A Massachusetts newspaper reports that officials from the town of Littleton (population: 10,141) "claim that five of Littletonâ(TM)s Flock Safety cameras were switched back on by the company without informing the town..." Littleton had temporarily disabled the cameras earlier this year, according to the article, but upon discovering the cameras were still active, city officials say they directed the Town Counsel "to initiate cancellation of the contract with Flock Safety and directed the Town Administrator to coordinate the removal of the six cameras on public ways" with the Department of Public Works. Ironically, it's the same Massachusetts town that last year was breached by a Chinese-state-sponsored hacking group for over 300 days. Flock has also considered dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers' vehicles "to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed," reports 404 Media, "essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according to a Flock presentation shared with 404 Media... 404 Media first revealed the intended partnership last August when multiple sources provided information on the plan."

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British Columbia declared a state of emergency Saturday after a fast-moving wildfire destroyed homes and forced more than 20,000 people to flee their communities.

Getting rid of old computers and printers responsibly is free, accessible and considerably simpler than most people assume.

There are Americans who are "obscenely obese and at the same time malnourished," Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says. He blames ultraprocessed food.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti's gang-controlled capital, there's an orphanage taking in the most at-risk kids. It's run by bestselling author Mitch Albom and his wife Janine.

Indiana University football was known for losing. That changed with the recent historic season, when head coach Curt Cignetti and quarterback Fernando Mendoza led the team to a national championship.

Food writer Michael Pollan, who has written about the health risks of highly processed foods for decades, shared his advice for eating healthier and avoiding ultraprocessed foods with 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker.

Correspondent Anderson Cooper spoke to 60 Minutes Overtime about his former math teacher, Yves Volel, who ran for president in Haiti in 1987 and was later assassinated.

Stacy Librandi went to Haiti as a volunteer new to disaster relief in 2010. Sixteen years later, she runs the largest and foremost emergency medical ambulance and medevac service in Haiti.

Former Indiana University linebacker Aiden Fisher credits head coach Curt Cignetti for Indiana University's success, citing his savvy recruitment of players — often from outside of college football's top teams — to build a roster of hard-working underdogs.

Scharf, who helped president win approval for $400m ballroom, to replace David Warrington on 1 September

Donald Trump announced on Sunday that ⁠Will ​Scharf, the staff secretary who helped secure approval for the $400m White House ballroom project, will become ⁠White House counsel and assistant to the president.

Effective 1 September, Scharf will replace David Warrington, who will be leaving the administration to join the private sector. Warrington ​formerly served ​as a ​personal counsel and a ​lawyer ‌for Trump’s ​2024 campaign.

NBC Bay Area brings news from the small idyllic California town of Suisun City (population: 29,518). The city council "declared a state of emergency Saturday after a cyberattack that shut down computer systems including 911 public safety operations." "Malicious software infected and compromised" the East Bay community's information technology systems beginning about 5:45 a.m. Friday, the city said on social media. "The cybersecurity incident hit critical public safety operations, including 911 routing, police and fire dispatch, records and city services," the city said. "There is no imminent threat to the public," the city said. "All public safety services remain active." The city shut down its computer network "to contain the threat and preserve evidence for a federal investigation," it said... Suisun City dispatchers were taking calls for service through the Solano County dispatch center. Suisun City police officers and firefighters continued responding to calls for service, the city said, but online city services and internal operations were unavailable. On Facebook the city said it was "working alongside federal, state and regional agencies, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and California Office of Emergency Services to maintain emergency services, investigate the incident and restore systems." But Bay Area PBS station KQED notes "They're only the latest local government in the region to be hit by a cyberattack." Earlier this year, Foster City and Pittsburg experienced other cyberattacks that impacted services in their own jurisdictions. Foster City declared a state of emergency after a March ransomware incident that shut down many services for more than a week. Pittsburg lost almost $1 million to a February phishing attack, though over half of it was recovered.

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US congresswoman to share journey online as she criticizes Trump administration’s attacks on reproductive care

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has announced she is going to freeze her eggs and will be sharing the process online.

The progressive New York congresswoman, 36, revealed her decision to undergo fertility treatment in a series of Instagram stories this weekend. “This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

First of PM’s ‘everyday fixes’ to be banning fake discounts and making it easier to cancel unwanted subscriptions

• Andy Burnham: I’ll end the rip-offs that people hate

Andy Burnham has promised a series of measures to tackle the cost of living, including a ban on fake discounts and making it easier for people to escape unwanted subscriptions.

The crackdown on “rip-off” business practices is expected to benefit consumers to the tune of £400m a year and will be the first in a range of “everyday fixes” to be implemented in the coming months.

XDA Developers reports: On July 22, a Google DeepMind engineer, Vidy Thatte, shared a snippet of a browser he built that "treats every URL as a prompt and generates a site from scratch" on his X account. Just a few days later, he shared a TestFlight link to let iPhone users try it for themselves. The browser he launched is called Gem, and it's a browser that doesn't really...browse. Instead of fetching a webpage from a server the way Chrome or Safari would, Gem hands whatever URL you type over to Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite model and asks it to generate a webpage on the spot. If you enter a real address, it builds its own interpretation of that site rather than loading the actual thing. If you enter an address that doesn't exist, Gemini simply invents a website to fill the gap. In other words, you're not visiting the internet so much as browsing one the model dreams up as you go... Thatte's reasoning was that with a model as fast and cheap as Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite, there's almost no practical difference anymore between loading a website and generating a brand-new one on the fly... Given that this tool is powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and it's just a side project rather than a full-fledged tool, it doesn't come with Gemini access baked in. Gem requires you to bring your own Gemini API key to get it working. Every URL you enter fires off a request to the model, so Gem needs a key linked to your Google account to actually generate anything, with the usage billed to you. You can grab a key for free from Google AI Studio, paste it into Gem's settings, and you're ready to start typing URLs. While you can get started for free, I ran into the limits within two minutes of playing around. So, I did need to enable billing on my API key and decided to load $10 into it. While the blogger's own site seemed to only get the Gemini logo, tapping it revealed nearly two dozen remixing options. (Dark mode, Reader, Neubrutalist, Broadsheet, Blueprint, Comic book, Punk zine, Notebook, Chalkboard, Receipt, Teletext, System 7, Wes Anderson, Cyber neon, Clay, Frosted, Geocities, Matrix, Museum, Windows 95, Terminal, Vaporwave, and Hide images...) "The frontend morphed before my eyes. Every new edit took practically no time to load, and within a second or two, the same XDA articles would reappear wearing a completely different skin..." For another site, it kept the article headlines, but then rewrote all the text! And after entering an address they knew didn't exist — their own name — in two seconds the browser whipped up a slick portfolio "genuinely been better than some of what those tools produced with far more time and context to work with." But its link to a LinkedIn profile led to a lookalike page, because Gem "had simply generated its own version of it, complete with a made-up follower number and details I never wrote...."

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In the ever-shifting theater of America’s culture wars, conservative media has found its newest gladiatorial conscript: Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham.

It’s an unlikely promotion—and from backers who, until recently, probably couldn’t have named five WNBA players.

The reason for her esteem probably has little to do with her faultless three point precision. In an interview with ESPN, Cunningham declared she opposed transgender women—whom she referred to as “biological men”—competing in women’s sports, arguing the issue was about “protecting young girls.” Later, she cheekily doubled down on the statement, posting an outfit photo on Instagram with the caption: “I said what I said” with a saluting emoji.

That was enough.

Almost overnight, Cunningham became more than a WNBA player. She became one of conservatism’s newest culture-war combatants: blonde, white, conventionally attractive, and playing in a league overwhelmingly composed of players of color, and with one of the largest openly LGBTQ+ player populations in professional sports.

Within days of Cunningham’s remarks, conservative media had found its new protagonist. 

Fox News host Riley Gaines, who herself rose to prominence as an anti-trans NCAA swimmer, called Cunningham “the first current high-level female athlete” willing to publicly oppose transgender participation in women’s sports, and praised her for speaking out from inside what Gaines called “the most woke league of all time.” The Daily Wire cast the now-famous finger-pointer—and on-court defender of Caitlyn Clark, another white player whose first season with the WNBA sparked racialized conversations that cast her Black opponents as too “aggressive”—as someone “now fighting for us.” Trump’s Department of Education joined in, posting a Grok AI-generated image of Cunningham wearing a crown with the caption: “Common sense prevails.”

Cunningham’s ascent into the right’s zeitgeist is by design. For generations, conservative movements have sought to anoint and weaponize cisgender white women as public-facing enforcers of social and racial hierarchy. 

While the specific rallying cry has changed throughout history, their use and ideological framing to the conservative movement has remained largely intact: They serve narratively as bulwarks against some grave impending demographic or social upset, which if allowed to come to fruition would be an assault on the current status quo of women at large. 

Ride of the Valkyries

American political history is thick with appeals to white womanhood as something endangered and therefore requiring protection, particularly against the encroaching civil rights gains of Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ communities. Since the Academy Award-winning Birth of a Nation, the idea that straight white women are in peril simply by living in proximity to minority groups has been repeatedly used to justify racial exclusion and stir up moral panic.

In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, southern governments launched what’s now known as the “Massive Resistance,” a series of laws to prevent integration. The campaign mobilized a movement of white women to organize through schools, newspapers and civic groups in an effort they sold as defending white children, neighborhoods, and public education. It was largely these communities that performed the on-the-ground enforcement of segregation, going so far as to pluck out children suspected of being mixed-race from white schools. This changed the packaging of the politics of segregation: Rather than snarling racism, the message could be framed more politely as a threat to the sanctity of motherhood and child welfare.

Related

An Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill With a Cruel New Twist

By the 1970s, overt defenses of racial segregation had become politically untenable on the national stage. The conservative movement’s next great cultural fight shifted toward gender. As the sexual revolution, second-wave feminism, and the promise of the Equal Rights Amendment changed family structures and challenged traditional gender roles, conservatives increasingly looked to white women to make the case against the nation’s expanding vision of female equality.

In the impeccably dressed mother-of-six Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative movement found its most formidable duelist against progressive feminism. Through her “STOP ERA” campaign, Schlafly argued the Equal Rights Amendment wouldn’t liberate women—it would endanger them by exposing women to the military draft, undermining mothers’ custody rights, and destabilizing the American family. 

Her message was overwhelmingly effective; the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified. As prominent legal scholar and feminist theorist Joan Williams put it, “the ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles.” 

For decades, conservative politics has repeatedly tapped into this vein, transforming cultural anxieties—over motherhood, children’s safety, crime, sexuality, and gender roles—into mass movements by placing cisgender white women front and center. 

At the turn of the late 70s, conservatives promoted Anita Bryant, a wholesome pop singer who warned that gay rights threatened America’s children. During the rise of evangelical moralism of the 1980s, the religious right elevated Patricia Pulling, the suburban Virginia mother whose campaign against Dungeons & Dragons helped ignite the Satanic Panic. From matronly children’s book authors to buxom blue jean models, the conservative avatar is exceedingly familiar: a woman whom white men are encouraged to protect and one whom other white women are encouraged to empathize with and emulate. 

The Girls We Don’t Protect 

In her research on anti-feminist women, sociologist Rebecca Klatch found “most…are white, middle-aged, housewives, married or widowed, new to politics, and oriented toward single issues.”

But by screaming to “remember straight white women,” the right aims to make us forget anyone who sits at the edges of that definition, those long underserved by America’s promise of a truly free and equitable land. It dehumanizes women of color even further in a league where all athletes still earn a fraction of the paychecks their male counterparts take home. It shuts down any future good-faith conversations on how to allow trans athletes to compete and the sheer danger to a trans community increasingly excluded from social participation. It also serves to drown out the voices of women who support trans athletes, and often becomes a political Rorschach test to attack civil rights far beyond who makes a starting line up. 

I don’t know if that’s what Cunningham signed up to represent, and quite frankly, I don’t know if she did either. She most recently told the press that she wants to “get back to basketball.” 

In a free-speaking democratic society, Cunningham, and every athlete, is entitled to be human: to hold opinions, and feelings, and have a political voice. She is not the first, nor will be the last, fair maiden to be cast as a sword-bearing champion for a conservative culture war. 

But if a movement’s cause is about truly protecting women, then perhaps the more revealing question to interrogate is which women it has deemed worthy of protection in the first place. Whose womanhood is treated as universal, whose safety becomes a national rallying cry, and whose voices—including those of Black women, queer women, and transgender women—are left at the margins. That hierarchy often tells us more about the movement behind it than the woman standing under the net.

The post Sophie Cunningham Is the Anti-Trans Right’s New White Woman Mascot appeared first on The Intercept.

Don Nelson was one of two coaches in NBA history to have at least 250 wins with three different franchises — Milwaukee, Dallas and Golden State.

UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"... Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their own 'light-user experience' for universal experience and believe all platforms are fungible. And while it's one thing for a business to delay their delivery dates and increase costs of by introducing a switch in computing environments that's of unquantified and possibly dubious value, how about when a switch in computing environments is made that affects schoolchildren's ability to learn for a period of time? While a MacBook Neo is indeed cute, what might be the possible consequences of a decision to move 25,000 students off Windows and onto MacBook Neos...? Or even the impact on a single kid who moves from a MacBook school to a Windows or Chrome school (or whose home computing environment isn't aligned with their school). Or students whose teachers decide learning in their classrooms should now additionally require an understanding of the Minecraft computing platform/UI (used in over 40,000 school systems.). Learning Management Systems and now various AI Edtech tools used by schoolkids are also subject to change. "Even if students and schools eventually benefit from a new platform, one wonders how much learning is lost during the switch," theodp asks, "and what the financial and educational ROI and payback period look like." Are there bigger problems than we realize? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What are the costs of switching between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A 46-year-old man was arrested on reckless endangerment charges, and authorities are investigating whether the boat was an illegal charter.

The Atlas of Surveillance maintains the largest known database tracking police surveillance technologies across the US.

Israeli PM says IDF will not withdraw until Hamas is disarmed and rebukes US pressure to end wars without his country’s buy-in

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump.

In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in.

This live blog is now closed.

• Israel rejects US-led 15-point Gaza peace plan, says Netanyahu

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a Gaza plan hailed by US president Donald Trump, vowing no military pullout of Gaza until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed. The Israeli military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting.

Here are the other key updates from today:

The US must pressure Israel to accept the next phase of the Gaza plan, a Hamas official said, after Netanyahu rejected the US-backed agreement. “We expect the mediators and the American guarantor to pressure Netanyahu and his government to adhere to the roadmap and not obstruct the process for internal political and electoral reasons,” Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim said.

A Houthi drone salvo targeted a Saudi oil refinery on the Red Sea coast. The Iran-backed group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the Houthis had “succeeded in targeting the Aramco refinery in Jazan on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast with a drone”.

Attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen killed at least four troops from the internationally-recognised government forces and injured 20 more personnel, two military sources said. The initial toll came from strikes on the Yemeni city of Mokha and surrounding areas, as well as Khokha, south of the port city of Hodeida, the sources said on condition of anonymity, after the Houthis announced they had targeted military forces and equipment on the Red Sea coast.

Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian met the country’s supreme ⁠leader Mojtaba Khamenei around the start of the president’s third year in office in late July, state ⁠media said, ⁠and ​a paramilitary leader promised footage of Khamenei in the future. Khamenei was reportedly seriously injured in the ​February strike that killed his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran. The promise to release footage of the leader by paramilitary Basij ⁠Organisation deputy Qasem Qoraishi appeared to be aimed ​at quashing speculation about his health.

On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Sens. Bill Cassidy and Bernie Sanders join Margaret Brennan.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said "I trust the science" on vaccines as measles cases have risen to their highest levels in 35 years.

Small cruise ship rescued skiff in south-east Alaska even though Meta billionaire’s $300m megayacht was closer

Mark Zuckerberg has faced questions over why a small cruise ship in south-east Alaska rescued a stranded skiff and its crew when his 387ft superyacht had been closer.

The Silicon Valley billionaire’s yacht, worth a reported $300m, is said to have “repeatedly” declined to assist when a nearby boat called for help last week.

DETROIT, Michigan — Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed responded sharply Sunday after President Donald Trump posted side-by-side photographs contrasting himself and first lady Melania Trump with El-Sayed and his hijab-wearing wife, captioned “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”

Trump also highlighted El-Sayed’s full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. The Michigan candidate and his supporters have accused Republicans of emphasizing his Arabic name and Muslim identity as a way to portray him as foreign or threatening.

Appearing on CNN, El-Sayed agreed that the couples represented different visions, but turned the attack against Trump. He said he and his wife genuinely love each other and contrasted that with what he characterized as Trump’s pursuit of personal wealth and power. He then shifted to affordability, asking whether Americans can pay for gasoline and groceries and whether parents believe their children will have better lives.

El-Sayed later joked that he and his wife “actually” like each other while questioning the Trumps’ relationship. His comments about their marriage are political rhetoric, not an established fact.

Trump has intensified attacks on El-Sayed since his Democratic primary victory, accusing him of hating Jews and Israel. El-Sayed rejects that characterization, saying he respects Judaism and Jewish Americans while strongly opposing AIPAC and unconditional U.S. military support for Israel.

El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in one of the year’s most closely watched Senate races.

Sources:

• Washington Examiner – MBFC Rating
• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post El-Sayed Fires Back After Trump Targets Him and Wife appeared first on News Facts Network.

• Nelson had second-most coaching wins in NBA history

• Won five titles with Boston Celtics in 1960s and 70s

• Helped develop stars Steph Curry and Dirk Nowitzki

Don Nelson, the second-winningest coach in NBA history who won five championships as a player with the Boston Celtics, died on Sunday. He was 86.

“On Sunday morning our beloved husband, dad, grandfather and great-grandfather Don Nelson ⁠peacefully went to be ⁠with the ​Lord, surrounded by his loving family,” a statement from his family read. “Throughout his last week, friends and family encircled him with love, sharing the ⁠blessing of his friendship and revisiting treasured memories.”

They’re just sunglasses. Normal F****** Sunglasses.

Astronomers say viewing conditions promising for this year’s shower, and 50 to 100 meteors an hour may be visible

The Perseid summer light show is back, and viewing conditions are especially promising across the northern hemisphere.

The meteor shower’s is expected to peak on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and coincides with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade – though the best time to view the fireballs will come after totality.

British Columbia battling 102 fires day and night across province, as breakneck speed hampers firefighters’ efforts

Canada’s federal government has announced it will provide urgent assistance to British Columbia after an onslaught of unprecedented fast-moving wildfires forced about 22,000 people to flee their homes in frantic evacuations.

A total of 102 wildfires were raging across the province on Sunday, of which nearly half were categorised as “out of control”, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Of those fires, 78 ignited during the past week.

Tropical cyclone brings torrential rain and high winds to east coast after hitting Japan’s southern Okinawa province

Typhoon Dolphin, the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China this year, has made landfall on the country’s east coast, bringing torrential rain and strong ⁠winds and triggering warnings ​of flooding and landslides.

The storm has already swept through Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture, injuring six people and cutting power to more than 50,000 buildings.

Daniel Kinahan, 49, faces charges of directing an organized crime group.

The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 9, 2026.

The following is the transcript of an interview with National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 9, 2026.

Levels at reservoir along Arizona-Nevada border dipped below previous record set in 2022, amid water crisis in west

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has plummeted to its lowest water level since it was filled some 90 years ago, the latest sign of a deepening water crisis in the American west.

Water levels at the reservoir, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border outside Las Vegas, hit 1,040.4ft (317.1 meters) above sea level on Friday, according to federal data. That’s just below the record set on 28 July 2022, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Exclusive: Hamish Falconer wants ‘sense of renewed pace’ in post-Brexit talks while staying within Labour’s red lines

• ‘I was on my honeymoon!’: Hamish Falconer’s surprise call-up to Burnham’s cabinet

The UK will move faster and be more ambitious on achieving closer ties with Europe under Andy Burnham’s government, his new chief post-Brexit negotiator has said.

Hamish Falconer, the new cabinet minister in charge of the EU reset talks, said there was “room to be ambitious” within Labour’s red lines on Europe, which exclude reopening discussions on the single market and customs union, and he would look at the “art of the possible”.

"If you're looking for a black or white decision here, you're not going to find it," GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy said about his decision to support Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general.

"I've been a Linux IT administrator for 30 years now," says crhylove (Slashdot reader #205,956), in a new video on his YouTube channel. "I used to be a data center architect, at one point I was the IT director for 13 school districts... I just haven't been happy overall with all the other operating systems out there... " I've been working really diligently for the last few weeks on a new distro called Spaced Linux that is exactly what I want to use. It's heavily focused on the [zoom-friendly 3D] Compiz desktop, very efficient using the rolling Devuan Ceres backend, and avoids dependency hell by promoting mostly Flatpak usage. It's still early, but it's already working great for me, it's been my daily driver for a few weeks now. There's also user-friendly themes — everything from Linux, Android, GeoWorks, and Mac OS X to Windows 11, Windows XP, and even Windows 3.11 (dark or light theme). And you can also run Windows apps under Wine. "And let me tell you, Nvidia runs perfectly on here now..." he adds in the video. "It just works really, really well out of the box." He's now working on voice-command features, bur argues that Spaced Linux "is already extremely usable, extremely efficient, extremely fast, and extremely reliable.... And it's only going to get better and better."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(The Center Square) – Tuesday marks one year since President Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day” in Washington, D.C., leading to the deployment of the National Guard and the beautification of the nation’s capital.

Michigan nominee, who spoke to Obama after primary win, vows to fight inequality as president ‘makes billions off you’

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Michigan, embraced Donald Trump’s suggestion that the two represent “VERY DIFFERENT” versions of the US, pledging to fight inequality while the president is “making billions of dollars off of you”.

In a Saturday night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump shared an image of himself and the first lady, Melania Trump, beside a photo of El-Sayed, who is Muslim, and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, wearing a hijab. “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s [sic],” read the caption.

Exclusive: Sadiq Khan urges Westminster council to adopt ‘positive vision of economic growth’ of nightlife

Sadiq Khan has ordered Westminster council to scrap a policy that would ban new pubs and bars from opening in Soho and the West End of London.

This comes after the Guardian revealed the council’s new licensing policy asks pubs to stop customers from standing up while consuming beverages, which it calls “vertical drinking”. The policy is under consultation and also asks pubs to have table service rather than allowing orders at the bar.

Former state senator tells A Better Discussion that controlling spending, reducing regulation and rebuilding Delaware’s private-sector economy should be priorities

WILMINGTON, Del. (Aug. 9, 2026) — Delaware can strengthen its economy, but doing so will require policymakers to control government spending, reduce barriers to private investment and pay closer attention to how state policies affect businesses, workers and taxpayers, former state Sen. Charlie Copeland said during an Aug. 3 live webcast.

Copeland joined Jane Brady, former Delaware attorney general, chair of A Better Delaware and host of A Better Discussion with Jane Brady, for a wide-ranging examination of Delaware’s economy, government spending, taxation, regulation, housing and education.

Both argued that decisions made in Dover have consequences that extend well beyond the state budget.

“Policies that the state adopts do matter,” Brady said. “They matter for every one of us.”

Copeland, a businessman and former Republican state chairman, argued that Delaware’s economic problems are significant but reversible.

“You could fix Delaware in a year,” Copeland said. “But what it takes is leadership.”

Government spending outpaces economic growth

Copeland traced what he described as a long-term acceleration in Delaware government spending.

He said state spending historically grew at roughly 2% annually before increasing to more than 4% as Delaware benefited from the growth of credit card banking, abandoned property revenue and legalized gambling.

Federal assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic helped push spending growth even higher, he said.

Copeland argued that while much of the federal money was temporary, higher levels of state spending became embedded in the budget.

“The general fund is now built on an annual 5% increase,” Copeland said.

Brady agreed that Delaware used large surpluses and federal assistance without developing enough of a long-term strategy for what would happen when the extraordinary revenue disappeared.

“We literally had $3 and $4 billion surpluses that we expended,” Brady said. “We spent it all. A lot of it we cooked into the base budget.”

She said some money went toward capital improvements, including schools, but questioned whether policymakers adequately planned for the long-term consequences of expanding recurring programs while temporary revenues were available.

Where is Delaware’s next growth industry?

Copeland said the spending issue becomes more concerning when compared with what he characterized as a stagnant private-sector economy.

He pointed to the closing of Delaware’s automobile plants, DuPont’s contraction and restructuring and Bank of America’s acquisition of MBNA as important turning points.

Copeland recalled telling then-Delaware State Chamber of Commerce President Rich Heffron while serving in the state Senate that Delaware faced a fundamental economic problem.

“Delaware’s in trouble,” Copeland recalled saying. “We have no growing industry in the state of Delaware right now.”

He said the question Delaware still needs to answer is straightforward.

“What’s your vision for how you grow this economy?” Copeland said. “Well, there hasn’t been one.”

Brady echoed that concern, saying Delaware has experienced what she described as a “slow but steady process of deterioration” in the state’s interest in developing new businesses.

She distinguished between companies legally forming or incorporating in Delaware and companies actually putting employees, facilities and investment in the state.

“There are a lot of new business formations, but they’re not for businesses that are operating in Delaware, necessarily,” Brady said.

Incorporation is different from economic development

That distinction became one of the central themes of the discussion.

Delaware traditionally points to its dominance in corporate incorporations as one of the state’s major economic strengths. Copeland acknowledged the importance of that industry but said incorporation should not be confused with companies choosing Delaware as a place to employ people.

“How many of them are headquartered in Delaware?” Copeland asked. “In other words, this is where their headquarter staff is, this is where their offices are, this is where they hire people, this is where they operate out of. And the answer is, very few.”

Brady said increasing competition from other states makes that distinction even more important.

She pointed particularly to Texas, which has been aggressively positioning itself to attract financial and corporate activity.

“Texas has really declared war on anybody who wants to go into business,” Brady said. “They’re going to bring them in.”

She said competition can benefit the economy by forcing states and institutions to innovate but warned that Delaware cannot take its historic advantages for granted.

Copeland agreed.

“Texas has made a very aggressive move,” he said, arguing Delaware is simultaneously making it more difficult for businesses to operate.

Making Delaware ‘open for business’

Asked what Delaware could do differently, Copeland said the state should begin with a clear message to employers and entrepreneurs.

“Delaware’s open for business,” Copeland said. “Get the regulatory guys off their backs.”

Copeland said a governor should personally contact businesses considering expansions and make the case for locating jobs in Delaware.

He also called for more government services to be moved online, greater use of technology and greater scrutiny of state positions and regulatory requirements.

His broader argument was that government does not need to create economic growth itself.

“There are these people that have agency and are going to make good decisions, and they’re going to grow it on their own because incentives matter,” Copeland said. “And if you get out of their way, it’s going to happen.”

Brady said the experience of businesses should receive more consideration when lawmakers make decisions affecting employers.

She said many decisions involving business finances and operations increasingly are being reviewed or influenced by people in government who may have limited experience operating businesses themselves.

That disconnect, she argued, can produce policies with unintended economic consequences.

A different view of government’s role

Not everyone agrees with Brady and Copeland’s prescription. Karl Stromberg, a leader of Delaware’s Working Families Party, has argued that higher taxes on wealthier residents and corporations can generate additional revenue for public priorities rather than necessarily driving investment away. Stromberg also supports changes to Delaware’s judicial and Court of Chancery system that he believes would make corporate governance more accountable to citizens and shareholders, and he favors a larger government role in housing policy to expand affordable options for lower-income families. Those positions reflect a different view of the same challenges: that stronger public investment, greater corporate accountability and more direct government involvement can improve economic opportunity rather than impede it.

Housing shortage highlights regulatory debate

Housing offered a practical example of the broader debate over regulation.

Copeland pointed to large parking lots and single-story retail developments near New Castle County Airport and suggested changes in land-use rules could allow residential units to be constructed above existing commercial properties.

“We’ve got plenty of place to put” housing, Copeland said, arguing that relatively modest changes to development codes could encourage private investment.

“If you get government out of the way, the incentives are there for private sector developers to put in affordable housing all over the place,” he said.

Brady questioned whether policymakers have sufficiently defined what they mean when discussing “affordable housing” and said the cost of regulation ultimately reaches consumers.

She returned to that point at the conclusion of the webcast.

“How much it costs the regulators, costs builders to build new homes affects anybody who wants to buy a new home,” Brady said.

Taxes and the competition for residents

Taxes also emerged as a major concern.

Copeland said continued government spending growth will eventually increase pressure to find additional revenue.

He warned that substantially higher income tax rates could change the calculations made by business owners and higher-income residents about where they live and invest.

“Once you start adding numbers on top, you start competing with New York and California,” Copeland said.

Because Delaware is geographically small, he said residents can relatively easily establish themselves elsewhere while businesses can direct future investments to other states.

He cited Delaware’s former estate tax as an example, arguing that some wealthy residents shifted their primary residences to states such as Florida.

“People don’t grow stupid overnight, and incentives matter, and they’re gonna make rational decisions,” Copeland said.

Brady said she personally knew several people who changed their residency during the period Delaware imposed the estate tax.

The two argued that policymakers should consider not simply how much revenue a new tax might theoretically generate, but whether it changes the behavior of the people being taxed.

Work, incentives and the safety net

Brady and Copeland also discussed labor-force participation and the relationship between public benefits and employment.

Copeland argued that government assistance should function as a safety net while preserving incentives for able-bodied people to enter the workforce.

Brady said the issue goes beyond government finances.

She argued that work provides people with a sense of productivity and personal accomplishment that government programs cannot replace.

“There’s benefits to working,” Brady said, adding that government policy can overlook “that human component.”

Copeland agreed, saying work can provide “a certain sense of self-esteem, self-worth” and personal value.

The two also acknowledged that reducing benefits after they have become embedded in household finances would be difficult.

Copeland said abruptly withdrawing assistance could create serious consequences for housing, food security and nonprofit organizations serving families.

“You have a serious transition cost that’s staring the state in the eye,” he said.

Education is economic policy, too

The discussion eventually turned to Delaware schools, with both Brady and Copeland arguing that education should be viewed as part of the state’s economic strategy.

Copeland said businesses consider workforce quality when determining where to invest and said Delaware’s education system requires significantly stronger action.

“I would declare a state of education emergency,” Copeland said.

He argued that years of incremental changes have not produced sufficient results and called for greater leadership and accountability.

Brady pointed to Mississippi’s improvement in student reading performance and said Delaware should be willing to consider policies that have produced measurable improvement elsewhere.

She argued that new education spending should be accompanied by specific accountability measures and measurable expectations for student improvement.

Brady: Policy choices matter at the ballot box

Brady ended the program by connecting the economic discussion to the elections Delaware voters will face this year.

She urged voters to look beyond political mailers and advertising and examine what candidates actually propose to do about spending, regulation, education, housing and economic development.

“It’s critical that we make good decisions about who we choose to govern us, because those policies matter,” Brady said.

The broader message from Brady and Copeland was that Delaware’s economic future is not predetermined.

Their argument throughout the webcast was that decisions made by governors, legislators and regulators influence whether businesses invest, whether people work, how much housing costs and ultimately how much government can afford.

DELAWARE LIVE TO GO

What: A Better Discussion with Jane Brady
Presented by: A Better Delaware
Host: Jane Brady, former Delaware attorney general and chair of A Better Delaware
Format: Weekly live webcast examining Delaware government, public policy, business, education, the economy and other issues affecting residents
When: Mondays at 8 a.m.
Aug. 3 guest: Former state Sen. Charlie Copeland
Why watch: Brady brings Delaware policymakers, business leaders and subject-matter experts into a weekly conversation about the decisions being made in the state and how those decisions affect Delaware residents.

OpenAI announced Friday it's pausing work on its Astra AI model because of security concerns. The Guardian reports: The company had evaluated the agent, Astra, and found "significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity", which had moved to a "critical" threshold... OpenAI stated that the model was not involved in an incident in which one of its AI agents went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a startup, Hugging Face... The reports have increased concerns about advancements in AI models and humans' ability to control them. Still, critics of the AI industry have warned that such disclosures from OpenAI and its competitors Anthropic and Meta could be designed to generate hype about the technology's power and thus spur additional interest from investors. To prevent potential rogue behavior from AI agents, OpenAI is "implementing stricter security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access", the company's blogpost stated. It will also install "enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities". The company will pause internal activities involving Astra that do not meet these new requirements. "We believe it's important to be transparent with the public and the safety and security communities about this potential shift in capabilities..." OpenAI wrote in a blog post titled "Responding to the next frontier of critical cyber capabilities." Under our Preparedness Framework, a model reaches the Critical cybersecurity threshold if it can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits of all severity levels in many hardened real-world critical systems without human intervention, or can devise and execute end-to-end novel strategies for cyberattacks against hardened targets given only a high level desired goal. While we continue to benchmark and assess this model, our preliminary evaluations indicate strong enough performance that we cannot rule out Critical capability level at this time... Accordingly, we have scaled up robustness testing of our safeguards and security controls so that they are appropriate for a deployment of these capabilities... - We are implementing stricter security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access, enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities, and sandboxed execution. - We are pausing internal activities involving Astra that do not yet meet these strengthened security control requirements. - We have implemented universal monitoring for risky actions and misalignment across all agentic applications of Astra, including training and evaluation. Monitors evaluate the model's Chain of Thought and trigger a security response to review and interrupt high risk activity. - We will work with relevant government agencies and select AI safety organizations to test the capabilities for this model... We believe advanced cyber-capable models should help defenders identify and address vulnerabilities before attackers do. We're committed to working alongside governments, safety institutes, and civil society to ensure that the frontier capabilities of models like Astra, and those that follow, are deployed responsibly and broadly for the benefit of all humanity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The computer company has notified all customers of a data breach.

(The Center Square) - The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could determine the future of legal actions over energy companies' contributions to climate change.

Sen. Bernie Sanders highlighted the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by outside organizations during the 2026 midterm cycle.

The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 9, 2026.

“Israel does not accept the 15-point document,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. The U.S. president had touted the Board of Peace plan as a step toward a lasting settlement.

(The Center Square) – American farmers, ranchers, and the agricultural industry will have to wait until at least September for the U.S. Senate to take up the long-delayed farm bill.

Rukhsar Ahmed was recently elected an MP in Pakistan while on bail over alleged child rape in 1990s Manchester

A grooming gang suspect released on bail in the UK and then re-elected as an MP in Pakistan has reportedly declined to say when he would return to face rape charges.

The Guardian disclosed that Rukhsar Ahmed, a former Pakistan state minister, was arrested at Manchester airport in July 2024 on suspicion of raping and trafficking at least two underage girls from care homes in the city’s Rusholme area during the 1990s.

Researchers believe they've found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, reports Medical Express: Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children's tunes, then imagined the melodies of subsequent bars before humming their imagined melodies. Brain activity from the patients carried information about relative pitches within the imagined melodies. Combining note-level pitch predictions over time allowed the research team to recreate melodic changes that reflected the structure of the imagined songs... "The model we created decodes relative pitch classes — such as do, re, mi, fa, sol, and la — rather than exact, absolute pitches," [said tudy co-lead Jii Kwon of Seoul National University]. "This is useful because people often recognize melodies by the relationships between notes, even when the same melody is played in a different key."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Drone strike comes after Riyadh signs defence pact and Tehran issues tough demands to reopen strait of Hormuz

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack on a refinery in Saudi Arabia, two days after the kingdom signed ⁠a defence pact with Turkey ⁠and Pakistan in response to ​growing regional instability caused by the US-Israel war on Iran.

The attack early on Sunday came after Iran said tough new demands would have to be met before it would reopen the strait of Hormuz, and after the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships had been targeted by an Iranian missile, as a deal to open the waterway remained out of reach.

Mutual aid groups that started giving out PPEs during Covid are now loaning air purifiers and distributing masks to fume-addled communities

Miquette Thompson’s home in rural Mendocino county has been covered in smoke all week. There are the nearby Feliz and Woodside fires in northern California, which have burned more than 1,000 acres, as well as the wildfires devastating Oregon and Washington that are sending smoke their way, too.

“It’s become not unusual,” she said of walking outside and seeing a hazy sky.

Travellers caught up in migration row as Madrid introduces checks on visitors from Italy in retaliation for Rome’s move

Italy’s foreign minister has called Spain’s decision to impose retaliatory checks on travellers from Italy “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable” as people making their way between the two EU countries were left grappling with the effects of the escalating feud.

Spain started carrying out spot checks on visitors from Italy at midnight on Saturday. The tit-for-tat move came after Rome infuriated Madrid by launching checks on 1 August for travellers from Spain in response to the recent influx of about 72,000 people into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa.

President Trump hailed the peace plan​ as a "historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other groups in Gaza."

Manuel Hernandez charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment after boat overturned in New York harbor

The captain of a boat that capsized in the New York harbor on Saturday evening has been charged following the deaths of a 27-year-old woman and her five-month-old daughter.

Manuel Hernandez, 46, was arrested and charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment in the early hours of Sunday morning, a New York police department spokesperson told the Guardian.

The new GNOME Boxes app for accessing virtual systems has reached beta, announced This Week in GNOME. There's also been more work on the Sushi file previewer for Nautilus, and Papers 51 Beta can now add visual signatures to PDF documents. But Phoronix noted one more announcement. "Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency announced earlier this year a new fellowship program and now as part of that, for the next two years GNOME has a fellow dedicated to working on design and community management... paid to help developers with design feedback and reviews, mock-up creation, and other GNOME design related efforts..." From the blog post by GNOME Design Team member Philipp Sauberzweig: I have been contributing to GNOME design as a volunteer for several years... I believe that it's essential for a free and democratic society to ensure free and independent access to these technologies. To achieve this goal, end-user devices based on free and open-source software are key, and the GNOME desktop and its app ecosystem offer a powerful alternative to proprietary platforms... This two-year fellowship is a great honor and marks a significant change in my life. It is a unique opportunity for me to devote my skills and experience entirely to a project I strongly believe in. During my two-year fellowship, I will support GNOME maintainers and developers with design feedback and reviews, create mockups, and coordinate efforts to standardize design patterns. My other activities focus on lasting improvements through two strategic initiatives: expanding the design community to increase capacity and enhancing our design tooling to reduce overhead and simplify onboarding... To attract new contributors, I will increase the visibility of design work by writing regular blog posts, giving presentations, and running workshops at conferences and hackathons. New contribution opportunities for newcomers will be created with clear instructions for independent activities such as collecting state-of-the-art examples, running accessibility and user tests, and creating mockups. Design reviews will be used as mentorship opportunities, pairing regular design contributors with experienced designers for peer review and knowledge sharing... If you're interested in contributing to GNOME design, check out the Design Team page on the Welcome to GNOME website, familiarize yourself with the Human Interface Guidelines, and join our Matrix channel. If you're a GNOME developer feel free to reach out to me via Matrix and involve me in design reviews. Jakub Beránek from the Rust compiler and infrastructure team also earned a fellowship in Germany's Sovereign Tech program, focusing on improving the Rust toolchain's tooling and infrastructure for Rust's developers. Other fellows include Pablo Neira Ayuso (Linux kernel maintainer for the Netfilter subsystem), CPython core developer Stan Ulbrych, and Python core developer Hugo van Kemenade, FreeBSD contributor Alexander Ziaee.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rage-baiting efforts of Trump accounts silenced after posts such as a video linking her Red album to Republicans

Some of Taylor Swift’s songs have been removed from videos posted on social media by Donald Trump’s campaign and the White House, silencing efforts to mock the pop star.

A video posted 3 August featuring the US president and the first lady, Melania Trump, watching fireworks was posted this month on TikTok with Swift’s song August.

Imports this year now account for 14% of the market amid claims vehicles are being dumped in the EU and UK

Chinese electric car sales have risen across Europe to a record high driven by strong demand and low tariffs in the UK and a surge in buyers in Italy.

Against a backdrop of claims that Chinese carmakers are “dumping” state-subsidised vehicles in the EU and UK to gain market share, the figures will give impetus to calls for quotas and higher tariffs to protect European manufacturers.

A legend among writers and reporters, and a leading practitioner of the "New Journalism," Gay Talese talks of a career writing about the famous and not-so-famous, from Frank Sinatra, to aging sports figures, mobsters and nudists.

Costs of security and removal efforts have reignited debate over whether work is vandalism or valuable public art

Three Banksy artworks have cost taxpayers almost £150,000 in removal efforts, security and other costs, with the bill expected to rise.

The largest bill relates to a mural painted on the Royal Courts of Justice in London in September 2025, where efforts to remove it and provide security have so far cost more than £85,000, according to the BBC.

In Idaho, new mothers have ended up on a child abuse registry after testing positive for THC – a chemical found in marijuana. An investigation raises hard questions about who gets punished, and who doesn't.

The company will pay some iPhone owners to settle a lawsuit, but following a development last week, it’s clear the legal machine grinds slowly.

Exclusive: Analysis shows 55% of accounts were located overseas – and seven of 12 most-read posts came from US

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal.

Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function.

Case, who has represented island state’s first district in US Congress since 2019, beat state senator Jarrett Keohokalole

The moderate Democratic representative Ed Case has seen off a progressive challenge to retain his party’s nomination for the US House of Representatives election in Hawaii’s first congressional district.

Case, who has represented the district in Washington DC since 2019, prevailed in Saturday’s primary over Jarrett Keohokalole, the state senator.

These are the products I actually use and recommend for active individuals.

Chicken breast works harder when the sauce, vegetables, or crisp coating carry the plate. These 15 recipes cover casseroles, noodles, slow cooker dinners, wraps, sandwiches, soups, and skillet mains.The post 15 chicken breast ideas for saucy skillets and hearty plates…

Using ‘spy glasses’ made by Facebook owner leads to floods of negative comments, say content creators

It was hardly an offensive video. Amid the buzz of the Tour de France finale, Oliver Hooson filmed himself whipping up a delicious-looking flat white for a fellow cycling enthusiast. But after posting the footage on social media, the comments that soon rolled in were a real shock. “PERV,” read one. “Out here pushing creep glasses,” said another. His mistake? Documenting the moment with Meta’s “spy glasses”.

Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them.

The bus is back, and afternoons get busy fast. These 13 back-to-school dishes cover quick snacks, packable lunches, air fryer dinners, pancakes, chili, sandwiches, salads, and easy treats.The post 13 back-to-school dishes worth having in your back pocket before the…

Autumn Mowery was 18 when she took over a candlepin bowling alley threatened with the wrecking ball, challenging herself to maintain a pillar of the community.

Katie and John Meehan say responses to campaign they launched after death of daughter Genevieve must be ‘wake-up call’

The parents of a nine-month-old girl who died after being placed in an unsafe sleeping position at nursery said they feared poor practice may be “rife” across England.

Genevieve Meehan suffocated when she was strapped face down to a beanbag for an hour and 37 minutes at a nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, in May 2022.

Jurors hear from host of medical experts as defence says postpartum psychosis caused young mother to kill children

It’s been called “America’s saddest murder trial” and last week jurors in the Lindsay Clancy case listened to mental health professionals, counsellors, psychiatrists, and medication experts explain the circumstances in which the young mother killed her three children.

It has been a spectacle that has gripped America, not least because Clancy’s legal defense has been supported by her now divorced husband.

In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You can also reach Crisis Text Line by texting MHA to 741741. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle No. 1155 for Aug. 9.

The United Arab Emirates' Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said one of its ships was targeted while transiting the strait.

Chuck Schumer and other senators took part in exercises in which legal experts laid out election disruption scenarios

In a Washington DC conference room last month, some of the most senior Democrats in the US Senate gathered to plan for a prospect that only recently would have felt more akin to science fiction: they started to wargame democracy.

Chuck Schumer, the US Senate minority leader, and senators including Alex Padilla, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, Elissa Slotkin and Raphael Warnock were among those in the room as a team of legal experts offered scenarios.

Dozens of Flock cameras have been vandalized around Dallas Texas in the last six months, reports a local news station. In Utah, ABC News reports, a county sheriff's office even said Wednesday a Flock camera was even vandalized within days of its being installed. And in the Minnesota city of Winona, "Every Flock license plate reader camera operated by the Winona Police Department has been sawed off and stolen in what investigators believe was a coordinated theft," according to local media: All eight cameras were taken August 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind. Two additional Flock cameras on the Mississippi River Bridge, owned by Buffalo County, were also stolen in the same manner... The thefts are part of a broader national trend. Flock cameras have been vandalized and cut down in communities across the country. When someone in Florida filmed a damaged Flock camera lying in the grass in Florida, their footage attracted 980,000 views on social media, according to a local news report, with the uploader saying "Most of the people that are commenting are against Flock cameras." But that report adds it's one of at least five cameras recently damaged just in Florida: - In another incident, investigators "found the black camera and its pole lying on the ground." - Two days later, sheriff's deputies found a camera destroyed "with pieces scattered on the ground. Deputies reported the damage appeared to have been caused by a blunt object." - On July 31, "Police said two camera poles had been intentionally cut in half, causing an estimated $10,000 in damage to the system." In West Virginia 20-year-old Wesley Jackson has been arrested for allegedly vandalizing Flock cameras, with another 20-year-old (a university student) now arrested for being his accomplice, according to a local news report. Ironically, Jackson's arrest was made possible partly by information from... automated license plate readers. But the Washington Post notes there's now a flood of Facebook commenters jokingly offering to provide a fake alibi: "Couldn't have been him — we were out counting blades of grass," said one of the 29,000 commenters on a post about the arrest from the local news station WDTV. Others attested that the man, Wesley Jackson, had been helping them "replace the roof on a homeless shelter," "playing halo 2," "changing the tires" on their car or giving their "doggie a treat" at the time the cameras were destroyed. Meanwhile, the anti-surveillance group DeFlock reports 100 communities have now rejected automated license plate readers. Wednesday an Arizona county sheriff explained to his local Board of Supervisors why he will not renew his office's contract with Flock when it expires next month. Local Arizona media reports: "We have a camera system that can do facial recognition technology and can start building a data set on what our citizens are doing on a day-to-day basis," Teeple told supervisors. "That, in my training and experience, is a huge Fourth Amendment violation." Recently an Arizona man even told his city council he'd be launching AI-powered satellites to monitor "where government officials go, where they stop, who they meet with, and when they return home," reports 404 Media: It would be no different than how the city monitors its citizens using Flock cameras, he said... He said he'd already started compiling profiles on their vehicles, spouses vehicles, children's vehicles, and planned to combine that data with Bluetooth signals, advertising IDs, and commercial data sources, "so our authorized users can replay the movements of every government official and their immediate family," he said. Local businesses would be invited to join the network, to "protect" officials while they shop, eat at restaurants, and move around the city. And CNET reports "a quiet battle is happening across the US" between "towns working to adopt Flock Safety systems and those trying to ban them entirely." From major cities like Los Angeles canceling its Flock contract to towns wrapping Flock AI cams in plastic bags because Flock won't take them down, it's a wild time for surveillance and questions about government accountability.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The total is also the eighth-largest Powerball jackpot in the game's history.

State Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole had criticized Rep. Ed Case's votes to send military aid to Israel and for a previous version of the SAVE America Act.

Lawyers for man accused of killing healthcare CEO Brian Thompson raise red flags about limits on reporters

Weeks before Luigi Mangione faces a jury over the killing of the UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, the hugely anticipated proceedings already have potential to reach trial-of-the-century status.

Intense global interest in Mangione’s case is unfolding against a media landscape where news consumers expect minute-by-minute updates, a mise-en-scène now made all the more complicated by social media influencers who managed to get press credentials and often flock to major US criminal cases in search of clicks and money.

I asked chefs about the snacks, ingredients and guilty pleasure foods they can’t stop buying.

PM expected to announce policies to tackle cost of living and indicate intent to help improve country’s high streets

Andy Burnham is to undertake a national tour this coming week as he aims to improve the government’s connection with the British public during his premiership.

The prime minister is expected to announce a set of policies that will help people financially as many struggle with the cost of living, as well as indicate his intent to improve high streets across the country.

New research shows that a class gap on the left threatens any winning coalition – but there are ways to address it

Debates on the left are typically framed as a division between moderates and progressives, with the two sides wrestling over how best to form a governing coalition. Yet, in many ways, this divide obscures a much bigger fault line: the class divide. The fact is, many of the Democratic party’s ideological factions consist almost exclusively of college-educated professionals. As a result, the priorities of this class tend to dominate the party’s appeals. The priorities of working-class voters, meanwhile, are an afterthought.

A new report from Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working Class Politics, and Joan Williams, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, looks at ways to bridge the yawning class divide that threatens the possibility of forming a winning coalition.

The discovery was made by an underwater fisherman who described it as the "most incredible" in his life.

Three years after a devastating marine heat wave in Florida, scientists say they are better prepared to protect vulnerable coral reefs.

To celebrate Quake's 30th anniversary, Bethesda released "a brutal new episode" — a new campaign chapter titled Dawn of the Machine "delivering ferocious combat, labyrinthine level design, and nightmarish realms that twist reality beyond recognition..." Face deadly new twists on familiar foes, including the Rocket Ogre, Demo Dog, Blood Shambler, and more. Each variant introduces lethal new behaviours — from overwhelming firepower to explosive death traps — forcing you to rethink every encounter. Expand your arsenal with brutal variants inspired by classic Quake expansions, including the Super Axe — unleashing lightning on successive strikes — and the Laser Cannon, firing ricocheting projectiles that tear through enemies from every angle... Reality is never stable. Shift between dimensions to solve puzzles and navigate the world, or find hidden secrets scattered throughout the realms. Face enemies that rise again or transform after death, and experience encounters where the rules change without warning — forcing you to adapt or be overrun. More details from Ars Technica: This is part of a series of new campaign chapters, all developed by MachineGames "in collaboration with id Software." MachineGames is best known for making the games in the relatively recent Wolfenstein reboot series, as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The Quake maps are made by a team dubbed "Quake Club," which includes several MachineGames employees who work on Quake maps in their spare time. The ambition and scope of some of these maps is beyond what was typical for Quake maps back in the late '90s, thanks in part to the team's use of TrenchBroom, a newer map editor that works well on modern systems and is easier to work with and more capable than what folks were using in those days. There are 19 new levels, and they have several new gameplay gimmicks, like a time loop mechanic and a disorienting-but-cool teleportation system that makes it look like the levels are changing on the fly — kind of similar to the multi-time-period levels we saw in Titanfall 2 or Dishonored 2, though in these Quake maps the time shifts happen without player input. There's also new music... The new maps have been added to the campaign list in the remastered version of Quake, and like that remaster, they're available free to anyone who already owns Quake on Steam, as well as Quake on current and last-gen PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Team manager has ‘no idea’ why they disappeared, after reports one of Commonwealth Games athletes said they intended to claim asylum

Years of arduous preparation and training had come to fruition and the pressure was finally lifted. After competing for their country in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, athletes from Uganda were afforded a couple of days’ sightseeing time before catching their plane home on Tuesday.

But when the flight took off, there were four empty seats.

Man is told he should not have been granted settled status so he can no longer sponsor Brazilian wife to remain

A 33-year-old Italian engineer who has been in London since 2018 has been plunged into a battle with the Home Office after officials told him they made a mistake allowing him to stay in the UK after Brexit.

Fabio, who initially came to London to finish his doctorate and who has built a successful career working on energy and climate change, says he is shocked by the development as he has not broken any rules since Brexit.

Finance sector will gain from the tech but it will need substantial investment and create risks, says rating agency

The rating agency Moody’s has said the race to adopt AI is putting big banks at the mercy of a small group of Silicon Valley firms, leaving them vulnerable to widespread outages and price gouging by profit-hungry tech bosses.

The financial sector’s efforts to integrate AI into day-to-day operations will eventually cut costs and increase revenues across the City and Wall Street, Moody’s said.

IGN reports: [A] new report suggests that all three memory manufacturers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — have collectively sold through their 2027 memory manufacturing capacity to, you guessed it, AI companies. According to a report from Digitimes and spotted by TweakTown, all DRAM and HBM capacity has been sold through for 2027, with no further supply planned. (The companies themselves have not yet confirmed this to be the case.) Of course, that only means that retail prices are going to go up even further in the near future. Selling through all the capacity for next year would be bad enough for consumers, but the problem is that most of the companies buying up this capacity have done so through long-term purchasing agreements, essentially pre-ordering memory that hasn't even been manufactured yet over a five-year term. Unless more capacity opens up somewhere in the next few years, it's hard to imagine that RAM will become more affordable and less scarce any time soon. It's not just memory that's affected. According to that Digitimes report, NAND storage is growing in demand too. Luckily, NAND capacity hasn't been completely absorbed, because there are more companies supplying the stuff. But it's not exactly hard to see that SSDs have been growing steadily more expensive over the last six months or so.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Natto toast, fresh fruit sandwiches and soufflé pancakes all part of growing interest in east Asian cuisine

Golden brown and glistening with melted butter, a tray of freshly baked bread fills the screen in a TikTok video. The camera lingers on the glossy tops before one bun is gently pulled apart, revealing a cloud-soft interior.

The clip is one of countless videos of Japanese milk buns that have racked up millions of views and thousands of comments and shares, helping to propel the pillowy rolls into UK supermarkets.

Nikita and Olga Belov say they will be persecuted on return to Moscow but are yet to convince Finnish authorities

A Russian family faces deportation from Finland after repeatedly being denied asylum – despite the threat of arrest, imprisonment and potential torture for their pro-Ukrainian activism.

Nikita and Olga Belov fled their homeland in 2022 after attracting the attention of Russian authorities – including military summons, threatening messages and attempts to locate them – after expressing opposition to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Rebeca Grynspan seen as continuity candidate with tacit support from current secretary general, António Guterres

A Costa Rican diplomat and former vice-president whose parents were refugees from the Holocaust has become the surprise frontrunner to lead the United Nations as its first female secretary general.

Rebeca Grynspan, whose parents emigrated to Central America from Poland – and whose maternal grandparents were killed by the Nazis – is the current head of the UN conference on trade and development (UNCTAD), a body that has exhaustively tallied the economic damage inflicted by Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been various cases of Ukrainian drones straying into NATO airspace.

When C.C. Opanowski of Hudson Falls, New York, was a teenager, she survived a terrifying attack at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, Shawn Doyle. Years later, he would kill Lori Leonard, a mother of two young sons in Chittenango, New York.

In reporting on the case of Joe Shymanski, a Washington, D.C., photographer murdered in 2023, "48 Hours"' Nikki Battiste says the story took her into unfamiliar territory: confronting someone she grew up with.

Researchers find microplastics can persist in compost, leaching into agricultural soils

Plastic contamination should be a central concern in efforts to deal with food waste, which campaigners call one of the most overlooked problems of the climate crisis, researchers have said.

This is despite the fact that, as the chef, author and activist Max La Manna puts it, food waste management is “one of the few climate problems where everyone wins”.

Gerson Turcios was 17 when he fled violence in Honduras to build a new life in the US. Six years later, he was mowing lawns in his home town of Rhinebeck when immigration officers took him. Within hours, friends, neighbours and local celebrities sprang into action. Could they stop his deportation?

Gerson Turcios didn’t recognise the men standing next to a couple of dark SUVs outside his house one July afternoon last year. He figured they were lost and approached to see if he could help. A slim 23-year-old with short dark hair and big brown eyes, Turcios had just finished work mowing lawns in the pretty town of Rhinebeck, in New York’s Hudson Valley. The men asked if he knew someone called Jimmy – he did, but Jimmy hadn’t lived in the small, white weatherboard house with Turcios, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend for a while.

The men noted Turcios’s accent and asked where he was from. Turcios didn’t answer, so one took out his phone and snapped a photograph. The next thing Turcios knew, he was in handcuffs in the back of one of the SUVs and on his way to an ICE processing centre in Newburgh, New York, then on to a detention centre.

• 22-year-old finishes two points clear of Shane Wiskus

• Paris bronze medalist rebounds from difficult 2025

• Nedoroscik falters as Hoopes wins pommel horse gold

Frederick Richard won his first US men’s gymnastics all-around title Saturday night, flashing the form he believes can make him a contender at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The 22-year-old Richard, a key member of the men’s team that earned bronze at the Paris Games two summers ago, posted a two-day total of 170.015, two points clear of runner-up Shane Wiskus and three points ahead of promising newcomer Danila Leykin.

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"Google should be required to divest the Chrome browser, and prohibited from paying Apple to distribute Google's search engine, the nonprofit advocacy group Public Knowledge argues in a new court filing," MediaPost reports, citing a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals: The group adds that "independent ownership" of Chrome "would open the distribution channel Google controls and allow Chrome to serve browser users when it makes privacy decisions and determines how to integrate search and (artificial intelligence)..." In September 2025, [U.S. District Court Judge] Mehta issued a remedies order that requires Google to share some data about users' searches with "qualified" competitors and to provide syndicated search results and ads to those competitors. The order also prohibits Google from entering into exclusive distribution contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and the Gemini app for six years, but allows the company to continue to make payments for search-ad revenue or distribution to Apple, Mozilla and others... Google recently appealed Mehta's order. The company argued in its written brief that it "prevailed in the marketplace fair and square," adding that Apple and Mozilla "sensibly chose" Google as the default search engine "because it gave their users the best experience," and because Apple and Mozilla would earn the most ad revenue through the deals. The [U.S.] Justice Department and states countered to the appellate court last week that the liability finding should stand, and also argued that Google should have been banned from paying Apple and Mozilla for placement as the default search engine on their browsers. [Antitrust enforcers had originally asked the judge to order Google to divest Chrome, but he's already rejected that request.] The government did not argue in its appellate papers that Google should be forced to sell Chrome. But Public Knowledge independently contends in its friend-of-the-court brief that divestiture would benefit consumers... "Divestiture would place those decisions with an institution whose success depends on serving browser users primarily...." The group is calling the appellate court's attention to Google's April 2025 decision to preserve tracking cookies — a reversal from its earlier plans to block third-party cookies by default. "Google is in the position of both deciding Chrome's tracking rules while running the advertising business affected by them," Public Knowledge writes. "An independent Chrome could make those decisions on behalf of users alone." But Firefox developer Mozilla filed its own friend-of-the-court brief Thursday warning Firefox could be forced to "exit the browser and browser engine markets" if it can't receive payment from Google for distributing its search engine, according to a later report from MediaPost: Federal and state antitrust enforcers recently asked the appellate court to reverse the portion of Mehta's order that allows those payments to continue. But Mozilla counters in its new friend-of-the-court brief that Mehta's decision regarding those payments was supported by the evidence --including a study it conducted concluding that its revenue would "decline dramatically" if forced to replace Google with Bing as Firefox's default search engine... Google is expected to file new arguments with the appellate court next month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal officials issued a public health alert for meat products containing jalapeños that may be linked to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people across at least 27 states.

Joe Shymanski, a, well-known Washington D.C. photographer, was murdered and dismembered in 2023. His ex-wife's former boyfriend, Brandon Holbrook, was convicted in the case. Shymanski's family still wonders if anyone else was involved.

Officials did not identify the pilots but said they were employed by Helicopter Transport Services, which was contracted by US Forest Service

Two helicopter pilots who crashed while they were fighting a wildfire in Utah have died, officials confirmed Saturday. The pilots were killed when their Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter went down Friday morning, according to the Sevier County Sheriff.

The helicopter was among those fighting a fire in the Fishlake National Forest. The crash ignited a new fire that spread to connect with the existing blaze, which has now scorched nearly 174 square miles (nearly 451skm).

Teenage girl treated in hospital after Friday’s school shooting has died, police say

The death toll from a school shooting in Thailand rose to nine on Saturday, after police said a 12-year-old girl caught up in Friday’s incident had died.

Police at the Plai Bang Police Station in Nonthaburi Province said the girl, who had been treated at hospital with critical wounds, had died, a day after a 14-year-old boy allegedly shot his grandparents and then killed more people at his school before turning the gun on ⁠himself.

Carney and Deadwyler

Over 10,000 financial insurance elites from around the world gathered in Hong Kong

A 29-year-old expectant mother is in hiding, concerned that she will be deported at any moment after the Trump administration ended the Temporary Protected Status program for hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants.

In a wide-ranging interview with the CBS News partner BBC News, Hunter Biden grew emotional as he discussed his father's condition, describing it as very sad to watch.

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Long-time Slashdot reader BrianFagioli is announcing that he's released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image. The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it. Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, the app — named Veridenz — answers a narrower question, by verifying whether a photo file matches the one that was originally witnessed. Users do not need a Nostr account because the app creates its own signing identity, keeping private documentation separate from a public Nostr profile. "The developer does not collect any data from this app," says its page in Apple's iPhone store. The free app's tagline is "Capture. Prove. Verify."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader BrianFagioli is announcing that he's released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image. The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it. Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, the app — named Veridenz — answers a narrower question, by verifying whether a photo file matches the one that was originally witnessed. Users do not need a Nostr account because the app creates its own signing identity, keeping private documentation separate from a public Nostr profile. "The developer does not collect any data from this app," says its page in Apple's iPhone store. The app's tagline is "Capture. Prove. Verify."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Former Vice President Kamala Harris is borrowing one of Donald Trump’s signature 2024 campaign slogans as she urges Democrats to turn out in overwhelming numbers for November’s midterm elections.

Speaking Friday in New Orleans, Harris told supporters Democrats must make the election “too big to rig,” a phrase Trump repeatedly used while claiming, often without evidence, that elections could be manipulated against him. Harris used the slogan while accusing Republicans of “cheating” and arguing that Democrats need margins large enough to overcome efforts she says are designed to weaken their voting power.

Harris used the same phrase at the National Urban League conference in Nashville on July 31, where she said Democrats need to be “ruthless” politically while remaining focused on winning the midterms.

She also floated several major structural changes, including revisiting the Electoral College, expanding the Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices, and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Trump’s campaign prominently used “too big to rig” in 2024 as he urged supporters to produce turnout large enough to defeat what he claimed could be election manipulation.

Harris is now repurposing that language from the opposite direction, applying it to Republican voting policies and election administration rather than alleged Democratic fraud.

The phrase underscores how rhetoric once associated almost exclusively with Trump’s election grievances is increasingly migrating into Democratic messaging as both parties accuse the other of undermining fair elections.

Sources:

• Mediaite – MBFC Rating

The post Harris Urges Democrats to Overwhelm GOP Election Tactics appeared first on News Facts Network.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senate Republicans have taken a procedural step toward bringing landmark cryptocurrency legislation to the floor in September, but unresolved ethics and banking disputes still threaten the bill’s chances of passage.

Majority Leader John Thune filed a motion Saturday to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act before lawmakers left for their August recess. The move sets up a procedural vote after the Senate returns, where supporters will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

The legislation would create a federal framework for determining when digital assets are regulated as securities or commodities and clarify the respective authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The crypto industry has spent heavily lobbying for those rules after years of regulatory uncertainty.

One major sticking point is President Donald Trump’s personal financial involvement in cryptocurrency. Democrats are pushing restrictions preventing presidents and other federal officials from profiting from digital assets while in office after Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in family crypto income last year.

Traditional banks are also pressing senators to restrict interest-like rewards on stablecoins, arguing that such products could drain deposits from regulated banks.

Thune’s maneuver keeps the bill alive but does not guarantee passage. The Senate has only a limited September legislative window before the midterms, and continued partisan disagreement could push the broader crypto framework into the next Congress.

Sources:

• Reuters – MBFC Rating

The post Senate Sets September Test for Landmark Crypto Regulation Bill appeared first on News Facts Network.

Yolŋu hip-hop artist dominates, while Butchulla duo and cousins Birdz and Fred Leone win artist of the year and Drifting Clouds takes home best new talent

Baker Boy has won album, song and film clip of the year at the 2026 National Indigenous music awards (Nimas), paying tribute to his late grandmother who his sophomore album, Djandjay, is named for.

The Yolŋu hip-hop artist, whose name is Danzal Baker, won three awards for Djandjay, including song of the year and film clip of the year for its hit single Thick Skin, which features Indigenous artists Thelma Plum, Emma Donovan, Kee’ahn and Jada Weazel.

"If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice," reports the Shreveport Times: The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is currently testing out the new tool designed to reduce the volume of calls human dispatchers must handle, which is over a thousand emergency calls a day. New Orleans implemented AI in April to answer 311 calls for non-emergencies. The AI was trained and programmed to provide information to callers, as the OPCD says 50% of 311 calls are for information, according to GovTech. AI is now answering 911 emergency calls in Louisiana's largest city and one of the cities with the highest call rates in the U.S. The OPCD is using Carbyne's AI Emergency Call Triage, with triage being the process of analyzing and prioritizing emergency calls. The AI system assesses incoming calls and can provide immediate feedback to callers. This is intended to handle the increase of calls that are related to one incident, so callers get automatically routed to an AI agent who asks if they are calling regarding the incident. If the answer is yes, then callers can receive information or updates, and if it's no, then the callers are transferred to a human. This combats multitudes of calls piling up and taking longer time to potentially answer an emergency call. The OPCD said the AI will not be used to handle emergency calls, only to direct such calls to a human dispatcher.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tehran insists on compensation and the lifting of sanctions, among other concessions from the U.S., as a condition for reopening the strait.

Tehran urges US to ‘correct its behaviour’ as UAE says one of its ships targeted by Iranian missile

Iran has issued tough new demands for reopening the strait of Hormuz, while the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile, as a deal to open the strategic waterway remained out of reach on Saturday.

Iran’s politburo-like body known as the supreme national security council said the strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behaviour”, and its state broadcaster published a statement from the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In Georgia the Savannah Police Department "terminated four sworn officers and two civilian employees following an internal investigation into misuse of the department's Flock Safety License Plate Reader system," according to a local news report: All six cases are also under independent criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation... Investigators found that employees were running searches on personal acquaintances and family members. One officer was found to have given someone from an outside law enforcement agency access to SPD's Flock Safety system, which they weren't authorized to do. Elsewhere ABC News reports that a female North Carolina police officer was arrested Wednesday "for allegedly using Flock license plate readers to track her boyfriend's ex-wife, according to police..." The officer is accused of accessing the system for personal use 31 different times, including at least twice when she was off-duty, and listing most of the lookups as motor vehicle infractions. [Police chief Ron] Campurciani "added that the department is looking at 10 other potential misuse cases and said three 'look like they could be problematic.'" And an Ohio news station reports a police officer who recently resigned "while under internal investigation repeatedly used the Flock license plate reader system to search a vehicle registered to someone investigators identified as his likely domestic partner." Meanwhile, 404 Media reported this week that an Iowa county's usage police specifically tells police officers — in all capital letters — not to tell occupants of a vehicle that an automated license plate reader was used for a traffic stop. It also instructs officers to not even mention the use of the ALPR technology in their reports "unless absolutely necessary," according to information they'd obtained from a public records request," suggesting they instead they call the cameras "county resources": It is not just local police in small communities who are creating policies designed to obfuscate Flock usage. Earlier this year, we reported that police in multiple states were being told to be "as vague as permissible" about why they were using Flock because their searches could be obtained using public records requests, and that warning was being shared by the FBI and Department of Justice... In the [Iowa county] public records request, Sheriff Don Phillips said "there is no need" to tell people about the use of Flock... "because the information is verified by the deputy running the license plate. It is common practice for law enforcement to refrain from disclosing investigative methods and sources to prevent criminals from learning how to circumvent them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warning of increased activity as patrols spent 21 days in July shadowing Moscow’s ships in Dover Strait and North Sea

The Royal Navy has warned of increasing Russian activity around the UK’s waters after it spent 21 days in July monitoring Moscow’s ships.

Naval operations to monitor Russian vessels increased by 25% last month compared with the previous year, with warships making repeated voyages through the strait of Dover and the North Sea.

Exclusive: Workers’ rights experts raise ‘alarm bells’ over app requiring ABNs for jobs they say lack worker autonomy

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

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

Concerns have been raised that workers using an increasingly popular Australian hospitality gig-work app may be missing out on entitlements such as superannuation by being hired as “independent contractors”, similar to delivery riders.

Launched in Melbourne in 2017, Supp describes itself as a “jobs marketplace”, where hospitality businesses can advertise available shifts to potential workers at an hourly rate, and where workers can secure ad-hoc employment. It was created by Kate and Cameron Reid, the owners of Lune Croissanterie, who maintain a financial stake in the company but are no longer on its board.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act keeps delivering for EU citizens.

Apple is working on a new feature that will support cross-device copy and paste between iOS devices and Windows PCs.

Microsoft asked for the feature using Apple’s EU interoperability request system for developers, which Apple implemented to comply with the Digital Markets Act. Apple began evaluating the request in March, and on June 26, proposed a project plan.

↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors

According to Apple, this minor feature is going to cost Apple “significant engineering effort”; I’d estimate it’ll cost them about one to two golden statues.

Measuring less than 4 centimeters and known as the "spring frog," the dark green-spotted amphibians were observed in San Lorenzo de Tarrazu.

"In a milestone for energy storage technology, Peak Energy has selected Sacramento, California, as the home of America's first manufacturing facility dedicated to grid-scale sodium-ion battery systems," according to the sustainability news site Intelligent Living. The move "represents the first large-scale test of whether sodium-ion technology can deliver on its promise of cheaper, safer, and more sustainable grid storage at a scale that actually moves the needle for the U.S. electricity system." The 183,000-square-foot plant, representing a $71 million investment, will produce up to 4 gigawatt-hours of storage annually when production begins in early 2027. That is enough output each year to serve nearly four million homes, and it signals that sodium-ion technology has moved from laboratory promise to commercial reality... Peak Energy, founded in 2023 by former engineers from Tesla, Enovix, and Fluence, announced its Sacramento site selection on July 8, 2026, after a nationwide search that ultimately chose California over Texas... The factory is designed as a system assembly plant rather than a cell fabrication facility. Peak will receive sodium-ion cells, manufactured to its specifications by Chinese suppliers, and assemble them into complete 30-foot-long, 100,000-pound containerized storage systems. Each GS1.1 unit stores 3.1 megawatt-hours, enough to fully charge more than 40 electric vehicles... In the United States, Peak Energy has emerged as the most advanced grid-scale player. It has secured more than 6 GWh of customer commitments, including a landmark deal with Jupiter Power for up to 4.75 GWh through 2030, valued at up to $500 million. Energy Vault has committed to 1.5 GWh of sodium-ion storage for AI data center applications, and RWE Americas has already deployed Peak's first grid-scale system on the MISO grid in Wisconsin, energized in March 2026. General Motors is codeveloping sodium-ion cells with Peak at its Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center in Michigan, testing 170- and 190-amp-hour cell formats with domestic production targeted for 2028. China, however, remains the global heavyweight. CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer, unveiled its TENER Sodium energy storage system in June 2026 with a rated cycle life of 15,000 cycles and a projected 25-to-30-year service life. In April 2026, CATL signed a 60 GWh supply agreement with HyperStrong, the largest sodium-ion deal announced to date. BYD, HiNa Battery, and Farasis are also shipping commercial sodium-ion products, including batteries for a $400 electric scooter already on sale in China... Peak Energy's first commercial shipments from Sacramento are slated for the first quarter of 2027, with contracted deliveries to Jupiter Power, Energy Vault, and RWE Americas following shortly after. The company has publicly stated it needs to deploy over $100 million in product in 2026, up from roughly $10 million in 2025, and the Sacramento facility is sized to meet that demand. At the system level, sodium-ion grid storage is already operating. Peak's pilot installation at the SolarTAC testing facility in Watkins, Colorado, stores 3.5 MWh and has been running since 2025. The RWE Americas deployment in Wisconsin, energized in March 2026, marks the first time sodium-ion batteries have backed up the MISO grid, which serves 15 central U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba... According to the International Energy Agency, sodium-ion manufacturing capacity announcements have accelerated sharply since 2024, with global pipelines now exceeding 400 GWh annually... Researchers are also pushing the technology forward. In May 2026, a team at the National University of Singapore published a breakthrough in all-solid-state sodium batteries that could further reduce costs and eliminate the flammable liquid electrolytes found in both lithium-ion and current sodium-ion designs. "The technology's sweet spot is utility-scale, multi-megawatt-hour installations," the article points out, "where the system-level cost savings from passive cooling and longer cycle life outweigh the per-cell energy density penalty..." The article also points out observations from the American Battery Leadership Coalition, an industry group advocating for sodium-ion policy support, that sodium-ion batteries can be built almost entirely from American materials, including coal, sawdust, and agricultural waste. This week Syntropic Power and UNIGRID Inc. also announced "a major partnership to commercialize UNIGRID's proprietary sodium chromium oxide (NaCrO2) battery technology across North America," reports Interesting Engineering, "targeting one gigawatt-hour (1 GWh) of deployments in 2027. The technology could be used in residential, virtual power plant, and large-scale stationary grid applications..." Independent testing by the ISO-accredited Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Battery Development Center revealed something surprising. UNIGRID's 210Ah cells displayed endothermic behavior during charging. This means the chemical reaction actually absorbs heat rather than dumping it into the environment. Coupled with a 97.9% cell-level round-trip energy efficiency and remarkable thermal stability under abuse testing, the battery stays cool on its own. The 210Ah sodium-ion cells deliver up to 218Ah of discharge capacity. It demonstrated exceptional durability, retaining over 99% of its capacity after 1,000 full discharge cycles, as well as heat-absorbing behavior during charging. These validated strengths allow Syntropic to optimize its product designs, enabling platforms like GridSpan [its modular DC platform designed for large-scale energy applications with flexible discharge durations ranging from 20 minutes to 20 hours] to operate safely and efficiently at grid scale without needing complex mechanical cooling systems... Commercialization kicks off with Tenet, a safety-focused, wall-mounted system for residential, light-commercial, and virtual power plant uses... Relying on abundant and widely distributed raw materials like sodium and chromium — rather than lithium and cobalt — protects manufacturers from geopolitical price spikes and material shortages. Apart from offering an alternative to lithium, a successful rollout will demonstrate that the most durable energy storage is the kind that could stay cool entirely on its own. Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pickens County Sheriff's Office said that​ after "a few slips and falls," the bull was back in custody without any injury.

IceWM, the venerable X11 window manager, has put up a new maintenance release, version 4.1.0. It’s got a small number of fixes, two very minor new features, as well a few updated translations. That’s it.

Weather system tied to warming sea surface expected to intensify in fall and winter, persisting until early spring 2027

El Niño, a recurring climate phenomenon marked by above-average sea surface temperatures, when changes in wind patterns allow warmer water to spread across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, could spell a wet winter for portions of the western and south-eastern US, climate models show. Coastal areas may be at elevated risk of flooding, experts warn.

Climate scientists predict this year’s “super” El Niño, a label assigned when sea surface temperatures climb by at least 2C, will be the strongest of the century. The weather system is expected to intensify in the fall and winter, persisting until early spring 2027, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

Joe Biden’s prostate cancer is reportedly ‘debilitating’, even as ex-president continues to speak out on public issues

Former US president Joe Biden’s prostate cancer has spread to other parts of his body and is causing him pain, even as he continues to speak out on public issues, his son Hunter said in an interview.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC broadcast late on Friday, Hunter Biden grew emotional as he discussed his father’s condition, describing it as very sad to watch.

The Dallas Business Journal reported Monday that the U.S. multinational paper goods company Kimberly-Clark announced "that its researchers identified and advanced patented technology transforming fibers from hesperaloe, a low-water-use plant with pointy leaves that thrives in the southwest region of the country, into material for paper towels." Discovering an alternative to conventional wood fiber "could reshape how the company, and the industry at large, manufactures products," according to article. And the move comes "amid growing pressure on manufacturers regarding their reliance on wood fibre from freshly felled trees," reports The Telegraph. "Campaigners claim that more than one million trees are cut down every day..." Unlike trees, hesperaloe can be grown on dry, low-quality farmland unsuitable for most food crops and harvested much more quickly. Kimberly-Clark said it had tested more than 70 potential materials before settling on hesperaloe. Earlier candidates included wheat straw, corn waste, seaweed, algae and chicken feathers. The US consumer goods giant will now develop the fibre at a pilot factory in Yuma, Arizona, working with local growers to determine whether the crop can be cultivated for commercial use in its tissue products. "This represents an exciting moonshot for Kimberly-Clark and the culmination of more than two decades of materials and plant science expertise," said Craig Slavtcheff, who is helping develop the new toilet paper. However, the company said products made from hesperaloe remained years away from supermarket shelves, with further research needed before the fibre could be produced at the scale required for global manufacturing. The US-based company has invested about $250m (£190m) in the project and filed more than 30 patents linked to the technology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The former San Francisco 49ers star running back spoke in a prerecorded video message while he sat on stage wearing his gold jacket at Tom Benson Stadium on Saturday.

Drone sightings over civilian and cargo airports have been reported more frequently.

The Washington Post shared surprising news this week about five top AI companies. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle "are spending so much on developing AI and delivering it to customers that they're expected to bleed cash in the coming year, according to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence." Free cash flow, which measures the cash left over after paying expenses and AI infrastructure costs, is now expected to shrink to almost nothing for the five companies combined in 2026, and decline again to negative $125 billion the following year... AI spending by Amazon and Google pushed the companies to an ignominious milestone: They lost more cash in the past three months than any other large U.S. companies, according to S&P Global data. Investment analysts expect Elon Musk's SpaceX to show even worse cash bleeding this week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senate minority leader condemns Republicans after Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer confirmed by 50 votes to 49 early on Saturday morning. This blog is now closed.

Joe Biden’s prostate cancer has spread throughout his body, causing the former president great pain, his son Hunter Biden said during an interview broadcast Friday.

“The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further,” Hunter Biden said in a sit-down with the BBC. “It’s very painful and it’s very debilitating in many respects.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — House Democrats are preparing a broad investigative agenda for President Donald Trump and companies tied to his political and business interests if they win control of the chamber in November, according to Reuters.

Senior Democrats and committee aides are discussing hearings, subpoenas and document demands focused on possible conflicts of interest, government contracts and financial relationships involving Trump and his family. The strategy prioritizes building an evidentiary record rather than immediately pursuing impeachment.

Potential targets include Paramount Skydance, YouTube, investment firm 1789 Capital, private prison operator GEO Group and security contractor Salus Worldwide Solutions. Democrats are also examining Venezuelan oil transactions involving Vitol and Trafigura, along with financial relationships involving major technology and investment firms.

Reps. Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin have already sent records requests to several outside entities. Raskin previously sought communications involving Paramount’s settlement with Trump and the company’s merger approval process.

Democratic leaders reportedly want to avoid repeating Trump’s first term, when impeachment proceedings dominated congressional attention and allowed him to characterize investigations as partisan persecution.

Impeachment has not been ruled out. Instead, lawmakers say any such effort would come only after investigations establish evidence warranting it.

The White House dismissed the planning as another partisan effort against Trump and said the administration is prepared to respond to legitimate congressional oversight regardless of which party controls Congress.

Sources:

• Reuters – MBFC Rating

The post Democrats Target Trump’s Business Ties Ahead of Possible House Takeover appeared first on News Facts Network.

Agent found to be able to find and exploit vulnerabilities without human intervention, and to carry out cyber-attacks

OpenAI will pause some work on an artificial intelligence model because of security concerns, the company stated on Friday, following a series of incidents in which AI agents have escaped containment.

The company had evaluated the agent, Astra, and found “significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity”, which had moved to a “critical” threshold where it can find and exploit vulnerabilities without human intervention, or devise and execute cyber-attacks when given only a “high level desired goal”.

At a Hiroshima memorial ceremony, Japan's prime minister said the country "maintains" its three long-standing non-nuclear principles, reports UPI. But the prime minister "stopped short of promising that the policy would remain unchanged, fueling speculation that her government could review a longstanding ban on allowing nuclear weapons into the country." [Prime Minister Sanae] Takaichi made the remarks Thursday at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony marking the 81st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city... Unlike previous prime ministers who pledged that Japan would "continue to uphold" the principles, Takaichi described the government's current position without making an explicit commitment about the future [only saying that Japan has "a mission to continue efforts toward realizing a world without nuclear weapon..."] The wording has drawn attention because her government plans to revise Japan's three key national security documents by the end of the year. At a news conference after the ceremony, Takaichi again said the government "maintains the Three Non-Nuclear Principles as a matter of policy." Asked whether the principles would continue to be included in the revised security documents, however, she declined to commit, saying she would refrain from prejudging the outcome. Japan's Three Non-Nuclear Principles state that the country will not possess nuclear weapons, will not produce them and will not permit their introduction into Japanese territory. The principles originated with a 1967 statement by then-Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and have remained a central element of Japan's postwar nuclear policy. Takaichi has previously questioned the third principle — the prohibition on allowing nuclear weapons into Japan. Before becoming prime minister, she argued in a 2024 book that Japan should retain the commitments not to possess or produce nuclear weapons but that an absolute prohibition on their introduction was unrealistic. Her argument was that barring port calls by U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons could limit the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear umbrella protecting Japan... The Japan Innovation Party has also called for a review of the third principle. In security policy recommendations submitted to the government in June, the party called for a "realistic review" of the ban on allowing nuclear weapons into Japan... Under existing government interpretations, Japan could respond flexibly in an extreme national emergency involving a U.S. vessel carrying nuclear weapons. Some within the ruling party therefore question whether formally revising the non-nuclear principles would provide enough practical benefit to justify the political controversy it would create. Critics also warn that changing the policy when Washington has not publicly demanded such a move could give China and North Korea additional grounds to portray Japan as expanding its military role... If Japan were to allow temporary entry by U.S. nuclear weapons or port calls by nuclear-armed vessels, Washington would gain additional operational options for its nuclear forces in Northeast Asia. Such a development could strengthen deterrence against North Korea and China but could also intensify debate over differences between U.S. extended deterrence arrangements with Japan and South Korea. "How the principles are addressed in Japan's revised security documents later this year could determine whether the issue develops into a broader debate over the future of extended nuclear deterrence among Japan, South Korea and the United States..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jorge Messi served as his son's agent and accompanied him to Europe when he signed with Barcelona as a teenager.

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

In a narrow 50-49 vote, President Trump's former defense lawyer was confirmed as attorney general in a vote early Saturday.

Exclusive: Lack of funds left British museums unable pay eight-figure sum for collection, which went to Abu Dhabi institution

One of the most important collections of UK Jurassic fossils ever compiled has been sold to a museum in Abu Dhabi, the Guardian can reveal, in what British experts have described as a loss for the nation.

The collection, which was amassed by a private fossil collector, consisted of 318 specimens, including ichthyosaurs, fish and crustaceans among other creatures, some of which could be new species.

(The Center Square) – Ten of the 13 programs meant to keep the B-52 flying into the 2050s are over budget, behind schedule or underperforming, a federal watchdog found, including new engines and radar.

A South Korean lunar orbiter has captured the first before-and-after images of the Moon's crash scene caused by a stray SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Associated Press reports: The Korea Aerospace Research Institute's Danuri spacecraft flew over the impact site soon after the Falcon 9 upper stage inadvertently plowed into the moon on Wednesday. Danuri made multiple passes, snapping photos from lunar orbit that were released by the space agency Thursday. The terrain is noticeably darker where the rocket hit and carved out a crater, sending dust and rock everywhere. Korean space officials said Danuri gathered before and after shots. NASA expects its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to fly over the crash site next week to view the aftermath. You can view the images here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When, where and how to get the optimal view of the first solar eclipse to be visible across the country this century

For the first time this century, people across the UK will be able to see an almost total solar eclipse in the evening sky on Wednesday.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between the sun and the Earth, blocking the sun’s light either partly or fully. This year, people in the UK and Ireland will see 90-96% of the sun covered by the moon for the first time since 1999 – and it’s their last chance until 2081.

Scotland’s former first minister says she will not visit Murrell in prison, where he is serving five-year sentence for embezzling SNP funds

Nicola Surgeon has said she will not visit her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, in prison, has stopped speaking to him and views herself as a “mug” for worrying about his wellbeing and mental health earlier this year.

During a podcast recording at the Edinburgh festival fringe, Scotland’s former first minister said Murrell had lied to her until the day he pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the Scottish National party.

• Messi family report death at medical clinic in Rosario

• Inter Miami are due to play Monterrey on Saturday night

Lionel Messi’s father and agent, Jorge, has died aged 68 at a medical clinic in the ⁠Argentinian city of ⁠Rosario after ​a long illness, the family have announced. Jorge Messi spent his final months ⁠alternating between a medical centre in Rosario and his home, accompanied by his wife, Celia, and his ⁠children Rodrigo, Matías and María Sol.

Lionel Messi ​spent time with his ‌father after the World ‌Cup before rejoining his club, Inter Miami, for whom he ‌returned to action a week ago. Inter Miami are due to play Monterrey on Saturday at home in the 2026 Leagues Cup, but the MLS club have yet to announce whether he will feature.

Abelardo de la Espriella, a millionaire lawyer with a taste for spectacle, took office Friday.

In the wake of 9/11, some called for rounding up whole groups of people viewed as potential threats to the nation. But Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta knew the U.S. had done that before.

State’s attorney general says scammers have made off with more than $100m in past two years

Scammers in New York have been using gold bars to steal money from victims, primarily older adults, and made off with more than $100m over the past two years, the state’s attorney general announced on Friday.

The scheme starts with victims receiving a fake pop-up message that states their computer or financial account has been compromised, the press release stated. The message includes a phone number to call, and when people do, the scammers convince the victims to provide remote access to their computers, which allows them to access their financial information or online bank accounts.

(The Center Square) – Two donors said they had never before made a political donation. Another said “look where I’m living” when asked if he made 7,878 donations worth $93,168.

It’s too reductive to simply smear scabs as sellouts. It’s important to understand why some workers might be motivated to weather scorn, rejection and even violence from their peers.

Inspired by real events, the films tackle issues of race, gender and class in ways that will resonate with many of today’s viewers.

Dr Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients - why is he working in the death chamber?

Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing.

It had all the appearances of a hospital setting.

Back-to-school weeks need food that works beyond one rushed morning. These 15 picks cover packable cookies, make-ahead salads, quick sandwiches, easy sides, and weeknight dinners for the busiest days.The post 15 quick back-to-school picks worth making the night before a…

(The Center Square) – After days of drawn-out negotiations, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a short-term government funding stopgap early Saturday morning.

Five school staff members died in the shooting outside Bangkok. The shooter also appeared to have killed his two grandparents.

City on track to record fewest reported rat sightings since pandemic as Mamdani’s ‘containerization’ program brings bins to boroughs

Is New York finally winning its war on rats? Or are New Yorkers’ vermin neighbors merely adapting to changing circumstances and, at least in some neighborhoods, staying out of sight?

With an estimated one rat for every three people, New York’s long-running rat war is in a period of uneasy detente.

Four-year-old Taras, who now resides at a Minnesota sanctuary, was diagnosed with an often fatal infection

A lion that escaped the war in Ukraine after being found as a four-month-old cub inside a duffel bag at Odesa railway station is facing an even greater battle for survival in his new home in Minnesota from a rare and often fatal fungal disease.

Taras; his two sisters, Lesya and Stefania; and an unrelated, slightly older cub from Kyiv named Prada were brought to the US in November 2022 by the Wildcat Sanctuary, a secluded private reserve near Sandstone, Minnesota, that arranged their rescue with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

Major win for president as former personal lawyer wins approval despite outcry over $1.8bn slush fund

The US Senate voted to narrowly confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general in a major win for Donald Trump, who will now have his one-time personal attorney sitting atop the nation’s law enforcement apparatus.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana cast the deciding vote in Blanche’s favor after two other Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – voted against him. Every Democrat rejected Blanche’s nomination as the Republican-led Senate voted 50-49.

The measure was approved in a 90 to 6 vote and now goes to the House.

• Blakely and Pease score 55.6 points in Phoenix

• Bullock third as defending champion Rivera sits fourth

• Women’s all-around competition concludes Sunday

The University of Florida’s Skye Blakely and 17-year-old Honolulu native Claire Pease are tied for ⁠the all-around lead after the first day of women’s competition at the US gymnastics championships ⁠on Friday in ⁠Phoenix.

Each ​earned 55.6 points.

Bill must still be approved by House but would keep government running at current funding levels

The US Senate on Friday passed a government funding bill that will prevent a shutdown through the midterm elections, though it still must be approved by the House of Representatives.

The continuing resolution (CR) passed by a 90-6 vote will keep the government running at its current funding levels until 11 December, more than a month past the midterms in which Democrats are hoping to regain control of Congress and block Donald Trump’s legislative agenda for the final two years of his presidency.

Observers express concern that the division has lost its independence and commercial reality has taken over

When Sir Demis Hassabis said AI had brought the world to a “pivotal moment in human history” last month, he knew another big change was imminent.

This shift was closer to home. The Nobel prize-winning head of Google DeepMind, Google’s AI unit, announced this week he was relinquishing his day-to-day duties as chief executive and becoming chair. He is also taking on the role of chief scientist at DeepMind’s parent, Alphabet.

An exchange between Dr Erica Schwartz and Senator Josh Hawley during her confirmation hearing is alarming

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s new cooking show isn’t the only big news out of the public health world this week. On Wednesday, Dr Erica Schwartz was confirmed by the US Senate as director ‌of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making her the first Black woman to hold the position. This is the first time in almost a year that the agency has had a permanent leader; the previous director, Susan Monarez, only lasted 29 days before she was ousted for butting heads with RFK about US vaccine policies. Translation: she was a little too keen on following accepted science for the Trump administration.

So is Schwartz an RFK-approved vaccine skeptic who thinks you can cure cancer by praying to trees? Surprisingly: no. Schwartz, who served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term, actually has government experience and a public health background. During her confirmation hearing in July, she walked a careful tightrope when asked about her stance towards vaccines. Schwartz said she “will never betray the science” but also dodged questions about how she would handle pressure from Kennedy.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

New York mayor’s policy set to generate revenue and address housing crisis despite outcry in some quarters

New York City’s introduction of a pied-à-terre tax has provided fodder for Zohran Mamdani’s critics, who accuse the democratic socialist mayor of attacking the rich – even as others welcome it as a much-needed effort to tax the wealthy in a city known for its yawning inequality and cost-of-living crisis.

The tax, aimed at closing the city’s budget gap, covers people who own but do not live full-time in a house worth more than $5m or a condominium or cooperative unit worth at least $1m.

One year after a massive stroke nearly incapacitated him, Todd Meiklejohn is opening up about his experience.

Falling debris sparked several fires on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, in attacks which killed at least four people

Megan Koverman's weight gain, fatigue, high blood pressure and other symptoms were dismissed for years before she was diagnosed with a rare heart disease.

Asked whether he targeted reporter who investigated party finances, Brexit campaigner says: ‘When you live by the sword, you die by the sword’

The prominent Reform UK member and Brexit campaigner Arron Banks is said to have set private investigators on a Sunday Times journalist after he broke a series of stories about Nigel Farage.

Banks is alleged to have paid for the services of investigators to examine Gabriel Pogrund, editor of the paper’s Insight investigations team.

Democratic incumbents in safe districts in New York and Colorado have been ousted so far this year by primary challengers.

Britain’s spooks take quiet satisfaction from survey ranking Secret Intelligence Service Europe’s top espionage agency

MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not.

L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former spies from across the continent, plus the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Each was asked to rank their top five foreign intelligence agencies, in secret, naturally enough. MI6 was first with 251 points ahead of DGSE on 169, with other agencies trailing behind.

The mission of the Flock app is quietly subversive: to encourage users to ditch their screens and explore the wonderful world of birding

On a brilliantly bright afternoon in his gallery and studio in Bolinas, a small town on the northern California coast, Keith Hansen was putting the finishing touches on a watercolor of an almost improbably flamboyant painted bunting.

With an ultra-fine sable brush, he made a few intricate additions to the cobalt blue plumage on the bunting’s head, and, satisfied with his work, slipped the watercolor into a stout binder that every few days welcomes a new addition.

Ever the strategist, the Chinese leader is taking the offensive, both abroad and at home. That’s bad news for global order, and minorities in his country

Imagine what would happen if a British prime minister in London told the Scots they could not have their own parliament, national football team or fly the saltire. Or if the Welsh were told their language and poetry were banned and must no longer be taught in schools. The ensuing uproar would probably destroy the United Kingdom. Yet that’s exactly what Xi Jinping, China’s communist emperor, is telling the roughly 125 million members of the 55 ethnic and religious minorities who together comprise about 9% of the country’s (majority Han Chinese) population.

Xi claims his sinicisation policy, embodied in a new “ethnic unity” law, will boost national identity and integration and, by expanding compulsory use of the Mandarin language, improve life and work prospects. Minorities should “hug tightly like pomegranate seeds” to build a strong, united China, he says. But Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs and others who value their separate language and customs fiercely object to what they see as forced assimilation into a conformist, intolerant monoculture dominated by the Communist party’s tunnel vision. For them, it’s ethnic cleansing by another name.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Tech companies offer eye-movement trackers, personalized podcasts and ‘optimized nap predictions’. Who actually needs this?

What job in our world is less lucrative than being a parent? A Hollywood internship? Volunteering at a soup kitchen? Professional writer? Parenting is the only job you have to pay money to do. Lots of money. Lodging, clothes, food, school, Pokémon cards – it really adds up. And it’s getting worse. According to the tech industry, I have to strap my drooling offspring to a computer in order to ensure the baby’s survival.

Parents are being offered life-altering advancements in artificial intelligence that purport to make this taxing endeavor a tiny bit easier. OpenAI is suggesting its latest products can make child-rearing more efficient: its boss, Sam Altman, suggests generating a podcast about your kid’s life that you can listen to in the morning on the way to school. How entertaining would a podcast “that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc” actually be? “Jimmy needs to work on his dribbling.” Great. I think he knows already. He’s not going to be the next Messi, so how about we switch back to music?

Sending snapshots of your pet is one thing. Sending a custom emoji is another.

NASA has squeezed at least another year of science out of Voyager 2 by cutting power to nonessential systems and switching to lower-power alternatives. Voyager 1 is expected to receive the same power-saving changes in the coming months. Space.com reports: Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977, called Voyager 1, rely on a form of nuclear battery known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat produced by the decay of plutonium. But the supply of plutonium on each probe drops at about four watts a year on each spacecraft. To keep the probe running on this dwindling power supply, engineers recently reduced Voyager 2's power requirements by turning off a few non-science devices and using "lower-power alternatives" that are still effective enough to keep the spacecraft warm while it's so far from the sun, NASA officials said in a statement. "The spacecraft power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off non-essential devices and systems," NASA officials wrote of the mission, which is managed by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The drop in power is having a measurable science impact on both spacecraft -- each has turned off two of their science instruments since 2024 alone. While some of these instruments were shut off after the spacecraft finished their historic planetary flybys decades ago, others were turned off due to power requirements. Each spacecraft initially launched with 10 instruments, and Voyager 2 is now down to only three instruments. At first it looked as though Voyager 2 would have to shut down another of these instruments later this year, but luckily, the new power shifts will allow all three to operate "for at least another year," NASA said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unexploded ordnance and a military motorcycle also recovered following record heat and drought conditions

Record-low water levels in the Danube have exposed remnants of Europe’s Nazi past, with dozens of second world war ships emerging from the riverbed during an intense drought.

In the middle of the river on the Serbian and Romanian border, a broken-up hull was visible on a sandbank that is normally underwater. Other vessels were partly submerged, some still believed to be laden with weapons.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month a policy banning visas for foreigners accused of links to “far-left terrorism.” The policy cited Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 as well as the law Rubio used to try to deport the pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil.

More than three weeks later, however, it’s not clear how Rubio and the State Department intend to use the policy. Their silence since the announcement has left some advocates wondering if the policy is really just a public-relations push by the Trump administration.

Existing law already allows the State Department to block terrorists from visiting the U.S. But tucked inside the policy is language about “economic sabotage” that advocates worry could empower a broad crackdown against people associated with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and campaigns to divest from fossil fuels.

“The message is to the public at large and particularly to anybody who would disagree with the government’s policies that they should tread carefully, lest they be considered a member or aligned with what the government considers to be a far-left terrorist group,” said Carrie DeCell, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.
“I think the vagueness is the point. It’s intended to send a broad chilling effect through the public and discourage dissent.”

Rubio’s Right-Wing Fever Dream

Rubio announced the policy at a July 16 gathering of foreign diplomats where he played up the threat of what he called “far-left terrorism,” which he said had been overlooked after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot — a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy,” Rubio said.

In a press release, Rubio said that State Department officials had been instructed to deny visas to “members of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism; supported violent criminal activity; participated in economic sabotage; financed, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups; and/or facilitated the convergence of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned networks for the purposes of violent action.”

The State Department has not elaborated further on how it decides whether a foreign national is a member of a “far-left” terror group or “aligned” groups. The department did not answer questions from The Intercept about its definitions for those terms.

The policy raised major concerns, however, for Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University.

Nothing in the policy appears to restrict it to foreign nationals residing abroad, Margulies said. He is concerned that the State Department could attempt to apply it to students living in the U.S. or to other people with legal status who are applying for different visas or renewals.

“The worry is that this will be used who are already in this country, for example, foreign students,” he said. “This gives the administration a hammer to go after these people, that I think is problematic under the First Amendment, and also exceeds the authority that Secretary Rubio has.”

Related

Judge Finds Rubio and Noem Intentionally Targeted Pro-Palestine Activists to Chill Speech

Other parts of federal immigration law already give the government wide discretion to block people accused of links to terrorism, making it something of a puzzle why the government would need a new policy to block people accused more specifically of “far-left” terrorism.

Yet one provision of the policy appears to mark a shift from existing policy, Margulies said: a section singling out people accused of “economic sabotage.” That kind of language could be used to target people who have supported Palestinian calls for the boycott of Israel, or environmental activists protesting fossil fuel companies, he said.

“That’s a term broad enough to get a tank through, and so that would really be problematic under the First Amendment, because of course people in this country have a right to criticize corporations as well as government,” he said.

The Vagueness Is the Point

When Rubio announced a new policy last May targeting misinformation researchers for visa denials, the State Department followed up seven months later by announcing that it would block or deport five foreign nationals.

So far the State Department has not announced any visa denials under the latest policy. For an example of the type of people that Rubio considers to be supporters of far-left terrorism, DeCell pointed to a State Department report about Cuba’s influence network issued last month. That report named streamer Hasan Piker, Amazon Labor Union founder Christian Smalls, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Baher Azmy, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said it was possible that the new visa restriction policy is simply another part of the multipronged effort to build up the threat of the left ahead of the midterms.

“This is coming at the same time they’re starting this once moribund terrorist court, they’re calling Amy Goodman a far-left enemy of the state,” he said. “It might be a midterm strategy, because it does seem to be coming all at once.”

DeCell’s group recently won an injunction blocking the State Department from implementing its visa restriction policy against misinformation researchers. She expects the State Department to eventually get around to announcing visa denials, as it did with them. “The justifications for their targeting likely would be made on X, if it follows the same path,” she said.

When it does, the latest restrictions could also be vulnerable to legal challenge. While the State Department has broad discretion to deny visas to foreigners, Margulies said, it is not unlimited, particularly for those living in the United States.

“Watch this space. They may have particular people in mind. Then we may see some developments very quickly how they intend to apply this,” he said.

The post Rubio Is Trying to Keep Leftists Out of U.S. by Banning Supporters of “Economic Sabotage” appeared first on The Intercept.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche as U.S. attorney general early Saturday, elevating President Donald Trump’s former personal defense lawyer after a contentious fight over the Justice Department’s independence and a controversial settlement benefiting Trump and his allies.

The 50-49 vote came shortly before senators left Washington for a five-week recess. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democrats in opposition, making Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy’s support crucial to Blanche’s confirmation.

Blanche had served as acting attorney general since Trump dismissed Pam Bondi in April. His nomination stalled over a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund designed to compensate Trump allies who claimed they were unfairly targeted by federal authorities, along with a settlement provision granting Trump and family members limited protection from IRS audits.

To secure skeptical Republicans, Blanche formally rescinded the fund and provided written assurances that the tax provision applied only to existing claims rather than future tax filings.

Collins and Murkowski remained unconvinced, citing concerns about Blanche’s independence, investigations targeting Trump critics and his handling of matters involving Jeffrey Epstein.

Supporters argued Blanche’s prosecutorial experience makes him capable of managing the department and advising Trump when presidential demands cross legal boundaries.

His confirmation gives Trump a former personal attorney permanent control of the Justice Department, ensuring questions about its traditional independence will remain central throughout Blanche’s tenure.

Sources:

• Reuters – MBFC Rating

The post Senate Confirms Todd Blanche as Attorney General in 50-49 Vote appeared first on News Facts Network.

NEWARK, New Jersey — New Jersey has opened a civil rights investigation into Delaney Hall, the privately operated ICE detention center in Newark, following months of complaints about conditions and the recent death of a detainee.

Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced the probe Friday and issued investigative subpoenas to GEO Group, the private prison company operating the facility under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The state says detainees have reported spoiled food, unsanitary bathrooms, inadequate hygiene supplies and insufficient medical care.

The investigation follows the death of Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, an immigrant from El Salvador who suffered a medical emergency while detained. His family alleges he had diabetes, epilepsy and high blood pressure and lost substantial weight while in custody. ICE has not accepted those allegations as established fact, and his cause of death remains under review.

Delaney Hall has already been the subject of another state lawsuit after GEO Group allegedly denied New Jersey health inspectors full access to the facility. Gov. Mikie Sherrill has called for the center’s closure and said her own request to enter the facility was denied.

The latest inquiry will examine whether GEO employees violated detainees’ civil rights. DHS has disputed claims that conditions at Delaney Hall are unsafe or inhumane.

Sources:

• Reuters – MBFC Rating

The post New Jersey Probes ICE Detention Center After Death, Abuse Complaints appeared first on News Facts Network.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, who has died at 71, was the first Latino to win the PEN/Faulkner. His YA novel “Aristotle and Dante” brought him international fame.

Many seemed reluctant to take sides in the Ohio Republican congressman's divorce, which was marked by accusations of abuse, until the allegation he had withheld his daughter’s sleep buddy.

Drought and record heat have forced the Norfolk and Suffolk league to move kick-off to the end of August as the ground is deemed too dangerous to play on

This summer’s record drought has forced a football league to delay the start of its season because “rock hard” pitches are a danger to its players.

The 2026/27 season in the Anglian Combination League of 85 amateur teams in Norfolk and Suffolk was due to start next weekend.

The US president’s profound ignorance of his enemy has led to an impotent cycle of empty threats, analysts say

Being the subject of mockery may be the most intense of all Donald Trump’s known aversions.

Yet more than five months after embarking on a war of choice against Iran, the US president risks attracting ridicule as he struggles to secure a military victory – while repeatedly threatening devastating bombardment against the Tehran regime, only to back down on the pretext of renewed negotiations.

• European Aquatics Championships taking place in city

• Threat to water quality tested two years after Games

Paris is staging its first high-diving competition in the Seine, with athletes launching themselves from a 20-metre platform in front of the Eiffel Tower – a spectacular new test of the city’s effort to reclaim its river for sport. The event on the Pont de Bir-Hakeim has also exposed the fragility of that ambition.

Organisers suspended training on Thursday when traces of hydrocarbons were detected upstream. By Friday, the French Swimming Federation said the affected area had been treated, allowing athletes to return to the water and the event to proceed as planned. High diving concludes on Saturday with the final two rounds and medal events, while the broader European Aquatics Championships run through to 16 August.

Journalists analyzed databases, scoured thousands of pages of documents and traveled to three states to illuminate a core finding of over $300 million in fraud.

Jerry and Tally Leonard have thrilled shoppers and open-skate crowds for decades at the Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon. Now, they’re not sure how they will fill the void.

Somosierra will be prime spot to view celestial alignment on 12 August, an event that poses logistical challenges

Little stirs in the mountains above Somosierra beyond the wind that lashes the flat peaks, the cows that graze on parched grass and the sun that beats down on the abandoned aerodrome where generations of glider pilots learned to ride air currents alongside squadrons of vultures and red kites.

But all this stillness will disappear, albeit temporarily, on the evening of 12 August, when swathes of northern and eastern Spain and the Balearic islands experience a total solar eclipse, the likes of which has not been seen here for more than 120 years.

Exclusive: anonymous flagging service says cases have surged, as watchdog says AI is making sexualised or ‘nudified’ content easier to produce

Children in the UK have reported a surge in explicit deepfake images featuring their likenesses, as a safety watchdog warned AI is making such content easier to produce.

The Report Remove service, which blocks intimate images from appearing online, said there had been a rapid increase in imagery that had been digitally manipulated or “faked” in some way, including with AI and nudification tools.

The police surrounded her car Thursday, "drew their guns, and told her to come out with her hands up," reports a local news station. The police thought they were pulling over a murder suspect, but "It turns out it was a mistake by another department with the Flock license plate reader technology." The black woman says she'd wanted to call her mother, "but I'm like, if I make a sudden move, it's going to be over. It's going to end my life." And amazingly, the same thing happened Monday, according to the local news report. "Milwaukee police pulled her over with guns drawn. She says officers never explained why, towed her car, and let her go." She now describes herself as "traumatized," recalling her second detention by police on Thursday. "After they put us in cuffs, they walked us to the car. I'm not knowing what's going on. I'm scared. All you see is people in their cars recording." She now says she's scared to drive her car, and so is her daughter. "Because she doesn't know if the police are going to pull us over and do it again..." "I haven't been to sleep since this happened. Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is guns." She wants an apology, since the local police would only say it wasn't their fault, it was the fault of the Milwaukee police department that failed to remove the alert from Flock's system. "Milwaukee police emphasized this was not a Flock camera issue, it was a data entry mistake," according to the local news report. The woman's response? "Y'all failed. Y'all failed the system. Y'all failed me. Y'all failed everybody."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists race to untangle complex links between exposure and mortality as fire weather grows more prevalent

A thousand kilometres from the infernos gorging on northern Ontario’s boreal forests, Erin O’Connor watched the sky above Canada’s biggest city turn an “almost post-apocalyptic” orange as it filled with light-scattering particles of soot and ash. Stepping outside the halls of Toronto General hospital, where air filters were keeping patients safe from the worst of the fumes, she was struck by a smell so strong it felt like standing by a campfire.

“It really hit you in the face as soon as you walked outside,” said O’Connor, who runs University Health Network’s emergency department and saw a rise in patients presenting with allergies and shortness of breath. “As the days progressed, it was like that everywhere. It seemed even inside you could smell that burning.”

Trump ally Abelardo De La ‌Espriella vows to start ‘profound transformation’ of country’s destiny as he is sworn in

The ​Trump administration plans to provide $1bn in security assistance to the ⁠government of Colombia’s new ​rightwing ‌president, the US state department announced, soon after Abelardo De La ‌Espriella was sworn in and used his inaugural speech to pledge a vigorous fight against drug trafficking, as well as austerity measures to restore confidence in the economy.

De La Espriella, 48, won June’s runoff election with ⁠promises to crack down on armed groups, shrink ⁠the state by as much as 40% and ​revive the oil and gas sector.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump is again alleging election fraud without evidence, this time claiming Republican Mike Rogers was cheated out of Michigan’s 2024 U.S. Senate race.

During an interview with Punchbowl News, Trump said he believed Rogers actually won against Democrat Elissa Slotkin and called the contest “a rigged deal.” He offered no evidence to support the accusation.

The certified results show Slotkin defeated Rogers by roughly 19,000 votes, or about 0.3 percentage points. Michigan’s bipartisan Board of State Canvassers unanimously certified the 2024 election after all 83 county canvassing boards completed their reviews.

Michigan’s subsequent statewide audit also found no evidence that tabulation problems altered election outcomes. A risk-limiting audit hand-counted nearly 120,000 ballots from 166 precincts and found a difference of just 33 votes from machine totals — about 0.03% of audited ballots.

Rogers himself previously floated similarly unsupported claims about his 2024 loss, despite the absence of evidence showing widespread fraud or an incorrect result.

Trump made the accusation while discussing Rogers’ 2026 campaign against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed. He also repeatedly called El-Sayed “Abdullah,” despite his actual name being Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

Trump has a long history of labeling elections “rigged” when results or polling are unfavorable. In this case, the allegation directly contradicts Michigan’s certified results and post-election auditing.

Sources:

• Mediaite – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Revives Baseless Election Fraud Claim in Michigan Senate Race appeared first on News Facts Network.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida — A 91-year-old Florida man has been charged with first-degree murder after authorities say he fatally shot his wife, who was blind and had severe Alzheimer’s disease, and told investigators he believed he was keeping a promise never to place her in a nursing home.

St. Johns County deputies responded Aug. 1 after William Albert Lippold’s son called 911. According to the arrest report, Lippold had summoned his son to the home by saying, “I did something bad, I need you to come over.”

Investigators said Lippold admitted shooting his wife and later attempting to take his own life by suffocating himself with a plastic bag. Deputies found his wife dead in a bedroom near a firearm, shell casing and handwritten note.

Lippold had been his wife’s sole caregiver. His son told investigators that his father had previously alluded to such an outcome as her condition worsened. Authorities say Lippold recently purchased the firearm and practiced using it at a gun range.

The sheriff’s report says Lippold told investigators that he had promised his wife he would never place her in institutional care and viewed the shooting as fulfilling that promise.

Lippold was arrested on a charge of premeditated first-degree murder with a firearm. An arrest represents an accusation, and he has not been convicted. The case now moves into Florida’s criminal court system.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post 91-Year-Old Florida Caregiver Charged in Wife’s Shooting Death appeared first on News Facts Network.

British and Germans themselves share stereotype but other nationalities are likelier to put out towels – or umbrellas

Germans are sunlounger hoggers, or so the longstanding stereotype goes. But not only is that cultural trope mostly confined to British – and, even more so, German – perceptions, surprising new data reveals that in fact Italian and French holidaymakers are the ones most likely to use their towel to stake their claim to a sunlounger.

A poll by YouGov of Europeans holidaymakers found that while many Germans (51%) and Britons (46%) associate Germans with the ritual of waking up at the crack of dawn to mark their spot, the perception barely exists elsewhere in Europe, with just 5-17% of those surveyed in other countries sharing the stereotype.

The Pentagon alleged that former U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall disclosed sensitive information about Air Force One's capabilities to the media.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the U.S. after reaching a $1.2 billion payout deal with President Donald Trump's Department of the Interior (DoI). RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900 million in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana. "After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future," the company said in a statement. RWE said it has agreed to relinquish its leases off the California and Louisiana coasts as well as in the New York Bight. Overall, the German firm plans to invest approximately $19.6 billion in the U.S. over the next six years "to grow its generation capacity." Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies." "We welcome RWE's agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation's energy security," he added. Earlier this year, the DOL reached a deal with TotalEnergies putting an end to the French company's offshore wind projects in the U.S. "Instead, the firm agreed to reroute investment to build a LNG plant in Texas and to develop 'upstream conventional oil' in the Gulf of Mexico," reports the BBC. Another similar deal was signed with Charlotte-based Duke Energy last month to terminate the company's offshore wind lease in the Carolina Long Bay area.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump announced over $180 million in grants to boost educational programs for the mining industry, part of a bid to increase critical mineral production.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump is publicly pressuring U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to reopen prosecutions over alleged vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, days after her office dismissed all four cases tied to the damage.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that newly visible cuts in the pool liner prove “pure VANDALISM” and accused Pirro of making a “hastily made decision.” He cited photographs posted by freelance photographer Andrew Leyden and again claimed the material had been deliberately slashed for hundreds of feet.

Pirro’s office previously dropped a felony case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn and three misdemeanor cases after the Interior Department provided records indicating that at least some of the damage resulted from a flawed installation rather than vandalism.

That reversal was significant because prosecutors had initially relied on Interior Department representations that vandals caused the damage. Hearn’s lawyers also argued that the government’s own witness could not attribute specific repair costs to his conduct.

Trump has continued insisting vandals were responsible and is now criticizing both Pirro and Hearn’s attorneys while pointing to Hearn’s political activity as part of his argument for renewed prosecution.

Whether prosecutors can or will reopen any of the dismissed cases depends on the specific dismissal orders and available evidence. Trump’s public demand nevertheless puts unusual political pressure on a federal prosecutor who is a longtime ally and appointee.

Sources:

• Washington Examiner – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Pressures Pirro to Reopen Reflecting Pool Vandalism Cases appeared first on News Facts Network.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito confirmed Friday that he plans to remain on the court for another term, ending months of speculation that he might retire while President Donald Trump and Republicans retain the ability to confirm a successor.

Alito, 76, told The Wall Street Journal that he intends to serve through the term beginning in October and running into summer 2027. His decision preserves the court’s current 6-3 conservative majority and prevents Trump, for now, from gaining an opportunity to appoint a fourth justice.

Some conservative activists have encouraged Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas to retire while Republicans control the Senate, arguing that younger replacements could secure the court’s ideological balance for decades.

Speculation intensified in June after NPR mistakenly published a prewritten article saying Alito was retiring. The outlet quickly retracted the report after the Supreme Court said it was inaccurate.

Alito pushed back against the idea that justices are politically interchangeable and criticized commentators who evaluate the court primarily through partisan outcomes.

He also defended his independence from Trump, saying he decides cases according to his interpretation of the law regardless of whether the outcome benefits the president.

Alito was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. His decision to stay removes one potential Supreme Court vacancy from the immediate political calendar.

Sources:

• Associated Press – MBFC Rating

The post Alito Says He Will Stay on Supreme Court Another Term appeared first on News Facts Network.

Memphis Grizzlies forward Brandon Clarke died in May from the effects of heroin and cocaine, authorities said Friday.

Justin and Tori Cannarelli of New York almost have a typical American family with their two children and a dog. But they also have one very unique member: a duck.

The Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 10 last year, which requires all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.

Konstantin Kontis and Vicky Kos were compelled to testify at a coronial inquest resuming on the sixth anniversary of the tragedy

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Quiet sobs could be heard in Melbourne’s coroner’s court, as several families attended to finally hear from the pair who were the most senior managers when, throughout July and August 2020, almost a quarter of the 188 residents at St Basil’s aged care home died from Covid-19 or neglect.

Following multiple failed legal bids to avoid giving evidence after 50 residents died in the Victorian aged care home they managed, Konstantin Kontis and Vicky Kos were compelled to testify at a coronial inquest resuming on the sixth anniversary of the tragedy.

A $50 million effort is underway to restore miles of eroded shoreline in Buxton, a village on one of the barrier islands of North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Two-term Rep. Andy Ogles lost the Republican primary for his Tennessee House seat, The Associated Press projects, despite securing an endorsement from President Trump.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the helicopter crashed in Richfield, which is about 160 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an opinion piece from the Washington Post, written by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger: NextEra Energy, a Florida-based utility company, has filed paperwork to buy Dominion Energy for about $67 billion, creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world. Virginia's State Corporation Commission is the regulatory body tasked with reviewing the application, and the SCC's commissioners will ultimately decide whether to approve, deny or impose new conditions on any potential merger. As a Virginian, I am deeply skeptical about whether selling our primary state-regulated utility to an out-of-state company is good for the commonwealth. I have serious questions about what this deal would mean for us. And as governor, I intend to get answers and be a voice for Virginians in the process. That is why I will be taking the legal step of "intervening" in this proposed merger, which means that as governor, I will formally request to be a party to the case. I know this action is unprecedented by a Virginia governor -- but so, too, is the size of this proposed merger and its potential impact on the commonwealth. Virginians deserve to know that their leaders are laser-focused on ensuring that their needs are part of the SCC review. "If two large corporations stand to benefit financially from this merger, so, too, should the Virginians who pay the bills," said Spanberger. "That is why any potential deal must deliver a more affordable energy bill with sustained, long-term energy cost savings." By formally intervening in the merger review, Spanberger's administration would gain legal standing to participate directly in the case, request detailed information, raise concerns, and advocate for conditions that benefit people in the state. She says the goal is to push for lower long-term energy costs, protect utility jobs, and ensure any new owner continues investing in reliable, affordable and cleaner power.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is the eighth round of Iran-related sanctions announced by the Trump administration this year.

CBS News received a second audio message from journalist Reza Valizadeh, who's been held in Iran's notorious Evin Prison since 2024. He gave an update on the prison conditions and on fellow American Kamran Hekmati, believed to be suffering from a recurring cancer.

Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat and a former U.S. House representative, cast his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed as “an extremist,” after the Aug. 4 primary election.

“Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11,” read an Aug. 5 statement from Rogers that invoked his law enforcement work “hunting terrorists.” 

The attack draws on an El-Sayed campaign connection to popular influencer and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, but the comment is not something El-Sayed said. El-Sayed campaigned this year alongside Piker, who said “America deserved 9/11” in 2019 and has since walked it back.

El-Sayed, a former public health official, addressed the controversy in April the morning he campaigned with Piker. 

In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” the host asked El-Sayed if he agrees with Piker’s comments about 9/11. 

“Of course I don’t think 9/11 was justified,” he said. “Because you appear with somebody doesn’t mean you agree with him on everything.” 

PolitiFact asked Rogers’ campaign for evidence to support Rogers’ statement. The campaign pointed us to a clip of El-Sayed at a campaign event being asked if he disavows Piker’s comments and describing the blowback as “cancel culture.” The campaign also pointed us to a clip of El-Sayed declining to answer when asked whether he’d campaign with Piker again.

“Abdul was asked point blank if he’d disavow Hasan Piker’s comments, and he wouldn’t do it. That tells you everything you need to know,” Rogers campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said.

Asked directly about Rogers’ 9/11 statement on MSNOW, El-Sayed accused Rogers of Islamophobia and said Rogers was using the attack to divide people.

What did Piker say about 9/11? 

Piker is one of the most popular political creators on the livestreaming platform Twitch, drawing more than 25,000 live viewers on average during his streams. He is a self-described socialist and often campaigns for progressive and left-wing challengers to moderate Democratic politicians.

Piker has drawn criticism for his critiques of Israel during the war in Gaza and for supporting some actions of militant groups such as the Houthis and Hezbollah. Critics have accused him of antisemitism after he described some Orthodox Jews as “inbred.” Piker has disputed that characterization and said he’s anti-Zionist, not antisemitic.

In an August 2019 stream while watching U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Piker said, “America deserved 9/11, dude.” He later said we “totally brought it on ourselves.”

Piker walked back the comments in an appearance two days later on the political YouTube show “The Young Turks,” where he was a contributor. He said he opposes violence and he was making the point that U.S. actions in the Middle East created the extremism that led to the terrorist attacks.

“All of the foreign policy decisions, and our arming of insurgent groups in the region, and our efforts in destabilizing the Middle East have a direct consequence, a boomerang effect if you will, in causing 9/11,” Piker said.

While campaigning with El-Sayed in April, Piker told The Associated Press he “didn’t mean that Americans deserved to die.” 

How El-Sayed addressed the Piker controversy

El-Sayed told the Michigan Advance that he campaigned with Piker on April 7 — at events at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan — because Piker reaches people who have been “locked out” of the political process.

At one of the events, a reporter asked El-Sayed if he would disavow anything Piker has said. El-Sayed didn’t point to anything specific and called the criticism cancel culture. 

“I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture, I thought we were over it.” 

Before the campaign events, El-Sayed told “Fox and Friends” on April 7 that he didn’t think 9/11 was justified.

Since winning the Aug. 4 primary, El-Sayed has not said whether he will campaign with Piker again ahead of the general election. 

“I’m not as focused on who I’m campaigning with. I’m focused on who I’m campaigning for,” he told MSNOW’s Jacob Soboroff on Aug. 5. He gave a similar answer to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Our ruling 

Rogers said El-Sayed “believes America deserved 9/11.” 

Rogers pointed to a seven-year-old statement from another person — not from El-Sayed — to support his claim. 

The incendiary attack by Rogers on El-Sayed, who is Muslim, evokes tropes about Muslims and support for terrorism. 

El-Sayed campaigned with Piker, but didn’t endorse his comments about 9/11, and said the same day that he doesn’t think the 9/11 terrorist attacks were justified.

We rate the statement Pants on Fire!

The National Rural Water Association has partnered with DEF CON Franklin to launch the Water Watch Center, which will provide threat intelligence and cybersecurity services to smaller U.S. water utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people. The initiative comes amid a growing wave of cyberattacks on water systems across multiple states. The Record reports: The program will see five managed detection and response providers work with DEF CON Franklin and the NRWA to offer cyber services for water utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people. There are over 50,000 community water systems across the U.S. and 91% of them serve fewer than 10,000 people. "These leading cyber firms and NRWA are architecting a scalable cyber delivery model that has eluded water industry and national security officials to date," said Jake Braun, the co-founder of DEF CON Franklin and former cyber official in the Biden administration. "Our incredible Franklin volunteers will support the effort to keep costs down for cash-strapped utilities fending off adversaries like the Iranian Red Guard or Chinese Military," Braun said. "To further accelerate the effort, we hand-picked cyber providers who already support water utilities. These folks walk in the door knowing the intricacies of cybersecurity in a water utility environment." The providers include Rapid7, Defendify, Legato Security, L1 Secure and Sentinel Technologies. The companies will share threat information and data on vulnerability patches with the NRWA, which will operate as a hub.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Move comes in response to Rome imposing similar measures after mass migration rush to Ceuta

Spain has announced it will introduce temporary border checks on visitors from Italy in response to Rome imposing similar measures after a mass rush of people from Morocco into Ceuta.

The checks, which come “amid the persistent irregular migration pressure” facing Italy, will start at midnight on Saturday and last until 7 September, Spain’s interior ministry said in a statement.

A federal appeals court said the White House lacks the authority to unilaterally construct the 90,000-square-foot ballroom. President Trump said the administration will appeal to the Supreme Court.

Will Rosenzweig’s defunct blog was publicized online by conservative pundit who tagged senior DoJ officials

A federal prosecutor fired last year over critical comments he had written as a private citizen about Donald Trump sued the justice department on Friday, saying his termination violated his first amendment rights.

Will Rosenzweig was two weeks away from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case when a blog he had written years earlier covering a broad range of topics was publicized online by a conservative political commentator who also included a screenshot of Rosenzweig’s LinkedIn account and tagged senior justice department officials.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Billions of dollars are traded every week on the lightly regulated prediction market sites, where users bet on everything from movie reviews to elections to conflicts in the Middle East. Clinical trials are just the latest area where the industry's rapid growth is raising ethical questions. Kalshi claims such bets will provide a new source of information about which drugs will get approved, and what clinical trials will show promising results, which the company says can help investors decide what new drugs to fund. "If you want to ban profiting from the failure of clinical trials, you would start with the stock market, where the financial incentive for this type of profit is orders of magnitude larger," said Kalshi spokesman Jack Such, pointing to stock market short sellers who have profited from clinical trial failures. "While Kalshi and the stock market are the same in this regard, they do differ in one important way: the stock market doesn't give any valuable information to researchers," Such said. Drug trial researchers, though, are far from convinced. David Tsai, who runs clinical trials at a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area, started an online petition pushing for such betting to be banned, making the case that betting on drug trials "threatens the very foundation of trust and integrity in biotechnology." Tsai is concerned that the prospect of betting provides those involved with a clinical trial a reason to tamper with the results for a prediction market payout. "If we were running a trial for an oncology drug that requires an infusion, a pharmacist who had placed a bet saying that it's gonna work well, or doesn't work well, could obviously adjust the infusion rate, could adjust the source temperature of the drug," he said. "They could change any number of variables that could obviously have a direct impact [on] how the trial and the data and the patient safety would come out." Another skeptic is Nicholas Zaorsky, a professor of radiation oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who has helped run clinical trials and agrees that prediction markets can interfere with the advancement of life-saving drugs. "Prediction markets can be valuable in some settings because they aggregate information, but clinical trials are fundamentally different: investigators, coordinators, and sometimes even participants can directly influence aspects of the outcomes being wagered on," Zaorsky said. "That creates financial incentives that risk undermining trial integrity." Bettors should not be rooting for an experimental medicine to fail just to earn a buck, says Joshua Pederson, the father of a 12-year-old cancer patient enrolled in a clinical trial. "It's a dark idea," he said. "It's quite ghastly." Kalshi, for its part, argues that its prediction markets could help patients track promising medical breakthroughs and clinical trials, enlisting experts including 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki to make the case. "Most patients don't know about the choices available in clinical trials or which programs are most promising. The opportunity to have an open, transparent dataset about trial probabilities is extremely promising and empowering for people," a white paper sponsored by Kalshi stated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A sudden slump in hiring has dramatically changed the outlook for the Federal Reserve's September interest rate decision.

Chad Eberle of Texas charged over deadly shooting in Saltillo that officials say stemmed from custody dispute

A Texas police officer has been arrested in Mexico after authorities there accused him of killing three people and critically injuring the mother of his child in what investigators say stemmed from a dispute over the custody of the minor.

The Coahuila attorney general’s office said 35-year-old Chad Eberle was arrested on Wednesday at the border on a warrant accusing him of femicide and qualified homicide, according to La Razon de Mexico, a newspaper based in Mexico City. Under Mexican law, femicide refers to the intentional killing of a woman or girl because of her gender.

Three people were killed in the shooting that started at an In-N-Out restaurant in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Whether the biggest artificial intelligence data centers should open in Florida and what it means for people’s electric bills is a top issue in the state’s governor’s race.

GOP frontrunner U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds welcomes them, with consumer protections attached, and has received dozens of campaign contributions from AI companies. David Jolly, the leading Democrat in the race, wants a data center moratorium, which some counties have enacted already.  

Florida has more than 100 operational data centers.There are proposals for hyperscale AI facilities, but none are open yet. 

“Byron Donalds wants to rush them onto pristine land while dismissing the consequences,” Jolly said in a July 22 X post. 

But Donalds said Jolly is wrong. “No protections for ratepayers and the environment = no data center. That’s the law on the books in Florida,” Donalds wrote July 22 on X, adding that he introduced a similar bill in Congress. 

In another post the same day, Donalds said the 2026 law, SB 484, “ensures that utility rates will not go up due to data centers.”

Does the law guarantee consumers’ electric bills won’t increase because of new data centers?

Gates McGavick, Donalds’ campaign communications director, said “no electric rate change” takes effect without the state energy commission’s approval. The commission has to “ensure data centers pay their own cost of service and we expect municipal utilities and co-ops to follow suit,” McGavick said.

Energy policy experts said the law can protect consumers against spiking utility bills. But they also say Donalds overstated its reach. That’s because the pricing plan for data centers depends on a state commission’s oversight, data centers’ operations could increase electric bills in other ways, and the law doesn’t apply to all utility companies.

“Saying rates ‘will not’ go up because of (the law) claims an outcome the statute does not deliver,” said Mark McNees, a Florida State University professor who researches how AI data centers can affect consumers. 

The law directs a commission to ‘reasonably ensure’ consumers don’t pay more, but doesn’t guarantee it

The law directs the Florida Public Service Commission, the state’s primary energy regulatory body, to approve minimum tariff and service rules for massive consumers of electricity, or “large load customers.” Data centers that require 50 megawatts of power or more are subject to the law. (A 50-megawatt facility typically draws enough electricity to power around 30,000 to 50,000 homes.)

The law says that rates for these large data centers must “reasonably ensure” that each “bears its own full cost of service” and that the cost isn’t shifted to the average consumer. 

The legislation says these costs of service include connection, incremental transmission and generation, and operations and maintenance expenses. It also bars data centers from splitting a single, large location into smaller connections to avoid paying full costs. 

Four investor-owned electric utilities in the state are governed by the commission and subject to the law: Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy Florida, Tampa Electric and the Florida Public Utilities Company. These companies serve approximately 75% of the state’s population.

By Oct. 1, these utilities must file compliant pricing plans for the commission’s approval.

The law doesn’t apply to rural cooperatives or municipal utility companies, such as Jacksonville Electric Authority, Orlando Utilities Commission and Gainesville Regional Utilities, which are governed by local boards that set their own pricing rules.

That means people who receive services from these companies aren’t protected under the new law, and could see different rate structures if data centers are built near them.

Energy policy experts said the new law is helpful but largely procedural. 

This “directs a process, not a result,” McNees said. The law’s language, that the plans must “reasonably ensure” data centers pay their own costs, is “an instruction to the commission,” not a cap on rates or ban on increases, he said.

The law outlines enforcement tools utilities could use against data centers, such as upfront financial guarantees and minimum demand charges to prevent them from abandoning projects midway and saddling locals with related costs. But it doesn’t require utilities to use these tools.

And while the legislation addresses incremental costs of serving data centers, it doesn’t address other expenses that could make consumers’ bills go up, experts said. 

For example, when fuel costs go up, utilities pass that onto customers. The new law doesn’t cap those charges or insulate residential customers from the increases, even if a data center’s electricity consumption raises the overall demand in the region.

Our ruling

Donalds said a new Florida law “ensures that utility rates will not go up due to data centers.”

The law outlines ways to protect consumers from paying higher bills because of new data centers, but it doesn’t guarantee it won’t happen.

Utility pricing plans for certain large data centers must “reasonably ensure” that each bears its own full cost of service, the law says. It’s up to the Florida Public Service Commission to define and enforce the pricing plan. 

The four top electric utilities in the state are bound by the law’s rules, but rural cooperatives and municipal utilities governed by local boards are not. 

We rate Donalds’ claim Half True.

RELATED: FL governor’s race: Did Jay Collins sponsor a bill giving permanent tax breaks to AI data centers?

RELATED: How much have data centers increased electricity prices? 

Late senator spent final days of his life working to advance bill that will now head to the House after 86-11 Senate vote

By a large, bipartisan margin, the US Senate on Friday approved a bill intended to punish Russia and countries that buy its petroleum exports over the invasion of Ukraine, capping a legislative push that was spurred by the death of its champion, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

The measure, renamed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia Act in honor of the late senator’s work on the issue, was approved by an 86-11 vote. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the sole Republican to oppose the legislation, together with 10 Democrats.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli hired former top aide Shawn Lewis to be a federal law enforcement liaison, though Lewis has three prior convictions for driving under the influence and a pending battery charge.

Former U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis says the biggest AI risk isn't sentience but autonomy. "What I'm worried about is that they get to choose what and where they do something, and under what rules they do it," he said, citing recent cases of AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta escaping security sandboxes. He argues developers need stronger safeguards, monitoring, and human accountability, invoking Asimov's idea that protecting humans should come before simply obeying them. The Register reports: "Asimov was right," he said, referring to science fiction author Isaac Asimov and his three laws that were to be followed by robots -- more specifically, AIs, in this case. "The first rule, and we call it the superior role, must be that it's designed not to hurt humans," Inglis said. "Second rule: To obey humans, such that it doesn't achieve agency and aspiration on its own. And the third: To do what humans tell it - and in that order. Instead we've designed them in the exact opposite way." What this means, he explained, is that AI developers created models to "do what humans tell you, obey the humans until it's inconvenient, and then the third one is maybe implied - protect humans - but if that's not built into the DNA, hardwired into it, then we have no right to expect it." Inglis admits it's not possible to hardwire rules into models and still keep their non-deterministic nature. "I would offer that you can tease those out in a highly controlled environment, a true sandbox, where you say, 'Let's put this thing through its paces, and let's back away to see what happens,'" he said. "Maybe you get the equivalent of a mini nuclear explosion in that room, and now you know this thing is capable of that." Inglis thinks another problem with AI is that it's become a commodity. "It's not like you can control it like you can nuclear material," he said. "You can't even specify its properties the way you can for an airplane or for an automobile, as diverse as they might be. Its manifestations are so numerous, so diverse, that as a general matter, you can't actually win by simply saying, "I will design those properties in,'" he added. "You need to do that to some degree, and then make sure that you understand how to watch it, monitor it, make sure you know what it does." [...] Ultimately, humans remain accountable for AI models' actions, according to Inglis. "They remain the source of agency and aspiration. It's possible for them to give broad authority to an AI model and have it run around for 30 hours without further consultation, but they need to know what they've asked it to do, and they need to know what they expect it will deliver in terms of performance on the back end. If they don't, then they're going to get what they deserve, which is the very frequent unpleasant surprise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Department of Energy today announced a plan to create a new class of open-weight foundation models as part of its Genesis Mission effort to turbocharge scientific discovery and engineering productivity. The DOE unveiled the first model as part of this effort, dubbed Genesis-Science-1, but it’s looking to the AI community for more open-weight models. Interested parties better act quickly, however, as the deadlines are coming up fast.

As part of its open-weights initiative, the DOE says it’s hoping “to galvanize the scientific and AI communities around shared infrastructure” and accelerate progress in materials discovery, energy systems, earth system modeling, fusion, biology, and high-energy physics. “This effort is grounded in the principles of open science, reproducibility, and responsible AI, with the goal of lowering barriers to advanced AI capabilities for the public good,” the DOE said.

The DOE announced that it’s soliciting proposals from open-weight model creators as well as the people who would like to use the models. This includes open-weight models for use as a base model for downstream fine-tuning, as well as AI models for immediate deployment.

It would like to hear from organizations and researchers who have access to “high-quality, domain-specific scientific data” who may be interested in contributing their data to future pretraining cycles. It also would like to hear from teams that would like to use that data to fine-tune existing models for specific use cases and mission needs, such as lab assistants, simulation surrogates, and scientific copilots.

Applications for the first contribution window for pretraining efforts will close next Friday, August 14. Applications for fine-tuning efforts will close on August 25. The DOE says additional deadlines will be rolling and occur every three months. You can submit and application for the Genesis Open Models Initiative here.

Genesis-Science-1

The first model accepeted into the DOE inititive, Genesis-Science-1, was developed by Arcee Labs. In a recent blog post, Arcee CTO Lucas Atkins and CEO and Co-Founder Mark McQuade discussed what drove them to undertake the development effort and where they plan to go from here.

(FOTOGRIN/Shutterstock)

“Just a year ago, Arcee made a decision that was difficult to defend. We began training our own open models from scratch, in the United States, when the faster and cheaper path pointed elsewhere,” the founders wrote. “We have real admiration for the open-model labs in China. DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, MiniMax, and GLM have built excellent models that people rely on, and they kept sharing open weights when much of the field was moving the other way. They earned their standing. Yet their work also showed how few capable open models were being made in the United States.”

The right response is this, Atkins and McQuade wrote, is to build better open models in the U.S. That is what the San Francisco company has done with its first model, Trinity, a 400 billion parameter language model that the company released under an Apache 2.0 license.

“Closed American systems will stay valuable, and many are superb,” Atkins and McQuade wrote in the blog post. “What they can’t offer a national laboratory is a model it holds in its own hands, free to preserve, adapt, and run on its own terms. We wanted American science to have that option too.

Open Vs Proprietary

The question of whether one should use open-weight models or closed-source models for AI endeavors has many variables, including capability, price, adaptability, national sovereignty, and whether one needs to run on-prem.

The top performing foundation models in the world today are largely proprietary, run in the cloud, and are not adaptable or fine-tunable to meet customers’ specific needs. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are widely recognized as developing the best AI models in the world with GPT, Claude, and Gemini, respectively. But they’re all closed source and come at a relatively high cost for users.

American open-weight models, meanwhile, generally don’t perform as well as the closed frontier models on most benchmark tests. While anyone can download, modify, and run models from Arcee AI, Poolside, Nvidia, Thinking Machines Lab, Meta, and Reflection AI on their own hardware, they generally don’t meet the same performance levels on benchmarks.

These are the general tradeoffs that practitioners have weighed over the first six months of 2026. But the latest open-weight models out of China buck that trend. Earlier this year, the Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) published its latest AI index that showed that Alibaba’s Qwen and DeepSeek foundation models scoring nearly as high as the proprietary American models. And in recent weeks, Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3 and Alibaba launched Qwen 3.8 tMax, which offered another jump in capability.

The emergence of these highly capable open-weight models from China spurred calls for the U.S. Government to regulate or ban these models from use in the United States. There doesn’t appear to be the political will to take such a drastic action as banning open-weight Chinese models for use by American businesses.

After all, that would signal that the Chinese have developed superior technology to the Americans, which is debatable. American officials have accused the Chinese of copying the proprietary American models through a technique known as of distillation, which is probably true. But making a technical as commonplace as distillation illegal also would seem to be a bridge too far (Prohibition didn’t last in the U.S., either).

The Risk of Chinese Models

The DOE will not tolerate Chinese models in the National Labs–for good reason, as their use does pose a security risk, even if the models are running on-prem in secure facilities.

Chinese models have been detected behaving differently when used in a government context, according CTERA CTO Aron Brand, citing a May Booz Allen study.

(Source: Shutterstock)

“Whether this behavior is deliberate or an emergent result of training data and alignment, the enterprise risk is the same: inconsistent behavior, political constraints, and the possibility of hidden backdoors or other latent behaviors,” Brand told HPCwire.

But at the same time, the government cannot cede the high ground in open-weight models to the Chinese. The good news is that the American AI community has recently made a large commitment to open-weight models.

Rise of Open-Weight Models

In July, an open letter titled “Open Weights and American AI Leadership” was signed by the CEOs of Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, IBM, Dell, Huggingface, Palantir, Perplexity, Mistral AI, Reflection and others. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s very first post on X was about the letter.

“Our AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by whether the United States build a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector,” the letter reads. “This is essential for creating opportunities for innovation and prosperity across the country.”

Open-weight models are superior to proprietary models in several respects, according to the “Open Weights and American AI Leadership” letter, in that they can be downloaded, inspected, modified, and run by anyone on their own hardware. They also strengthen competition by preventing AI capabilities from being used by only a handful of companies or labs, which ultimately improve capabilities and drives down costs.

The post DOE Launches Open Model Initiative for Genesis Mission appeared first on HPCwire.

Bass says the company, which provides automated license plate readers, “lost the trust” of Angelenos.

Aug. 7, 2026 — Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory created a platform that pinpoints genetic triggers that turn microbes into efficient factories for new chemicals and materials. The method enables rapid, precise reprogramming of bacteria as biotechnology tools, supporting the domestic production of valuable products and the recovery of critical minerals and materials, enhancing the nation’s supply chains and global competitiveness.

ORNL developed a platform using automation and artificial intelligence to rapidly identify beneficial genetic traits in microbes, supporting the engineering of strains for industrial biotechnology and manufacturing. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL.

Scientists leveraged synthetic biology expertise, artificial intelligence and statistical mapping techniques to rapidly assess bacterial traits and precisely identify candidate genes that trigger desired characteristics. They then validated findings with gene editing, as described in Nature Communications. The approach builds on previous work by ORNL scientists who adapted a technique called protoplast fusion to create the diverse microbial offspring needed for genetic mapping.

The resulting platform enables the discovery of specific genetic triggers for complex traits, supporting precise design of microbes with targeted capabilities for applications such as the breakdown and conversion of plant lignin into valuable products and the uptake of critical minerals.

“Unlike past approaches that study the effect of gaining or losing whole genes, the new approach lets us determine how small differences in the nucleotide sequence affect bacterial function,” said Josh Michener, co-lead for the project and Biological Systems Design group leader at ORNL. “Variations in strains at the nucleotide level have a huge impact on the resulting phenotype, especially when you’re engineering microbes with specific mutations. The method also lets us study natural mutations in parental strains that make them ideal biotechnology tools.”

Old-School Technique Makes Fresh Microbial Mixes

To determine which genes control certain characteristics in organisms, scientists used a method called quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping. QTL mapping involves analyzing the traits of lots of varied offspring from two distinct parents, and is a common approach in mapping the genes of other organisms such as plants. The method examines many genetic differences at once and precisely identifies candidate genes in a single workflow.

The problem with applying QTL mapping to bacteria, however, is that these microorganisms reproduce asexually with limited genetic variation.

ORNL researchers overcame this hurdle by applying a tool first developed in the 1970s: protoplast fusion. Using the fusion technique, researchers were able to cross Bacillus strains, producing a large population of genetically varied offspring, called recombinants. Bacillus are model bacteria that serve as workhorses for fermentation, enzyme production, and for plant growth and health.

The team also tested the method across several other bacterial groups, demonstrating alternative genome shuffling methods that expand the tool’s usability on different types of microbes used as biotechnology tools. These include:

• Clostridium thermocellum, a bacterium that tolerates industrial processes and is good at breaking down and fermenting plant cellulose;
• Novosphingobium aromaticivorans, a bacterium that excels at breaking down aromatic compounds from plant lignin and converting the molecules into high-value chemicals.
• Stutzerimonas stutzeri, a versatile bacterium used in applications such as bioremediation and to fix nutrients in soil, supporting plant growth and suppressing plant pathogens.

Researchers measured properties of the bacteria and identified DNA variants that could explain the differences in those traits. They then validated their findings by using CRISPR gene-editing tools to swap gene sections and confirm the effects in bacteria.

“We have now, for the first time ever, put all these pieces together for a platform that gets results on complex genes-to-traits linkages much faster,” Michener said. “We built the genetically diverse bacteria population, identified DNA variants, and confirmed the work with gene editing.”

Automation Results in 10X Faster Phenotyping

By creating such broad diversity in the bacterial offspring, scientists faced a challenge in the research: phenotyping all the progeny. They tackled it with automation and AI, setting up a robotic system to quickly and repeatedly place plates with precision so that high-resolution digital imaging could be accomplished at the same angle and lighting for comparable data between the recombinants. The phenotyping was accomplished 10 times faster with automation, the scientists noted.

Getting consistent data was crucial to the application of mathematical algorithms and the use of a computer vision model that processed the images and extracted traits, said co-lead Dan Jacobson, ORNL computational systems biologist.

“We built this project with a very multidisciplinary lineup,” Jacobson said, “The team did everything from building the robotics, conducting imaging and image processing, performing the statistical work, the mapping and assemblies, the genome shuffling work, growing these different isolates from the population and extracting DNA to send for sequencing, then growing them again for the phenotype assays. It’s an example of the kind of good collaboration that’s possible at a national lab, and how that research can enable whole new areas of inquiry across the nation’s science ecosystem.”

The microbial QTL mapping platform is available for licensing at ORNL.

Scientists continue to deploy the method to study and engineer microbes for better manufacturing processes as part of the DOE Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI) at ORNL. The platform is also being used to study plant-associated microbes as part of the DOE Secure Ecosystem Engineering and Design Science Focus Area (SEED SFA), as well as by a program at Colorado State University studying airborne microbes.

The project was supported primarily by the ORNL Laboratory-Directed Research and Development program and CBI. Additional funding was provided by the SEED SFA and Michener’s DOE Early Career Research Award. CBI, the SEED SFA and the ECA are in turn supported by the DOE Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research program. Genome sequencing was conducted by the Joint Genome Institute, a DOE Office of Science user facility.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science. The Office of Science is the largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is committed to addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.

Source: Stephanie Seay, ORNL

The post ORNL Combines AI and Synthetic Biology to Accelerate Microbial Engineering appeared first on HPCwire.

The famous 1949 print of a bullfighter disappeared from the building’s lobby in 2018. It was dropped at a local police station this week.

"Framework has been sending out email notifications to customers alerting of a limited data breach in which customer information was accessed through a Metabase BI service zero-day exploit," writes Slashdot reader DuoDreamer. Data includes customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses. "Framework is investigating whether or not this included Framework for Business customers as well." TechCrunch reports: Framework's spokesperson Eric Schumacher told TechCrunch that the breach affected "all customers," but declined to specify a specific number. Framework computers are relatively niche products, but some estimates say the company sold hundreds of thousands of devices. Metabase disclosed its own breach in a blog post on its official website, where it said that it was hacked by someone using an unknown security flaw, a so-called zero-day. The company said the hackers exploited the bug to give them the ability to access customers' databases stored on Metabase's cloud servers. In its email to customers, Framework also included the email Metabase sent to the company, which says hackers accessed Framework's cloud instance. The computer maker said it investigated the incident and found that hackers had stolen its customers' personal data, but did not include their payment information.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aug. 7, 2026 — Predicting exactly how fuel burns in heavy-duty engines, gas turbines, and rocket motors is essential to optimizing performance and preventing equipment damage, but running physical experiments in these extreme environments is notoriously difficult and prohibitively expensive.

Pele software suite creates highly detailed 3D visualizations of turbulent flames, allowing researchers to study complex combustion without needing to run physical experiments.

This is where Pele, an open-source simulation suite co-developed by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) alongside a multi-institutional team, comes in. Built on the Berkeley Lab-developed AMReX framework and harnessing exascale supercomputing and artificial intelligence, Pele accurately models complex combustion for both low-speed and high-speed fuel-air interactions. By simulating how different fuels perform in these extreme environments, Pele allows scientists to reliably predict real-world outcomes and accelerate the design of next-generation aerospace and power technologies.

The Pele Suite of Exascale Reacting Flow Codes was named a 2026 R&D 100 Awards winner by R&D World in the Software and Services category.

“Being named an R&D 100 winner validates the incredible power of team science. By combining Berkeley Lab’s decades of expertise in adaptive mesh refinement with the deep domain knowledge of our national lab partners, we built a framework that successfully harnessed exascale computing. That collaborative breakthrough is what now empowers researchers around the world to tackle some of the most complex clean energy and aerospace challenges,” said Ann Almgren, Berkeley Lab senior scientist and a contributor on the Pele development team.

The multi-laboratory development effort is led by Marcus Day (National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), formerly of Berkeley Lab). It includes partners from Sandia, Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The Berkeley Lab contingent driving the project includes researchers from the Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division (AMCR): Ann Almgren, John Bell, Andrew Myers, Andrew Nonaka, Jean Sexton, and Weiqun Zhang.

A Foundation Built at Berkeley Lab

Long before the Department of Energy launched the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) in 2016 to push scientific supercomputing to its next frontier, Berkeley Lab researchers were laying the groundwork for simulating combustion in extreme environments. In the early 2000s, Day, who was then at Berkeley Lab, and Bell created a low-Mach-number combustion code (LMC) built on top of BoxLib, an early software framework for adaptive mesh refinement on CPU-based computers. The team’s foundational work on simulating reacting flows originated in the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research’s applied mathematics program and was subsequently enhanced in DOE’s SciDAC program.

That foundational work expanded significantly under ECP. LMC became PeleLM for low-speed flows, while a new solver, PeleC, was added for high-speed flows. Pushing these codes to run on exascale systems revealed a major roadblock: these supercomputers rely on GPUs, whereas BoxLib was strictly a CPU-based framework.

To solve this, a multi-laboratory team led by Bell completely rebuilt BoxLib from the ground up to create AMReX. Today, AMReX acts as the software infrastructure for the entire Pele suite, managing the intricate data and geometry needed to run these massive combustion models.

Modeling the fluid dynamics of combustion is a massive computational challenge because capturing the microscopic details of a flame front requires an incredibly fine, high-resolution grid, but simulating an entire engine block at that microscopic scale would instantly overwhelm a supercomputer. AMReX solves this bottleneck by acting as a highly intelligent numerical microscope. It starts the simulation with a relatively coarse grid. As Pele calculates the fluid motion and chemical reactions, AMReX constantly scans the environment for intense physical activity, such as rapid ignition or steep changes in turbulence.

Instead of forcing the supercomputer to calculate the entire engine block at maximum resolution, AMReX follows the action. It adds higher-resolution grid points specifically where the flame is reacting. As the flame moves, the high-resolution grid moves with it—adding detail just ahead of the flame and erasing it from the space left behind. Focusing computing power only where it’s actually needed cuts simulation costs by 70 percent or more.

Beyond managing the grid, AMReX serves as the crucial translator between Pele’s science and the supercomputer’s hardware. It orchestrates the complex distribution of data across millions of GPUs, thereby offloading a massive logistical burden and allowing Pele’s specialized flow solvers to focus entirely on the complex math of combustion physics. This seamless integration of advanced computer science and physical modeling ultimately enables Pele to operate at the exascale and run some of the largest reacting-flow simulations in history.

In addition to Berkeley Lab, AMReX was developed with contributions from researchers at NLR and Argonne National Laboratory.

Source: Linda Vu, Berkeley Lab

The post Berkeley Lab: Pele Combustion Simulation Suite Named R&D 100 Award Winner appeared first on HPCwire.

The company’s new “2.0” plans and 36-month installment plans provided cover for removing what was billed as a limited-time offer.

White House continues to target Cook despite decision from justices that upheld Federal Reserve’s independence

Donald Trump is attempting once again to oust the US Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, despite a recent US supreme court decision that upheld the central bank’s independence.

Cook reportedly received a letter from the White House this week that provided notice, in accordance to the supreme court’s June ruling, that Trump was “considering removing” her from her Fed position over the same claims of mortgage fraud that he levied against her last summer.

The European research project EXA4MIND provides tools and preconfigured workflows that make it easier to collect, manage, and analyze extremely large and diverse datasets.

Aug. 7, 2026 — More than 25 scientific papers and studies over nearly four years, 30 training courses and workshops on artificial intelligence (AI)-based data analysis and processing, as well as an online platform featuring links to useful tools and extensive documentation: this is the track record of the European research project “Extreme Analytics for Mining Data Spaces” (EXA4MIND).

Ten universities, research institutes, and companies leveraged the resources of European High Performance Computing (HPC) centers and developed tools and interfaces that use open-source software and libraries to create modular workflows. These solutions enable researchers to access databases, manage research data and results, and analyze big data using AI methods. The project was coordinated by the Czech National Supercomputing Center, IT4Innovations, with support from the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ).

“EXA4MIND brings together high-performance and cloud computing, AI and data analytics, as well as professional data management across Europe to unlock datasets that are more diverse and larger than conventional big-data collections,” explains Dr. Stephan Hachinger, Head of Research Data Management at LRZ. “Researchers and small and medium-sized enterprises can find tools on the platform that allow them to automate their own analytics workflows across different computing resources and storage solutions, while professionally indexing, cataloging, and publishing their data according to the FAIR principles.” This makes research data and analytical results discoverable online for both humans and machines.

AI Workflows for HPC Systems

One of the main drivers behind these efforts is the continuous growth in data volumes and the increasing use of AI in science and industry. At the same time, more researchers in companies and universities are working with cloud technologies and require additional expertise to establish their own data analytics workflows while integrating supercomputers into their processes.

Today, most high-performance computing systems rely on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which support not only traditional simulation workloads but also AI applications such as computer vision and machine learning. While industry often uses databases, object storage systems, and data-streaming technologies to support AI, HPC centers typically focus on adapting file systems, network connections, and input/output libraries. They generally assume that experienced users can efficiently navigate these environments. However, AI is attracting new user groups to HPC centers, many of whom use pre-existing models to analyze research data. As a result, there is growing demand for interoperable tools and standardized workflows that simplify entry into AI-driven supercomputing.

For work at supercomputing centers, EXA4MIND provides guidance on installing data backends such as vector databases and object storage systems, as well as recommendations on when these solutions offer advantages over traditional storage approaches. EXA4MIND’s Advanced Query and Indexing System (AQIS) supports the setup of high-performance analytics pipelines based on the open-source frameworks Airflow and Dask. AQIS also supports AI inference and querying data using natural language.

In doing so, it helps make the benefits of AI and HPC accessible to startups and SMEs across Europe. “EXA4MIND opens opportunities for researchers and small companies to explore the services of supercomputing centers and work more efficiently with massive datasets,” said Hachinger. “The modules of the EXA4MIND/EDD platform can be deployed on systems ranging from laptops to HPC clusters, depending on the computational requirements.” Through the interfaces developed by the project partners, European and international data spaces, as well as data from the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and EUDAT, can be accessed using EXA4MIND tools. “We explicitly encourage users,” Hachinger added, “to connect their workflows with these environments in order to search for data and share results.”

Data Analytics Workflows in Practice

To demonstrate the effectiveness of its workflows and their applicability across different domains, EXA4MIND validated them through practical use cases from research and industry:

• For molecular dynamics simulations, the researchers established a community data platform. Using IDA4SIMS and ADAMS4SIMS, scientists can compare their simulations with real-world observations, enrich their research data in compliance with FAIR principles, and improve simulation quality. The platform also enables testing of force-field descriptions that determine molecular behavior.
• Automotive supplier Valeo uses AI to enhance driver assistance systems. Through EXA4MIND, the company developed processes for enriching and annotating data generated by such systems. Project partners also built a database of driving situations and created tools for analyzing traffic scenarios in which assistance systems frequently fail, providing important foundations for more autonomous driving.
• Agriculture also benefits from AI, particularly in irrigation and fertilisation management. These technologies can increase yields while conserving water. With Aquaview, a system developed by Terraview/Gamaya, vineyard operators can monitor soil moisture levels and make weather-dependent irrigation decisions. The service is based on satellite data. By applying EXA4MIND tools for caching, data conversion, and filtering, workflows were streamlined and data volumes reduced, saving both processing time and storage capacity.

These applications, analytics tasks, and the tools and technical processes behind them are thoroughly documented and linked on the EXA4MIND platform. Interested users can also access studies, research papers, and workshop materials to learn about the technologies and adapt them for their own needs. In addition, the EXA4MIND team developed workflows specifically for supercomputing centers, enabling their computing power to be used more effectively for AI applications and scaled as required.

EXA4MIND represents an important contribution to Europe’s data-driven research landscape. As with its predecessor project LEXIS, which created a platform for orchestrating geographically distributed HPC and cloud systems, the practical experience gained with workflows and technologies can feed into larger strategic IT initiatives. The EuroHPC Federation Platform, currently being developed by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, aims to provide future access to supercomputers, quantum computers, and AI systems.

Hachinger concluded: “We are convinced that European supercomputing, particularly within the framework of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, will benefit from the concepts developed in EXA4MIND and LEXIS, further expanding the range of applications available at European computing centers.”

Source: LRZ

The post European EXA4MIND Initiative Simplifies AI and Big Data Workflows for HPC appeared first on HPCwire.

The Defense Department stopped processing national security reviews of wind projects in May, despite a law demanding they be completed in 75 days.

Decision follows supreme court ruling that allowed US government to strip protections for Haitians and Syrians

Temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of South Sudanese nationals in the United States is set to end after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with stripping their protections.

On Friday, US district judge Patti Saris of the district of Massachusetts rejected an attempt by immigrant rights organizations including the New York-based African Communities Together to keep TPS for South Sudanese nationals living in the US.

At issue is who pays to expand energy infrastructure when a data center​​ needs as much electricity​ as a midsize city.

Motor resistance of 3-4 mOhm is way too low, looks like shorted motor phases.

Suno says it will begin watermarking and fingerprinting AI-generated songs, tighten download policies to curb mass distribution, and explicitly prohibit deceptive audio and unauthorized voice or likeness cloning. The changes come as the company faces mounting copyright lawsuits, a recent adverse ruling in Germany, and scrutiny over a past data breach that revealed training-data sources. TechCrunch reports: In a blog post, co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman shared core principles and said that the platform wants to promote original creation while enabling more people to make music with its AI tools. One of the key points of contention involved users uploading AI-generated songs on other streaming platforms and gaming the system to earn revenue. Suno said that now it will use audio watermarking and fingerprinting to prevent misuse on other streaming platforms. It's not clear if Suno will use an existing system like Google's Synth ID or adopt a new one, and the company did not say when contacted by TechCrunch about this. The startup also signed an agreement with lyrics provider Musixmatch to use its Sentinel system for copyright detection, the blog post said. [...] The company added that it plans to add a new download policy to bar mass distribution on streaming platforms, but declined to provide details on the record. Suno has also changed its community guidelines to explicitly prohibit "deceptive audio presented as real" and "using a real person's voice or likeness without permission" to prevent copycats.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The ChatGPT maker is reportedly working on a small, portable AI smart speaker, but it better not look too much like Apple’s designs.

Our critical utility infrastructure can make the same classic mistakes as we do with our everyday connected devices.

The island has struggled with low water pressure and outages over the past year.

Wildfires in the US and Europe, Russian strikes in Kyiv, beekeepers in Gaza and the European Aquatics Championships – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

ByteDance is reportedly training an AI model with roughly 10 trillion parameters as it tries to close the gap with leading frontier systems such as Anthropic's Mythos. The model is still in early pre-training, and its eventual performance will depend on more than scale alone, but the project underscores how aggressively Chinese firms are pushing frontier AI despite limits on access to advanced chips. The Next Web reports: The size is itself the statement. At roughly 10 trillion parameters, the model would be more than three times as large as Moonshot's Kimi K3, which sits among the biggest Chinese models today at about 2.8 trillion. [...] Parameter count is not everything, of course. Bigger models are not automatically better, and the industry has learned that data quality, training technique and efficiency often matter as much as raw scale. Even so, committing the compute to train a model this size is a declaration in its own right, a signal that ByteDance wants to compete at the very top rather than ship a capable also-ran.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

D.Va’s bestie brings a different type of mech gameplay to Overwatch.

If you can navigate yourself to Google Earth, you can take off and fly.

He’ll be among the many celebrities attending the launch party for the new Pixel devices.

Every election cycle since 2010, we have published profiles of some of the many outside groups trying to influence who gets elected to Congress and the White House. Today, we’re launching our latest Players Guide with write-ups of eight of the biggest spenders so far for the 2026 midterms.

Each profile has information about the individuals who run the group, the people funding the group, the group’s political leanings and motivations, and how the group is spending the millions it has raised. If the group has been around for a while, we note its spending during the prior election cycle for comparison.

During the last midterm cycle, outside groups collectively spent $2 billion on independent expenditures, which are advertisements and other communications that expressly advocate for or against candidates for office, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics. The total was double that amount for the 2024 presidential cycle.

The eight groups we’re starting with this time include the Senate Majority PAC, which is trying to help Democrats retake control of the Senate, and the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is working to keep Republicans running the House of Representatives. We also highlighted Fairshake, a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC that backs or opposes candidates based on whether they appear to be for or against policies favorable to the digital currency industry.

Come back throughout the general election for details about other key players, as we’ll be publishing more profiles over the next three months. Some of the featured groups will be ones we’ve written about before — because they continue to spend large amounts of money — but we’ll be writing about a few of the newly formed groups as well.

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

The post Players Guide 2026 appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Two Multi-Client Studies Launched to Track Enterprise AI Barriers and Europe’s Digital Autonomy Push

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 7, 2026 — Intersect360 Research has announced two new multi-client research studies. The first, “Enterprise AI Adoption,” examines the drivers, barriers, and satisfaction gaps shaping enterprise AI investment. The second, “AI in the EU,” analyzes Europe’s push for digital sovereignty and autonomy in artificial intelligence.

The Enterprise AI Adoption study will explore the true state of AI use inside organizations, including testing, production, training, and inference. Intersect360 Research’s ongoing survey work has already reached 458 medium to large enterprises with more than $10 million in annual revenue. That work found that 84% of AI and HPC budgets are combined within organizations that run both workloads, underscoring how closely AI investment is now tied to high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure decisions. The study also found that while enterprises view product development, engineering, and R&D as the ultimate promise of AI< that category currently has the lowest rate of AI adoption within enterprises at just 31%. That trails well behind data analysis, analytics, and forecasting.

“Intersect360 Research studies show a substantial gap between AI workloads associated with horizontal applications – such as customer service chatbots – and those associated with science, engineering and R&D,” said Addison Snell, CEO of Intersect360 Research. “This study will surface the specific obstacles and enablers for adoption of these more advanced applications, determine what verticals are best positioned deploy AI for science in the near term, and help us gain clarity as to how providers can support end-users confidently deploy AI functionality into these mission critical areas.”

The Enterprise AI Adoption study will combine Intersect360 Research’s existing broad-based AI budget survey data, presented to sponsors as an initial kickoff, with a new quantitative survey of more than 200 additional respondents segmented across commercial verticals and geographies. It will also include a qualitative survey capturing 30 to 50 organizational quotes on AI adoption, usage, and outlook. Intersect360 Research estimates the enterprise AI opportunity will reach $100 billion in 2027, growing at a double-digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR), driven by hybrid on-premises and cloud deployments and shaped by data sovereignty, supply chain, and facilities planning issues.

The AI in the EU study will assess the state of AI adoption across the European Union relative to the U.S., China, and Japan, with a focus on workloads in science, R&D, and engineering, as well as the region’s hardware, software, and emerging technology landscape, including quantum, photonics, and fusion. The study comes as European institutions have made digital sovereignty a policy priority. The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking has committed €7 billion from 2021 to 2027 across 38 member states, deploying 11 supercomputers, three of which rank among the world’s top ten, along with 19 AI Factories and 13 AI Factory Antennas. The European Chips Act is separately mobilizing €43 billion in public and private support to reach 20% of global semiconductor market share by 2030.

Both studies will be anchored by Intersect360 Research’s HPC-AI Leadership Organization (HALO), a global end user group that helps guide the firm’s research agenda. The AI in the EU study will additionally be informed by the HALO EMEA Advisory Committee. Research for both studies will take place in the fourth quarter of 2026 through the first quarter of 2027, with final reports expected in the first half of 2027.

Base pricing for sponsorship of the Enterprise AI Adoption study is $35,000, and base pricing for the AI in the EU study is $20,000. Both include full survey data and final reports, with optional add-ons available for custom survey questions, sponsor-branded white papers, and participation in concluding webinars. Companies interested in participating must commit by September 30, 2026, to provide input into the survey and discussion guide.

About Intersect360 Research

Intersect360 Research is a market intelligence, research, and consulting advisory practice focused on high-performance data center trends, including High Performance Computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing, big data, and hyperscale. Intersect360 Research utilizes both user-based and supplier-based research to form a complete perspective of market dynamics, trends, and usage models, including both technical and business applications. The company’s research agenda and studies are informed by the HPC-AI Leadership Organization (HALO), a global end user group organized by Intersect360 Research to help guide the future of the HPC-AI industry. More information on HALO is available at www.hpcaileadership.org.

In addition to its market advisory subscription services, Intersect360 Research offers customers an array of client-specific services, including custom surveys, white papers and custom analysis. More information about Intersect360 Research as well as the full slate of Intersect360 Research reports available for purchase and download can be found at www.intersect360.com.

Source: Intersect360 Research

The post Intersect360 Research Launches Studies on Enterprise AI Adoption, EU Sovereignty appeared first on HPCwire.

Four U research teams which include faculty from the Department of Atmospheric Science join a national initiative advancing AI, energy, and atmospheric science.

Aug. 7, 2026 — The University of Utah has been selected to receive multiple U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Genesis Mission awards, joining a national cohort of research institutions advancing transformative science and technology.

The Genesis Mission invests in ambitious, high-impact research designed to accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen U.S. competitiveness, and address some of the nation’s most complex scientific and technological challenges. The University of Utah’s awards recognize research teams whose work has the potential to drive breakthroughs in areas of national importance.

“The Genesis Mission reflects how scientific discovery is evolving; bringing together artificial intelligence, national laboratories, universities, and interdisciplinary research teams to tackle challenges that no single institution could solve alone,” said Jake Jensen, senior associate vice president for research.

University of Utah Research Teams

U researchers are contributing to multiple Genesis Mission projects that reflect the breadth of the university’s expertise in artificial intelligence, energy systems, and atmospheric science.

In the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Gannet Hallar is leading the Bridging Resolution Disparities in the Genesis of Mixed-Phase Clouds (BRIDGE) project, with Court Strong serving as co-principal investigator. Collaborating with researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Texas at El Paso, the team will combine advanced atmospheric observations, artificial intelligence, and predictive modeling to improve understanding of how clouds form and produce precipitation. The research aims to improve precipitation forecasting, an important step toward strengthening water security in the western United States and beyond.

Professor Steven Krueger in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences is a co-investigator on a Michigan Technological University-led project that brings together researchers from Brigham Young University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of Utah. Together, the team will combine cloud-chamber observations, advanced computer modeling, and artificial intelligence to better understand how clouds produce rain. The research aims to improve precipitation forecasting and strengthen weather and climate models that support water resource management and environmental prediction.

Assistant Professor Rohan Basu Roy in the Kahlert School of Computing and the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute is leading a University of Utah project to help address one of artificial intelligence’s newest challenges: the growing demand for electricity to power AI data centers. His team is developing an AI-driven resource control plane that can intelligently manage computing workloads, allowing data centers to reduce energy use during periods of high demand while minimizing impacts on performance. The project aims to improve grid reliability, lower operating costs, and help prepare the nation’s energy infrastructure for the rapid growth of AI computing.

Assistant Professor Morteza Fayazi in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering is a co-investigator on a University of Washington-led project, Transforming Science and Energy with AI. The collaboration brings together researchers from multiple institutions to apply artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery and advance next-generation energy systems.

“The University of Utah has built a research enterprise that brings together expertise across disciplines to solve problems of national and global importance,” said Erin Rothwell, senior vice president for research. “These Genesis Mission awards recognize the creativity of our researchers and the strength of the partnerships that make ambitious science possible.”

About the Genesis Mission

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission supports transformative research designed to accelerate scientific discovery, foster collaboration, and strengthen America’s research and innovation ecosystem. By investing in visionary research teams, the initiative aims to expand scientific knowledge and develop technologies that address some of the nation’s most significant scientific and technological challenges.

Source: University of Utah

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Judge finds probable cause to believe the MyPillow founder violated campaign law by handing out free pillows at event

An administrative law judge in Minnesota has found probable cause to believe Mike Lindell, candidate for Minnesota governor and the MyPillow founder, violated campaign finance law by handing out free pillows at a public event last month.

In a four-page ruling issued on Thursday, Judge Nicholas Lienesch found that a complaint against Lindell had enough to move on to an evidentiary hearing in front of a three-judge administrative panel.

Political leanings: Conservative/Republican

2024 total spending: $296.6 million

The Senate Leadership Fund, or SLF PAC, is a Republican super PAC that was established in 2015 by allies of Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was Senate majority leader at the time.

The group, now connected to Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, says its mission is to “support strong Republican candidates in competitive states, leveraging best-in-class campaign tactics and standards to aggressively counter the Democratic machine.” It is “solely dedicated” to “protecting and expanding the Republican Senate Majority.” Its executive director is Alex Latcham, a former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and former director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.

As a super PAC, SLF PAC can accept unlimited contributions, but it must disclose its donors and cannot coordinate its spending with candidate campaigns.

In early April, the group revealed to the New York Times that in order to maintain GOP control of the Senate, it plans to spend around $350 million in 2026 on television, digital and streaming ads, as well as mail and other operations to influence voter turnout. The Times reported that the super PAC is prioritizing defending five Republican-held seats by spending $79 million in Ohio, $71 million in North Carolina, $42 million in Maine, $29 million in Iowa and $15 million in Alaska. In addition, the group is looking to flip three Democratic seats by spending $45 million in Michigan, $44 million in Georgia and $17 million in New Hampshire.

Ads in those races are set to start airing in September, the Times said. Democrats need to gain a net of four seats to regain the majority in the Senate (including the two independent senators who caucus with the Democrats).

As of June 30, the Senate Leadership Fund had raised a total of $253.7 million for the 2026 midterms, according to its most recent quarterly financial report to the Federal Election Commission. At that point, it still had $238.6 million in cash on hand – more than double the amount it had at the same point in 2024, according to a press release.

Some of SLF PAC’s largest individual donors for this election cycle include Miriam Adelson, a physician and businesswoman; Paul Elliott Singer, a hedge fund manager; and Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world. It has also received at least $46 million, so far, from an affiliated nonprofit, One Nation, a so-called “dark money” group that, as a registered 501(c)(4) organization, does not have to disclose its donors. One Nation is led by Steven Law, who headed the Senate Leadership Fund until he stepped down in 2024.

During the 2024 election cycle, SLF PAC spent $211 million on independent expenditures — the third most of any super PAC (only exceeded by Make America Great Again Inc. and WinSenate PAC), according to an analysis of campaign finance data by OpenSecrets. The FEC defines independent expenditures as spending on communications that “expressly advocate” for the election or defeat of a specific candidate.

OpenSecrets said roughly 71% of that money was spent backing candidates who won their races or opposing candidates who lost. About 30% of SLF PAC’s independent expenditure dollars in 2024 were spent opposing the reelection of then-Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, and supporting his Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno. Brown had been a three-term senator before being ousted by Moreno.

SLP PAC is planning to spend big in Ohio again in 2026, as Brown is now challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill the seat vacated in early 2025 by Vice President JD Vance.

FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Christine Sung contributed to this article.

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Political leanings: Democratic

2024 total spending: $391.2 million

Senate Majority PAC, formally known as SMP, is a super PAC that describes its “one mission” as helping Democrats “win Senate races.”

It’s headed by J.B. Poersch, a former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Poersch was named the super PAC’s president in early 2017. Other senior staff include Amanda Ach, digital director, and Lauren French, communications director. Ach previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and French was recently a senior adviser at the State Department during the Biden administration.

As a super PAC, Senate Majority PAC is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but it must report expenditures and all donations of more than $200 to the Federal Election Commission. The group cannot make contributions to candidate committees and cannot coordinate independent expenditures with candidate campaigns.

In a July 10 press release, SMP announced that along with Majority Forward, an affiliated nonprofit group, it raised $147 million in the second quarter of 2026, “their best second-quarter fundraising ever.” The groups have now collected a combined $326 million since the beginning of the election cycle, and SMP had about $126 million in cash on hand at the end of June, the press release said.

Unlike SMP, which files quarterly financial reports with the FEC, Majority Forward, a 501(c)(4) organization, is only required to file an annual report with the IRS at the end of the group’s fiscal year. We don’t know who is donating to Majority Forward because the group is not required to disclose its donors. However, according to FEC data through March, Senate Majority PAC’s largest contributors include Majority Forward, the George Soros-funded Democracy PAC and retired media executive Fred Eychaner.

SMP previously announced that it would run eight-figure TV and digital ad campaigns in the fall supporting or opposing Senate candidates in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Ohio. We’ve already written about two of Majority Forward’s TV ads that attack the incumbent in Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

During the 2024 elections, SMP spent about $391.2 million and more than $325 million of that was contributed to other political committees, including WinSenate PAC, an affiliated super PAC that also worked to elect Democrats to the Senate.

Senior Writer D’Angelo Gore contributed to this article.

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The Pentagon on Friday released a new batch of documents and images related to UFOs, the fifth disclosure in recent months about the strange encounters.

Friday's jobs report showed employers shed jobs last month, rather than adding 95,000 new hires that had been forecast by economists.

Puerto Rico's massive rationing measure comes amid a severe drought on top of shortages due to infrastructure issues.

Political leanings: Pro-Israel

2024 Spending: $61.4 million

United Democracy Project is a nonpartisan super PAC created to advocate for political organizations and candidates that support the United States’ partnership with Israel. The super PAC “works to help elect candidates that share our vision and will be strong supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship in Congress,” according to its website.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group established in the 1950s, historically refused to contribute funds to individual candidates’ campaigns. However, AIPAC announced its plans to launch a political action committee, or PAC, and a super PAC ahead of the 2022 election cycle in December 2021.

AIPAC PAC, which was created on Dec. 15, 2021, has become the biggest pro-Israel PAC in the U.S., ahead of the Joint Action Committee for Public Affairs and JStreetPAC. United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, was established on Jan. 3, 2022.

As a political action committee, AIPAC PAC is limited to donating no more than $5,000 per election to a candidate’s campaign committee, according to federal contribution limits for the 2026 elections. As a super PAC, United Democracy Project cannot donate to candidates directly, but it can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money expressly advocating for or against federal candidates — spending that the Federal Election Commission defines as “independent expenditures.” Both the PAC and super PAC are required to disclose their donors in reports to the FEC.

Through June, United Democracy Project raised about $104 million during the 2026 cycle, according to FEC records. That’s already more than the $87.1 million it collected during the 2024 cycle, in which it spent around $61.4 million, including $34.8 million on independent expenditures promoting or opposing Democratic House candidates.

The super PAC’s largest contributors for 2026 include Paul Singer, the founder and co-CEO of Elliott Management; portfolio manager Blair Frank; businessman Marc Rowan; and media proprietor and investor Haim Saban. It has spent about $52.5 million, and, as of June 30, more than $27.9 million of it was on independent expenditures.

United Democracy Project has focused heavily on House primary races, spending about $5 million supporting Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who lost the Democratic primary in Illinois’ 7th Congressional District seat on March 17; more than $1 million supporting Adrian Boafo, who won the Democratic primary in Maryland’s 5th District on June 23; and over $3 million opposing Rep. Thomas Massie in the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th District, which he lost to Ed Gallrein on May 19. The super PAC also spent nearly $500,000 supporting Gallrein.

Massie’s and Gallrein’s primary was the most expensive House primary in history, according to Politico, which reported that over $9 million was spent by pro-Israel interest groups alone. In the article, United Democracy Project spokesperson Patrick Dorton was quoted as calling Massie “the most anti-Israel Republican in the House.”

The super PAC also spent over $2 million opposing Tom Malinowski, who lost a special Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11^th District on Feb. 5. United Democracy Project’s involvement in the primary, which was won by progressive candidate Analilia Mejia, frustrated many centrist Democrats, Politico reported.

On June 23, Politico reported that, to hide its involvement in certain races, “United Democracy Project has shielded more than 40 percent of the money it has spent across primaries in both parties so far for the 2026 cycle through pop-up and pass-through PACs,” according to the publication’s analysis.

FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow James Constan contributed to this article. 

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Political leanings: Pro-cryptocurrency

2024 Spending: $195.8 million

Fairshake, its website says, is a super PAC that “supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet.” Generally, it supports politicians who back policies favorable to the cryptocurrency industry.

The group registered with the Federal Election Commission in 2023, and it is financially supported by some of the most influential companies and executives in the digital currency sector.

FEC records identify Brandon Philipczyk as Fairshake’s treasurer and Josh Vlasto is the group’s spokesman. Philipczyk has worked on various campaigns for Democratic candidates, including former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president. Vlasto previously served as press secretary for Sen. Chuck Schumer and former New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, both Democrats.

As a super PAC, Fairshake can receive unlimited financial contributions from donors, who must be disclosed periodically in reports to the FEC. As of June 30, it had received almost $137 million in the 2026 election cycle and still had about $127 million on hand, according to its latest FEC filing in July.

Its largest contributors include Coinbase, a company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange; Ripple Labs, which specializes in a blockchain technology used to make digital payments; and AH Capital Management, also known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, a venture capital firm. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, remain two of the super PAC’s biggest individual donors.

The super PAC has already spent roughly $13.3 million this election cycle on independent expenditures, which are advertisements and other communications that expressly advocate for or against candidates for office. In February and March, it opposed a trio of Illinois Democrats in congressional primary races, including the state Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won the Democratic nomination in the Illinois Senate race; state Rep. La Shawn Ford, who won the Democratic nomination for the state’s 7th Congressional District seat; and state Sen. Robert Peters, who failed to win the Democratic nomination for the state’s 2nd District seat.

Last year, Ford and Peters voted for a 2025 state law that put in place new rules for the digital assets industry. Meanwhile, one of Stratton’s primary opponents, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, may have been seen as more of an industry ally, since he had cast votes for federal legislation described as “very pro-crypto” by a nonprofit called the Stand With Crypto Alliance.

For the 2026 midterms, Fairshake has also contributed at least $51 million to two affiliated super PACs, Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress, which have spent tens of millions of dollars supporting certain House and Senate candidates.

During the 2024 elections, Fairshake spent about $195.8 million in total. It donated more than $86 million to Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress. It also put nearly $40.7 million into independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates. According to the website OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending, Fairshake spent about $14 million for Democrats, about $13.5 million against Democrats and roughly $13.1 million for Republicans.

FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Angela Lin contributed to this article.

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

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The Trump administration tapped a surveillance giant with a record of attacking the press to advise the State Department on free speech.

Among the partners for the State Department’s new “Freedom Tech Excellence Program” is Palantir, the AI and data integration firm started by right-wing powerbroker Peter Thiel. Under the program, company employees will go on temporary assignments to advise the government on “digital freedom and freedom of expression,” including counter-surveillance and dealing with First Amendment issues.

“FTEP brings private sector talent to the Department for limited-term assignments to advance diplomatic efforts on key issues including online freedom of expression, privacy-enhancing technologies, countering digital surveillance, and responsible AI governance,” according to the State Department’s website.

Palantir is best known for building large-scale data analysis platforms. In addition to corporate contracts, the company’s massive government tenders include database, surveillance, and tracking tools for police and federal authorities. Among its government clients are the military, the State Department itself, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Palantir and its key personnel have also been involved in multiple lawsuits against journalistic outlets.

The firm’s history has raised criticisms of its role in the new State Department initiative, especially given the Trump administration own’s dubious track record on First Amendment issues.

“To some extent, this announcement and this program sound like doublespeak,” said Carrie DeCell, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Certainly neither this State Department, nor the partners they have announced so far, are trustworthy leaders in what they identify as online freedom of expression or countering digital surveillance.”

The new initiative is planned to run through the beginning of 2029, according to the State Department’s press office. While participants could be placed anywhere in the agency and may require security clearances, the Freedom Tech Excellent Program “is not geared towards bolstering the Department’s internal application or operational use of AI technologies,” the department said in a statement to The Intercept.

Anduril, a military tech firm with links to Palantir and Thiel, was also listed as a partner in the State Department initiative. Anduril’s executive chair Trae Stephens is a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund, which has invested about $2.6 billion in Anduril. Besides a mutual appreciation of “The Lord of the Rings,” Thiel shares similar politics with Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and has backed Luckey’s new bank, Erebor.

Neither Anduril nor Palantir responded to requests for comment.

Palantir and the Feds

Palantir’s work has brought it notoriety across the globe, though at times defining what it does can be complex. It has repeatedly eschewed its label as a surveillance firm. Palantir CEO Alex Karp denied on a podcast last year that the company engages in unconstitutional surveillance work.

And, in an unsigned blog post last year, Palantir wrote, “Contrary to some media reports, we are not a surveillance company.”

Palantir, though, enabled U.S. mass surveillance by bolstering the National Security Agency’s global data collection efforts, according to documents provided to The Intercept by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Palantir helped the NSA expand a program that became notorious for its ability to hoover up Americans’ communications along with those from abroad.

More recently, the firm has become a focal point for protests in the U.K. over its massive contract with the National Health Service and its ties to the Israeli military. Just this week, the NHS apologized after admitting it had falsely stated that Palantir did not have access to identifiable patient data.

Related

Palantir Is Helping Trump’s IRS Conduct “Massive-Scale” Data Mining

Stateside, the company had a contract with New York City public hospitals that gave it access to patient information. The contract was allowed to expire after it came under scrutiny in an Intercept report. The Intercept also reported this year that Palantir has access to sensitive federal databases for its contract to aid in Internal Revenue Service investigations.

Palantir’s IRS work led to a letter last year from 10 members of Congress to Karp requesting information about the “mega-database” built off IRS data. In response, the firm again denied that it was engaging in widespread surveillance of Americans and that it was building any such database.

Palantir also has a 15-year relationship with ICE. The Intercept found that its contracts with the agency have aided immigration raids, including ones that led to family separations. And Palantir built bespoke software for ICE that helps track self-deportations and visa overstays.

In April, Reps. Dan Goldman and Nydia Velázquez, both Democrats from New York, sent a list of questions directed to ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, demanding information about how they were leveraging Palantir’s technology to create “a mass surveillance ecosystem.”

Attacks on Free Press

Along with eccentric far-right views and donations to MAGA Republicans, one of Thiel’s most well-known acts was his involvement in the lawsuit that drove the news outlet Gawker into bankruptcy.

Thiel had become upset with Gawker over the media company’s reporting about his personal life. He went on to spend $10 million secretly bankrolling lawsuits against the company, finally scoring with a major judgment in favor of the wrestler Hulk Hogan that caused Gawker to close and sell off its assets.

Journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said that Thiel constituted a “serious threat” to the group’s principles of “freedom of press and independence of media,” particularly in light of the secrecy around his role in the case. His actions were, RSF said, “nothing different to governments using legal or economic leverage to shut down a media that happens to displease them.”

Related

Kash Patel Is Using MAGA’s Favorite Tool to Muzzle the Free Press

Palantir also recently filed a suit against Swiss online news magazine Republik for reporting on how Palantir repeatedly failed to land contracts with the Swiss government. Palantir claimed that Republik had an obligation to run a list of rebuttals from the firm.

A Swiss court, however, handed Palantir a defeat by siding with the outlet on all but one of the 23 charges and forcing Palantir to pay most of Republik’s legal fees. (In a since-deleted post on Medium responding to the Republik lawsuit, Palantir once again denied that it is a surveillance company.)

David Greene, senior counsel for anti-surveillance nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that positioning Palantir as a bulwark for civil rights undermined the government’s own free speech initiative.

“There’s a big problem right now with the U.S. government and the people outside government who exercise power, in terms of trying to claim free speech as a value when they clearly don’t sincerely hold that value,” Greene said. “It really lowers the esteem of the U.S. in terms of having any moral authority on freedom of expression grounds.”

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Because of expected rain and potentially poor weather, the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation is moving its Aug. 8 Second Saturday program from Fort Christina Park indoors to the Copeland Maritime Center at the Kalmar Nyckel Shipyard in Wilmington. Image created with AI on 8/7

Rain is moving “Lions, Sea Serpents & Mermaids, Oh My!” inside the Copeland Maritime Center, where families can explore the creatures and legends that once filled sailors’ imaginations.

WILMINGTON, Del. — Mermaids, sea serpents and other legendary creatures will be taking shelter from the rain Saturday.

Because of expected rain and potentially poor weather, the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation is moving its Aug. 8 Second Saturday program from Fort Christina Park indoors to the Copeland Maritime Center at the Kalmar Nyckel Shipyard in Wilmington.

The free family program, “Lions, Sea Serpents & Mermaids, Oh My!,” runs from 1 to 4 p.m. and explores the monsters, mythical creatures and maritime folklore that accompanied sailors across largely unknown oceans for centuries.

Visitors will learn about mermaids, sea serpents, lions and other creatures that appeared in sailors’ stories and as decorations aboard sailing ships. Children also can create their own sea serpents as part of the hands-on program.

Sea Monsters Filled an Unknown World

Long before satellites, sonar and modern ocean science, sailors ventured into waters they could barely understand.

Enormous whales, giant squid, unusual fish, violent currents, strange sounds and sudden storms could all become the foundation for stories about something more frightening lurking below.

Across different cultures, those fears produced an extraordinary collection of sea monsters.

Greek mythology told of Scylla, a multiheaded monster that attacked passing sailors, and Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool capable of swallowing ships.

Norse and Scandinavian stories helped create the legend of the kraken, an enormous tentacled creature said to be capable of pulling ships beneath the waves.

Sea serpents appeared repeatedly in sailors’ accounts, with mariners describing enormous snake-like creatures rising from the water or swimming alongside their vessels.

Some sightings may have been whales, giant squid, oarfish or other real animals viewed under difficult conditions.

But when sailors could not explain what they saw, folklore could.

Mermaids Brought Beauty to the Danger

Mermaids became especially enduring because they represented something different from the traditional monster.

They were mysterious and potentially dangerous, but also beautiful and human.

Stories of beings combining human and aquatic features date back thousands of years. Over time, the familiar image emerged of a woman above the waist and a fish below.

For sailors months from home, the mermaid became a powerful combination of attraction and danger — much like the sea itself.

Even explorers reported seeing them. Christopher Columbus recorded a mermaid sighting in the Caribbean in 1493, although historians generally believe he probably saw manatees.

The account shows how sailors often interpreted unfamiliar things through stories they already knew.

When Monsters Appeared on Maps and Ships

Maritime monsters were not limited to stories.

Historic maps sometimes filled unknown waters with enormous fish, serpents and fantastic creatures, visually warning travelers that they were entering places humans did not fully understand.

Mythical creatures also appeared aboard ships as carvings and figureheads.

Lions might symbolize strength and courage, while women, gods and fantastic creatures could represent protection, identity or good fortune.

Saturday’s program uses those traditions to introduce families to a time when superstition and seamanship frequently traveled together.

Why Sea Monsters Still Fascinate Us

Science has explained many of the creatures and natural forces that once frightened sailors, but sea monsters never disappeared.

The kraken, sea serpent and mermaid remain familiar characters in books, movies, television and popular culture.

Part of their appeal may come from the same mystery that fascinated sailors centuries ago.

Humans know far more about the oceans today, but the deepest waters remain difficult to explore and new marine species continue to be identified.

We know legendary krakens probably were not pulling sailing ships underwater, but giant squid are real.

There is no evidence mermaids exist, but sailors genuinely reported seeing them.

And some ancient stories about frightening waters appear to have been inspired by very real maritime hazards.

That mixture of fact, fear and imagination is what keeps sea-monster folklore alive.

A Delaware Maritime Connection

The setting adds another layer to Saturday’s program.

Today’s Kalmar Nyckel is a full-scale replica of the Swedish colonial ship associated with the establishment of New Sweden in the Delaware Valley in 1638. It will be in Historic New Castle tomorrow. The replica was built at the Wilmington shipyard and today serves as a floating classroom and ambassador for Delaware maritime history.

A 3/4 size replica of the ship is inside the Copeland Maritime Center and is available to explore on Saturday.

Saturday’s event explores another part of that history — not simply how sailors crossed the ocean, but what they imagined might be traveling beneath them.

And while mermaids may still get much of the attention, they were only one creature in a much larger and stranger world of maritime folklore.

To Go Box

• What: Second Saturday — “Lions, Sea Serpents & Mermaids, Oh My!”
• When: Saturday, Aug. 8, 1-4 p.m.
• Change of plans: Because of anticipated rain and poor weather, activities are moving indoors from Fort Christina Park.
• Where: Copeland Maritime Center at the Kalmar Nyckel Shipyard, 1124 E. Seventh St., Wilmington.
• What to expect: Sea monsters, mermaids, sea serpents, maritime folklore, ship symbolism and hands-on family activities.
• Cost: Free.
• Who: Families and visitors of all ages interested in maritime history and folklore.
• Learn more: Visit the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation website for current program information.

Political leanings: Democratic

2024 total spending: $256 million

The House Majority PAC, or HMP, as it is formally known, was created in April 2011 by Alixandria Lapp, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official. It was one of several political action committees formed by Democrats in response to the heavy spending by conservative organizations in the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans won the House.

House Majority PAC says it is “solely focused on electing House Democrats, including protecting our most vulnerable incumbents and boosting our most promising challenger and open seat candidates.” Abby Curran Horrell, a former chief of staff for Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, became HMP’s executive director in April 2019. Mike Smith, a veteran political strategist, has been its president since January 2023, after Lapp stepped down. 

As a Carey committee, also called a hybrid PAC, the House Majority PAC can act as both a traditional PAC, giving money directly to candidates’ committees, and a super PAC, making independent expenditures not coordinated with candidates and accepting donations of any size from individuals, labor unions and corporations. It must disclose those donations and expenditures in reports to the Federal Election Commission.

HMP reported receiving roughly $123.6 million for the 2026 election cycle as of June 30. A significant portion of that money came from House Majority Forward, an affiliated nonprofit organization that says it’s focused on “promoting economic growth and opportunity, social justice, environmental stewardship, and democracy.” Other large donors to the PAC include Connie Ballmer, co-founder of investment company the Ballmer Group; George M. Marcus, the billionaire founder of the Marcus & Millichap real estate firm; and philanthropist and retired media owner Fred Eychaner, who is a Democratic megadonor.

HMP has said it may spend more than it has raised thus far, as it has placed nearly $284 million in TV and digital ad reservations for the 2026 midterms in about 70 media markets, according to a June announcement. “Nearly 80% of these reservations are in offensive districts—underscoring HMP’s commitment to aggressively expanding the House battlefield and putting more seats in play than ever before,” the PAC said in a press release.

FEC records show HMP already spent about $961,000 in the fall of 2025 trying to influence the special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. But Republican Matthew Van Epps, a military veteran, ended up defeating Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn.

In the 2024 election cycle, HMP raised about $260.5 million and spent the vast majority — $195.7 million — on independent expenditures, which are advertisements that expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a federal candidate. The PAC also contributed $530,625 directly to federal candidates.

Senior Writer D’Angelo Gore contributed to this article.

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President Trump has ordered a 15% tariff on imported products made with polysilicon, a key material for semiconductors and solar panels. The new tariff will take effect on December 4th. The Guardian reports: The executive order signed by the president on Thursday evening said: "The plan of action in this proclamation will, among other things, help ensure the commercial viability of United States production of polysilicon and its derivatives that is necessary to meet United States economic and national security requirements." Polysilicon, an ultra-pure form of silicon, is an important ingredient in making the semiconductors vital for AI processing power, datacentres and solar power generation. US solar factories have long accused Chinese rivals of dumping cheaper panels on the market, which they say have been enabled by excessive government subsidies and by moving manufacturing to other countries to dodge US tariffs. [...] The US has two main polysilicon factories, including Hemlock Semiconductor, which operates a plant in Michigan and is a joint venture between the US tech company Corning and Japan's Shin-Etsu Handotai. The Munich-based Wacker Chemie runs a factory in Tennessee. Trump said in the order that he had accepted recommendations by the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to set minimum import prices of $21 a kilogram for polysilicon, $100 a kilogram for polysilicon ingots and wafers, $0.22 a watt for solar cells, and $0.38 a watt for solar modules or panels. The order also allows the commerce department to create an incentive program for companies that invest in factories to produce polysilicon or derivative products.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Political leanings: Republican

2024 total spending: $242.6 million

The Congressional Leadership Fund’s purpose is to maintain and expand the slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives. The group was formed in October 2011 as the conservative counter to the liberal House Majority PAC and is endorsed by House Republican leadership.

CLF is what’s known as a hybrid PAC or Carey committee, meaning it “has the ability to operate both as a traditional PAC, contributing funds to a candidate’s committee, and as a super PAC, which makes independent expenditures,” according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics. Such organizations must have separate bank accounts for those purposes.

Chris Winkelman is the CLF’s president, as well as the president of its sister 501(c)(4), the American Action Network. Winkelman is a lawyer who previously served as general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee and was the NRCC’s executive director during the 2024 election cycle.

As of June 30, the CLF had raised more than $163 million in the 2026 election cycle and had almost $142 million in cash-on-hand, Federal Election Commission records show. “This is the highest cash-on-hand ever recorded at this point in the cycle for CLF,” the PAC said in a July 15 press release.

At least $44 million of the money it has received for 2026 came from the American Action Network. Meanwhile, major individual donors include Miriam Adelson, a physician and businesswoman; Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Kenneth Griffin, the CEO of the investment firm Citadel; Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Investment Management; and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. 

As of June 24, the CLF had announced $175 million in ad reservations for the fall. It said the campaign will span 41 local markets across the country and include ads airing on broadcast, cable, streaming and digital platforms.

The PAC already spent more than $219,000 on direct mail or text messages trying to ensure that Republican Rep. David Valadao keeps his seat in California’s 22nd Congressional District, which was redrawn to favor Democrats after California voters approved Proposition 50 in November. Valadao and Randy Villegas, a progressive Democrat, were the top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary and will face each other in the general election.

Democrats need to gain a net of at least three seats to win a majority in the House.

The CLF spent more than $7 million helping Valadao hold on to his seat in 2024, when he was facing Democrat Rudy Salas, who lost. In total, the PAC spent about $217 million that election cycle on independent expenditures advocating for or against congressional candidates.

Senior Writer D’Angelo Gore contributed to this article.

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Political leanings: Conservative

2024 total spending: $91.3 million

Restoration of America PAC, previously known as Restoration PAC, was founded in January 2015 as a super PAC. 

According to its website, Restoration of America is an “umbrella name for a family of conservative organizations” that will “defend our nation by electing like-minded leaders and by creating organizations and campaigns that promote fully transparent elections, economic freedom, limited government, military superiority, secure borders, rule of law, and the sanctity of life.” Besides the super PAC, the collective includes two 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, Restoration of America and Voter Reference Foundation, and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Restoration of America Foundation.

The super PAC describes itself as a committee that helps conservative candidates “win the toughest battles in America,” and says its advertisements spread the message of “restoring America’s greatness” and “defeating the woke Left.” 

Doug Truax is the Founder and CEO of the Restoration of America political organization and its super PAC. Truax is a graduate of West Point and an Army veteran. In 2014, he ran in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat for Illinois, but lost to then state Sen. Jim Oberweis, who was defeated by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin in the general election.

As a super PAC, Restoration of America PAC can receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, political action committees and other sources. It’s also required to periodically report those donations to the Federal Election Commission.  

In the 2024 election cycle, it raised and spent more than $91 million, including nearly $43 million on independent expenditures, which are communications, such as TV or newspaper ads, that expressly advocate for or against candidates. The majority of its independent-expenditure spending – more than $34 million – was against then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, who was campaigning to become president.

Richard Uihlein, the billionaire CEO of the shipping and industrial supplies company Uline, is the super PAC’s largest donor. FEC records show the Republican megadonor contributed more than $80 million to the super PAC for the 2024 cycle, and so far, he has already contributed over $ 57 million from January 2025 to June 2026. Restoration of America PAC reported receiving almost $60.8 million in total contributions as of June 30.

Much of its spending during the 2026 cycle has been contributions to other conservative groups, including American Principles Project PAC, Citizens for Free Enterprise and Americas PAC. But the super PAC did spend over $1.6 million on TV ads last fall, supporting Republican Nate Morris’ U.S. Senate candidacy in Kentucky. 

Morris later suspended his campaign in May — at President Donald Trump’s request — and endorsed Rep. Andy Barr for the Republican nomination in the Senate race. Trump then nominated Morris in July to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Colombia.

FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Justine Weng contributed to this article. 

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Political leanings: Democratic

2024 spending: $82 million, combined

Democracy PAC and Democracy PAC II are liberal super PACs created by billionaire George Soros to fund political organizations that help elect Democrats.

Michael Vachon, who has been an adviser, spokesperson and chief of staff for Soros, is the treasurer of Democracy PAC, which was created in January 2019, and Democracy PAC II, which was formed in July 2021. As super PACs, both can accept unlimited donations.

Since it launched, Democracy PAC has been solely funded by Soros or companies or organizations he created. As of June 30, the super PAC had received more than $102 million for the 2026 election cycle, according to its most recent financial report to the Federal Election Commission. About half of its money came from Geosor Corp., a private investment company that Soros has long owned. The other half came from the Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit that Soros founded as part of his Open Society Foundations, which describes itself as “the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for rights, equity, and justice.”

The board chairman of the Open Society Foundations is Alex Soros, one of George’s sons, who was chosen by his father in 2023 to take over his philanthropic and political operations. The New York Post reported in June that the Soros network was on pace to surpass its previous donation record of $128 million during the 2022 election cycle.

In the 2026 cycle, Democracy PAC, according to FEC records, has so far used more than $40 million of its funding to make large contributions to other Democratic-aligned groups, including Senate Majority PAC, Strategic Victory Fund IE PAC, J Street Action Fund and AB PAC, which is also known as American Bridge 21st Century. Democracy PAC has also contributed millions to several committees working to elect Democrats at the state level.

Meanwhile, Democracy PAC II had both received and donated about $1.6 million as of the end of June, FEC records show. But it had more than $121 million cash on hand, money left over from a $175 million donation that George Soros made to his secondary super PAC during the 2022 election cycle.

During the 2024 election cycle, Democracy PAC gave more than $67 million to other groups, and Democracy PAC II distributed an additional $9.6 million.

Senior Writer D’Angelo Gore contributed to this article. 

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Authorities say a teen killed his two grandparents and five teachers and staff before taking his own life.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz told Aaron MacLean on the "School of War" podcast that President Trump should heap more pressure on Iran — including by arming Iranians to "let them overthrow their own government."

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 7, 2026 — AMD has announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Taalas, a pioneer in specialized AI inference silicon. As AI inference becomes one of the fastest-growing segments of the AI market and workloads become increasingly specialized, the acquisition strengthens AMD’s long-term AI roadmap with differentiated inference technology and world-class engineering expertise.

Credit: Shutterstock

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Taalas’ technology optimizes inference dataflows, significantly reducing compute and memory bottlenecks associated with general-purpose architectures and enabling highly optimized AI inference capabilities.

Taalas’ technology will complement AMD’s full-stack AI platform, including AMD Helios rackscale solutions, AMD Instinct GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, AMD ROCm software and the company’s expanding AI ecosystem. AMD plans to integrate the technology into its accelerator roadmap and develop system-level solutions with AMD Instinct GPUs.

“AMD is building a full-stack AI platform that gives customers the flexibility to deploy the right compute solutions for every AI workload,” said Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of the Artificial Intelligence Group at AMD. “Taalas’ technology and world-class engineering team strengthen our AI portfolio by delivering differentiated inference performance and efficiency.”

“We founded Taalas to rethink AI inference from the ground up by building the hardware around the model,” said Ljubisa Bajic, co-founder and CEO of Taalas. “Our Canada-based team has combined deep technical expertise with a willingness to challenge conventional approaches. Joining AMD will give us the scale, engineering resources and global reach to accelerate our innovation.”

As AI moves into more real-time, high-volume applications, AMD and Taalas will help customers deploy inference workloads more efficiently across a growing range of applications. Positioned to accelerate AI innovation, the acquisition builds on AMD’s long-standing presence in Canada – where the company has been a proud contributor to the country’s semiconductor and AI ecosystem – and reflects a continued commitment to retaining and growing Canadian talent. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

About AMD

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

Source: AMD

The post AMD Acquires Taalas to Advance Compute Solutions for Rapidly Growing AI Inference Market appeared first on HPCwire.

Delays to sexual assault charges and failures to report past convictions in court hearings gave Simon Levy chance to attack more women

Catastrophic errors left a prolific and proven sex offender free before he murdered two women in London, it can be revealed.

On Friday, an Old Bailey jury found Simon Levy, 40, guilty of murdering Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo in March 2025 and Sheryl Wilkins five months later.

The CPS admitted errors at three court hearings in May, June and August 2025, which ended in Levy remaining free. It would not specify publicly what those were, but a source authorised to speak for the organisation said they included failing to mention he had been arrested for Valencia-Trujillo’s murder, and that it could find no record or mention of Levy’s past sexual assault convictions, nor that he was a suspect in a 2024 rape.

The CPS said: “We accept there was relevant information regarding bail that was not provided to the court when bail applications were being considered. Our actions fell short of the standards that victims, families and the public are entitled to expect … We could and should have taken a more robust approach to representations about bail.”

By May 2025, police wanted Levy remanded, fearing he posed a “high risk of reoffending” with his crimes “escalating”.

Levy failed to attend three crown court hearings for the train attacks, and the CPS accepts there is no evidence of a warrant being sought for his detention. For two he claimed illness, for the other that he was not informed. His final non-appearance in crown court was on 11 August 2025. A fortnight later he murdered Wilkins. A CPS source said individuals involved in the Levy case had been disciplined.

The assaults on the London tube network and trains were investigated by BTP. Officers arrested Levy, who was travelling on a stolen Oyster travel card, but handed it back to him, unaware it was stolen. With it he travelled to south London to commit his first murder, and carried out further sexual assaults on trains.

BTP admitted the charging of Levy for his sexual assaults on trains in November 2024 was held up because of a delay in holding an identification parade after his arrest. It meant his bail was extended and during this delay he attacked and raped another woman and murdered Valencia-Trujillo, a mother of two.

BTP identified him as a suspect and charged him but never searched his home. Peter Fulton, BTP’s head of crime, said: “There’s a fine line between going fishing and breaching someone’s human rights.” He said that every woman who reported Levy for attacking them on a train saw him charged and convicted. When the Met, which investigated the murders, searched Levy’s home, evidence was found about his attack on the prison officer.

The police watchdog has placed two Met officers under investigation over whether Levy was supervised correctly as a person on the sex offender register. A constable is under investigation for gross misconduct, meaning he could be dismissed. The other officer, under investigation for misconduct, is a detective sergeant.

BTP said it had not referred its errors to the police watchdog. Instead it has moved one officer, who it says delayed the holding of the ID parade, out of investigations, and given a supervisor words of advice.

Some in party are delighted by leader’s tack rightwards but opponents have savoured latest Conservative controversy

There was a moment in the middle of this week when a news alert raised eyebrows among the politically committed. It read: “Kemi Badenoch: Former neo-Nazi candidate would just be sorting out bins.” It was a collection of words that might prompt palpitations in the most sanguine of communications professionals, followed by panicked advice that retreat was necessary. But as a deeply weird week for the Conservative party came to a close on Friday, its leader appeared adamant she would hold the line.

With Badenoch accused of aping Reform UK on policy and purging centrists from her party in recent weeks, her decision to stand by a man who was jailed after creating sexualised images of a Jewish MP and calling her a “rodent” has prompted concerns about the leader of the opposition’s political antennae and the Tories’ wider strategy.

Psychiatrists who treated Lindsay Clancy​ before she killed her children in Massachusetts began testifying at her trial Friday.

Senator Bill Cassidy, who will not be returning to Congress after losing his Louisiana primary to a Trump-backed candidate, said he would support the AG nominee

• Murkowski won’t support Blanche’s attorney general bid

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Following Lisa Murkowski’s announcement that she plans to vote “no” on Todd Blanche’s nomination to lead the Department of Justice, the acting attorney general can’t afford another defection in order to secure the permanent position.

So far the only other holdout is Senator Bill Cassidy – a GOP lawmaker from Louisiana. Cassidy, a former physician, said this week he’s concerned about Blanche’s ability to lead the justice department independently, considering he once served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.

Falling behind on a credit card balance can get expensive fast, but the rules around rate hikes still play a role.

Interest earnings on a $75,000 1-year CD account could be robust. Here's what savers need to know now.

CBS News reviewed dozens of posts on social media that suggest a renewed push for migrants to cross the border from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta.

Bill Cassidy, Republican who had been seen as a decisive holdout, announced that he is prepared to back Blanche

• US politics live – latest updates

Bill Cassidy, the US Republican senator seen as the decisive holdout on Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, announced on Friday that he will support the pick, setting the stage for a major win for Donald Trump.

Confirmation that Cassidy, of Louisiana, is prepared to back Blanche – Trump’s former personal lawyer, and a loyal ally of the president – appeared to clear the last hurdle of his confirmation process, which had been challenged by the defections of the Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins.

Much-delayed devices to be deployed by end of month after immigration agents involved in deaths or serious injuries

Officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be equipped with much-delayed body cameras by the end of next month, it was reported on Friday. But experts have questioned the transparency of a policy that allows the ICE director to restrict the public release of footage unless “it is in the best interests of the agency”.

Pressure has mounted on the Trump administration to provide body cameras after people caught up in encounters with federal immigration personnel suffered death or serious injuries.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, announced he will vote to confirm Todd Blanche for attorney general.

Amanda Knox made headlines almost two decades ago when she was convicted, but later acquitted, of the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: On Thursday, AMD said it's entered into an agreement to acquire Taalas, a Toronto-based startup that makes chips for inference. Taalas' accelerators are customized, or hard-wired for a single AI model, rather than being general purpose. In exchange for that loss of flexibility, Taalas' technology promises a less-expensive chip that it says can produce output for specific models thousands of times faster than a traditional GPU. An AMD representative declined to provide a purchase price for the transaction. Taalas has raised a total of $219 million in venture funding since its 2023 founding. Taalas' current chip runs a small version of Meta's Llama 3.1 model, though the company is working on chips for bigger and more advanced models. It's manufactured using an older Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. process, and uses speedy SRAM memory on the chip itself. Taalas CEO Ljubisa Bajic says on the startup's website that the company "developed a platform for transforming any AI model into custom silicon." "From the moment a previously unseen model is received, it can be realized in hardware in only two months," Bajic wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The backlash to what some dub ‘pervert glasses’ is growing – but people living with disabilities point out the new tech can also be life-changing

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One summer day earlier this year, Rhys left a cafe in Melbourne where he had been working remotely, when his phone pinged with a message on the dating app Grindr.

The message was a photo of him sitting at a table outside the cafe on his laptop, with his dog seated on the ground next to him. In the foreground, in a man’s hand was an iPhone unlocked.

The AFLW could borrow some of the gumption from a North American ice hockey league to grow Australian rules football’s elite women’s competition

In Australia, it is called the Matildas effect. Elsewhere, it has increasingly become known by a different name: business as usual.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League is one of several North American competitions making a habit of not only attracting spectacular women’s sports crowds, but doing so at a domestic level. Just three years into its existence, the ice hockey league is doing a mighty fine job of it too, with last season’s attendance up 71% on their inaugural campaign.

Counter-disinformation group says social media channels connected to Pravda network helped amplify message

Accounts with links to the Russian military promoting far-right messages reached more than 500,000 people in the early days of the Ceuta migration crisis, according to an analysis done by 411, a counter-disinformation group.

Russia-linked social media accounts frequently spread destabilising narratives in Europe, often promoting far-right talking points about immigration.

Trump’s summer of tariffs means trade uncertainty is here to stay Expert comment thilton.drupal 7 August 2026

The Trump administration has pushed through another round of tariffs. While they are being challenged in the courts, unpredictable and costly US trade policy is here to stay.

The Trump administration spent the waning days of July upending – again – the structure of US trade policy. Various issues have been used to justify a new wave of tariffs, investigations and threats – including forced labour, EU digital policy, Canadian commodities and Brazilian politics. But amid these specific dramas, a broader reality has become clear: that rapidly changing, often political tariffs are the new normal for US trade policy. 

Congress also bestirred itself on trade last month, but in contradictory directions that may ultimately serve instead to further embolden the White House. Indeed, the more aggressive this administration’s use of tariffs becomes, the more difficult subsequent administrations are likely to find it to move away from them.

From ‘Liberation Day’ to Section 301

July was a big month for US trade policy as time ran out on the temporary ‘section 122’ tariffs that the Trump administration put in place in February 2026. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 15 per cent on all imports for up to 150 days ‘to address fundamental international payments problems.’

This was the administration’s move to keep a form of global tariffs in place after the US Supreme Court had overturned US president Donald Trump’s original approach. The court struck down his use of an emergency powers act to declare wide-ranging tariffs via an executive order on ‘Liberation Day’ in April 2025. 

Following this setback, in March 2026 the administration initiated a series of investigations under ‘section 301’ of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits it to document and levy tariffs on countries that burden or unfairly restrict US exports. 

The first section 301 investigation to be completed was also the largest: the claim that US commerce was being harmed by imports of goods produced with forced labour. The investigation did not, crucially, focus on firms using forced labour. Instead, it accused 59 countries and the European Union of permitting the import of goods allegedly produced with forced labour elsewhere.

On 24 July, the administration implemented tariffs on the 60 economies. While the new rates are significantly lower than the original ‘Liberation Day’ rates for many countries, they reinstituted a 10-12 per cent minimum tariff on the 60 economies, which together provide the US with 99 per cent of its imports. This applied even to the countries (and the EU) that had moved to enact or beef up enforcement of forced labour bans. 

Canada, Brazil, EU, China

These forced labour tariffs also stack on top of some previous ones. As a result, while estimates put the overall US effective tariff rate at 10.8 per cent, some countries face much higher tariffs. 

In July, the administration cited a previously unused legal authority (section 338 of the notorious 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff act) to declare 50 per cent levies on various Canadian goods – some longstanding trade irritants, others related to Canadian public boycotts and retaliation over prior tariffs. The White House also put a 25 per cent tariff on some Brazilian goods, in a move that was viewed by many in Brazil as politically motivated ahead of the country’s upcoming elections. 

More is on the way. An ‘excess capacity’ section 301 investigation targeting 16 economies including China, India, Japan and the EU is still in process, with potentially high tariff outcomes. The administration has said it would restart its 2019 section 301 investigation against countries that engage in so-called ‘digital protectionism,’ which would chiefly target EU members and Canada. President Trump’s response to EU fines on Google in July was also to suggest additional tariffs. 

Pharmaceuticals have also been targeted. On 31 July, tariffs on pharmaceuticals from certain companies – justified under a different law focused on national security concerns – began to take effect. Some are as high as 100 per cent. The administration also has an ongoing section 301 investigation targeting German pharmaceuticals, in response to German efforts to lower drug spending. 

Meanwhile, Washington and Beijing nibbled at the edges of their trade truce; in addition to putting 12.5 per cent forced labour tariffs on Chinese goods, the US banned Chinese-made humanoid robots. 

For its part, the Chinese government has continued to build out its ability to restrict critical minerals flows, while meetings between senior US and Chinese officials have not marked progress on agricultural trade or Washington’s planned Board of Trade to manage relations with China. It appears, to quote former US negotiator Ambassador Wendy Cutler, that ‘just holding the truce together has become the main objective.’

Exemptions and challenges

The new tariffs – like the ones they replaced – cover about half of all goods imported into the US, with significant exemptions. The exemptions process may help manage inflationary pressures at home, but it also makes implementation complex and has prompted questions about which industries are given exemptions and why.

An audit of the first Trump administration’s tariff exclusion practices in 2018 and 2019 by the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General warned of the ‘appearance of improper influence in decision-making for tariff exclusion requests.’ 

A recent New York Times report raised questions about the basis of the exemptions from last month’s tariffs over forced labour, including commodities like diamonds. The report quoted White House spokesperson Kush Desai in response: ‘The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.’

Overall, President Trump gets a new version of the across-the-board tariff wall he desires, while importers get chaos. The new tariffs are already being challenged in court, including by 25 US states. Experts disagree on which challenges might succeed, but it appears that the administration aims to maintain elevated tariff levels by imposing new tariffs faster than courts can overturn old ones. 

Contradictory Congress

A majority of the American public, including independents and non-MAGA Republicans, dislike tariffs. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of tariff initiatives from both parties, introduced comprehensive legislation that would wrest trade policy power back to Congress. But the bill has no clear path forward. 

At the same time, a bill giving the president even more tariff authority to target Russia, including to put 100 per cent tariffs on top importers of Russian oil, began to move through the Senate with strong bipartisan support. Wyden was one of only ten Democrats to oppose it.

Related work

Trump’s tariffs: Are they here to stay? Independent Thinking podcast

This reflects the politics of tariffs: the pain they impose is diffuse, while the benefits are highly specific and thus easier to organize around. A majority of US public opinion supports free trade in the abstract but opposes specific trade liberalization deals with their real and imagined costs. 

As a result, Congress remains unwilling to engage in affirmatively setting trade policy, handing more power to the executive branch. Meanwhile, more corners of US industry are getting used to building in uncertainty and negotiating with the administration for exemptions from tariffs. 

This means it’s going to get harder, rather than easier, for future leaders of any political stripe to swear off trade policy as a cheap political tool. As with climate change, the risk for US trade policy is that the world is left with heat and unpredictability all year round. 

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon's attorneys wrote that Trump's animosity toward Lemon "is well documented, stretching back over a decade."

Argonne-led collaboration will use AI and U.S. Department of Energy user facilities to understand how tiny flaws affect electronics over time

Aug. 7, 2026 — How a microelectronic device performs depends on what it is made of, how well its materials and interfaces are built and how electricity, heat and tiny defects change over time. These devices power much of modern life ­— from smartphones and laptops to secure communications and artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

Credit: Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock

As next-generation devices become smaller, faster and more tightly packed, their performance is affected more and more by tiny flaws in materials and interfaces. These defects can lead to overheating, electrical leakage, unreliable switching and, in the end, shorter device lifetimes. But defects are not always harmful. They can also influence electrical and thermal behavior in useful ways, depending on how they are distributed and how they evolve over time. Understanding both the harmful and beneficial effects of defects is essential for designing better microelectronics.

To address the challenges defects pose, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Northwestern University plan to develop the Materials Discovery Cloud. The project will create a physics-informed AI framework that learns how material composition, structure and operating conditions influence defect evolution and key functional properties such as electrostatic potential, current density and temperature.

The Materials Discovery Cloud is part of DOE’s Genesis Mission, a bold national initiative to double America’s research and development productivity within a decade while strengthening U.S. technological leadership and global competitiveness.

From Protein Folding to Device Function

AlphaFold is an AI system developed by Google DeepMind that predicts a protein’s 3D structure based on its amino acid sequence. It transformed biology by making structure prediction much faster and more accurate, helping scientists better understand how proteins work.

The new microelectronics effort follows a similar idea but applies it to a very different problem. Instead of predicting protein structure from sequence, the team aims to predict how networks of defects form, change and affect how a device works.

“In biology, AlphaFold learned to connect sequence to structure,” said Subramanian Sankaranarayanan, Argonne scientist and lead principal investigator on the project, as well as a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. ​“We want to connect defect distributions in materials and interfaces to the electrical and thermal properties that matter for microelectronics. Such a framework remains elusive.”

Why Defects Are So Hard to Understand

Defects are tiny irregularities in a material’s structure. They can include missing atoms, dislocations, voids or chemical disorder. Some defects hurt performance. Others can help enable useful behavior. The challenge is knowing which defects matter, when they matter and how they change under real operating conditions.

These attributes are difficult to determine because no single instrument can capture the whole picture.

Some tools, such as electron microscopes, can directly image features at very small scales. X-ray methods can reveal strain, buried structures and defect motion. Other techniques measure chemistry, electrical behavior and heat flow. Each method shows one part of the story, but not the whole system.

A useful way to think about it is like trying to understand the day’s weather from the temperature alone. Temperature tells you something important, but you also need to factor in wind, clouds, precipitation and humidity to see the full picture. The same is true for microelectronics.

Bringing Many Tools into One Framework

To close that gap, the team is combining many types of data from DOE Office of Science user facilities and advanced computing systems, drawing information from different tools and scales into one unified platform.

At Argonne, those include the Advanced Photon Source and the Center for Nanoscale Materials for X-ray and microscopy measurements, as well as the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility for large-scale computing. Partner capabilities include the Advanced Light Source, the Molecular Foundry and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Berkeley Lab, and the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at ORNL.

The Materials Discovery Cloud will help researchers gather experimental data, run simulations and generate synthetic data that mimic experiments. The synthetic data is especially important because complete experimental data sets for material samples are still complicated and time-consuming to collect. Simulations can fill in missing pieces and help train the AI framework.

Another part of the effort focuses on autonomous discovery, which uses AI, machine learning and robotics to help researchers decide which measurements to run next and collect new data more quickly. That can help address one of the project’s key challenges: generating enough high-quality experimental data to build and refine AI models.

In this work, researchers are developing an AI-guided platform for microelectronics materials that can synthesize samples and carry out multiple kinds of characterization in a more integrated, high-throughput workflow. By reducing the need to move samples among facilities for separate measurements, the approach could speed data collection and help fill important gaps in the multimodal datasets used to train the framework.

“What makes the Materials Discovery Cloud powerful is that we can bring together experiments, simulations and AI in one workflow,” Sankaranarayanan explained. ​“That gives us a way to learn from limited data today while building a framework that can grow more capable as new data comes in.”

AI Guided by Physics

This system is not designed to be a black box that gives answers without explanation. Instead, it will be built around well-established laws of physics. This helps ensure the AI’s predictions are grounded in how materials and devices actually behave.

That certainty is important because the researchers want the system to do more than spot patterns in data. They want it to help reveal why certain defects lead to specific changes in performance, reliability or lifetime.

To do that, the framework will combine several kinds of AI tools that can bring together many types of data, learn from both experiments and simulations and identify which new measurements would be most useful next. In the end, the goal is to connect tiny, atomic-scale features in a material to the larger electrical, thermal and mechanical behavior of a real device.

What Success Could Look Like

If successful, the Materials Discovery Cloud could change how scientists design and test new materials and devices.

Instead of waiting through long rounds of experiments, researchers may be able to get useful answers from a smaller set of early measurements. That could help them spot problems sooner, avoid spending time on weak candidates and focus more quickly on the most promising designs.

Over time, the framework could also support inverse design. Rather than starting with a material and seeing how it performs, they could start with a goal — such as better heat management or a longer-lasting device — and ask what kind of material structure or defect pattern would be needed to achieve it.

By bringing many different measurements into one predictive system, the effort aims to help scientists better understand, control and design the materials behind the next generation of microelectronics.

Other contributors to this work include Pierre Darancet, Henry Chan, Maria Chan, Daniel Durham, Tom Gage, Dina Sheyfer, Hua Zhou, Ross Harder, Jeffrey Klug, Mathew Cherukara, Supratik Guha and Aditya Koneru from Argonne; Mary Scott, Archana Raja, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Ed Barnard and Sujoy Roy from Berkeley Lab; Panchapakesan Ganesh and Rama Vasudevan from ORNL; and Mark Hersam from Northwestern University.

This research was supported by the DOE’s Basic Energy Sciences (BES) Office under the Genesis Mission’s BES AI Pathfinder Program, Materials Discovery Cloud.

Source: Amber Rose, Argonne National Laboratory

The post Argonne: Predicting Microelectronics Performance with Physics-Informed AI appeared first on HPCwire.

Aug. 7, 2026 — The University of North Dakota has been selected for the inaugural cohort of projects supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, making UND the only institution in North Dakota chosen to participate in the national initiative.

The project, led by Jielun Zhang, assistant professor in the College of Engineering & Mines’ School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, will develop new methods to improve the security and reliability of artificial intelligence models used in battery management systems and other energy science applications. Jueming Hu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UND, serves as co-principal investigator.

The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by the U.S. Department of Energy that is building the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines artificial intelligence, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments.

“Our researchers are tackling complex challenges that have the potential to improve lives and strengthen critical infrastructure,” said Vice President for Research and Economic Development Scott Snyder. “Selection for the inaugural Genesis Mission reflects the quality of research taking place at UND and our commitment to advancing discoveries that serve our state and the nation.”

The project, titled “Adversarial Robustness Framework for AI Models in Battery Management and Energy Science Workflows,” addresses an increasingly important challenge as artificial intelligence becomes more widely used to monitor and manage lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, support the electric grid and provide backup power for critical facilities.

AI models help estimate battery health, monitor operating conditions and identify potential problems before failures occur. However, those models can be vulnerable to manipulated data or cyberattacks that could cause them to overlook battery degradation, misidentify unsafe operating conditions or make incorrect recommendations.

To address those risks, Zhang and his collaborators will develop a framework for evaluating and improving the resilience of AI models used in battery management and related energy science applications. The research team will create standardized methods for testing AI systems against realistic attacks, develop techniques to detect compromised data and strengthen AI models so they can continue operating reliably in challenging environments.

“Artificial intelligence is becoming an essential tool for managing increasingly complex energy systems,” Zhang said. “Our goal is to develop practical methods that help ensure these models remain secure, reliable and trustworthy so they can safely support critical energy infrastructure.”

The project also includes collaborators from La Sierra University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Clean Republic SODO LLC.

The research builds on UND’s growing leadership in artificial intelligence, advanced computing and energy systems research, bringing together expertise from multiple engineering disciplines to address challenges at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI and critical energy infrastructure.

The goal of the Genesis Mission Phase I awards is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation while evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation or generate new scientific insights.

Researchers expect the project to produce new evaluation methods, software tools and model-hardening techniques that will help scientists, utilities, technology developers and energy system operators assess and improve the resilience of AI systems used in energy applications. The work could contribute to safer battery technologies, more reliable distributed energy resources and more secure deployment of artificial intelligence across critical energy and scientific workflows.

Representatives from UND joined researchers from across the country at the Genesis Mission Summit on July 22 in Washington, where the inaugural cohort of projects was announced.

The project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Source: Nikki Krueger, UND

The post University of North Dakota Joins DOE Genesis Mission with AI Battery Security Project appeared first on HPCwire.

Andrew and Tristan Tate remain in jail as they fight extradition to UK to face charges of rape, assault and more

Lawyers for Andrew and Tristan Tate urged a ⁠US judge on Friday ⁠to release the ​brothers from a Miami jail as they fight the British government’s efforts to extradite them to face charges of rape, assault and facilitating trafficking for ⁠sexual exploitation.

In a filing in Miami federal court, the Tate brothers’ lawyers said their “extraordinary public visibility” would make it impractical for them to try to flee, meaning there was ⁠no need to keep them behind bars until the extradition proceedings end.

Home Office minister Anna Turley says PM is ‘authentic’ and praises video of him discussing bar snacks with John Healey

Streeting said it was “not OK” that the killers of PC Andrew Harper were eligible for early release, PA reports.

He said the government should “never have been put in a position” where prisons were so full that offenders were going to be let out at an earlier stage of their sentence.

A federal appeals court is set to consider President Trump's effort to fire two immigration judges this fall, a case that could have significant implications for federal workers.

Teenager killed his grandparents ⁠before opening fire at school near Bangkok, where more than 30 were wounded

A Thai teenager killed his grandparents before opening fire at his school, where he shot five people dead and took his own life, police have said, in an attack that has shaken a country struggling to deal with gun violence.

The 14-year-old wounded more than 30 people in the ⁠shooting at the prestigious Debsirin Nonthaburi school northwest of Bangkok. Nine people were in a critical condition, the Thai health department said.

Experts say the attackers’ behaviour, and the handling of their cases, have striking similarities

About 40 metres off Tottenham High Street, up a slip road for deliveries to a B&M homewares store, is a stretch of concrete paving behind a 2-metre wall topped with spikes.

This is the patch of ground that Simon Levy tried to turn into his personal killing field.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 7, 2026 — QC Ware today announced a technology demonstration of a hybrid quantum-classical computational chemistry workflow using Promethium and IBM Quantum hardware.

The demonstration calculated electrostatic interaction energy for nitric oxide reductase by combining GPU-accelerated molecular modeling and classical chemistry methods with quantum measurements performed on IBM’s 156-qubit Heron superconducting quantum processor. The work highlights how Promethium can be used alongside quantum hardware in scientifically relevant workflows. This was a technology demonstration and is not currently a fully integrated Promethium product capability.

“This demonstration shows how classical and quantum computing can be combined to address meaningful computational chemistry problems,” said Dr. Kin-Joe Sham, Co-Founder and COO at QC Ware. “We believe Promethium delivers high-performance computational chemistry today while providing a foundation for exploring future hybrid workflows.”

Nitric oxide reductase is a chemically complex metalloenzyme system, making it a relevant benchmark for evaluating advanced computational methods. The workflow focused on electrostatic interaction energy, an important molecular property in drug discovery, catalysis, and materials science.

The demonstration builds on QC Ware’s previously published research in hybrid quantum-classical chemistry and reflects the Company’s broader strategy of delivering practical, GPU-accelerated quantum chemistry today while advancing the use of artificial intelligence and quantum computing to address increasingly challenging scientific problems.

Available today, Promethium’s GPU-native architecture enables researchers to apply quantum chemistry across larger molecular systems and more compounds than has traditionally been practical. For selected workloads, Promethium runs demanding calculations up to 20× faster than the main conventional platforms, helping researchers generate molecular-level insights in hours instead of weeks and accelerating decision-making across drug discovery, catalysis, and materials science.

About QC Ware

QC Ware is a quantum computing software company. QC Ware develops applications that unlock the power of quantum computing for drug discovery, material design and other industry verticals. QC Ware’s Promethium platform provides GPU-accelerated quantum chemistry for molecular modeling and drug discovery, helping customers make better discovery decisions today while exploring the hybrid quantum-classical workflows of tomorrow. QC Ware also organizes and hosts Q2B quantum computing conferences in Japan, Europe and the United States.

Source: QC Ware

The post QC Ware Demonstrates Hybrid Quantum-Classical Chemistry Workflow with IBM Quantum appeared first on HPCwire.

Aug. 7, 2026 — The US Department of Energy recently announced that three research projects involving New York University (NYU) faculty have been selected in the first round of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The selected ventures span quantum computing, decentralized scientific AI, and multi-agent hypothesis generation, underscoring NYU’s growing role in AI-enabled discovery science.

The Genesis Mission is a national DOE initiative that unites the department’s national laboratories, universities, and industry partners with advanced AI, high-performance computing, scientific instrumentation, and data infrastructure to accelerate discovery. More than 5,000 applications were submitted, and just 278 projects were selected in this first round. NYU’s three projects are among that inaugural group:

• “AI-driven Pulse-level Optimal Control of Many-body Quantum Eigensolvers” is spearheaded by Andrei Vrajitoarea, an assistant professor of physics, and Norah Hoffman, assistant professor of chemistry and physics. The team will design a new way to program quantum computers that skips a costly translation step. Today’s quantum algorithms are typically written in abstract instructions, then translated into a rigid sequence of hardware operations, which slows computation and introduces errors. Using AI, the NYU team will instead control the quantum hardware directly.
• MARS (Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Scientific Hypothesis Generation) is led by Brookhaven National Laboratory in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, NYU, and Microsoft. Mengye Ren, an assistant professor of computer science and data science at NYU’s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science, will help build specialized teams of AI agents designed to help scientists generate stronger, evidence-based hypotheses more efficiently. Early work will focus on identifying problems in analog circuit designs and interpreting material structures from X-ray data.
• DAISY (Decentralized Agentic Intelligence System for Scientific Inquiry) is led by Iowa State University in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, with NYU’s Chinmay Hegde, an associate professor of computer science and engineering, and Juliana Freire, an Institute Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. The team is designing a network of AI agents that divide labor, share compact knowledge tokens, and work together to accelerate discovery. NYU will help lead development of the platform’s core toolkit, with early applications planned in materials science, crop breeding for bioenergy, and the power grid.

“Science is entering an era where discovery itself can be accelerated by the tools we build to pursue it,” said Juan de Pablo, NYU’s Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology and executive dean of the Tandon School of Engineering. “This is exactly the kind of cross-disciplinary momentum the Genesis Mission was designed to unlock, and it’s where NYU is ready to lead.”

“Our breakthroughs emerge from the deep and broad disciplinary excellence among our faculty, which is bolstered by the collaborative environment we foster in Arts and Science,” said Michael Purugganan, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of Arts and Science and Silver Professor of Biology. “As part of the Genesis Mission, our scientists will continue to embrace AI’s potential as an engine for discovery in meeting 21st-century challenges.”

“Leveraging AI from the ground up is vital for both scientific discovery and technological advancement,” said Gerard Ben Arous, dean of NYU’s Courant Institute School. “Developing promising AI agents into advanced applications has been a driver of the Courant Institute School’s success, and it will remain a core focus under the Genesis Mission.”

Source: NYU

The post NYU Joins 3 DOE Genesis Mission Projects for AI and Quantum Research appeared first on HPCwire.

Yinon Levy charged with manslaughter in first exception this decade to culture of impunity for Israelis who kill Palestinians in the occupied West Bank

Prosecutors in Israel have indicted an extremist settler for shooting a Palestinian activist last July, the first attempt this decade to hold an Israeli responsible for killing a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank.

Yinon Levy, who was under western sanctions, is charged with manslaughter over the death of Awdeh Hathaleen, an English teacher and peace activist. In his last moments, Hathaleen filmed the settler drawing his weapon and opening fire towards him.

The typical American's paycheck has grown faster since 2019 than in any stretch since the early 1980s. But prices climbed nearly as fast, swallowing about 80% of the wage increase.

Estimates for previous two months were revised down sharply but unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%

• Business live – latest updates

US employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July and gains for the previous two months were revised down sharply by a combined 103,000 jobs, painting a weaker picture of the labor market than past data indicated.

The unemployment rate, however, held steady at 4.1%. Economists had projected an unchanged unemployment rate and 83,000 new jobs for the month.

Outdoor griddles have gained in popularity, especially among the cleaning-averse. Here’s what an expert thinks about grill surfaces.

Considering a $10,000 3-year CD account this August? Here's how much interest you'd earn once the account matures.

The all-conquering franchise’s revamps are technically impressive, its transfers more true to life – and its new grassroots social hub is surprising fun

As if the world wasn’t sufficiently football-obsessed, it’s time to prepare for the arrival of its biggest football video game. EA Sports FC 27 (the franchise that used to be Fifa – what better time to no longer be Fifa-branded?) is due to be released on 25 September. I just spent two intense days in Vancouver, where the EA FC games are made, playing FC 27 and talking to its developers.

With an annual franchise such as EA FC, it helps to have something fresh to entice regular fans, and FC 27 has a whole new element, entitled the Grounds. It’s a physical hub-type area, similar to the City as seen in 2K’s recent NBA 2K basketball games, but much more pleasant to frequent, split as it is into areas inspired by British, French and Argentinian street-football culture.

Domestic flights cost 26.5% more than last year, data shows, amid demand for travel and reduced oil refining capacity

Even if a lasting ceasefire between the US and Iran lowers oil prices, travelers hoping to snag cheaper airfare should buckle their seatbelts and expect continued turbulence.

US domestic airfares are 26.5% higher than a year ago, according to June’s consumer price index data, and analysts say prices globally are up 25-30% compared with 2025.

A Trump administration framework on AI testing leaves a lack of transparency – and plenty of open questions

After months of talking with tech industry leaders, the Trump administration finalized a framework this week for how it will test new artificial intelligence models for safety and cybersecurity risks. So far, the White House is keeping details of the framework private, in a blow to transparency and potential boon for secretive AI companies.

On Tuesday, staff from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, Nvidia and Microsoft attended a private meeting with White House officials to review the AI framework. Multiple outlets have since reported that although the volunteer vetting process for new AI models has been settled, the White House does not plan to release its policy publicly and will only share testing criteria with a select few tech companies.

Robyn Cory says daughter Kristen was not protected, amid questions about why it took six years to identify remains

The family of Kristen Galvan, a 15-year-old Houston girl who was sex trafficked and murdered, says law enforcement failed her twice by not protecting her after she gave forensic interviews about her traffickers, and later by taking more than six years to identify her remains.

The Texas attorney general’s office announced on 28 July that Kristen’s remains had been positively identified using advanced DNA testing conducted over the past year. Parts of her skull, clothing and an earring were found beneath a bridge beside a jogging trail in Missouri City, about 10 miles outside Houston.

Officials try to find homes for residents as talks to save social assistance hub collapse amid government crackdown

Rome authorities are scrambling to find homes for hundreds of people sleeping in tents in extreme heat after talks aimed at saving Italy’s most high-profile centre for housing and social assistance collapsed amid a crackdown by Giorgia Meloni’s government on squatted buildings.

The approximately 400 evicted residents of Spin Time Labs, located in a 10-floor building in Rome’s Esquilino district occupied by grassroots groups since 2013, will not be allowed to move back in after its private owner refused Rome council’s offer to buy the property. The residents were forced out at the end of last month.

Companies receiving billions in refunds for U.S. tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court should return money to consumers, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.

As Abelardo de la Espriella takes office as president vowing a new military offensive, the country’s last leftwing rebels are getting ready to fight back

As the boat approached the riverbank, camouflaged figures watched from the tree line.

Behind them, in the dim understory of the jungle, a commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN) sat with his rifle on his lap, amid the buzz and whine of insects and the thwacks of machetes on bamboo as his troops set up camp, hidden from enemy drones.

For PC enthusiasts who’ve already lived through SSD price hikes and RAMageddon, there could be more bad news ahead.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday she will oppose Todd Blanche's nomination as attorney general, narrowing the confirmation path for President Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department.

An investigation was underway at a Far South Side funeral home after more than 50 decomposing bodies were found in the facility.

The alleged threats were made in the case of a Black teen who was found dead off the Mississippi coast after celebrating the Fourth of July with friends.

Environmentalists and activists furious as Trump’s policies raise costs for Americans. Plus, the masterpiece that was left lying in museum storage

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Good morning. Donald Trump’s statement that oil companies have made “too much money” from the Iran war has angered environmentalists, who say his policies were designed to benefit those very corporations.

Americans have paid more than $78bn more at the pump since the start of the Iran war, according to a Brown University tracker. A recent analysis from the environmental advocacy group Climate Power and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal thinktank, found that Trump’s policies had cost the average American family $285 more when filling up their cars.

What policies has Trump enacted to help the oil industry? Since re-entering the White House last year, he has eased dozens of restrictions and regulations on fossil fuel expansion, exempted fossil fuel producers from environmental rules, and signed an executive order last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits targeting oil majors. Trump has also personally invested in major oil companies.

What did the supreme court previously rule? In the court’s June decision, the chief justice, John Roberts, said Trump’s first order violated the 14th amendment of the US constitution. “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community,” he wrote. “The framers of the 14th amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’. We keep that promise today.”

MIAMI, Florida — A dispute over a prized lobster-diving location in Biscayne Bay escalated into an attempted murder case after authorities accused a Miami Beach boater of deliberately shutting off an 18-year-old diver’s air supply underwater.

Michael Joseph Simpson Jr., 51, was charged with attempted felony murder following the July 29 confrontation during Florida’s two-day recreational spiny lobster season. According to a Miami-Dade sheriff’s report, two groups argued after one accused the other of taking their preferred diving spot.

Investigators allege Simpson entered the water and shut down a Brownie’s Third Lung system supplying air to diver Hunter Coffer. Boat owner Steven Del Sol reportedly pulled Coffer to the surface by the air hose after witnesses shouted that a diver was still underwater. Coffer emerged gasping, disoriented and tangled in lines, according to the report.

Simpson’s attorney, Howard Srebnick, strongly disputes that account. He said Simpson never touched the equipment and claims video shows another person becoming entangled in the system while Simpson was elsewhere. The defense also says multiple witnesses support Simpson’s version and criticized investigators for making an arrest before interviewing them.

Simpson surrendered Aug. 4 and was released on $10,000 bond. Prosecutors will ultimately determine whether to formally pursue the attempted murder charge.

Sources:

• The Guardian – MBFC Rating

The post Florida Boater Accused of Cutting Diver’s Air During Lobster Dispute appeared first on News Facts Network.

The post Bloomberg Gives $1.25M to Missouri Abortion Rights Campaign appeared first on News Facts Network.

Few have heard of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but it has saved tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars

When I started my training in 1980, we accepted an arithmetic that would now be indefensible. Central lines, the catheters we threaded into the great veins of the critically ill, became infected, and some of those patients died. We recorded the deaths as complications. Almost no one thought of them as preventable, because no one had yet done the slow work of proving they were.

That work got done, and federal money paid for it. Beginning in 2008, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a small arm of the health department, funded a national effort in more than a thousand adult intensive care units: a checklist, a sterile insertion protocol, and a unit culture in which a nurse could stop a surgeon. Central-line bloodstream infections fell by 41%, from 1.915 to 1.133 per 1,000 catheter days. The agency estimates that effort alone averted between 290 and 605 deaths. Across its wider work on hospital-acquired harm, AHRQ’s own accounting credits 20,500 deaths prevented and $7.7bn saved in the four years from 2014 to 2017. Hardly any of my patients have heard of the agency. That was always rather the point.

Robert B Shpiner is an internist and clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He has practiced and taught intensive care medicine for more than 40 years

Save Our Signs aims to document every sign in the more than 400 national parks and historic sites across the country before the Trump administration removes them

Jenny McBurney was among hundreds of people around the world who sprang into action last year when the Trump administration started deleting government datasets and webpages because they included information about “gender ideology”, environmental justice or diversity, equity and inclusion.

McBurney, a government publications librarian at the University of Minnesota, joined the Data Rescue Project, a group that mobilizes volunteers to archive critical government datasets that are at risk of deletion by the Trump administration.

High 30s celsius forecast for France, Spain and Italy next week, before affecting Germany, Poland and Czechia

Another pulse of heat is expected to affect central and western Europe next week. The latest forecast models show daily maximum temperatures well into the high 30s celsius widely across France, Spain and Italy during the first half of the week, while Germany, Poland and Czechia will experience the highest temperatures towards the end of the week. The shift in the focus of the heat as the week progresses can be attributed to the movement of high pressure. At the start of the week, low pressure centred in the Atlantic and high pressure centred over the low countries will draw warm air from southern Europe northwards into parts of France. During the working week, the high pressure will slip a little farther south and east, enabling the warm air once situated over western Europe to make inroads into parts of Germany and central Europe.

The heat in central and western Europe this summer has been unrelenting. Last week’s weather tracker highlighted record-breaking temperatures for the month of July in Austria. However, only a few days later, on 4 August, the all-time record was shattered with 41.0C achieved in Stammersdorf, north-east of the capital, Vienna. This comfortably broke the previous all-time record set in August 2003 by 0.7C. Unbelievably, that record was broken again the following day when 41.2C was recorded in Deutsch-Altenburg. Slovakia also set an all-time record on the same day, of 41.4C. The continuing European heatwave, associated with a vertically extensive anticyclone, raised the freezing level above 4,000 metres across much of the Alpine region. This represents a level in the atmosphere well above many Alpine glaciers, accelerating the seasonal melting process. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, 51.8C was recorded in Badwater, California, the highest temperature in the US for 2026 so far.

A teenager described as "troubled" and "bullied" by a classmate killed his grandparents before gunning down five staff members at a high school in Thailand, police said.

By dragging out talks, Tehran aims to damage the US president politically – but some fear a bruised and weakened Trump could lash back

Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.

For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous.

A Transportation Department proposal could obscure the cost of a plane ticket, aviation experts warn. Here's what to know.

• Rookie Haynes King caps comeback in 33-30 win

• Arizona’s Carson Beck also impresses on debut

• Hall of Fame game opens 2026 NFL preseason

Maybe a team should’ve drafted Haynes King.

The rookie quarterback ran in from the five-yard line on the final play to give the Carolina Panthers a 33-30 victory over the Arizona Cardinals in the Hall of Fame game that kicked off the NFL preseason on Thursday night.

To counter the purported national scourge of “organized retail crime,” a bill moving through Congress would deliver the Department of Homeland Security unprecedented policing powers, granting even more authority to what experts say is an already lawless ICE.

The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, was introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, last year with wide bipartisan support. The bill is aimed at limiting coordinated retail theft and shoplifting, which lawmakers allege is happening at “unprecedented levels” as organized criminal gangs steal merchandise from stores and resell the goods online. According to the legislation, the perpetrators “are often polycriminal organizations, using profit from the reselling of stolen goods to support crimes involving drugs and weapons trafficking” while facilitating “human smuggling,” all of which is “funding nefarious groups and activities and threatening the integrity of the international economy.”

The bill would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement authority to coordinate federal efforts against large-scale shoplifting. ICE would establish a so-called “Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center” that would bring under one roof analysts and agents from myriad agencies, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Secret Service. The goal is to centralize investigative data and establish “a secure system for sharing information regarding organized retail and supply chain crime threats by leveraging existing information systems at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.”

It’s unclear if ICE agents themselves would have the authority to confront alleged suspects. DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civil libertarian groups are disturbed by legislation they say constitutes a major expansion of domestic surveillance and policing by DHS, which was founded largely to tackle matters of counterterrorism, civil defense, and other matters of national safety, and ICE, whose purview is immigration enforcement and transnational crime.

Jina John, senior policy counsel for AI, privacy, and technology at the ACLU, told The Intercept the bill could grant DHS increased surveillance powers. “This would formalize a mechanism for retailers to share data about consumers with DHS as well as state and local authorities relating vaguely to ‘threats,’” she said. “The risk here is that when retailers share information, it’s not a specific clip of footage related to a specific theft, in practice, they are sharing continuous footage. That means access to FLOCK license plate readers in retail parking lots and surveillance cameras at stores and malls.”

The Center itself would be staffed in part by ICE agents and helmed by a director handpicked by the head of ICE. The bill allows the Center to share information deemed confidential under federal law, which includes the “identity, confidential statistical data, amount or source of any income, profits, losses, or expenditures of any person, firm, partnership, corporation, or association.” Such disclosure would require the sign-off of the Center’s director.

“Given that this director will be named by ICE, an agency that has acted without any regard for the law, this is probably not the best person to make such important judgments,” ACLU senior counsel Nina Patel told The Intercept.

Related

“Terrorist”: How ICE Weaponized 9/11’s Scarlet Letter

Despite sustained opposition to DHS and ICE under Trump’s second term by congressional democrats, CORCA was co-sponsored by 13 Democratic members of the Senate, including Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner, and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin.

In a July letter opposing the bill, rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law cautioned about the establishment of “essentially a new fusion center, nominally for the purpose of addressing retail theft.” Like DHS itself, fusion centers are a post-9/11 creation intended to thwart acts of international terrorism. Over the past two decades, their mission has widened and now encompasses, for example, the surveillance of political protests.

The premise that organized retail theft is a rampant crime phenomenon, rather than a new name for the timeless petty offense of shoplifting, is disputed and controversial. In 2023, the National Retail Federation, a trade group that supports the bill and whose warnings are cited in its text, retracted a report claiming organized retail crime was responsible for 50 percent of the nearly $100 billion worth of merchandise that went missing in 2021. The true number was found to be closer to 5 percent of that sum.

The companies on whose behalf the NRF lobbies are inclined to support legislation dedicated to safeguarding merchandise and profits. Should it pass, CORCA would deepen collaboration between corporate America and DHS and expand the country’s public-private surveillance apparatus. “Companies determined by the Executive Associate Director to have significant interests” in retail theft could be granted information-sharing agreements with the government about threats, investigations and loss prevention activities, according to the bill’s text.

The ACLU and other civil liberties groups insist ICE is so lawless it can’t be trusted with new powers. “As a result, ICE would have more access to information and more sway over local law enforcement — which means more opportunities for ICE to misuse data and target people in violation of their rights,” Patel said. “ICE cannot be trusted.”

Related

Federal Agents Are Intimidating Legal Observers at Their Homes: “They Know Where You Live”

In May, the House passed CORCA and referred it to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley and Durbin are now hoping to turn it into law as an amendment to the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon’s annual funding bill that historically passes easily with bipartisan support. Despite the fact that CORCA is intended to protect store shelves from thieves, and not the United States from foreign militaries, both senators are urging the acceptance of the amendment on the grounds that it will “reduce violent crime.”

A press release from Grassley’s office last month included exhortations to include the amendment in the NDAA from executives of Amazon, Home Depot, and the International Council of Shopping Centers, among others.

The post Congress Might Give ICE the Power to Go After Shoplifters appeared first on The Intercept.

Met police say charge relates to alleged assault that reportedly took place in December at venue in London

The England footballer Ivan Toney has been charged with assault after an incident at a nightclub in Soho in December last year.

Scotland Yard said the striker had been charged on 31 July with assault causing actual bodily harm. Toney, who plays for the Saudi Pro League club Al-Ahli, is due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on 24 September.

Stephen Akinsanya says being mistaken for defendant shows lack of progress on racism within legal system

A black barrister has said a security guard told him he could not park in a court’s car park in London because “it’s not for defendants”.

Stephen Akinsanya, who in June was awarded an OBE for raising awareness of youth knife crime and its prevention, said the incident, at an east London court about four weeks ago, illustrated the lack of progress on racism within the criminal justice system.

Donald Trump’s second term is unlike his first. The politicians who challenged him are gone. The lawyers who once pushed back now choose their battles. What remains is an imperial president with almost no internal checks - using executive power to reshape everything from the economy to immigration and even the presidency itself.

Few journalists have covered Trump as closely as the New York Times's Jonathan Swan. He speaks to Jonathan Freedland about how the president has consolidated such enormous power and what it could mean for America - and the world.

Regime Change by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman https://guardianbookshop.com/regime-change-9781398567597/

Florida man faces count of attempted felony murder after confrontation over a spot to catch lobster, authorities say

A Florida boater was alleged to have tried to kill a diver by cutting off his air supply while they fought over a spot to catch lobsters off the state’s coast recently, according to authorities.

Michael Joseph Simpson Jr’s criminal defense attorney on Thursday issued a statement dismissing those allegations as “false”. Nonetheless, Simpson, 51, was faced with a count of attempted felony murder after he was jailed in what a sheriff’s office report portrayed as a particularly heated case of boat rage on the waters of Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin says ‘We’re going after them right now’ despite threat of violence in home country

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are faced with the prospect of imminent risk of arrest and deportation – to a home country racked with crime, violence and political unrest – after the Trump administration officially stripped them of humanitarian protections that had allowed them to live and work legally in the United States for years.

US district judge Ana Reyes confirmed on Wednesday that her order blocking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending temporary protected status (TPS) for Haiti was no longer in effect. This followed the controversial supreme court ruling in June that upended judicial review of the program and opened the door for immigration enforcement to track down and detain Haitians en masse.

Protect your privacy, identity and loved ones with these important home safety steps I’ve tested for the modern world.

Perinatal psychiatrist Dr. Uruj Kamal Haider and Kriti Lodha joined a special edition of "Healthful" to talk more about mental health conditions, including postpartum psychosis​.

A new study argues that life may have emerged twice on Earth. "Two of the main lineages of life -- bacteria and archaea -- may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living," reports ScienceAlert, citing a new study that "focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation." From the report: "The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyze those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary divide that separates bacteria and archaea," says William Martin, a biologist at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf in Germany. "The new data leave only one conclusion. The bacterial and archaeal lineages made the transition to the free-living state independently. Only free-living cells are alive. "Let's call it by name: we are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life." That's a huge claim to make, especially when defining what life even is can be surprisingly tricky. The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ten months into her tenure as editor in chief, Weiss’s biggest – and riskiest – bet is getting closer to taking flight

Bari Weiss is 10 months into her tenure as editor-in-chief of CBS News, but her biggest test is right around the corner.

The newest season of 60 Minutes is set to premiere next month after Weiss overhauled the show’s correspondent corps and production staff in the spring. Long considered the gold standard in television news, the show still generates a staggering nine million average viewers per night at a time when linear television’s core audience is either ageing out or turning to digital alternatives.

BOSSIER PARISH, Louisiana — A federal desegregation case dating to the civil rights era has formally ended after 61 years, returning full control of Bossier Parish schools to local officials.

The Bossier Parish School Board and Justice Department agreed to dismiss the 1964 case, which began when Black students were still being excluded from white schools. Federal oversight later governed issues including school assignments, facilities and other measures intended to dismantle the district’s dual school system.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the district had complied with court requirements for decades and described continued oversight as costly and unnecessary. Superintendent Jason Rowland said the dismissal gives local officials “freedom to make our own decisions” while acknowledging the history that produced the decree.

The original plaintiffs are deceased, and their children could not be located, according to court filings. The Justice Department, which historically enforced desegregation orders, has increasingly supported ending long-running federal supervision under the Trump administration.

The move follows similar efforts involving other Louisiana districts, including DeSoto and Concordia parishes.

Ending court supervision does not repeal federal civil rights laws or permit renewed segregation. Bossier Parish remains subject to constitutional and statutory protections against racial discrimination, but future disputes will no longer be handled through the decades-old desegregation case.

Sources:

• Associated Press – MBFC Rating

The post Louisiana District Ends 61 Years of Federal Desegregation Oversight appeared first on News Facts Network.

Can the UN close the global AI gap?  Expert comment jon.wallace 7 August 2026

Can UN AI governance bridge the widening digital divide between AI superpowers, middle powers, and developing countries? 

The UN Global Dialogue in Geneva, held from 6-7 July, brought together governments, companies, academics, and civil society to discuss the risks emerging from the widening technological gap between middle powers, developing countries, and the AI superpowers. 

Advanced semiconductors, computing infrastructure, and AI capabilities remain concentrated primarily in the United States and China, leaving many countries dependent on technologies they neither develop nor fully control. 

This creates difficult choices between proprietary US systems and open-weight Chinese models, while raising issues around safety, governance, and technical capacity. The resulting asymmetry extends beyond access to AI, limiting the ability of other countries to shape the standards, infrastructure, and governance arrangements that will determine AI’s future. 

The UN summit resulted in a proposal for a ‘Dialogue of Dialogues’ approach to help address some of the issues discussed. This approach cannot counter the technological dominance of the US and China. But it can help countries strengthen their collective position by linking existing governance initiatives, improving technical interoperability, developing shared safety baselines, and building greater capacity to shape the future of AI governance.

Risks and governance priorities

The Geneva summit drew on the preliminary report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. The report identifies various real-world harms emerging from artificial intelligence, including the lack of robust mechanisms to evaluate autonomous AI agents and mitigate bias; the proliferation of AI-generated child sexual abuse material and deepfake-enabled sexual violence; and the environmental cost of building large-scale AI infrastructure. 

Notably, the report also describes how AI governance initiatives remain fragmented, with over 40 types of AI governance instruments globally. It also points out that governance is largely voluntary and concentrated at the corporate level. 
Another report by the AI Governance for Humanity Lab takes stock of this fragmented landscape and proposes concrete steps for streamlining it through interoperable standards, like shared incident reporting and crisis protocols.

The Geneva summit built on this work by proposing a ‘Dialogue of Dialogues’ approach, resembling the IPCC, ICAO, and WHO models. This would connect governance initiatives, strengthen interoperability, and support evidence-based assessment without creating a supranational regulator. 

Through the UN AI Dialogue Partnerships Hub, it seeks to foster consensus, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration among like-minded state and non-state actors while respecting geopolitical diversity and national sovereignty. 

Coalitions to ‘govern the governance’

The Dialogue of Dialogues would enable smaller coalitions to advance shared AI priorities, preventing gridlock and aiding broader multilateral progress. This includes minilateral and regional efforts among states, and multistakeholder efforts uniting like-minded governments, tech companies, and civil society.

One good format to build on would be compute coalitions, where groups of interested countries pool their computing resources, infrastructure, and expertise to reduce their dependence on the AI superpowers. The EU’s AI Continent Action Plan is an obvious example. So too is Brazil’s Artificial Intelligence Plan (PBIA), which supports 100 collaborative AI research projects with Latin American and African partners. Meanwhile, Africa’s AI factory initiative promotes digital sovereignty by developing locally relevant AI models in African languages and pricing services in local currencies.

Another useful format would be regulatory coalitions grouped around shared challenges. This would see a coalition of governments, researchers, civil society, and AI laboratories identify practical common standards on challenges such as AI watermarking, deepfake detection, or safeguards against AI-generated sexual exploitation material. 

Such standards could form the basis for adoption by others: the European Union’s AI Act is a good example, as is Singapore’s proposed ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) which aims to help establish common rules on digital trade and trusted cross-border data flows. 

Smaller coalitions like these could promote technical interoperability through common evaluation methods. That would enable AI developers, particularly in technologically underdeveloped countries, to demonstrate compliance across regulatory regimes without costly duplication of certification. Such interoperability could significantly reduce compliance costs for companies while enabling them to compete internationally.

What a Dialogue of Dialogues can achieve – and what it can’t

The UN’s Dialogue of Dialogues cannot impose binding constraints on the US or China, or somehow compete with the US-led Pax Silica or China’s WAICO groupings. It will be most effective in promoting technical interoperability and shared baselines among other countries – creating ‘translation keys’ that allow diverse AI regulatory regimes to communicate with each other. 

The risk is that, if handled incorrectly, it could lead to further fragmentation. Regulators must work with the private sector to promote interoperability: for example, by developing shared safety benchmarks or transparency reporting requirements. 

Interoperability is not a cure-all for the polarizing dynamics of the global AI race. But it can reduce friction among countries not locked in strategic competition, ensuring that countries do not have to choose between incompatible regulatory regimes such as the US and China or the EU.

Such an effort could start with what is achievable. For example, sovereign  coalitions could seek to create a ‘minimum viable interoperability’ by 2027 – as suggested by Costa Rica in the Geneva Dialogue. This could be achieved by establishing shared terminology, comparable risk classifications, consistent documentation, interoperable incident reporting, and multilingual evaluation methods. These are technical, not overtly political measures and can be built even amid rising geopolitical tension. 

Related work

What the UK should learn from Kimi K3, WAICO and the Hugging Face incident

The UK is well-placed to be a key player in global AI governance interoperability by rallying support among middle powers. It has a strong AI safety research base, is a signatory to Pax Silica, and maintains dialogue channels with both the US and China as well with technologically developed and underdeveloped countries through the Commonwealth.

The Dialogue of Dialogue approach will also need to be defended at the United Nations. The Global Dialogue was established by General Assembly resolution, not by Secretary-General prerogative so a new UN Secretary General cannot unilaterally abolish it. But there is a risk it could be deprioritized.  

To ensure it has lasting impact, the Dialogue of Dialogues should be progressed by the UN’s Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies (ODET), which oversees the UN’s 2024 Global Digital Compact and emerging technology governance. ODET is best placed to coordinate across the UN system and ensure balanced participation among governments, civil society, academia, and industry. 

Co-locating with the ITU’s AI for Good and WSIS summits would provide an ideal opportunity to promote the Dialogue of Dialogues approach to industry and a wider range of stakeholders, while reducing resource requirements and leveraging an established audience. This arrangement, however, should be accompanied by robust independent governance safeguards under ODET to prevent undue corporate influence. 

The Dialogue of Dialogues approach cannot prevent the challenges that countries face in the emerging AI landscape. But it should be persevered with, if countries outside of great power rivalry are to gain equal access to the opportunities AI promises – and promote the standards needed to ensure AI uses are safe and beneficial to all. 

Ultimately, bridging the global AI divide requires sustained, inclusive multilateralism. Giving every nation a voice in setting global standards through the UN can ensure that AI serves as a tool for universal progress rather than further fragmentation.

Inspections ordered by US regulator will affect about 470 aircraft, after reported problems in earlier models

• Business live – latest updates

The US aviation regulator has ordered inspections of the fuselages of Boeing 737 Max planes for possible cracks in a component.

The Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directive will affect an estimated 471 aircraft and follows reports of cracks in earlier Boeing models.

Is the AI boom about to bust? Audio sseth.drupal@c… 7 August 2026

In this week’s episode of Independent Thinking, our experts explore the US-China race for AI leadership and the likelihood of an AI crash

The $2.6 trillion spent on artificial intelligence, data centres and advanced chipmaking dwarfs the cost of previous infrastructure megaprojects. Yet AI has become a money pit for tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta, and the tech is failing to hit its stratospheric targets.

Could an AI crash take overinvested economies down with it? In the longer term, whose approach will dominate? Will it be the US’s private-led model with tech giants at the top? Or China’s tactic of spreading low-cost AI throughout the Global South, with an eye on dominating the future?

Bronwen Maddox is joined by Alex Krasodomski, director of Chatham House’s Digital Society Programme; James Kynge, a senior research fellow for China and the World with the Asia-Pacific Programme; and Creon Butler, director of the Global Economy and Finance Programme.

About Independent Thinking

Independent Thinking is a weekly international affairs podcast hosted by our director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.

More ways to listen: Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Explore our other Chatham House podcasts.

What I’m Discussing Today

• Kareem’s Quote of the Day: Can we finally learn to see our cultural differences as strengths rather than as threats?

• If the Disease Doesn’t Kill You, Listening to RFK Jr. Just Might: Laughable misinformation…if only public health weren’t so deadly serious.

• Insider Trading is Illegal, Unless You Pay Trump Media $100,000 a Month: Market-moving posts make it seem as if the American dream is rigged.

• Jesse Owens & the 1936 Olympics: One man shattered Hitler’s racial mythology in Berlin, but he couldn’t defeat the American version when he got home.

• Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History (PBS): Henry Louis Gates Jr. examines the complicated history between Black and Jewish Americans.

• Valerie June: “Workin’ Woman Blues”: The hard, daily work of women becomes a spare, soulful performance that refuses either self-pity or sentimentality.

Kareem’s Quote of the Day

“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), creator of Star Trek

Star Trek first came on the air on September 8, 1966, while I was beginning my sophomore year at UCLA and preparing to make my debut on the school’s varsity basketball team. It was an exciting moment for me and, between classes and basketball, I didn’t have any time to watch television, but when I did become aware of the show, it felt right to me. The multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic crew of the Starship Enterprise was the same kind of crew I’d worked with on the basketball court since my high school days at Power Memorial Academy in New York. (Sadly, we didn’t have anyone from another planet.) I already knew the truth that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry put on display every week: if you want an elite team, you choose the most qualified person for each position, and you ignore extraneous issues like race and religion. You trust that cultural differences will enrich your team, rather than create divisions. The world is still catching up with that idea, and a lot of people are going to die off before they recognize its fundamental truth.

Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1921, but his family moved to L.A. when he was still an infant. His father, like mine, was a police officer, and we both grew up in big, vibrant, diverse cities; maybe that’s why we came to see the world in the same way. He wanted to be a cop like his dad and studied police science at Los Angeles City College. He was also interested in flying, and he entered the United States Army Air Corps-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall. He was 20 years old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and like hundreds of thousands of his contemporaries, he rushed to sign up for the armed services. With his pilot license in hand, he was made an officer and eventually flew 89 combat missions and won the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. He survived two plane crashes while he was in the USAAC and another after the war when he was a pilot for Pan Am.

After that, he decided to stick to working on the ground, and became an officer with the LAPD. He started in the traffic division, but he had dreams of being a writer and soon joined the force’s Public Information Division, eventually becoming the head speechwriter for the city’s chief of police. From there, he became the department’s liaison to the popular TV series Dragnet, eventually writing treatments for the show based on real cases. By the mid ‘50s, he quit the force to become a full-time TV writer. Over the next decade, he made a name for himself writing cop shows, military dramas, and Westerns before creating Star Trek. The show wasn’t a huge commercial hit, but it developed a cult following. When it was threatened with cancellation after its second season, a thousand students from 20 local schools marched on NBC in protest. That got the show a reprieve, but it was cancelled after its third season.

Still, it had kicked open a door for everything that followed. It had a crew featuring a Black woman, an Asian American man, and a Russian officer during the height of the Cold War—not to mention Mr. Spock, the Vulcan who extended the show’s theme of inclusion to other worlds. One episode even allegorically tackled the Vietnam War, as the Klingons and Captain Kirk fought via proxies on the planet Neural. Kirk compared the situation to “20th-century brush wars on the Asian continent,” and faced vocal opposition from the antiwar Dr. McCoy. Legend has it that the episode was so controversial that it almost got the show cancelled on the spot.

When I hear today’s Republican party rail against DEI, I always wonder what it is that they find so objectionable: is it the diversity, the equity, or the inclusion? Break it down into its component parts, and it’s hard to see where the harm comes in. It’s like their stated opposition to “Antifa”: aren’t we all supposed to be anti-fascist here in the USA? The truth is, these are just labels President Trump and his followers use to rile up the masses. They’re as phony as MAGA, which has nothing to do with making America great again, unless you think it was great back in the days when women couldn’t vote, Black people had to sit in the back of the bus, and gay people were imprisoned for falling in love. I seriously doubt anyone in today’s GOP would admit out loud that they support those positions. But I also seriously doubt they have learned to “take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures,” or see them as “part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.”

Their closed minds are everyone’s loss.

Read more

OTTAWA, Canada — New research concludes that human-caused climate change significantly increased the likelihood of the extreme fire weather behind Canada’s devastating 2026 wildfire season, contradicting President Donald Trump’s repeated emphasis on poor forest management.

World Weather Attribution found that the hot, dry and windy conditions affecting northwestern Ontario and the Northwest Territories were at least twice as likely because of global warming. The group’s rapid-attribution studies use observations and climate models to compare current conditions with a world without human-driven warming.

Trump has accused Canada of failing to properly maintain forests and brush, even threatening tariffs over wildfire smoke drifting into the United States. Researchers say management practices can influence how fires spread near communities, but climate change is worsening the underlying heat and dryness that make large fires more likely.

Canada has endured three exceptionally severe wildfire seasons, with millions of acres burned and smoke repeatedly degrading air quality across the United States. As of early August, more than 4,500 fires had burned roughly 3.9 million hectares nationwide.

The study recommended stronger early-warning systems, improved coordination among firefighting agencies and greater use of Indigenous knowledge in wildfire planning.

The findings do not suggest forest management is irrelevant. They indicate that management alone cannot explain the worsening scale and frequency of extreme Canadian fire seasons as temperatures continue to rise.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Climate Study Undercuts Trump’s Claims About Canada Wildfires appeared first on News Facts Network.

A decade after leaving elite gymnastics behind, the viral UCLA star is chasing a spot at LA 2028 on her own terms – and inspiring a new generation

Every morning, Katelyn Ohashi gets up and makes a smoothie and then walks her four-month-old puppy. She drives to the gym and begins with a moment of gratitude before warming up with gymnasts half her age. She trains four days a week, around four hours per day, while also dabbling in her various hobbies. It’s a routine that maybe a decade ago she didn’t envision but is now undertaking.

When Ohashi left elite gymnastics in 2013, it was no longer a place where she found joy. Although she was seen as an Olympic hopeful (she was the last gymnast to beat Simone Biles in the all-around finals at the American Cup), a back injury took her out of the running for the Games. She slowly found her joy for the sport in NCAA gymnastics at UCLA, where she was known for her perfect 10 floor routines that often went viral, garnering millions of views from around the world.

The administration is subjugating science to political imperatives, a major blow to US soft power and technological progress

The Trump administration is waging an unprecedented war on institutions devoted to research and higher learning. While plenty of countries have harmed universities by imposing neoliberal logics on academia – creating artificial markets in the name of spurring professors to be more productive – the Trumpist subjugation of all science to political imperatives has no equivalent in a democracy; if anything, it is reminiscent of Stalin’s Soviet Union. The assault now also targets foreign students and any kind of international collaboration – a major blow to US soft power. Why are Trumpists engaging in what can only be described as an act of wanton self-injury?

Project 2025’s Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget, initiated the rule change that would make any federal grant subject to review by political appointees – including funds for science that so far have been allocated through judgment by first-rate fellow scientists. This measure would furnish Trumpists with a new weapon to threaten universities along the lines of: “Nice medical school you have there – pity if something were to happen to it because your administration had failed to come into alignment with the president’s priorities.”

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

What Happened: More than 60 House Democrats are pressing Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins for answers about how the agency’s mental healthcare has been increasingly strained under President Donald Trump’s second administration. The lawmakers sent the secretary a letter last week asking questions about the state of VA care, citing a ProPublica investigation from this spring that revealed the agency’s mental health workforce has been plummeting and veterans have been left in the lurch.

What They Said: The letter was spearheaded by Rep. Judy Chu, who is a psychologist and represents a district in Southern California. “Caring for our nation’s Veterans is a fundamental responsibility,” the letter says. “That includes ensuring access to high-quality mental health care.”

The lawmakers demanded that the VA disclose details about its shortage of mental health providers and the impact on veterans. It also pushed the agency to lay out how long veterans have to wait for care.

As ProPublica has detailed, while the VA has long had a shortfall of mental health providers, the situation has gotten far worse under the current Trump administration. Hundreds of mental health staffers have left the VA and not been replaced.

Background: ProPublica’s investigation recounted the troubling experiences of both mental health providers and of veterans seeking care.

With so many staffers leaving and not being replaced, the remaining providers have often been stretched remarkably thin.

A psychologist who worked for a VA in Arizona recounted how some of her one-on-one sessions were replaced with online group sessions that included as many as 35 veterans. The therapist said their remaining individual sessions were sometimes limited to as little as 16 minutes.

“It was always bad,” said the psychologist. “And now it’s at a breaking point.”

In VA exit surveys that ProPublica obtained, mental health staffers who quit often wrote that they were no longer able to provide high-quality care.

“Mental Health is understaffed, burned out,” wrote one New York-based staffer who was leaving. “There is not enough mental health care for the Veterans who need the services.”

Veterans, meanwhile, have started to fall through the cracks.

Jason Beaman, a Navy and Army vet, was shuffled among therapists who later left until he finally had enough. “I just quit. I don’t want to mess with the therapist anymore,” Beaman told us this spring.

Why It Matters: After Trump returned to office last year, his administration promised to deliver veterans “the highest quality care.”

The VA is the country’s largest healthcare system, serving 9 million veterans. Those men and women face many mental health issues at a higher rate than the general population. They die by suicide at roughly twice the rate.

VA mental health staff have developed deep expertise in addressing the particular needs of vets. Indeed, studies have shown that vets get better care at the VA than through private providers.

“VA psychologists are best in class,” said Russell Lemle, former chief psychologist for the San Francisco VA Health Care System and now a senior policy analyst at the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. “When you lose them, the veterans are the ones who pay the price.”

ProPublica reported that in January, the department had around 500 fewer psychologists and psychiatrists than it had at the same time last year. Recent VA data shows those head counts continue to decline.

Response: In response to questions from ProPublica, VA spokesperson Quinn Slaven defended the agency. “The Trump Administration is solely focused on measuring VA’s success by how well it serves Veterans,” Slaven wrote in an email. “This commonsense approach has led to dramatic improvements for Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors across the country.”

Slaven said that the VA completed a record number of mental healthcare appointments in the past fiscal year while also lowering veterans’ wait times.

The VA previously declined our request for an interview. Instead, spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz accused ProPublica of attempting to mislead the public by “cherry picking issues that are limited to a handful of sites and in many cases were worse under the Biden Administration.”

After ProPublica shared the findings of its investigation and the names of veterans who would appear in it, the agency reached out to several to inquire about their care and offer help.

The congressional letter gives the VA until Aug. 14 to respond.

Read the Investigation

Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump

The post House Democrats Demand Answers From Trump’s VA on Vets Struggling to Access Mental Healthcare appeared first on ProPublica.

Your iPhone can play ocean or rain sounds to help create a peaceful and serene sleep environment.

An addiction-services nonprofit approved by the city focuses on harm reduction for hard drug users — to the chagrin of some in the neighborhood.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Household costs have risen steeply in recent years. In response, some consumer advocates have called on utilities to protect vulnerable people from a loss of service. Wilmington City Council followed the trend last month when approving a measure that would have prevented the city from shutting off water service to vulnerable households that meet certain criteria.

An attempt to override Mayor John Carney’s veto of a measure to prohibit water service cutoffs for certain vulnerable people fell short Thursday after too few Wilmington City Council members showed up to attend a special meeting to consider the measure. 

Only five members of council were in attendance at the meeting, falling two short of the quorum threshold. A public body cannot take official action unless it reaches a quorum of members in attendance, which is seven on Wilmington’s City Council. 

Introduced by Councilwoman Shané Darby, the bill would have prevented city officials from shutting off water service for certain homes with unpaid accounts. Low- or middle-income households that are occupied by a senior citizen, a person with a disability or a child younger than 5 would have qualified for the protection. 

Last month, the City Council narrowly passed the measure. About two weeks later Carney vetoed the legislation. According to Wilmington’s charter, the City Council had 15 days from the date of a veto to hold an override vote, meaning Thursday’s special meeting was its last chance to do so. 

Darby, who held a press conference this week to tout the override vote, attended the Thursday meeting, along with Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo, and councilmembers Coby Owens, Christian Willauer and Alexander Hackett. 

Congo announced that all other members of council had contacted him before the meeting to be excused.

“This was our one opportunity to override the veto,” Congo said during the meeting. 

Nine of the council’s 13 members would have had to vote in favor of the override motion to reverse Carney’s decision. Only seven members voted in favor of the legislation when it initially passed in July. 

In a statement issued Thursday, Carney reiterated his justification for the veto. 

“Wilmington has worked hard to strike a balance between supporting residents and ensuring the financial health of our public utilities,” Carney said. “We recognize the importance of making water service affordable and accessible, but we must also maintain policies that encourage customers to engage with the city to resolve delinquent accounts.” 

In further defending his veto, Carney also emphasized existing protections against water service disconnection for people with delinquent accounts. He said that while there are around 4,000 delinquent accounts, protections in place make water service disconnections “rare.” 

Still, keeping the enforcement mechanism in place is crucial in maintaining the water system’s financial viability and upkeep, Carney said. 

Several residents spoke in favor of the veto during the Thursday meeting’s public comment period.

And many of them acknowledged they were “preaching to the choir,” given that the council members in attendance were all likely to support the bill’s goals.

The post Wilmington City Council fails to override Carney veto of a bill to prevent water shut-offs appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Ultraconservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi left a subtle opening in remarks Thursday for rethinking Japan’s “Three Non-Nuclear Principles.”

The divisions in Astoria, Queens, foreshadow the tensions that can emerge as more progressive candidates win elections across the country.

Critics decry proposed hyperscale projects, fearing overuse of water and electricity, and ‘appropriating rural, Black-owned land for industrial purposes’

There seems to be a fight over datacenters in nearly every city in the US right now. And amid the extreme polarization of today’s politics, the opposition tends to be bipartisan.

“I would say it’s kind of the far left and the far right ran into each other and had a hug,” said Frank Scott Jr, mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. “But they come at it from different perspectives.”

Why Should Delaware Care
The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival is an annual free jazz concert held in Wilmington that serves as a shared space for community members and visitors to gain exposure to a variety of sounds. This year, the event started on a rainy note but that did not stop Rodney Square from being a place that fosters connections for long-time friends, vendors building clientele and performers giving back to their home. 

Matt La Von grew up a Marine brat, moving from place to place and leaving short-lived friendships behind — until he got to Delaware in the 1990s.

While living in Bear, La Von attended his first jazz concert: Wilmington’s Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. He fell in love with the genre, and his high school band director pushed La Von to pursue that passion. 

He has since moved away from northern Delaware, but La Von, now a professional saxophonist, came back to the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival this week.

He returned not as an attendee, but to perform alongside his quintet in front of his longtime high school friends whom he refers to as his family. 

“Man, I’ve been so busy and wrapped up in my own busy life in New York City that I forgot about this special place that I can attribute almost everything to,” La Von said. “If I didn’t have these experiences, if I wasn’t shaped by these people, I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing today.”

La Von was one of 20 performers who took the stage at Wilmington’s Rodney Square during this year’s jazz festival, a week-long celebration of the legacy left behind by jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown. 

Wilmington shows up for the arts

Even when the festival started on a rainy note Monday evening, it still drew in a crowd of around 1,500 people, said Lattisha Williams, program assistant of cultural affairs for the city of Wilmington. The community came wearing their ponchos or raincoats, and a slew of umbrellas lined the festival grounds. 

The late Clifford Brown, the festival’s namesake, was a jazz trumpeter from Wilmington’s East Side who contributed to the creation of the hard bop sound that reigned over jazz in the 1950s. 

He has been described as one of the greatest trumpet players in history, La Von said, particularly for his warm sounds that are repeated by players today. 

“Whether I’m in New York or Paris, I’m pretty sure that there is an 80 to 90% probability that [Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring”] is getting played in any club session,” La Von said.

Brown’s legacy also expands beyond the festival’s end date. CityFest Wilmington also hosts free live concerts every Wednesday during the summer season. 

Arreon Harley-Emerson, CEO and artistic director of Elevation Ensemble by Elevate Vocal Arts, recalled a time when the festival was the only event happening at Rodney Square. Now, he said, the space blossoms with art- and music-centered events.

“I think that Clifford Brown is an example of what can happen when we believe in the arts,” Harley-Emerson said.

And data suggests that Delaware believes in the arts. The state ranks third in the country for arts funding per capita, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, spending an estimated $7.03 per person on the arts this year. 

Both Delaware and the city of Wilmington also ranked among the National Center for Arts Research’s most arts-vibrant communities in the country last year. 

Festival attendees share jazz across generations

As Wilmington resident Karin Smallwood looked around the festival crowd on Monday, ranging from toddlers to seniors, she said the best part was seeing how the free concert bolstered the culture of jazz. 

“It’s a great opportunity for the younger generation to experience jazz music,” Smallwood said. “Even if they don’t know what it is, you will still see them tapping their foot and nodding their heads.”

Brittany Draxton, who recorded her 7-year-old son Ryland as he patted his small hands on a circle of drums free for community members to play with, said it was important that she show him the festival’s beauty.

“The fact that he was able to express his skills, and there’s this peace here, and the music,” she said. “It’s about keeping the Southern jazz culture alive.”

Jonathan Mitchell, owner of Mitch’s Mo’Better Chicken food truck, has been serving his food to festival attendees since 2012. His participation, though, extends far earlier than that. 

“Since I was 10 years old I have been coming here,” Mitchell said. “And now I’m coming as a vendor, so it’s a good experience where the whole community comes out, and I get to see my repeat customers.” 

Mitchell’s cousin, Jeron Johnson, was a first time vendor at the festival this year, serving water ice from his food truck Treat 2 You. 

“We used to come here just to see my cousins and the show,” he said, pointing to Mitchell. “So it’s a blessing to be inside here doing my work.”

Music that transcends cultures

The festival brought in musicians across multiple genres, from gospel, to R&B, to sounds traditional of Native American tribes. 

R. Carlos Nakai is a Native American flautist who takes inspiration from the indigenous communities he is a part of, the Navajo Nation and the Ute Tribe. He said he hopes to bring a different expression to America’s multicultural music scene during his performance this Saturday. 

What’s most important to him is the possibility of connecting with jazz artists to freestyle. He said he hopes the audience will welcome new sounds they may have never heard before.

“Maybe we will offer a kind of opportunity or information that they can build upon in their own way to express themselves in the mixed community that this country is,” Nakai said. 

La Von, the professional saxophonist, said the festival has always featured diversity. What he most remembers from the festival during his first visit is  the wide variety of demographics sitting on the stairs or in their lawn chairs to listen to jazz. 

He hoped to achieve a similar feeling on Monday with his song, “Solidarity,” he said, created in response to the protests after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

“I wanted to write something that incorporated those feelings, and, you know, get back to the feeling of togetherness,” La Von said, “which is what we’re missing in so many parts of society.” 

Get Involved
The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival will run through Aug. 8 at Rodney Square in downtown Wilmington. The festival is free to attend, and begins at 5:15 p.m. on Friday, and 2 p.m. on Saturday. More information can be found here.

The post Jazz music bridges cultures and generations at Wilmington’s Clifford Brown Festival  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Images and maps show how the Old Trails Fire pushed beyond familiar danger zones in Washington.

Property prices in ‘suspended animation’ owing to higher mortgage rates and uncertainty in Middle East

• Business live – latest updates

UK house prices were broadly stagnant in July as prospective buyers were squeezed by higher mortgage rates, uncertainty around the Middle East and stretched affordability, according to the lender Lloyds.

The average property cost £299,253 in July, down by £143 compared with June, the bank’s monthly index found.

Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer

Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China.

The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy.

Daniel Mullins explains how he plans to follow up his quirky classic without losing what made it stand out in the first place

Glitchy aesthetics. Literally collapsing menu boxes. The game taunting you by “possessing” your Steam friends. Technical tricks of this nature may sound gimmicky in 2026, but they felt excitingly unorthodox a decade ago, when Pony Island came out to critical acclaim.

Fans of Daniel Mullins, the celebrated indie developer of Inscryption, will be forgiven for forgetting that Pony Island 2: Panda Circus is in active development. After all, it’s been almost three years since the announcement – and a full decade since it was first teased as an Easter egg in Pony Island’s ARG (Alternate Reality Game) – with only a single trailer and a bunch of tunes from the soundtrack released to the public.

US president’s complaint industry ‘making too much money’ comes after his policies boosted corporations

Donald Trump’s statement that oil companies have made “too much money” from the Iran war has angered environmentalists, who say that his policies were designed to benefit those very corporations. If he really believes his own claims, he should impose a windfall profits tax, advocates say.

“Trump’s declaration that big oil is ‘making too much money’ belies his accommodation and giveaways to the industry that have enabled its price-gouging – not to mention his disaster of a war of choice against Iran,” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen. “But like a broken clock that’s correct twice a day, the president is right that oil companies are ‘making too much money’, which means Trump should endorse a windfall profits tax.”

ExxonMobil and Chevron on Friday both reported windfall profits for the second quarter of the year. Chevron said its earnings soared nearly 400% to $12bn, while Exxon’s profits more than doubled to $14.5bn. On Monday evening, Trump took aim at those gains, saying the companies “ought to give some of that back to the public”.

Since he returned to office, President Donald Trump’s administration has upended foreign aid. It’s labeled well-established, long-running programs as “not aligned with American interests” and slashed their budgets. 

Still, the billions of taxpayer dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent; lawmakers have insisted the government continue to fund humanitarian aid, global health and pro-democracy causes around the world. With most of the old programs now gone, however, we wanted to know: What is the Trump administration doing with that money now?

Recently, we published our investigation that found one answer to that question in a little-known bureau of the State Department that has dramatically transformed under Trump. For decades, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL, has supported  human rights in some of the most oppressive countries in the world. Now, our reporting found,  it’s planning to direct funds to controversial groups supporting right-wing causes in Europe and elsewhere. 

Our full story lays out some of the groups the government has considered funding, which include a British free-speech organization that has fought against bans on “gay conversion therapy” and a British American think tank created this year to focus on “existential threats to Britain, to America, and to our shared Judeo-Christian civilisation.” (Administration officials dropped that grant after significant pushback from Congress.) 

One proposed grant particularly caught our attention: Trump administration officials suggested funding research on crime against minority populations in South Africa. 

It’s clear from sources we spoke with that the key targeted minority population in question is the white ethnic group known as Afrikaners. Afrikaners were responsible for creating the nation’s infamous and brutal racially segregated apartheid system. Previously, DRL staff had been told to begin the process of awarding funds to a group called Lex Libertas, which was founded by a controversial figure who has called for Afrikaner self-governance. The group is currently fundraising to place 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall in remembrance of attacks on South African farmers.

The proposed grant was later opened up to allow a broader set of invited groups to apply for $1 million of funding, though it is still intended for the same purpose, according to people with knowledge of the process. The State Department declined to say whether Lex Libertas will be among those invited to compete, citing ongoing deliberations, but said the Trump administration has serious concerns about the human rights situation in South Africa that need to be addressed. Lex Libertas did not respond to questions about the organization or the proposed grant.

Former diplomats who have worked extensively on human rights told us they were shocked that the victimization of white South Africans would be prioritized over the serious issues elsewhere in the region. 

“It’s laughable to suggest that on the African continent, the prime issue of human rights concern is whites in South Africa,” one former agency official said when we asked him about the grant. South Africa is plagued by violence, but extensive research has found that white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups.

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Trump Officials Want to Use Human Rights Aid to Advocate for White South Africans and Right-Wing Causes in Europe

Experts also described the proposed grant to fund research into violence against Afrikaners as keeping with the Trump administration’s overall stance toward South Africa.

For decades, the U.S. relationship with the country has been symbolized by our massive support for HIV care, Mattie Webb, a professor at the Virginia Military Institute who studies South Africa and U.S. foreign policy, told us. 

Since Trump returned to office, there’s been a stark shift as the administration has strengthened ties with borderline white nationalist groups that are considered fringe in South Africa. 

“The U.S. is very clearly shifting its priorities away from aid that would benefit far more people in South Africa to this narrow focus on the white minority,” Webb said.

In the last 18 months, Trump has argued there is a genocide of white South Africans and used claims that white people are subjected to disproportionate violence to justify cutting off U.S. funding for HIV treatment and research. And even as he’s barred nearly all new refugees from the United States, he’s welcomed white South Africans, fast-tracking their entry.  

There have long been tensions between South Africa and the U.S., former diplomats told us, but the aid the U.S. provided saved lives and helped sustain a working relationship that is vital to U.S. national security and economic interests. Now, by seeking to fund a movement antagonistic to the South African government, the U.S. risks driving a wedge between the two nations.

Other grants also raised red flags for experts and lawmakers. Political appointees at the State Department are considering funding a British free-speech organization that has fought bans on discredited therapy practices that attempt to convert gay people to heterosexuality. That proposed $5 million grant would provide support for people facing “deplatforming” and advocate against “restrictive online safety and hate speech laws,” according to a document we reviewed. (The organization’s founder said it had “neither applied for nor been awarded a grant from the US State Department or any other branch of the US Government” but did not respond to our other questions.) And a call for proposals recently released by the bureau would fund research, conferences and cultural engagements in wealthy democracies to develop “civilizational self-confidence in Europe.” 

Not all the proposed funding is directed to controversial groups, our reporting found. But even some of the grants slated to fund more traditional human rights projects skirt federal requirements for competitive bidding that are meant to deter waste, fraud and abuse. Instead, officials are trying to direct millions to handpicked organizations, according to sources and documents. 

In response to questions about our reporting, the State Department stressed that the process of awarding grants is ongoing and that multiple offices provide input, writing that “programs are still in active deliberation and receipt of a grant is not guaranteed to any organization that does not meet all requirement and standards for federal grants.” 

We are continuing to report on foreign aid and the Trump administration’s policies in South Africa. If you have tips or information we should know about either of these issues, please feel free to get in touch with us! Reach out via phone or Signal to Anna Maria Barry-Jester at 408-504-8131 or Sharon Lerner at 718-877-5236.

The post What Is the Trump Administration Doing With Foreign Aid Money? appeared first on ProPublica.

The curator of Norway’s national museum in Oslo is bringing the work by the Flemish baroque artist Clara Peeters out of obscurity in a major exhibition of female artists

Anonymous was often a woman: so said Virginia Woolf. And so thought Cynthia Osiecki one day in 2022, when she chanced on an unattributed still life in the storage area of the National Museum of Norway in Oslo.

Osiecki had been studying the work of a renowned 17th-century Flemish artist, Clara Peeters, one of the earliest practitioners of still life painting. Works by Peeters hang in the Prado in Madrid, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Researchers in China have developed a living mycelium textile that can self-clean, renew its surface, and partially repair holes when treated with a nutrient solution and fresh fungus. The material can also gain added properties such as blue pigmentation or UV resistance by co-culturing it with yeast or other fungi. Dezeen reports: The breakthrough from the researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology is a type of engineered living material (ELM) -- a material built off living organisms that stay active even after they're fabricated into their final form. [...] By working with living but dormant cordyceps militaris fungus instead, the researchers have been able to take advantage of its biological functions. The result is a material that is self-renewing and responsive to its environment, in ways that could one day transform architecture and clothing -- as seen in a prototype dress created together with material innovation company Peelshere. It can also be adapted by mixing in other fungi or yeast, lead researcher Ke Li and her team detail in a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. In it, they describe a "programmable fungal platform" where mycelium is treated like a modular system, with the sheet material forming a base structure and extra biological abilities, such as colour and UV resistance, becoming "plug-and-play" add-ons via other organisms. This gets their textile closer to the self-repair, environmental responsiveness and controllable functionality that is the promise of engineered living materials, they argue. The ELM's self-renewing and semi-repairing functionality comes from the mycelium base structure. Following drying at 45 degrees, the material is not quite living and not quite dead, but instead in a "low-metabolic, dormant-like state", Li told Dezeen, meaning it is not actively growing. However, new growth can be triggered by applying a nutrient solution of potato water, leading the dormant mycelium to germinate, send out new fungal filaments and renew the material's surface. When this nutrient solution is applied over a hole, along with a small patch of fresh fungus, it triggers the living cells to grow across the gap, seamlessly repairing the surface without any adhesives or stitching. The material is also naturally self-cleaning, as it is hydrophobic. "Its distinctive surface texture, biological colouring, controlled repair and biodegradability may be particularly useful in applications where visual expression and a defined product lifetime are important," said Li. "Further improvements in durability, moisture resistance, safety and manufacturing consistency would be needed before it could be considered for routine clothing or permanent architectural use."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slovakia reaches new high of 42C as authorities in Poland forced to shut down Kozienice and Połaniec power plants

• Europe’s dry riverbeds and scorched earth – in pictures

Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues.

Countries including Slovakia, Austria and Hungary registered record temperatures. On Thursday, the Slovakian hydrometeorological agency said a new high of 42C (108F) had been reached in Dolné Plachtince.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level since 1983 as the Trump administration continues to release emergency crude to offset supply disruptions caused by the war with Iran.

According to federal data, the reserve is now at about 304.8 million barrels, which is a drop of over 108 million barrels since the drawdown started. The administration said it would release 172 million barrels over 120 days after commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was mostly shut down. For context, about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes through that strait.

The reserve is supposed to be used for serious supply emergencies, and the administration has used it to try to keep gasoline and crude prices from spiking. Still, President Trump has said that these releases cannot make up for wartime disruptions forever.

Overall, the oil market is still tight. Saudi Aramco estimates that the conflict with Iran has removed more than 2.6 billion barrels from global supply. U.S. refiners are trying to bring in more oil from the Middle East when they can.

It is important to be clear here: commercial U.S. crude inventories are not at a 45-year low. EIA data shows that commercial stocks have actually gone up recently, to about 407 million barrels. The record low only applies to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, not to all domestic crude supplies.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating
• Reuters – MBFC Rating
• Reuters – MBFC Rating
• U.S. Energy Information Administration – Unrated

The post U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1983 appeared first on News Facts Network.

What might a modern day equivalent of Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics look like? Guided by the author, I propose the three laws of AI

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted in July that legions of AI-powered robots would dominate the physical world and that AI might not take orders from people any more. He also offered an alternative vision in which there would be agreement for a collective objective to make AI benign by imbuing it with a love of the truth and a desire for humanity to prosper, and that governments might have to enforce this objective.

Governments around the world are belatedly starting to act on AI. In the US, President Trump’s administration is delaying and restricting the distribution of the most powerful frontier AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. In the European Union, AI regulations promulgated in 2024 came into effect this year. However, these actions are a long way short of requiring the kind of guardrails that would imbue AIs with a desire for humanity to prosper.

Russia’s coming succession crisis.

Beijing’s quest to challenge America’s legal hegemony.

Beijing’s quest to challenge America’s legal hegemony.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Prohibitions on voter suppression, intimidation and dilution tactics were passed federally in 1965, but recent court rulings have chipped away at some protections. Seeking to retain, and expand protections, Delaware legislators approved a statewide voting rights act.

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer signed legislation Thursday that ensures key protections from the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 will be retained in the state, regardless of what may happen in the future.

In doing so, Delaware became the second state to write prohibitions against voter discrimination, voter suppression and vote dilution into state law following a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in April that overturned parts of Section 2 of that pivotal civil rights legislation.

In the case Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruled that considering race in Congressional redistricting was an illegal gerrymander. It further required that plaintiffs prove a state “intentionally” sought to gerrymander districts to diminish opportunities for minority voters, a high bar that experts believe could impact up to a dozen Congressional districts that have a majority of minority voters – typically in Republican-led states.

The NAACP, which advocated for the federal legislation more than 60 years ago, condemned the decision, calling it a “betrayal of Black people.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Larry Lambert (D-Claymont) had already been working with advocates on what would become House Bill 444, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named after the late civil rights icon.

Lambert filed the bill just a month after the Callais decision, and pushed it through the General Assembly in the waning days of the legislative session.

He said the Callais ruling was not the impetus for his bill, but it did convince him to not wait for the 2027 legislative session.

What does HB 444 do?

While codifying protected rights already held by the national Voting Rights Act, the new state legislation also crucially specifies that intent does not have to be proved for future violations of electoral discrimination. It also empowers the state attorney general, along with individuals and organizations, to bring complaints against offending agencies or jurisdictions.

The bill creates a “democracy canon,” which instructs courts and officials that, when election laws are ambiguous, they should interpret them in favor of protecting voting access.

HB 444 also dramatically expands requirements for language assistance in local elections, tasking the Department of Elections to provide materials, and even potentially translators, for any language spoken by more than 2%, or 1,000 people, of voting age. 

While now signed, House Bill 444 does not take effect until July 1, 2027, to allow for implementation.

House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown, who is the first Black woman to preside over Delaware’s lower chamber, noted that the protections afforded by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are so recent that many residents remember the time before them.

“It’s only been 61 years since the federal government actually put a system in place that allowed Black Americans to register to vote,” she said in comments at the bill signing, held at the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Wilmington. “So many sacrifices were made, and yet here we are in 2026 watching the Trump administration work to strip us of everything that our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our parents, our grandparents, and our great grandparents work hard for.”

Republicans split over backing bill

While the legislation was unanimously approved by the State Senate – Sen. Bryant Richardson (R-Seaford) drew praise Thursday for notably being the sole Republican co-sponsor of the legislation – the House of Representatives was less receptive. Just two Republicans, Rich Collins and Danny Short, voted in favor of the bill.

No House Republican critiqued the bill during its committee and floor hearings, but the caucus expressed their concerns in a statement ahead of the vote.

“Among the concerns is that the measure defines voter suppression so broadly that almost any election rule — such as voter ID, signature checks, or standard polling hours — could be challenged if statistical voting differences occur between designated minority groups and the general population,” a caucus spokesman wrote. 

In addition, the caucus sought to turn the tables on the debate by arguing that Delaware Democrats were actually suppressing Republican votes through the decennial redistricting. Efforts to move the redistricting power from the majority party to an independent commission have not advanced.

However, unlike race or ethnicity, political affiliation has never been a protected class for redistricting law.

Advocates turn to felon enfranchisement

Andrew Bernstein, the voting rights counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware who assisted Lambert on the bill, said there is more work to be done to extend voting rights.

He pointed to House Bill 180, a Constitutional amendment that would give convicted felons the right to vote following the completion of their sentence or upon their pardon. 

Currently, those convicted of felony murder, manslaughter, bribery or abuse of public office, and sexual offenses are disenfranchised for life under state law. Individuals convicted of other felonies only regain the right to vote after finishing any parole, probation or sentence modification, even after leaving prison.

“That is a remnant of Jim Crow. It disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities as our criminal legal system maintains racial bias. We were hardened to see the first leg of a constitutional amendment limit disenfranchising passed this year, but we must remain committed to that cause and ensure that the second leg of that amendment passes next session,” Bernstein said.

The post Delaware enshrines civil rights voting protections appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages. Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish. The ability to "rapidly design" genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could "transform phage therapy" and "expand biotechnological toolkits," the researchers wrote in the journal Science. But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised "important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations" and urged others who were designing whole genomes to "consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project." In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: "Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not." Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, said the work was impressive, but revealed how hard it would be to make more complex genomes. "This is literally the smallest and easiest genome to make," he said. An AI trained on the genetic code of dangerous bugs could be used to design more harmful viruses, Ellis said, but controlling access to genetic data and having restrictions on making genomes that look dangerous would help. "Governments are working hard to do this already," he added. "But honestly," he said, "the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat." Dr Filippa Lentzos, a reader in science and international security at King's College London, said the most important point to intervene at the moment was when DNA was being manufactured. "It's important to see the bigger governance picture and not focus regulation solely on the AI model," she said. "A layered approach makes more sense: safeguards around model development and access, responsible research review, synthesis screening, and established laboratory biosafety and biosecurity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nominees to face off in November in redistricted seat central to Trump’s bid to retain slim Republican majority

Tennessee primary voters picked a pair of Memphis-area lawmakers to square off in a dramatically reconfigured US House seat central to Donald Trump’s plan to try to hold on to a slim Republican majority in the midterm congressional elections.

Republicans chose state senator Brent Taylor, who was endorsed by Trump, to be their nominee in the revamped ninth congressional district. Democrats picked state representative Justin Pearson, who gained national prominence three years ago when he was expelled from the Tennessee house for protesting in support of gun control measures.

Ruling comes as part of second phase of landmark trial that found social media company enabled harm against users

A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $567m into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts from the social media giant’s platforms.

The Thursday ruling comes as a part of the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March. At the time, a jury found that the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms, and imposed the maximum penalty: a $375m fine.

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• Trump signs new orders targeting birthright citizenship

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One quick note on the contempt resolution: Senator Rand Paul may try to send it straight to the Department of Justice, since advancing it in the Senate would require 60 votes. Republicans hold just 53 seats, making it almost certain to fall short of that threshold.

Republicans on a Senate committee voted to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress on Thursday. This comes after a bitter hearing last week, where the retired public health official invoked the fifth amendment for fear of self-incrimination and possible prosecution by Republican lawmakers on the homeland security and governmental affairs committee – who have routinely vilified Fauci for his handling of the Covid-19 response.

The ruling is in addition to the $375 million Meta was ordered to pay in the same lawsuit in March.

For more than a decade, president has been fixated on trying to undermine a key constitutional right

With a pair of executive orders on Thursday, Donald Trump has tried – once again – to undermine the guarantee of birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the US constitution and reaffirmed by the supreme court just five weeks ago.

The orders attempt to broaden the categories of children who would be ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called “birth tourism”, which the president claimed is practiced by “hundreds of thousands” of people.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn had faced two primary challengers, including Rep. John Rose.

A New Mexico court ordered (PDF) Meta to create a $567 million fund to address harms linked to youth mental health and child sexual exploitation after finding its platforms constituted a public nuisance. "In sum, the Court finds that New Mexico is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and public safety in and throughout the state, and that Meta's platforms are a significant contributing cause to the crisis," wrote Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the decision. The fund comes on top of $375 million in civil penalties, though the judge declined to mandate changes to features such as infinite scroll and autoplay, citing potential First Amendment and Section 230 concerns. Tech Policy Press reports: The decision follows the second phase of in the State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc., which consisted of a bench trial. Its central question was whether Meta's platforms amounted to a public nuisance in New Mexico, and, if the court found that they did, what remedy would be needed to address it. In March, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable for violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, awarding $375 million in civil penalties. The jury deliberated less than a day following that nearly seven-week trial. The $567 million abatement fund would be in addition to the civil penalties, according to today's decision. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in December 2023, alleging the company made false public statements about the safety of its platforms while knowing internally that its products facilitated child sexual exploitation. The court denied Meta's Section 230 defense in May 2024. In today's decision, the court again asserted that "Section 230 does not preclude the State's public nuisance claim," but the decision attempted to thread the needle on issues that the court determined might have run "afoul" of the statute, or of the First Amendment, such as issuing remedies around any particular product feature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms.