters boarded the ship in a clandestine operation in the North Sea on Saturday night, Belgium’s defence minister, Theo Francken, said on Sunday.

Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand

Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.

Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.

Five additional personnel have been reported seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, US military said

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday.

Five additional personnel have been reported seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, the US military said. Authorities have not yet publicly identified the three soldiers who were killed.

President says in social media post that Iran tried to ‘stop Trump’ and now ‘faces renewed war with United States’

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Donald Trump on Saturday appeared to link the massive attack he ordered against Iran to his persistent claims about his 2020 election loss to former president Joe Biden, in a social media post about allegations that Tehran’s government interfered in the US president elections.

“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump,” his Truth Social post said, “and now faces renewed war with United States”.

"There's probably a lot of jockeying inside of Iran right now, they have a very consultative, deliberative process to replace the Supreme Leader," Sen. Tom Cotton said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

The CEO of Anthropic says his company refused to allow its technology to be used by the Trump Administration without certain guidelines (such as not using its AI to power fully-autonomous weapons without any human involvement).

A Tony Award-winner for "Hairspray," and a seven-time Oscar nominee, Marc Shaiman has written about his nearly 50 years in show business in a new memoir, "Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories From a Sore Winner."

In a library in Florence, Italy, historian Ivan Malara noticed handwritten notes on a book printed in the 1500s — and recognized the handwriting as Galileo's. The finding "promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science," writes Science magazine — since the book Galileo annotated was a reprint of Ptolemy's second-century work arguing that the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo's notes, perhaps written around 1590, or roughly 2 decades before his groundbreaking telescope observations of the Moon and Jupiter, reveal someone who both revered and critically dissected Ptolemy's work. And they imply, Malara argues, that Galileo ultimately broke with Ptolemy's cosmos because his mastery of the traditional paradigm's reasoning convinced him that a heliocentric [sun-centered] system would better fulfill Ptolemy's own mathematical logic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White has taken the hard-hitting sport of mixed martial arts to its highest-profile moment this summer: a UFC match on the South Lawn of the White House.

Regulator says Prof Jacob George will no longer be involved after gender-criticial social media posts from last year

A health official who reportedly intervened to pause a clinical trial on the use of puberty blockers has been removed from any further involvement due to accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George, who was appointed chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, raised concerns that led to the Pathways trial being put on hold by the government, according to the Sunday Times.

Though the supreme court ruled against the levies, businesses hit hard by the tariffs shouldn’t hold their breath for any rebates

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Now that the supreme court has found that the Donald Trump exceeded his authority to levy tariffs, the big question for many businesses – particularly small businesses who were so hard hit by these tariffs – is are they able to get their money back?

Don’t hold your breath. When it comes to tariffs, Trump still has many more tricks up his sleeve.

Their actions are no different from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo

We shouldn’t beat around the bush: Donald Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s military attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression. There is no lawful justification for it. It is no different from Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The United Nations charter allows the use of military force in only two circumstances – with authorization of the UN security council, or as self-defense from an actual or imminent armed attack. Neither was present.

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

David Pogue looks back at the career of the singer-songwriter whose Top 10 hits included such classics as "Oh, Carol," "Calendar Girl," "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," and "Laughter in the Rain."

Missiles and bombs landed across Iran, hitting political and security targets in Tehran, including supreme leader’s residence

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran – what we know so far

The US-Israeli war against Iran entered its second day on Sunday, as news of the assassination of the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, shook the Islamic Republic and the wider region.

Donald Trump announced Khamenei’s death while Israel claimed to have killed at least 40 senior Iranian commanders in the first day of attacks. Both countries continued to pound Iran, conducting hundreds of airstrikes across the country overnight and on Sunday.

Despite the apparent loss of a significant portion of its senior military and political leadership, Iran did not slow its retaliation on Sunday, bombing targets in the Gulf and unleashing waves of ballistic missiles towards Israel.

Honor's move into robotics feels like a bold move, and it turns out that its first humanoid has some bold moves of its own.

This Leica camera phone is beautiful. Come take a look.

Party leader Zack Polanski says surge in numbers ‘proves that the future of progressive politics belongs to the Greens’

The Green party said its membership had passed 200,000 this weekend in the wake of its victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection, in which it overturned a huge Labour majority.

The party’s membership has tripled since September last year, when it was about 68,000, after the announcement of Zack Polanski as its leader.

In 1991 more than half a million Americans served in Operation Desert Storm; 148 were killed in action, to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Yet, when Marine veteran Scott Stump set out to build a memorial on the National Mall, he faced "grueling" resistance.

Experts say trusted adults must be brave and discuss issue or risk children looking for answers from unsafe sources

Teachers and parents in the UK need to be brave and discuss Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes with children and young people or risk them looking for answers from dubious or dangerous sources, according to experts who will host the first public seminar for schools on the issue.

Thrive, the education consultancy hosting the online seminar on the convicted child sex offender, said: “Many children and young people are encountering this material often without context, warnings or adult support, leaving educators to manage the emotional and safeguarding impact in real time.”

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions asks whether we could cope with a world where computer gave up saying no …

This week’s question: what if Shakespeare were dropped in modern-day London?

After years of computer saying no, and giving us all migraines and premature grey hair, I’m starting to worry that computer – or rather AI large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini – are taking too much of a fancy to playing nice and saying yes. I confess to using both of these programs, but I’ve noticed that, well, it’s as if they’re trying to please, with statements such as, “You’re absolutely right, Jeff,” and “That’s pretty much right.” Often, when I ask, “Would you mind thinking for a bit longer on that?”, I then get another response saying: “Jeff, you’re absolutely right, again, to query that result. It turns out I was a bit hasty in my reply …”

If the world runs even more on information filleted out from the sump of the internet by LLMs, what are the consequences? Can we look forward to a future in which AI is more concerned with appearing sympathetic (getting good reviews?) than being factual? Er, a bit too human? Jeff Collett, Edinburgh

A bill to create a state intelligence operation would allow scrutiny based on ‘opinions’ – and could prompt other states to follow

“Florida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ he dislikes.” It’s not nearly as amusing as the usual “Florida man” headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.

If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first – CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn’t remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another’s policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized.

Dylan Lopez Contreras, a senior at Ellis Prep academy, was taken by ICE in May. The Guardian invited him and five of his classmates to share their lives and dreams

The students at Ellis Prep academy – like most high schoolers – have a lot on their mind right now.

Essay deadlines, college applications, younger siblings and dance rehearsals. But also, the immigration operations across the US and the president’s goal of “mass deportations”.

James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett adopt contrasting strategies as party hopes to tap into Trump backlash in reliably red state

At a packed town hall meeting last month in Laredo for James Talarico, the 36-year-old Democrat vying for a US Senate seat in Texas, Cristina Rodriguez took the microphone. Rodriguez, a 16-year Marine Corps veteran, said she had never cast a ballot. She didn’t identify as either a Democrat nor a Republican, and to her it didn’t matter. Regardless of what party the president belonged to, she had to obey orders.

Her attitude changed after the re-election of Donald Trump, whom she viewed as spiteful and divisive. In Talarico, a state representative from the Austin suburb of Round Rock, she found the exact opposite – a former middle school teacher and current seminary student who speaks in measured tones and preaches mutual respect.

KEL MARQUEZ
Staff Writer

The trees are bare 

and branches are thin

It makes me hopeful 

that spring will give in

As snow melts, flora and fauna

revealed by the breeze

Winter gives way 

to what spring foresees

When color reappears, 

bringing life to Earth

The seasons change, 

a planet’s rebirth

Winter shall come again, 

it’s written in the stars

But it’s nice to know that soon, 

spring will be ours

Samsung's new top-of-the-line phone packs upgrades to the camera and battery, but here's what I've loved using so far.

One of the biggest tech events of the year may not be on your radar, and not because it's happening in Barcelona.

Can the Blues derail their capital rival's title charge?

• Trump quipped about inviting US women to White House

• Knight appears on SNL with Hughes brothers

US ice hockey star Hilary Knight aimed a barb at Donald Trump during an appearance on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live.

Knight led the US women to gold at last month’s Olympics, scoring the Americans’ first goal as they beat Canada in overtime. But after the US men’s team won gold Trump joked that he would have to invite the women’s team to the White House too or risk being impeached. Many of the men’s players laughed at Trump’s comments, and Knight later called them “distasteful and unfortunate.” While the US men visited the White House last week, Knight and her teammates said they were too busy to attend and will instead celebrate at an event in July organized by rapper Flavor Flav.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 1, 2026.

Unveiled at MWC 2026, this book-style foldable has a lot going for it.

After byelection defeat and with right-leaning advisers gone, will PM return to his instincts and embrace Labour ‘DNA’ on climate?

Less than a year ago, Keir Starmer stood in front of an audience of senior officials and business leaders from 60 countries in London to declare climate action was “in the DNA of my government”.

Vowing to go “all out” for net zero and to “accelerate” while others were slowing down, the Lancaster House speech was his strongest intervention yet on the issue. “We’re paying the price for our overexposure to the rollercoaster of international fossil fuel markets,” he said. “Homegrown clean energy is the only way to take back control of our energy system.”

Jackson’s body lay in repose at his Rainbow/Push Coalition headquarters as thousands visited to pay their respects

Some were older, some were younger and some were strangers, but many more were friends – they had lined up down the blocks of Chicago in mercifully mild weather for a chance to say goodbye to the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

Friday was the last day of public visitation as Jackson lay in repose at the headquarters of his Rainbow/Push political activism coalition in the city he called home.

Plumes of smoke rose above Tehran and explosions could be heard across the city on day two of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. In a statement the Israel Defense Forces said the country's air force was striking targets 'in the heart of Tehran'. The strikes came after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first wave of attacks. Although Israel said it was targeting military assets in Iran, there have also been reports of a high civilian death toll

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

• US and Israel launch new wave of attacks across Iran amid threat of escalation

The president said the strikes have put immense pressure on Iran, and he believes the U.S.-Israeli military action can lead to an eventual diplomatic solution.

Authorities seek to reassure visitors after tourists at five-star resorts had to shelter in underground car parks

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

The weekend began as it often does in Dubai. By late morning on Saturday, the beach clubs on Palm Jumeirah were already at capacity. Along the waterfront promenade, running clubs gathered beneath the towers, filming their warm-ups before setting off in neat formation.

On Instagram, the city appeared untouched: blue skies, a flat sea and the steady churn of shoppers inside the Dubai Mall. Across the Gulf, however, the largest regional war since the 2003 invasion of Iraq was intensifying.

How the latest strikes risk opening a Pandora’s box in the Gulf.

A map created by the CBS News data team shows the strike locations across Iran, including the capital and the site of a major nuclear facility.

British forces in Bahrain and Iraq being drawn into Iran conflict in defence of civilian sites and military assets

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

Three hundred British personnel were within 200 metres (650ft) of an Iranian missile and drone strike on the US naval base in Bahrain on Saturday, one of several incidents where UK forces have been drawn into the war in the Middle East.

No casualties were reported in the incident, one of more than 25 waves of retaliatory attacks in response to the massive US-Israeli joint bombing campaign launched against Iran on Saturday.

You need only $12 to find out what's sucking the life out of your bank account.

The record sum paid at auction for a rare example is part of a boom in trading cards – and the prices can be staggering

For £12m, you could buy a seven-bedroom mansion in Hampstead, north London, or a Bugatti La Voiture Noire, one of the world’s most coveted sports cars, with a few hundred thousand quid to spare. Alternatively, you could blow it all on a Pokémon card.

This is what AJ Scaramucci, son of financier and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, did earlier this month when he bought the world’s only Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) 10-graded Pikachu Illustrator card, one of the rarest and most coveted Pokémon cards ever, at auction. The seller, YouTuber, wrestler and occasional boxer Logan Paul, made a mighty profit after flipping the card for about £8m more than the £3.9m he originally paid for it in 2021.

Kash Patel’s partying went viral and the US men’s team came to Washington. Now it’s all part of the culture war

Ah, hockey. The most impish of sports. A bunch of blissfully beefy individuals wearing colorful sweaters zoom around in skates chasing a wee little object called, of all things, a “puck”. It’s adorable. It’s like A Midsummer Night’s Dream for people missing teeth. These days, if you’re talking about hockey, you probably are thinking about HBO Max’s gay sex-capade romance, Heated Rivalry. In the TV series, two hockey players on opposing teams fall in love, engaging in various erotic scenarios in between smashing each other into plexiglass. Actually, maybe that second part is connected to the first part.

Heated Rivalry has become an absolute phenomenon, enthralling American audiences despite all the factors that might prevent someone less than tolerant from connecting with the show – it’s gay, it’s about one of our least popular major team sports, and most damning of all, it’s Canadian. It might as well be about talking beavers. And yet, it’s a major hit that’s done a lot of good for healthy representation of the LGBTQ+ community.

News of Ali Khamenei’s killing sparks backlash from Marjorie Taylor Greene and other America First loyalists

Donald Trump had come to Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, with a promise. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” the then US president-elect said in December 2016.

Trump has pushed his isolationist message in the decade since, repeatedly assuring his “America first” base that there would be no repeat of the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A reporter ponders on how to repair a religious structure long thought of as good but supported by an evil underside

In 1965, just shy of my junior year at the Jesuit high school of New Orleans, with good potential as an offensive end, I had an epiphany in the muddy slog of August football practice: Why are you doing something you don’t like?

Soon after, I quit, and was trailed by guilt for a dereliction of duty. Jesuit vaunted student achievements of all kinds. I played on the golf team and did some pieces for the school paper. Jesuit fostered a fraternal culture, molding friendships I carry to this day.

Ex-official calls transfer of unaccompanied girls as young as 13, many pregnant due to rape, a human rights violation

All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.

As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.

Stay as healthy as possible as you get older with these key vitamins

The Supreme Court is set to convene Monday to hear a Second Amendment dispute over a federal law that bars unlawful drug users from having firearms.

Trump threatens Tehran with force ‘never seen before’ if it pursues retaliation after Khamenei’s death

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Israel and the US have launched fresh waves of intensive attacks across Iran on the second day of their military campaign to overthrow the country’s government, which has plunged the Middle East into a new regional conflict with no certain timeline or outcome.

The renewed violence on Sunday comes amid heated rhetoric from Washington and Tehran that suggests further escalation in the coming hours and days.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the blogIt's FOSS: Greg Kroah-Hartman has updated the projected end-of-life (EOL) dates for several active longterm support kernels via a commit. The provided reasoning? It was done "based on lots of discussions with different companies and groups and the other stable kernel maintainer." The other maintainer is Sasha Levin, who co-maintains these Linux kernel releases alongside Greg. Now, the updated support schedule for the currently active LTS kernels looks like this: — Linux 6.6 now EOLs Dec 2027 (was Dec 2026), giving it a 4-year support window. — Linux 6.12 now EOLs Dec 2028 (was Dec 2026), also a 4-year window. — Linux 6.18 now EOLs Dec 2028 (was Dec 2027), at least 3 years of support. Worth noting above is that Linux 5.10 and 5.15 are both hitting EOL this year in December, so if your distro is still running either of these, now is a good time to start thinking about a move.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With many of its key specs being the same as the Leica Leitzphone, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra has a lot going for it.

This approach delivered the best bacon with the least amount of hassle.

Employees say they have heard little from major defense contractor V2X Inc about safety and evacuation protocols

Employees of major defense contractor V2X Inc on US military bases in Kuwait say they lack adequate bunker facilities and have had their pay reduced amid Iranian missile attacks across the Persian Gulf region, while receiving limited communication from their employer about safety and evacuation procedures.

The Guardian interviewed three V2X employees on the US bases Camp Arifjan and Camp Buehring in Kuwait, following Iranian missile strikes on Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan on Saturday.

Thousands go missing every year, including more than 5,000 Native American and Alaska Native women and girls

Savannah Guthrie is moving back to New York to resume anchoring NBC’s Today show and acknowledging that her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, may not be found a month after she disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the middle of the night.

“We still believe in a miracle,” Guthrie said in a video last week announcing a $1m reward for her mother’s return in an enduring mystery that has gripped the US for four weeks. “We also know that she may be lost. She may already be gone.”

Antics of RFK Jr, Kristi Noem and others prompt derision – could their erratic behaviour prove president’s undoing?

Heads bowed, linked by arms across their backs, they gathered in a solemn prayer circle. “The quiet moments are often the most important,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, reflected later on social media. Then Team Trump entered the chamber to cheers and applause for Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

Democrats gathered on Capitol Hill, however, regarded the people appointed by Donald Trump to his cabinet and other senior positions rather differently. In the past two weeks alone, they saw a health secretary who boasted about snorting cocaine off toilet seats; a homeland security secretary who allegedly fired a pilot for leaving her blanket on a plane; and an FBI director who chugged beer with Olympic hockey players in Italy at taxpayers’ expense.

Melt faces from beyond the grave.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his Tehran compound, according to four Israeli security officials briefed on the matter.

Just four years ago, a progressive primary challenger with endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., fell 281 votes short of toppling scandal-stained incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas.

Cuellar went on to win the general election in the 28th Congressional District. Then he won again in 2024, despite a federal bribery indictment. In December, President Donald Trump granted Cuellar a pardon from federal charges.

Trump’s assist might have generated a serious primary challenge for a Democrat elsewhere, but Cuellar does not have any well-funded opponents this time around in Texas’s primary elections on Tuesday.

That trend has repeated itself along the Texas border. In districts where progressives once drew national attention and fundraising dollars, a handful of candidates in the left lane are mounting shoestring campaigns.

Texas politicos chalked that phenomenon up to the disappointment from the defeat of progressive candidates in 2022 and 2024, mid-decade redistricting that made several seats in Texas more conservative, and concerns from national groups that some Latinos have permanently swung to the right after voting for Trump in 2024.

Some observers, however, believe that there’s a chance that Democrats may overlearned the lessons of 2024, when Trump made historic inroads among Latino voters along the border.

“I think there’s a decided progressive shift, especially among Democratic voters who are desperate for real change,” said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “But I think they’re desperate to find candidates who can articulate that.”

One of the candidates who is vying for progressive votes Ada Cuellar, an emergency room doctor who has tapped her retirement fund as national donors line up behind a centrist competitor.

Ada Cuellar, no relation to Henry, is running in the Democratic primary against Tejano music scion Bobby Pulido in the 15th Congressional District, which stretches from McAllen on the border to the suburbs of San Antonio. Pulido has cast himself as the candidate most attuned to the district’s attitudes on social issues such as guns and abortion rights.

Washington Democrats are gushing over Pulido’s prospects to win over Republicans in a district that went 58 percent to 40 percent for Trump over Kamala Harris in 2024. Only a shotgun-wielding centrist like Pulido has a chance, the theory goes.

Cuellar disagrees. While she eschews the “progressive” label — she considers herself an “independent Democrat” — she is running on a platform that includes support for Medicare for All and abortion rights.

“The establishment has misread the moment, and they really shouldn’t have made a pick here,” said Cuellar. “I really think they shouldn’t make picks in general.”

Early polls, including one conducted by Cuellar’s campaign, showed her far behind the singer. The $824,000 that Ada Cuellar has loaned her own campaign, though, appears to be evening the score.

And national groups are rushing to prop up Pulido. Blue Dog Action is running ads responding to Cuellar’s attacks on Pulido over his views on abortion, for example. The centrist Democratic PAC spent close to $1 million in support of Pulido in February alone, campaign finance records show.

Cuellar is not the only candidate in the progressive mold running without national support.

In the 34th Congressional District, policy researcher Etienne Rosas is trying to take on conservative Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez — with $7,900 in cash on hand compared to the incumbent’s $1.3 million.

Gonzalez co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition and voted in favor of the January appropriations bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, factors that would make him a tempting target for progressives elsewhere. Still, national groups have stayed away.

“To be honest, as a socialist myself, I’ve been kind of dismayed how much little outreach leftists that have a national platform have done to this district,” Rosas said.

Rosas is hopeful that support from local Democratic Socialists of America members will give him a people-power boost. Still, he wishes that more national progressives would turn their eyes to the border.

Gonzalez’s campaign did not return a request for comment.

Down in the Rio Grande Valley

National progressive groups and political figures have had a mixed record in supporting campaigns in the Rio Grande Valley.

In 2020 and 2022, Henry Cuellar faced serious primary challenges from immigration legal aid lawyer Jessica Cisneros in his district, which stretches from Laredo to the outskirts of San Antonio. Buoyed by the backing of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, she fell short by a few hundred votes of toppling Cuellar on her second try.

In the 15th Congressional District, where Ada Cuellar and Pulido are competing now, Michelle Vallejo secured the Democratic nomination in 2022 and 2024, first as a progressive, then as more of a centrist.

Related

Silicon Valley Billionaire Storms Into Texas to Bail Out Abortion Foe Henry Cuellar

Vallejo drew national support, but that was not enough to put her over the top in two races against Republican Monica De La Cruz. In a January 2025 report, the local group Cambio Texas said that Vallejo’s campaigns fell short in part because she relied too heavily on national groups.

The report was also critical of national progressives’ alleged overreliance on “purity tests” and “ideological language.”

“When progressive messaging fails to resonate with Texas voters, the problem often lies with the messenger,” argued the group, whose executive director at the time, Abel Prado, is now serving as Pulido’s campaign manager. “Winning elections requires a willingness to engage with people outside one’s own social or political comfort zone.”

The defeats of Cisneros and Vallejo left a bitter taste in the mouths of national progressives and may have contributed to their relative absence this time. Another key factor is the redistricting that Trump pushed through the Texas legislature last year.

Under the new maps, every district along the border voted for Trump by a more than 10-point margin, save for the compact seat in El Paso represented by Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

That redistricting may make it difficult for Democrats to win even in the 23rd Congressional District, where sitting Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales is being dragged down by a scandal involving an affair with a former staffer. None of the candidates in the crowded Democratic primary there have seen significant donations come into their campaign thus far.

In recent years, national groups such as Justice Democrats pursued a strategy of trying to get the most progressive candidates possible elected in districts that are already blue, rather than attempting to boost candidates who share their views in purple or red districts.

“Redistricting has a part in it, absolutely,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director at Justice Democrats. “We look at pretty deep blue districts.”

Still, Andrabi is critical of the strategy that national Democrats have pursued of supporting conservative Democrats such as Henry Cuellar.

“You have a Democratic establishment that is actually OK with having a diet Republican represent south Texas, as long as they have a D after their name,” he said.

Along with Gonzalez, Cuellar was one of seven House Democrats to vote for funding the Department of Homeland Security last month. He is the House’s sole Democrat opposed to abortion rights. And he voted against a war powers resolution that would have forced Trump to seek congressional approval for further attacks on Venezuela.

Cuellar’s campaign did not respond to a request for his pitch to progressives in his district.

The argument from national Democratic groups for supporting relative conservatives such as Cuellar, Gonzalez, and Pulido is consistent: They are all the most likely to win a general election in districts that voted heavily for Trump.

Yet as polls show Democrats fired up and Latinos shifting away from Trump, candidates such as Rosas and Ada Cuellar believe that national Democrats have misjudged the border. Cuellar says she is hardly bothered anymore when people call her a progressive.

“It’s not really a scary thing to get that label,” she said. “I have noticed that the Democrats get very energized by a person who is more progressive. And I have also noticed that right now, there is such a hunger for a person who is a fighter and who is competent.”

The post Texas Progressives Say Democratic Establishment Is Blowing It In the Rio Grande Valley appeared first on The Intercept.

The Iranian foreign minister says Donald Trump’s aim of regime change is ‘mission impossible’ after US-Israeli strikes hit multiple sites in Iran.

Reports say at least 201 people have been killed and there are growing fears the move could plunge the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.

The Guardian's Patrick Wintour explains what we know so far and what to expect

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Footage released by Iran's state media shows a school building in the south of the country reportedly destroyed by US and Israeli strikes. At least 100 children were killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for

• ‘The most bitter news’: Iran reels as more than 100 children reportedly killed in school bombing

Aggression feeds a sense that the US is operating outside global norms and helps to fuel a more complex currency outlook

• What the US-Israeli attacks on Iran mean for oil prices

Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, with its puerile Pentagon nametag Operation Epic Fury, is another show of violent force from a bullish administration.

Aside from unleashing fresh instability across the Middle East, the strikes add to the sense of a US operating with little regard for international law or global norms – as with Trump’s on-off tariff regime, and the attack on Venezuela.

President Trump said that "heavy and pinpoint bombing" of Iran would "continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary."

From phones you can wear like a bracelet to weird AI gadgets packed with lasers, these products went hard and then went home.

Sales beat wider retail sector last year thanks to customers inspired by websites such as Vinted, industry body says

Young people inspired by secondhand fashion websites such as Vinted and Depop are helping charity shops thrive despite rising energy and employment costs.

Save the Children’s retail sales rose 3% last year, helped by a surge in December when the charity rang up 11% more than the same month a year before, raising more than £1m for its causes.

Exclusive: Labour’s Rushanara Ali plans to intervene in elections bill amid warnings of foreign interference

A former Labour minister has added her voice to those of a growing list of experts and senior MPs calling for a ban on political donations in cryptocurrency as concerns grow over foreign interference in British elections.

Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP who helped draft the elections bill when she was a minister in the communities department, called for the government to strengthen the legislation with an outright ban on donations in digital currencies.

Effective closure of the strait of Hormuz could spell trouble for many developed economies

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

The US-Israeli war on Iran has ignited fears that escalating military aggression in the Middle East could send oil prices soaring, push up prices at the pump and drive a global economic downturn.

The US began “major combat operations” in Iran on Saturday morning, shortly after Israel launched a strike against Tehran. Within hours of the US-Israeli strikes, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reportedly warned tankers in the strait of Hormuz that no ship would be allowed to pass through the world’s most critical oil trade route.

This Old Firm derby clash at Ibrox looks set to have a huge bearing on this season's title race.

Anthropic's Claude AI assistant "jumped to the No. 2 slot on Apple's chart of top U.S. free apps late on Friday," reports CNBC: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it. Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Commentary: Yes, Apple's $599 iPhone 16E is a good buy, but its successor could launch immintently, possibly at a March 4 Apple media event.

Woman deceived into relationship tells spycops inquiry the trip was not to meet Italian socialists, as Carlo Soracchi claims

An undercover police officer is facing allegations that he used taxpayers’ money to pay for a romantic break in Venice with a woman he was deceiving into a long-term relationship, the spycops public inquiry has heard.

Carlo Soracchi pretended to be an activist for six years while he infiltrated socialist and anti-fascist campaign groups.

The America First president who built his political brand on opposing foreign military adventures has unleashed a war of choice aimed at regime change

It turns out that Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “candidate of peace”, is just as eager to start new wars. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as the antithesis of his Democratic opponents Joe Biden, and later, Kamala Harris. Trump insisted he would use his deal-making skills to end multiple global conflicts that started under the Biden administration, including Israel’s war on Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” he said.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

Ben Saul says ‘rolling over’ after Israel and US attack is counterproductive for middle powers because it undermines rules-based order

• Iranian Australians celebrate death of supreme leader and dream of regime change

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

International law experts have criticised Australia for “rolling over” and backing what they say is an illegal attack by Israel and the US on Iran.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, endorsed the fresh war by stating that “Australia supports action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security”.

The text mimics a common fraud, but differs in that criminals appear to have hacked a genuine business account

John the delivery driver has tried to drop off something at your home from a company called Cleaning Superstore but you missed him, according to the message you have received via WhatsApp.

Although you cannot remember buying anything from the company, the text appears to have come from a legitimate WhatsApp account so you try to rearrange delivery by clicking the link provided.

Labour peer, who was a child refugee, criticises home secretary’s response to Gorton and Denton byelection defeat

The home secretary’s decision to double down on hardline immigration reforms in light of Labour’s byelection defeat to the Green party is “disappointing”, according to the Labour peer Alf Dubs.

Lord Dubs, a child refugee who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport in 1939, had previously accused Shabana Mahmood of “pulling up the drawbridge” on child migrants.

The regime may now have to meet Trump’s demands merely to save itself. And he needs a coherent plan to deal with what he has unleashed

The coordinated strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning formally reignited a conflict that had been simmering since last summer’s 12-day war. They targeted key command structures and killed senior figures, most notably Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who had been in power since 1989. Donald Trump marked his demise with a post saying “one of the most evil people in history” was dead, adding: “This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans.”

Israel has published reports claiming that Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), defence minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and Admiral Ali Shamkhani, head of the defence council, have also been killed. In response, Iranian forces have fired missiles and drones at Israel, at US bases in the Gulf, Iraq and Jordan, and at some civilian targets across the Gulf. Events are moving quickly, but far from predictably.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House

Investors shifting to ‘heavy-asset, low-obsolescence’ companies insulated from disruption, says Goldman Sachs

Investors have a new mantra as they prepare for AI to shake up the global economy – the Halo trade.

Interest in Halo – short for “heavy assets, low obsolescence” - has risen as investors seek out companies with tangible, productive assets, which might be insulated from AI disruption, such as energy and transport infrastructure companies.

After a heist and the departure of its boss, the French institution wrestles with water leaks, strikes and much-criticised plans for a €1bn renovation

Just over a year ago, Laurence des Cars, the intellectually brilliant (if famously prickly) former head of the largest and most-visited museum in the world, wrote a somewhat alarming note to her boss, France’s culture minister.

Des Cars, who on Tuesday resigned as president of the Louvre, lamented the advanced state of disrepair of the iconic museum’s buildings and galleries.

In a 9,000-word expose, a writer for Harper's visited San Francisco's young entrepreneurs in September to mockingly profile "tech's new generation and the end of thinking." There's Cluely founder Roy Lee. ("His grand contribution to the world was a piece of software that told people what to do.") And the Rationalist movement's Scott Alexander, who "would probably have a very easy time starting a suicide cult..." Alexander's relationship with the AI industry is a strange one. "In theory, we think they're potentially destroying the world and are evil and we hate them," he told me. In practice, though, the entire industry is essentially an outgrowth of his blog's comment section... "Many of them were specifically thinking, I don't trust anybody else with superintelligence, so I'm going to create it and do it well." Somehow, a movement that believes AI is incredibly dangerous and needs to be pursued carefully ended up generating a breakneck artificial arms race. There's a fascinating story about teenaged founder Eric Zhu (who only recently turned 18): Clients wanted to take calls during work hours, so he would speak to them from his school bathroom. "I convinced my counselor that I had prostate issues... I would buy hall passes from drug dealers to get out of class, to have business meetings." Soon he was taking Zoom calls with a U.S. senator to discuss tech regulation... Next, he built his own venture-capital fund, managing $20 million. At one point cops raided the bathroom looking for drug dealers while Eric was busy talking with an investor. Eventually, the school got sick of Eric's misuse of the facilities and kicked him out. He moved to San Francisco. Eric made all of this sound incredibly easy. You hang out in some Discord servers, make a few connections with the right people; next thing you know, you're a millionaire... Eric didn't think there was anything particularly special about himself. Why did he, unlike any of his classmates, start a $20 million VC fund? "I think I was just bored. Honestly, I was really bored." Did he think anyone could do what he did? "Yeah, I think anyone genuinely can." The article concludes Silicon Valley's investors are rewarding young people with "agency". Although "As far as I could tell, being a highly agentic individual had less to do with actually doing things and more to do with constantly chasing attention online." Like X.com user Donald Boat, who successfully baited Sam Altman into buying him a gaming PC in "a brutally simplified miniature of the entire VC economy." (After which "People were giving him stuff for no reason except that Altman had already done it, and they didn't want to be left out of the trend.") Shortly before I arrived at the Cheesecake Factory, [Donald Boat] texted to let me know that he'd been drinking all day, so when I met him I thought he was irretrievably wasted. In fact, it turned out, he was just like that all the time... He seemed to have a constant roster of projects on the go. He'd sent me occasional photos of his exploits. He went down to L.A. to see Oasis and ended up in a poker game with a group of weapons manufacturers. "I made a bunch of jokes about sending all their poker money to China," he said, "and they were not pleased...." "I don't use that computer and I think video games are a waste of time. I spent all the money I made from going viral on Oasis tickets." As far as he was concerned, the fact that tech people were tripping over themselves to take part in his stunt just confirmed his generally low impression of them. "They have too much money and nothing going on..." Ever since his big viral moment, he'd been suddenly inundated with messages from startup drones who'd decided that his clout might be useful to them. One had offered to fly him out to the French Riviera. The author's conclusion? "It did not seem like a good idea to me that some of the richest people in the world were no longer rewarding people for having any particular skills, but simply for having agency."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The attack on Iran presents Europe with a new test in already-strained ties with the U.S., as appeals for restraint clash with Trump’s assertion that force will succeed.

Regional authorities withdraw permit after citing risk of organised crime infiltration linked to a subcontractor

It is one of Europe’s most celebrated shorelines, framed by mountains and 19th-century villas and famed for its Caribbean-blue water and white sand.

But Mondello beach in Palermo, Sicily, has also been mired in controversy, the subject of complaints stretching back a century from residents and tourists who say its private lidos, cabins and deckchairs have left scant room for public access.

On Saturday morning, the United States and Israel carried out intensive airstrikes against Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who had ruled the Islamic Republic since 1989. 

According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, the attacks killed at least 333 civilians across 18 provinces of Iran in at least 59 incidents. In response, Iran launched a barrage of missile and drone attacks at U.S. and Israeli targets, both military and civilian, across the region.

The Intercept spoke with Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, to make sense of what led to the attack on Iran, what we know so far, and how the situation might unfold in the days and weeks to come.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What have we seen today in Iran and in the wider region?

Trump has entered us into a major regime change war against Iran, and from what we know so far, it seems like hundreds of Iranians have been killed, with a plurality of those deaths taking place at a girls’ school where at least dozens, maybe over 100 people were killed.

We don’t know exactly why that school was bombed, whether it’s a case of bad intelligence or misfire or something. But those were among the very first casualties of the war, and that really underscores the life-and-death stakes here as the war is unfolding.

It’s just such a tragic loss, and it wouldn’t have happened if Trump had not made the decision to go to war. So, you know, regardless of what the reason was — whether faulty intelligence or misfire or whatever — those girls can’t come back. And that just really underscores the stakes of war, and why so many people try to prevent war from breaking out.

The Iranian government just confirmed the death of Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. What does his death mean for Iran and the country’s position in the region?

Khamenei has been at the top of the Islamic Republic for decades here, and a big, huge part of each consequential decision that Iran has made for decades. Even before he was officially supreme leader, he was the president, and he was a key adviser to the first Supreme Leader, [Ruhollah] Khomeini. So he’s one of the original revolutionaries of the Islamic Republic. In a lot of ways, Iran wouldn’t be where it is today without him, and that cuts both ways. A lot of people think he’s held the country back. He’s been responsible for major human rights violations, and then has, you know, more or less picked a fight with the United States and put the country into a major trap here.

There’s only been one Supreme Leader succession before, and that was from Khomeini to Khamenei in 1989. And so it’s been a very long time, but there are processes in place. There’s a whole body whose whole job is basically to sit around and wait to choose the next Supreme Leader. It’s called the Assembly of Experts, and it’s made up of very senior figures in the Iranian establishment. It’s a little unclear whether they would do so immediately or would do so later, but at some point they will convene and consider who the next Supreme Leader will be. 

[Editor’s note: After this article was published, Iranian officials announced that a council of high-ranking jurists would rule in Khameni’s stead until a new leader is chosen.]

This happening during wartime throws a lot of questions into the air, but we will see, ultimately, what the system comes up with. Khamenei appears to have prepared for succession within the Islamic Republic and has been directing different decision-makers to appoint assessors and have a plan of operation so that events can continue and the system can move on, even in the circumstances of his death.

Will it make a difference the fact that he was killed in an attack, rather than dying of natural causes, in how the succession might play out or in who is picked?

I think there is a concern that, you know, if you’re choosing a leader during wartime, is that going to end up being somebody who is more dogmatic and rigid ideologically? Or is it going to be someone who’s more pragmatic and might work to try to end the crisis? We won’t know until the person is chosen and they start to make certain decisions.

Trump has made clear that the goal of this operation is regime change, and has called on the people of Iran to seize power and on the security forces to work toward a transition. What are we actually seeing at this moment, and what might we expect to see in the coming days and weeks?

It does seem like they want to do regime change, but a kind of stand-off regime change, where they don’t put boots on the ground, per se, and then they encourage people on the ground to rise up and overthrow the government for them.

One situation that comes to mind is in 1991, where George H.W. Bush stopped at repelling the Iraqis from Kuwait, and then encouraged Iraqis to rise up. And tens of thousands of people were slaughtered by Hussein’s regime in the wake of that call to rise up. I think there’s a clear historical parallel to Trump’s approach to Iran thus far, where a lot of Iranians have already been killed after Trump encouraged them to rise up.

Related

Fool Me Twice: The Case for War With Iran Is Even Thinner Than It Was for Iraq

Even after strikes, you have to assume that at least elements of the Iranian government will maintain a monopoly on the use of force — meaning they still get the guns, and the Iranian people don’t. If this all leads to something where democracy somehow flows from bombs, well, we’ll see. I don’t think that’s a particularly likely scenario.

The [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] remains the strongest actor within Iran, both in terms of military capability and organization. Obviously, they have absorbed a lot of the blows in the initial U.S. strikes, but I think they are far and away the most powerful actor inside the system. So essentially, if the theocrats in the Iranian system are taken out, the IRGC are the ones in charge of much of Iran’s response and defense, and are best situated to fill any political and governmental void that may take place.

Based on how today played out, what can we divine about the logic of the Trump administration going into these strikes? What did they want to accomplish?

I think probably a lot of Americans were taken by surprise by this. But for those who read the news, you saw the biggest build-up in the Middle East since the Iraq War. And I think, reading the signs, it was either there would be a deal or a war.

This played out very similarly to June, where the diplomacy seems to have been a ruse. Trump seems to have been convinced by Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran months ago, probably predating the protests and so forth.

Essentially, they’re high off the Maduro operation. They thought: Hey, here’s an adversary that is weak — there’s never going to be a better time to strike. I don’t know if they ever considered the diplomatic option. It seems like it’s quite possible that it was just a ruse to try to lure the Iranians into thinking they might get a deal. 

You mentioned the U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In that case, the Trump administration quickly replaced Maduro with a puppet government. Does the Trump administration have its eyes on specific successors in Iran? 

There have been a lot of reports of strikes targeting critics of the regime, such as Mir Hussain Mousavi, the Green Movement leader. His house, where he’s essentially been under house arrest for 15 years, was targeted in some of the initial strikes. That apparent eagerness to target past political leaders who may have had a falling out with the current government seems to be a signal that they’re trying to eliminate any potential people who could actually transition to democracy but still be a nationalist figure. I don’t know if they have someone picked out or if they don’t care, but I would guess that if that’s actually been part of the strike pattern that they have someone figured out that would be a pushover for U.S. and Israeli interests.

What does it tell other actors on the world stage that the U.S. and Israel carried out the attack amidst ongoing negotiations? And what message does it send to other major powers?

Related

Lesson From Ukraine: Breaking Promises to Small Countries Means They’ll Never Give Up Nukes

This tells any potential adversaries of the U.S.: Get nuclear weapons. Hedging is not a strategy, and giving up your program like [Muammar] Gaddafi is not a strategy. The only successful strategy is what Kim Jong Un did, which is to get nuclear weapons. He’s the only surviving despot of the so-called axis of evil.

It just seems like the Wild West in the international system right now. It’s just “might makes right.” That is also a message that will be heard by other global powers like Russia or China that might have designs on smaller, weaker states out there. If the U.S. is saying “might makes right,” they say, “OK, if that’s how you want to play it, then we’ll pursue our own interests too.”

There has been considerable unrest in Iran over the past month, with massive protests against the government and a brutal crackdown that has killed thousands. Given that opposition to the government, what do you think the reaction might be inside Iran to the attacks?

Iranians have long been caught between authoritarianism of their own government and militarism of foreign powers, and this is a pretty clear-cut example of that. You have this horrible crackdown from the Iranian government in January, and then a major military attack from the United States, all within 40 days of each other.

I think there has been a growing contingent inside Iran of people who are for military intervention. I don’t know how widespread that is, but I think it’s certainly something that unbiased observers have witnessed over the years. Certainly a significant majority of the population does not like the Islamic Republic and would like it gone. But then you get to the question of who endorses military force and how widespread that is — I don’t think that is a majority of the population. And if it were that, once the bombs started falling, that support would evaporate pretty quickly. I think a lot of the people on the streets who participated in the protests did so for domestic reasons and also would oppose the U.S. bombing the country.

What can we expect to see in the coming days and weeks?

Trump seems to think this will be over in a couple of weeks. I have no idea if that’s realistic. I would probably take the over, at least in terms of the reverberations from this incident, which are going to be enormous. I think those will likely be measured in years rather than weeks.

This is probably in the realm of dangerous speculation, but I feel like the Iranian government is going to have a harder ideological edge to it, and that, if you take out the upper echelons of the leadership, the people that are going to fill those roles are, I think, still steeped in a good bit of the ideology of the Islamic Revolution and opposition to U.S. hegemony, and have lived through so many confrontations with the West and with the U.S. in particular. 

So it’s possible that they could replicate the Venezuela situation to some degree. But my assumption is that the people who step into the void are going to be more of Khamenei’s ilk, and may have less restraint as well, particularly on the nuclear program. Who knows where the nuclear program will be when all is said and done, but I think there will be very little holding Iranian leadership back from pursuing a nuclear weapon if any trace of the current government survives this.

Update: March 1, 2026

An editor’s note was added after Iranian officials announced that a council of jurists would rule until a new leader is chosen.

The post The U.S. and Israel Killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What Comes Next? appeared first on The Intercept.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 1.

This blog is closed. Follow our live coverage on our new blog here.

• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed

• A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s response

• War on Iran: how the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded

Blasts have been heard in several cities, including the capital, Tehran, and Isfahan in central Iran.

Reuters reports there are long queues at petrol stations in the capital, as many people try to leave. An unnamed Iranian official who spoke to the news agency said several ministries in southern Tehran had been targeted.

US and Israel strike Iran; supreme leader confirmed killed; fierce domestic criticism of military action – key US politics stories from 28 February at a glance

The US launched attacks against Iran on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel. Hours after the bombs started falling across Iran, Trump claimed the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, calling it the “greatest chance” for the Iranian people to “take back” their country. State media in Iran later confirmed his death.

The announcement came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” was to continue through the week or as long as necessary. There was no immediate comment from Iran on Khamenei’s status.

Saturday afternoon Sam Altman announced he'd start answering questions on X.com about OpenAI's work with America's Department of War — and all the developments over the past few days. (After that department's negotions had failed with Anthropic, they announced they'd stop using Anthropic's technology and threatened to designate it a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security". Then they'd reached a deal for OpenAI's technology — though Altman says it includes OpenAI's own similar prohibitions against using their products for domestic mass surveillance and requiring "human responsibility" for the use of force in autonomous weapon systems.) Altman said Saturday that enforcing that "Supply-Chain Risk" designation on Anthropic "would be very bad for our industry and our country, and obviously their company. We said [that] to the Department of War before and after. We said that part of the reason we were willing to do this quickly was in the hopes of de-esclation.... We should all care very much about the precedent... To say it very clearly: I think this is a very bad decision from the Department of War and I hope they reverse it. If we take heat for strongly criticizing it, so be it." Altman also said that for a long time, OpenAI was planning to do "non-classified work only," but this week found the Department of War "flexible on what we needed..." Sam Altman: The reason for rushing is an attempt to de-escalate the situation. I think the current path things are on is dangerous for Anthropic, healthy competition, and the U.S. We negotiated to make sure similar terms would be offered to all other AI labs. I know what it's like to feel backed into a corner, and I think it's worth some empathy to the Department of War. They are... a very dedicated group of people with, as I mentioned, an extremely important mission. I cannot imagine doing their work. Our industry tells them "The technology we are building is going to be the high order bit in geopolitical conflict. China is rushing ahead. You are very behind." And then we say "But we won't help you, and we think you are kind of evil." I don't think I'd react great in that situation. I do not believe unelected leaders of private companies should have as much power as our democratically elected government. But I do think we need to help them. Question: Are you worried at all about the potential for things to go really south during a possible dispute over what's legal or not later on and be deemed a supply chain risk...? Sam Altman: Yes, I am. If we have to take on that fight we will, but it clearly exposes us to some risk. I am still very hopeful this is going to get resolved, and part of why we wanted to act fast was to help increase the chances of that... Question: Why the rush to sign the deal ? Obviously the optics don't look great. Sam Altman: It was definitely rushed, and the optics don't look good. We really wanted to de-escalate things, and we thought the deal on offer was good. If we are right and this does lead to a de-escalation between the Department of War and the industry, we will look like geniuses, and a company that took on a lot of pain to do things to help the industry. If not, we will continue to be characterized as as rushed and uncareful. I don't where it's going to land, but I have already seen promising signs. I think a good relationship between the government and the companies developing this technology is critical over the next couple of years... Question: What was the core difference why you think the Department of War accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic? Sam Altman: [...] We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs [embedded Forward Deployed Engineers] and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the Department of War. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one... I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did... Question: Were the terms that you accepted the same ones Anthropic rejected? Sam Altman: No, we had some different ones. But our terms would now be available to them (and others) if they wanted. Question: Will you turn off the tool if they violate the rules? Sam Altman: Yes, we will turn it off in that very unlikely event, but we believe the U.S. government is an institution that does its best to follow law and policy. What we won't do is turn it off because we disagree with a particular (legal military) decision. We trust their authority. Questions were also answered by OpenAI's head of National Security Partnerships (who at one point posted that they'd managed the White House response to the Snowden disclosures and helped write the post-Snowden policies constraining surveillance during the Obama years.) And they stressed that with OpenAI's deal with Department of War, "We control how we train the models and what types of requests the models refuse." Question: Are employees allowed to opt out of working on Department of War-related projects? Answer: We won't ask employees to support Department of War-related projects if they don't want to. Question: How much is the deal worth? Answer: It's a few million $, completely inconsequential compared to our $20B+ in revenue, and definitely not worth the cost of a PR blowup. We're doing it because it's the right thing to do for the country, at great cost to ourselves, not because of revenue impact... Question: Can you explicitly state which specific technical safeguard OpenAI has that allowed you to sign what Anthropic called a 'threat to democratic values'? Answer: We think the deal we made has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic's. Other AI labs (including Anthropic) have reduced or removed their safety guardrails and relied primarily on usage policies as their primary safeguards in national security deployments. Usage policies, on their own, are not a guarantee of anything. Any responsible deployment of AI in classified environments should involve layered safeguards including a prudent safety stack, limits on deployment architecture, and the direct involvement of AI experts in consequential AI use cases. These are the terms we negotiated in our contract. They also detailed OpenAI's position on LinkedIn: Deployment architecture matters more than contract language. Our contract limits our deployment to cloud API. Autonomous systems require inference at the edge. By limiting our deployment to cloud API, we can ensure that our models cannot be integrated directly into weapons systems, sensors, or other operational hardware... Instead of hoping contract language will be enough, our contract allows us to embed forward deployed engineers, commits to giving us visibility into how models are being used, and we have the ability to iterate on safety safeguards over time. If our team sees that our models aren't refusing queries they should, or there's more operational risk than we expected, our contract allows us to make modifications at our discretion. This gives us far more influence over outcomes (and insight into possible abuse) than a static contract provision ever could. U.S. law already constrains the worst outcomes. We accepted the "all lawful uses" language proposed by the Department, but required them to define the laws that constrained them on surveillance and autonomy directly in the contract. And because laws can change, having this codified in the contract protects against changes in law or policy that we can't anticipate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waves of Tomahawk and air-launched missiles eliminate Iranian air defenses and military sites as Trump welcomes the toppling of Khamenei’s reign.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for March 1, No. 1,716.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 1 #994

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 1, No. 524.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for March 1, No. 728.

President Trump posted on social media that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed after a massive U.S. and Israeli military operation​ Saturday.

60 Minutes has been covering the geopolitical situation in Iranian for almost five decades. Here are some of the reports we've broadcast.

Congress is expected to vote on two resolutions that seek to block further military action, the latest test of a long-shot strategy to reassert lawmakers’ war powers.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said the strike killed more than 100 children at the girls’ elementary school in southern Iran.

Australian foreign affairs minister says Israel and US should explain ‘the legal basis for the attacks’ on Iran and won’t say if Pine Gap used during strikes

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Australia has urged Iran to stop retaliatory attacks on countries across the Middle East after the US and Israel bombed Iran, killing its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, when asked about the legality of the strikes on Iran, said it was up to Australia’s allies to explain “the legal basis”.

Olivia Dean tops the winners list with four, while Sam Fender bags two – see all the category winners here

Olivia Dean

President Trump launched a wide-ranging attack on Iran after weeks-long lobbying by an unusual pair of U.S. allies in the Middle East: Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Crowds gather in DC, New York and beyond to denounce Trump’s Iran strikes as an illegal act of war

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

• Full report: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed

• A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s response

• War on Iran: how the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded

As news circulated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had been killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran, anti-war protesters gathered across the United States, including outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to voice opposition to US military involvement in the region.

“It wasn’t sanctioned by Congress, so what Trump is doing is on his own terms, it’s making him a fascist and it’s making the country into a fascist state,” said Sue Johnson, a protester.

The question of who owns and authorizes the month holds particular relevance amid attacks on Black history in the US

There is a myth that persists about Black History Month that can be heard in the common gripe: “They gave us the shortest month of the year” (they, the unnamed powers that be). Jarvis Givens, the author of I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month, hates it. “Every time I hear that backhanded comment it doesn’t seem right,” said Givens, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “If you know anything about the basic origins of Black History Month then you know that we weren’t ‘given’ anything.”

The question of who owns and authorizes Black History Month holds particular relevance now, in its centennial year, and at a time when efforts to celebrate, preserve, and acknowledge Black people’s past in this country are under attack. Official recognition of Black American resistance to centuries of racial injustice is being challenged by local, state, and national efforts to restrict, ban and possibly criminalize such information in public schools, universities and other institutions. So the sentiment that Black history can be quite literally given or taken away by state officials is valid.

Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man

Joint operation prompts Tehran to retaliate with missile attacks on bases across Middle East

• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed, says Donald Trump

• US-Israeli war on Iran – live updates

• A visual guide to US-Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s response

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been killed as the US and Israel launch a war on Iran to trigger regime change, Donald Trump has claimed. The US president announced the death of the ayatollah, who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, in a post on Truth Social. “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote.

The death of Iran’s supreme leader was announced after waves of air attacks across the country. Iran’s Red Crescent reported more than 200 deaths and 747 injuries in daylong attacks across 24 provinces.

At least 100 people were reportedly killed in a strike on a primary school in Minab, in the south-east.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had earlier said there were “many signs” Khamenei was “no longer alive”, and Israeli officials briefed media that his body had been recovered.

Tehran fired retaliatory strikes against Israeli and US bases across the Middle East. Iran’s attacks targeted more than six countries, pulling in places that had been previously untouched by the escalating crisis.

In Israel, one person died and 22 others are injured, media reports say, after an Iranian missile strike hit a building in Tel Aviv. An official said the building was aflame and had partially collapsed.

In Dubai, a number of people were injured after an incident occurred at Dubai international airport, the Dubai media office has said. The Burj Al Arab and Fairmont hotels caught fire amid Iranian attacks.

The United Arab Emirates said in a statement that it had intercepted the vast majority of the 137 missiles and 209 drones fired at its territory by Iran in the hours after the US and Israel launched a regime change war on the Islamic Republic.

In Bahrain, an Iranian drone flew into a high-rise building in what looked like a targeted attack, exploding and engulfing the skyscraper in flames. Earlier, the country’s national security agency was also struck by an Iranian missile.

Social media footage also appeared to show a missile hitting the huge US naval base in Bahrain. In Kuwait, a drone crashed into the country’s main airport, wounding several employees and damaging the facility.

In Lebanon, gas stations across the country had lines 10 cars deep within an hour of the strikes. People in Beirut airport watched as commercial flights were cancelled, and grocery stores were filled with the more cautious stocking up on essential goods – the memory of the 2024 war with Israel fresh in their minds.

At least one person was killed and seven wounded during an “incident” at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed international airport, officials said after Iranian strikes targeting the United Arab Emirates and Gulf states.

The protest near the White House was among the demonstrations that erupted across the country after Israel and the United States launched strikes on Iran.

Friday was "a horrible day" for investors in Duolingo, reports Fast Company. But Friday's one-day 14% drop is just part of a longer story. Since last May, Duolingo's stock has dropped 81%. Yes, the company faced a social media backlash that month after its CEO promised they'd become an "AI-first" company (favoring AI over human contractors). And yes, Duolingo did double its language offerings using generative AI. But more importantly, that summer OpenAI showed how easy it was to just roll your own language-learning tool from a short prompt in a GPT-5 demo, while Google built an AI-powered language-learning tool into its Translate app. And yet, Friday Duolingo's shares dropped another 14%, after announcing good fourth quarter results but an unpopular direction for its future. Fast Company reports: On the surface, many of the company's most critical metrics saw decent gains for the quarter, including: — Daily Active Users: 52.7 million (up 30% year-over-year) — Paid Subscribers: 12.2 million (up 28% year-over-year) — Revenue: $282.9 million (up 35% year-over-year) — Total bookings: $336.8 million (up 24% year-over-year) The company also reported its full-year 2025 financials, revealing that for the first time in its history, it crossed the $1 billion revenue mark for a fiscal year. But the Motley Fool explains that Duolingo's higher ad loads and repeated pushes for subscription plans "generated revenues in the short term, but made the Duolingo platform less engaging. Ergo, user growth decelerated while revenues rose." Thursday Duolingo announced a big change to address that, including moving more features into lower-priced tiers. Barron's reports: D.A. Davidson analyst Wyatt Swanson, who rates Duolingo stock at Neutral, posited that the push to monetize "led to disgruntled users and a meaningful negative impact to 'word-of-mouth' marketing." Duolingo has guided for bookings growth between 10% and 12% in 2026, compared with the 20% rate the company would have expected to see "if we operated like we have in past years...." If stock reaction is any indication, investors are concerned about Duolingo's new focus.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US joined an Israeli assault after intel suggested Iran’s top clerics and commanders could be hit at once

• Full report: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed

• What we know so far: US and Israel wage war on Iran

• War on Iran: how the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded

Donald Trump launched attacks against Iran on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel after they developed intelligence that they could simultaneously target the country’s leaders and mullahs, according to two people familiar with deliberations.

The Israelis had been tracking the movements of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and determined there was a window of opportunity to launch attacks as they convened, the people said.

Bystander describes ‘loud crashing sound from the rocks’ as light aircraft goes into sea at Lee-on-the-Solent

A pilot survived after a light aircraft crashed on to a beach in Hampshire on Saturday.

The pilot had exited the aircraft before firefighters arrived and was subsequently assessed by the ambulance service, Hampshire and Isle of Wight fire and rescue service said.

War launched by US and Israel on Iran has quickly escalated prompting anxiety and concern in whole region

• Full report

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

The 26-year-old dominates in Manchester, landing the night’s biggest prizes as Rosé, Wolf Alice and Mark Ronson also take top honours

Olivia Dean was the big winner at the 2026 Brit awards, taking home awards for artist of the year, pop act, song of the year for her Sam Fender duet Rein Me In, and album of the year for The Art of Loving.

In less than a year, Dean has leaped to the forefront of British pop thanks to The Art of Loving, her second album. With songs that get to the heart of the joys and frustrations of casual modern dating, she is enormously relatable, while her sophisticated and cosmopolitan songcraft, deftly finessing styles such as bossa nova, trip-hop, neo-soul and jazz together, has given her an unusually broad and cross-generational appeal.

The building appears to be among many devastated in Trump’s ‘major combat operations’ as long expected attacks arrive

• Full report: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• What we know so far: US and Israel wage war on Iran

Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.

At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.

US president posts on Truth Social that Iran’s supreme leader, ‘one of the most evil people in History, is dead’

• US-Israel war on Iran: Donald Trump says Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead – latest reports

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been killed in the opening salvo of a regime change war launched on Saturday by the US and Israel, Donald Trump has claimed.

The US president announced the death of the ayatollah, who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, in a post on Truth Social.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote.

“He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

Trump said that the goal of the military campaign, which began on Saturday morning with a barrage of missiles and airstrikes, was regime change.

“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” he wrote.

Actor, originally charged on two counts, also accused of shouting homophobic slurs during attacks on 17 February

Shia LaBeouf surrendered to New Orleans police after they obtained a new warrant Friday to arrest him again in connection with a case that had already left him facing two counts of battery.

The new warrant brought the number of people whom the Transformers film franchise star is accused of battering to three. He turned himself over to police in advance of a bail hearing on Saturday afternoon, after which he posted a $5,000 bond to continue out of authorities’ custody while awaiting the outcome of the case.

Are you not at all interested in upgrading to macOS Tahoe, and getting annoyed at the relentless notification spam from Apple trying to trick you into upgrading?

The secret? Using device management profiles, which let you enforce policies on Macs in your organization, even if that “organization” is one Mac on your desk. One of the available policies is the ability to block activities related to major macOS updates for up to 90 days at a time (the max the policy allows), which seems like exactly what I needed.

Not being anywhere near an expert on device profiles, I went looking to see what I could find, and stumbled on the Stop Tahoe Update project. The eventual goals of this project are quite impressive, but what they’ve done so far is exactly what I needed: A configuration profile that blocks Tahoe update activities for 90 days.

↫ Rob Griffiths

All you need to do is clone a random GitHub repository, set all its scripts to executable, generate two random UUIDs, insert those UUIDs into one of the scripts in the GitHub project folder you just cloned, run said script, open System Settings and go to Privacy & Security > Profiles, install the profile the script created, click install in two different dialogs, and now you have blocked Apple’s update notification spam! Well, for 90 days that is.

I honestly don’t understand how normal people are supposed to use macOS. The amount of weird terminal commands you need just to change basic settings is bewildering. macOS definitely isn’t ready for the desktop if they expect users to use the terminal for so many basic tasks. I’m glad I’m using Linux, where I don’t have to deal with the terminal at all.

He played a behind-the-scenes role in Iran’s Islamic revolution, served as president in the 1980s and dominated the country for more than three decades.

"The drought of upcoming Star Wars movies is coming to an end soon," writes Cinemablend. In May the The Mandalorian and Grogu opens, and one year later there's the release of the Ryan Gosling-led Star Wars: Starfighter. But "there are some insiders who already believe that Starfighter will be a bigger hit than The Mandalorian and Grogu..." According to unnamed sources who spoke with Variety, there's a "sense" that Star Wars: Starfighter, which is directed by Deadpool & Wolverine's Shawn Levy, will be a more satisfying viewing experience. These same sources are allegedly impressed by the early footage they've seen of Ryan Gosling's performance and also suggested that Levy has "recaptured the franchise's spirit of fun." Furthermore, the article states that there's concern that because The Mandalorian and Grogu is spinning out of a streaming-exclusive series, it might not have as much appeal to people who aren't already fans of The Mandalorian... Star Wars: Starfighter, on the other hand, will be accessible to everyone equally. It's set five years after The Rise of Skywalker, which is an unexplored period for the Star Wars franchise onscreen. It's also expected that most, if not all of its featured characters will be brand-new, so no knowledge of past adventures is required. Slashdot reader gaiageek reminds us that 2027 will also see a special 50-year anniversary event in movie in theatres: a "newly restored" version of the original 1977 Star Wars.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coordinated daylight assault on Tehran sparked Iranian retaliation and plunged the region into wider conflict

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran – what we know so far

The bombs and missiles started falling on Tehran in full daylight, at about 9.15am, after the working day had started and the streets and offices were full.

Bombing campaigns in the modern era usually start at night, to heighten the target’s sense of disorientation and minimise the effectiveness of air defence.

Mexico's attorney general's office said it performed genetic tests to match the cartel leader's remains to the family.

If this isn’t catnip to the average OSNews reader, I don’t know what is.

Windows 95 is a comprehensive upgrade to the Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 products. Many changes have been made in almost every area of Windows, with the user interface being no exception. This paper discusses the design team, its goals and process then explains how usability engineering principles such as iterative design and problem tracking were applied to the project, using specific design problems and their solutions as examples.

↫ Kent Sullivan

This case study was written in 1996 by Kent Sullivan, who joined the Windows 95 user interface team in 1992. I consider the second half of the ’90s as the heyday of user interface design, with Windows 9x, Apple’s Platinum in Mac OS 8 and 9, and BeOS’ Tracker/Deskbar as the absolute pinnacles of user interface design. Coincidentally, this also seems to mark the end of a more scientific, study-based approach to designing graphical user interfaces.

Reading through this particular case study for Windows 95 feels almost quaint. Where are the dozens of managers pushing for notification spam, upsells, and dark patterns to enable expensive data-hoarding services? Why are none of the people mentioned in the study talking about sneaky ways to secretly and silently convert your local account to an online account? Where are all the “AI” buttons? Why is there n chapter on how to trick people into enabling telemetry data?

The user interfaces of the late ’90s were the last ones designed by people who actually cared, by people who approached the whole process with the end user in mind, rooted in scientific data collected by simply looking at people use their ideas. They were optimised for the user as best they could, instead of being optimised for the company’s bottom line.

It’s been downhill ever since.

Satellite images and videos reveal dozens of targets of strikes on Iran, including the Tehran compound of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has hit at least one U.S. base in the region.

"We're probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning," Sen. Tom Cotton told CBS News on Saturday.

Bootc and OSTree represent a new way of thinking about Linux system deployment and management. Building on container and versioning concepts, they offer robust and modern solutions to meet the current needs of administrators and developers.

↫ Quentin Joly

Slowly, very slowly, I’ve been starting to warm up to the relatively new crop of immutable Linux distributions. As a heavy Fedora user, opting for Fedora’s atomic distributions, which use bootc and OSTree, seems like the logical path to go down if I ever made the switch, and this article provides some approachable insights and examples into how, exactly, it all works, and what benefits it might give you. It definitely goes beyond what I as a mere desktop user might encounter, but if you’re managing a bunch of servers or VMs in a more professional setting, you might be interested, too.

I’m still not convinced I need to switch to an immutable distribution, but I’d be lying if I said some of the benefits didn’t appeal to me.

A Conversation With Karim Sadjadpour

It started Friday when all U.S. federal agencies were ordered to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's AI technology after contract negotiations stalled when Anthropic requested prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. But later Friday there were even more repercussions... In a post to his 1.1 million followers on X.com, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth criticized Anthropic for what he called "a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon." Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic's models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic... Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of "effective altruism," [Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei] have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission — a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives. The Terms of Service of Anthropic's defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield. Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable... In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic... America's warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final. Meanwhile, Anthrophic said on Friday that "no amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position." (And "We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.") Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action — one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company. We are deeply saddened by these developments. As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government's classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so. We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government... Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement. Anthropic also defended the two exceptions they'd requested that had stalled contract negotiations. "[W]e do not believe that today's frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America's warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights." Also Friday, OpenAI announced that "we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman emphasized that the agreement retains and confirms OpenAI's own prohibitions against using their products for domestic mass surveillance — and requires "human responsibility" for the use of force including for autonomous weapon systems. "The Department of War agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the Department of War also wanted. " We are asking the Department of War to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Regime could try to retain control of streets as US and Israel have expressed no intention of mounting ground invasion

Venezula’s Nicholás Maduro was captured. But Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have chosen a different strategy for Iran: to target and aim to kill the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, , and as many other senior regime figures as possible.

Though Iranian military sites and its air defence systems were also targeted by coordinated US and Israeli bombing, beginning in the morning, the most significant attack was on Khamenei’s compound in Tehran.

Iran strikes are attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out Epstein and tariffs with the thunder of cruise missiles

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq without deciding whether it should. The George W Bush administration failed to ask whether the costs, risks and likely consequences of regime change justified the gamble. The result was tragedy – for Iraq, for the Middle East and for America.

Donald Trump’s attack on Iran now follows the same pattern – but with an even narrower logic of performative power. In the run-up to Iraq, Washington devoted enormous energy to planning the invasion. Almost no attention was given to the more important question: was war necessary, and could it realistically produce a stable political outcome?

Christopher S Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham said the operation would be "violent, extensive and I believe, at the end of the day, successful."

Makerfield MP had been under pressure concerning thinktank’s commissioning of PR firm to investigate reporters

The Labour minister Josh Simons has resigned from the government after the Guardian revealed that he falsely linked reporters to a “pro-Kremlin” network in emails to GCHQ despite having claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” about a PR firm’s investigation into their journalism.

Simons, who had been a Cabinet Office minister, previously ran the thinktank Labour Together. He quit on Saturday, saying his position in office had become “a distraction from this government’s important work.”

Tehran carries out extensive retaliatory strikes on Israel and US air bases as region is plunged into fresh conflict

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran – what we know so far

Israel and the US have launched a war on Iran, unleashing waves of air attacks across the country in an attempt to bring about regime change and plunging the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.

The sudden offensive triggered Iranian retaliatory strikes throughout the day across a swathe of the Middle East, with explosions reported in Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

There's already 5,000 sensors embedded in Antarctica's ice to look for evidence of neutrinos, reports the Washington Post. But in November scientists drilled six new holes at least a mile and a half deep and installed cables with hundreds more light detectors — an upgrade to the massive 15-year-old IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the charged particles produced by lower-energy neutrinos interacting with matter: When they do, the neutrinos produce charged particles that travel through the ice at nearly the speed of light, creating a blue glow called Cherenkov radiation... "Within the first couple years, we should be making much better measurements," [said Erin O'Sullivan, an associate professor of physics at Uppsala University in Sweden and a spokesperson for the project.] "There's hope to expand the detector, by an order of magnitude in volume, so the important thing there is we're not just seeing a few neutrino point sources, but we're starting to be a true telescope. ... That's really the dream." The scientists spent seven years planning the upgrade, according to the article. "To drill holes a mile and a half deep takes about 30 hours, and 18 more hours to return to the surface," the article points out. "Then, the race begins because almost immediately, the hole starts to shrink as the water refreezes." ("If it takes too much time, the principal investigator says, "the instruments don't fit in anymore!")

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in pond north of Atlanta in February

The son of the rapper Lil Jon drowned after ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, officials in the US state of Georgia said.

The body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in a pond north of Atlanta in early February.

Imam Shuaib Din was not hit by multiple shots fired by Abdul Raouf Afridi, who ambushed him outside his home

A man has been arrested for recently shooting a gun at prominent Muslim leader Imam Shuaib Din in Utah, the police department in the city of Sandy said Saturday.

Din’s suspected attacker was identified as Abdul Raouf Afridi. Police said the man was arrested on 12 counts of aggravated assault, including felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance, dangerous discharge of a weapon from a vehicle and possession of a dangerous weapon as a prohibited person.

Shia LaBeouf, who was charged with battery after police say he punched several people outside a New Orleans bar earlier this month, was arrested again on Saturday.

Interesting Engineering reports: US tech giant Google announced on Tuesday that it will build a new data center in Pine Island, Minnesota. The new facility will be powered by 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy from wind and solar, coupled with a 300-megawatt battery, claimed to be the 'world's largest', with a 30-gigawatt-hour (GWh) capacity and 100-hour duration... The planned battery would dwarf a 19 GW lithium-ion project in the UAE... Form Energy's batteries work very differently from most large batteries today. Instead of using lithium like the batteries in electric cars, they store electricity by making iron rust and then reversing the rusting process to release the energy when needed... Form's iron-air batteries are heavier and less efficient than their counterparts; they can only return about 50% to 70% of the energy used to charge them, while lithium-ion batteries return more than 90%. However, Form's batteries have one distinct advantage. They are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, costing about $20 per kilowatt-hour of storage, which is almost three times as cheap... It will store 150 MWh of electricity and can supply to the grid for up to 100 hours, delivering about 1.5 MW at peak output. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As they say in Europe, look at that S-car-go.

CNN reports that images from Iran's capital "have shown cars jammed along Tehran's street, with heavy traffic on major roads after today's wave of attacks by the US and Israel." And though Iran has a population of 93 million, the attacks suddenly plunged Iran into "a near-total internet blackout with national connectivity at 4% of ordinary levels," according to internet monitoring experts at NetBlocks. CNN reports: Since Iran's brutal crackdown earlier this year, the regime has made progress to allow only a subset of people with security clearance to access the international web, experts said. After previous internet shutdowns, some platforms never returned. The Iranian government blocked Instagram after the internet shutdown and protests in 2022, and the popular messaging app Telegram following protests in 2018. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced an hour ago that they're "closely monitoring developments" — keeping in contact with countries in the region and so far seeing "no evidence of any radiological impact." They're also urging "restraint to avoid any nuclear safety risks to people in the region." UPDATE (1 PM PST): Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait "are shifting to remote learning starting Sunday until further notice following Iranâ(TM)s retaliatory strikes on Saturday," reports CNN.

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The US president upended half a century of US foreign policy in an eight-minute video with another attempt at Middle Eastern regime change

It was another date that would live in infamy. But whereas Franklin Roosevelt declared war in sombre tones to a joint session of Congress, Donald Trump did it his way.

The US president wore a white “USA” cap, dark jacket and white shirt open at the collar. He stood at a blue lectern bearing the US presidential seal and a black microphone, with the Stars and Stripes behind him, presumably at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. He released a video on his own social media network, Truth Social, at 2.30am on Saturday – a time when most Americans are asleep but Trump is often found rage-tweeting into the night.

In a televised statement, Sir Keir Starmer has said British planes 'are in the sky today' in the Middle East 'as part of coordinated regional defensive operations to protect our people, our interests and our allies'. This came after the US and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran, prompting Tehran to fire retaliatory strikes against Israel and US bases across the Middle East

CEO Sam Altman claims military will not use AI product for autonomous killing systems or mass surveillance

OpenAI said it had struck a deal with the Pentagon to supply AI to classified US military networks, hours after Donald Trump ordered the government to stop using the services of one of the company’s main competitors.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, announced the move on Friday night. It came after an agreement between Anthropic, a rival AI company that runs the Claude system, and the Trump administration broke down after Anthropic sought assurances its technology would not be used for mass surveillance – nor for autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.

U.S. allies and adversaries responded to the joint attacks by the U.S. and Israel on Iran with concern over the risks of a new war in the Middle East.

A look at the features for this week's broadcast of the Emmy-winning program, hosted by Jane Pauley.

After Zohran Mamdani’s upset, a new wave of challengers targets incumbents, driven by fury at Donald Trump

They are impatient, unafraid and hungry for change. Inspired by Zohran Mamdani’s shock victory in last year’s New York mayoral race, a wave of insurgents is mounting primary challenges against Democratic incumbents ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The emboldened lineup of primary challengers – often, but not always, from the party’s progressive wing – has been fuelled by anger over the party’s tepid response to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, complicity in the war in Gaza and a crushing affordability crisis.

USALESS.COM is recalling its Rhino Choco VIP 10X product due to the undeclared presence of Tadalafil, which is the active ingredient in Cialis.

Members of Congress swiftly denounced the president’s military action against the Islamic Republic alongside Israel

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran: what we know so far
  

Donald Trump’s failure to build a case with the US public for striking Iran and then going ahead apparently after a last-minute alert to Congress’s key national security experts – the so-called “gang of eight” – has fuelled fierce domestic criticism of the military action against the Islamic Republic on Saturday.

Belying the gravity of Saturday’s attacks, the president spent just three minutes of Tuesday’s record-length one hour and 48 minute State of the Union address trying to explain why the need to act against a regime that had been a strategic foe for decades had suddenly become so urgent and whose nuclear facilities he claimed to have “obliterated” in previous strikes last June.

Americans weighed in on how long a conflict with Iran might last and what Congress should do.

Days before embarking America on another foreign war, Donald Trump spent more than 90 minutes speaking endlessly about America being back during his State of the Union, leveling racist accusations of Somali American fraud, and expounding on the beauty of America’s raid to arrest Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. It was a master class in testing the attention span of Americans hoping to hear anything at all about the danger that has loomed in the background now for months: the threat of armed conflict with Iran. Those who made it to the finale — and who have conscious memories of the George W. Bush years — would have noticed a similar tenor to the State of the Union in 2003, the one which paved the way for the justification of the invasion of Iraq less than two months later.

In that speech, Bush outlined the alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the myriad ways in which Iraq had supposedly deceived international investigators, and the staggering human rights abuses committed by Saddam Hussein against his own countrymen. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the president boasted, would soon outline to the United Nations the threat the United States, and indeed the world, was up against in Baghdad.

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Bush’s Iraq War Lies Created a Blueprint for Donald Trump

However, while many of the claims made by Bush were spurious at best and outright deceptions at worst, the claims Trump made in his speech were even less believable — and much more scattershot. Trump claimed that Iran would “soon” have intercontinental ballistic missiles that would “reach the United States of America,” that more than 32,000 Iranians had been killed in recent protests (NGOs estimated the number to be much lower, and an Iranian human rights group put the death toll at 6,488), and that the Iranian military had somehow killed “millions,” somewhere in history, with roadside bombs it pioneered. Perhaps most plainly false of all, Trump contended he just wanted the Iranians to say “those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” despite Iranian officials constantly making such insistences.

Before the U.S. and Israeli military launched strikes Saturday, the specter of an Iranian war has become something of a national miasma, the build-up having gone on now so long that its cause is imperceptible, yet perhaps everything at once. The build-up to the Iraq War was similarly argued under many causes, with Saddam’s authoritarian governance very much part of the discussion, but the aftermath of 9/11 and the supposed threat Iraq posed to the homeland was chief among them — the fire that led Americans to line up front and center behind the cause. While Iran has been on the wish list for American neoconservatives and foreign policy wonks for decades, this escalation has happened over a much shorter time frame, much more suddenly, and much more obvious in how the government is desperately in search of a compelling cause.

Stretching back into December, the cards were being laid out. Benjamin Netanyahu had made plans to meet with Trump at the White House to discuss what he saw as the threat posed by Iran’s conventional ballistic missile program, seeking a green light to initiate another devastating war, with hoped-for American support. Israel’s reasoning was not based on Iranian human rights abuses or about threats to the American homeland, but threats to Israel and “U.S. interests,” according to NBC News. Netanyahu had wanted a post-war situation similar to Lebanon’s, where Israel has been able to continue striking that country daily with Hezbollah unable to respond. Iran still retained deterrent military capacity to prevent this from happening. A greater threat, however nonexistent, needed to be communicated.

The rollout of news stories to back up Netanyahu’s claim was well-telegraphed, with reports suddenly emerging in the Israeli press that Iran was planning to use an imminent military exercise as a diversion to strike Israel. At the same time that Netanyahu was meeting with Trump, reports again suddenly emerged that Iran was seeking to develop and purchase “biological and chemical warheads” for its missiles, eerily echoing the false claims Powell made before the U.N. about Iraq.

Related

Israel Is Cynically Capitalizing on the Iranian Protests for Its Own Ends

As attention shifted to the burgeoning protests in Iran, suddenly the United States and Israel had a much stronger casus belli: supporting anti-government demonstrators to overthrow the government. Only a few days after the protests began, Trump promised the “United States of America will come to their rescue” if the Iranian government killed protesters, “which is their custom.” As the death toll mounted, far exceeding the toll of previous protest movements, the threats of intervention continued but never actually materialized. Western officials brought in Starlink satellites to keep protesters connected (SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk has joked that he supports Secretary of State Marco Rubio becoming the shah of Iran), and unnamed foreign intelligence agencies allegedly brought in firearms used to kill over 200 members of government security forces. Yet Trump continued to promise that he was planning something, saying “help is on the way,” and demanding protesters “take over institutions” even as protests dissipated.

Trump wanted war, as did Netanyahu, but there was no conception of when it should happen, for what cause it should exactly be waged, and what would even be done. There was want, but there was no will, and there was no way. Everything had to be cobbled together in the background, sometimes to seemingly even get Trump on board with the plan he himself put into motion.

Related

The Bloody U.S. Legacy in Iraq

Reports of considering strikes on “symbolic military targets” were followed by Trump commending Iran for supposedly halting hundreds of planned executions. Declarations of an “armada” being sent to Iran’s shores were accompanied by demands to stop killing protesters, even though the protests had ceased days earlier. More reports poured in of plans for special ops raids and strikes to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (and perhaps also his son), with reports of imminent attacks being just as suddenly thrown out as more and more military assets moved in to allow for greater and greater operations, a build-up not seen since Bush’s full-scale invasion of Iraq 23 years ago.

With attacks underway, the plan now seems to revolve around a complete decapitation of the Islamic Republic’s leadership and the overthrow of the entire system via the air — followed by a populist uprising Trump hopes will topple the regime. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump said in a video address. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

The campaign of airstrikes comes only hours after the United States insisted it wanted to have a civil diplomatic conversation.

As with the diplomatic talks that preceded Iran’s war with Israel in June, these negotiations are set up to fail, and the scope of demands is now far wider and even more contradictory. Reports emanating from the discussions seem to oscillate between a willingness to resurrect some version of the Obama-era nuclear deal and a demand for what amounts to complete capitulation — with Rubio demanding restrictions on ballistic missile range and ending of support to Hamas and Hezbollah; Israel demanding the full dismantling of said ballistic missile arsenal; and Trump plainly stating “no nuclear weapons, no missiles, no this, no that, all the different things you’d want.”

There is also no consensus about what the threat from Iran is even supposed to be in the American imagination. Trump’s accusation of near-imminent ICBM production is a recent invention, clearly meant to steer things in a familiar, concrete direction. But the Trump administration cannot seem to agree on whether or not Iran is even developing its nuclear program at all — with Rubio telling reporters there is no enrichment happening, even as special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News that Iran was merely “a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”

Bush administration officials infamously claimed they did not want “the smoking gun” to be “a mushroom cloud,” but officials had always kept that estimate in months — the way the threat of Iran making a nuclear bomb has often been phrased as “months away” for the better part of two decades. Now, the threat is somehow both days away and barely off the ground.

Related

Would-Be Iran Monarch Reza Pahlavi Declares a Civil War in Iran

While opposition figures like Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah, as well as Mojahedin-e-Khalq leader Maryam Rajavi, have jostled for the attention of Trump’s circle, there seems to be little attention paid to their efforts, with the president dismissing Pahlavi as “very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country.” Those who remember Ahmed Chalabi and the motley crew of Iraqi opposition cronies may rest easy, as there seems to be little care at all about what would even come next. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the brewing war’s strongest supporters, scorned the idea of even considering the day after in an interview with an Emirati newspaper, saying: “You gotta quit saying we. It’s not we, it’s them. It’s not my job to construct a new Iran. It’s my job to give them the opportunity to construct a new Iran.”

The feeling at home, despite oversaturation in the media, could not be more different than it was before Iraq. Just before the bombs fell, 64 percent of the country supported the invasion; more than two decades later, only 21 percent of Americans currently favor an attack on Iran, with only 40 percent of Republicans supporting it. The Trump administration is apparently so concerned about the optics of the scenario they have walked themselves into that, according to reporting from Politico, officials were hoping Israel would attack Iran first, leading Iran to attack American troops, thereby rallying the country behind the war effort after the fact.

One would think that such a drive toward an unpopular war-in-the-making would galvanize Democrats, but so far, anti-war voices have been limited. Lawmakers like Rep. Ro Khanna have found themselves drowned out by demands from Democratic leaders that the Trump administration simply provide a clear explanation, apparently seeking to avoid the embarrassment of pundits and politicians after the disaster of Iraq, who blamed their initial support on buying the Bush administration’s flimsy case.

It is an unshakeable belief that consistency of logic is the primary issue with a war to cement Israel’s military hegemony, one that may cost thousands of lives. While some prominent progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders attempted to hamper Trump’s funding to execute the war without congressional approval in June, Sanders has not made any public comments on the march to war in over a month, and other progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have also supported anti-war initiatives, were seen applauding as Trump railed against Iran this week at the State of the Union.

The world is now watching a devastating war rage with no real reasoning, already no end in sight, and its chief belligerent making promises it cannot keep to a population it will surely massacre in the process. Unpopularity has not stopped the Trump administration before, whether it be in Venezuela or in Minneapolis, but the United States finds itself in a uniquely baffling position, where its opposition party, much like how it goes in Israel, instead begs for a better execution of the government’s evil plan.

The post Fool Me Twice: The Case for War With Iran Is Even Thinner Than It Was for Iraq appeared first on The Intercept.

Lucy Powell calls for party to make more use of Greater Manchester mayor after Gorton and Denton defeat

Andy Burnham would have won the Gorton and Denton byelection, Labour’s deputy leader said as she called for the party to make more use of the Greater Manchester mayor.

Overturning a 13,000 Labour majority from the general election, Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green councillor, became the party’s fifth MP on Friday in an area that had returned Labour MPs for nearly a century.

Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America's teens use AI help with schoolwork: One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots' help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under $75,000 annually say this. Fewer teens living in higher-earning households (7%) say the same." "The survey did not ask students whether they had used chatbots to write essays or generate other assignments..." notes the New York Times. "But nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often.'" Agreeing with that are the Pew Researchers themselves. "Our survey shows that many teens think cheating with AI has become a regular feature of student life." One worried teenager still told the researchers that AI "makes people lazy and takes away jobs." But another teenager told the researchers that "Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leader launches ‘roadmap’ of first 100 days in power to show party is ready to govern if it wins Senedd elections

The leader of Plaid Cymru has described the prospect of leading the next government in Wales as “a heck of a task” but that he senses voters are increasingly driven by their Welsh identity and may be ready for Britain to be “redesigned”.

Speaking to the Guardian as he published a glossy 60-page “roadmap” for his party’s first 100 days in government, if it takes power in May, Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was ready to lead the devolved administration in Cardiff but would work with other parties if he did not win a majority.

Nomma Zarubina, convicted of lying to the FBI, is the latest Russian woman accused of using her sexual wiles for spying

Nomma Zarubina, 35, now sits in a New York jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last week to charges that she lied to the FBI about her contacts with the FSB, Russia’s biggest domestic intelligence service.

But, in a playbook that comes straight from the cold war, the striking-looking Zarubina – known as “Alyssa” to her Russian handlers – was tasked with meeting prominent Americans in order to lure them into the orbit of Moscow intelligence.

PM says British planes ‘in the sky today’ to protect allies in Middle East from retaliatory strikes by Tehran

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran: what we know so far

Keir Starmer has said RAF fighter jets are flying “in the sky today” to defend allies in the Middle East against Iranian retaliation after the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign aimed at regime change in Tehran.

The UK did not participate in the first waves of strikes against Iran on Saturday morning and has no immediate intention of doing so, but fighter jets were running defensive operations from Qatar and Cyprus to shoot down any incoming drones and missiles.

North Carolina’s Michael Phillips revealed that he had a 0.38in member in bid to reduce stigma of the condition

A North Carolina man has challenged anyone on earth to disprove his claim of having the world’s smallest penis as he advocates against body shaming and aims to raise awareness about the medical condition known as micropenis.

Michael Phillips, 38, threw down the gauntlet in an interview posted Friday on TMZ’s YouTube channel, in which he purported that his penis was 0.38in (0.97cm) when fully erect – and, holding up the fingernail on his right pinky to illustrate that length, added: “When it’s flaccid, it’s smaller than that.”

A start-up called Reflect Orbital "proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night," reports the Washington Post, "with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight...." Slashdot noted their idea in 2022 — but Reflect Orbital now expects to launch its first satellite in April, according to the article. "But its grand vision is largely 'aspirational,' as its young founder, Ben Nowack, told me..." Reflect Orbital's Nowack describes a scene right out of sci-fi: An extremely bright star appears on the northern horizon and makes its way across the sky, illuminating a 5-kilometer circle on Earth, then setting on the southern horizon about five minutes later, just as another such "star" appears in the north. To make the night even brighter, a customer could make 10 "stars" appear at once in the north by ordering them on an app. Two such artificial stars are in development in Reflect Orbital's factory. Nowack showed them to me on a Zoom call. The first to launch is 50 feet across, but he plans later to build them three times that size. If all goes according to plan, he'll have 50,000 of them circling the Earth in 2035 at an altitude of around 400 miles. Nowack plans to start selling the service "in mostly developing nations or places that don't have streetlights yet." Eventually, he thinks, he can illuminate major cities, turn solar fields and farms into round-the-clock operations for any business or municipality that pays for it. He likened his technology to the invention of crop irrigation thousands of years ago. "I see this as much the same thing," he said, arguing that people would no longer have to "wait for the sun to shine." The article adds that Elon Musk's SpaceX "wants to launch as many as a million satellites to serve as orbiting data centers — 70 times the number of satellites now in orbit." (America's satellite-regulation Federal Communications Commission grants a "categorical exclusion" from environmental review to satellites on the grounds that their operations "normally do not have significant effects on the human environment.") The public comment periods for the two proposals close on March 6 and March 9.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The thought of never having to clean the inside of our toilets again makes us want to cry happy tears.

In a rare public address, former president said US is experiencing ‘dark days’ and urged Americans to vote

• Sign up for This week in Trumpland, a free newsletter on the latest from the Trump administration

Joe Biden has warned that his presidential successor, Donald Trump, will attempt to “steal” the midterm elections, in a rare public address.

Speaking in South Carolina, where he was being honored for his lifetime achievement in politics, Biden also asserted that the US is experiencing “dark days”, in a speech made hours before the Trump administration launched attacks on Iran.

The education secretary wants a fairer system and the Tories have leapt in with their own plan – but why now?

For anyone who attended university in England in the last 15 or so years, the idea of student loans feeling like some sort of debt trap is hardly news. But three weeks ago, when the journalist Oli Dugmore discussed this on the BBC’s Question Time, it felt like a moment.

It was less the size of the initial debt, he explained, than the way above-inflation interest rates meant the interest charged alone was now almost as much as the original sum. “So was it mis-sold to me?” he asked, rhetorically. “Yes, I’d say so.”

As a result of New York’s most severe winter in years, the city may see a drop from it’s estimated 3 million rats

Since arriving from Europe in the 1600s, New York City’s rats have survived hurricanes, floods, terrorist attacks, riots, fires, a pandemic (they actually thrived during that), the Dutch and Crocodile Dundee II.

But as a result of New York’s most severe winter in years, when the city saw snow, then a historic deep freeze, then even more snow, the rat population might now be about to decline. For a bit.

Enhance your privacy while surfing the web, stream foreign Netflix libraries, unblock regional sports and avoid mobile traffic shaping with the best iPhone VPNs.

With Splendid Spoon, you get premade smoothies, soups, bowls and oats that are vegan, gluten-free and easy to prepare in minutes. This is what two meal kit testers thought after trying the service.

If you have a question about women's health, Oura's new AI model can answer it. This is what you need to know about privacy and access.

Whether you call it the Leica Leitzphone or the Xiaomi 17 Ultra Leica phone, this dream camera phone is my latest obsession.

Giving you one less screen to check, you can have conversations with the Luna Ring about your health.

I've taken over 2,000 photos on the Leica Leitzphone powered by Xiaomi, and I'm blown away by the quality I've been able to achieve.

The first lady is a Trump and therefore automatically qualified to do anything her heart desires

“We ended DEI in America,” Donald Trump boasted during his State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday.

Unlike many things the president said in his excruciatingly long SOTU speech, this was actually half true. The Trump administration’s “war on woke” has pushed a lot of large companies and institutes to retreat from the diversity, equity and inclusion policies they used to pretend to be proud of.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

WILLIAM MCCARTHY
Managing Sports Editor

On Dec. 1, 2023, the university announced the arrival of a new varsity program to the 302 — this time featuring a puck and a pair of ice skates.

Initially, Delaware Women’s Ice Hockey was expected to join the College Hockey America (CHA) conference, but by the time they began their season this past fall, the CHA had merged with the Atlantic Hockey Association to form the Atlantic Hockey America (AHA), taking many current members with them. 

During the nearly two-year gap from the announcement to the first actual game, pivotal moves were made by athletic administrators. 

Former Pennsylvania State University assistant coach Allison Coomey was named head coach of the Blue Hens on April 1, 2024. Under her leadership Delaware assembled a roster of 17 freshmen and four underclassmen for the 2025-26 inaugural season. 

Delaware first took the ice in collegiate Division I play on Sept. 26, welcoming Long Island University to the Fred Rust Ice Arena in Newark. The Blue Hens debuted their new roster and coaching staff to a packed house on South Campus. 

In their opening game, the first goal in program history was netted in by freshman forward Francesca Barresi. Delaware would eventually drop its first two games on opening weekend.

It was not until the fourth game of the season, the second game against the College of the Holy Cross, that the Blue and Gold struck gold. Delaware celebrated its first win in program history with a 2-1 final score on Oct. 5. 

The stars of the show were freshmen forwards Katelynn Charlton and Meera Smith, who netted the two goals for Delaware in its winning effort. 

Charlton would be recognized later that week as the AHA Rookie of the Week, scoring three goals across the weekend and the game-winning goal in the victory past Holy Cross. This was her second consecutive week winning the award. 

This was a full-circle moment for everybody who had invested their time into this new program at the university, but a rigorous schedule against seasoned opponents would prove difficult for the Hens. 

Delaware’s second and final win of the regular season would come on Nov. 14 with a 5-3 final decision over AHA rival Lindenwood University. Graduate student forward Kaitlin Finnegan netted two of the five goals.

Finnegan brought the most experience to the team and was recruited from Lindenwood itself, spending five total years in Missouri with varying playing time.

Finnegan falls into the category of four upperclassmen that Coomey says have set role model expectations for the rest of the extremely young roster. 

“I think our upperclassmen have done a really good job,” Coomey said. “They’ve been in situations where they didn’t get a lot of ice time, and now are leaned on a lot here. I admire them for taking a chance on a new program at Delaware and embracing leadership roles.”

Delaware would struggle against tough opponents through the new year in AHA play, but nothing stopped the Blue Hens from constantly improving what they do both on and off the ice. 

“Our leadership group did a great job of getting the girls together off the ice,” Coomey said. “Whether they’re doing movie nights or secret Santa –– or the other night a meeting about how to execute better on the ice.”

Coach Coomey said the coaching staff also shifted gears around the halfway point of the season, introducing scouting film on opponents and other new strategies to prepare for the second wave of league play.

Ultimately, Delaware ended the regular season 2-30 and would play Robert Morris University in the AHA Championship on Feb. 19. The Blue Hens fought against a dominant Robert Morris team, leading 2-1 after two periods, but inevitably fell in overtime with a final score of 3-2. 

The official end of their season was an exact metaphor of how the entire season went — they fought. No matter the game or streak the team was on, they pushed until the final buzzer sounded across all 33 games. 

The trials and tribulations of the first season in program history were felt, but not without its massive wins. In tandem with Charlton, defender Lexie Lonask was also awarded AHA Rookie of the Week on Nov. 2nd. 

These victories, as well as the culture that was built throughout the season, signal a bright future for the young program in Newark. 

Caspar San Giorgio to appear in court after defacing London statue with slogans including ‘Zionist war criminal’

A 38-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage after Winston Churchill’s statue outside the Houses of Parliament was sprayed with graffiti labelling the former prime minister a “Zionist war criminal”.

The Metropolitan police arrested Caspar San Giorgio, of no fixed address, shortly after 4am on Friday. He was charged in the early hours of Saturday morning and is due to appear at Highbury Corner magistrates court in London.

President Trump says his objective in attacking Iran "is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats" from the regime in Tehran. Read his full statement and watch the video here.

Commentary: I don't want Galaxy AI to handle tasks that I actually like doing.

What is an augmented reality play in a real theater, with virtual actors and a real audience? In this case, haunting and something more than what I can do at home -- for now.

Emma Operacz was diagnosed with a rare cancer at 21. An unusual treatment and bone marrow donation from her sister saved her life.

Experts say global measles vaccination rates are falling as Trump officials signal a deprioritization of the virus

The US government has amplified anti-vaccine rhetoric and signaled that it does not consider measles to be a priority, which could have global ramifications as countries around the world have lost or are on the brink of losing measles elimination status.

The World Health Organization announced in late January that six European countries: the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan had all officially lost their measles elimination status, which means the virus has been circulating continuously in those countries for more than 12 months. In order to contain measles, at least 95% of children should be fully vaccinated against it, according to health recommendations, but vaccination rates have been falling across Europe.

Cygnet Texkimp was approved to export machines to Rydena, but ministers examining deal after Guardian highlighted founders’ links to Kremlin military supply chain

Ministers are reviewing a decision to allow a British company to export hi-tech equipment to Armenia after the Guardian uncovered links to the Russian military supply chain.

Cygnet Texkimp, based in Cheshire, was weeks away from exporting two machines that produce carbon fibre “prepreg”, a lightweight material that can be used in a range of civil and military applications.

Volunteers offer moral and legal support, and document ICE actions with the aim of holding people accountable

As ICE operations ramped up across the US over the past year, vans emblazoned with imagery of the Statue of Liberty have been deployed in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and most recently, Minneapolis. Liberty Vans, or camioneta de la libertad in Spanish, are on a mission to defend vulnerable communities in the crosshairs of federal enforcement.

Volunteers in the small fleet of three vans – which are named for the second world war Liberty ships that delivered supplies to Allied forces – offer moral and legal support, stand in visible solidarity with families and document ICE operations so people can see the human impact of the military-style raids that have become a daily part of American life.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Friday unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet. The objective is a tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical cryptographic material used today. Today's X.509 certificates are about 64 bytes in size, and comprise six elliptic curve signatures and two EC public keys. This material can be cracked through the quantum-enabled Shor's algorithm. Certificates containing the equivalent quantum-resistant cryptographic material are roughly 2.5 kilobytes. All this data must be transmitted when a browser connects to a site. To bypass the bottleneck, companies are turning to Merkle Trees, a data structure that uses cryptographic hashes and other math to verify the contents of large amounts of information using a small fraction of material used in more traditional verification processes in public key infrastructure. Merkle Tree Certificates, "replace the heavy, serialized chain of signatures found in traditional PKI with compact Merkle Tree proofs," members of Google's Chrome Secure Web and Networking Team wrote Friday. "In this model, a Certification Authority (CA) signs a single 'Tree Head' representing potentially millions of certificates, and the 'certificate' sent to the browser is merely a lightweight proof of inclusion in that tree." [...] Google is [also] adding cryptographic material from quantum-resistant algorithms such as ML-DSA (PDF). This addition would allow forgeries only if an attacker were to break both classical and post-quantum encryption. The new regime is part of what Google is calling the quantum-resistant root store, which will complement the Chrome Root Store the company formed in 2022. The [Merkle Tree Certificates] MTCs use Merkle Trees to provide quantum-resistant assurances that a certificate has been published without having to add most of the lengthy keys and hashes. Using other techniques to reduce the data sizes, the MTCs will be roughly the same 64-byte length they are now [...]. The new system has already been implemented in Chrome.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US president violates UN charter just days into his Board of Peace era, and chooses to take the biggest gamble of his administration

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran: what we know so far

The first war of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace era has begun – an unprovoked attempt at regime change in collaboration with Israel, with no legal foundation, launched in the midst of diplomatic efforts to avert conflict, and with minimal consultation with Congress or the American public.

Trump’s recorded eight-minute address after the first bombs had fallen, made clear that this would be no limited strike aimed at cajoling Tehran into concessions at the negotiating table. He warned that if Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) did not surrender they would be killed, and the country’s armed forces, its missile and navy would be smashed.

The president spoke to The Washington Post early Saturday after announcing that the U.S. had begun striking Iran to bring about regime change.

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At 8am, two hours before the US supreme court officially slapped down Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs on 20 February, Joseph Spraragen’s phone was already ringing off the hook.

The seasoned New York-based attorney and his 40-strong specialised trade team at Grunfeld, Desiderio, Lebowitz, Silverman & Klestadt (GDLSK) had spent months filing hundreds of lawsuits for heavy-hitter clients, including luxury brands Prada and Dolce & Gabbana, in protest of the US president’s decision to impose sweeping import taxes last April.

With David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance poised to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the president is tightening his grip on the US media

• Get Margaret Sullivan’s latest columns delivered straight to your inbox by signing up here

For many years, Donald Trump has trashed CNN and has taught his loyal followers to do the same.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, angry chants of “CNN sucks!” reverberated at his campaign rallies, and he still jumps at every opportunity to disparage star CNN journalists such as Kaitlan Collins.

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sat down with CBS News for an exclusive interview Friday, hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the company a supply chain risk to national security.

What I am Discussing Today:

• Kareem’s Daily Quote: From a time when leaders were positive.

• Executive Power and Elections: Can Trump Control the Midterms?

• If Taiwan Goes Down: The problem with dependence.

• Video Break: What doesn’t kill you, just makes you stronger.

• State of the Union: Ugly and unnecessary.

• My Tribute to A Legend: A Lakers coach like no other.

• What I’m Watching: Blue Moon

• Jukebox Playlist: Erroll Garner plays Misty

Kareem’s Daily Quote:

“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” — President Barack Obama

I think back on my life, on the impossible odds that I faced personally, on the impossible odds that we faced as a country, even in the last 70 years or so. Impossible that Black people would be able to sit at a white counter at Woolworths and be served by a White waitress. Impossible that Black people could go swimming at their local public pool any day of the week—not just on the one day before the water’s about to be drained out and replaced, so that White families might enjoy it again. Those small steps forward were a very long time in coming, and they took a lot of pain and tears to achieve. Which reminds us that progress has never depended on perfect conditions or easy moments, but on people who refuse to shrug and say, “That’s just the way things are.”

Contrary to what some might think, preach or yell from the rafters, loving a country doesn’t mean pretending it has no flaws and never did. It means paying attention when something feels off. It means asking questions when the path forward looks uncertain or shady, and pushing back as hard as you can when it’s out-and-out reprehensible.

Every generation reaches a moment when the challenges in front of it feel just too damn big. The issues may look different on the surface, but the pattern is the same: systems under strain, institutions tested, people trying to make sense of what’s real and what’s noise. It’s easy to feel powerless. But history shows us that the turning points have always come from those who choose to stay engaged rather than step back. People who understand that silence is also a decision.

The quote is not bombastic. It doesn’t call for a parade. It’s simply a reminder that change doesn’t have to start with grand gestures. Sometimes, it starts with awareness. With the willingness to look directly at the things that aren’t working, and work to find a solution instead of hoping they’ll sort themselves out. It starts with people who care enough to ask, “What kind of country do we want to be?” and then do whatever they need to do to move us closer to that answer.

Read more

Private providers accused of prescribing powerful stimulants without examining young patients properly

Children with ADHD are being put at risk by poorly regulated private clinics that prescribe powerful stimulants without key physical examinations, doctors have warned.

A surge in remote-only assessments has led to what one clinician described as “widespread and unsafe practice”, where children are being diagnosed and medicated via video link. The clinical warnings have now forced health authorities in Greater Manchester to overhaul prescribing rules, mandating face-to-face checks to protect the safety of children.

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After the Trump administration cut it off, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CBS News in an exclusive interview Friday night he wants to work with the military — but only if it addresses the firm's concerns.

A Democratic primary in a GOP held Texas congressional district is seeing major money ahead of polls closing in the March 3 contest.

Democrats hope to capture the House, but the Senate could be a heavier lift in November’s midterm elections

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On the first Tuesday of November, Americans will decide whether to keep Congress under Donald Trump’s control, or hand power to the Democrats. The first national elections since the 2024 polls that brought Trump back to the White House, the 3 November midterms will be a crucial test of whether the president’s handling of top issues such as the economy and immigration have met Americans’ expectations. On Tuesday, voters will cast ballots in initial state primaries, with more to follow in the months ahead.

Up for grabs in November are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate, and if Republicans lose their majorities in either chamber, it will alter the course of Trump’s presidency. Should Democrats take the House, they will gain the power to issue subpoenas as they investigate his administration, and can block the president’s legislative agenda. Should they wrest control of the Senate from the GOP, Democrats could stop Trump from appointing nominees to cabinet positions and the federal judiciary, including the supreme court.

The images from Mexico looked like a modern global battlefield. Security forces engaged in torrents of gunfire on the beach. Commercial flights into Puerto Vallarta promptly canceled as military helicopters took up airspace to run strafing fire on narco positions below. Highways filled with stalled traffic as buses burned along major routes, the smoke sending visible plumes across the city.

The torrent of violence followed a Mexican military operation Sunday that killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the hemisphere. Retaliation moved quickly. Cartel organizations launched an onslaught of armed convoys and road blocks that torched buildings and gas stations in at least 20 states around the country, grinding an entire nation to a halt. In the violence, at least 70 people have died, 25 of which were Mexican military forces. 

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Trump Demanded El Mencho’s Head. Mexicans Are Paying the Price.

In an after-action press conference, Mexican authorities were quick to frame the operation as a strategic success — a symbol of cross-border intelligence cooperation and another blow against organized crime.

But when reporters asked about the weapons recovered during the raid targeting El Mencho, Mexican Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla Trejo offered a more unvarnished assessment. “Eighty percent are of North American origin,” he said plainly, roughly the same proportion of the nearly 23,000 firearms Trejo said the Mexican administration has confiscated since October 1.

Narco organizations have evolved from illicit trafficking networks into heavily armed forces capable of blunting military grade law enforcement across entire regions. That escalation is not an anomaly. The United States — with its vast civilian gun market, weak barriers to arms trafficking, and law enforcement gaze fixed largely northbound — has helped create cartels more heavily armed than at any point in their history, a transformation that has destabilized Mexico, cost billions of dollars, and claimed thousands of lives on both sides of the border.

And while America watches from next door — calmly stirring its tea as cartel violence becomes political currency for tougher borders and even fantasies of military intervention — it has largely avoided confronting its own role in arming its supposed adversaries to the hilt.

The Iron Pipeline 

There are only two highly regulated legal gun stores in the whole of Mexico, so it is hardly controversial or new within law enforcement circles that America has long been an armory of illicit firearms for Mexican organized crime. In 2006, after the Mexican government began deploying soldiers to combat organized crime, cartel fighters began sourcing American firepower to near parity with the Mexican military. This coincided with a liberating time for American gun owners after the U.S. assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004. As a 2013 Cambridge research report found, the re-release of American assault rifles coincided with murder rates spiking in Mexico. This supply chain, through which America effectively dumps 200,000 firearms into Mexico each year, is known among gun policy experts as the “Iron Pipeline.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, a law enforcement agency long constrained by political pressure and an aggressive gun lobby, could do little more than document the flow. Between 2014 and 2021, the agency reported that nearly 70 percent of firearms submitted for tracing by Mexican authorities originated back in the U.S., a figure federal agents and trafficking experts have consistently warned understates the true scale of weapons moving south.

While American gun companies reported record profits, their weapons were simultaneously transforming Mexican criminal mobs into paramilitary cells able to rout state military forces.

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The result of that armament has been staggering: Mexico has recorded more than 463,000 homicides since 2006, alongside a parallel crisis of more than 130,000 people missing or disappeared. Much of the bloodshed has come at the muzzle of weapons trafficked north-to-south across the U.S. border.

In a previous attempt to arrest El Mencho back in 2015, cartel forces shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a .50-caliber rifle. The crash killed nine soldiers, with the gun later being traced back to a gun store in Washington state. In 2019, Cartel del Noreste conducted a two-day campaign of terror, pouring gunfire into the small town of Villa Union. In the aftermath, 23 people were dead, and authorities recovered a cache of weapons sourced from Houston. That same year, three American women and their six children were killed while living in Sonora when their Mormon community was besieged by sicarios. Two of the rifles used to kill them were bought from New Mexico and Arizona. Just last year, The Intercept recovered made-in-America rifle ammunition, including spent rounds from a factory owned by the U.S. military, at the the scene of a bloody cartel gun battle at a village in Michoacán. 

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In the aftermath of El Mencho’s killing, a video appears to show CJNG fighters in Jalisco mounting an ambush, with one gripping a Barrett .50-caliber rifle — a weapon manufactured in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Another clip posted on X shows what appear to be narcos unleashing a barrage of gunfire at Mexican authorities with an FN SCAR, a rifle assembled in Columbia, South Carolina.

Too Little, Too Late

There was no federal arms trafficking law on the books until 2022, which left U.S. authorities with few tools to charge gun runners for over a century. Meanwhile, a politically beleaguered ATF spent decades failing to properly inspect America’s nearly 80,000 gun dealers, allowing repeat violators to stay in business. While Customs and Border Protection has the clear authority to stem the outbound flow of weapons, their institutional fixation on migration and drugs has meant they intercept only a small fraction of the firearms flowing into cartel hands. 

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When Mexican authorities filed a landmark lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers in hopes that Washington might finally intervene, the U.S. Supreme Court — backed by a conservative majority installed during Trump’s first term — effectively shut the case down, ruling that federal law shields gunmakers from liability.

As a direct result of America’s blind eye to arms control, these hyper-armed Mexican syndicates have diversified their criminal portfolio. By capitalizing on America’s orchestrated thirst for opioids, Mexico became the leading source of fentanyl, shifting the drug war’s deadliest toll north of the border. In 2023, more than 105,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, far exceeding Mexico’s roughly 20,000 to 30,000 cartel-linked homicides annually — a grim inversion of the drug war’s human cost.

In a bid to bring stability to their country — and in doing its due diligence over America’s overdoses — Mexican authorities have dismantled more than 2,000 clandestine drug laboratories in recent years, many linked to fentanyl production raids that routinely uncover compounds armed to the teeth with U.S.-sourced firepower. Each lab, a Mexican diplomat once told me, is a “mini-Waco” in terms of firepower.

Even if America could snap its fingers and stop the drug trade tomorrow, the cartels have branched out. Extortion — taxation imposed at gunpoint — has become a multibillion-dollar pillar sustaining their criminal fiefdoms.

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Trump’s War on Drugs

Human lives have borne the brunt of this violence, but the financial toll has been staggering as well. Since 2007, the United States has spent more than $3 billion in bilateral security assistance to Mexico under the Mérida Initiative and roughly $400 billion more on domestic immigration and border enforcement — a backward attempt to shield itself from the consequences of its own weaponry and the displacement driven by that violence.

For years, Washington has framed cartel brutality as a threat arriving from elsewhere, something to fortify against, sanction, or even confront militarily. Yet the defining asymmetry of the modern drug war is not migration or narcotics, but American guns: The United States has poured hundreds of billions into containing the fallout while leaving largely untouched the marketplace helping to produce it.

Americans enjoy the constitutional right to keep and bear arms — a right that’s deeply embedded in the country’s political identity and culture. But keeping arms carries a much larger obligation: being responsible for where those weapons ultimately end up. Until the United States learns to build a wall against the outward flow of its own firepower, the drug war will remain a shared tragedy — sustained not by inevitability, but by what America allows to leave its hands.

The post Made-in-America Guns Are Fueling Death and Destruction in Mexico appeared first on The Intercept.

Israel and the US launched strikes against Iran as Donald Trump declared the start of 'major combat operations' and called on Iranians to rise up against their government. The US president’s comments came soon after explosions were heard across central Tehran. One apparent strike hit near the offices of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran was preparing a 'crushing retaliation', an Iranian official told Reuters

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• US and Israel strikes on Iran: what we know so far

• Full report

Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.

According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting. 

Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.” 

The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.

“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government,” said Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates substantial risk that the administration is laying the groundwork to improperly reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of the voters.”

Five of six federal officials who attended the summit didn’t answer questions about the event from ProPublica. 

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “common practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. The official pointed to comments Trump made to PBS News denying he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft executive order. “Any speculation about policies the administration may or may not undertake is just that — speculation,” the official said.

In the past, Trump has expressed an openness to a federal takeover as a way to stem projected Republican losses in November. This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans need “to take over” elections and “to nationalize the voting.”

Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’” 

The 30-person roundtable discussion on Feb. 19, at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials dined together, photos reviewed by ProPublica showed.

Flynn, the institute’s chair, told a social media personality why he’d arranged the event. 

“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us have met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn said to Tommy Robinson on the gathering’s sidelines. Robinson posted videos of these interactions online. “The overall theme of this event was to make sure that all of us aren’t operating in our own little bubbles.”

Flynn has repeatedly advocated for Trump to declare a national emergency and posted on social media after the event addressing Trump, “We The People want fair elections and we know there is only one office in the land that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”

In addition to Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the upcoming elections attended the event. At least four of the six attended the dinner.

One is Clay Parikh, a special government employee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who’s helping Olsen with the 2020 inquiry. A spokesperson at ODNI said Parikh had attended the summit “in his personal capacity.” 

Another, Mac Warner, handled election litigation at the Justice Department. A department spokesperson said that Warner had resigned the day after the event and had not received the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.  

The department “remains committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure all elections remain free, fair, and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.

A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines. 

Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh in her unsuccessful bid to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.

Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the overall importance of election integrity, a non-partisan issue that matters to all citizens — both in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any other speeches.” 

“Elections should be free from fraud or any other malfeasance that subverts the will of the people,” she added. 

At the meeting, activists presented on ways to transform American elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave on conservative media, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by the pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group broke down into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more incremental legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.

Multiple activists left the meeting convinced Trump should do the latter, a step they believe would allow the president to get around the Constitution’s directive that elections should be run by states. 

Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”

Byrne responded to questions from ProPublica by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested “2/3 of Americans correctly do not trust” voting machines, which the proposed national emergency declaration aims to do away with.

Will Huff, who has advocated for doing away with voting machines, told a conservative vlogger that Olsen, the White House lawyer, and other administration representatives would take the “consensus” from the gathering back to Trump. “It’s got to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Arkansas secretary of state.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment to decide whether to declare a national emergency. 

“The President has been briefed on findings of shortcomings in election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are steady hands around the President wanting to ensure that any action taken is, first, constitutional and legal, but also backed by evidence.”

McCarthy, the cybersecurity official, expressed more general solidarity with fellow attendees in a post on social media about the summit. “Grateful for friendships forged through years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction,” she wrote. “The mission continues… and so does the fellowship.”

Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Many have involved Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Before taking her government post, Honey was a leader in the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica has reported, as was McCarthy.

Previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica show that just weeks after Honey started at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official on a conference call arranged by her former boss, Mitchell.

“We are excited to welcome her on our call this morning to hear about her work for election integrity inside DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing presenters on the call.

Honey didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — though not this one.

The prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”

The post Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms appeared first on ProPublica.

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Foot traffic was slow outside the Bay of Pigs Museum on Calle Ocho in Miami’s Little Havana neighbourhood. A few tourists in T-shirts and shorts bypassed the gallery dedicated to one of the most fateful days in Cuba’s history and headed instead to nearby Máximo Gómez Park to take photographs of Cuban exiles playing dominoes.

This is the street at the heart of the Cuban expat community of more than 1 million people where tens of thousands partied through the night in November 2016 to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, and where they gathered in sorrow almost exactly 30 years ago to mourn four Cuban-Americans shot down by the communist country’s air force as they conducted a mission for the humanitarian exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

Kate Fox says Joe Ceccanti was the ‘most hopeful person’ before he started spending 12 hours a day with a chatbot

On 7 August, Kate Fox received a phone call that upended her life. A medical examiner said that her husband, Joe Ceccanti – who had been missing for several hours – had jumped from a railway overpass and died. He was 48.

Fox couldn’t believe it. Ceccanti had no history of depression, she said, nor was he suicidal – he was the “most hopeful person” she had ever known. In fact, according to the witness accounts shared with Fox later, just before Ceccanti jumped, he smiled and yelled: “I’m great!” to the rail yard attendants below when they asked him if he was OK.

Last summer, I traveled to McLoud, Oklahoma, home to the state’s largest women’s prison. McLoud — a town of fewer than 5,000 residents — lies 30 miles east of Oklahoma City on a wide expanse of prairie. At the edge of town, off a rutted road, stands Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, a sprawl of concrete and razor wire. 

I went there to meet April Wilkens, who has spent more than a quarter century at Mabel Bassett for the 1998 shooting death of her ex-fiancé, Terry Carlton. Wilkens had repeatedly sought help from law enforcement after Carlton beat, raped and stalked her — pleas that, according to trial testimony, were met with indifference. She was convicted of first-degree murder and handed a life sentence.

More than two decades later, her case drew renewed attention. Wilkens became a central figure in the push for new legislation that would allow survivors of domestic violence to seek reduced sentences when their crimes stemmed from their abuse.

Read More

The Victims Who Fought Back

The state’s high incarceration rate — and the mounting human and financial costs of keeping so many people behind bars — had created an opening, one that a Tulsa lawyer named Colleen McCarty recognized. Troubled by Oklahoma’s dual distinction as a state that consistently has one of the highest rates of female imprisonment and of domestic abuse, she and another Tulsa attorney, Leslie Briggs, visited Wilkens in prison in 2022. In that meeting, the lawyers explained that they wanted to pass legislation that could reduce the long sentences that survivors of domestic abuse faced, even when their crimes were a direct result of their abuse. After two years of advocacy, the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act was passed into law in 2024.

The law did not automatically reduce survivors’ sentences. Instead, it created a mechanism for them to petition for relief — requiring them to demonstrate that domestic abuse was a “substantial contributing factor” in their offense and leaving the ultimate decision to a judge.

When I first heard about the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, I was floored. I live in Texas and cover criminal justice, so I spend a lot of time tracking where change is — and isn’t — politically possible. I knew how unusual it was for ambitious sentencing reform to emerge from a deep red state where lawmakers have long favored harsh punishment. Oklahoma, which has put to death 130 people since capital punishment resumed in 1976, has the most executions per capita of any state in the nation.

I wanted to understand how that law came to be, and, just as importantly, if it was working as intended. As I chronicle in my story, “The Victims Who Fought Back,” the path to the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act began with that meeting in 2022 between the two lawyers and Wilkens. McCarty and Briggs wanted a sense of how many women were imprisoned for crimes tied to their own abuse. After their meeting, Wilkens came up with a solution; she decided to draft a questionnaire asking other prisoners about the abuse they had endured. She wanted to know: How many other women at Mabel Bassett had cases like hers? 

Wilkens distributed the questionnaire one weekend that fall. She chatted up anyone she saw in the rec yard, the library, the chow hall. Conducting an unauthorized survey could’ve earned her a disciplinary write-up, but Wilkens, who had a nearly spotless record, decided it was a risk worth taking. 

For years, she had listened to women describe the violence they had endured — stories that had barely surfaced in courtrooms, if at all. She could see the intersection between their abuse and the crimes they went on to commit. Some had been prosecuted for failing to protect their children from their abusive partners; others had committed crimes alongside their abusers under threat of further harm — offenses that, like Wilkens’, could not be understood apart from the abuse that preceded them.

Among Mabel Bassett’s lifers, Wilkens stood out as a leader; she was well-liked and respected, and as she moved through the prison with her questionnaire, women stopped to hear what she had to say. There was no incentive to fill it out, because no law yet existed to help survivors. There was only Wilkens’ force of personality and a simple request: “If you’ve experienced domestic violence, and that’s connected to why you’re here, will you fill this out?”

One hundred and fifty-six women filled out the survey. McCarty, who would go on to become Wilkens’ attorney, told me she read them in a single sitting, so unmoored by the women’s stories that she had to lie down when she finished. When I went to talk to her last year in Tulsa, she told me that I could read them, too. 

I’m sharing brief excerpts of them here because they do more than document individual suffering. They also expose something broader: the systemic blind spots that allowed so many of these women’s histories to go unheard in police reports, courtrooms and sentencing decisions.

Fear and terror are the predominant themes. “The abuse graduated from emotional to verbal to physical to sexual,” wrote one woman. 

“He said he was going to kill me and hide the body,” wrote another. “His wife before me had her nose broken twice.”

“I kept begging for a divorce and he’d threaten to kill my children.”

“From the beating I received, my left ear I don’t hear well.”

“My children’s father he beat me barely made it out alive.”

A fraction of the respondents had, like Wilkens, gone on to kill their abusers. “I didn’t realize I shot him until the gun went off,” wrote one woman.

Another wrote, “One night just snapped, shot & killed my husband.”

Many described a system that had failed them. “My lawyer was arrested during my trial,” wrote one woman whose children were put in foster care after her arrest. “I never even got a chance.” 

“Am ready to tell my story,” wrote a woman who was convicted when Ronald Reagan was president. “Have been for a long time.”

The questionnaires became part of the foundation for a legislative push, helping lawmakers grasp how often abuse and criminal charges intersected, and how rarely that history was fully considered in court. When the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act passed in 2024, there was hope that it would offer women like Wilkens and others at Mabel Bassett a meaningful second look at their sentences. 

What I learned through my reporting, though, is just how resistant that system can be to change. Wilkens, along with many other women with similar stories, still waits behind bars. 

With her, inside Mabel Bassett, is another prisoner whose response to the questionnaire has stayed with me: “I was in a very abusive, sick relationship,” she wrote. “I am FREE now.”

The post A Secret Survey From Inside a Women’s Prison Tells Stories of Domestic Abuse Untold in Court appeared first on ProPublica.

On February 24th, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory activated its automated alert system, sending out roughly 800,000 real-time notifications flagging asteroids, supernovae, flaring black holes and "other transient celestial events," reports Scientific American. And this is only the beginning -- that number is projected to climb into the millions as it continues scanning the ever-changing sky. From the report: The astronomical observatory equipped with world's largest camera hit a key milestone on February 24, when a complex data-processing system pushed hundreds of thousands of alerts out to scientists eager to pore over its most exciting sightings. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory began operations last year, capturing stunning, panoramic time-lapse views of the cosmos with ease. Rubin's first images, based on just 10 hours of observations, let space fans zoom seemingly forever into an overwhelmingly starry sky. But watchful astronomers were always awaiting the next step: the system that would automatically alert them to the most promising activity in the overhead sky amid the 1,000 or so enormous images that Rubin's telescope captures every night. "We can detect everything that changes, moves and appears," said Yusra AlSayyad, an astronomer at Princeton University and Rubin's deputy associate director for data management, to Scientific American last summer. "It's way too much for one person to manually sift through and filter and monitor themselves." So even as they were designing and building the Rubin Observatory itself, scientists were also designing an alert system to help astronomers navigate the flood of data. As soon as the telescope began observations, the team started constructing a static reference image of the entire sky in impeccable detail. Now the data processing systems that support the observatory are starting to automatically compare every new Rubin image to the corresponding section of that background template. The systems identify all of the differences, each of which is individually flagged. The algorithms can also distinguish between a potential supernova and a possible newfound asteroid, for example. Alerting the scientific community is the final, crucial step. Astronomers -- as well as members of the public -- can sign up for notifications based on the type of sighting they're interested in and the brightness of the observation in question. And now that the alerts system has gone live, users receive a tiny, fuzzy image with some astronomical metadata of each observation that fits their criteria -- all just a couple of minutes after Rubin captures the original image.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Project Play finds UK taxpayers are funding ‘record child fatalities’ and ‘repeated violence’ against children in northern France

The deaths of 22 children while trying to cross the Channel in the last two years, along with the mistreatment of thousands of others, were due to “catastrophic failures” of the UK and French governments, according to a new report.

Project Play, an NGO that has worked with 2,192 children hoping to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK to claim asylum in the last two years, has documented the impact of the hostile conditions in northern France due to regular teargassing, evictions and dinghy-slashing by the French police.

Donald Trump said the US had begun 'major combat operations' in Iran, warning that there may be US casualties. The strikes, which the US president said were aimed at destroying Iranian missiles and annihilating its navy, follow repeated US-Israeli warnings that they would strike Iran again if it pressed ahead with its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Trump told members of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's armed forces, to lay down their weapons, promising they would be granted immunity. The other option, according to Trump, was 'certain death'

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran: what we know so far

• Full report

President Trump launched military strikes on Iran after several rounds of talks over the country's nuclear program and uranium stockpiles. Here's what to know about the nuclear program.

Legendary nightclub Le Palace, where Serge Gainsbourg and Prince also performed, to rise again

In the late 1970s, Le Palace in Paris’s busy theatre district was one of continental Europe’s most famous nightclubs.

On the opening night on 1 March 1978, Grace Jones stunned VIP guests with her rendition of Edith Piaf’s classic La Vie en Rose. Later, Serge Gainsbourg and Prince came to perform, Bob Marley was photographed there and Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld were part of a glittering cast of international celebrities, politicians, designers and models who came to drink and dance.

Ahead of the decision to launch military strikes, the U.S. issued a designation that enables punishing Iran for detaining Americans for political leverage.

As the director general prepares to stand down, potential candidates have fallen away amid a series of crises

There is an impressive shortlist circulating in Britain’s media circles, comprising some of the most talented executives in the business. Unfortunately for the BBC, it contains the names of figures no longer in the running to become its next director general.

Those closely observing the corporation’s search for a successor to Tim Davie have been quick to note how the events of the past week help explain the alarming attrition rate.

The Israel Defense Ministry said in a statement that it launched the strike because it was expecting "a missile and drone attack" from Iran "in the immediate future."

PM criticises ‘sectarian politics’ in byelection but party may fear Greens’ nascent leftwing political machine

The Green party’s success at winning Muslim votes in Gorton and Denton has sent tremors through Westminster, prompting recriminations and accusations from opposition parties, who sense another major realignment in British politics.

Experts say Hannah Spencer’s unexpectedly wide margin of victory was delivered in part by a significant shift of Muslim voters from Labour to the Greens.

Case brought by 29 workers and backed by UVW union seen as test case that could lead to changes at other restaurants

Harrods is facing legal action over its addition of a £1-a-head cover charge to diners’ bills that does not go to workers, in a test case that could lead to changes at a string of upmarket restaurants.

Legislation, which came into force in October 2024, requires business owners to hand over all tips and service charges to staff. Some restaurants, including those at Harrods, add a mandatory cover charge as well as an optional service charge and only pass on the latter to their workers.

Likelihood of winning to decrease after NS&I cut the proportion of the total invested amount paid out in prizes

There was some bad news this week for Britain’s 22 million-strong army of premium bond holders: the odds of winning a prize are to get worse.

National Savings and Investments (NS&I) says it is cutting the proportion of the total invested amount paid out in prizes from 3.6% to 3.3% a year with effect from April’s draw.

Southern California's air quality board rejected proposed rules to phase out gas-powered appliances after receiving more than 20,000 opposition comments generated through CiviClick, "the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform." Phys.org reports: A Southern California-based public affairs consultant, Matt Klink, has taken credit for using CiviClick to wage the opposition campaign, including in a sponsored article on the website Campaigns and Elections. The campaign "left the staff of the Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) reeling," the article says. It is not clear how AI was deployed in the campaign, and officials at CiviClick did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But their website boasts several tools, including "state of the art technology and artificial intelligence message assistance" that can be used to create custom advocacy letters, as opposed to repetitive form letters or petitions often used in similar campaigns. When staffers at the air district reached out to a small sample of people to verify their comments, at least three said they had not written to the agency and were not aware of any such messages, records show. But the email onslaught almost certainly influenced the board's June decision, according to agency insiders, who noted that the number of public comments typically submitted on agenda items can be counted on one hand. The proposed rules were nearly two years in the making and would have placed a fee on natural gas-powered water heaters and furnaces, favoring electric ones, in an effort to reduce air pollution in the district, which includes Orange County and large swaths of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Gas appliances emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx -- key pollutants for forming smog. The implications are troubling, experts said, and go beyond the use of natural gas furnaces and heaters in the second-largest metropolitan area in the country.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 28.

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

He’s the Democratic politician with movie-star looks and a picture-perfect family, dogged by accusations of being a smooth‑talking elitist. Can he really unite the American left and win the most powerful office in the world?

When you think of the politician Donald Trump isn’t, when you think of the norm he broke, the archetype he shattered, you might well picture a man who looks a lot like Gavin Newsom. Tall and handsome, hair coiffed just so, with a blond wife and four photogenic kids at his side, Newsom, who has been the governor of California since 2019 and is often described as the frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee for the White House in 2028, looks the way professional politicians, and especially presidential candidates, look in the movies.

It’s dogged Newsom for years, that look of his, perennially suggesting that he is, in the words of one California newspaper, “too ambitious, too slickly handsome, and too patrician-seeming”, especially for a populist age that cherishes the authentic and has no truck with anything either phoney or “elite”. The elite tag especially has hung around Newsom’s neck for decades, thanks to the fact that his ascent to the top of California politics has seemed smooth and unbroken, apparently eased by a childhood spent in the orbit of the Getty family, when that name was a byword for astronomical wealth.

DoJ says it will not ask US supreme court to rehear tariffs case despite president’s complaint on Truth Social

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The Trump administration said refunds of tariffs struck down by the US supreme court “will take time”, according to court documents filed by the Department of Justice.

Businesses including FedEx have lined up to demand reimbursement for US tariffs they have paid but that the court last week deemed were imposed illegally, prompting heavy criticism from Donald Trump.

Hours before Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's interview, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deemed the AI company a "supply chain risk to national security," which restricts military contractors from doing business with Anthropic.

US threats to seize Greenland have created ‘new international fault lines’ that can be used to spread disinformation, Danish intelligence agencies say

Denmark’s intelligence services have warned that a foreign power may try to sway the general election on 24 March, saying the main threat was from Russia over support for Ukraine but also citing the chaos caused by US efforts to seize Greenland.

The PET police intelligence service and FE military intelligence said in a joint statement the election campaign could be marked by disinformation and cyberattacks “to sow division, influence the public debate or to target candidates, parties or specific political programmes”.

In an interview that aired Friday on "CBS Evening News," Renee Good's family said they would trade their lives for hers if they could.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is widely regarded as one of the Democratic party’s leading contenders for the 2028 presidential election. He has also published a new book, Young Man in a Hurry, reflecting on his childhood and his path to the governor’s mansion.

This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Newsom about why he believes the Democrats suffered such heavy losses in 2024, why the party needs to be less judgmental, and whether he intends to run for president in 2028

Critics claim the operations are geared at social media, but police say they have enabled real arrests

Police officers from Bangkok’s metropolitan bureau had less than 24 hours to prepare for their latest undercover operation. They would be starring as performers of a lion dance at a temple fair held for the lunar new year. Their mission: track down and arrest a suspected thief who had a history of evading officers.

“The dance was spontaneous. We just did what we did,” said the police captain Lertvarit Lertvorapreecha, adding that nobody had time to practise. In his haste, he accidentally picked up his colleague’s male mask, which he wore with a red silk dress, trousers and tactical shoes.

Hours after exclusion of Anthropic, OpenAI announces fresh Pentagon deal, but says it will maintain same safety guardrails at the heart of the dispute

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Donald Trump said Friday he will direct all federal agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE” all use of Anthropic technology in the latest instalment of a very public clash over AI safety.

The Department of Defense and Anthropic hit an impasse with neither side backing down as a deadline for an agreement lapsed on Friday afternoon. The Pentagon had demanded the artificial intelligence company loosen ethical guidelines on its AI systems or face severe consequences.

‘I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn’t do,’ former US president says after six-hour deposition

Bill Clinton told a congressional committee on Friday he “had no idea of the crimes” Jeffrey Epstein was committing and insisted he “did nothing wrong” in his relationship with the convicted sex trafficker.

The former president’s remarks came in his opening statement in a deposition to the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, a day after his wife, Hillary Clinton, appeared before the same body and called the proceedings “partisan political theater” and “an insult to the American people”.

Taliban offer to resolve dispute via dialogue after Pakistan bombed cities in Afghanistan in latest escalation with its neighbour

Washington endorsed Pakistan’s “right to defend itself” after it bombed major cities across Afghanistan amid heightened tensions between the two hostile neighbours.

The Taliban government in Kabul stressed it was ready to negotiate on Friday as violence intensified between the two countries.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: OpenAI has fired an employee following an investigation into their activity on prediction market platforms including Polymarket, WIRED has learned. OpenAI CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, disclosed the termination in an internal message to employees earlier this year. The employee, she said, "used confidential OpenAI information in connection with external prediction markets (e.g. Polymarket)." "Our policies prohibit employees from using confidential OpenAI information for personal gain, including in prediction markets," says spokesperson Kayla Wood. OpenAI has not revealed the name of the employee or the specifics of their trades. Evidence suggests that this was not an isolated event. Polymarket runs on the Polygon blockchain network, so its trading ledger is pseudonymous but traceable. According to an analysis by the financial data platform Unusual Whales, there have been clusters of activities, which the service flagged as suspicious, around OpenAI-themed events since March 2023. Unusual Whales flagged 77 positions in 60 wallet addresses as suspected insider trades, looking at the age of the account, trading history, and significance of investment, among other factors. Suspicious trades hinged on the release dates of products like Sora, GPT-5, and the ChatGPT Browser, as well as CEO Sam Altman's employment status. In November 2023, two days after Altman was dramatically ousted from the company, a new wallet placed a significant bet that he would return, netting over $16,000 in profits. The account never placed another bet. The behavior fits into patterns typical of insider trades. "The tell is the clustering. In the 40 hours before OpenAI launched its browser, 13 brand-new wallets with zero trading history appeared on the site for the first time to collectively bet $309,486 on the right outcome," says Unusual Whales CEO Matt Saincome. "When you see that many fresh wallets making the same bet at the same time, it raises a real question about whether the secret is getting out." [...] Though this is the first confirmed case of a large technology company firing an employee over trades in prediction markets, it's almost certainly not the last. Opportunities for tech sector employees to make trades on markets abound. "The data tells me this is happening all over the place," Saincome says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Riot police use teargas to disperse people gathering around wreckage of plane loaded with money from central bank

At least 20 people have died and dozens have been injured after a military cargo plane carrying banknotes crashed while landing near Bolivia’s capital on Friday, damaging about a dozen vehicles on a highway and scattering bills on the ground, an official has said.

Footage from local media showed people rushing to collect banknotes while police in riot gear tried to disperse them using teargas. Authorities were later seen setting the money alight in a bonfire at the scene of the crash.

This live blog is now closed.

• Bill Clinton says he had ‘no idea’ about Epstein’s crimes in House testimony

• Howard Lutnick scrutiny grows as new photo shows him with Epstein

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James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, said the committee’s list of questions for Bill Clinton grew longer after Hillary Clinton’s deposition yesterday, where she deferred a host of questions to her husband.

“So we already had a big portfolio of questions for him, and that increased yesterday,” Comer said at a press conference outside the building where the closed-door deposition was set to begin shortly.

Researchers at Cortical Labs used living human neurons grown on a chip to learn how to play Doom in about a week. "While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms," reports New Scientist. From the report: In 2021, the Australian company Cortical Labs used its neuron-powered computer chips to play Pong. The chips consisted of clumps of more than 800,000 living brain cells grown on top of microelectrode arrays that can both send and receive electrical signals. Researchers had to carefully train the chips to control the paddles on either side of the screen. Now, Cortical Labs has developed an interface that makes it easier to program these chips using the popular programming language Python. An independent developer, Sean Cole, then used Python to teach the chips to play Doom, which he did in around a week. "Unlike the Pong work that we did a few years ago, which represented years of painstaking scientific effort, this demonstration has been done in a matter of days by someone who previously had relatively little expertise working directly with biology," says Brett Kagan of Cortical Labs. "It's this accessibility and this flexibility that makes it truly exciting." The neuronal computer chip, which used about a quarter as many neurons as the Pong demonstration, played Doom better than a randomly firing player, but far below the performance of the best human players. However, it learnt much faster than traditional, silicon-based machine learning systems and should be able to improve its performance with newer learning algorithms, says Kagan. However, it's not useful to compare the chips with human brains, he says. "Yes, it's alive, and yes, it's biological, but really what it is being used as is a material that can process information in very special ways that we can't recreate in silicon." Cortical Labs posted a YouTube video showing its CL1 biological computer running Doom. There's also source code available on GitHub, with additional details in a README file.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For Buddy Wiggins of Honolulu, Hawaii, the end result of a yearslong sports gambling addiction has come to this: soliciting strangers on the beach.

Author Dan Simmons, best known for the epic sci-fi novel Hyperion and its sequels, has died at 77 following a stroke. Ars Technica's Eric Berger remembers Simmons, writing: Simmons, who worked in elementary education before becoming an author in the 1980s, produced a broad portfolio of writing that spanned several genres, including horror fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction. Often, his books included elements of all of these. This obituary will focus on what is generally considered his greatest work, and what I believe is possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Hyperion. Published in 1989, Hyperion is set in a far-flung future in which human settlement spans hundreds of planets. The novel feels both familiar, in that its structure follows Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and utterly unfamiliar in its strange, far-flung setting. Simmons' Hyperion appeared in an Ask Slashdot story back in 2008, when Slashdot reader willyhill asked for tips on how Slashdotters track down great sci-fi. If you're in the mood for a little nostalgia, or just want to browse the thread for book recommendations, it's well worth revisiting.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The company's new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn't really help Americans.

Neither president nor anyone in administration has reached out after Good was killed by immigration officer, says family

The family of Renee Good, an unarmed US citizen and mother who was killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis last month, said in an interview with NBC News that neither Donald Trump nor anyone in his administration has contacted them since her death.

“There’s a reason that we hired our own investigators – to make sure that the truth is transparent and available, to make sure that this is really taken seriously, and to make sure that we know what occurred,” Brent Ganger, Good’s brother, told NBC News.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 28, No. 727.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 523, for Saturday, Feb. 28.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 28 #993

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Feb. 28, No. 1,715.

The world's most important mobile show kicks off on Monday and will show off wild phone concepts along with new devices launching later this year.

President Trump said he will give federal agencies six months to phase out their use of Anthropic's AI products.

This week's guests include Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Republican Rep. Mike Turner.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deemed artificial intelligence firm Anthropic a supply chain risk on Friday, following days of increasingly heated public conflict with the AI company.

Renee Good's family said they spent agonizing "hours in limbo," unsure of the details surrounding her fatal shooting by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis last month.

Some of the changes mirror Scouting America's suggestions to the Department of Justice, including discontinuing its Citizenship in Society merit badge.

New submitter DeanonymizedCoward shares a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is reportedly in crisis following major budget cuts, layoffs, and furloughs under the Trump administration, says TechCrunch. The agency has now replaced its acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, after a turbulent year marked by controversy and internal turmoil. During his tenure, Gottumukkala allegedly mishandled sensitive information by uploading government documents to ChatGPT, oversaw a one-third reduction in staff, and reportedly failed a counterintelligence polygraph needed for classified access. His leadership also saw the suspension of several senior officials, including CISA's chief security officer. Nextgov also reported that CISA lost another top senior official, Bob Costello, the agency's chief information officer tasked with overseeing the agency's IT systems and data policies. "Last month, CISA's acting director Madhu Gottumukkala reportedly took steps to transfer Costello, but other political appointees blocked it," added Nextgov.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trustees unanimously voted to place Alberto Carvalho on leave and appointed Andres Chait in the interim

Two days after the FBI searched the headquarters of the Los Angeles unified school district and the home of its superintendent, the district board of education placed Alberto Carvalho on administrative leave.

The board met in closed session meetings for several hours on Thursday and Friday to discuss Carvalho’s employment with the nation’s second largest school district. The trustees unanimously voted Friday to place Carvalho on paid leave, and appointed another high ranking district official, Andres Chait, to serve as interim superintendent.

Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, known for his hits like "Laughter in the Rain," "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" and "Calendar Girl," has died.

Amid rising signs of conflict, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem advised non-essential staff to urgently flee the country.

After nearly two days of closed-session meetings, the Los Angeles school board placed Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on paid administrative leave amid a federal investigation into his time as the head of Miami's school district.

joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity has introduced "Computer," a new tool that allows users to assign tasks and see them carried out by a system that coordinates multiple agents running various models. The company claims that Computer, currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers, is "a system that creates and executes entire workflows" and "capable of running for hours or even months." The idea is that the user describes a specific outcome -- something like "plan and execute a local digital marketing campaign for my restaurant" or "build me an Android app that helps me do a specific kind of research for my job." Computer then ideates subtasks and assigns them to multiple agents as needed, running the models Perplexity deems best for those tasks. The core reasoning engine currently runs Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6, while Gemini is used for deep research, Nano Banana for image generation, Veo 3.1 for video production, Grok for lightweight tasks where speed is a consideration, and ChatGPT 5.2 for "long-context recall and wide search." This kind of best-model-for-the-task approach differs from some competing products like Claude Cowork, which only uses Anthropic's models. All this happens in the cloud, with prebuilt integrations. "Every task runs in an isolated compute environment with access to a real filesystem, a real browser, and real tool integrations," Perplexity says. The idea is partly that this workflow was what some power users were already doing, and this aims to make that possible for a wider range of people who don't want to deal with all that setup. People were already using multiple models and tailoring them to specific tasks based on perceived capabilities, while, for example, using MCP (Model Context Protocol) to give those models access to data and applications on their local machines. Perplexity Computer takes a different approach, but the goal is the same: have AI agents running tailor-picked models to perform tasks involving your own files, services, and applications. Then there is OpenClaw, which you could perceive as the immediate predecessor to this concept.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity has introduced "Computer," a new tool that allows users to assign tasks and see them carried out by a system that coordinates multiple agents running various models. The company claims that Computer, currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers, is "a system that creates and executes entire workflows" and "capable of running for hours or even months." The idea is that the user describes a specific outcome -- something like "plan and execute a local digital marketing campaign for my restaurant" or "build me an Android app that helps me do a specific kind of research for my job." Computer then ideates subtasks and assigns them to multiple agents as needed, running the models Perplexity deems best for those tasks. The core reasoning engine currently runs Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6, while Gemini is used for deep research, Nano Banana for image generation, Veo 3.1 for video production, Grok for lightweight tasks where speed is a consideration, and ChatGPT 5.2 for "long-context recall and wide search." This kind of best-model-for-the-task approach differs from some competing products like Claude Cowork, which only uses Anthropic's models. All this happens in the cloud, with prebuilt integrations. "Every task runs in an isolated compute environment with access to a real filesystem, a real browser, and real tool integrations," Perplexity says. The idea is partly that this workflow was what some power users were already doing, and this aims to make that possible for a wider range of people who don't want to deal with all that setup. People were already using multiple models and tailoring them to specific tasks based on perceived capabilities, while, for example, using MCP (Model Context Protocol) to give those models access to data and applications on their local machines. Perplexity Computer takes a different approach, but the goal is the same: have AI agents running tailor-picked models to perform tasks involving your own files, services, and applications. Then there is OpenClaw, which you could perceive as the immediate predecessor to this concept.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A pair of reading glasses can help reduce eye strain and boost your reading pleasure. Here are our favorite places to get yours.

Trump administration’s unlawful policy turns ‘refugees’ American Dream into a dystopian nightmare’, judge says

A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration policy that allowed immigration authorities to arrest and detain certain refugees in Minnesota, ruling that the government relied on an incorrect interpretation of federal law and unlawfully targeted people who had already been admitted to the US.

In an order on Friday, the court said the administration’s approach had effectively been “terrorizing” refugees by subjecting them to arrest and potentially indefinite detention despite their lawful status. The judge concluded that federal immigration law does not give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authority to detain refugees simply because more than one year has passed since their arrival in the country.

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

As tensions between two countries reach new highs, US president says regime is ‘talking with us’

Donald Trump has suggested the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as tensions between Washington and Havana reach a new high after the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

As he left the White House for a campaigning event in Texas on Friday, Trump said: “The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble.”

By mid-afternoon, it was 91F (33C) in downtown LA, according to the National Weather Service

After a week of heavy downpours that left parts of Los Angeles flooded, the city is now facing unusually high temperatures for late February.

By mid-afternoon Friday, it was 91F (33C) in downtown Los Angeles, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). That breaks the daily record for 27 February, which was 88F (31C), set last year.

The file system of the Windows operating system is NTFS, whether you’re running it on a desktop/laptop or server. It’s the only file system Windows can run on and boot from, at least officially, so you’re not even given a choice of file systems for the boot volume like you are on, say, desktop Linux. That’s about to change, though: Microsoft has finally announced that Windows Server will be able to boot from ReFS.

We’re excited to announce that Resilient File System (ReFS) boot support is now available for Windows Server Insiders in Insider Preview builds. For the first time, you can install and boot Windows Server on an ReFS-formatted boot volume directly through the setup UI. With ReFS boot, you can finally bring modern resilience, scalability, and performance to your server’s most critical volume — the OS boot volume.

↫ chcurlet-msft at Microsoft’s Tech Community

Without diving too much into the weeds, ReFS can roughly be seen as Microsoft’s answer to modern file systems like ZFS and Btrfs, with comparable design goals and feature sets. It’s been around since 2012, but only for Windows Server, and with every Windows Server release since, the company has improved performance, added new features, and fixed bugs. Now, in 2026, it seems Microsoft thinks ReFS is ready to be used as a bootable file system for Windows Server.

If you want to try this for yourself, you need to be a Windows Insider and make sure you have Windows Server build 29531.1000.260206-1841 or newer. During installation, the Windows installer will ask you to choose between NTFS and ReFS; the rest of the installation process will be pretty much the same as before. Now all we need is to wait for ReFS to become an option on client versions of Windows too, which would mark – arguably – only the second time in history Windows transitioned from one default filesystem to the another.

South Korea has reversed a two-decade policy and approved the export of high-precision map data, paving the way for a fully functional Google Maps in the country. Reuters reports: The approval was made "on the condition that strict security requirements are met," the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao -- local internet giants which currently dominate the country's market for digital map services. But it will appease Washington, which has urged Seoul to tackle what it says is discrimination against U.S. tech companies. South Korea, still technically at war with North Korea, had shot down Google's previous bids in 2007 and 2016 to be allowed to export the data, citing the risks that information about sensitive military and security facilities could be exposed. "Google can now come in, slash usage fees, and take the market," said Choi Jin-mu, a geography professor at Kyung Hee University. "If Naver and Kakao are weakened or pushed out and Google later raises prices, that becomes a monopoly. Then, even companies that rely on map services -- logistics firms, for example -- become dependent, and in the long run, even government GIS (geographic information) systems could end up dependent on Google or Apple. That's the biggest concern."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sherry Xue Li ripped off millions from foreign investors and funnelled some stolen money into US political campaigns

A New York businesswoman was sentenced Friday to nine years in federal prison over a financial scheme that ripped off more than $30m from foreign investors and funnelled some of the stolen money into US political campaigns, including a Donald Trump fundraiser during his first presidency.

Sherry Xue Li was also ordered to forfeit $31.5m, as well as property at three locations, and to make restitution to her victims.

Conspiracy theories about the Epstein files have racked up millions of views on social media. Here's what to know about 10 of the most viral claims.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.

Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.

• Middletown Municipal Election (Middletown)
• Project Washington data center hearings (New Castle County)
• Joint Finance Hearings (Statewide)
• Redding Consortium meeting (Wilmington)
• Newark Comprehensive Plan discussions (Newark)
• Solar array project vote (Sussex County)

Middletown to elect council

Residents of the town of Middletown will head to the polls Monday to select three new council members, or half of the legislative body.

Candidates this year include three incumbents Bruce Orr, Craig Sherman and David W. Thomas as well as challenger Michelle Williams. The top three vote-getters will earn a two-year term on the council.

You must be at least 18, resident in town limits, and be eligible to vote under state statute to vote in the municipal election.

Residents must offer proof of residency with a form of identification such as a driver’s license or State of Delaware ID card; a uniformed service ID card; another current photo identification ID card issued by the State of Delaware; the U.S. government; the voter’s employer; high school or higher education; a current utility bill; bank statement; credit card statement; a paycheck or pay advice; or another type of bill or statement.

📍 Voters can cast ballots from noon to 8 p.m. Monday, March 2, at Town Hall, located at 19 W. Green St. in Middletown.

Data center developer to undergo reviews

The controversial Delaware City-area data center project known as Project Washington will have two hearings next week.

Starwood Digital Ventures filed a request with New Castle County’s Board of Adjustments for a special use permit to allow it to build an electric switch station for the project. The board will consider the request during a hearing on Thursday.

Starwood’s plan is also continuing to move through the state’s land-use review process –  in which representatives from multiple state agencies offer comments about how the data center plan may be impacted by their respective regulations. 

Among the agencies that typically participate in the process is the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, which has ruled that the plan violates the state’s Coastal Zone Act. Starwood recently appealed that decision.

The land use process is conducted by the Delaware Preliminary Land Use Service board, which does not have the power to make final decisions. Still, its recommendations can influence the ultimate decisions that local governments make. The public is allowed to listen and comment on those deliberations, but they cannot ask questions.

📍 The New Castle County Board of Adjustments will meet at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, at 67 Reads Way in New Castle. Members of the public can also attend the meeting over Zoom. The Preliminary Land Use Service will meet from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, March 4. 

Health, Education departments discuss budgets

State lawmakers will complete their budget hearings next week, by hearing testimony from two of the state’s largest departments: the Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Education.

The Joint Finance Committee’s budget review for DHSS will span the entirety of Monday’s hearings, as the department oversees a swath of large-scale programs used by many Delawareans, including Medicaid and SNAP benefits. It was originally set to present last week, but the hearings were postponed following the latest snowstorm.

Legislators will hear from Department of Education leaders as well as leaders from the Redding Consortium and Wilmington Learning Collaborative (WLC), two appointed work groups that are working on improving educational achievement in the city of Wilmington, on Tuesday. 

Notably, the Redding Consortium is behind a controversial proposal to merge the four school districts that serve the city of Wilmington: Brandywine, Christina, Colonial and Red Clay. It has published a preview of its presentation to be found here.

The Redding and WLC leaders will present between 10:30 a.m. and noon Tuesday, while Education Secretary Cindy Marten will lead a department discussion from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.  

Those hearings were likewise postponed from earlier in February.

📍 The Joint Finance Committee will meet from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, March 2, and 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, at Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For information about virtual attendance for the Monday meeting, click here. For the Tuesday meeting, click here.

Redding to finalize redistricting process

After presenting to state lawmakers earlier in the day, the members of the Redding Consortium for Educational Equity will convene in Wilmington for their first meeting in a month.

According to their agenda, the work at their Tuesday, March 3, meeting will again be light and largely procedural, with just an hour scheduled.

They will be finalizing the process for how to recommend combining four school districts and forming, by far, the largest single school district in Delaware. The draft version of that plan can be found here.

📍 The Redding Consortium for Educational Equity will meet publicly at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, at the Delaware Tech-George Campus, located at 300 N. Orange St. in Wilmington. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Newark to discuss Comp Plan

After weeks of soliciting information for its once-in-a-decade update to the land-use plan, known as its Comprehensive Plan, Newark city and planning officials will begin deliberations Monday on what to include.

Comp Plans have enormous impacts on future building projects, transportation investments and natural resource protections. 

Officials will review the results of public surveys and listening sessions as they begin crafting the final plans over coming months.

📍 The Newark Planning Commission and City Council Joint Meeting will meet publicly at 7 p.m. Monday, March 2, at the Newark Municipal Building, located at 220 S. Main St. in Newark. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Sussex to consider solar projects

On the Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission’s agenda next week are final decisions on two solar projects.

The larger of the two would be located on nearly 7 acres of land at 27858 Cypress Road near Frankford. It is a 4-megawatt system being developed by RWE Renewables Americas, which acquired the former Con Edison Renewables, one of the nation’s largest solar developers.

The other project is proposed by San Francisco-based Forefront Power, and would be located on roughly 11 acres of land at 32507 Vines Creek Road near Dagsboro.

Both projects are seeking conditional use waivers as their properties are currently zoned AR-1, or agricultural residential.

📍 The Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission will meet publicly at 3 p.m. Wednesday, March 4, at the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

The post Get Involved: Middletown election, data center hearings, more appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

President Donald Trump has ordered all U.S. federal agencies to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's AI technology, escalating a standoff after the company sought limits on Pentagon use of its models. CNBC reports: The company, which in July signed a $200 million contract with Pentagon, wants assurances that the Defense Department will not use its AI models will not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon had set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. ET Friday for Anthropic to agree to its demands to allow the Pentagon to use the technology for all lawful purposes. If Anthropic did not meet that deadline, Pete Hegseth threatened to label the company a "supply chain risk" or force it to comply by invoking the Defense Production Act. "The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY." "Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology," Trump wrote. "We don't need it, we don't want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic's products, at various levels," Trump said. On Friday, OpenAI said it would also draw the same red lines as Anthropic: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the years to come, robots will help offset worker shortages in health care, manufacturing and other industries, experts say.

Home secretary will defy ‘plain wrong’ calls from unions and leftwing MPs that she is alienating Muslim voters

Shabana Mahmood will press on with hardline immigration policies despite calls for a reversal from unions and left-leaning Labour MPs after the Green party’s byelection victory.

Senior Labour sources insisted that the home secretary would continue to roll out changes to asylum policy, dismissing as “plain wrong” claims that it would further alienate Muslim voters.

Law demanding IDs must match ‘sex at birth’ invalidated the driver’s licenses of about 1,700 trans people in the state

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Two transgender men are suing Kansas over a new law that invalidated their driver’s licenses and about 1,700 others for reflecting people’s gender identities and not their sex assigned at birth, arguing that the measure is “dehumanizing”.

The men filed their case Thursday, the same day the law took effect, and argue that it violates rights to privacy, personal autonomy and due legal process guaranteed by the Kansas state constitution. The men also are challenging the law’s tough, new enforcement provisions for the state’s three-year-old policy of barring transgender people from using public restrooms or other single-sex facilities associated with their gender identities.

Encryption backdoors, social media bans for children, creepy age verification for applications – what will they think of next? The latest brilliant idea by US lawmakers sure is a hell of a doozy: legally mandated age verification in every single operating system.

Colorado’s SB26-051, introduced last month, would require operating systems to register the owner’s age, which third-party apps can then leverage to determine if the user is an adult. The bill calls for the device owner to register their birthdate or age, but for the purposes of creating an “age bracket,” which can then be shared to an app developer through an API to learn their age range, according to BiometricUpdate.com.

[…]

Ball also said the legislation was based on California’s bill AB 1043, which was passed last year. It too requires OS makers to create a way for the device owner to register their age bracket, which can then be shared to app developers over an API. The California law starts to take effect January 1, 2027.

↫ Michael Kan at PCMag

Age verification to protect children sounds innocent enough, but if you have more than two brain cells to rub together it’s crystal clear that what we’re really looking at is the true end of privacy and online anonymity. If age verification is only used by certain applications, it’s easy enough to avoid them, but if it becomes part of Windows, desktop Linux, Android, it’s truly game over. Nobody will be anonymous online ever again, and nobody will have any sense of privacy left when opening up their computer.

Worse yet, if you do end up using an operating system that doesn’t adhere to this law, or you hack out or circumvent the age verification nonsense, you’ll automatically become an easy target for law enforcement. Clearly, if you circumvent age verification, you must be up to no good, right? Of course, as we’ve seen in countries with heavily deteriorating democracies and freedoms, like the US or Hungary, even merely opposing the government will be classified as “up to no good”, and let’s not even get started about the various minorities these countries are actively trying to eradicate.

If something like this is enshrined in law in your country, you’re fucked.

Spectrum is the largest internet provider in the US after the acquisition.

Streamer said ‘deal no longer financially attractive’ at price required to match offer by David Ellison’s firm

Paramount Skydance has beaten Netflix to take over Warner Bros Discovery’s storied Hollywood studios and streaming business after the streaming giant refused to increase its bid.

The $110bn deal ends a high-stakes bidding war between the two media companies, but the takeover still faces regulatory hurdles and a backlash from critics worried about a rightward tilt in US media.

Brown, 62, third member of hit HBO series to die since December, was trying to jumpstart car at home at time of blaze

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The Wire actor Bobby J Brown died recently in a barn fire at his Maryland home, making him the third cast member of the acclaimed HBO show to pass away since December.

According to authorities and a statement on social media from his daughter, Reina, the 62-year-old Brown had gone into a barn at his residence in the St Mary’s county community of Chaptico at about 10pm on 24 February to try to jumpstart a car. It evidently ignited during the attempt, and Brown asked his wife for a fire extinguisher.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a "seemingly threatening" drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said. The case of mistaken identity prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to close additional airspace around Fort Hancock, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. The military is required to formally notify the FAA when it takes any counter-drone action inside U.S. airspace. It was the second time in two weeks that a laser was fired in the area. The last time it was CBP that used the weapon and nothing was hit. That incident occurred near Fort Bliss and prompted the FAA to shut down air traffic at El Paso airport and the surrounding area. This time, the closure was smaller and commercial flights were not affected. The FAA, CBP and the Pentagon confirmed the incident in a joint statement, saying the military "employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace." "At President Trump's direction, the Department of War, FAA, and Customs and Border Patrol are working together in an unprecedented fashion to mitigate drone threats by Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist organizations at the U.S.-Mexico Border," the statement said. The report notes that 27,000 drones were detected within 1,600 feet of the southern border in the last six months of 2024. Illinois Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the ranking member on the Senate's Aviation Subcommittee, is calling for an independent investigation to look into the matter. "The Trump administration's incompetence continues to cause chaos in our skies," Duckworth said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In announcing the agreement, the defense secretary assailed Scouting America for welcoming transgender children but stopped short of saying they would be denied entry.

FreeBSD has its jails technology, and it seems NetBSD might be getting something similar soon.

Jails for NetBSD aims to bring lightweight, kernel-enforced isolation to NetBSD.

[…]

The system is intended to remain fully NetBSD-native. Isolation and policy enforcement are integrated into the kernel’s security framework rather than implemented in a separate runtime layer.

It does not aim to become a container platform. It does not aim to provide virtualization.

↫ Matthias Petermann

It has all the usual features you have come to expect from jails, like resource quota, security profiles, logging, and so on. Processes inside jails have no clue they’re in a jail, and using supervisor mode, jails are descendent from a single process and remain visible in the host process table. Of course, there’s many more features listed in the linked article.

It’s in development and not a default part of NetBSD at this time. The project, led by Matthias Petermann, is developed out of tree, with an unofficial NetBSD 10.1 ISO with the jails feature included available as well.

Stocks fell Friday after a report showed higher-than-expected inflation and as Wall Street continues to fret over AI-related disruption.

• Striker was demoted to under-21s after refusing to play

• Recent club form has not translated to USMNT

Josh Sargent joined Toronto FC from Norwich City in England’s second-tier Championship on Friday, ending a difficult situation in which the striker was exiled to the under-21 squad after he refused to play in an FA Cup match last month.

Sargent, 26, was signed as a designated player through the 2030-31 MLS season. He had eight goals this season and 56 goals in 157 appearances with the Canaries overall.

Apple, Garmin, Samsung, Google or Amazfit? One dominated heart rate, but steps and distance accuracy were a different story.

Former Boy Scouts cave to Pete Hegseth as he laments move from ‘focus on God as the ruler of the universe’

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Scouting America will alter several policies at the urging of the Pentagon, including one targeting transgender children, the defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday as he pushes a campaign against military support for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Some of the changes mirror what the organization suggested to the defense department in January, which included discontinuing its citizenship in society merit badge and introducing a military service merit badge as well as waiving registration fees for the children of military personnel.

Trump commerce secretary – who lived next door to Epstein in New York – urged to testify about extent of relationship

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Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are taking a closer look at US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick’s connection to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after the justice department’s website restored a photo showing him with the disgraced financier on his private island.

In the picture, Epstein appears front and center – and is surrounded by three other men. Lutnick, dressed in a blue shirt and white shorts, stands a few feet behind Epstein.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon would be canceling troops' attendance at some of the nation's top universities.

"If somebody charges you something and it's unlawful, they should give you your money back," Dame CEO Alexandra Fine said.

It’s time once again for HPC Career Notes, our monthly feature that’s designed to keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the HPC community, including promotion, new company hires, and accolade. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!

Franck Cappello

Franck Cappello

Argonne National Laboratory announced that one of its senior computer scientists, Franck Cappello, has been named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), making him part of the 1% of ACM members to achieve the prestigious position.

Cappello was recognized for his contributions to high performance parallel and distributed computing, including Grid’5000, the first large-scale experimental testbed designed as a scientific instrument for researchers to test and improve advanced parallel and distributed computing technologies.  Grid’5000 has supported thousands of publications and hundreds of doctoral theses, and is still used more than 20 years after its initiation.

“I am truly honored to receive this recognition,” Cappello said. ​“The field of high performance parallel and distributed computing for scientific applications has provided so many challenging opportunities for research and development, from advanced computing platforms to innovative software technology to the interplay of high performance computing with artificial intelligence. I am grateful to my colleagues and to Argonne for providing the environment to pursue this research. A special thanks to all the students and postdocs without whom our research results would not have been possible.”

Cappello is one of 71 new ACM Fellows among ACM’s global membership of more than 100,000 computing professionals. The ACM Fellows induction ceremony will take place at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 13 in San Francisco.

Kevin O’Buckley

Qualcomm announced that it has appointed Kevin O’Buckley to the position of executive vice president of global operations and supply chain. In his new role, O’Buckley will lead Qualcomm’s global semiconductor operations across manufacturing engineering, foundry and supplier partnerships, supply chain, and procurement.

Kevin O’Buckley

O’Buckley joins Qualcomm from Intel, where he most recently served as senior vice president and general manager of Intel Foundry Services. Previously he worked at Intel, IBM, GlobalFoundries, and Marvell. Intel announced that it has expanded the responsibilities of Chief Technology and Operations Officer Naga Chandrasekaran to take O’Buckley’s former role at Intel Foundry Services.

“Kevin brings deep operational expertise, proven commercial leadership, and decades of experience scaling complex semiconductor operations and delivering custom silicon products across data center and edge devices,” said Akash Palkhiwala, Qualcom’s CFO, COO, and EVP. “His leadership will further strengthen our global operations as we continue to deliver industry-leading products with high-performance, low-power computing, AI and connectivity at scale.”

Kash Shaikh and Mark Adams

Penguin Solutions announced the retirement of Mark Adams as president and CEO and, after a thorough search process, the board appointed Kash Shaikh as succeed Adams, effective February 2.

Mark Adams

Shaikh brings more than 30 years of technology and operational experience to Penguin. Most recently, he was the president and CEO of Securonix, where he scaled the business, introduced agentic AI solutions, and strengthened customer relationships while growing the company. Earlier in his career, Shaikh held executive leadership roles at Virtana, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Ruckus Wireless, and Nortel Networks. He’s has been recognized for his leadership excellence with industry honors, including the Stevie Gold Award for Executive of the Year and multiple Comparably Best CEO awards. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from NED University of Engineering and Technology, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Wichita State University and a Master of Business Administration from Boise State University.

Kash Shaikh

“Penguin Solutions has built a differentiated platform at the intersection of advanced computing, memory and services, with a long history of helping customers design, build, deploy and manage complex infrastructure at scale,” Shaikh said. “As enterprises move from proofs of concept to production AI environments, Penguin’s focus on performance, reliability and time-to-value is increasingly critical. I’m excited to work alongside the leadership team and our employees to deepen customer partnerships, continue expanding our enterprise footprint and execute our strategy with discipline as we build the next chapter of the company.”

Adams is retiring after running Penguin for five years. “Leading Penguin Solutions has been a privilege and a defining chapter in my career,” he said. “This is the right time for me personally to retire, and I’m deeply grateful for the support of the board, our employees, our customers and our shareholders over my tenure as CEO. I am incredibly proud of what our teams have accomplished together – we have redefined Penguin Solutions and put it in a position to capture significant opportunities in the AI and advanced memory markets.”

Kim Fischer

Kim Fischer

Q.ANT, a provider of photonic quantum computing sensors and solutions, has hired Kim Fischer as its new vice president of marketing. In this role, Fischer will lead the strategic development of Q.ANT’s global brand and market positioning, including strengthening communications with investors, customers, partners, and the press.

Fischer has more than 20 years of experience in strategic corporate and brand development at a range of companies. She impressed Q.ANT Founder and CEO Michael Förtsch with her ability to translate technological leadership into market positioning.

“Q.ANT represents a technological innovation with the potential to fundamentally change the future of high-performance computing and AI,” Fischer said. “I see my role as translating this technological excellence into clear and strategically effective communication in order to build and anchor visibility, trust, and relevance in the relevant markets over the long term. The focus is not on technology as an end in itself, but on its concrete added value for companies, society, and sustainable infrastructures.”

Mohsen Moazami and Guido Torrini

DDN made two executive hires in February, including the appointment of Mohsen Moazami as Vice Chair and Guido Torrini as Chief Financial Operating Officer.

Mohsen Moazami

In his strategic leadership role, Moazami will work closely with CEO and Co-Founder Alex Bouzari and the executive team to advance DDN’s next phase of growth in the HPC and AI storage market. Moazami most recently served as a member of the Office of the CEO and President of International at Groq, which Nvidia recently acquired for $20 billion. He also founded a venture capital firm, CNTP, and spent 12 years at Cisco in the Emerging Markets group.

“DDN is helping define how AI is built and operated at industrial scale,” Moazami said. “Its data intelligence platforms sit at the center of the global AI ecosystem. I look forward to working closely with Alex and the leadership team as Vice Chair to support DDN’s strategic growth, deepen its global impact, and help position the company for its next chapter.”

Guido Torrini

Torrini brings more than 25 years of experience leading finance and operations across global technology companies. He began his career at Cisco and Dell during the rise of networking and infrastructure at scale and later held senior finance leadership roles at Groupon and Gympass. He also had leadership roles at Celonis, where he helped guide the company through a significant phase of enterprise software expansion and value creation. And most recently was CFO of OneTrust, a provider of privacy, security, and data governance solutions.

“DDN is delivering the critical data intelligence infrastructure organizations need to deploy AI at scale—across enterprises, governments, and the world’s most demanding AI factories,” Torrini said. “I’m excited to join at a moment when AI is reshaping the technology landscape and redefining the global economic order—and when DDN is uniquely positioned to help lead what comes next.”

Brian Cunningham

QuSecure a provider of post-quantum cybersecurity and cryptographic solutions, has appointed Brian Cunningham to be its EVP Strategy & Growth. In his role, Cunningham will be responsible for building and scaling QuSecure’s go-to-market operating system across federal and commercial sectors, aligning strategy, delivery readiness, partner ecosystems, and execution discipline.

Brian Cunningham

QuSecure CEO and co-founder Rebecca Krauthamer said Cunningham, who is a former Special Operations commander and a Navy SEAL, brings “a rare combination of operational discipline, strategic clarity, and credibility across government and enterprise markets. He knows how to build systems that scale under pressure, and that capability is exactly what QuSecure needs as demand for quantum-safe security accelerates.”

“Post-quantum cryptography is no longer a future problem; it’s a present execution challenge,” Cunningham said. “Organizations know they need to modernize cryptography, but many struggle with how to do it safely, at scale, and without breaking critical systems. QuSecure has built the right platform for this moment, and I’m excited to help scale the strategy, partnerships, and operational muscle required to turn PQC readiness into durable advantage for customers.”

Victor Peng and Jeremy O’Brien

Quantum computer maker PsiQuantum has hired former AMD President Victor Peng to be its interim CEO, enabling co-founder Jeremy O’Brien to take the role of executive chairman.

PsiQuantum executives (L-R): Dr. Pete Shadbolt, Chief Scientific Officer; Prof. Jeremy O’Brien, Executive Chairman; Victor Peng, Interim CEO; and Prof. Terry Rudolph, Chief Architect.

Peng will lead day-to-day operations and execution at PsiQuantum, which is working to develop utility-scale, photonic quantum computing systems. Peng has decades of experience in the computer business, starting as an engineer with DEC in the early 1980s, and has played a central role in major computing shifts spanning CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and system-level architectures. He served as CEO of Xilinx, where he led the company’s transformation into a global leader in adaptive computing, culminating in the $49 billion acquisition by AMD in 2022.

O’Brien will lead the board of directors and continue to guide strategy and key partnerships for the Palo Alto, California company, which is coming off a decisive year in which it raised over $1 billion in a Series E round, advanced to the final stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), and broke ground on America’s largest quantum computing site in Chicago.

With Peng serving as Interim CEO and O’Brien in the Executive Chairman role, PsiQuantum has experienced leadership in place as it conducts its search for a permanent CEO.

Ariel Kelman

Ariel Kelman

AMD has hired Ariel Kelman to be its new chief marketing officer and senior vice president. In his new role, Kelman will report to Chief Administrative Officer Ruth Cotter

Kelman brings more than two decades of experience at enterprise and technology companies, including serving as president and CMO at Salesforce, as well as leadership roles at Amazon Web Services and Oracle, where he helped scale and modernize global marketing teams during periods of rapid growth.

“I’m thrilled to join AMD at such an exciting moment in the company’s journey,” Kelman said. “I’m looking forward to working with the team to elevate the AMD brand, deepen engagement with customers and partners and capture the massive AI data center opportunity enabled by AMD’s uniquely differentiated products. That combination is what energizes me most.”

For the previous edition of HPC Career Notes, click here.

The post HPC Career Notes: February 2026 appeared first on HPCwire.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Weeks after the U.S. Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing. One reason is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been slow to authorize its release. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so far not received approval to spend any of the research funding allocated in a budget bill signed into law on 3 February. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) was authorized to spend its funding just last week. And NASA has had its full funding authorized for release, but with an unusual restriction that limits spending on ten specific programmes -- many of which the Trump team had tried to cancel last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The company refused to grant the Department of Defense permission to use it for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons systems.

That's up from 700 million users in September last year and more than doubled from where it was last year.

As students across the U.S. protest federal immigration policies, legal experts are re-evaluating the boundaries of student free speech established by judicial precedent.

Thousands of students have taken part in protests at public schools in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Iowa, California, Arkansas, and Texas against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions. In some cases, students have faced suspensions for walking out of school. In others, their schools have collaborated with local law enforcement to allow peaceful off-campus protests with no suspensions.

News reports on these protests have frequently mentioned the constitutional rights of students who attend publicly funded schools. These rights are defined by two landmark Supreme Court cases from the mid-twentieth century.

Political free speech for some (but not all) students

Courts have held since the late 1960s that public secondary school officials can regulate student protests on campus that they view as disruptive. But not all protests can be regulated by schools, especially those that express “pure speech.”

First Amendment protections rarely extend to private schools. And even within the public system, a clear legal divide exists between the restricted rights of high schoolers and the broader liberties afforded to college students.

Unlike high schoolers, public university students enjoy the full speech protections afforded to adults. However, their right to protest is still subject to the standard "time, place, and manner" restrictions that apply to any public forum.

The foundational case for public secondary schools is Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969). In his 7-2 majority opinion, Justice Abe Fortas said, “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Fortas’s quote is central to any discussion of students’ speech rights in public schools. Since 1969, his ruling has been repeatedly cited by the Supreme Court when defining the boundaries of student expression.

In December 1965, at the height of the Vietnam War, three students, including Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old student at Warren Harding Junior High School in Des Moines, Iowa, wore black armbands to school to protest the war. They were all suspended.

Fortas said that students’ free speech rights didn’t extend to conduct that “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.” But he also held that silent protests—such as wearing armbands—were constitutionally permitted. “Our problem involves direct, primary First Amendment rights akin to ‘pure speech.’ The school officials banned and sought to punish petitioners for a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on the part of petitioners,” Fortas concluded.

The Tinker decision cited a famous Supreme Court decision from 1943, West Virginia v. Barnette, which allowed public school students to decline to pledge allegiance to the American flag on religious grounds. In his majority opinion, Justice Robert Jackson wrote that school officials had “important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights.”

In his dissent, Justice Hugo Black called the Barnette majority decision “the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary” if students could “defy and flout orders of school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork.”

Beyond Tinker and West Virginia v. Barnette

While Tinker and Barnette set the stage, later decisions have clarified how students' First Amendment rights apply to present-day challenges such as social media and student-led journalism.

In 1988, the Supreme Court decided in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier that public high school officials could censor a student-run newspaper's planned stories on divorce and teenage pregnancy. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron White said that “a school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission, even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school.” In his dissent, Justice William Brennan concluded that the majority had ignored Tinker, and indeed, that its opinion “teach[es] youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.”

Two years earlier, the Court had determined that public school students cannot claim First Amendment protection for using vulgar language on school grounds. The Supreme Court ruled in Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986) that a student who used sexually explicit language at a school assembly wasn’t protected by the First Amendment. “Under the First Amendment, the use of an offensive form of expression may not be prohibited to adults making what the speaker considers a political point, but it does not follow that the same latitude must be permitted to children in a public school,” said Chief Justice Warren Burger in the majority decision.

The Supreme Court further narrowed student speech rights in 2007 with Morse v. Frederick, a case that tested whether schools could censor messages promoting illegal drug use. There, the justices considered a student who unfurled a 14-foot 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' banner during a school-supervised event. After the principal confiscated the banner and suspended the student, a divided Court said that the First Amendment allows schools to prohibit speech that reasonably appears to promote illegal drug use.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts referenced Tinker, Hazelwood, and Bethel School District, concluding that “schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use.” Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Tinker should be overturned, while Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that punishing a student for a “nonsense banner” violated the First Amendment because it effectively punished the student “for expressing a view with which it [the school] disagreed.”

Recent cases and broader exceptions

In 2021, the Supreme Court considered whether schools can punish students for private, off-campus speech. In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the justices held that a student’s off-campus Snapchat outburst did not warrant a suspension, even though it targeted a school-related activity like cheerleading.

In his 8-1 majority opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said that schools have a substantial interest in regulating certain kinds of off-campus conduct. But In B.L.’s specific case, Breyer continued, her conduct did little “to suggest a substantial interference in, or disruption of, the school’s efforts to maintain cohesion on the school cheerleading squad.”

However, the Court made clear that there were some areas where school administrators could discipline students for their off-campus conduct, including “serious or severe bullying or harassment targeting particular individuals; threats aimed at teachers or other students.”

For high school students who have been walking out without their schools’ consent, legal experts disagree on the scope of their First Amendment protection. It’s clear under Tinker that schools can discipline students for leaving class without permission. But if administrators impose harsher-than-normal penalties because of the protest’s message, there could be serious ramifications.

In a recent blog post, Adam Goldstein from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) noted this basic constitutional concept: “If a school does choose to discipline a student for walking out to join a protest, it has to do it consistently with how it would punish any other student for cutting class. Punishing a student more harshly because they wanted to express their opinion would be viewpoint discrimination, which is never permissible under the First Amendment.”

Student’s free speech rights may soon be tested yet again in the courts. But as Freedom Forum noted last year, “While students’ free speech rights in school aren’t absolute, the Supreme Court consistently has reiterated that students are people under the Constitution and possess First Amendment rights.”

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

Mary Walsh, leaving after 46 years, says staffers told to ‘aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum’

A veteran CBS News producer who is leaving the network after 46 years has suggested that political bias is at play at the network in a farewell memo sent to colleagues on Friday afternoon.

“We’ve been reading a lot of goodbyes lately and here I am headed out the door. It’s too soon, even after 46 years,” Mary Walsh wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the Guardian. “But maybe it’s for the best. We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.”

President Trump said Friday that he is "not happy" with the pace of progress in negotiations with Iran.

Former President Bill Clinton denied any knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes in an opening statement before the House Oversight Committee in New York.

Escalating tensions flared into open conflict as Pakistan’s defense minister said his country’s patience with the Taliban had run out.

NASA wants its Space Launch System rocket to stop requiring yearslong launch delays.

Want to quickly boost your savings? Here are four ways to earn $500 worth of interest before the end of 2026.

An anonymous reader shares a column: I'm going to take the diplomatic hat off here and say with brutal honesty: basically everybody in the music business hates Spotify except for the people who work there. It's a platform that sucks artists for everything they have, it actively prevents community building, and, despite all of that, the platform still struggles to maintain a healthy profit margin. The streaming business model is fundamentally broken. And eventually, its demise will become more and more obvious to recognize. I'll break down exactly why the DSP era is coming to a grinding halt, why the major labels are quietly terrified, and why the artists who don't pivot now are going to go down with the ship. [...] Jimmy Iovine put it bluntly: "The streaming services have a bad situation, there's no margins, they're not making any money." This model only works for Apple, Amazon, and Google, because they don't need their music platforms to be wildly profitable. Amazon uses music as a loss-leader to keep you paying for Prime. Apple uses it to sell $1,000 iPhones. As for Spotify, or any standalone music streaming company, they're kind of screwed. And guess what -- when the platform's margins are structurally squeezed, guess who gets squeezed first? The artists. [...] What if Jimmy is right? If the DSPs are "minutes away from obsolete," what replaces them? Well, I'm not sure the DSPs are going to disappear overnight, but if you're an artist or a manager trying to sustain yourself in this evolving music economy, the answer is direct ownership. The artists who will survive the next five years are the ones who are quietly shifting their focus away from the "ATM Machine." They are building their own cultural hangars. They are capturing phone numbers on Laylo. They are driving fans to private Discord servers. They are focusing on ARPF (Average Revenue Per Fan) through high-margin merch, vinyl, and hard tickets, rather than begging for fractions of a penny from a playlist placement. We are witnessing the death of the "Mass Audience" and the birth of the "Micro-Community."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Attorney general says $111bn deal will be investigated amid concerns over monopoly power and job losses

Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, said his office will investigate a possible merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, hours after Netflix backed away from a planned takeover.

“Paramount/Warner Bros is not a done deal,” Bonta said in a post on X. “These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny — the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.”

In his memoir, the Tony Award-winning composer of such hits as Broadway's "Hairspray" writes of his half-century in show business, which grew in part from his youthful worship of Bette Midler - an adoration that would grow into a collaboration.

After the U.S. men’s hockey team won the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics, the White House TikTok account shared celebratory posts. But one of its videos that appears to show player Brady Tkachuk insulting the Canadian men’s hockey team isn’t real.

The White House’s 45-second video showed a clip of an interview with Brady Tkachuk, the Ottawa Senators captain, with brother Matthew Tkachuck. The song "Free Bird" played in the background. After the interview clip, the music intensified and the video continued with a compilation of footage of the team and the winning game shot.

The Feb. 22 video made it look like Brady Tkachuk said, "They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating f----s a lesson," referring to the Canadian men's hockey team.

But the original clip of Tkachuk with his brother, from a February 2025 news conference at the 4 Nations Face-Off, shows he did not say that. 

The White House TikTok video was edited with artificial intelligence. The TikTok includes a label that says it "contains AI-generated media," which TikTok may automatically apply to content it identifies as "completely generated or significantly edited with AI." However, because the White House TikTok includes several video clips, it’s unclear to viewers which part was created with AI.

We contacted the White House for comment but did not receive an immediate reply.

Tkachuk also made it clear he didn’t say what the video claims. 

"Well, it's clearly fake because it's not my voice and not my lips moving," Tkachuk said when a reporter asked him about the White House video during a Feb. 26 press scrum in Ottawa. "So, I mean, I'm not in control of any of those accounts and, so I know that those words would never come out of my mouth. So, can't do anything about it." 

The reporter asked Tkachuk, "Do you like it?" He replied, "I mean, it's not my voice, not what I was saying. So, yeah. I mean, I would never say that. That's not who I am. So, yeah, I guess I don't like that video. And ‘cause that just never would come out of my mouth."

The White House generated other controversy related to the U.S. men’s hockey team Olympic win after President Donald Trump spoke to them by phone in the locker room after the final Feb. 22 game. During the call, Trump invited the team to the State of the Union address and said that he would also have to invite the U.S. women’s hockey team (who also won the gold medal). Video of the call showed the men’s team laughing at the comment, a moment that generated criticism as being disrespectful to the women athletes’ accomplishments.

We rate the claim that Tkachuk insulted the Canadian men’s hockey team during a news conference Pants on Fire! 

Mamdani wooed the president with much property talk and showed the real ‘art of the deal’ might have been soft power via Photoshop

• US politics live – latest updates

In the hours after Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump for an undisclosed sit-down in the Oval Office on Thursday, a meme quickly circulated on X.

It resembled the screengrab of a TikToker who doles out dubious financial advice, but instead had the mayor’s picture front and center. On the left it read “I receive 12,000 homes” and “the release of a constituent kidnapped by ICE” and on the right “you receive fake newspaper cover”.

• Ifab expected to adopt changes at meeting this weekend

• MLS added timed sub, off-field treatment rules in 2024

• New rules could make for faster play at the World Cup

Four years ago, MLS Next Pro implemented a pair of rules geared towards eliminating time-wasting. Now, just months ahead of the 2026 World Cup, MLS’s experimentation is set to be adopted globally. The International Football Association Board (Ifab), the sport’s rule-making body, is set to meet this weekend and is widely expected to adopt both changes.

The first of the two, commonly referred to as the timed substitution rule, forces a team to play a man down for a minute if a player takes longer than 10 seconds to leave the pitch. The second of the guidelines, dubbed the off-field treatment rule, removes a player from the match for a minute if they spend more than 15 seconds on the ground after an injury.

Tehran’s ICBMs cannot currently reach the US, experts say, and White House has claimed its nuclear programme has been destroyed

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Donald Trump’s likely casus belli for an attack on Iran – which would be the largest US intervention since the Iraq war – is fraught with contradictions, and his top advisers have been left to cover for him as the White House makes the case for intervention.

In his State of the Union address this week, Trump alleged that Iran posed a direct threat to the US and that the country was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America”. But that claim has not been backed up with evidence by the White House or the Pentagon, and US intelligence reports from just last year say that it would take Iran 10 years to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the US.

The $200 billion video game industry is caught between studios eager to cut ballooning development costs through AI and a player base that has grown openly hostile to the technology after a string of visible blunders. As Bloomberg News reports, Arc Raiders, a surprise hit from Stockholm-based Embark Studios that sold 12 million copies in three months, was briefly vilified online for its robotic-sounding auto-generated voices -- even as CEO Patrick Soderlund insists AI was only used for non-essential elements. EA's Battlefield 6 and Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 both drew gamer anger this winter over thematically mismatched or poorly generated graphics, and Valve's Steam has added labels to flag games made using AI. Some 47% of developers polled by research house Omdia said they expect generative AI to reduce game quality, and PC gamers -- now facing inflated hardware prices from AI-driven demand for graphics chips -- have turned reflexively antagonistic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ofcom says that after provisional ruling it could apply to courts to demand internet providers stop access to site

A suicide forum linked to deaths in Britain has been ruled provisionally in breach of the Online Safety Act after it failed to properly block access to UK users when ordered to do so last year.

Ofcom, the online regulator, said it could now apply to the courts to demand internet service providers block access to the site in the UK. This will depend on how the site, which also faces fines, responds over the next 10 days.

Attorney general Pam Bondi says 39 people now charged over January protest and warns ‘more to come’

Federal authorities have arrested more people on Friday for their alleged involvement in a protest at a church in Minnesota in January, following earlier arrests of organizers and journalists that were demonstrating amid sweeping, and often violent, immigration enforcement efforts in the state.

Attorney general Pam Bondi said the justice department unsealed an indictment that charged 30 more people for the demonstration. Of those charged, federal agents have already arrested 25 of them, Bondi said, with “more to come”. The latest arrests bring the total number of people charged to 39.

The incident, which prompted the closure of airspace near Fort Hancock, Texas, occurred weeks after the use of a counter-drone laser by DHS personnel grounded flights at the El Paso airport.

Samsung's AI-powered visual search tool on its new phones is now dangerously good at helping me shop. RIP my bank account.

Investigation under way after vehicle ploughs into building

A tram derailed and crashed into a building in Milan on Friday, killing two people and injuring 38 others.

One of the dead was hit by the tram as it derailed while the second victim was a passenger, the city’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, told reporters at the scene.

Mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest level since 2022, and now borrowers can find even lower-cost loans, experts said.

Commentary: The features unveiled at Samsung's Unpacked event could make social media even more treacherous, especially for young adults.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to decline 12.9% year-on-year (YoY) in 2026 to 1.1 billion units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. This decline will bring the smartphone market to its lowest annual shipment volume in more than a decade. The current forecast represents a sharp decline from our November forecast amid the intensifying memory shortage crisis.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Feb. 27, 2026 — Researchers and clinicians from six leading medical centers and academic institutions — including the University of California San Diego — have collaborated to develop a new artificial intelligence model of the male urinary tract that could make prostate cancer radiation therapy more precise and help reduce side effects, such as urinary complications.

Side‑by‑side MRI images show how an AI system outlines the urethra compared with outlines drawn by a team of medical specialists. In each view (axial, coronal and sagittal), the yellow line shows the experts’ outline and the blue line shows the AI’s outline. Panel A shows one example where the AI only partly matches the expert outline, while panel B shows another example where the AI comes closer to the expert outline, especially along the edges. Credit: Yuze Song, electrical engineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego

The team used U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS allocations on the Expanse system at the UC San Diego School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences’ San Diego Supercomputer Center to construct a detailed MRI-based atlas of the urethra, the narrow tube that carries urine through the prostate. They tested this tool against a robust reference standard created by having four imaging and radiation experts reach consensus on the precise location of the urethra in scans from 71 patients.

Lead author Yuze Song, an electrical engineering doctoral student in UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, worked on the study alongside Tyler Seibert, MD, PhD, associate professor of radiation medicine and applied sciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and radiation oncologist at UC San Diego Health, and an international team of collaborators.

“During radiation treatment for prostate cancer, it’s critical to avoid giving too much radiation to the urethra, as this can lead to serious urinary problems,” Seibert said. “On MRI scans, the urethra is tiny and often difficult to identify clearly — even for very experienced doctors. That uncertainty can lead to differences in how doctors plan radiation, potentially affecting treatment safety.”

By running their AI model on Expanse, the team automatically identified the urethra on MRI scans from all 71 patients. When tested on challenging cases, Seibert said that the AI-generated outlines could overlap the urethra anatomy, which may help reduce radiation toxicity during treatment.

“The AI system performed impressively — thanks to the power of Expanse,” Song said. “Trained on data from 11 MRI scanners across six hospitals, it produced urethra contours that were typically within about two millimeters of the expert standard — similar to or better than many human specialists. Even in the most difficult cases, the program still captured one-third of the urethra and deviated by less than three millimeters.” Song is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

If validated in future clinical trials, this approach could make prostate radiation treatment more consistent across clinics and help minimize urinary side effects for patients.

Full study details appear in Radiotherapy and Oncology.

The time on Expanse was supported by NSF ACCESS (allocation no. MDE230005).

Source: Kimberly Mann Bruch, UCSD

The post SDSC Powers AI Model to Improve Prostate Cancer Care appeared first on HPCwire.

Researchers find that across 195 US cities, winters are on average nine days shorter than they were in 1970-1997

For the millions of people across the United States who have spent the last month digging themselves out of above-average levels of snow and ice, this winter has felt especially long and harsh. But the typical winter is actually getting shorter in 80% of major US cities scrutinized by researchers, according to new data released by Climate Central, an independent climate science and communication group.

Researchers found that across 195 US cities, winters are on average nine days shorter today than they were from 1970 to 1997, as the climate crisis progresses.

US retailer’s decision comes as RFK Jr and Maha movement increase pressure on food industry to drop dyes like red 40

The big-box US retailer Target announced on Friday that by 31 May it will only sell breakfast cereals made without certified synthetic food colors.

The company is introducing the restriction amid increased pressure on the food industry from the Trump administration and the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement to stop using such ingredients, which they see as dangerous.

Feature for supervised accounts rolls out as Meta platform faces US trials over alleged harms to children

Instagram will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm.

The announcement on Thursday comes as Instagram’s parent company, Meta, is in the midst of two trials over harms to children.

The criminal civil rights case has also ensnared journalist Don Lemon.

Darren Connor denies possession of offensive weapon in a public place without lawful authority or reasonable excuse

A man accused of entering a mosque in Manchester with an axe, a hammer and a knife also allegedly took in zip ties and a balaclava, a court has heard.

Darren Connor, 55, appeared on Friday at Manchester magistrates court, where he denied possession of an offensive weapon in a public place without lawful authority or reasonable excuse.

The find was made on a farmer's land in western Wales, museum Amgueddfa Cymru said.

Exclusive: memo came after Mike Huckabee’s remarks about Israel sparked alarm inside White House

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The US secretary of state Marco Rubio told ambassadors in the Middle East to stop making public comments that could inflame tensions and undermine Donald Trump’s pressure on Iran to relinquish its capacity to produce a nuclear weapon, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

“Given rising tensions in the region, Chiefs of Mission and embassies at addressee posts must refrain from public statements, interviews, or social media activity that could in any way inflame regional audiences, prejudice sensitive political issues, or complicate US relationships,” the cable said.

Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, Ramadan in Gaza, Trump’s State of the Union address and snow in New York City – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

US president accuses Tehran of failing to ‘negotiate in good faith’ over its nuclear programme

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Donald Trump says he has not made a final decision on whether to launch strikes on Iran but is “not happy” with the situation and military force – including regime change – remains an option.

The remarks came at the White House on Friday after talks between the US and Iran on Tehran’s nuclear programme ended inconclusively, with a suggestion that further discussions would be held next week.

Hide from the heat by staying cool inside with lightning-fast internet -- here are the deals we've been eyeing this summer.

Nasa announced on Friday radical changes to its delayed Artemis III mission to land humans back on the moon, as the US space agency grapples with technical glitches and criticism that it is trying to do too much too soon. From a report: The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency's recently confirmed administrator, Jared Isaacman. Announcing the changes on Friday, he said that Nasa would introduce at least one new moon flight before attempting to put humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century, in 2028. The new, more incremental approach would give the Nasa team a chance to test flight and refine its technology. As part of the changes, the Artemis II mission to fly humans around the moon this year, without landing, would also be pushed back from its latest scheduled launch on 6 March to 1 April at the earliest. "Everybody agrees this is the only way forward," Isaacman told reporters at a news conference. "I know this is how Nasa changed the world, and this is how Nasa is going to do it again."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Finding good rural broadband can be challenging, but these handpicked options offer dependable service.

Party billed it as a two-horse race with Reform but Greens’ Hannah Spencer connected with voters in a way it could not

From the outset of the Gorton and Denton byelection, Labour strategists were desperate to say the party was on course to win, but the trouncing at the hands of the Greens has made this look laughable in hindsight.

Hollie Ridley, Labour’s general secretary, sent a note to No 10 at the end of January saying it was “clearly a two-horse race” with Reform UK, and only 3% of voters were saying they would stick with the Greens.

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Designer’s first catwalk for the brand in Milan flirts with bad taste with short, tight dresses and a diamante G-string

Demna is fashion’s dark lord of apocalyptic streetwear. Gucci is the glossy sex kitten of Milan. Put the two together, and what do you get? Sex appeal that flirts with bad taste.

At Demna’s first Gucci catwalk show, staged in Milan on Friday afternoon in front of an audience including Donatella Versace and Paris and Nicky Hilton, dresses were so short and tight that Emily Ratajkowski periodically yanked down a handful of disco-ball sequins to cover her bottom as she walked. There were lapdance-bar tinsel hair extensions, and Kate Moss in a diamante G-string. A certain sketchiness in the roll of the hips, a model who pulled his phone out of his bumbag and scrolled his way down the catwalk.

Two competing bills would restrict big investors from buying single-family homes, but they take different approaches.

Military reckoned ‘good’ Afghan insurgents were separate from ‘bad’ Pakistani insurgents but distinction has blurred

Days after the Taliban swept to power in 2021, Pakistan’s then spymaster appeared in Kabul on what looked to many like a victory lap. Sipping tea in the lobby of the Afghan capital’s fanciest hotel, Lt Gen Faiz Hameed told reporters: “Don’t worry, everything will be OK.”

This week it became clear just how badly Pakistan had miscalculated how it could rely on the Taliban, as Islamabad unleashed airstrikes in Afghanistan and troops from both countries fought each other on the border.

After a blizzard hit New York City Feb. 22, a viral Instagram post said, in protest of the city’s inefficient snow removal, a man crafted a car entirely of snow and received a parking ticket for the sculpture. 

"NYC man crafts realistic snow car — receives parking ticket from NYPD," said text on the video.

But a video and images included in the post show events that did not happen in New York or even as recently as this month. It uses images from a similar post on Facebook nearly eight years ago and a video from Lithuania in 2021. And neither posts say law enforcement issued real parking tickets. 

The 2018 Facebook post was from a machinist in Canada who fooled Montreal law enforcement with a car made of snow and was issued a fake parking ticket for the prank. The sculpture was in a local snow removal zone and later cleared by sanitation workers the following day, CBS News reported at the time.

The Instagram post also used 2021 footage showing a Lithuanian couple sculpting a Ferrari out of snow and painting it to replicate a real sportscar. Donata Bugiene, who documented her husband building the Ferrari out of snow, was featured on FOX10 and Storyful. 

We rate the claim that this Instagram video shows a New York City man sculpting a car out of snow False.

The latest Wi-FI standard expands bandwidth and boosts performance. Here's what it changes, and what you'll need to upgrade at home.

Leaks, rodent infestations and faulty smoke alarms are some of the housing conditions residents said they’re hoping Mayor Zohran Mamdani will help improve.

A sprawling Chinese influence operation -- accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official's use of ChatGPT -- focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. From a report: The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down. The report offers one of the most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts. The influence operation appeared to involve hundreds of Chinese operators and thousands of fake online accounts on various social media platforms, according to OpenAI.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here:

• Report: Labour MPs demand Starmer change direction

• Analysis: clock is ticking for Starmer

• Profile: who is Hannah Spencer, new Green MP?

Reform activists are “hearing Matt Goodwin has all but conceded defeat to the Greens”, the UK poll aggregator Britain Elects has posted on X.

The Green party has predicted a “seismic moment” in UK politics, with a party source telling the Press Association:

Things are feeling positive. Not wanting to get ahead of ourselves, but everything that we thought that was going to be happening looks like it’s happening … Whatever happens, I think it’s fair to say that Greens are here to stay now as a progressive voice in British politics.

A surprise collectible on Pokemon Day looks just like a tiny Game Boy and plays music on swappable cartridges for $70. Give us the real Game Boy again, come on.

The president’s cuts have defunded and alienated thousands of American scientists. Europe can benefit, if it makes the right offer

Donald Trump has spent much of his second term at war with science and scientists. He is cutting staff at institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by a third, and has cancelled or frozen up to 8,000 federal research grants. This hasn’t just hurt individual research programmes, it has damaged America’s credibility as a reliable partner in the scientific community. It is not surprising that many researchers – one poll last year by the journal Nature gave the number of 75% – say they are considering leaving the US entirely.

However, it is one thing to express dissatisfaction, and quite another to up sticks and leave. If the UK and EU want to attract elite scientific talent, their approach must be twofold: appealing directly to scientists concerned with political interference in their research, and offering stable, ringfenced money.

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

Scale of defeat to Greens has plunged party into fresh despair and again raised prospect of leadership challenge

Keir Starmer is facing an ultimatum from his own party to change direction or risk a leadership challenge within months after the Greens humiliated Labour with a historic byelection victory in Gorton and Denton.

Overturning a 13,000 Labour majority from the general election, Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green councillor, became the party’s fifth MP on Friday. Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin was second, just ahead of the Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia.

Celebrate the Pokemon franchise's 30th anniversary with plenty of free stuff in mainline games and mobile apps alike.

An anonymous reader shares a report: While some see AI as a tool to be used, its specific use and how it is deployed responsibly is being heavily debated online across a wide range of industries. In terms of journalistic content, and in this particular instance, reviews, review aggregator Metacritic has taken a firm stance on content published and submitted to their platform, that have been generated by artificial intelligence in some way. In a statement by co-founder Marc Doyle, sent to Gamereactor, he says this: "Metacritic has been a reputable review source for a quarter century and has maintained a rigorous vetting process when adding new publications to our slate of critics. However, in certain instances such as a publication being sold or a writing staff having turned over, problems can arise such as plagiarism, theft, or other forms of fraud including AI-generated reviews. Metacritic's policy is to never include an AI-generated critic review on Metacritic and if we discover that one has been posted, we'll remove it immediately and sever ties with that publication indefinitely pending a thorough investigation." So, what is this about specifically? Well, it's probably a sound guess, that this pertains to Videogamer's review of Resident Evil 9: Requiem, which was removed from the platform after a barrage of comments accusing the review of being AI-written, and for the author of being made up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are some highly rated films to try, plus a look at what's new in February.

After debuting it at CES, Clicks is expanding the BlackBerry-like Communicator phone with localized options ahead of MWC 2026.

Shares in company increased over 20% as investors were encouraged by CEO’s assertion that cuts will drive profits

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Fintech company Block announced that it would be laying off 4,000 of its 10,000 employees because of gains in AI productivity.

“Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey, Block’s CEO, said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday. “We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.” Block is the parent company for online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App.

Refund amounts for State Farm customers will vary based on their place of residence and insurance premiums.

When dental records and DNA matches failed, investigators turned to an older technology.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced significant changes to the agency's Artemis program, which aims to land on the moon in 2028.

RACHEL GEHRMEN
Staff Reporter

Upon returning to the university and facing blistering winds, temperatures in the negatives and frozen snow clumped around each corner of campus, it is easy to forget that we are entering the spring semester. Much of the student body has collectively agreed that the first weeks back at the university have been brutal. 

“I’ve been enjoying my classes, but it’s been hard with the weather,” Keira Murphy, a sophomore at the university, said. 

Contrasting the idea of spring semester that we like to adopt — warming weather and blossoming nature — the circumstances that welcomed the student body on Feb. 1 were cold, windy and ruthless. 

Many students have undergone inconveniences while navigating their first few weeks of class, including rerouting their day to avoid the harsh winds, slipping on icy patches and even changing anticipated move-in dates. 

“Being an RA, everyone’s move-in was particularly affected because it got pushed back three or four days,” Kaden Redlus, a junior at the university, said. “And I’m from the south, so that got hit right when I had to leave.” 

Due to weather forecasts of snow on Feb. 1, which was the original student move-in date, the university pushed that date forward to Jan. 29 as a precaution. Although Newark did not end up getting hit with this predicted snow, campus was still frosted over when students arrived. The results of the Jan. 26 snowstorm had stuck around, the layer of ice on top making it clear that the frosty conditions were there to stay. 

While the university’s Facilities and Grounds crew plowed the snow throughout campus, students still experienced difficulties across certain sidewalks and parking lots. 

“I was talking to one of my friends where I work, and she was talking about how the parking lot right behind my dorm was just packed full of ice — and this was right before move-in,” Murphy said. 

“On the sidewalk, sometimes there’s not enough room, especially in between classes when people are walking both ways, and it’s kind of tough,” Jacob Weiss, a sophomore at the university, said.

Ice patches and remainders of frozen-over snow have been common sources of annoyance and potentially dangerous situations. Certain sidewalks, such as South College Avenue on the side closest to the Green, already get congested with foot traffic during class-change. That became even worse as the walkway is narrowed due to the shoveled snow lining the sides. Other walking paths across campus have also become difficult to navigate due to the same issue. 

Students who rent have stumbled upon another issue — the worry of getting fined for improper clearing of their house’s sidewalk. Many off-campus housing leases include the task of shoveling any snow in front of the property’s walkway. In a lack of compliance, the renters receive a fine. 

“We’re worried we’re gonna get fined for not shoveling our sidewalk in front of our house,” Jules Fuchs, a sophomore at the university, said. “But none of us were here for when it actually snowed, and now it’s all ice, so we can’t shovel it.” 

This month’s state of snow creates difficulties for students in a situation like this. Others, like Fuchs, who were still enjoying winter break at the time of the snowfall, are now left helpless due to the layer of ice sealing its place on the ground. 

The frustrating blanket of ice that covers the snow and pieces of campus sidewalk has also been a reason for embarrassment. Walks to class have become even more tedious with the added caution of paying close attention to one’s step. 

“I was coming out of my friend’s apartment and I absolutely ate it on my walk to class,” Reagan Mitchell, a sophomore at the university, said. “Cars, people, everyone saw it.” 

Due to not always being visible, ice sprawling across the sidewalks has sent students sprawling themselves. Although, for those who have not slipped yet, the sight of a cartoonish fall can easily be the highlight of their day. 

After returning from their 6-week break, most students hoped to leave winter behind with their sights set on spring. However, among the snow and the ice that are practically fused to campus, the cold and the wind are reminders that winter is very much still in session. 

“I hate the cold and I hate the wind, and I hate walking 20 minutes to McDowell in the freezing weather,” Ollie Panella, a freshman at the university, said. “And then when I thought it was warm today, I checked the temperature, and it was actually 27 degrees outside, and I didn’t like that at all.” 

For spring semester so far, every outing is a brutal trek through nose-numbing temperatures and eye-watering winds. Braving the cold has become part of the student body’s everyday routine. 

“The cold is whatever, but the wind, the wind is horrible,” Mitchell said. “I rerouted all of my walks to class so I can go through as many buildings as possible.” 

Scarves, hats and gloves are familiar elements to see while walking to class, which is slightly unusual for Newark and especially for the beginning of spring semester. 

Having left the comfort of their homes and being thrown back into school, freezing weather conditions are not what students had in mind. Fingers hiding in gloves and mittens are crossed all over campus, holding onto hopes of the real spring greeting us soon. 

Countdown to May has begun and dejected Labour MPs want to see in that time that PM is capable of change

When Labour’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, urged Keir Starmer to stand down two weeks ago, Starmer’s closest advisers presented him a choice: fight, flight or hand over his destiny to his party by calling a leadership contest.

The prime minister chose the first option and his Downing Street team sprung into action to contain the threat. At the moment of greatest peril for Starmer, MPs peered over the precipice and didn’t like what they saw.

Whether you're on vacation or simply want an extra layer of home security, these smart locks will help you protect your home.

Foreign minister says 272 Ghanaians are thought to have been drawn into battle since 2022, after he visited Kyiv

At least 55 Ghanaians have been killed in Russia’s war with Ukraine after being “lured into battle”, Ghana’s foreign minister has said after a visit to Kyiv in which officials raised the issue of Russian recruitment of African people.

Reports of African men being attracted to Russia by promises of jobs and ending up on Ukraine’s frontlines have become more frequent in recent months, creating tensions between Moscow and some of the countries involved.

The Pokemon Company announced its first mainline games exclusively for the Switch 2, coming in 2027.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic and the Pentagon: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. If other leading firms like Google follow suit, this could massively complicate the Pentagon's efforts to replace Anthropic's Claude, which was the first model integrated into the military's most sensitive work. It would also be the first time the nation's top AI leaders have taken a collective stand about how the U.S. government can and can't use their technology. Altman made clear he still wants to strike a deal with the Pentagon that would allow ChatGPT to be used for sensitive military contexts. Despite the show of solidarity, such a deal could see OpenAI replace Anthropic if the Pentagon follows through with its plan to declare the latter a "supply chain risk."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a stunning setback for Labour, the Green party has decisively won the Gorton and Denton byelection, with Reform UK finishing second. Does this result signal the end of Labour’s safe seats? And could it mark the beginning of the end for Keir Starmer? John Harris, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey unpack the fallout – and explore what might happen next

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Trade between the EU and two South American countries may start within two months under a provision application of the Mercosur deal.

“The law allows the provisional application of the deal can happen two months after notification has been exchanged between both sides in the form of a ‘note verbale’ that the deal will enter into provision application.”

“The president reached out to member states and to MEPS, that’s what it means. She reached out to member states and MEPs, and I remind you that the member states as the European Council, endorsed and approved the EU Mercosur agreement and empowered the European Commission to move forward with provisional application.”

Newly elected Gorton and Denton MP taps into colour meme of the moment with statement waistcoat

• UK politics live – latest updates

Of course the Green candidate wore green, though the correct term – the 2026 TikTok one – is “gross green”.

Coined by New York magazine, and seen all over the high street as well as on the cover of Caro Claire Burke’s forthcoming satirical novel Yesteryear, it’s actually chartreuse. But where’s the fun in calling it that? And it’s not so much a colour as a mood.

Average life satisfaction still below pre-pandemic peak despite improving economic outlook, reports ONS

The proportion of people in the UK who feel dissatisfied with life has failed to improve since the pandemic despite the economic outlook improving, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics said its quarterly survey of personal wellbeing in the UK shows that average life satisfaction remains below its pre-pandemic peak, despite the rate of GDP per person rising over the same period.

President Trump's media company, which is merging with a fusion energy player, is exploring whether to spin off Trump Social as a publicly traded concern.

US and Israel attack Iran, killing Khamenei. Tehran launches counterstrikes: Early analysis from Chatham House experts Expert comment jon.wallace 27 February 2026

What do the attacks mean for the regime after the death of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? How will they affect ordinary Iranians, and the region? And what does President Trump hope to achieve? Chatham House experts provide insights.

The United States and Israel launched multiple air strikes across Iran on Saturday 28 February, striking multiple targets and killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

US President Donald Trump announced ‘major combat operations in Iran’ and said later on Saturday that Khamenei had been killed.

Iranian state media announced the supreme leader’s death early on Sunday.

Trump said: ‘Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime’. He said Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme – a claim denied by Tehran. ‘They can never have a nuclear weapon,’ he said.

Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Iranians to pursue regime change. In a message addressed to ‘the great, proud people of Iran,’ Trump said: ‘The hour of your freedom is at hand…when we are finished, take over your government, it will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.’

Iran launched retaliatory strikes against Israel, and across the region.

Here Chatham House experts provide early analysis of the meaning of the strikes for Iran, the region and the world.

Dr Sanam Vakil, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme:

There is no doubt that we are at a critical moment, one that will reshape the region and profoundly affect Iran itself. The Iranian people will bear the greatest cost. 

For Tehran, this is not a short twelve-day war or a contained round of escalation that can be paused and reset. This new stage of conflict is existential and clearly about regime survival. It is also unlikely to end quickly.

President Donald Trump campaigned against regime change wars and was sharply critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As recently as his Gulf visit in May 2025 he promised that those days were over.

Yet what we are seeing now suggests something far more ambitious than coercive diplomacy. Trump has framed this confrontation as the culmination of a 47-year adversarial relationship between the US and Iran, dating back to 1979, arguing that the Islamic Republic has consistently undermined US interests and destabilized the region. These strikes are intended to do more than bring Tehran back to the negotiating table. Trump appears to be attempting to redefine the terms of that 47-year conflict and secure his place in history by trying to resolve it decisively.

The US and Israel have targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile infrastructure and radar installations, alongside specific strikes on leadership compounds and elements of Iran’s military command structure.

This is not limited to degrading capabilities at the margins. It is a direct blow to the state’s security architecture and governing apparatus. The parallel with the 2003 Iraq war is difficult to ignore. That war demonstrated that collapsing or attempting to collapse a regime is far easier than shaping what follows.

Khamenei’s death will be accompanied by temporary constitutional succession plans that are necessary to project continuity, even if continuity is anything but clear.

It is no surprise that people are cheering and celebrating the death of the longest-serving regional autocrat. He is single-handedly responsible for stubbornly clinging to his ideology and resistance, leading the regime into countless poor decisions. and choosing time and again to massacre his own people.

Trump has spoken about freedom for the Iranian people. That is a powerful message rhetorically, but it is difficult to see how genuine political transformation develops under conditions of sustained war, chaos and potential fragmentation.

External military pressure may weaken a regime, but it does not automatically build a viable alternative. Even if such an outcome benefits Israel strategically by removing a hostile government, it does not mean the immediate result for Iranians will be stability or something better. The space between regime collapse and democratic consolidation is historically the most dangerous phase.

Iran, moreover, is not Iraq in 2003. It has more cohesive state institutions, a deeply embedded ideological structure and regional networks that extend well beyond its borders.

Even if parts of its leadership and command structure are degraded, the Islamic Republic has experience regenerating under pressure. While talks were ongoing, Tehran was simultaneously preparing for this contingency. Its response came within four hours of the first strikes, suggesting pre-planning and coordination.

Strikes across Israel and against Gulf states indicate a deliberate decision to externalize the conflict rather than absorb the blows quietly.

From the regime’s perspective, if survival is at stake, there is little incentive to keep the confrontation geographically contained. Expanding the theatre raises costs for US partners, and signals that any attempt to dismantle the system will reverberate across the region. There is also a real possibility that Iran’s allies, including the Houthis and perhaps others within Iran’s broader network, will be drawn in more directly.

Bronwen Maddox, Director of Chatham House:

You don’t do regime change from the air.

The ayatollah was the main character of a theocratic, repressive and brutal regime that yearned for nuclear power, but he was not the only character. At best, there’s a very confused picture. There are many people still defending the regime.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are a real military-industrial complex running much of the economy, and one of them could end up in charge.

One thing I think that has become clear to us is that intelligence, probably Israeli intelligence, is right through the country.

It’s also a question of how many targeted assassinations there are taking out the whole leadership of the regime - and how much the regime is weakened at this point. But it’s very hard to get from where we are now to a vision of democracy or where Iranians can choose.

Risk of protest

I’m afraid we’re heading for a very messy picture which is of enormous risk to those who want to come out and protest.

President Trump talked about Iran’s protesters. But the protesters already feel betrayed. Tens of thousands were shot in the wave of demonstrations earlier this year, and they do not want to come out again. Trump saying weeks ago that ‘help is on its way’ was not enough to save them. And they still lack a leader.

The best-case scenario is that the protesters begin to come out again, on the streets, they find that they are not shot down, they begin to produce leaders or a leader and realise that they can actually change the regime.

The worst-case scenario is that the Revolutionary Guard still show themselves to be very much in control of the country, that they continue to hit other countries around, which not only destabilizes the region but encourages Arab countries to pull away from the US, and pull away from any talks about stabilizing Gaza and the West Bank.

Objectives

The ⁠risk is that the US already has multiple stated objectives – ending Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, missiles, and supporting Iranian protesters. That is a recipe for confusion.

Iran’s ⁠⁠neighbours and the Gulf states will be very uncomfortable at the strikes on them, presumably from Iran, this morning. Iran is trying to make them look complicit with the US in the eyes of their populations.

I don’t think it’s realistic to see an all-out war, because so many countries don’t want it but a destabilization and the Gulf and Saudi Arabia pulling away from the US, I think that is likely.

T⁠his has the makings of the kind of enduring conflict that Trump said he didn’t want. 

UK policy

The UK government is taking what is an inevitable position. and a defensible one. Which is to be arms-length from the US. To say: we, Britain, are going to stick to the rule of law. And this is very much what the UK did over Venezuela as well: to say that we might welcome the ends of what has been achieved, but we don’t embrace the means of that.

And this is part of the gradual distancing that you are beginning to see in parts of UK policy. I think, easily mocked as it is, to say: ‘come on, go on one side or the other’ – this is where the UK is going to have to find a path.

Dr Marion Messmer, Director of the International Security Programme:

President Trump has said these attacks are intended to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. After the US air strikes in June 2025, the US government said they had significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear programme.

The strikes also come at a time when several US officials have called for regime change in Iran.

The US seems to have targeted sites that either have a connection with Iran’s nuclear research, or are missile production and storage sites, seeking a further degradation of Iran’s military capabilities.

The Iranian government is already weakened after two years of on-and-off conflict escalation. But it is striking back. Israel and Qatar have reported intercepting incoming Iranian missiles. This means that even with a weakened Iranian government, there is a risk of this conflict escalating and drawing other states in.

Beyond the risk of war in the Middle East, the attack set a worrying precedent by continuing a pattern: striking when negotiations are not going as Washington would like them to. This reduces the likelihood that other states will be willing to enter into negotiations with the US in future, if there is always a risk of the US escalating to military attack.

Laurel Rapp, Director of the US and North America Programme 

President Trump’s declaration of war against Iran to depose the regime is a high-risk break with decades of US policy towards Tehran.

The American strategy appears wholly predicated on the untested proposition that the Iranian people will quickly rise up – a huge gamble. Should a massive revolt fail to materialize, the Trump administration will face a fork in the road: fold or double down.

In abandoning negotiations for force, the US opens an uncertain and dangerous path ahead, with grave risks for US military personnel in the ballistic missile strike zone, and US partners vulnerable to retaliation from Iranian proxies.

It is undeniable that Iran’s nuclear ambitions, stockpile of ballistic missiles, and regional militia proxies pose a threat to the United States and its partners. The Iranian regime has cultivated these tools for decades, at great cost to the Iranian people. Multilateral sanctions and periodic US strikes against Iranian proxies sought to bind Iran’s hands.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) successfully cabined Iran’s nuclear problem until the US withdrew. It was a strategy to manage symptoms versus address root causes, and – though imperfect – it prevented a risky and grinding US military entanglement.

President Trump ran on a platform of ending forever wars and bringing US troops home.

The White House National security strategy (NSS), published just two months ago, affirms that the ‘days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over.’ Both accurately reflect American public attitudes, with little appetite for a war of choice in the Middle East.

The initial US military campaign appears limited to air strikes but – if the lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are instructive – aerial bombardment alone is unlikely to topple a regime absent mass defections from Iran’s deeply entrenched military command.

Requirements typically include a significant commitment of ground troops, relentless diplomatic coordination among partners, and careful planning and stewardship of successor structures. These are the ingredients of nation-building that the American public has rightfully rejected.

If the past year of US foreign policy decision-making is predictive of the days ahead, Trump’s desire to project strength and ‘win’ may quickly supplant the popular mandate that brought him back to power – as well as his own strategy.

Every recent US president has tried to, finally, redirect US attention beyond the Middle East. To Asia. To the Western Hemisphere. None has succeeded. 

Farea Al-Muslimi, Research Fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme:

While the Houthis are widely viewed as one of Iran’s closest remaining regional allies – particularly after the weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon – it is far from certain that they will intervene militarily.

The Yemeni militia has for years benefited from Iranian financial and military support. Iran has helped develop the Houthis’ ballistic missile and drone capabilities, and Yemen has at times served as an arena through which Tehran could pressure its regional adversaries indirectly while claiming deniability.

However unlike Hezbollah, the Houthis have historically been sensitive to accusations that they are merely an Iranian proxy even if that – throughout the years – proved to be true.

Yemen does not offer Iran the same theological, social, or political depth that exists in parts of Lebanon or Iraq. On the contrary, suspicion of ‘Persian’ influence has deep historical roots in Yemen. With the exception of a limited ideological circle within the Houthis, overt identification with Iran remains unpopular. This explains why Houthi leaders have often denied or downplayed the extent of their relationship with Tehran, and have reacted sharply when they are labeled an Iranian tool.

Domestic calculation therefore remains central to any decision to escalate. The Houthis cannot afford to frame a war as one fought simply on behalf of Iran. 

Previous attacks on Israel and on Red Sea shipping were justified internally through the lens of solidarity with the Palestinian cause – an issue that commands broad sympathy among Yemenis, including among the Houthis’ rivals. A direct intervention in defence of Tehran would not carry the same unifying legitimacy.

Moreover, the movement is still recovering from significant US strikes last year that degraded parts of its military infrastructure. Entering a new confrontation at a moment of relative fragility would carry serious risks.

At the same time, the Houthis are not inherently risk-averse. The group has historically thrived in wartime conditions, using conflict to sustain mobilization, reinforce ideological cohesion, and postpone difficult political compromises. War can serve its internal logic.

This does not mean it will automatically intervene, but it does mean that controlled escalation remains an available instrument, especially if it can be framed as self-defence rather than solidarity.

Two factors could significantly shift the calculation. The first, and more likely, would be direct military strikes against Houthi targets. In that scenario, intervention would become less a matter of choice and more one of perceived survival.

The second concerns the residual presence of Iranian and Hezbollah-linked operatives in Yemen. In the past, personnel affiliated with the IRGC and Hezbollah have reportedly assisted in launches toward Saudi Arabia, at times pushing escalation beyond what Houthis preferred.

That footprint appears to have diminished following Hezbollah’s regional setbacks, but if those external actors retain operational influence, the risk of entanglement increases.

They can resume drone and missile attacks against Israel, as well as target US military facilities or Western-linked infrastructure within range. Such actions would not fundamentally alter the balance between Washington and Tehran, but they would expand the theatre of conflict.

For now, however, it remains doubtful that the Houthis will initiate a campaign solely on Iran’s behalf. Their decision-making is shaped as much by domestic legitimacy and strategic self-preservation as by regional alignment. Unless directly drawn in, they are more likely to calibrate their involvement carefully rather than commit to open-ended escalation.

Chatham House is an international affairs think-tank based in London. Our mission is to address geopolitical challenges and international problems. Find out more about our work from our website, here.

The biggest Pokemon event of the year just wrapped up. Celebrate the series' 30th anniversary with new games, cards and a teeny tiny Game Boy.

Police chief accused of caving to Republican demands by reversing decision to fire implicated duo

A Detroit police department decision to reverse course on firing two officers who allegedly violated local law by coordinating an arrest with federal immigration agents has ignited outrage and accusations that the chief caved to Republican demands.

It has also played into a debate in the US around the role of local law enforcement amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown as many police departments – especially in large Democratic-run cities such as Detroit – have a policy of not co-operating with federal immigration operations.

This 12-week training program is the sign you’re looking for to sign up for a Hyrox this year.

Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed a revised bid by Paramount Skydance to be a superior offer. From a report: Earlier this week, Paramount raised its bid to buy the entirety of WBD to $31 per share, up from $30 per share, all cash. It was the latest amendment to Paramount's multiple offers in recent months -- and since moving forward with a hostile bid to buy the company -- and it's now unseated a deal between WBD and Netflix to sell the legacy media company's studio and streaming businesses for $27.75 per share. Last week, Netflix granted WBD a seven-day waiver to reengage with Paramount, resulting in the higher bid. Paramount's offer is for the entirety of WBD, including its pay-TV networks, such as CNN, TBS and TNT. Netflix had four business days to make changes to its own proposal in light of Paramount's superior bid, the WBD board said in a statement Thursday. Instead, the decision by the streaming giant to walk away puts a pin in a drawn-out saga that saw amended offers from both bidders.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If a disability has made your credit card payments unmanageable, debt forgiveness may be closer than you think.

As Pokémon turns 30, we would like to hear what the franchise means to you

It is 30 years since the game Pocket Monsters was released for the Nintendo Game Boy in Japan. Many more video games, trading cards, toys, an animated series and films followed as the franchise became a worldwide hit. With this in mind, we would like to hear what Pokémon means to you after three decades.

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SAN FRANCISCO and SEATTLE, Feb. 27, 2026 — OpenAI and Amazon today announced a multi-year strategic partnership to accelerate AI innovation for enterprises, startups, and end consumers around the world. Amazon will also invest $50 billion in OpenAI, starting with an initial $15 billion investment and followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met.

Partnering to Bring New Advanced AI Capabilities to Enterprises Worldwide

OpenAI and Amazon are jointly developing a Stateful Runtime Environment powered by OpenAI’s models, which will be available through Amazon Bedrock.

Stateful developer environments are the next generation of how frontier models will be used, seamlessly enabling models to access elements like compute, memory, and identity. A Stateful Runtime Environment allows developers to keep context, remember prior work, work across software tools and data sources, and access compute. They’re designed to handle ongoing projects and workflows.

These stateful developer environments will be trained to run optimally on AWS’s infrastructure and integrated with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and infrastructure services so customers’ AI applications and agents run cohesively with the rest of their infrastructure applications running in AWS. The Stateful Runtime Environment is expected to launch in the next few months.

Bringing OpenAI’s Most Advanced Enterprise Platform to AWS Customers

AWS will serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, expanding access to OpenAI’s most advanced enterprise platform as demand for AI deployment accelerates across industries.

Frontier enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage teams of AI agents that operate across real business systems with shared context, built-in governance, and enterprise-grade security, without managing underlying infrastructure. As companies move from experimentation to production AI, Frontier makes it straightforward to integrate powerful AI into existing workflows quickly, securely, and at global scale.

OpenAI to Use Trainium Compute to Power Growing Amazon Customer Demand

OpenAI and AWS are expanding their existing $38 billion multi-year agreement by $100 billion over 8 years. The expansion includes OpenAI committing to consume approximately 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity through AWS infrastructure, which will support demand for Stateful Runtime, Frontier, and other advanced workloads. This agreement lowers the cost and improves the efficiency of producing intelligence at scale.

Under this structure, OpenAI secures long-term capacity while working with AWS to deploy purpose-built silicon alongside its broader compute ecosystem, enabling enterprises to consume intelligence on demand without managing underlying infrastructure.

This commitment spans both Trainium3 and next-generation Trainium4 chips and will power a broad range of advanced AI workloads. Trainium4, expected to begin delivery in 2027, will provide another major performance gain, including significantly higher FP4 compute performance, expanded memory bandwidth, and increased high-bandwidth memory capacity to support increasingly capable AI systems at scale.

Custom Models Available to Power Amazon’s Customer-Facing Applications

OpenAI and Amazon will collaborate to develop customized models available to Amazon developers to power Amazon’s customer-facing applications. Amazon teams will be able to tailor OpenAI models for use across AI products and agents that serve customers directly. These capabilities will complement the models already available to Amazon developers, including Amazon’s Nova family, offering another tool for teams to build and deliver at scale.

“OpenAI and Amazon share a belief that AI should show up in ways that are practical and genuinely useful for people,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. ”Combining OpenAI’s models with Amazon’s infrastructure and global reach helps us put powerful AI into the hands of businesses and users at real scale.”

“We have lots of developers and companies eager to run services powered by OpenAI models on AWS, and our unique collaboration with OpenAI to provide stateful runtime environments will change what’s possible for customers building AI apps and agents,” said Andy Jassy, President and CEO of Amazon. “We continue to be impressed with what OpenAI is building, and we’re excited not only about their choosing to go big on our custom AI silicon (Trainium), but also our opportunity to invest in the company and partnership over the long-term.”

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon.

About AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is guided by customer obsession, pace of innovation, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. By democratizing technology for nearly two decades and making cloud computing and generative AI accessible to organizations of every size and industry, AWS has built one of the fastest-growing enterprise technology businesses in history. Millions of customers trust AWS to accelerate innovation, transform their businesses, and shape the future. With the most comprehensive AI capabilities and global infrastructure footprint, AWS empowers builders to turn big ideas into reality.

Source: Amazon

The post OpenAI and Amazon Announce Strategic Partnership appeared first on HPCwire.

theodp writes: On Tuesday, Microsoft GM of Education and Workforce Policy (and former Code.org Chief Academic Officer) Pat Yongpradit posted an obituary of sorts for coders. "Computer programmers and software developers are codified differently in the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data," Yongpradit wrote. "The modern AI-infused world needs less computer programmers (coders) and more software developers (more holistic and higher level). So when folks say that there is less hiring of computer programmers, they are right. But there will be more hiring of software developers, especially those who have adopted an AI-forward mindset and skillset. [...] The number of just pure computer programming roles has already been declining due to reasons like outsourcing, AI will just accelerate the decline." On Wednesday, Yongpradit's colleague Allyson Knox, Senior Director of Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft, put another AI nail in the coder coffin, testifying before the House Committee on Education -- the Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education on Building an AI-ready America: Teaching in the Age of AI. "Thank you to Chairman Tim Walberg, Ranking Member Bobby Scott, Chair Kevin Kiley, Ranking Member Suzanne Bonamici and members of the Subcommittee for the opportunity to share Microsoft perspective and that of the educators and parents we hear from every day across the country," Knox wrote in a LinkedIn post. "Three themes continue to emerge throughout these discussions: 1. Educators want support to build AI literacy and critical thinking skills. 2. Schools need guidance and guardrails to ensure student data is protected and adults remain in control. 3. Teachers want classroom-ready tools, and a voice in shaping them. If we focus on these priorities, we can help ensure AI expands opportunity for every student across the United States." Yongpradit and Knox report up to Microsoft President Brad Smith, who last July told Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi it was time for the tech-backed nonprofit to "switch hats" from coding to AI as Microsoft announced a new $4 billion initiative to advance AI education. Smith's thoughts on the extraordinary promise of AI in education were cited by Knox in her 2026 Congressional testimony. Interestingly, Knox argued for the importance of computer programming literacy in her 2013 Congressional testimony at a hearing on Our Nation of Builders: Training the Builders of the Future. "Congress needs to come up with fresh ideas on how we can continue to train the next generation of builders, programmers, manufacturers, technicians and entrepreneurs," said Rep. Lee Terry said to open the discussion. So, are reports of computer programming's imminent death greatly exaggerated?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 27, 2026 – The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) has announced the completion of a research program funded by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to make control electronics for quantum hardware more compact and manufacturable. The work addresses the needs identified by QED-C members in the enabling technology roadmap, Control and Readout Electronics for Quantum Systems.

In 2022, $1.4 million in government matching funds were competitively awarded to QED-C member companies to enhance the control and readout electronics supply chain and its capabilities.

The results achieved by QED-C members Amphenol RF, Maybell Quantum Industries, Rigetti Computing, and XMA, in collaboration with NIST, demonstrate improvements in size and performance of control and readout technologies across several qubit modalities.

Amphenol RF reduced the size, weight, and loss of room-temperature control readout electronics in quantum systems while improving overall performance. This advance will enhance room-temperature control readout electronics in future quantum systems in a manufacturable package designed for production scalability.

Maybell Quantum Industries changed the design of control and readout electronics to tightly integrate passive and active devices with interconnects, shrinking the overall size. This new cable design delivers high performance in a simpler, denser, and more integrated package.

Rigetti Computing created a way to measure temperature directly on the chip alongside the qubit circuitry using nanoscale superconducting structures that are relatively straightforward to fabricate and integrate into existing manufacturing flows. This will make it easier to identify and diagnose heating issues that can degrade qubit performance.

XMA solved three bottlenecks to scaling quantum hardware: cost, footprint, and thermal impact. A new cabling solution increases channel capacity while reducing the cost and shrinking the size of this crucial infrastructure.

Companies had to be members of QED-C to participate in the sponsored R&D program. Participants’ work had to support one of four goals from the roadmap:

• Reduce the thermal load and physical footprint associated with microwave-control cabling in cryogenic environments
• Locate digital and mixed signal electronics closer to the quantum processer in cryogenic environments
• Enable tighter integration of active and passive components with each other and with quantum devices in cryogenic environments
• Reduce the size, weight and power of room-temperature control and readout electronics

QED-C aims to identify gaps in enabling technologies for quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum networking. Learn more about the Control and Readout Electronics program here.

About QED-C

The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) is the world’s premier association of pioneers in the quantum technology marketplace. Members of QED-C enable the real-world application of quantum technology, and, in turn, grow a robust  commercial industry and supply chain.  Sitting at the intersection of tech, academia, business, entrepreneurship, and policymaking, QED-C is uniquely able to foster the collaborations the industry needs. QED-C is where experts and organizations share knowledge and collectively shape how quantum technology will grow. QED-C is managed by SRI.

Source: QED-C

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The supreme court has deferred to executive power for decades. Its decision on tariffs is a long-overdue warning

After two decades of deferring to executive authority and eroding anti-bribery laws, the supreme court has suddenly limited presidential power in a way that could make one ugly form of political influence a bit more difficult to pull off. Last week’s ruling did not merely strip one president of his executive power to unilaterally impose levies across broad swaths of the economy – it makes it harder for any president to transform tariffs from a broad economic policy into a personal political cudgel that muzzles criticism and enforces fealty.

“A Supreme Court otherwise inclined to endlessly expand Trump’s authority just restricted his go-to tool, ruling that U.S. presidents do not have the power to unilaterally deploy tariffs and dole out punishment and favor to specific companies and economic sectors, friends and family, and entire countries,” said Lori Wallach of Rethink Trade.

The Washington Post reported that Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, dumped $1m into Trump’s inauguration, cultivated relationships with Trump officials, and “refrained from publicly criticizing the president or his policies on national television” – just before securing tariff exemptions for his company’s products.

ProPublica reported that the administration approved a tariff exemption for a thermoplastic made by a company “owned by a pair of brothers who have donated millions of dollars to Republican causes”.

A tariff exemption for electronics conveniently benefited Tesla and, by extension, its CEO, Elon Musk, who bankrolled a multimillion-dollar campaign to re-elect Trump.

The sugar behemoth Florida Crystals, which has lobbied on tariff policy, gave $2m to the main pro-Trump Super Pac, Maga Inc, ahead of Trump slapping tariffs on imported sugar. Reynolds American likewise delivered $2m to the same Super Pac while successfully pushing Trump to crack down on imports of Chinese tobacco products.

Trump relaxed export controls on the microchip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) after the company gave $1million to Maga Inc.

Trump reduced tariffs on Vietnam and removed that country from the United States’s export controls list after the Hanoi government approved his family business’s $1.5bn golf course and real estate project.

Total anonymity online is impossible, and it’s dangerous to claim otherwise.

Following the recent release of Pokemon Legends: Z-A, The Pokemon Company announced its first mainline games exclusively for the latest Nintendo console.

Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Neptune and Uranus will all be visible at same time in curved line across sky

Six planets will parade across the sky this weekend in a rare celestial spectacle, experts have said.

For the next few days, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Neptune and Uranus will all be visible at the same time in the night sky – although binoculars or a telescope will be needed to spot the latter two planets.

Bobby J. Brown's breakout role was as a police officer on HBO's "The Wire." He appeared in 12 episodes across four seasons.

Bright Data, a company that operates one of the world's largest residential proxy networks, has been running an SDK inside smart TV apps that turns those devices into nodes for web crawling -- collecting data used by AI companies, among other clients -- and most consumers have had no idea it was happening. The company has published more than 200 first-party apps to LG's app store alone and still lists Samsung's Tizen OS and LG's webOS as supported platforms, though LG says the SDK is "not officially supported" and its operation on webOS "is not guaranteed." Google, Amazon, and Roku have all since adopted policies restricting or banning background proxy SDKs, and Bright Data no longer supports those platforms. Several Roku apps still running the SDK disappeared from the store after a journalist with The Verge behind this reporting contacted the company.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Second time in two weeks military used laser to attack what it mistakenly thought was a threat, disrupting air traffic

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Democratic members of Congress have expressed astonishment and anger at what they claim is the incompetence of the Trump administration after the US military used a laser on Thursday to shoot down what it thought was a threatening drone on the US-Mexico border in Texas but later turned out to belong to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The apparent confusion between two entities in the US government led to airspace being closed around Fort Hancock, right along the border. It was the second time in two weeks that air traffic was disrupted in the region as a result of a high-energy laser being deployed against drones.

After training as a monk, he left the monastery to go into journalism, writing a syndicated Post column that made him a prominent voice in the peace movement.

Wave of strikes comes after Taliban forces attack Pakistani border troops following earlier action from Islamabad

Pakistan has bombed major cities in Afghanistan including the capital, Kabul, with Islamabad’s defence minister declaring that the hostile neighbours were in a state of “open war” as a cycle of retaliatory attacks escalated further.

Witnesses in Kabul and Kandahar, the southern Afghan city, reported explosions and jets overhead until dawn, while the Taliban government said later that Pakistani surveillance aircraft were still flying over Afghanistan.

Built with over 1,000 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, LillyPod is now online to power scientific research and supercharge the future of medicine.

Feb. 27, 2026 — Lilly this week launched the most powerful AI factory wholly owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company to help its teams make meaningful medical advancements faster, more accurately and at unprecedented scale. Dubbed LillyPod, it’s the world’s first NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX B300 systems.

LillyPod was inaugurated Wednesday at a ribbon-cutting in Indianapolis.

Powered by a DGX SuperPOD with 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, Lilly’s AI factory delivers more than 9,000 petaflops of AI performance. It was assembled in just four months.

“It’s a big day for us with the supercomputer coming on board, but it’s a day 150 years in the making,” said Diogo Rau, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer at Lilly. “LillyPod is a powerful symbol of who we are and why we do this work: to make life better for people around the world. We are, right here, right now, at the right moment to advance biology in a way that has just never been done before.”

Step Behind the Scenes of the LillyPod

Computational power that once required 7 million Cray supercomputers now fits inside a single NVIDIA GPU — and LillyPod contains more than 1,000 of them. This infrastructure enables Lilly’s genomics team to harness 700 terabytes of data using over 290 terabytes of high-bandwidth GPU memory.

“Computation is at the heart of biology and it is at the heart of science,” said Thomas Fuchs, senior vice president and chief AI officer at Lilly. “Being able to compute at scale is not something optional for a company like ours, it is absolutely necessary. So we are building the computational future of medicine and you see that in all areas along the pharmaceutical value chain.”

Lilly’s AI factory is set to support the large-scale training of protein diffusion models, small-molecule graph neural network models and genomics foundation models.

NVIDIA’s full-stack AI factory architecture offered with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD — including accelerated computing, NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking and optimized AI software — provides a secure, scalable platform for the highly regulated workflows of healthcare and life sciences.

NVIDIA Mission Control software allows Lilly to manage its DGX SuperPOD, orchestrate workloads, monitor performance and automate AI operations securely and efficiently.

The supercomputer’s nearly 5,000 connections are built with more than 1,000 pounds of fiber cables. Lilly aims for its new AI supercomputing infrastructure to run on 100% renewable electricity by 2030, using efficient liquid cooling and minimal incremental energy impact.

Advancing Foundation Models, Physical and Agentic AI

LillyPod is more than a tool — it’s a new scientific instrument that brings together proprietary data and advanced AI models.

With this foundation, Lilly teams can analyze genomes, explore billions of chemical possibilities and apply AI across clinical development and manufacturing to design better trials, optimize production and accelerate decision‑making. Together, these capabilities enable faster, more precise and more scalable creation and delivery of medicines.

“LillyPod will usher in a new era of AI-driven drug discovery,” said Tim Coleman, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Lilly. “We believe that computation is foundational to science and that Lilly patients deserve every advantage that we can give them.”

Select models will be made available through Lilly TuneLab, an AI and machine learning platform that provides biotech companies with access to drug discovery models built on proprietary Lilly data generated at a cost of over $1 billion.

As the first drug discovery platform with plans to offer both Lilly models and NVIDIA BioNeMo open foundation models for healthcare and life sciences, TuneLab uses a federated learning infrastructure built on NVIDIA FLARE, which enables biotech companies to tap into powerful proprietary AI models while keeping their data private and separate from other users. As more companies participate, the models improve, benefitting all users and further expanding AI access for the biotech ecosystem.

Historically, drug discovery has been constrained by the physical limits of the wet lab. Even highly productive teams can typically analyze roughly 2,000 molecular ideas per target per year, because each experiment requires physical synthesis and testing.

“Now the supercomputer center essentially just breaks the physical limit [of the wet lab],” said Yue Wang Webster, vice president of research and development informatics at Lilly. “Now in the dry lab, you can test billions of molecule ideas at your fingertips.”

LillyPod removes this constraint by creating a computational dry lab at massive scale, where scientists can simulate and evaluate billions of molecular hypotheses in parallel before committing to physical experiments.

With its internal AI platforms, Lilly employees can also use LillyPod to build chatbots, agentic workflows and research lab agents without reinventing the wheel.

By combining science, data and compute power, Lilly and NVIDIA are breaking new ground for AI in life sciences.

“This machine is exactly how AI should be used,” said Fuchs. “It should be used for science. It should be used to lessen suffering and improve the human condition.”

More from HPCwire

• NVIDIA and Lilly Announce Co-Innovation AI Lab for Drug Discovery
• Lilly Partners with NVIDIA to Build Pharmaceutical Industry’s Most Powerful AI Supercomputer

Source: Rory Kelleher, NVIDIA

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IAG reports record operating profits on margins of more than 15% at British Airways and sister airline Iberia

British Airways’ owner, International Airlines Group, has announced a sharp rise in annual profits to almost £4bn despite a slight fall in passenger numbers in 2025.

Pre-tax profits across IAG increased by 20% to €4.5bn (£3.9bn), with record operating profits on margins of more than 15% at BA and its sister airline Iberia.

TORONTO and AMSTERDAM, Feb. 27, 2026 — Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and Equinix, Inc. today announced they have entered into a joint agreement to purchase atNorth—a leading Nordic high-density colocation and built-to-suit data center provider—from Partners Group, one of the largest firms in the global private markets industry.

Photo of one of the atNorth facilities in the Nordics

The US$4 billion enterprise value transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. The agreement between CPP Investments and Equinix will support atNorth in its continued rapid scaling, through capturing opportunities created by rising demand for data center infrastructure. CPP Investments will invest approximately US$1.6 billion, owning an approximate 60% controlling interest, and Equinix will own an approximate 40% stake. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive upon close to Equinix’s adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) per share.

atNorth’s portfolio includes eight operational data centers alongside several sites under development across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, as well as plans for further expansion, with 1 GW of secured power and a considerable amount of additional future capacity planned. Designed to meet increasing demand for AI and high-performance computing, several of the company’s facilities are liquid cooling-enabled to support high-density workloads. Across its portfolio, atNorth integrates renewable energy sourcing, heat reuse initiatives and efficient modular design to advance circular economy principles and minimize environmental impact.

“This acquisition is a powerful validation of atNorth’s journey and its market position as the leading Nordics data center platform,” said Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth. “It further illustrates the strategic importance of the region as Europe’s rising AI powerhouse. I’m extremely proud to announce the next step in our chapter, welcoming this investment from CPP Investments and Equinix, which will enable access to capital, global enterprise, and hyperscale relationships, and supply chain strength required to scale at pace. Our strategy remains firmly rooted in the Nordics, and we will continue to operate independently under the atNorth brand, preserving our dedication to the communities where we operate and the culture and values that have defined our success to date.”

“This transaction builds on our long-standing and highly productive relationship with Equinix,” said Maximilian Biagosch, Senior Managing Director & Global Head of Real Assets, CPP Investments. “It demonstrates our conviction and commitment to the data center sector, where demand continues to accelerate, fueled by continued strong enterprise demand as well as cloud and AI adoption. The Nordics are an attractive market for data center growth and the opportunity to partner with Equinix on this acquisition allows us to deploy capital at scale into a high-quality platform, helping us deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns for CPP contributors and beneficiaries.”

“The scalable sites of atNorth are very complementary to Equinix’s connectivity services and global footprint. Combined with our joint focus on sustainability, this acquisition is expected to enhance our ability to help customers unlock the full potential of the Nordics’ expanding digital landscape,” explained Bruce Owen, President, EMEA, Equinix. “For businesses looking to scale with resilience, Equinix offers a future-ready infrastructure for long-term success, maintaining the jurisdictional and data sovereignty of organizations operating in the region. We are delighted to partner with CPP Investments, whose long-term track record of investing in the sector is highly complementary to Equinix’s connectivity services.”

There are multiple factors contributing to the Nordics’ burgeoning status as a critical hub for the next generation of digital growth. The Nordics region is widely recognized for its strong and resilient economy, supported by a long‑standing emphasis on innovation, research and technical expertise. Renowned worldwide for its leadership in environmentally sustainable projects, the Nordic region provides access to renewable energy sources, bolstered by its naturally cool climates.

Highlights / Key Facts

• As part of the transaction, CPP Investments and Equinix have provisionally agreed to a financing package of US$4.2 billion (€3.6 billion), underwritten by a group of European and Canadian lenders to fund the transaction as well as the capital required to fund the expansion of the business.
• atNorth has an installed and active development pipeline of approximately 800 MW that will come online over the next five years. In addition, it has plans for significant further expansion, with an additional 1 GW of secured power and a considerable amount of future capacity planned, providing a platform for future expansion across the Nordics.
• Equinix currently operates eight data centers in the Nordics, including five in Helsinki and three in Stockholm, contributing to a wider European footprint of over 100 facilities across 20 countries. This regional reach enables customers to deploy infrastructure close to end users and directly connect with AI, cloud, network and enterprise partners anywhere in the world.
• The transaction adds to CPP Investments’ long-standing collaboration with Equinix, which includes a 2024 joint venture alongside GIC to expand the Equinix xScale data center program.
• The investment further enhances CPP Investments’ global data center strategy and builds out its presence in Europe.
• Designing for responsible operations and in line with atNorth’s sustainability focus, Equinix operates all its European facilities with 100% renewable energy coverage and is on track to achieve its global net-zero target by 2040. The company’s environmental strategy centers around implementing energy efficiency initiatives to optimize energy usage, piloting innovative decarbonization solutions and collaborating with suppliers to address emissions.
• Equinix delivers customer-controlled sovereignty, providing the foundation of digital infrastructure—secure facilities, reliable power, private connectivity—with customers keeping 100% control of their technology stack, data and operational decisions. The company’s global infrastructure enables organizations to access comprehensive ecosystems around the world while maintaining uncompromising local control.
• Equinix was advised by Guggenheim Securities Europe Ltd. as financial advisor as well as Slaughter and May as legal advisor.

About atNorth

atNorth is the leading Nordic data center company that offers cost-effective, scalable high-density colocation and built-to-suit services trusted by industry-leading organizations. With sustainability at its core, atNorth’s data centers run on renewable energy resources and support circular economy principles. All atNorth sites leverage innovative design, power efficiency, and intelligent operations to provide long-term infrastructure and flexible colocation deployments. atNorth is headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland and operates eight data centers in strategic locations across the Nordics, as well as a ninth under construction in Kouvola, Finland, a tenth site in Ølgod, Denmark and an eleventh campus in Stockholm, Sweden. The business has also announced a new mega-site development in the Sollefteå Municipality in Sweden.

About CPP Investments

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Canada Pension Plan Fund in the best interest of the more than 22 million contributors and beneficiaries. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, we make investments around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and alternative strategies including in partnership with funds. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York City, São Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm’s length from governments. At December 31, 2025, the Fund totaled C$780.7 billion.

About Equinix

Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) shortens the path to boundless connectivity anywhere in the world. Its digital infrastructure, data center footprint and interconnected ecosystems empower innovations that enhance our work, life and planet. Equinix connects economies, countries, organizations and communities, delivering seamless digital experiences and cutting-edge AI—quickly, efficiently and everywhere.

Source: Equinix

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Feb. 27, 2026 — The participation of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) in this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) will focus on showcasing how artificial intelligence translates into solutions with real impact, thanks to the services offered by the BSC AI Factory. With advanced AI and supercomputing resources and an environment designed to drive innovation, the BSC AI Factory makes it easier for startups, small businesses, and public administrations to explore new opportunities and accelerate digital transformation with an impact across Europe.

At 4 Years From Now (4YFN), the MWC area dedicated to tech startups, BSC will present the catalog of 24 specialized services that BSC AI Factory offers to companies, organized into six strategic pillars: access to advanced supercomputing; data management services; technical consultancy; regulatory compliance in responsible AI; specialized sectoral consultancy in health, climate, and language models; and training and talent development programs.

The BSC AI Factory, one of the first established in Europe, offers comprehensive support ranging from initial maturity assessment to the deployment of scalable solutions. This approach translates scientific excellence into competitiveness, growth, and economic impact, facilitating the adoption of secure, efficient, and trustworthy AI.

Through January 2026, the BSC AI Factory provided 505 services, selected 14 strategic projects, trained 314 participants, and evaluated approximately 92 initiatives within the framework of EuroHPC, the European Union’s supercomputing initiative, thereby strengthening the European AI ecosystem. By the end of the project in March 2028, the initiative expects to assist 2,000 public and private clients and offer a total of 3,000 services.

The BSC booth at 4YFN (8.1B55, Hall 8, Fira Gran Via) will host 16 startups collaborating with the BSC AI Factory. These companies will exhibit their innovative solutions in sectors such as healthcare, quantum computing, urban intelligence, sustainability, privacy-preserving AI, and industrial automation. Additionally, on Tuesday, March 3 at 3:00 PM, a session will be held to present the BSC AI Factory service catalog and highlight open opportunities for startups, including access to incubation and acceleration spaces.

Destination Earth 2050: Journey into a Climate Future

The BSC space at 4YFN will host the interactive experience ‘Destination Earth 2050: Journey into a Climate Future’ every day of the event. This experience will offer a journey through the past and future of real climate phenomena using the Earth’s digital twin from the European initiative Destination Earth, in which BSC plays a strategic role.

In a context where climate change intensifies risks and generates increasing impacts on health, the economy, and production systems, tools such as the Destination Earth climate digital twin are essential for anticipating scenarios and planning adaptation to the changes we face.

The visualized cases clearly illustrate how climate change not only intensifies extreme weather events but also broadens their scope. One of the examples analyzed is the DANA that shook Valencia in 2024. In this case, we can see that while the storm dynamics would be similar in different climate scenarios, the intensity and affected area would grow significantly (up to 25-30%) in future conditions, covering an even larger part of eastern Spain and affecting areas of Murcia or Andalusia more intensely.

The BSC AI Factory translates this knowledge into applied fields, driving AI services to transform the complexity of climate digital twins into solutions for strategic sectors such as:

• Energy: Implementation of AI for predictive analysis that optimizes energy demand forecasting, reduces operational inefficiencies, and reinforces the stability of national grids.
• Climate: Use of digital twins and high-resolution simulations to improve the design of public policies and strengthen natural disaster prevention systems.
• Agrifood: Integration of high-precision climate predictions into AI solutions to optimize production and decision-making for agrifood companies.

Sessions and Conferences at the Agora

The BSC space at 4YFN will also feature a prominent agenda of presentations on the impact of AI and supercomputing in areas such as health, sustainability, digital infrastructure, and the public sector. The program is complemented by sessions on talent creation, investment strategies, and educational talks.

Source: BSC

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EPA rolls back rules as chemical firms claim provisions in RMP protection system too expensive to implement

The Trump administration is slowly dismantling the federal disaster management system that protects the nation from chemical catastrophes, such as fires and explosions at high-risk facilities.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Response Management Program (RMP) requires more than 12,500 high-risk facilities to develop protocols to prevent catastrophes, or limit fallout, and was largely designed to protect workers, first responders, and fence-line communities.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Feb. 27, 2026 — IonQ has announced that it has successfully deployed the technology powering the Romanian National Quantum Communication Infrastructure (RoNaQCI). This initiative represents one of the largest and most complex operational quantum key distribution (QKD) networks in Europe and one of the largest of its kind outside of China.

Delivered in partnership with the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest and RoEduNet, Romania’s national research and education network, the project marks a major milestone in Europe’s efforts to protect critical communications against current and future cyber threats. The nationwide network is built exclusively using IonQ’s commercially available QKD technology, demonstrating that quantum-secure communications are scalable and operational for national infrastructure today.

“IonQ is proud to support this large operational quantum-secure communications network deployed in Europe, and to directly contribute to the realization of EuroQCI, which is building Europe’s flagship quantum communication infrastructure,” said Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO of IonQ. “This deployment of QKD at national scale supports critical security initiatives and protects sensitive communications across government, healthcare, research, education, and data center environments.”

Romania’s quantum infrastructure now includes 36 quantum-secured links spanning more than 1,500 kilometers, accounting for more than 20 percent of Europe’s terrestrial quantum communications infrastructure to date. This network connects six major metropolitan areas including Bucharest, Iași, Timișoara, Craiova, Cluj-Napoca, and Constanța, to ensure secure data movement through end-to-end distribution of encryption keys transported in a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) network combined with data traffic in C-band across the metropolitan part of the network.

“Our newly deployed national QKD infrastructure is an important milestone both for Romania and for the EuroQCI effort,” said Prof. Pantelimon George Popescu, Head of the Quantum Computing Laboratory at POLITEHNICA Bucharest. “This network establishes a practical foundation for secure data exchange across Romania and contributes to the broader European effort to build interoperable quantum communications networks.”

All QKD systems deployed across the network were supplied by IonQ’s subsidiary, ID Quantique, ensuring consistent performance, interoperability, and security at a national scale. The project brought together a broad consortium of 12 Romanian universities, seven research institutes, three national agencies, and additional public and private stakeholders.

This news follows IonQ’s continued work to accelerate quantum-secure communications across Europe as part of the European quantum communications infrastructure. Most recently, IonQ announced a partnership with the Slovak Academy of Sciences to deploy Slovakia’s first national quantum communication network and has launched the Geneva Quantum Network in Switzerland. IonQ also joined Q-Alliance with the government of Italy, and designated Oxford, UK as its EMEA headquarters, reinforcing the company’s commitment to supporting Europe’s quantum initiatives.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the forthcoming IonQ Tempo, will be the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Source: IonQ

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OpenAI has closed what is now the largest private financing in history -- a $110 billion round at a $730 billion pre-money valuation that more than doubles the $40 billion raise it completed just a year ago, itself a record for a private tech company at the time. Amazon invested $50 billion, SoftBank put in $30 billion, and Nvidia committed $30 billion, and additional investors are expected to join as the round progresses. The valuation is a sharp jump from the $500 billion OpenAI commanded in a secondary financing in October, and the round dwarfs recent raises by rivals Anthropic ($30 billion) and xAI ($20 billion). The company has been telling investors it is now targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, a more measured figure than the $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments CEO Sam Altman had touted months earlier. OpenAI is projecting more than $280 billion in total revenue by 2030, split roughly equally between consumer and enterprise. ChatGPT now has over 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million paying subscribers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WAKEFIELD, Mass., Feb. 27, 2026 — The AI-RAN Alliance has announced a major growth milestone, reaching 132 members worldwide, welcoming new Board Members including Qualcomm, SK Telecom, and Vodafone, and accelerating delivery of AI-native RAN innovation at a global scale. At MWC 2026, the Alliance will present 33 AI-driven innovation demonstrations and unveil four new industry blueprints. These will highlight how AI can be integrated into the Radio Access Network (RAN) to enhance wireless networks making them more intelligent and also demonstrate how the network will support AI applications and foster new ways of innovations.

In under two years, the Alliance has become a leading platform for software-defined and AI-native network innovation, uniting operators, technology partners, universities, and research labs worldwide. Its working groups covering AI-for-RAN, AI-and-RAN, AI-on-RAN; task group, such as Data-for-AI; and the shared labs are accelerating benchmarking, delivering reference designs researched collaboratively by industry and academia.

From Proof to Practice

The 33 demos at MWC will show how AI is now embedded across every layer of the Network, from the RAN physical layer to orchestration and edge applications.

• AI‑for‑RAN: Leveraging AI to optimize the RAN’s performance, from radio signal processing to network operations and automation, to deliver faster speeds, better coverage, lower energy consumption, and efficient use of radio resources.
• AI‑and‑RAN orchestration: End‑to‑end AI control that places workloads on shared compute based on cost and performance targets, cutting operational complexity.
• AI-on-RAN: Deploying AI workloads directly on mobile network infrastructure, enabling advanced applications at the network edge. By bringing AI capabilities closer to the user, we enable low-latency applications, real-time AI inference, and new use cases that were previously impossible.
• Agentic RAN & large telco models: How agentic AI frameworks can autonomously interpret operator intents and optimize RAN operations in distinct scenarios using Large Telco Models.
• Digital twins: Virtual replicas of radio networks used to train and test AI before live deployment.

Together, they reflect a clear shift from experimentation to AI-native RAN implementations.

Expanding Global Collaboration and Policy Alignment

The Alliance is expanding its technology and innovation collaborations globally, welcoming Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) as a new member, while advancing AI-RAN commercialization through its collaboration with South Korea’s AI Network Alliance (AINA), supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT). This collaboration aims to support the development of use cases and facilitate the contribution of trial results to the relevant AI-RAN Alliance Working Groups. It also encompasses the promotion of vendor lab tests focused on performance and efficiency.

New Industry Blueprints to Accelerate Deployment

The Alliance has released four foundational publications defining the key building blocks of AI-powered 5G and 6G networks, providing guidance for implementation. These include:

• An AI-RAN Reference Architecture framework outlining a high-level AI‑native RAN design, including major functional domains and main components.
• A report summarizing the latest AI/ML techniques and models for improving RAN performance from link‑level optimizations to network‑wide automation.
• A document defining AI-RAN platform and infrastructure orchestration for managing AI and RAN workloads to dynamically optimize resource efficiency and ROI, while ensuring strict RAN performance
• A white paper that explains how AI‑on‑RAN enables differentiated, monetizable connectivity for mobile‑native AI applications.

Together, these publications establish architectural foundations and operations strategies needed to transform the RAN into a multi-purpose platform, helping operators accelerate innovation from research to real-world deployment and the introduction of predictable, premium-differentiated connectivity essential for AI-native applications.

Industry Alignment, Real‑World Impact

Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, Principal Fellow of SoftBank Corp.’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology and Chair of the AI-RAN Alliance, commented: “These milestones reflect the growing recognition that AI-native RAN is no longer experimental, it is foundational to the future of wireless networks. With 132 members, active global collaborations and demonstrations, the Alliance is turning innovation into impact and accelerating the path to commercial deployment. The industry is aligning and we’re delivering partnerships that will deliver value to stakeholders worldwide.”

MWC 2026

The Alliance will make its exhibitor debut at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Hall 2 (Booth #2E45). It will run 33 multi-member AI-RAN demonstrations across the four-day event, offering insights into real-world performance improvements, energy-and-spectral-efficiency gains and automation breakthroughs across 5G-Advanced and 6G-ready AI-native networks.

For more information, visit: https://ai-ran.org.

About the AI-RAN Alliance

The AI-RAN Alliance is a global consortium accelerating the integration of artificial intelligence into Radio Access Networks. Established in 2024, the Alliance unites leading companies, researchers, and technologists to advance open, practical approaches for building AI-native wireless networks. The Alliance focuses on enabling experimentation, sharing knowledge, and real-world performance to support the next generation of mobile infrastructure.

Source: AI-RAN Alliance

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Feb. 27, 2026 — Welinq and Pasqal have announced the strengthening of their strategic collaboration to accelerate the development of networked quantum computing based on interconnected neutral-atom quantum processors. Building on an established collaboration and a shared neutral-atom technology stack, the two companies are now moving into a new phase of rapid implementation, tightly aligning quantum computing and quantum networking to deliver scalable, network-ready quantum architectures designed for deployment in data centers.

Credit: Welinq

This collaboration reaches a new milestone with InterQo, a €4 million, supported by the Île-de-France Region and BPI France through the i-Demo Régionalisé (France 2030) call. The project includes a bilateral industrial partnership between Pasqal and Welinq, alongside a dedicated research collaboration led by Pasqal with the group of Alexei Ourjoumtsev at Collège de France (JEIP), a leading expert in quantum optics and strong light–matter interactions.

From Individual Machines to Networked Quantum Computers

Early deployments of quantum computing resources generally depend on standalone quantum processing units (QPUs). While these machines are already demonstrating practical utility and delivering value, scaling capacity will ultimately encounter practical limits.

By allowing separate quantum processors to function as a single, more powerful computer, quantum networking fundamentally shifts how quantum resources can be deployed and scaled. In practice, quantum information is converted from qubits inside a QPU into photons – the ideal carriers of flying quantum information – and transmitted optically between processors. This optical quantum interconnect enables entanglement to be shared between qubits located on different QPUs, effectively creating a larger quantum computer with many more qubits than any individual machine could provide.

This collective operation would enable quantum computing to scale beyond the vertical scalability barriers of individual processors, currently around 10,000 physical qubits for neutral-atom systems. By networking multiple QPUs, the architecture can enable more complex quantum algorithms and support the development of large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation.

Neutral-Atom Technologies Aligned from Computing to Networking

Pasqal and Welinq independently develop neutral-atom technologies that are natively compatible, from quantum computing to quantum networking, operating at the same optical wavelengths.

Pasqal has established itself as an industrial leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, operating two quantum manufacturing facilities in France and Canada. The company has deployed operational QPUs at major HPC centers across Europe, including CEA and Jülich, with CINECA following, as well as QPUs in Saudi Arabia and Canada. On the technology side, Pasqal is building QPU architectures which are natively compatible to work in networked configurations. This includes vacuum chamber designs that can physically integrate photonic interfaces while maintaining pristine conditions QPUs require, as well as dynamical qubit positioning, that enables flexible interface – qubit coupling for multiplexed interconnection.

Welinq develops cutting-edge quantum networking solutions designed to interconnect quantum processors at high rates. Its core innovation is a high-rate entanglement generation platform based on waveguide-QED, acting as a “quantum Ethernet port” that allows quantum processors to be directly networked and to share entanglement between them. As part of this full-stack networking approach, Welinq has also demonstrated the most powerful neutral atom–based quantum memory to date and recently announced its first commercial sale, translating laboratory breakthroughs into deployable components for data center environments.

This alignment supports a coherent approach to building quantum computer clusters that can be deployed in data centers. It also aligns with broader industrial initiatives such as Q-PLANET, a Pasqal-led European program to structure and scale the quantum technology supply chain, supported by Welinq as a partner. Together with long-standing collaborations with industrial partners such as Exail for advanced laser technologies, these initiatives establish a solid industrial foundation for quantum technologies and strengthen Europe’s position in the global quantum landscape.

InterQo: A Concrete Milestone Backed by the Paris Region

This strategic alignment now moves into concrete execution through InterQo.

“Quantum networking represents a promising pathway toward large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing,” said Loïc Henriet, CEO of Pasqal. “While we have operational QPUs deployed worldwide today, one next major scaling challenge will be connecting individual processors into networked quantum clusters. Our collaboration with Welinq through the InterQo program lays essential groundwork for this transition.”

InterQo represents a concrete step in realizing this vision. The project brings together Pasqal, Welinq, and the Collège de France in a joint research and industrial collaboration. Supported by €4 million from the Île-de-France Region and BPI France through the France 2030 program (i-Demo Régionalisé call), the work focuses on two critical challenges: designing QPUs with built-in networking capabilities and integrating efficient photon extraction systems to connect them. This effort accelerates the convergence of proven technologies toward a fully operational, network-ready quantum processor.

“Welinq is delighted to continue its successful collaboration with Pasqal,” said Tom Darras, CEO of Welinq. “By bringing neutral-atom computing and quantum networking together, we are moving another step closer to the deployment and commercialization of interconnected quantum computers within data center environments, worldwide”

Toward Production-Ready Networked Quantum Systems

This partnership positions Pasqal and Welinq to deliver networked quantum systems that integrate into existing data center infrastructure. Beyond technical milestones, this collaboration strengthens Europe’s quantum ecosystem by combining industrial deployment expertise with breakthrough networking capabilities, both developed on European soil. As quantum computing will advance toward networked, production-scale systems, the Pasqal–Welinq partnership is set to mark a key milestone, delivering the critical infrastructure required for next-generation quantum data centers, while establishing technological leadership and generating high-value employment across the French and European quantum ecosystem.

More from HPCwire

• Welinq Secures 1st Sale of Its Entangled Photon Pair Source
• Pasqal Delivers Italy’s 1st Neutral Atom Quantum Computer

About Pasqal

Pasqal is leading the industrialization and deployment of neutral atom quantum computing, transforming Nobel Prize-winning research into real-world solutions for industry, science, and governments. Since 2019, the company has built high-performance quantum systems and cloud-ready software that tackle the world’s most complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and AI. With a truly global footprint — including teams and facilities across Europe, North America, and Asia — and backed by over $215 million from international investors, Pasqal is accelerating the adoption of robust, high-performance quantum computing.

About Welinq

Based in Paris, Welinq is pioneering in the industrialization of quantum infrastructure, offering solutions that extend beyond individual hardware components. With a full technology stack spanning software solutions for algorithm partitioning and a suite of quantum hardware, including photon pair sources, quantum memories, and qubit-photon interfaces, Welinq addresses the comprehensive needs of quantum data centers and secure networks. A spin-off from Sorbonne University, CNRS, and PSL University, Welinq was founded in 2022 by Tom Darras, Julien Laurat, and Eleni Diamanti.

Source: Welinq

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Both sides are reporting they have inflicted heavy casualties on each other, but it is difficult to know the true numbers when they are presenting sharply divergent figures.

Pakistan’s information minister Attaullah Tarar claims 133 Afghan Taliban fighters were killed, with more than 200 injured. Of its own soldiers, Tarar says that two were killed in the cross-border fighting, while three were injured.

The UK is deeply concerned by the significant escalation in tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We urge both sides to take immediate steps toward de‑escalation, avoid further harm to civilians, and re‑engage in mediated dialogue.

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Feb. 27, 2026 — ASUS has announced ASUS Optimized Liquid-Cooling Solutions and a strategic partner framework designed to address the escalating thermal, power, and density challenges of next-generation AI and high-performance computing data centers.

As AI and HPC workloads push compute density and power consumption beyond the capabilities of traditional air cooling, optimized liquid-cooling solutions by ASUS will provide the critical thermal management required for the next-generation NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 system based data centers. By efficiently dissipating heat from high-performance CPUs, GPUs, and accelerator-dense racks, ASUS significantly reduces energy consumption, lowers PUE, and optimizes TCO while supporting unprecedented rack density.

ASUS Optimized Liquid-Cooling Solutions offer a comprehensive portfolio spanning direct-to-chip (D2C), in-row CDU–based cooling, and hybrid configurations, enabled through collaboration with global infrastructure leaders. Leveraging a strategic framework of partners — including Schneider and Vertiv, alongside precision components from Auras Technology, Cooler Master, and other industry leaders —ASUS provides purpose-built cooling solutions that ensure optimal stability and performance at scale. With 2,156 No. 1 SPEC CPU records and 248 No. 1 MLPerf results, ASUS continues to demonstrate leadership in real-world compute density and AI performance.

A flagship example of liquid-cooling expertise by ASUS is its recent deployment for the National Center for High-performance Computing, National Institutes of Applied Research (NCHC, NIAR) in Taiwan. The system features a dual-compute architecture, including the Nano4 NVIDIA HGX H200 cluster and NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system — Taiwan’s first fully liquid-cooled AI supercomputer deployment of this architecture.

Designed and engineered by ASUS from the ground up, the system implements direct liquid-cooling (DLC) technology to achieve an exceptional power-usage effectiveness (PUE) of just 1.18. This deployment seamlessly integrates high performance with sustainable design, demonstrating the strength of ASUS in thermal and energy management for large-scale AI infrastructure.

Join ASUS at GTC 2026

ASUS announced its participation as a Diamond Sponsor (Booth #421) at NVIDIA GTC 2026 from March 16–19 in San Jose, USA. Under the theme Trusted AI, Total Flexibility, ASUS is collaborating with NVIDIA and global infrastructure giants to showcase a robust, next-generation liquid-cooling ecosystem. Come explore with us and witness the next evolution of AI infrastructure.

About ASUS

ASUS is a global technology leader that provides the world’s most innovative and intuitive devices, components, and solutions to deliver incredible experiences that enhance the lives of people everywhere. With its team of 5,000 in-house R&D experts, the company is world-renowned for continuously reimagining today’s technologies. Consistently ranked as one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, ASUS is also committed to sustaining an incredible future. The goal is to create a net zero enterprise that helps drive the shift towards a circular economy, with a responsible supply chain creating shared value for every one of us.

Source: ASUS

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