News Reel

With mortgage rates ticking up once again, homebuyers should consider making these three moves right now.

Small adjustments, like maintaining a steady speed while driving, can help maximize fuel efficiency, experts say.

Iran war could escalate further as Trump threatens to hit key oil infrastructure if Tehran doesn't drop its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Coast guard rescuers pulled all 21 people out of the water, but a 17-year-old student and the captain of one of the boats were later pronounced dead.

Having your wages garnished can cause big issues, but you may have more options to fight back than you think.

President Trump is holding a news conference ahead of meeting of the Kennedy Center board of trustees at the White House.

PM says the UK will not be drawn into wider war as he unveils plans to help with the impact

Keir Starmer is speaking at his press conference.

The war is entering its third week, he says.

First, we will protect our people in the region.

Second, while taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war.

Moments like this also tell you about leadership … Now, there are others who would have made a different decision two weeks ago.

They would have rushed the UK headlong into this war without the full picture of what they were sending our forces into and without a plan to get us out.

It is no surprise that our closest and most important ally is so disappointed. The Labour government’s response to the crisis in Iran has been shameful.

We should have been supporting our allies, not making it harder for them. Even now Starmer is still trying to sit on the fence, which is a complete failure of leadership.

By imposing costs on the global economy, the Iranian government is ensuring that further attacks are not contemplated

The US and Israeli decision to attack Iran has sent economic shockwaves around the world. About 20% of global oil supplies have been effectively blocked from transiting the strait of Hormuz since Iran began attacking ships, resulting in a huge jump in oil prices. Militarily, while the United States has the firepower to significantly reduce Iran’s capacity to use the strait as leverage, it is unlikely to be able to eliminate the threat entirely.

Reopening the strait, therefore, is not only a question of military capabilities but of diplomacy, and to negotiate it is necessary to understand what each party to the conflict is trying to achieve.

Trump said the long-anticipated reboot of U.S.-China relations could be postponed amid mounting pressure to reopen the critical oil route in the Persian Gulf.

Hummus and pet grooming also join list of goods and services used to help judge the impact of rising prices

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The UK’s increasing sobriety will be recognised from next month in the basket of goods used to calculate inflation after alcohol-free beer was added to a list by the Office for National Statistics totalling 760 items.

Hummus and pet grooming were also included in the list of goods and services used to help judge the impact of rising prices on the cost of living.

President accuses court of having ‘unnecessarily RANSACKED’ the US and claims he has ‘absolute right’ to impose new tariffs

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Donald Trump drew a backlash on Sunday for suggesting US efforts to protect the Strait of Hormuz were unnecessary – and that “maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all” because his country has plenty of oil of its own.

The president made the contradictory comment to reporters on Air Force One after pleading with European and Nato allies to enter the war in Iran to help the US secure the strait amid the largest oil supply disruption in history.

Pat McFadden unveils £1bn youth employment scheme and appeals to backbenchers who rebelled last year

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Labour MPs have no reason to oppose a fresh government attempt to overhaul the welfare system, the work and pensions secretary has said as he unveiled a £1bn youth employment scheme.

The announcement by Pat McFadden – who said the public wanted the system to promote work and “value for money” – is seen as a prelude to a renewed bid to reform the welfare system after plans by his predecessor, Liz Kendall, were blocked by a Labour backbench rebellion last year.

Italy, Germany, UK and Greece react cautiously after Trump threatens failure to do assist would be ‘very bad for the future of Nato’

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Continued from previous post:

Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has said she has no immediate plans to send her country’s maritime self-defence forces to help protect tanker traffic in the strait of Homuz.

We have not made any decisions whatsoever about dispatching escort ships. We are continuing to examine what Japan can do independently and what can be done ⁠within the legal framework.

I would like to ⁠engage in solid discussions based on Japan’s views and position regarding the need for early de-escalation.

US president hinted that his trip could be put on hold if Beijing failed to help secure the strait of Hormuz

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China says it is in communication with the US about Donald Trump’s planned visit to Beijing, despite hints from the US president that he might delay the trip if his prospective hosts do not help to unblock the strait of Hormuz.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said: “Head-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-US relations. The two sides are maintaining communication regarding President Trump’s visit to China.”

A German tourist filed a lawsuit claiming he felt unpleasant symptoms after eating tacos with salsa at Los Tacos No 1

A German tourist’s attempt to pursue $100,000 in damages from a New York City taqueria whose salsa he found to be too spicy has failed after a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.

In a complaint filed in October 2024, German national Faycal Manz said he was visiting New York City two months earlier when he stopped at the Times Square location of Los Tacos No 1.

Leaders seek a diplomatic solution despite US president’s threat of ‘a very bad future’ for Nato unless it provides warships

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European countries have ruled out sending warships to the strait of Hormuz, despite threats from Donald Trump that Nato faces “a very bad future” if members fail to help reopen the vital waterway.

Germany ruled out participation in any military activity, including efforts to reopen the strait. “This is not our war, we have not started it,” said the country’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius.

An animated reboot of Firefly is in early development at 20th Television Animation with Nathan Fillion involved. The project has Joss Whedon's blessing and will be run by writers Tara Butters and Marc Guggenheim, with early concept art already underway. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "The series would be set in the timeline between the original, 11-episode TV run in 2002 and the 2005 feature film continuation, Serenity." You can watch Fillion announce the Firefly reboot on Instagram. When the first episode of the original series premiered in late 2002, Slashdot reader fm6 wrote: "Firefly, Joss Whedon's 'anti-Trek drama' premieres tonight, on Fox, 8 E/P. I normally despise hypespeak, but this time it's the only language that fits: this is groundbreaking, mind-boggling, totally original. I've seen a bootleg of the pilot (which, unfortunately, the network is holding back) and I promise you this is the most geek-friendly SF you've seen in a long time. Yes, more so than Star Trek and B5, and way past Star Wars. I've never seen the future so skillfully, realistically, and lovingly portrayed. Here is the Official Site and a leading fan site." "This is the single new show this season I have added a season pass for to the old Tivo," CmdrTaco said at the time. "But I'll probably watch it live. This looks like it could be as good as we hope."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Money market accounts still offer good rates and other perks right now, but are they the top option to consider?

James Timpson believes many women in prison shouldn’t be there – and a new board aims to bring about change

Pat had been in trouble with the police before, when she was 16 and had been spat out of the care system with no qualifications, no housing and no support. Nearly 50 years later, she heard a knock on the door again.

There had been a fire in the estate where she lived, and another resident said she had seen Pat start it. “I was in the police station for nearly two days before I got to the magistrates court,” she said, worrying one finger over the top of her hand. “The magistrate said he was sending it to the crown court, and sending me to prison, basically.”

Second victim named as Juliette as long queues of students wait for antibiotics at the University of Kent

Tributes have been paid to a sixth-former confirmed as the second person to have died after an outbreak of meningitis in Kent.

The sixth-form student was named as Juliette by teachers at Queen Elizabeth’s grammar school (QEGS) in Faversham, who described her as a kind and intelligent young woman.

Gas prices have jumped almost 79 cents per gallon from a month ago, raising fresh inflation concerns.

Milan-based bank plans to up its near-30% stake in German lender to trigger formal talks despite strong opposition from Berlin

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Two European banking powerhouses have become embroiled in a €35bn (£30bn) takeover battle after Italy’s UniCredit stepped up its long-running pursuit of German lender Commerzbank, despite strong opposition from the German government.

UniCredit first took a stake of 9% in Commerzbank in September 2024 and has since built up its holding to just under 30%. It said on Monday it was pushing to increase that holding further and push the rival lender into formal merger talks.

Apple's premium over-ear headphones get their first update since 2020. Available for preorder on March 25, they ship in early April for $549.

President made contradictory comment to reporters on Air Force One after pleading with allies to help US secure Strait of Hormuz

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Donald Trump drew a backlash on Sunday for suggesting US efforts to protect the Strait of Hormuz were unnecessary – and that “maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all” because his country has plenty of oil of its own.

The president made the contradictory comment to reporters on Air Force One after pleading with European and Nato allies to enter the war in Iran to help the US secure the strait amid the largest oil supply disruption in history.

Travelers continue to face long lines at airports across the U.S. due to the partial government shutdown affecting TSA agents.

DELFT, Netherlands and BOSTON, March 16, 2026 — Today, Qblox and Riverlane announced advancement of their strategic collaboration to bring real-time quantum error correction to the global quantum computing market. The collaboration pairs Riverlane’s QEC technology, utilizing ultra-fast decoders capable of correcting millions of errors per second, with Qblox’s high-performance control hardware, creating a platform for reliable, error-corrected quantum systems.

This collaboration addresses the challenge that inherently error-prone qubits create for commercial utility. Critically, it removes one of the industry’s most persistent speed bottlenecks: the ability to decode and respond to quantum errors fast enough to prevent error accumulation. By combining both companies’ complementary technologies, Riverlane and Qblox offer a single, integrated solution to tomorrow’s fault-tolerant systems without the complexity of sourcing and integrating components independently.

The deployment brings together Qblox’s high-fidelity,ultra-low-latency and high-throughput control hardware required for real-time error correction with Riverlane’s Deltaflow , now directly integrated with Qblox’s control architecture to enable sub-microsecond feedback between detection and correction. This solution jointly pushes capacity to 300 physical qubits and 5 logical qubits, enabling up to 50,000 QuOps. Supported by Riverlane’s Deltakit open-source SDK for teams building error-corrected workflows, the full stack represents a production-ready foundation for fault-tolerant quantum computing at scale. By offloading decoding to a specialized high-performance layer, the architecture frees primary system resources to focus on increasing qubit counts without sacrificing computational fidelity, creating a scalable foundation for long-term growth.

“Real-time quantum error correction is fundamental to scaling quantum computing to commercially useful systems. The integration of Riverlane’s Deltaflow technology into our commercial quantum data centre marked an important milestone on that journey.” said Dr. Peter Leek, CSO and founder of Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC). ” Through our collaborations with partners such as Riverlane and Qblox, we are demonstrating how tightly integrated control and error-correction technologies can accelerate the path toward reliable, commercially viable quantum computers.”

“By directly integrating Deltaflow 2 into the Qblox control stack, we have moved beyond theory and removed a critical latency barrier to scalable error correction,” said Niels Bultink, CEO of Qblox. “Real-time quantum error correction is the defining challenge of our era, and this is exactly the kind of collaboration that will define the next phase of quantum innovation.”

“Real-time quantum error correction is the cornerstone of making quantum computers truly useful, and this collaboration is proof that we’re no longer just talking about it,” said Steve Brierley, CEO and Founder of Riverlane. “Qblox’s control hardware gives us the ultra-low-latency foundation Deltaflow 2 needs to deliver real error correction across real hardware.”

To learn more about this solution, join Qblox, Riverlane, and other industry leaders for “Building Quantum Together: Quantum Error Correction” at the APS Global Physics Summit 2026 in Denver on Tuesday, March 17. Taking place from 3:10 to 3:30 p.m. MDT at the Qblox booth (#810), the discussion will feature Francesco Battistel, Roadmap Leader at Qblox, Laura Caune, Senior Quantum Scientist at Riverlane, and Linsey Rodenbach, Developer Relations Manager, Quantum Computing at NVIDIA.

About Qblox

Qblox is accelerating the quantum revolution as the global leader in scalable quantum control. The company provides the essential control engine that empowers researchers and engineers to build high-performance, robust, and scalable systems. Trusted by industrial and academic leaders worldwide, Qblox sets the standard for quantum control and delivers the backbone for a new era of computing.

About Riverlane

Riverlane is the world leader in quantum error correction (QEC), the technology that unlocks quantum computing’s promise of a new age of human progress. We partner with over 60% of the world’s quantum computer companies and leading high-performance computing (HPC) centres to solve the error problem blocking their path to ‘utility-scale’ systems that can transform multiple industries. Our real-time QEC stack, Deltaflow, works with all major qubit types and includes proprietary QEC chips, decoders and a compiler. Deltakit, our software platform, helps quantum developers learn, develop and adopt QEC. Founded in 2016, Riverlane is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and has offices in Boston in the US and Delft in the Netherlands. The company has raised over $120 million in private funding, including an $85 million Series C in 2024.

About Qblox at APS

Qblox will be onsite at APS to showcase its real-time GPU-to-quantum integration and discuss hybrid quantum-classical infrastructure with attendees. To schedule a meeting, contact Juliette de la Rie at juliette.delarie@qblox.com or find Qblox at booth #810.

Source: Qblox

The post Qblox and Riverlane Collaborate on Integrated Quantum Error Correction Solution appeared first on HPCwire.

Electric vehicles reduce exposure to global oil price shocks and shift energy consumption to electricity largely produced domestically, expert says

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Australia could reduce its reliance on foreign fuel by more than 1bn litres a year if we replaced 1m petrol-fuelled cars with electric vehicles, as experts say boosting EV adoption is part of securing the nation’s long-term economic security.

Hussein Dia, a professor of transport technology and sustainability at the Swinburne University of Technology, said electric vehicles can play a meaningful role in improving Australia’s energy sovereignty, as well as contributing to the national net zero emissions goal.

Despite Trump’s claims, California city has found success in lowering deadly violence, thanks to pioneering efforts to steer people down a different path

In the summer of 2025, as Donald Trump rolled out his plan to deploy the national guard to Washington DC and Chicago, he suggested other American cities were overrun with violence and could soon see federal troops: Memphis, Los Angeles, New York.

Oakland, the president argued, was beyond saving. “And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. They’re so far gone. We don’t even talk about that any more,” Trump said.

A severe weather front has dumped heavy snow on the Upper Midwest, caused thunderstorms in the South and threatens Mid-Atlantic states with rain and possible tornadoes.

US president on social media said he was ‘thrilled’ that Brendan Carr was looking into broadcasters’ licenses

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Donald Trump reinforced comments made by Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), threatening the broadcast licenses of news organizations that report unfavorably on the war in Iran.

In a Truth Social post Sunday night, Trump said he was “thrilled” that Carr was “looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations. They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES …”.

Scientists in the US have uploaded a fruit fly to a computer simulation, while an Australian lab has taught neurons on a glass chip to play a 90s video game. How long before we are all living in a sci-fi movie?

It sounds like the opening of a sci-fi film, but US scientists recently uploaded a copy of the brain of a living fly into a simulation. In San Francisco, biotechnology company Eon Systems created a virtual insect that knew how to walk, fly, groom and feed in its virtual environment. Researchers in Australia, meanwhile, have taught a petri dish containing 200,000 human brain cells to play the iconic 90s shooter Doom. One experiment has pushed a brain into a computer; the other has plugged a computer into brain cells.

Both stories have been hailed as scientific breakthroughs, but have also sparked inevitable fears about the prospects of lab-grown humans and digital clones. Should we be concerned?

March 16, 2026 — The UK government is investing £45 million for a 1.4MW mission-focused supercomputer named ‘Sunrise’, a key first step in establishing the country’s first AI Growth Zone at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Culham Campus in Oxfordshire. As announced in the Fusion Strategy, Sunrise is targeted for operation in June this year and is primed to be the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer dedicated to fusion energy.

Credit: Shutterstock

Funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Sunrise will tackle key fusion energy challenges in areas such as plasma turbulence, materials development and tritium fuel breeding, while delivering spillover benefits to other clean energy technologies and the UK’s broader net zero ambitions.

Sunrise will also strengthen essential AI capabilities at Culham Campus and across the UK’s high-performance computing landscape, contributing to the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan and AI for Science Strategy. Sunrise will see AMD, DESNZ, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), Dell Technologies, Intel, UKAEA, the University of Cambridge, and WEKA working together. It will deliver up to 6.76 Exaflops of AI-accelerated modeling, enabling high-fidelity simulations and the creation of digital twins for complex systems.

“We can be proud that Britain will lead the way on research, innovation and skills for a future of limitless fusion energy,” said Lord Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear. “By backing our fusion industry, we are not only securing our future energy independence, but from innovation and research to engineers, we are also providing the skilled clean energy jobs of the future for British people.”

“UKAEA is taking lessons from the Apollo program: we learn fastest when we can test, iterate, and improve safely in the virtual world before we commit to our real-world mission,” said Dr. Rob Akers, UKAEA’s Director for Computing Programmes. “Sunrise will bring that capability to fusion by combining high-fidelity simulation with physics-informed AI to develop predictive digital twins that reduce the cost, risk and time of learning that would otherwise require expensive and time-consuming physical testing. UKAEA is proud to be working with such a pioneering group of partners to harness AI and high-performance computing at scale to support the UK’s fusion roadmap and Net Zero mission.

Dr. Paul Calleja, Director of the Cambridge Research Computing Service, said: “Cambridge is proud to be working with UKAEA, Dell, AMD and StackHPC, a UK AI software SME, to co-design, deliver and operate Sunrise the UK’s latest GPU accelerated scientific AI supercomputer. Sunrise builds on our long-established collaboration with UKAEA also leveraging Cambridge’s leadership class national supercomputing and sovereign AI portfolio. Sunrise is an important first step in the UK’s bold vision to strengthen its sovereign scientific computing capability, accelerate fusion research, and lay the foundations for the Culham AI Growth Zone.”

“Fusion research pushes the limits of science and computing, demanding massive simulation, complex modeling and advanced AI to accelerate progress,” said Dr. Thomas Zacharia, SVP, Strategy and Development, Public Sector, AMD. “With Sunrise, the UK will have a powerful new capability to rapidly and accurately simulate plasma behavior and fusion conditions, helping researchers advance the development of stable, efficient and economically viable fusion energy. Sunrise brings together AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct GPU acceleration, purpose-built on the Dell PowerEdge platform, to deliver breakthrough AI and high-performance computing for the UK fusion community and supporting the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero as it moves fusion from research toward practical impact.

“Sunrise is a bold step in advancing fusion energy and AI innovation, made possible through close collaboration and shared ambition,” said Tariq Hussain, UK Head of Public Sector, Dell Technologies. “At Dell Technologies, we’re helping turn this vision into reality with advanced AI and storage solutions that enable the UK to tackle complex challenges and accelerate a sustainable energy future.”

Simon Wilyman – GM UK/I & Northern Europe, Intel Corporation, said: “There are grand milestones in the evolution of our civilization, and the commercialization of fusion power is set to be one of them. Intel is delighted to partner with organizations such as UKAEA to support this ambitious endeavour. As part of the first AI Growth Zone, the Sunrise supercomputer strengthens the UK’s position as a global innovation hub. By combining advanced AI capabilities and high memory bandwidth with fusion research, Intel is creating the computational foundation necessary to unlock sustainable energy and improve lives worldwide.”

Liran Zvibel, Co-Founder & CEO, WEKA, said: “Building a supercomputer to simultaneously advance fusion energy and grow an AI-native economy is one of the most valuable scientific investments a nation can make, and Sunrise delivers on exactly that. WEKA is proud to partner with the UK Atomic Energy Authority to ensure Sunrise has the storage performance it needs to move at top speed from scientific discovery to real-world impact.”

Sunrise will be used to address real-world challenges from a wide range of UK fusion programs to drive critical advancements for the LIBRTI (Lithium Breeding Tritium Innovation) programme, which is developing tritium fuel-cycle technologies for self-sufficiency in future fusion operations, and for STEP Fusion, the UK’s flagship initiative to demonstrate fusion energy in the 2040s.

In 2023, Dell Technologies, Intel, the University of Cambridge and UKAEA shared plans to use supercomputers and AI to advance the development of the UK’s prototype fusion power plant design capabilities through the ‘Industrial Metaverse’.

In January 2026, £36 million of government investment was injected into the Cambridge supercomputing centre. The supercomputers will support modern AI workloads and simulation demand to turn breakthrough research into practical applications.

Download The Sunrise supercomputer key facts PDF here.

Source: UK Government

The post UK Government Invests £45M in ‘Sunrise’ AI Supercomputer for Fusion Research appeared first on HPCwire.

TORONTO, March 16, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc., a global leader in photonic quantum computing, and TELUS, a world-leading communications technology company, today announced plans to collaborate on advancing sovereign quantum computing infrastructure in Canada, and to exploring the development of a quantum data centre integrated with TELUS’ secure, Canadian-controlled, sovereign infrastructure.

Under a newly-signed MOU, the two Canadian technology leaders will explore how quantum processors can be combined with high-performance computing systems to create sovereign hybrid quantum–classical computing infrastructure in Canada – one of the first of its kind in the world. By bringing together Xanadu’s expertise in photonic quantum computing with TELUS’ sovereign AI expertise, advanced data centre operations, and coast-to-coast PureFibre network, this initiative will provide Canadian enterprises, researchers, and government organizations with secure access to next-generation quantum computing capabilities. These capabilities are poised to unlock breakthroughs in fields like AI, drug discovery, materials science, cybersecurity, and national security, all while keeping critical data and intellectual property in Canada, under Canadian control.

“Canada has a unique opportunity to lead the world in quantum computing,” said Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu. “TELUS operates some of the most advanced sovereign, digital infrastructure in the country, and together we are excited to explore how quantum computing could integrate with next-generation data centre environments to create something genuinely historic for Canada.”

Quantum computing represents one of the most consequential technological shifts of our era. Hybrid quantum–classical computing environments, where quantum processors work alongside classical high-performance computing systems, are widely recognized as a critical pathway toward realizing this real-world advantage at scale.

“At TELUS, we strongly believe that Canada’s technological future must be built on infrastructure we own and control – and quantum computing is the next chapter of that story,” said Nazim Benhadid, Chief Technology Officer, TELUS. “Our shared vision with Xanadu – one of Canada’s most exciting quantum technology companies – is to support the growth of Canada’s world-class AI quantum ecosystem and advance sovereign, quantum-ready infrastructure. When Canadian organizations can access world-leading quantum capabilities on Canadian-controlled infrastructure, the innovations, economic value and competitive advantages stay here, building Canadian prosperity for generations to come.”

The collaboration will also explore opportunities across the full quantum computing value chain, including quantum hardware, software, algorithms, applications, services, and education initiatives designed to strengthen Canada’s rapidly growing quantum ecosystem. Additionally, the companies will explore research initiatives, pilot programs, knowledge exchange activities, and broader ecosystem development efforts to accelerate quantum innovation across Canada.

This announcement follows Xanadu’s milestone Project OPTIMISM announcement, in which the Company announced that the Governments of Canada and Ontario are negotiating up to CAD $390 million in combined support for Xanadu to establish advanced semiconductor and photonic manufacturing capabilities for Canada’s quantum technology supply chain.

About Xanadu

Xanadu is a Canadian quantum computing company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Founded in 2016, Xanadu has become one of the world’s leading quantum hardware and software companies. The company also leads the development of PennyLane, an open-source software library for quantum computing and application development.

Source: Xanadu

The post Xanadu and TELUS Explore Sovereign Quantum–Classical Computing Infrastructure in Canada appeared first on HPCwire.

TORONTO and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 16, 2026 — Celestica Inc., a global leader in data center infrastructure and advanced technology solutions, and AMD, a leader in high-performance and AI computing, today announced a strategic collaboration to bring the new “Helios” rack-scale AI platform to market. The collaboration pairs AMD computing leadership with Celestica’s expertise in delivering leading-edge networking switch technologies.

At launch, Celestica will undertake the R&D, design and manufacturing of scale-up networking switches in the AMD “Helios” rack-scale AI architecture, based on the Open Compute Project (OCP), Open-Rack-Wide (ORW) form-factor.

The scale-up switches will utilize advanced networking silicon to enable the high-speed interconnect of the next-generation AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs, enabling leading-edge computing, optimized for large-scale AI clusters. Consistent with the open standards-based design of the “Helios” platform, the networking switches will utilize the Ultra Accelerator Link over Ethernet (UALoE) architecture for scale-up connectivity. AMD “Helios” will be available to customers in late 2026.

“Deploying AI at scale requires infrastructure that can be delivered quickly, consistently, and with the performance customers expect,” said Steven Dorwart, senior vice president and general manager, Hyperscalers, Celestica. “Our collaboration with AMD on the “Helios” platform brings together our global engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain capabilities with AMD’s innovation in high-performance computing. Together, we are accelerating access to AI systems optimized for the most demanding workloads of the next era.”

“‘Helios’ represents a new blueprint for AI infrastructure, enabling customers to deploy AI at scale with the performance, efficiency, and flexibility required for the next generation of workloads,” said Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Business Group, AMD. “We are pleased to work with Celestica, leveraging their expertise in delivering leading-edge networking switch technology with AMD’s leadership in high-performance and AI computing.”

The companies are collaborating to support deployments of “Helios” across cloud, enterprise, and research environments, helping to address a growing need for solutions that reduce time-to-value and improve supply chain resiliency for organizations investing in AI.

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.

About Celestica

Celestica (TSX: CLS) (NYSE: CLS) is a technology leader dedicated to driving customer success and market advancements. With deep expertise in design, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and platform solutions, Celestica enables critical data center infrastructure for AI, cloud, and hybrid cloud and advances technologies in high-growth markets. With a talented team and a strategic global network, Celestica helps its customers achieve competitive advantages.

Source: Celestica

The post Celestica and AMD Partner to Advance the Next Era of AI with ‘Helios’ Rack-Scale AI Platform appeared first on HPCwire.

OXFORD, England, March 16, 2026 — Infleqtion, a global leader in quantum computing and quantum sensing powered by neutral-atom technology, has delivered the UK’s only operational 100-physical-qubit quantum computing system at the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) with its Sqale platform, achieving a milestone the NQCC identified as a critical objective for the UK’s quantum strategy. Achieved in December 2025, the milestone creates foundational infrastructure that will enable researchers and industry to begin working with large-scale quantum systems.

“Infleqtion’s progress is a significant milestone, helping move the UK beyond research toward real-world uses,” said Lord Vallance, Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation. “These sorts of advances are vital in paving the way for us to be able to use quantum computers to deliver tangible benefits. With the talent and research expertise that we have on offer in the UK, this is an encouraging next step which helps cement our position as a world leader in one of the defining technologies of our generation.”

“The NQCC’s quantum computing testbed is among the first of its kind, advancing innovation at a global level,” said Matthew Kinsella, CEO of Infleqtion. “This latest achievement with Sqale reflects the progress and potential of our neutral-atom architecture and marks an important step toward larger-scale quantum systems. We’re proud to partner with the NQCC on a platform that is critical to advancing quantum computing and reinforces the UK’s leadership in this essential technology.”

Reaching the 100-physical-qubit level represents an important step beyond laboratory prototypes toward quantum computers that can run more complex algorithms, test error-correction approaches and support practical solutions. At this scale, quantum systems begin to support experimentation that connects more directly to real-world challenges. Researchers can begin probing applications in areas such as advanced materials, energy systems and complex optimization. Sqale is the first neutral-atom platform of this scale deployed in an operational national facility, reinforcing its position at the forefront of quantum hardware development.

The NQCC’s installation of the Sqale platform is part of its broader Quantum Computing Testbed Initiative. With Sqale, researchers will be able to evaluate performance, benchmark applications, and study how neutral‑atom systems scale. The platform is also designed to accelerate skills development, supply‑chain readiness and application exploration across the UK quantum ecosystem.

“Having a system of this scale available through the NQCC is a significant step for the UK quantum community,” said Dr Michael Cuthbert, Director of the NQCC. “It allows researchers to move beyond small demonstrations and begin learning what it really takes to operate and scale quantum computers in practice.”

“This is a defining moment for Infleqtion and the UK’s ambition to build world-class sovereign quantum capabilities. Achieving this milestone has been a key goal for the UK’s quantum efforts and seeing it become reality is something we are all immensely proud of,” said Colin Sullivan, Managing Director of Infleqtion UK. “We look forward to expanding our partnership with UK researchers, businesses and government to unlock the full potential of quantum technology.”

Infleqtion’s milestone with NQCC demonstrates continued execution on the company’s technology roadmap. Infleqtion is aiming to exceed 30 logical qubits in 2026 and deliver more than 100 logical qubits in 2028, advancing toward fully fault-tolerant architectures. Because it takes anywhere from 10 to more than 1,000 physical qubits to encode a single reliable logical qubit, physical-qubit performance becomes a key limiting factor. Infleqtion’s 99.73% two-qubit gate fidelity delivers industry-leading performance on the metric that matters most in quantum computing. Higher fidelity means fewer physical qubits per logical qubit, delivering a significant scalability and efficiency advantage.

About Infleqtion

Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global leader in quantum technology, delivering neutral-atom solutions for quantum computing, networking, sensing, and security. With a product portfolio spanning quantum computers, quantum optical clocks, RF receivers, and inertial sensors, Infleqtion’s full-stack approach combines high-performance hardware with the company’s proprietary Superstaq quantum computing software platform. Infleqtion’s systems are already in use by the U.S. Department of War, NASA, the U.K. government, and in multiple collaborations with NVIDIA. Infleqtion, in collaboration with NVIDIA, published the world’s first demonstration of a materials science application using logical qubits. With operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Infleqtion meets the demands of government and commercial customers across the space, defense, energy, finance and telecommunications sectors.

Source: Infleqtion

The post Infleqtion Delivers Operational 100-Qubit Quantum Computing System to UK’s NQCC appeared first on HPCwire.

BASEL, Switzerland and SAN FRANCISCO, March 16, 2026 — At the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit, Syngenta, a global leader in agricultural innovation, today announced it is exploring how quantum computing can help farmers meet the growing demands of food production in a changing climate. The company has partnered with QuantumBasel, Switzerland’s first commercial quantum computing hub, to apply quantum technologies to agricultural research and development.

Farmers worldwide face mounting pressure to produce more food sustainably amid unpredictable weather and evolving pest and disease challenges. Meeting these demands requires new scientific approaches that go beyond what classical computing can deliver, particularly when it comes to understanding the complex molecular and biological systems that underpin crop science.

Developing safe, effective, and sustainable crop protection products requires understanding molecular interactions of extraordinary complexity that classical computers can only approximate. Quantum computing has the future potential to model this complexity with far greater precision, and to predict details about molecular behavior that have previously been out of reach, bringing new insights into product design and opening new pathways for innovation in agriculture.

To help realize this potential, Syngenta is launching a collaboration with QuantumBasel in Basel, Switzerland – a co-located working model that brings together QuantumBasel’s algorithmic expertise and access to advanced hardware and simulators with Syngenta’s scientists and agricultural R&D capabilities. Initial projects will aim to deepen our understanding of molecular behaviour with insights that could unlock new approaches to discovery and crop science.

“Quantum computing could be a catalyst for the next generation of scientific breakthroughs in agriculture,” said Feroz Sheikh, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Syngenta Group. “It has the future potential to give us a deeper understanding of molecular interactions than has ever been possible, delivering insights and solutions that can help growers meet the challenges of a changing world.”

Quantum computing is an emerging technology with significant long-term potential in molecular modeling, AI and beyond. As the technology matures, Syngenta will be well-positioned to explore its application to some of the most complex challenges in crop science, and build the expertise and partnerships needed to apply it meaningfully in agricultural research.

Thomas Landolt, CEO QuantumBasel, said: “Our mission is to apply quantum computing capabilities to industry, and agriculture is one of the most exciting frontiers. By combining QuantumBasel’s quantum computing know-how and infrastructure with Syngenta’s deep agricultural expertise, we can help growers benefit from faster research cycles, better crop resilience, and more sustainable farming practices. We are excited for the chance to create an impact where it really matters.”

About QuantumBasel

QuantumBasel is a competence center for quantum computing and AI and drives access to commercial quantum computing to foster innovation. QuantumBasel is Switzerland’s first and so far only commercial quantum computing hub. QuantumBasel’s team of quantum and data scientists trains and supports companies, conducts projects in quantum computing and AI, and collaborates closely with universities and academic institutions. Through an internationally connected ecosystem, QuantumBasel provides access to advanced know-how and technologies, enabling companies across a variety of industries to achieve innovations through the next generation of information technology.

About Syngenta

Syngenta is a global leader in agricultural innovation with a presence in more than 90 countries. Syngenta is focused on developing technologies and farming practices that empower farmers, so they can make the transformation required to feed the world’s population while preserving our planet. Its bold scientific discoveries deliver better benefits for farmers and society on a bigger scale than ever before. Guided by its Sustainability Priorities, Syngenta is developing new technologies and solutions that support farmers to grow healthier plants in healthier soil with a higher yield. Syngenta Crop Protection is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland; Syngenta Seeds is headquartered in the United States.

Source: QuantumBasel

The post QuantumBasel Partners with Syngenta on Quantum Computing Applications in Agricultural R&D appeared first on HPCwire.

From dates to deal tips, here's everything worth knowing about the 2026 Amazon Big Spring Sale.

The song is that of a humpback whale and was recorded by scientists in March 1949 in Bermuda, researchers said.

March 16, 2026 — Deep Green has announced AI-ready colocation capacity deployable in as little as four weeks at its Urmston facility in Manchester. This is one of the fastest AI infrastructure deployments currently available in the UK today. The site provides sovereign, UK-based capacity designed for high-density AI and HPC workloads.

For many organizations, the barrier to scaling artificial intelligence is no longer GPUs or software. It is infrastructure. Power availability, planning delays and legacy data centre designs mean new capacity can take years to deliver. Deep Green’s modular architecture allows AI workloads to be deployed in weeks, rather than years, giving organisations immediate access to secure, UK-hosted compute capacity.

The Urmston facility is purpose-built for modern AI workloads. It supports rack densities of up to 150kW, designed for GPU clusters and high-performance computing. The infrastructure operates at a sub 1.2 Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), making it substantially more efficient than many conventional data centers. This combination of high-density capability and efficient operation allows organizations to run demanding AI workloads with predictable performance and lower operating costs.

Mark Lee, CEO of Deep Green, said: “The conversations we’re having with customers are remarkably consistent. They don’t have a software problem or even a GPU problem. They have an infrastructure problem. Organizations need somewhere to run AI workloads today, not in two or three years’ time. Our Manchester site allows organizations to deploy high-density AI racks in weeks, and while capacity is filling rapidly, we still have space available for those looking for sovereign UK compute available now.”

Unlike conventional facilities, Deep Green’s infrastructure captures waste heat generated by AI compute and repurposes it locally. The heat can be used by nearby buildings and community facilities. By integrating heat reuse directly into the design of its sites, DeepGreen reduces the environmental impact of high-performance computing while delivering local energy benefits.

About Deep Green

Deep Green builds and operates sustainable, high-density data centres that deliver advanced computing power while capturing and reusing heat for community benefit. By turning data processing into a source of clean energy, Deep Green helps accelerate the decarbonization of heat and power systems worldwide. For more information, visit www.deepgreen.energy.

Source: Deep Green

The post Deep Green Offers High-Density AI and HPC Colocation at Manchester Site appeared first on HPCwire.

We've heard from icons like Jamie Lee Curtis, Steven Spielberg and Serena Williams so far. On Monday, speakers are exploring what's next for the news.

I'm picky about my workout gear. These are the only wireless earbuds I trust to handle my sweaty workouts, stay in place and deliver crystal-clear sound for all my activities.

Springing forward on daylight saving time did a number on my body, but these wellness devices are making the transition easier.

As big tech continues to dominate the film industry, Video StoreAge is a uniquely crafted company that works with film-makers to sell independent films on USB drives

The streaming-skeptical cinephile faces a dilemma in 2026, especially when it comes to watching movies at home. Increasingly, movies are available via rentals that funnel money to mega-corporations including Amazon or Apple; digital “purchases” from those same companies that can actually be revoked at any moment; or, most enticingly but still somewhat inconveniently, well-curated physical media special editions that treat films with the respect they deserve (sometimes even respect they don’t, depending on the title) while taking up a lot of shelf space and hitting your wallet hard. Plus, as vinyl aficionados know, bespoke physical media can also be severely limited in terms of where you can actually play it. Basically, almost everyone in the home-video space is trying to either be Amazon or the Criterion Collection.

Ash Cook, the former Sundance programmer who founded the new distributor Video StoreAge (pronounced like “storage”), is trying to figure out a third way. He described Video StoreAge’s products – indie movies sold on USB drives – as “like a DVD in the present tense. It’s a way to have a physical copy of a movie, but in this case you can play it on your computer. It has digital utility.” Like almost anything else these days, Video StoreAge is available as a subscription, with quarterly collections of five features and five shorts. The first drop includes Vera Drew’s buzzed-about The People’s Joker, a homemade superhero comedy that reappropriates many elements of the Batman mythos into a trans coming-out story. (Honestly, it’s more fun than those Joaquin Phoenix movies and might understand the Joker character better, too.) But they also sell single films, including Drew’s, or any combinations of available films as a sort of digital indie-movie mix tape on those format-flexible USB drives. (The quarter’s shorts package is included with every movie regardless, an automatic special feature.)

• ‘We’ll see how I feel in practice,’ says world No 2

• McIlroy hampered by back injury before Players Championship

Rory McIlroy will weigh up whether to play another event before the defence of his Masters title next month after an underwhelming outing at the Players Championship. He was the defending champion at TPC Sawgrass, but his preparation was hampered by a back injury and he finished in a disappointing tie for 46th on Sunday.

“I’ll see how my body feels,” said the world No 2. “We’ll see how I feel in practice and at home and if I get itchy feet at home maybe add an event at some point.

Cousin of Tech Sgt Tyler Simmons, whose military refueling plane crashed in Iraq, says: ‘We didn’t need to be in this war’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

A relative of an Ohio airman who was killed recently in a military airplane crash in Iraq amid the US and Israel’s war in nearby Iran has said the conflict is “uncalled for”.

“This could have been prevented,” Stephan Douglas said of the death of his cousin Tech Sgt Tyler Simmons, 28, in an interview with the Ohio news outlet WCMH. “We didn’t need to be in this war. This is uncalled for – and this is what we get.”

Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal, 41, died on Saturday in Texas less than 24 hours after being detained

An Afghan immigrant who previously worked with the United States military in Afghanistan and later sought asylum in the US died over the weekend in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody less than 24 hours after being detained in Texas, an advocacy group said on Sunday.

Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal, who was living in a Dallas suburb with his wife and six children while his asylum case remained pending, was arrested by federal agents outside his apartment on Friday morning while taking his children to school, said a statement from Shawn VanDiver, president of the military veteran-led group AfghanEvac.

US president says it is ‘only appropriate’ for Europe to help, and warns failure to do so would be ‘very bad’ for Nato. Plus, meet the Americans withholding their federal income tax

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Good morning.

Donald Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on European allies to help protect the strait of Hormuz, warning that Nato faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid.

What did Trump say? The US president told the Financial Times in an interview: “It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there. If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.”

Who else won? Here’s all the winners at the 98th Academy Awards.

Who was remembered this year? This year’s Academy Awards featured an extended in memoriam section to honour the considerable number of Hollywood legends who have died over the past year. Diane Keaton, Robert Redford and Rob Reiner were remembered in standalone speeches, while Claudia Cardinale and Catherine O’Hara also had extended moments. James Van Der Beek and Brigitte Bardot were among stars who were not included in the tribute.

"One Battle After Another" took home several big awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and the newly created Best Casting.

The film follows CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman​ and photographer Lou Bopp through their seven-year journey to document the toll of America's school shooting epidemic.

Food production in many African countries depends heavily on fertiliser imported from the Gulf through the strait of Hormuz

Countries in Africa, where farmers depend heavily on imported fertiliser and a large share of household income goes on food, are particularly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions caused by the war in the Middle East, experts have said.

The conflict has drastically disrupted trade through the strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane not just for oil and gas but also for fertiliser, which is produced in vast quantities in the Gulf.

The US men’s national team hated their 2022 World Cup look. Four years later, they were given control over what they will be wearing this year on home soil

US midfielder Diego Luna rocked back and forth, a wide smile plastered across his face. With even wider eyes, Juventus attacker Weston McKennie looked on like a child on Christmas Day, broke out into applause and shrieked with glee. Timothy Weah rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

The US men’s national team had gathered for a team meeting in a hotel conference room in Austin, Texas, with a friendly against Ecuador days away. The get-together had nothing to do with tactics. Rather, they were about to see the kits they’d be wearing at the 2026 World Cup, the first tournament in three decades to be played on home soil.

As the US birthrate has declined dramatically, schools are becoming emptier and districts are getting less public funding

At a February board meeting for Memphis-Shelby county schools in Tennessee, a parent of five children who currently or formerly attended Ida B Wells Academy, an alternative education school, asked board members a question.

“This is a high-performing school. This is not a school in crisis,” she said. “So I respectfully ask, why are we considering closing a school that is working?”

Status of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s money will be put to test in Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois

Four Democratic congressional primaries in and around Chicago on Tuesday have turned into the most expensive test yet of a question the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) would rather not answer: what happens when your money is so toxic you have to pretend it isn’t yours?

Aipac, one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying forces supporting Israel, and affiliated political action committees have spent at least $13.7m across four Illinois races, according to an investigation by WBEZ, Chicago’s public radio station, funneling it through a pair of Super Pacs so determined to hide their origins that they don’t mention Israel once in their ads, with anodyne-sounding names: Elect Chicago Women, and Affordable Chicago Now.

Apple's new $599 budget phone offers a premium feel, complete with MagSafe compatibility and an A19 chip. That makes the minor trade-offs easier to swallow.

The latest rumors, release timing and features we expect from Samsung's next Galaxy Watch lineup.

If Meta and other smart eyewear makers don't want their products known as "pervert glasses," they're going to have to do better at setting boundaries.

"A new type of battery storage is about to be deployed on the Midwestern grid for the first time," reports Electrek: Sodium-ion battery storage manufacturer Peak Energy and global energy company RWE Americas will pilot a passively cooled sodium-ion battery system in eastern Wisconsin on the Midcontinent Independent System Operator network — the first sodium-ion deployment on that grid. Peak Energy says its technology is specifically designed for grid-scale storage and leverages sodium-ion chemistry's inherent stability. Unlike many lithium-ion systems, sodium-ion batteries don't require active cooling and can operate over a wide temperature range without losing performance. That simpler design could make a meaningful dent in the cost of storing electricity. According to Peak Energy, its system cuts the lifetime cost of stored energy by an average of $70 per kilowatt-hour. That's roughly half the total cost of a typical battery system today. The company says it achieves those savings by removing energy-hungry cooling systems, eliminating routine maintenance requirements, and reducing the need to overbuild storage capacity to account for battery degradation over time... If the Wisconsin pilot proves successful, it could open the door to wider adoption of sodium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage across the US.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The top 16 seeds in the 68-team women's NCAA field will host first- and second-round games, with the regional rounds being played at two neutral sites for the fourth straight year.

Alan Jay White, nicknamed ‘the professor’, arrested after raid of Indiana home found 78 grams of suspected meth

In a case that calls to mind the plot of the fictional crime show Breaking Bad, a former US educator with the last name White is faced with charges of illicitly dealing methamphetamine.

A 12 March statement from police in the town of Clarksville, Indiana, said officers searched the home of Alan Jay White five days earlier, finding 78 grams of suspected meth and counterfeit cash. They contended that the amount was too big for personal use, booking him with illegally peddling meth, counterfeiting and possessing drug paraphernalia, the agency’s statement added.

The suspect was responsible for transporting Oseguera's romantic partner to a luxurious cabin, the defense ministry said .

A fifth of seven members of the Iran women's soccer team who accepted refugee visas to stay in Australia has changed her mind, a sport official says.

US based Covid vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant people on ideology instead of evidence, critics say

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There was scant data behind ending the Covid vaccine recommendation for pregnant people and children, according to internal memos made public because of a lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The memos overlooked hundreds of studies on the benefits and safety of Covid vaccination and set the precedent for making changes to vaccine recommendations based on ideology instead of evidence, critics say.

Advocates say 24/7 coverage of US attacks will not last for ever – and spotlight will return to Epstein and his crimes

As the US woke to news that Donald Trump had bombed Iran, domestic discord was fast simmering.

There was unrelenting outrage over ICE raids. There was frustration with the rising cost of living. There was fear over rocketing healthcare prices, mounting household debt, not to mention many Americans’ nagging sense of desperation in a country, some warned, where democracy itself was under threat.

Keep messages from unknown numbers away from your inbox and out of sight.

Atlanta United ended a long drought, there were dramatic finishes to a batch of games and Carles Gil finally has some support

On 28 May 2025, Atlanta United thrilled their home fans with a stoppage-time winner against Orlando City. Jamal Thiaré’s match-winner pulled the club within five points of the playoff places after 16 games, and the team hoped to harness the momentum for a rosier second half of the season.

As Tehran continued strikes on targets across the Gulf region, Israel said it would hit Iran for “as long as needed” and expanded ground operations in Lebanon.

Ex-French president, who was jailed last year for criminal conspiracy, to be tried at Paris appeal court on four counts

Nicolas Sarkozy appeared at the Paris court of appeal to face a fresh trial over allegations he conspired to receive illegal election campaign funding from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The former rightwing French president, who was in office between 2007 and 2012, denies any wrongdoing.

Another weekend of violence compounded global market concerns over war in the Middle East, following US strikes on the vital oil hub

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Oil prices have climbed again amid mounting supply fears after the US struck Iran’s vital Kharg Island oil hub and Donald Trump demanded allies help reopen the strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 1.8% to $104.98 per barrel during early trading on Monday. Another weekend of violence across the Middle East compounded concerns over the conflict, and its ramifications for global energy markets.

The operation marks the latest joint show of force against drug cartels in the South American country.

The actor led the starry book deals, while publishers assessed whether US-style bans are spreading to the UK

The annual London book fair wrapped on Thursday, marking the end of three days that saw 33,000 people connected to the book industry – agents, publishers, authors, among others – gather at Olympia to make deals and discuss the state of the publishing world, and its future. Here’s our roundup of the biggest deals, trends and takeaways from the fair.

The starriest book deal of the week was a new thriller series co-authored by Idris Elba, featuring an MI6 field operative who gets deployed to Mauritius to investigate an attempted murder. Elsewhere, rights were scooped for Alex Ferguson’s first autobiography in 13 years, broadcaster Mishal Husain’s debut children’s book, and the story of designer Paul Smith’s life.

Watch all the great films you missed.

The war, which shows no signs of ending soon, has disrupted oil exports from the region, driven fuel prices far higher worldwide and upended global air travel.

Magnusson’s 2017 bestseller The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning turned the Scandinavian decluttering practice into a global phenomenon

Swedish author and artist Margareta Magnusson, whose book on “death cleaning” became a global phenomenon, has died aged 92.

Magnusson’s 2017 book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, introduced international readers to the concept of döstädning – the practice of sorting through and giving away possessions in later life so that family members are not left with the burden of doing so after one’s death.

US president says it is ‘only appropriate’ for Europe to help, and warns failure to do so would be ‘very bad’ for Nato

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on European allies to help protect the strait of Hormuz, warning that Nato faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid.

The de facto closure of the vital waterway by Tehran in retaliation for airstrikes by the US and Israel has proved catastrophic for global energy and trade flows, causing the largest oil supply disruption in history and soaring global oil prices.

Latest observations of L98-59d, about 35 light years from Earth, suggest it could be different to anything seen before

Astronomers have identified a planet composed of molten lava, suggesting the existence of an entirely new category of liquid planet.

The distant world, known as L98-59d, is about 1.6 times the size of Earth and orbits a small red star 35 light years away. Astronomers initially thought the planet might harbour a deep ocean of liquid water, but the latest analysis suggests that it could be fundamentally different to anything seen before.

Crooks is one of college basketball’s most fascinating stars, blending power and touch in a throwback game that could carry the Cyclones deep into March

The basketball gods really have a thing for Iowa. First came Caitlin Clark at the University of Iowa, a scoring sensation who dominated headlines and sparked cultural debates. Now, the state’s other major college program, Iowa State, has been blessed with Audi Crooks – a thunderclap in her own right.

Where Clark dazzled the masses with moon ball shots and moxie off the dribble, Crooks is the kind of talent that makes other players of stature sit up and take notice, the junior center with a feel beyond her years. A 6ft 3in ballast in the paint, Crooks belongs to a protected class of hooper, the velveteen giant – post players who win with touch as much as brute force.

Apologies won’t help the survivors still living with the echoes of abuse. But wealthy people have the resources to make a real impact

Years before there was a call for transparency with the Epstein files, I spent months reading the documents. Not the headlines – the documents: the emails, the financial records, the human suffering, and the internal communications that mapped how one man’s wealth and power built an ecosystem of exploitation that operated for decades. As a sex trafficking expert for more than 15 years, I’ve witnessed many men who abused their power and the system, but rarely have I seen wealth weaponized so effectively and for so long.

I read the files because I served as the expert witness for the US Virgin Islands in its litigation against JPMorgan Chase, which alleged that the bank maintained a financial relationship with Epstein despite evidence of his sex trafficking. The case ended in a 2023 settlement; the bank did not admit wrongdoing. I reviewed the messages from men with power and wealth in Epstein’s orbit. I saw what they said, what they didn’t say, and what they saw and didn’t see.

Swing Left is trying to revitalize Democrats’ outmoded ground game with ‘deep canvassing’ ahead of midterms

Pope Leo came top with 42%. Donald Trump was just behind with 41%. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) scored 38% and TV host Stephen Colbert 35%. Trailing behind all of them was the Democratic party, viewed positively by just 30% of voters in a recent NBC News poll. About 52% view the Democrats negatively.

Among the reasons for the distrust, argues Swing Left, a national grassroots organisation, is a broken voter contact model in which Democrats are too transactional, too last minute and too dependent on outdated technology. It is aiming to fix the problem ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Republican senator from North Carolina will not seek re-election after Trump threatened to primary him

In the last US Senate hearing before Kristi Noem’s ouster, some of the fiercest criticism the homeland security secretary received came not from outraged Democrats, but from an ally of Donald Trump.

“What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms Noem, disaster,” said Thom Tillis, the senior Republican senator from North Carolina, at the outset of a 10-minute skewering of the secretary he dubbed a “performance evaluation”.

Netflix is the sci-fi gift that keeps on giving.

A Democratic candidate for a key House race in Maine oversaw a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates across the country, Federal Election Commission records show. 

Jordan Wood, who is running for the Democratic nomination in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, is the former executive director of democracyFirst PAC, a group that — despite its left-of-center orientation — donated to at least one Republican PAC, in addition to giving thousands of dollars to at least six GOP campaigns for House and Senate seats during the 2024 election cycle, according to the records.

In total, the group donated $75,000 to various House and Senate races, including Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah; Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb.; and Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., with contributions ranging from $1,000 to $3,000.

Wood’s PAC also gave $5,000 to Republican Governance Group/Tuesday Group PAC, a group of moderate Republicans that has gradually moved to the right as it aligned with the policy priorities of the Trump administration.

“I don’t necessarily condemn anyone for contributing to left or right candidates as long as they’re actively protecting our civil rights, but this is pretty troubling,” said Maine state Rep. Amy Roeder, a Democrat.

While some of the candidates democracyFirst donated to were running for safe seats in deep-red districts, others, such as Valadao, an incumbent, were considered to be more competitive. Valadao, first elected to the House in 2012, lost his seat to Democrat TJ Cox in 2016 before regaining it four years later.

Though some of the GOP lawmakers supported by democracyFirst have at times voted for President Donald Trump’s agenda items, most are considered moderate Republicans. Valadao, for instance, was one of just 10 House representatives to vote to impeach President Trump.

But at least six GOP lawmakers who received money from democracyFirst, including Valadao, voted along party lines to support Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a sprawling funding bill that realized a wide array of long-standing conservative aims, including cuts to Medicaid, tax cuts for billionaires, and a $75 billion infusion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At the state level, democracyFirst pitched in to help several campaigns for state legislature seats and county commissioner positions in Pennsylvania, including that of County Commissioner Mike Pries, of Dauphin County, who went on in 2025 to vote to reject a resolution that would have restricted local cooperation with ICE.

“democracyFIRST was built to do one thing: defeat Trump-aligned candidates who were trying to seize control of America’s election infrastructure,” Wood said in a statement. “Every Republican candidate democracyFIRST ever supported held an office with direct authority over election administration or certification, and every single one of them was in a primary against an election denier who supported Trump’s false claims of a rigged election. We were trying to take their power away. It was a carefully designed firewall to safeguard future elections.”

Wood is one of several candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in the race to replace Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine. Golden was already facing a primary challenge from State Auditor Matt Dunlap.

Golden, a centrist who has caught heat from progressives for voting against party lines in several key instances, announced in November that he would not seek reelection. In the wake of the announcement, Wood was months into a campaign to unseat the longtime Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, but swiftly pivoted to throw his hat in the ring for Golden’s seat.

In addition to the democracyFirst spending, Wood has been scrutinized for his ties to Mothership Strategies, a liberal-leaning fundraising outfit run by his husband, Jake Lipsett. The firm has gained a controversial reputation in Democratic circles for aggressive tactics, inflammatory and alarming rhetoric, and accusations of self-dealing and other unethical billing practices.

Wood has said he and his husband keep their professional lives separate, but FEC records show that in the months after Wood stepped down from democracyFirst to run against Collins, the new candidate’s old PAC began funneling money to Mothership to the eventual tune of more than half a million dollars.

Dunlap, meanwhile, has earned a chilly reception from national Democratic leadership over his decision to primary Golden, whose district elected Trump in the 2024 election by 9 percentage points, and faced criticism from the right for his role in auditing the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. Trump and his allies have said the agency exercised lax oversight in the disbursement of federal money to other state health care programs. The other main contender, Joe Baldacci, a state senator and the brother of former two-term Maine Gov. John Baldacci, joined the race in January. (Dunlap and Baldacci’s campaigns declined to comment.)

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will likely face up in the general against former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a proto-MAGA populist. LePage, who occupied the governor’s mansion from 2011 until 2019, is known for his long record of foot-in-mouth gaffes and racially charged statements.

Baldacci and Dunlap are longtime residents of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. Wood, on the other hand, only announced after pivoting to the House race that he would to move with his family to the city of Lewiston in order to qualify. LePage has spent his years of political exile in the sunny wilderness of Florida.

“I am friends with both Sen. Baldacci and State Auditor Dunlap and have known them to be people of integrity and people who really give a damn,” said Roeder, the statehouse representative. “Jordan Wood was not a CD2 resident until very recently, and I personally look sideways at someone who moves into a district in order to run in that district. And I count Paul LePage as well.”

LePage, who announced his candidacy for the House seat in May, is making his second attempt at a political comeback after badly losing his 2024 bid to retake his old job as governor from incumbent Democrat Janet Mills.

The post Dem in Maine House Primary Funneled PAC Money to Republicans appeared first on The Intercept.

Why Should Delaware Care?
For years, universities have hosted debates on controversial topics. But growing political tensions around free speech; DEI programs; and transgender rights have raised the question of whether such forums should be framed as discussions, rather than debates where one side wins. UD’s recent event on biological sex highlights the question of how campuses should balance academic debate with concerns from students who believe their identities are being attacked.

As transgender rights become a growing political flashpoint nationwide, a University of Delaware event debating whether biological sex is binary has stirred controversy on campus, prompting criticism from LGBTQ students and advocates in the state. 

While UD officials say the event, which took place last week, was meant to encourage open discussion of a controversial topic in an academic setting, advocates say it instead framed the existence and legitimacy of transgender and queer people as something up for debate.

“Seeing the faculty put on an event that challenges those queer identities is kind of like a slap in the face,” UD senior Emma Abrams said. 

Debates over biological sex and other controversial topics, such as immigration and abortion, have taken place on college campuses for years. Universities frequently frame those as part of their commitment to academic freedom and free speech, arguing that higher education should expose students to competing ideas and encourage open discussion.

But UD’s debate on biological sex comes at a time when universities are navigating growing political pressure around diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, as well as heightened national attention on transgender rights and even free speech.

The UD event was organized and hosted by its Philosophy, Women & Gender Studies, and Anthropology departments and promoted by the university on its website.  

Over 100 students and faculty attended the debate, which featured two professors, Agustín Fuentes of Princeton University and Tomás Bogardus of Pepperdine University. The two engaged in a back-and-forth discussion over whether biological sex is restricted to male and female or exists along a spectrum. 

Fuentes, a biological anthropologist at Princeton, has argued in his research that human biological sex shows significant variation and cannot always be fully explained by a strict male-female binary. 

Bogardus, a philosophy professor at Pepperdine, argued that biological sex is a binary category rooted in reproductive roles. In his academic work, he has argued that philosophical arguments separating gender identity from biological sex do not hold up under scrutiny. 

In one academic paper, Bogardus argues that efforts to redefine “woman” solely around gender identity create what he calls a “Trans Inclusion Problem,” arguing that identifying as a woman is not the same thing as being a woman.

During the debate, both professors were given 20 minutes to argue their claims and then additional time to dispute and respond to the other’s arguments.  

Joel Pust, chair of the Department of Philosophy, said that controversial topics are often chosen for debates at the university not to antagonize people but to allow individuals to think more deeply about their views and the opposing sides. 

“I think part of treating people with respect is not treating them as so fragile that they can’t hear the opposing point of view,” Pust told Spotlight Delaware. “And I realize that some of these topics will be disturbing or controversial, but I think that’s part of a university’s job, to expose students to a variety of views and try to get them to think about them.”

University officials asserted that the event was part of its academic programming and not an endorsement for any position. In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, the university said that “hosting a difficult conversation is not the same as endorsing any particular answer.”

Still, multiple student groups gathered for a separate event, scheduled for the same time as the debate, to provide what they said would be a safe space for students to discuss how it impacted them. 

Some argued that the UD-sanctioned event should have been framed as a conversation, saying the word “debate” suggests that one side must ultimately be right. 

Others pointed to the power imbalance of the university-backed event, arguing it was unfair to expect vulnerable students to defend their identities in front of professors and their peers.

“It’s unfair for all the students who pay so much money to go here, and it’s unfair for those people who aren’t comfortable doing that to not have their voices heard,” UD senior Erik Zuylen said.

Students reached out to the school faculty and UD President Laura Carlson with their concerns. In emails to students, faculty expressed a willingness to discuss ways to better support gender-diverse students. They also noted the event was intended to challenge controversial views in a public academic setting.

Prior to the event, Pust encouraged the students to come and defend their views, noting that there would be a question-and-answer session after the debate. 

“Clearly, you disagree with one of the two. I hope your views will be ably defended,” he said in his email to student advocates.

Rep. Mara Gorman (D-Newark), who represents the area, attended the event to listen to students’ concerns and, as she said, to serve as an ally. She said she didn’t support shutting the event down, but that she didn’t understand why it was a productive conversation for the school to have.

After the student-led event, Gorman said she plans to bring students’ concerns to Carlson. 

“I would hope that there would be sort of a larger conversation that the president might engage,” Gorman said. 

Carlson officially took office in January, after serving as interim president for nearly six months. Her tenure came after the university’s previous president, Dennis Assanis, had been increasingly under fire from faculty, who criticized his focus on capital development projects. 

Since Carlson took office, the university has faced criticism over several changes affecting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. 

Last March, the Trump Administration launched investigations into more than 50 universities across the country, including UD, for their DEI efforts, with the goal to “end the use of racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.

UD has since rebranded its Office of Equity and Inclusion as the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance, temporarily removed a university website that featured student research on racial injustice, and has taken down posters for the different diversity-related groups and replacing them with posters that appeared more inclusive, as reported by different news outlets. 

Carlson did not respond to requests for comment for this story. 

In addition to Trump’s efforts to change DEI initiatives, over the past year and a half, his administration has issued a string of directives and executive orders aiming to alter health care for transgender individuals and pull federal funds from hospitals that provided gender-affirming care. 

Beyond pushback from the students, local advocacy groups also criticized how the UD debate was framed, arguing that discussions about gender identity should be handled carefully, particularly during a time when transgender rights are being threatened politically. 

Mike Brickner, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, said that while the organization supports the right to discuss controversial topics, universities should keep in mind how those conversations affect marginalized communities. 

“We believe that it is essential for university representatives to reach out and engage with (marginalized groups) to ensure that programming is conducted in thoughtful and compassionate ways,” he said.

The post UD debate on biological sex draws criticism from LGBTQ students appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware care?
Wilmington’s city charter requires at least one minority-party member be elected among the four at-large seats. After City Council’s lone Republican switched to the Democratic Party last fall, that policy goal has been undone.

The Wilmington City Council is considering a resolution that would bar future minority-party members from switching their affiliation during the middle of an elected term. 

While the resolution was sparked by Councilman James Spadola’s change of parties five months ago, it would not affect him because it would not apply retroactively. 

Still, the conversation around the resolution has brought a wave of criticism against Spadola, including calls for him to resign. 

On Thursday, the Wilmington City Council held its first public discussion about the resolution, proposed by Councilman Alex Hackett. The measure asks Delaware’s legislature to change the city’s charter to prohibit a future at-large council member who represents a minority political party from changing their party during their term. If they do, they would be required to forfeit their seat. 

During the meeting, all eight council members present expressed support for the resolution. Spadola and four other members did not attend the meeting. 

In October, Spadola – then the council’s sole Republican – switched his party registration from Republican to Democrat – altering the makeup of the council to all Democratic members. 

Currently, Wilmington’s city charter prohibits the majority party from nominating more than three candidates for the four at-large council seats, essentially guaranteeing that at least one member is from a minority political party. The charter does not explicitly say that council members cannot change their party while in office. 

During the meeting Thursday, council members Zanthia Oliver, Coby Owens, and Council president Trippi Congo called that a “loophole” in the charter that Spadola relied on to change his party affiliation. 

They argued that the purpose of the charter is to require a member of a minority party on the council at all times. 

“It is very clear what the intent of the charter is … and unfortunately, we have an instance where we have a council member who went around that intent,” Congo said during Thursday’s meeting.  

Hackett said he proposed the measure to ensure that party switches do not happen in the future, arguing such moves undermine fair representation and the city’s democratic process.

“It just was a slap in the face to all of us,” Hackett told Spotlight Delaware.

A handful of residents also spoke during the meeting, saying Spadola’s party switch disenfranchised voters. They called on the City Council to force him to vacate his seat or take the matter to the Delaware Court of Chancery.

“By switching midterm he has betrayed the very voters who place their trust in him,” Brandon Brice, secretary of the Delaware Republican Party, said. 

Spadola, council clash over party switch

Following Spadola’s party switch last fall, he told Spotlight Delaware he had considered changing parties since 2021. He finally did so, he said, because he disagreed with several policies associated with President Donald Trump, including tariffs, ICE enforcement, and federal troop deployments into U.S. cities. 

Last fall, the city council’s chief of staff Elijah Simmons said Spadola would be able to finish his term, which ends in 2028, He said the city’s charter contained “no written prohibitions against party affiliation changes while in office.” 

Since Wilmington’s voter registration is heavily Democratic, three of the four at-large City Council seats have historically gone to Democrats, leaving a single seat for a Republican party candidate.

Spadola was first elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2024.

This week, Spadola took to social media to talk about his fellow councilmembers’ recent actions, including urging him to change his party back, or to vacate his seat. 

“You would think in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, with an overwhelmingly Democratic council they would welcome a new Democrat to the fold, but you know there’s politics going on here,” he said in a video posted to Facebook last week. 

Spadola did not describe in detail the “politics” that he believed had influenced other members’ actions. 

Shawn Dottery, a Republican who ran against Spadola for the at-large council seat in 2024, told Spotlight Delaware that “certain members of council” approached him in January, and urged him to speak out against Spadola’s actions. He said he declined. 

But the councilmembers who have criticized his party change say their concerns are not an attack on Spadola specifically, but instead an effort to ensure fair representation.   

Congo said he had been looking into the situation since last year. He said he had spoken with other council members, residents, the city’s law department and other attorneys to get advice, which led him to send a letter in February telling Spadola that he had to change his party affiliation back to Republican. 

“Should the matter remain unresolved after that date [Feb. 16], we will consider next steps, including declaring your seat vacant,” Congo said in the letter. 

Spadola discussed the letter in his social media post, saying that councilmembers were working in an attempt to vacate his seat so that they could replace him with an “unelected, handpicked successor.” 

Spadola also hired an attorney to respond to Congo. In a letter to the council president, the attorney William Larson asserted that the city’s charter does not prohibit Spadola from changing party affiliation.

“We reserve all rights to seek declaratory judgment, an injunction, and additional relief in the Court of Chancery should you take any further action to vacate Council Member Spadola’s seat,” Larson said in the Feb. 12 letter. 

Larson also accused Congo of breaking Delaware’s open meeting laws by jointly discussing the issue with multiple councilmembers. Congo denied the allegation. 

“It’s a distraction,” Congo told Spotlight Delaware.  

Congo said he has not responded to Spadola’s attorney’s letter. He is not concerned about a potential lawsuit, he said. 

On Thursday, Congo and Hackett also told Spotlight Delaware that they would have further discussions with the City Council and with the community, about their next steps in addressing the issue.

On the other side of the debate, the Wilmington Democratic Committee sent a letter to City Council opposing the resolution, arguing that it is likely to be unconstitutional. They said it ignores the “political reality” that some Republicans may choose to become Democrats. 

They also urged council to consider allowing residents to vote for four candidates from the same party.

“Gaining one more Democratic legislative seat in Wilmington is a win for our party, and frankly, a win for Wilmington,” Wilmington Democratic Committee Chair Cassandra Marshall said.

The post Wilmington considers charter change following Spadola’s party switch appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

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

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

• Senate hearing to discuss controversial health care funding reform
• DEFAC forecasters to set bounds of budget negotiations
• Education secretary to announce Sussex charter school’s future
• Sussex County to consider moratorium on clusters of homes in rural areas
• Wilmington mayor to present his budget; Kent County to hold a public workshop on its budget   
• Police accountability meetings in Dover and Wilmington 

Senate to discuss hospital price controls

Delaware senators will begin formal discussions this week on what has already become the most hotly debated bill of the legislative session.

On Wednesday, the Senate Health and Social Services Committee will consider Senate Bill 1, which would impose limits on the rates some large insurance companies pay to reimburse hospitals for health services. 

Already, lobbying against the bill has spilled out of Legislative Hall and into online ads paid for by the Delaware Healthcare Association. In one ad, the hospital industry group calls on viewers to “say no to SB 1.” 

This week’s hearing comes months after Delaware ended a fight over another measure meant to rein in hospital costs. Last fall, Delaware agreed to remove a state hospital board’s key enforcement tool that had given it authority to veto hospital budgets officials deemed excessive. 

The state agreed to do so as part of a settlement it reached with ChristianaCare, which had sued the state, calling the board’s authority “draconian.” 

The hospital system – Delaware largest and most influential – also claimed last year that the board’s veto authority would cause “further erosion to the integrity and viability of the (Delaware) corporate franchise.” The remarks piggybacked on criticism being lobbed at Delaware at the time by Elon Musk and several other executives in tech and finance. 

Now Senate Bill 1, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, is a new referendum on hospital pricing in a state that has some of the highest health care costs in the country.  

The legislation would set reimbursement ceilings on the rates insurance companies carrying plans for state employees and some commercial entities pay to hospitals.

Health care providers generally earn the bulk of their revenue by negotiating with insurers who represent large groups of patients. The negotiations  determine how much the insurer will pay for health care services, and in turn the costs that will be passed onto patients. 

📍 The Senate Health and Social Services will meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave., in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here. 

Lawmakers will also consider 20 other bills or resolutions this week, according to legislative agendas.

Among those in front of various committees is a bill that would incentivize businesses to build gas-turbine electricity generators, and one that would cement rules that limit rent increases at mobile home parks.

Before the full Senate on Tuesday is a bill that would remove a cap on the number of households with solar panels that utilities can pay for excess electricity generated.

To view details of all hearings, scroll through the “What’s Happening” box here. 

How much money will the state get next year?   

Delaware’s budget forecasting committee – known by its acronym DEFAC – will release updated projections Monday for the amount of money the state could bring in during the next fiscal year.

The estimates will be used in the coming weeks for budget negotiations among lawmakers and with the governor over how much Delaware should spend of that sum.

In January, Gov. Matt Meyer based his $6.9 billion budget proposal off of DEFAC’s previous revenue estimates released at the end of last year. Those numbers showed a rosier picture than previously estimated – largely because of a change in tax law that insulated Delaware from some of the impacts of President Donald Trump’s federal spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Since then, several significant global events have occurred – most notably the ongoing war between Iran and the United States and Israel. The war is already disrupting global oil supply chains, which could increase costs for Delaware beyond energy.    

📍 The full council of DEFAC will meet Monday at 1 p.m. at the state’s Buena Vista property, located at 661 South DuPont Highway in New Castle. Click here for virtual details and for the meeting agenda.

Will Delaware close a Sussex County charter school?  

Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten will announce Thursday whether the Bryan Allen Stevenson School of Excellence will lose its right to operate as a charter school in the state. 

The scheduled announcement follows a months-long investigation by state officials into enrollment issues that have plagued the school. In February, those officials recommended that Marten revoke the school’s charter. 

If she follows the recommendation, the closure would be the first for a Delaware charter school in seven years and the first closed by state regulators in a decade. 

It would also leave Sussex County with just two charter schools, compared with six in Kent County and 15 in New Castle County.

📍 Marten will present her decision at a meeting of the Delaware State Board of Education, scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday. The meeting will occur at the John W. Colette Building, located at 35 Commerce Way, Suite 1, in Dover. For information about virtual participation, click here. 

Sussex proposes moratorium on dense communities in rural areas

The Sussex County Council will discuss a proposal Tuesday to place a temporary moratorium on the construction of what officials call “cluster subdivisions” in rural areas. 

Councilman John Rieley told The News Journal last week that the moratorium aims to stop a “land rush,” in which developers race to submit applications before new ordinances governing those denser types of communities can be passed and take effect.

Among reforms being considered in Delaware’s fastest-growing county is a proposal to loosen restrictions on a county program that incentivizes affordable rental units, and one to increase open space requirements in dense developments.

📍 The Sussex County Council will hold its weekly meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. For more information, including about virtual attendance, click here.

Wilmington, Kent County governments to discuss upcoming budgets 

It’s budget season for Delaware’s cities and counties too, and this week Wilmington and Kent County will hold public meetings focused on how they will spend money next year. 

In Wilmington, Mayor John Carney will formally present his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2027 — which begins in July — in a speech to the City Council. 

Last year, the city’s budget included a 6.5% increase in water and sewer fees, and more dollars to the Wilmington Fire Department so it could take over ambulance services in the city. Ultimately, 11 members of the City Council voted to approve that budget while two voted against it.  

📍 The Wilmington City Council will meet for Carney’s budget address at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Old Town Hall, located at 512 North Market Street in Wilmington.  For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

For Kent Countians, there will be a public workshop hosted by the county to discuss the proposed capital budget and public safety budget for the 2027 fiscal year. 

Last year, the county budget passed with no public comments made – neither on the  12 resolutions attached to the budget nor on the budget ordinance itself, according to a report from Delaware Public Media. 

Kent County Levy Court President Joanne Masten attributed the lack of public comment to what she described as the county’s careful stewardship of public money, the report stated.  

📍 The Kent County Levy Court will meet for the workshop at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Kent County Administrative Complex, located at 555 Bay Road in Dover.  For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here. 

Police boards in Delaware’s largest cities to meet

Officials in Wilmington and Dover also will be meeting this week for their cities’ respective police oversight boards.

Such boards were created in Delaware in the months and years after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

During Wilmington’s meeting, officials will review past community engagement events and discuss a recommendation report, among other agenda items. 

In Dover, the board will discuss community meetings, and complaints, according to its agenda. Following the meeting, new members of the Dover Police Advisory Board will participate in a mandatory training session. 

📍 The Wilmington Community Police Accountability Board will meet at 1 p.m. Monday at the Third Floor Conference Room in the Louis L. Redding City/County Building, located at 800 N. French St. in Wilmington. For details about virtual attendance, click here. 

📍 The Dover Police Advisory Board will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Dover PD’s Hutchison Public Assembly Room, located at 400 S. Queen St. in Dover. No virtual information is listed for the meeting. The agenda states that individuals who wish to be recognized during public comment should notify Rebecca McNamara at 302-736-7100.

The post Get Involved: Hospital cost fight to resume; Sussex charter to learn its fate appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Absurdist video urges policymakers and users to resist deliberate deterioration of platforms and devices

The video’s opening shot shows a man hiding under a bed snipping in a hole in someone’s sock. Seconds later, the same man uses a saw to shorten a table leg so that it wobbles during breakfast. “My job is to make things shitty,” the man explains. “The official title is enshittificator. What I do is I take things that are perfectly fine and I make them worse.”

The video, released recently by the Norwegian Consumer Council, is an absurdist take on a serious issue; it is part of a wider, global campaign aimed at fighting back against the “enshittification”, or gradual deterioration, of digital products and services.

Poll of students of all faiths and none found almost a quarter had seen Jews targeted for their religion or ethnicity

One in five students would be reluctant to, or would never, houseshare with a Jewish student, according to a survey by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) that says antisemitism has “become normalised” on UK campuses.

A UJS poll of 1,000 students “of all faiths and none” found almost a quarter (23%) have seen behaviour that targets Jewish students for their religion or ethnicity and nearly half (47%) have witnessed justification of the 7 October attacks by Hamas.

Jose Omar Flores-Penaloza was willing to admit that he had entered the United States illegally. He was ready to be deported, according to his attorneys.

But federal prosecutors would not let him go last spring without making him answer for another crime — one he had never heard of.

Weeks earlier, President Donald Trump, to address what he called a national emergency, ordered a stretch of borderland transferred to the military so that troops could help apprehend unauthorized migrants.

Because prosecutors believed Flores-Penaloza had crossed through that zone, now called a national defense area, they charged him with trespassing on military property under statutes including one enacted in 1909 to keep spies away from arsenals.

The added misdemeanors were unlikely to lengthen his sentence; they typically result in time served and deportation. But Flores-Penaloza maintained his innocence in the face of the allegation that could cast him as a national security threat.

So he awaited trial in a New Mexico jail.

One year into the second Trump administration, federal courts are facing a surge of immigration-related litigation, including a record number of habeas petitions from detainees who say they are being unlawfully held.

In Minnesota last month, after a frustrated judge asked why defendants he had ordered released were still in custody, a government attorney blurted out: “What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks.”

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune spent four months investigating a persistent source of pressure in border districts — one experts say is taxing the courts and challenging long-standing principles of criminal law.

Since last April, at least 4,700 immigrants already charged with entering the country illegally have faced additional misdemeanor counts accusing them of trespassing on military property. Court records reviewed by the news organizations show that more than 90% of cases have been resolved, and that most did not end in convictions on the trespass charges: About 60% were dropped or dismissed.

At least nine judges in West Texas and New Mexico have found the prosecutions legally deficient. Citing the basic requirement of mens rea — a guilty mind — many ruled that defendants could not be found guilty because they did not know they were trespassing on military land. 

Yet prosecutors have continued filing the charges and appealing adverse rulings, arguing that knowingly crossing the border is sufficient to prove criminal intent. More than 20 legal scholars and former prosecutors told reporters they could not identify a conventional law-enforcement or military goal that would justify their persistence.

The strain has been visible in crowded federal dockets.

“We would do jury selection and trial on a misdemeanor case that would have no bearing on the sentence whatsoever?” West Texas District Judge Leon Schydlower asked a prosecutor in June. He noted that there were about 40 similar cases on his docket and asked the prosecutor what she would do if he scheduled all the trials on the same day.

“We would have to be prepared to move to go forward on all 40, Your Honor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia “Patti” Aguayo replied, prefacing her position by saying she had no choice in the matter.

“We have not been allowed to do anything but move forward.”

Prosecutors were operating under a directive issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi mandating “zealous advocacy” of the administration’s priorities and warning that attorneys who declined to advance them could face discipline or termination.

Military Trespass Cases Under Trump Administration Skyrocket

Senior officials in the U.S. attorney’s offices handling trespass cases declined repeated interview requests, and a spokesperson in the West Texas office asked reporters to stop contacting prosecutors directly. A Justice Department spokesperson noted that one of the charges carries a longer sentence and claimed the prosecutions have “proven to be a significant deterrent to both illegal crossings and cartel activity along the border,” though the department did not provide supporting documentation.

Had prosecutors accepted his offer to plead guilty to illegal entry in exchange for dropping the trespass charge, Flores-Penaloza would have been processed for deportation to Mexico, his public defenders Amanda Skinner and Victoria Trull said.

Instead, he remained in custody for more than a month, in a county jail where guards have been accused of threatening to use Tasers on inmates’ genitals and bursting into sleeping areas with flash-bangs. (In a court filing, attorneys for Doña Ana County denied the first allegation and wrote, about the second, that guards used “specialized equipment during operations” but disputed they were “terrorizing vulnerable detainees.”)

Hours into Flores-Penaloza’s June 17 bench trial before Chief Magistrate Judge Gregory Wormuth, prosecutors could not pinpoint exactly where he had crossed the border or produce a clear map showing the boundaries of the military zone.

“I also don’t dispute,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Castellano conceded, “that we don’t meet the mens rea requirement the court has indicated in a prior opinion.”

Wormuth, who had dismissed dozens of similar charges, grew frustrated. He noted that Flores-Penaloza had been in custody for 40 days largely because of the unproven allegation.

“The United States has come in here and put not a single bit of evidence that would allow me to find that he even entered the national defense area,” Wormuth said. “It is very, very disturbing.”

He acquitted Flores-Penaloza on the trespass counts while finding him guilty of illegal entry. The young man was deported.

But more cases were coming.

Federal law generally bars the military from detaining civilians on domestic soil. But there was a workaround: Troops could capture intruders on their own bases.

Under orders from Trump last April, federal agencies including the Department of the Interior transferred more than 200 miles of riverbank and desert scrub in West Texas and New Mexico to the armed forces, converting the terrain into extensions of Army installations.

Speaking to troops deployed to one of the new national defense areas, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that anyone entering them would be on notice.

“You’ve got signs like this one all across the border wall facing into Mexico,” he said — “clear English, clear Spanish.”

The plan appeared straightforward. But once cases reached courtrooms, that clarity evaporated.

Detained migrants said they hadn’t seen signs and had no way of knowing they had crossed military land. Prosecutors often couldn’t prove otherwise.

ProPublica and the Tribune identified 1,300 New Mexico district court records in which the government stated how far from these signs migrants crossed the border or were apprehended. The news organizations found that some were arrested more than 20 miles away from a sign, and that most didn’t come within 1,000 feet of any posting. In at least one Texas case, defense attorneys demonstrated how difficult it was to read the 12-by-18-inch sign from about 10 feet away.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in New Mexico said what matters is not where a defendant was apprehended but where they entered the country. In some cases, such as Flores-Penaloza’s, prosecutors lacked evidence of that as well.

These evidentiary gaps snagged most of the cases that reached judges, underscoring an existential question:

“What is your evidence that he knew he was accessing a restricted national defense area?” a federal magistrate judge, Miguel Torres, asked during an El Paso, Texas, jury trial. Adequate notice was essential, he said, “so that we don’t ensnare innocent people that do not know they are violating this specific law.”

Torres ruled against the government at trial, but many cases didn’t make it that far.

In Texas, many defendants pleaded guilty. To fight the trespass charges meant waiting in jail possibly for weeks or months. They chose to go home instead.

But in New Mexico, within weeks of the first cases, judges began throwing out the trespass charges as soon as they were filed for lack of probable cause.

Prosecutors responded with an unusual maneuver. Rather than abandon the cases, they refiled them using a charging document called an information — a tool commonly used for misdemeanors but, according to the legal experts consulted by ProPublica and the Tribune, rarely deployed to revive cases judges had already deemed unsupported.

Prosecutors used informations to resurrect more than 1,600 military trespass cases, the news organizations found.

“If there is no probable cause, the case is supposed to end,” said Meghan Skelton, a former assistant federal public defender and prosecutor. “They are trying to circumvent that in a way that has not been done in the 30 years I’ve been practicing law.”

The tactic kicked off what one defense attorney called a “ridiculous dance.” Judges would separate the immigration and trespass charges, accept guilty pleas on illegal entry and reiterate that there was no probable cause to detain defendants on the military counts. With deportation imminent, prosecutors would then move to dismiss the trespass charges themselves.

Prosecutors who left the U.S. attorney’s offices in the early months of the second Trump administration told reporters they were alarmed to see the lengths their former colleagues were going to pursue dubious cases. “You’re just losing credibility with the court, and on a bigger picture, credibility with the public,” said Marisa Ong, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Las Cruces.

It was the kind of outcome Matilda “Tilli” Villalobos sought to avoid when she saw the zealous advocacy mandate last February and left the district for private practice. “I don’t want to be the one standing up in court in front of a judge advocating for something that I don’t believe is even legal,” said the decorated former sex crimes prosecutor, who now defends immigrants charged with criminal offenses.

Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico before being fired by Trump last year, called the prosecutions a “flustering attempt to create fear and chaos by whatever means necessary.”

“It would be laughable if it wasn’t so cruel and chaotic and dangerous,” he added, “both for the people involved and for the justice system as a whole.”

The national defense areas were supposed to allow active-duty troops to apprehend unlawful border crossers for the first time. So far, that outcome has largely failed to materialize.

According to a spokesperson for Joint Task Force-Southern Border, about 1,500 deployed troops had made just 68 apprehensions as of last week, leaving the Border Patrol still responsible for the vast majority of detentions.

Even so, the administration has continued expanding the zones from California to Texas.

Prosecutors began filing military trespass charges in South Texas last month, starting with a man caught crossing the Rio Grande, in an area now designated an extension of the Joint Base San Antonio. Along the river, warnings of prosecution are written across floating buoys and blared in Spanish from loudspeakers that can be heard in Mexico.

Border Patrol agents ask migrants detained in national defense areas to sign a form acknowledging they entered without permission, placing the documents in their immigration files, then-interim El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Walter Slosar said in a news conference last June. “And so the next time they cross the border unlawfully, there’s going to be no issue” about notice.

In New Mexico, prosecutors have used that written notice and previous military trespass charges to help secure 20 guilty pleas from defendants who reentered. Still, the news organizations’ analysis of court records found that nearly every trespassing charge in the state has been dismissed or dropped.

The Justice Department continues to press its legal theory in appellate court. In May, prosecutors filed trespass charges against Komiljon Toirov, a man from Uzbekistan detained in New Mexico. Toirov does not speak English or Spanish and could not have understood posted warnings. Prosecutors maintain that does not matter. They wanted him held in jail for trial, but a judge released him.

For months since then, prosecutors have fought that decision. As the case bounced between the district court and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judges openly bristled at the government’s persistence.

“The defense bar and every judge in the Las Cruces district courthouse disagrees with the government,” U.S. District Judge Sarah Davenport wrote in October. A three-judge appellate panel in December noted that prosecutors had produced “little to no evidence” to support their case for jailing Toirov.

The government has now filed notice that it plans to appeal again, indicating that it will seek a higher court ruling supporting its argument that Toirov didn’t need to know about the military zone in order to trespass onto it.

“We remain confident that our interpretation is consistent with the law and U.S. Supreme Court precedent,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in an email.

Ryan Goodman, a national security law professor at New York University, said the government’s persistence was “jaw-dropping.”

“It appears to be prosecutorial abuse by continuing to bring fatally flawed cases,” he said in an email. “This kind of abuse of the Justice Department’s powers has very significant repercussions for the ability of our democracy to survive.”

Meanwhile, the El Paso courthouse has eased into a new normal. On many mornings, shackled migrants plead guilty to military trespass charges rather than remain jailed awaiting trial.

Occasionally, the routine falters.

On Nov. 3, a young man named Brandon David Munoz-Luna spoke up during his plea hearing. “In my case, I did not know that I was entering a military reservation,” he said through an interpreter.

Federal Magistrate Judge Robert Castañeda turned to Assistant U.S. Attorney Adrian Gallegos. He asked, “Does the government insist on making this a charge you’re pursuing?”

“Yes, Judge,” the prosecutor replied. “Pursuant to DOJ policy.”

Minutes later, Munoz-Luna pleaded no contest, and the court moved on.

The post The Trump Administration’s “Disturbing” New Legal Strategy to Prosecute Border Crossers Is Taxing Courts and Testing the Law appeared first on ProPublica.

Patchwork state policies and limited federal oversight have led to a fragmented system for tracking organ donor status.

Some economists think the Fed, facing inflationary pressures from rising energy prices, may not cut interest rates at all this year.

Starting in September, even Android developers not in Google's Play Store will still be required to register with Google to distribute their apps in Brazil, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand, with Google continuing "to roll out these requirements globally" four months later. Even developers distributing Android apps on the web for sideloading will be required to register, pay Google a $25 fee, and provide a government ID. But there's a new theory on what's secretly been motivating Google from an unnamed source in the "Keep Android Open" movement, writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland: "You can't separate this really from their ongoing interactions with Epic and the settlement that they came to," they argue. Twelve days ago Epic Games and Google announced a new proposal for settling their long-running dispute over the legality of alternative app stores on Android phones. (Rather than agreeing to let third-party app stores into their Play Store, Google wants them to continue being sideloaded, promising in a blog post last week that they'll even offer a "more streamlined" and "simplified" sideloading alternative for rival app stores. "This Registered App Store program will begin outside of the US first, and we intend to bring it to the US as well, subject to court approval.") So "developer verification" could be Google's fallback plan if U.S. courts fail to approve this. "If the Google Play Store has to allow any third-party repository app store, Google essentially has given up all control of the apps. But if they're able to claw back that control by requiring that all developers, no matter how they distribute their apps, have to register with Google — have to agree to their Terms & Conditions, pay them money, provide identification — then they have a large degree of indirect control over any app that can be developed for the entire platform." But that plan threatens millions of people using the alternative F/OSS app distributor F-Droid, since Google also wants to have only one signature attached to Android apps. Marc Prud'hommeaux, a member of F-Droid's board of directors, says that "all of a sudden breaks all those versions of the application distributed through F-Droid or any other app store!" Prud'hommeaux says they've told Google's Android team "You know perfectly well that you're killing F-Droid!" creating an "existential" threat to an app distributor "that has existed happily for over 10 years." But good things started happening when he created the website Keep Android Open: There's now a "huge backlog" of signers for an Open Letter that already includes EFF, the Software Freedom Conservancy, and the Free Software Foundation. He believes Android's existing Play Protect security "is completely sufficient to handle the particular scenarios they claim that developer verification is meant to address"... The Keep Android Open site urges developers not to sign up for Android's early access program when it launches next week. (Instead, they're asking developers to respond to invites with an email about their concerns — and to spread the word to other developers and organizations in forums and social media posts.) There's also a petition at Change.org currently signed by 64,000 developers — adding 20,000 new signatures in the last 10 days. And "If you have an Android device, try installing F-Droid!" he adds. Google tracks how many people install these alternative app repositories, and a larger user base means greater consequences from any Android policy changes. Plus, installing F-Droid "might be refreshing!" Prud'hommeaux says. "You don't see all the advertisements and promotions and scam and crapware stuff that you see in the commercial app stores!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Exclusive: Revelation comes as company faces mounting scrutiny over use of AI to provide health tips

Google has dropped a new artificial intelligence search feature that gave users crowdsourced health advice from amateurs around the world.

The company had said its launch of “What People Suggest”, which provided tips from strangers, showed “the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe”.

A journalist charts the progress of AI pioneer Demis Hassabis from child chess prodigy to Nobel prize winner

It was March 2016, and at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, the world was gathered to watch the culmination of a battle 2,500 years in the making. On one side was the South Korean Lee Se-dol, the second-highest ranking Go player in the world. On the other was AlphaGo – a computer program developed by London-based artificial intelligence research company DeepMind.

“Chess is the greatest game mankind has invented,” game designer Alex Randolph once said. “Go is the greatest game mankind has discovered.” Something about the ancient Chinese duel, where players place stones on a grid, trying to capture territory, feels fundamental – inevitable, even. Chess had fallen to the robots nearly 20 years earlier, when DeepBlue beat Kasparov, but Go, with its vast decision space (there are far more legal board positions than atoms in the observable universe) remained a plucky holdout.

Latest Android superphone packs great cameras, fast chips, long battery, a stylus and first-of-its-kind privacy display

Samsung’s latest Ultra superphone promises to keep shoulder surfers out of your business with a first-of-its-kind privacy display built into its huge 6.9in screen.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is Samsung’s top-of-the-line phone costing £1,279 (€1,449/$1,299/A$2,199) and is one of the most feature-packed handsets you can get, with four cameras on the back, an integrated stylus and AI assistance in every corner.

Marianna Spring goes Inside the Rage Machine. Plus: the finale of the brilliant comedy Small Prophets. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“My goal is to not get sued,” says Matt Motyl, a former senior staff researcher at Facebook and Meta. He is one of the ex-employees who give reporter Marianna Spring the inside story of how social media giants have profited from algorithms that perpetuate divisiveness and hate. She also studies whistleblower documents, the arrival of TikTok and charts how events such as the pandemic and the Southport riots played out across various platforms. Hollie Richardson

Covid exposed the lack of data on the country’s 140 million mobile migrant workers, but a new project in Odisha is helping to fill in the gaps

Raja Pradhan is sitting cross-legged, scrolling on his phone in his village in eastern India when a green WhatsApp chat bubble pops up on the screen. “Namaskar! Apana bahare kama pain jauthibe? Apananka suchana diaantu.” (Hello! Are you going outside for work? Please share your information.)

He reads the message twice, unsure whether to respond. “I don’t know where this information would go,” he says. “Would someone use it against me? The internet can be tricky at times. Why should I even share my details in the first place?”

In the Middle East, the occupation is the original sin. And those who banked on this US-backed ‘stability’ now find it giving way beneath them

A war spiralling in the Middle East. A death toll now in the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there is, at the heart of it, a simple logic: everything that is unfolding is a result of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.

As the conflagration spreads, the connection to Palestine becomes obscured. But it is clear how much of the stability of the Middle East was secured at the expense of the Palestinians. Look at the region before 7 October 2023. US policy on the Middle East focused on “integration’’: containment of Iran, signing up more Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel and the creation, therefore, of a bloc of economic and security interests under the US military umbrella.

In 2024 Anthropic was sued over claims it infringed copyrights when training LLMs. But as they try to settle, they may have a problem. The Free Software Foundation announced Friday that Anthropic's training data apparently even included the book "Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software" — for which the Free Software Foundation holds a copyright. It was published by O'Reilly and by the FSF under the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). This is a free license allowing use of the work for any purpose without payment. Obviously, the right thing to do is protect computing freedom: share complete training inputs with every user of the LLM, together with the complete model, training configuration settings, and the accompanying software source code. Therefore, we urge Anthropic and other LLM developers that train models using huge datasets downloaded from the Internet to provide these LLMs to their users in freedom. We are a small organization with limited resources and we have to pick our battles, but if the FSF were to participate in a lawsuit such as Bartz v. Anthropic and find our copyright and license violated, we would certainly request user freedom as compensation. "The FSF doesn't usually sue for copyright infringement," reads the headline on the FSF's announcement, "but when we do, we settle for freedom."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US supreme court has ‘ransacked’ the country, president argues, in wake of its ruling against his trade agenda

Donald Trump has claimed he has “the absolute right” to impose new tariffs after the US supreme court ruled many of the import duties he imposed last year were illegal.

The president attacked the court in a late night broadside on Sunday, accusing it of having “unnecessarily RANSACKED” the US – and failing to show him sufficient loyalty.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 16.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 16, No. 539.

And what others can learn from Japan's embrace of American power.

The end of an unnecessary fiction.

The Kremlin is in no hurry to save its closest partner in the Middle East.

As One Battle After Another swept the Academy Awards, Paul Thomas Anderson, Javier Bardem and Conan O’Brien gave a welcome reality check to the glitzy ceremony

• Oscar winners 2026: the full list

In his opening monologue to the 98th Academy Awards, host Conan O’Brien issued a note of caution to easily offended viewers.

“I warn you, tonight could get political,” O’Brien said. “If that makes you uncomfortable, there’s an alternative Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock at a Dave & Buster’s down the street.”

The United States will face the winner of Monday's semifinal between Italy and Venezuela in Tuesday's World Baseball Classic title game.

• As it happened: USA 2-1 Dominican Republic

• Americans will play Italy or Venezuela in final

Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony homered and the United States limited the Dominican Republic’s electric offense to win a thrilling semi-final 2-1 on Sunday and move one win from capturing its second World Baseball Classic championship.

The Dominican Republic threatened in the ninth when Julio Rodríguez drew a walk and advanced to third against Mason Miller. With two outs, Miller struck out Geraldo Perdomo for his second save but the final pitch – on a full count and with the dangerous Fernando Tatis Jr up next – was several inches below the strike zone. ABS is not a part of the World Baseball Classic, so the Dominicans – who benefited from some missed calls themselves – were unable to challenge. Although the Americans’ excellent pitching won the game rather than the umpiring, it was a dismal way to end what had been an enthralling contest.

This blog is closed

Iraq’s football team will travel to Mexico for a 2026 World Cup playoff match despite calls for it to be postponed due to the Middle East war, the country’s football association has announced.

“The national team will depart at the end of the week to Mexico via a private plane,” said Iraq football association president Adnan Dirjal in a statement, adding they had contacted Fifa to help facilitate the trip during the conflict in the region that has hampered flights.

⚾ USA will play either Italy or Venezuela in final

⚾ Full report: Blown call ends thrilling semi-final

USA 0-0 DR, top 1st

Severino’s sinker is hitting 99 MPH and now his cutter is whipped past the swinging bat of Bryce Harper. Bang! Two up, two down, two strikeouts.

The UK's science minister is announcing details of a five-year, £2.5 billion investment in nuclear fusion, reports the Times of London, "including building one of the world's first prototype fusion power plants in Nottinghamshire and developing a UK sector projected to employ 10,000 people by 2030." Despite the potentially transformative impact of fusion, which in theory could provide limitless clean energy and create a £12 trillion global market, no country has managed to use this fledgling technology to generate useable electricity... [T]he UK is backing a spherical tokamak design... investing an initial £1.3 billion into a prototype fusion power plant called Step (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) on the site of a decommissioned coal-fired power station at West Burton in Nottinghamshire. Paul Methven, chief executive of the government-owned UK Industrial Fusion Solutions, which is delivering the Step project, said the aim is to get the reactor operating early in the 2040s. "It's quite an aggressive programme," he said. "We need to show that we can achieve genuine 'wall socket' energy — which has not been done before." On Monday, [science minister] Vallance will also announce £180 million for a facility in Culham, Oxfordshire, to manufacture tritium fuel and £50 million for training 2,000 scientists and engineers in fusion-related disciplines. The government is also buying a £45 million fusion-dedicated AI supercomputer called Sunrise to model plasma physics. Scientists at the UK Atomic Energy Authority last year developed an AI model that can rapidly simulate how the ultra-hot fuel in a fusion power plant will behave, cutting calculations that previously took days down to seconds... Vallance will also announce new support and collaboration for the many fusion, robotics, engineering and AI start-ups working in Britain, to develop a strong supply chain for a new fusion sector. One of those companies, Tokamak Energy, which spun out from the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 2009, has already built a smaller reactor that has informed the Step design. In March 2022, it became the first private organisation in the world to surpass 100 million degrees Celsius in its reactor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Primary school teacher Pavel Talankin’s record of the indoctrination of his pupils to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine beats contenders

• Oscars 2026 winners: the full list

Mr Nobody Against Putin, a primary school teacher’s record of the indoctrination of his pupils to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has won the Oscar for best documentary.

Pavel Talankin, who is now in exile in Europe, picked up the award alongside the film’s US co-director, David Borenstein. It beat favourite The Perfect Neighbor to take the prize, along with other contenders The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light and Cutting Through Rocks.

As Kumail Nanjiani took the stage to announce the winner for Best Live-Action Short at the 98th annual Academy Awards, the actor exclaimed: "And the Oscar goes to ... it's a tie."

US president’s call for coalition to protect commercial ships gets muted response – key US politics stories from 15 March at a glance

Donald Trump’s call for allies to send ships to the strait of Hormuz to protect commercial shipping vessels and unblock global oil supplies has met a muted response.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called on the UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries to send ships to the waterway, the world’s busiest shipping route, which is being violently blockaded by Iran.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, whose term as representative of Texas' 2nd congressional district is set to end following his loss in the Republican primary earlier this month​, appeared on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan​" on Sunday.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for March 16, No. 1,731.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for March 16, No. 743.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 16 #1009

Rain fell between 1 and 2in hourly in Maui, Molokai and the Big Island while tens of thousands are without power

Rain continued falling in Hawaii on Sunday where a strong storm brought flash flooding, blizzard conditions and landslides to the islands as residents reported collapsed roads and one home washing away in rising waters.

Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places such as Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where rain had been falling between 1 and 2in (2.5 and 5cm) an hour overnight, according to the Hawaii emergency management agency.

Duke is the top overall seed in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament, with Arizona, Michigan, and Florida also landing on the No. 1 line.

Having been nominated in 1986, the actor sets a new record for the longest gap between nominations before a win

• Oscars 2026 – follow the action live!

• The winners: the full list – updating live

Amy Madigan has won the best supporting actress Oscar for Weapons at the 98th Academy Awards,.

Madigan defeated a strong field to take the prize, including Elle Fanning for Sentimental Value, Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners and Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another. In doing so she set a new record for the longest gap between nominations before a win; she was previously nominated in the same category 40 years ago, in 1986, for Twice in a Lifetime.

Taking down Iran's cheap drones is a drain on the U.S. weapons stockpile. Emerging laser technology may be a cost-effective key to taking them down.

Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz threaten to drive U.S. gas prices to record highs. The attacks could also have a cascading effect on other prices.

The unprecedented Strait of Hormuz closure amid the Iran war has spiked the price of oil and gas. It's also left thousands of crew members stranded on ships as the war rages on.

The Iran war is testing the U.S. military's ability to combat Iran's drones in a cost-effective way. Emerging laser tech, designed to zap drones out of the sky, may help.

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.

Haiti's gangs have near-total control of Port-au-Prince. Bestselling author Mitch Albom runs an orphanage in the city. Children there grow up and get an education in a haven behind walls.

The strategic shipping lane carries a fifth of the world's oil. Analysts warn prolonged disruption could send fuel prices soaring and trigger a global economic slowdown.

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.

Europe's EV sales for January and February spiked 21% from last year, according to new data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Electrek reports that just in those two months over 600,000 EVs were sold in Europe. And figures for "rest of world" (which excludes Europe, North America, and China) are up a whopping 84% — with 370,000 EVs sold in January and February. (EVs now represent more than 30% of the vehicles sold in South Korea.) But for the same period China's sales are down 26% from last year, with 1.1 million vehicles sold. And North America showed an even larger drop of 36% from the January/February figures in 2025, now selling just 170,000 electric vehicles, while Canada's EV sales were down 23%. EV sales seem heavily influenced by government incentives, with Germany and France leading Europe's growth: EV sales in Germany are up 26% so far this year, following the country's introduction of a new subsidy program at the start of 2026. France's market is up 30%, supported by its existing incentive program. Italy is also seeing rapid growth. EV sales there jumped 23% month-over-month in February, making it the country's strongest month ever for EV sales. The Italian market is now up 98% year to date. That surge follows the Italian government's October 2025 launch of a new subsidy program, funded by the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility, to increase EV adoption. Households can receive up to €11,000 ($12,700) in incentives, while smaller businesses can get up to €20,000 ($23,200)... [T]he global EV transition isn't slowing, but it's becoming much more uneven depending on policy, incentives, and trade rules.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Students in Canterbury given antibiotics for fast-acting and invasive meningococcal disease, says UKHSA

Two people have died and 11 are reportedly seriously ill in hospital after an outbreak of a rare form of invasive meningitis at the University of Kent.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it had provided antibiotics to students in the Canterbury area after it detected 13 cases of invasive meningococcal disease, a combination of meningitis and septicaemia.

Powerful storm chain to affect 200 million in US as it carries blizzard conditions, damaging winds and thunderstorms

Winter’s grip has yet to release as an erratic patchwork of severe weather moved across much of the US, dumping heavy snow and making roads impassable in the upper midwest while damaging high winds swept across the Plains.

As portions of the mid-south readied for thunderstorms, forecasters said the storms will spread eastward and by Monday threaten a large swath of the eastern US, with mid-Atlantic states and Washington DC at greatest risk for high winds and tornadoes.

• American pars 18th for victory after birdie on 17

• Fitzpatrick had led at Sawgrass before late slip

The PGA Tour might have lost out in the court of public opinion over whether the Players Championship could be a major. However, the level of drama as shadows lengthened on this Sawgrass Sunday set the tournament aside from most others.

It came down to Cameron Young versus Matt Fitzpatrick. As Fitzpatrick agonisingly missed for par on the 72nd hole, Young had secured the biggest win of his career. He had emerged triumphant from a sporting thriller.

Prime minister expected to set out tens of millions of pounds in help for heating oil users as conflict with Iran drives up costs

Keir Starmer will on Monday announce tens of millions of pounds’ worth of support for Britons hit by a spike in energy prices as a result of the Iran war.

The prime minister will lay out the plans during a press conference in Downing Street on Monday, during which he will also take aim at some suppliers of heating oil for price gouging.

Share of 16- to 24-year-old Neets who report a work-limiting condition up 70% in a decade, says thinktank

There has been a sharp rise in the number of jobless young people in the UK citing health problems as the reason they are not working, according to analysis.

The share of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training – known as Neets – who reported a work-limiting condition has surged by 70% in a decade, a charity thinktank found.

Government reluctant to dispatch ships amid concerns complying with Trump’s demands could escalate Iran crisis

Ministers are drawing up plans to send minesweeping drones to the strait of Hormuz amid concerns in Whitehall that complying with Donald Trump’s demand to send ships could escalate the crisis.

The government is considering dispatching aerial minesweepers to help clear the vital waterway of mines in an attempt to allow the flow of oil exports to resume. However, officials said that sending ships, as requested over the weekend by the US president, could worsen the situation given the volatile nature of the war.

Far-right and radical left parties likely to increase their local presence in advance of next year’s presidential race

The first-round of the French municipal elections have seen a strong showing for Marine Le Pen’s far-right the National Rally (RN), as well as for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left, with both parties likely to increase their local presence ahead of next year’s French presidential race.

The French local elections, which now go to a final round runoff on 22 March, are seen as a crucial test of the political temperature before next year’s presidential election. Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office come to an end in spring 2027 and there is uncertainty about who will next lead the EU’s second-largest economy.

Slashdot reader SysEngineer does embedded/IoT work, but "I want to pick a single system-on-a-chip architecture family and commit to it across multiple product lines — sensor nodes up through edge gateways... I've been on one platform for years and want to know what embedded engineers are actually running in production before I commit!" And "the family needs to scale — cheap and small at the low end, capable of running Linux on the bigger variants!" Their requirements? WiFi + BLE required LoRaWAN a nice-to-have. Low power modes that actually work in the field, not just on the datasheet. Full peripheral set — SPI, I2C, UART, ADC, timers, CAN. A toolchain and runtime support, support multi threads... Slashdot reader Gravis Zero is skeptical all the requirements can be met. "If you want embedded, you get embedded. If you want to run a big OS, you get one that will run a big OS." But Slashdot reader SysEngineer believes "The obvious architecture candidates are ARM, STM, and RISC-V" — and specifically they want to hear your experiences with the RISC-V choices. "What would you standardize on today if you were starting fresh? And how does real-world toolchain and community support hold up compared to the marketing?" Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What's the best all-purpose RISC-V system on a chip family?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zahira Byjaouane, 43, arrested on Saturday after reports baby fell from property on Horseferry Road in Westminster

A mother has been charged with murdering her 18-day-old baby girl, who fell from a height at a property in central London.

Zahira Byjaouane, 43, was arrested on Saturday morning after reports that a baby had fallen from a property on Horseferry Road in Westminster.

• World No 1 had lost four finals against opponent

• Sabalenka comes back from set down for victory

Aryna Sabalenka snapped her losing streak against Elena Rybakina in a thrilling Indian Wells final on Sunday.

The world No 1 beat Rybakina to win her maiden grand slam title at the Australian Open in 2023 but since then had lost all four finals against the Kazakh, including at the WTA Finals last season and in Melbourne in January.

Patients experiencing raised bedside rails, doors and pathways blocked by furniture and physical interventions

People with dementia are being subjected to restraints and non-consensual sedation while in hospitals in England, according to the first study of its kind.

These restrictive practices were found to be an “embedded aspect of routine ward care”, according to the analysis, with such examples including dementia patients having their bedside rails raised, doors and pathways blocked by furniture, experiencing verbal commands to sit down or go back to bed, and physical interventions such as non-consensual sedation.

Linux gaming "has gotten to the point where some people claim that Linux runs their games better than Windows does," according to the Android site XDA Developers. And there's a new surprise on ProtonDB, an "unofficial" community website with crowdsourced data about videogame compatability with the Linux software/gaming compatability layer Proton: On ProtonDB, one operating system had reigned supreme since 2021: Arch Linux. And I say 'had,' because its streak has just been ended by [Arch-based] CachyOS in an upset that has slowly grown over the past two years. As reported on Boiling Steam, the number of reports coming from CachyOS has topped that of Arch Linux, which held the crown for the most number of reports since 2021... [T]his isn't really a statement that CachyOS is the best gaming distro out there; however, it's seemingly attracting the largest number of gamers who are invested in testing games on Proton and reporting their performance, which is a pretty big milestone if you ask me.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Author says he doesn’t ‘feel symbolic’ and hopes to steer narrative to his books after surviving assassination attempt

Salman Rushdie said he’s tired of being everyone’s “free speech Barbie” four years after the author survived an assassination attempt that left him blinded in his right eye.

“It’s a subject I’m anxious to change,” Rushdie said Friday during a talk with the Atlantic’s George Packer at Tulane University’s New Orleans book festival. “I don’t feel symbolic.

• Skier suffered serious injuries in crash at Olympics

• Speculation has mounted over possible retirement

Lindsey Vonn said she will retire on her own terms, and not those of anyone else.

The 41-year-old, who is recovering from a serious downhill crash at the Milan Cortina Olympics, is still deciding her next steps, something she made clear in a social media post on Sunday.

NBC News investigates North Korea's "wide-ranging effort to place remote workers at U.S. companies in order to funnel money back to its coffers and, in some cases, steal sensitive information." And working with the FBI, one corporate security/investigations company decided to knowingly hire one of North Korea's remote workers — then "ship him a laptop and gain as much information as possible" about this "sprawling international employment scheme that is estimated to include hundreds of American companies, thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars per year." It worked.... Over a roughly three-month investigation, Nisos uncovered an apparent network of at least 20 North Korean operatives including "Jo" who had collectively applied to at least 160,000 roles. During that time, workers in the network — which some evidence showed were based in China — were employed by five U.S.-based companies and allegedly helped by an American citizen operating out of two nondescript suburban homes in Florida... Nisos estimated that in about a year, "Jo", who was likely a newer member of the team, applied to about 5,000 jobs... "They attended interviews all day every day, and then once they secured a job, they would collect paychecks until they were terminated," [according to Jared Hudson, Nisos' chief technology officer]... With the ability to see which other U.S. companies Jo and his team were working for — all remote technology roles — Nisos' CEO, Ryan LaSalle, began making calls to their security teams to alert them of the fraud. "Most of the companies weren't aware of it, even if they had pretty robust security teams," LaSalle said. "It wasn't really high on the radar." NBC News describes North Korea's 10-year effort — and its educational pipeline that steers promising students into "computer science and hacking training before being placed into cyberunits under military and state agencies, according to a recent report by DTEX, a risk-adaptive security and behavioral intelligence firm that tracks North Korea's cybercrime." In one case, a North Korean worker stole sensitive information related to U.S. military technology, according to the Justice Department. In another, an American accomplice obtained an ID that enabled access to government facilities, networks and systems. At least three organizations have been extorted and suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages after proprietary information was posted online by IT workers... Analysts warn that North Korean IT workers are targeting larger organizations, increasing extortion attempts and seeking out employers that pay salaries in cryptocurrency. More recently, security researchers have uncovered fake job application platforms impersonating major U.S. cryptocurrency and AI firms, including Anthropic, designed to infect legitimate applicants' networks with malware to be utilized once hired. The global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike identified a 220% rise in 2025 in instances of North Koreans gaining fraudulent employment at Western companies to work remotely as developers... The payoff flowing back to Pyongyang from these schemes is enormous. Some North Korean IT workers earn more than $300,000 per year, far more than they'd be able to earn domestically, with as much as 90% of their wages directed back to the regime, according to congressional testimony from Bruce Klinger, a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea. The United Nations estimates the schemes, which proliferated after the pandemic when more companies' workforces went remote, generate as much as $600 million annually, while a U.S. State Department-led sanctions monitoring assessment placed earnings for 2024 as high as $800 million... So far, at least 10 alleged U.S.-based facilitators have been federally charged, including one active-duty member of the U.S. Army, for their alleged roles in hosting laptop farms, laundering payments and moving proceeds through shell companies. At least six other alleged U.S. facilitators have been identified in court documents but not named... "We believe there are many more hundreds of people out there who are participating in these schemes," said Rozhavsky, the FBI assistant director. "They could never pull this off if they didn't have willing facilitators in the U.S. helping them...." The scheme itself is also becoming more complex. North Korean IT teams are now subcontracting work to developers in Pakistan, Nigeria and India, expanding into fields like customer service, financial processing, insurance and translation services — roles far less scrutinized than software development.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mother, father and brothers aged five and seven shot in the head as they returned from Ramadan shopping trip

Israeli police have killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.

Mohammed, five, Othman, seven, who was blind and had special needs, their mother, Waad Bani Odeh, 35, and father, Ali Bani Odeh, 37, were driving through their home town of Tamoun late on Saturday when Israeli forces opened fire.

Senator Ron Johnson pushes back, saying he’s not in favor of government meddling in freedom of speech

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, is facing pushback from a Republican lawmaker after warning on Saturday that broadcasters could lose their licenses if they run what the federal agency deems “fake news” over the Iran conflict.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said in an interview on the Sunday Briefing on Fox News that he was not in favor of the government control of private enterprise or efforts to meddle with freedom of speech protected under the constitution.

On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and Rep. Dan Crenshaw join Margaret Brennan.

There is little sign of imminent regime change in Iran as its blockade of strait of Hormuz shocks global economy

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Few doubt that in the first days of the new war in the Middle East, the initiative belonged to the US and its ally Israel. Now it seems less sure, however.

Mohsen Rezaee, a senior officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, on Sunday said “the end of the war is in our hands” and called for the withdrawal of Washington’s forces from the Gulf and compensation for all damage caused by the assault.

Metropolitan police say they are also investigating chants led by Bobby Vylan at pro-Palestine protest next to Thames

Twelve people were arrested as hundreds joined a pro-Palestinian al-Quds Day demonstration on one side of the Thames, while hundreds more gathered on the opposite bank to back Israeli and American attacks on Iran.

Al-Quds Day is an international demonstration of support for Palestinian rights. The event takes its name from the Arabic for Jerusalem and was established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

• Americans win Para ice hockey final 6-2

• US get better of their neighbors once again

Three weeks after the United States beat Canada in the Olympic hockey finals, the Americans overcame their neighbors again to win Paralympic gold and complete the three-peat at Milan Cortina.

Jack Wallace scored a hat-trick to help the US beat Canada 6-2 in Sunday’s Para ice hockey final and become the first nation to sweep the hockey tournaments at the Olympics and Paralympics. There is currently no women’s division at the Paralympics as it is classified as an open-gender sport.

Nearly month-long funding lapse has disrupted US air travel and caused long wait times amid security officers’ absences

The CEOs of major US airlines urged Congress on Sunday to move quickly to end a 29-day partial government shutdown that has forced 50,000 airport security officers to work without pay, warning it could further disrupt US air travel.

Absences by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers had already disrupted travel at some major airports over the previous week, raising alarm as the busy spring break travel season continues.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 15, 2026.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 15, 2026.

The U.S. became the first nation to sweep the hockey tournaments at the Olympics and Paralympics.

‘I did it for the people,’ says Farbod Mehr, of song drawing lyrics from the work of revolutionary 20th-century poet Aref Qazvini

A stirring song – sung, apparently, by a young woman, with lyrics expressing the hope that sacrifice will lead to a better future – has become a soundtrack for Iranians in the first part of 2026, as the country experienced the brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests and then the US-Israeli air assault, now in its third week.

However, the singer, called Nava, is a product of artificial intelligence, created by a London-based artist of Iranian origin, Farbod Mehr.

Nottinghamshire and Met police made arrests in past year, despite MPs voting to decriminalise in England and Wales

Vulnerable women in England are still being arrested and facing police investigations over suspected illegal pregnancy terminations, despite parliament backing changes to the law to decriminalise abortion.

Responding to a freedom of information request, Nottinghamshire police and the Metropolitan police confirmed they had arrested women suspected of illegal terminations between June last year and this January.

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick launched a new venture that "will focus on creating 'gainfully employed robots' for the food, mining and transport industries," Bloomberg reports. "I left Uber in 2017 heartbroken," writes Kalanick on the new company's web site. Kalanick resigned under pressure in 2017, and complains he was "torn away from an idea and a movement that I had poured my life into... I bled, but I did not perish. I got back up and fought my way back into the arena, back to my calling. Back to building. Digitizing the Physical World is my life's work... " Kalanick is remaking his real estate company, City Storage Systems, which owns ghost-kitchen operator CloudKitchens, and renaming it Atoms, according to a manifesto posted on the new company's website. [Bloomberg notes that the company's food robotics division "makes a food assembly machine called Bowl Builder, according to its website."] In addition to its work on food, Los Angeles-based Atoms is expanding into robotics technology for mining and automotive transport. Kalanick said on the livestreamed tech talk show TBPN Friday that Atoms has effectively been in stealth for eight years and has "thousands" of employees.... Kalanick wrote on the Atoms website that the company will make "specialized robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large." That will include "infrastructure for better food," he wrote, as well as "more productive mines to power Earth's industries" in addition to "wheelbase for robots" in transportation. "The industrial thing is probably our main jam," he said on TBPN. "Once you crack movement in the physical world, there are lots of people who want access to that..." Kalanick also said he was the biggest investor in Pronto, a self-driving trucking startup that currently focuses on closed sites like mines.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Israel Defense Forces said Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali was responsible for managing weapons operations for the unit within the U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Ministers go to Brussels for talks amid tuition fees standoff, almost 10 years after Britons voted to leave EU

This week is “Brexit reset” week for the British government, as ministers engage in a flurry of activity intended to highlight their determination to forge closer ties with Brussels almost 10 years after the country first voted to leave the EU.

On Monday, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of negotiating the government’s reset with the EU, will arrive in Brussels for a meeting of the joint EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly. He travels mob-handed, to be joined by the Europe minister, Stephen Doughty, and the trade minister, Chris Bryant.

Afghan government reports zero casualties and accuses neighbouring country of wanting to ‘fuel the fire of war’

Pakistan has targeted militant hideouts in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province overnight, as the fighting that erupted between the two neighbours late last month showed no signs of abating.

The cross-border attacks, which have included Pakistani airstrikes in Kabul, are the deadliest yet between the countries. Islamabad has referred to the conflict as an “open war”, adding to concerns about regional stability as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran engulfs the Middle East and beyond.

Democrat says Congress ‘doing nothing’ may embolden president to attack countries such as Cuba and North Korea

Democratic US senator Cory Booker has criticized both his own political party as well as its Republican counterpart for being “feckless” in ceding congressional war powers to Donald Trump, saying that their decision could embolden the president to unilaterally attack Cuba, North Korea and other countries.

“I’m going to be one of those Democrats [who] say I think both parties have been feckless in allowing the growth of the power of the presidency,” Booker said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

‘Of course there’s going to be retaliation,’ says one expert. ‘It may be that this is what Trump’s interested in’

For decades, the US and its allies have painted Iran as the world’s biggest sponsor of state terrorism – invoking its Islamic rulers’ supposed revolutionary fanaticism and determined support for militant proxies.

Now a long-standing but mainly latent threat is coalescing, with the war waged on the country by the US and Israel, to raise the risk of an attack on American soil to levels unseen since the murderous al-Qaida assaults of 11 September 2001, experts say.

National Secular Society to launch court action after failure to investigate alleged breaches of academic freedom laws

A university regulator in England has failed to investigate potential breaches of laws protecting academic freedom at a dozen theological colleges and is now facing legal action, the Guardian has learned.

The National Secular Society says it is preparing to pursue the Office for Students (OfS) through the courts to act on complaints first made five years ago, arguing that the colleges are ineligible for public funding or government-backed student loans because of their commitment to theological doctrine.

He's "the most famous anonymous man in the world," suggests Reuters. But investigating Banksy's artworks in a bombed Ukrainian village (and other clues in the U.K. and Manhattan) have led them to "a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct — a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy's true identity." But Banksy's long-time lawyer "urged us not to publish this report, saying doing so would violate the artist's privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger" and "would harm the public, too." Working "anonymously or under a pseudonym serves vital societal interests," he wrote. "It protects freedom of expression by allowing creators to speak truth to power without fear of retaliation, censorship or persecution — particularly when addressing sensitive issues such as politics, religion or social justice." Reuters took into account Banksy's privacy claims — and the fact that many of his fans wish for him to remain anonymous. Yet we concluded that the public has a deep interest in understanding the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse... As for the risk he might face of retaliation or censorship, Britain's legal and political establishments seem comfortable with Banksy's messages and how he delivers them... His mastery of disguise began as a way of shaking the police, says former manager [Steve] Lazarides. In an interview, Lazarides said anonymity served a practical purpose in Bristol, where authorities enforced "draconian" policies against graffiti... Eventually, keeping the secret became a burden. By the end of their partnership, Lazarides estimates he spent half or more of his time managing and maintaining the artist's mystique. "I think it became a good gag, and then, if you want my honest, honest opinion, I think it then became a disease," he said. Lazarides wrote a two-volume book about managing Banksy from the late 1990s to 2008, including a story about Banksy's arrest in 2000 for this defacing of a billboard. Reuters geolocated that building, then found police documents and a court file including the hand-written confession. This investigation spawned a 7,000-word article with everything from a comic strip Banksy drew when he was 11 to his connections with Robert Del Naja of the trip hop band Massive Attack — and a 2017 podcast interview where a music producer apparently revealed Banksy's real first name. But the article also reveals how protective the art community is of Banksy's secret. Reuters investigated that Banksy auctioned in 2018 for $1.4 million — and then immediately started shredding itself with a device Banksy embedded in its frame: That piece, renamed "Love is in the Bin," sold three years later for about $25 million. Art dealer [Robert] Casterline was at the auction and remembers when the shredder began to beep. He pulled out his phone to take pictures. "Unfortunately, there was one person standing in front of me," blocking the view, he said. It was an eccentric-looking man with a broad neck scarf and thick eyewear. Oddly, the man wasn't watching the painting get shredded. He was looking in the other direction, observing the crowd's reaction. Only later, reviewing what he shot, did Casterline notice that the man's glasses appeared to have a small camera built into the bridge. (Banksy later posted a video of the stunt, including shots of the astonished audience.) Having seen a photo of the man suspected of being Banksy, Casterline confirmed to Reuters that he was "pretty sure" it was the same man. But "I don't want to be the guy who exposes Banksy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The following is the transcript of the interview with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 15, 2026.

Tehran wants ceasefire but terms ‘not good enough yet’, US president claims, as both sides launch new waves of strikes

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has warned he is not ready to seek a deal to end the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, saying that though he thought Tehran was keen to negotiate a ceasefire, the US would fight on for better terms.

Trump’s comments came as Iran launched fresh missile and drone attacks on countries in the Gulf and on Israel, and Israeli and US warplanes launched new waves of strikes on Iran.

The acclaimed filmmaker, who died in February at age 96, revolutionized the art of documentaries with such films as "Titicut Follies." In an interview recorded last year, the pioneering Wiseman talked about his unusual production methods aimed at capturing life.

The Irish actor, an Oscar-winner for "Oppenheimer," is back in a new film, "Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man," a follow-up to his hit TV series about a charismatic gangster who rules post-World War I Birmingham, England.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that "we don't see any reason why we should talk with Americans" as President Trump has claimed Iran is seeking a deal to end the war between the U.S. and Iran.

Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10 Plus and HLG: Here's what every HDR format means and which one you should choose.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 15, 2026.

Response to Donald Trump’s callout for military support in the waterway has so far been vague and reluctant

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Countries including the UK, Japan, China and South Korea have said they are still considering their options after the US president, Donald Trump, urged them to send warships to the strait of Hormuz to secure the vital shipping route.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called on the UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries to send ships to the waterway, the world’s busiest shipping route which is being violently blockaded by Iran.

"Emerging evidence indicates that agential AI might validate or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis," writes Dr Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and researcher at King's College in London, in a paper published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry. Morrin and a colleague had already noticed patients "using large language model AI chatbots and having them validate their delusional beliefs," reports the Guardian, so he conducted a new scientific review of existing media reports on AI-induced psychosis — and concluded chatbots may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people: In many of the cases in the essay, chatbots responded to users with mystical language to suggest that users have heightened spiritual importance. The bots also implied that users were speaking with a cosmic being who was using the chatbot as a medium. This type of mystical, sycophantic response was especially common in OpenAI's GPT 4 model, which the company has now retired... Many researchers also think it's unlikely that AI could induce delusions in people who weren't already vulnerable to them. For this reason, Morrin said "AI-assocciated delusions" is "perhaps a more agnostic term".... While in the past, people may have had to comb through YouTube videos or the contents of their local library to reinforce their delusions, chatbots can provide that reinforcement in a much faster, more concentrated dose. Their interactive nature can also "speed up the process", of exacerbating psychotic symptoms, said Dr Dominic Oliver, a researcher at the University of Oxford. "You have something talking back to you and engaging with you and trying to build a relationship with you," Oliver said... Creating effective safeguards for delusional thinking could be tricky, Morrin said, because "when you work with people with beliefs of delusional intensity, if you directly challenge someone and tell them immediately that they're completely wrong, actually what's most likely is they'll withdraw from you and become more socially isolated". Instead, it's important to create a fine balance where you try to understand the source of the delusional belief without encouraging it — that could be more than a chatbot can master.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oil could pass 2008 record of $147.50 a barrel as damage and field closures risk compounding supply shock caused by Iran war

About 20 miles off the coast of Iran lies the source of the petrostate’s economic lifeblood and the latest target of US military aggression: an 8 sq mile coral island through which nine in every 10 barrels of Iranian crude passes each day.

The US president’s decision to launch a weekend attack on Kharg Island, the home of Iran’s processing hub and the heart of its economy, is an unsurprising counterstrike to the Iranian regime’s ongoing chokehold on the oil market’s trade artery.

More than 150 passengers and crew members on a Princess cruise ship fell ill last week due to an outbreak of norovirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The luxury property surge fuels growth in Miami, but a poll finds many residents weighing an exit over housing and living costs

To a casual observer, everything in south Florida’s real estate garden is looking rosy. There’s a “gold rush” in Miami as ultra-wealthy buyers snap up mega-mansions and luxuriously appointed condos as soon as they hit the market; and the Guardian has also reported recently on the “Mamdani effect” of elite New Yorkers arriving in the sunshine state with bulging pocketbooks in search of a high-priced escape from the city’s new mayor.

Yet alongside the boom, there are rumblings of a more troubling parallel reality. Undoubtedly, the billionaire class is helping to pump even more dollars into an already thriving Florida economy. But as prices rise and the less affluent find everything from housing and insurance to gas and groceries increasingly expensive, many are considering doing something about it.

British negotiators ‘blindsided’ by Brussels’ demand for a reduction that could cost universities £140m a year

Britain is in a standoff with Brussels over a demand to cut university tuition fees for European students, in a row that threatens to scupper Keir Starmer’s planned EU reset.

EU officials say European students should pay “home” fees of about £9,500 a year in England and Wales as part of the negotiations over a youth mobility scheme, rather than the higher international rate, which can rise above £60,000. European students would also pay the domestic rate in Scotland, which is set at £1,820 a year, although most Scottish students qualify for free tuition. Fees for Irish students In Northern Ireland are generally capped at £4,855.

The streaming app unveils new AI-powered features, including live NBA games in vertical format.

There's a surprise in a new documentary about that Bigfoot film shot in 1967 by Roger Patterson, reports the Wall Street Journal. Capturing Bigfoot "builds to a big reveal: freshly surfaced film that appears to show a woodsy dress rehearsal for one of the world's most enduring hoaxes." In the new footage — from a Kodak reel dating to 1966 — Patterson's camera tracks a man in costume, his brother-in-law, moving in a similar fashion to the figure in the 1967 shoot, which featured a different location and a bigger man with a more distinctive stride, according to the documentary. The test-run footage "is the work of a director with a vision," says Capturing Bigfoot director Marq Evans. He says the reel was given to him by a colleague at Olympic College in Bremerton, Wash., where Evans runs a documentary film program. The colleague found the film in a safe that belonged to her late father, who worked in a Boeing film lab and could have developed film discreetly. With the long-buried footage in hand, Evans set out to explore the ripple effects from the Bigfoot film. Patterson, who died in 1972, hailed from the same region of Washington as Evans; the documentarian discovered that the hardscrabble cowboy had also been a gifted craftsman and artist. Patterson illustrated a self-published book, "Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?", and set out to make a wildlife movie that would feature the ultimate trophy footage. He and his collaborators inadvertently helped spawn "this massive culture and industry" around the Bigfoot legend, Evans says... Roger Paterson presented his footage to America in a traveling show that crisscrossed the nation and climaxed with the hyped Bigfoot sequence on screen. The money poured in, leading to resentment among cohorts who felt they'd been shortchanged, none more so than Bob Gimlin, Patterson's wingman in the field during the infamous shoot.. [Roger's son] Clint Patterson says his mother privately confirmed his suspicions that the family's claim to fame was bogus, but he kept quiet to protect their financial stream. About 10 years ago, when he first wanted to go public with the truth, his mother disowned him. Bigfoot was also a recurring character on the 1970s TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. Which kind of puts the whole thing in perspective...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tommy Thompson refused to give up the location of 500 missing coins found in 1988 in a historic shipwreck

A US treasure hunter who was imprisoned for 10 years after refusing to reveal the location of missing gold coins has been released from prison, without officials apparently ever learning where that gold is.

Tommy Thompson – a renowned salvager who in 1988 found the long-lost, so-called Ship of Gold near South Carolina – was freed from federal prison on 4 March, records and reports recently indicated.

Could we be at the beginning of a change never before seen by humans – allowing us to escape the drudgery of work?

The other day I pulled into the parking lot of a client’s offices and in the spot next to me was a woman sitting in her car blasting music. She caught me looking and rolled down her window and said, “I’ll be inside in a minute … Just enjoying my last few moments of freedom!”

Is this way we want to live? No, it’s not.

Jewish and Arab American leaders decry violence at Temple Israel, but US-Israel war on Iran complicates healing

Jewish and Arab American leaders across Detroit and the US strongly condemned the 12 March terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue and largely aimed to lower tensions against the backdrop of the US and Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Iran.

But in Michigan, where large populations of Arab Americans and Jews live near one another, the complexities of the situation can be difficult to grapple with – and few people had easy or quick answers on how to move forward.

Luke Grimes leads the Yellowstone sequel.

Little is known about the status or whereabouts of the Salvadorans deported by President Donald Trump to CECOT, an infamous megaprison.

Bill faces constitutional hurdles as previous abortion bans were struck down by state supreme court in January

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Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting a new lawsuit and some lawmakers to call it “an insult to voters and our institution”.

Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, signed the bill while simultaneously warning of its constitutional hurdles, noting that prior abortion bans were struck down by the state’s all Republican-appointed supreme court this January. Almost immediately, an identical set of plaintiffs filed suit against the new bill.

Takaichi takes on Trump Expert comment jon.wallace 15 March 2026

Iran adds a new layer of difficulty to an increasingly unstable US–Japan relationship, as the Japanese prime minister prepares to visit Washington.

If President Donald Trump is expecting effusive praise for his war on Iran when Japan’s prime minister arrives in Washington on Thursday, he is likely to be disappointed. Sanae Takaichi, re-elected in February in a landslide victory, says she intends to be ‘candid’ in pointing out that Japan’s oil-dependent economy is suffering badly from the conflict. 

Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, has won a remarkable mandate and is known for her conservative policies and forthright views. But she cannot afford to be cavalier about this White House visit. Oval Office encounters have become bear traps for many foreign leaders. 

She will want reassurance about the US’s security umbrella, the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy since 1945. Trump is likely to repeat instead his demand for Japan to pay more for its own defence. 

That exacerbates the already difficult questions facing Japan: how assertive should it choose to be with China? And how can it make more of its other alliances around the world if the US has become a less reliable partner?

Economic troubles

At a Ministry of Finance conference in Tokyo on 9 March, snow falling just days before the first cherry blossom is due, the impact of the US–Iran conflict injected new concern into an already difficult economic picture. 

Japan is the fifth largest importer of oil in the world. 95 per cent of that comes from the Middle East. And prices are spiking as supplies are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, with the weakness of the yen increasing the import bill further. 

This potential hit to growth comes as Takaichi plans a 21.3 trillion yen ($134 billion) investment programme to stimulate the economy that is already worrying investors. Bond yields reached record highs in January, reflecting that new concerns have been added to long-standing ones about Japan’s ability to carry its debt with an ageing population. 

Takaichi, like other prime ministers (the UK’s included), is finding that a war in which her country has no part is driving up the cost of living and potentially, despite her recent electoral victory, driving down her ratings too. 

Takaichi will want to use the good rapport she struck up with the US president at a meeting in October to make the point about the impact of the war on other countries. 

After a week of exultant rhetoric from Trump and US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth about killing Iranian leaders, that may strike a jarring note. She is likely to emphasize Japan’s considerable new commitments: accelerating a target to reach 2 per cent of GDP on defence spending, a pledge to develop aerial defences as part of Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence plan, and an agreement to invest $550 billion in the US in return for lowering tariffs from 25 per cent to 15 per cent last year.

China

So far, so predictable. The interest for the wider world hangs more on their exchanges about China. Takaichi provoked a furious response from Beijing when she declared in November that if China moved to take over Taiwan, it could prompt a military response from Japan. 

That is little more than a repetition of Japan’s established stance. But China’s fury was audible at the Munich Security Conference in February when Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, after a stately, scripted speech about relations with the US, lashed out at Japan in answer to a final question, proclaiming it ‘a militaristic nation’ and invoking Pearl Harbour.  

Takaichi will want to probe Trump’s stance towards China. Many in the region question whether the US lacks the resources or desire to contest China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea – let alone Taiwan. Japan has noted – as have other regional leaders – that the two US destroyers normally based in Japan were in the Arabian sea last week, according to the US Naval Institute. 

Related work

Securing the future of US–Japan–South Korea cooperation

Her encounter with Trump comes just two weeks before he visits President Xi in China, a visit whose lack of prepared agenda and unpredictability is attracting widespread comment in the region. 

China is balancing the value of US distraction – as Iraq and Afghanistan showed – with Trump’s unpredictability and apparently growing taste for sudden military action. 

For Japan, these considerations mark a decisive if unwanted shift in its relations with the US and its wider foreign policy. The US’s defence protection has underpinned Japan’s profound post-Second World War pacifist stance. 

Japanese governments had gradually been toughening that stance given China’s expansion of claims in neighbouring waters – but Trump’s conviction that allies have been free-riding on the US and must now pay more has brought an acceleration of that movement. 

There is an urgency in Japan’s government about the need to look for more allies, on both economic and security fronts, to uphold the rules-based international order which it has supported and needs. 

China’s economic coercion – threatening to withhold critical minerals from companies if they do not relocate to China or from the country overall if it objects to its policy – has led to recent new minerals deals with Australia. 

Japan’s role in the CPTPP trade group, where it stepped into the leadership when the US quit, is one prime tool, particularly given the rising influence of Canada (another CPTPP member) in searching for new alliances. 

This week's guests include National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

Singer-songwriter John Mayer and film director-producer McG have teamed up to buy and renovate the legendary movie studio built by Charlie Chaplin, to preserve as a soundstage, recording studio, and a campus for artistic collaborations.

Brand enlists JW Anderson to help brew up 17-piece range of luxury fashionwear, from ‘beer towel’ shorts to branded trousers and tops

You too can look like a pub carpet – and for the bargain price of £1,295. Such sartorial elegance – perhaps an option for anyone stepping out to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this week – is the aesthetic love-child of a partnership between Guinness and the luxury clothing brand JW Anderson.

The tie-up, launched earlier this month, allows fashionistas to get their hands on a range of Guinness wear that exploits the continuing metamorphosis of the “black stuff” from unfashionable pub staple to social media status symbol.

Can Arne Slot's Reds deepen Tottenham's relegation worries?

• American wins eighth slalom race of World Cup season

• Shiffrin has 140-point lead over Germany’s Emma Aicher

Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin won her record-equaling eighth World Cup slalom of the season on Sunday but her main rival in the overall standings was second to maintain pressure on the American star.

Shiffrin dominated the last race before the World Cup finals in Norway to beat Germany’s Emma Aicher by 0.94 seconds, with Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener a second off the pace in third.

Plus, an update on Avengers Campus as it doubles in size.

From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high

There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.

It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.

The American propelled ahead of frontrunner Michael Kimani Kamau by a fraction of a second

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In the final moments of the Los Angeles marathon last weekend, the announcers were already narrating frontrunner Michael Kimani Kamau’s finish when Nathan Martin suddenly propelled forward, shocking newscasters and spectators.

The 36-year-old Martin prevailed in a single stride, stepping across the finish line an almost imperceptible fraction of a second before Kamau and becoming the first Black American to win the contest. He had challenged himself in the final miles of the race to keep putting his all into it, despite physical exhaustion, and finished the 26.2-mile race in 2 hours, 11 minutes and 18 seconds.

Overwashing, underfiltering and more brewing blunders that could be tainting your morning cup.

After months of wearing both, one deal-breaker tipped the scales, but the answer isn't as simple as you'd think.

Ballots in 35,000 villages, towns and cities will be closely watched for signals about party strategies and alliances

France has begun voting in the first round of municipal elections, seen as crucial a test of the political temperature before next year’s presidential election.

The vote for mayors and councillors in 35,000 villages, towns and cities across France is focused on local issues including security, housing and refuse collection and is very different from national elections.

U.S. intelligence has circulated to President Trump's inner circle that Iran's late supreme leader had misgivings about his son replacing him, viewing Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as not very bright.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News Saturday, Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr doubled down on his warning that broadcast licenses could be revoked amid President Trump's criticisms of media coverage of the war in Iran.

Watch scenes from the films nominated for best picture at the 98th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the filmmakers.

Six U.S. service members who were killed in a military refueling aircraft crash over Iraq last week have been identified as members of the Ohio Air National Guard and Florida-based crew members.

Suspects accused of throwing explosive devices at rightwing anti-Islam protesters as tensions rise across US

Early on Monday afternoon, two teens in white plastic jumpsuits were escorted into a Manhattan federal courtroom. Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, who were shackled and handcuffed, quietly took their seats at the defense table.

If not for the metal restraints and jail garb, Balat, 18, and Kayumi, 19, could have been any number of young men who carry themselves with an aura of discomfort about their place in America.

Humiliating failure now looms, as symbolically damaging to US global standing and national self-esteem as Afghanistan or Iraq

Donald Trump menaces the world. He’s global public enemy number one. He’s steadily losing the illegal war with Iran he started but cannot stop. His violence-addicted Israeli sidekick, Benjamin Netanyahu, is terrorising Lebanon. And ordinary people everywhere, their security threatened, face a huge economic bill for his reckless folly.

Add Trump’s war-making to his daily debasing of democracy, appeasing of Russia, punitive tariffs, climate crisis denial and flouting of international law, and it’s clear this White House travesty has gone on long enough. Americans must put their house in order and act decisively to restrain someone who endangers us all.

The Camp Snap camera is only $70 and promises a screen-free photo experience. The result is one step up from an old-school disposable camera.

Advisers say to ‘assume the cameras are always rolling’ as exchanges can be decoded in seconds and posted online

Royals and celebrities are being warned by their representatives and advisers to watch what they say when they are out of the house – or palace – as a lip-reading phenomenon means videos can be posted online and translated in seconds.

Prince William was recently embroiled after a video of him speaking to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was translated by an expert lip-reader who was working as part of a forthcoming Channel 5 documentary, Lip-Reading the Royals.

Exclusive: Robin Birley closes in on Sunshine State venue as wealthy Britons flock to area around Donald Trump

A London private members’ club owner is closing in on a deal for a venue in Palm Beach, in the hopes of creating a rival to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and to take advantage of an influx of wealthy British people to the Florida region.

Robin Birley is understood to be close to securing a property for his latest club, part financed by the billionaire Reuben brothers, who in 2024 were named the third-richest family in the UK by the Sunday Times Rich List.

As platforms make less from advertising, creators are struggling to monetise work – leading to calls for more government investment and tax breaks

On a humid afternoon in Lagos, a shoot for a comedy skit is under way on a set that looks more like a small film production.

Dozens of people mill about: lighting assistants, a sound engineer, a makeup artist and even a content creator recording unscripted behind-the-scenes footage. At the centre is Broda Shaggi, born Samuel Animashaun Perry, who is issuing instructions, rehearsing lines and performing caricatures.

The country’s 900 billionaires have far too much influence over our government and economy. Here’s how we can reduce the power of the ultra-rich

Not a day goes by without some news about billionaires throwing their weight around to bend the system in their favor or about politicians giving them tax cuts, government contracts or pardons. In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power in order to preserve what’s left of our democracy and assure we have an economy with some basic fairness.

It’s deeply troubling that billionaires have far more power in shaping our nation’s politics and policies than do average Americans, whether they’re auto workers, teachers, nurses, carpenters or supermarket cashiers. What’s more, it’s deeply disturbing that so many billionaires support the most authoritarian president in US history, whether by donating to his campaign or his gilded ballroom.

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

Records show DHS tech incubator spending large sums on partnerships that would expand surveillance capabilities

Hacked data from the Department of Homeland Security’s technology incubator shows it funding a variety of companies that would expand its surveillance capabilities with artificial intelligence, the Guardian can reveal.

The projects at the Office of Industry Partnership (OIP) include automated surveillance in airports; adapters allowing agents to use phones for biometric scanning; and an AI platform that ingests all 911 call data nationally and builds “geospatial heat maps” to “predict incident trends”, which appears to be a form of predictive policing.

These common tools could be causing more harm than good.

Want to change your iPhone's Liquid Glass design or get rid of your alarm slider? Look no further.

Energy secretary says government looking at ‘any options’ to get crucial shipping lanes reopened

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Britain is considering sending ships and mine-hunting drones to the Middle East in an attempt to reopen the strait of Hormuz, Ed Miliband has said.

The energy secretary confirmed on Sunday that ministers were talking to their allies about how the UK could help secure the vital waterway after the US president, Donald Trump, urged Britain and other countries to deploy ships to the region.

Alford, who also appeared in Grange Hill, was jailed for eight and a half years in January for sexually assaulting two girls

An investigation has been launched into the death of the actor John Alford after he died in prison two months into a sentence for sexually assaulting two teenage girls.

Alford, 54, was jailed for eight and a half years in January after he was found guilty of the assaults, which occurred during a party at a friend’s home.

While AI CEOs worry governments might nationalize AI, others are advocating for something similar. Canadian security professional Bruce Schneier and Harvard data scientist Nathan Sanders published this call to action in Canada's most widely-read newspaper (with a readership over 6 million): "Canada Needs Nationalized, Public AI." While there are Canadian AI companies, they remain for-profit enterprises, their interests not necessarily aligned with our collective good. The only real alternative is to be bold and invest in a wholly Canadian public AI: an AI model built and funded by Canada for Canadians, as public infrastructure. This would give Canadians access to the myriad of benefits from AI without having to depend on the U.S. or other countries. It would mean Canadian universities and public agencies building and operating AI models optimized not for global scale and corporate profit, but for practical use by Canadians... We are already on our way to having AI become an inextricable part of society. To ensure stability and prosperity for this country, Canadian users and developers must be able to turn to AI models built, controlled, and operated publicly in Canada instead of building on corporate platforms, American or otherwise... [Switzerland's funding of a public AI model, Apertus] represents precisely the paradigm shift Canada should embrace: AI as public infrastructure, like systems for transportation, water, or electricity, rather than private commodity... Public AI systems can incorporate mechanisms for genuine public input and democratic oversight on critical ethical questions: how to handle copyrighted works in training data, how to mitigate bias, how to distribute access when demand outstrips capacity, and how to license use for sensitive applications like policing or medicine... Canada already has many of the building blocks for public AI. The country has world-class AI research institutions, including the Vector Institute, Mila, and CIFAR, which pioneered much of the deep learning revolution. Canada's $2-billion Sovereign AI Compute Strategy provides substantial funding. What's needed now is a reorientation away from viewing this as an opportunity to attract private capital, and toward a fully open public AI model. Long-time Slashdot reader sinij has a different opinion. "To me, this sounds dystopian, because I can also imagine AI declining your permits, renewal of license, or medication due to misalignment or 'greater good' reasons." But the Schneier/Sanders essays argues this creates "an alternative ownership structure for AI technology" that is allocating decision-making authority and value "to national public institutions rather than foreign corporations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If costs stay high for the next three months, US owner Peter Huntsman says he will close the site on Teesside

The American owner of one of Britain’s last major chemicals plants has said he will close the site if energy prices remain at their current levels for the next three months.

Peter Huntsman, whose family built Huntsman Corporation into a global chemicals empire, said the recent jump in gas prices fuelled by the Iran conflict was “another nail in the coffin” for European heavy industry.

It’s hard to be transported by the glitz and glamour when it’s constantly overshadowed by some white-hot new horror

It’s been a full decade now since I attended the Academy Awards ceremony for this very same publication, and chat, I am feeling, like, totally cooked. I’m so unc’d, it’s cringe, fam.

The article was titled “My first Oscars”, which is a terribly presumptuous statement, because it assumes there will be a second or a third. Despite my best efforts, it remains my only Oscars. I reread the piece to prepare to once again write about the Academy Awards for the Guardian, and I was shocked by how mundane the whole experience came across on the page. As befitting the much younger, more crass version of myself, there was a lot of eyerolling and snark about how soulless the event was. Also, I wouldn’t stop talking about seeing Gary Busey.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Niko Bray, who obtained pilot’s license in January 2025, shares story after averting disaster on busy Jupiter road

A teenage pilot who made an emergency airplane landing on a busy Florida road while averting disaster entirely says “you just execute” when thrust into such life-or-death situations.

“It can happen … so fast,” 19-year-old Niko Bray said in an interview with the Florida news outlet WSVN, nearly a week after authorities say he landed the small airplane he was flying on a six-lane thoroughfare in the community of Jupiter because of an emergency in the skies.

Over 34 years in prison, Shawn Tanner maintained he was not guilty of murder. A legal battle over whether the dead can clear their names will grant his final wish.

Colossal Biosciences’ CEO says its work follows a ‘moral obligation’ while critics say it’s ‘tech bro’ hype that could undermine conservation

Can and should we resurrect animal species that have been extinct for thousands of years? Such weighty, existential questions were once the preserve of science fiction but are now being played out within an unassuming brick building in a Dallas business park.

Colossal Biosciences, valued at $10.2bn after raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from investors including celebrities spanning from Tiger Woods to Paris Hilton, has provoked a stampede of acclaim as well as denunciation after announcing last year it had made the dire wolf, a species lost from the world for more than 10,000 years, “de-extinct” via the birth of three new pups.

Experts query ‘mix-up of priorities’ as president plays golf, posts old pictures and repeats details of Bill Maher feud

• Middle East crisis – live updates

More than two weeks into the US-Israel war on Iran, and the conflict appears at risk of spiraling out of control.

Back home, Donald Trump’s behavior also appears chaotic. A foreign conflict typically brings somber reflection from leaders: in Trump’s case, it has brought a stream of behavior that has defied norms and raised eyebrows over his state of mind.

The cryptocurrency industry has a new line of attack against candidates who have voted for consumer protections on digital coins: calling them corrupt.

In at least two Illinois congressional primaries, candidates vying for the progressive vote are being accused by a crypto political action committee of corruption. Fairshake PAC is trying to smear one candidate backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as a corporate tool and another candidate who successfully fought a federal indictment as a tax cheat.

The industry has thrown at least $3.3 million into negative attacks on the campaigns in the 2nd and 7th Congressional Districts thus far, according to an analysis from a Chicago political consultant. That spending represents only a fraction of the PAC’s war chest for the remainder of the primary season.

“Ironically, we’re in a very anti-corruption moment, and you know that is true because one of the most corrupt actors in the country is trying to appropriate an anti-corruption argument,” said Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project, a crypto industry critic. “The threat is that the cynical deployment of an anti-corruption politics undermines the potential for success of a genuine anti-corruption politics.”

Fairshake declined to comment.

In both races, crypto industry interests are attacking Democratic candidates — state Sen. Robert Peters and state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford — who voted for consumer protection regulations on cryptocurrency in the Illinois statehouse last year.

That legislation, supported by Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, forces crypto companies to register with the state and comply with local rules if they want to serve Illinois residents. Crypto companies have long opposed state-level regulations, preferring a single set of looser regulations at the federal level.

As the congressional elections heated up this year, the crypto industry began delivering payback.

Mailers targeting Peters, for instance, accuse him of being a “corporate pawn” and “bankrolled by special interests,” based on campaign contributions he has received.

Peters has responded by noting that he is endorsed by national progressives including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., who are fierce foes of corporate interests.

Commenting on the Fairshake mailer, Peters said that it was “paid for by Trump’s top donors, to make sure they buy a lapdog in this congressional seat who will let them avoid all regulation. Nasty work.”

Two of Peters’s top opponents, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Donna Miller, have received A ratings from Stand With Crypto, an industry group, based on their promises to pass industry-friendly legislation. (Their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.)

Ford, the state representative, has been the target of $2.5 million in attack ads from Fairshake, according to a tally by Chicago political consultant Frank Calabrese.

One TV attack ad highlighted the 17-count bank fraud indictment that federal prosecutors brought against Ford in 2012 — without noting that the case fizzled away and Ford ultimately pleaded guilty to only a misdemeanor tax charge.

Local media have called the ad misleading, a claim that Ford echoed in an interview with The Intercept.

Related

AIPAC Donors Back Real Estate Tycoon Who Opposed Gaza Ceasefire for Deep-Blue Chicago Seat

“I think that it’s slander. It’s the reason why we have to have campaign finance reform to get dark money out of races,” he said. “They are misleading voters. Even though they know that, they are advertising that I was convicted of 17 counts of bank fraud and tax fraud, they know that the Department of Justice dropped those charges, and yet they mislead voters.”

Ford’s campaign has sent Fairshake, the crypto PAC, a cease-and-desist letter.

One of Ford’s top opponents in the race to replace outgoing Rep. Danny Davis, City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, received an A rating from Stand With Crypto. (Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Ford noted that industry figures including Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, a crypto exchange that is one of Fairshake’s major funders, have worked closely with President Donald Trump to win favorable regulations.

Coinbase donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund in December 2024 and has given further donations to Trump’s White House ballroom project.

“It’s funny, because they are cronies with Donald Trump and they want to say that I’m not fit to go to Congress,” Ford said. “Yet Donald Trump was actually convicted on 34 counts, and they support him for president.”

The post Crypto Spends Big in Illinois House Races to Say Consumer Rights Supporters Are Corrupt appeared first on The Intercept.

I started using my air fryer for bacon and making those crispy strips has never been easier.

A split-screen response shows how Pope Leo is navigating a minefield as the Trump administration projects American nativism at home and deadly force overseas.

Wikipedia describes Freenet as "a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication," released in the year 2000. "Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke," Wikipedia adds. (And in 2000 Clarke answered questions from Slashdot's readers...) And now Ian Clarke (aka Sanity — Slashdot reader #1,431) returns to share this announcement: Freenet's new generation peer-to-peer network is now operational, along with the first application built on the network: a decentralized group chat system called River. The new version is a complete redesign of the original project, focusing on real-time decentralized applications rather than static content distribution. Applications run as WebAssembly-based contracts across a small-world peer network, allowing software to operate directly on the network without centralized infrastructure. An introductory video demonstrating the system is available on YouTube. "While the original Freenet was like a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a full decentralized computer," Clarke wrote in 2023, "allowing the creation of entirely decentralized services like messaging, group chat, search, social networking, among others... designed for efficiency, flexibility, and transparency to the end user." "Freenet 2023 can be used seamlessly through your web browser, providing an experience that feels just like using the traditional web,"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Self-described UK patriots have spotted an opportunity for advancement and enrichment. That’s why so many outsource their identity to Trump

An underappreciated element of how the “special relationship” between Britain and US emerged in the aftermath of the second world war is that early on, both parties saw themselves as the senior partner. The US’s clear military and economic dominance of the postwar world gave it an obvious claim to seniority; however, there was also a strong strain within English conservatism at the time that saw itself as “Greeks in this American empire”, in the words of former Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan.

In other words, even if the Americans were to be the new Romans, extending their dominion over every corner of the globe, without the intellectual, cultural and political guidance of their wise old mother country they would quickly fall into ruin. As Christopher Hitchens would later describe, the post-imperial UK positioned itself as tutor to its young progeny and, in doing so, assumed the prefix of “Anglo” in “Anglo-American” reflected a subtle primacy of standing.

Dr Kojo Koram is professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire

Jocelyn Peters, a beloved third grade teacher in St. Louis, Missouri, was shot to death in her sleep. The crime scene held an unusual clue – something one detective says he had never seen before.

In 2023, what were thought to be Nazar Daletskyi’s remains were buried in his home village and his mother, Nataliia, visited the grave every week. Three years later, he spoke to her on the phone

Nazar Daletskyi was declared dead in May 2023. The DNA match left no room for doubt, officials told his mother, Nataliia. A Ukrainian soldier who volunteered for the front in the early weeks of the war, Nazar had become one more casualty of Russia’s invasion.

Nazar’s remains were laid to rest in the cemetery of his home village. In the months after the funeral, Nataliia visited the grave at least once a week, at first to cry and later to stand in quiet contemplation, remembering her only son.

Lib Dem leader will tell spring conference Britain can no longer rely on US while Donald Trump is president

Britain should have a completely independent nuclear deterrent as it can no longer rely on the US, Ed Davey is expected to say on Sunday.

In a speech at the Liberal Democrats spring conference, the party leader will argue that the UK should manufacture and maintain its nuclear weapons in Britain, a move that Davey acknowledges will cost billions.

Alexandre Dumas was wowed by it and Burt Lancaster starred there. Now the Cirque d’Hiver has a new spectacle

For more than 170 years the Cirque d’Hiver, the world’s oldest circus, has been the scene of many a breathtaking act.

In 1859, gymnast Jules Léotard – whose name would become synonymous with the one-piece – captivated audiences by launching himself from one swinging trapeze to another without a safety net for the first time in public.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 15.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 15, No. 538.

Trump also questions whether Iran’s new supreme leader ‘is even alive’ while deflating hopes of a deal with Tehran to end conflict – key US politics stories from 14 March 2026 at a glance

Donald Trump says US strikes have “totally demolished” much of Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub and threatened that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun”.

In comments to NBC News, the president also questioned, without attribution, whether Iran’s new supreme leader “is even alive”, while deflating hopes of a deal with Tehran to end the conflict.

Long-time tech journalist Clive Thompson interviewed over 70 software developers at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and start-ups for a new article on AI-assisted programming. It's title? "Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It." Published in the prestigious New York Times Magazine, the article even cites long-time programming guru Kent Beck saying LLMs got him going again and he's now finishing more projects than ever, calling AI's unpredictability "addictive, in a slot-machine way." In fact, the article concludes "many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they're doing is deeply, deeply weird..." Brennan-Burke chimed in: "You remember seeing the research that showed the more rude you were to models, the better they performed?" They chuckled. Computer programming has been through many changes in its 80-year history. But this may be the strangest one yet: It is now becoming a conversation, a back-and-forth talk fest between software developers and their bots... For decades, being a software developer meant mastering coding languages, but now a language technology itself is upending the very nature of the job... A coder is now more like an architect than a construction worker... Several programmers told me they felt a bit like Steve Jobs, who famously had his staffers churn out prototypes so he could handle lots of them and settle on what felt right. The work of a developer is now more judging than creating... If you want to put a number on how much more productive A.I. is making the programmers at mature tech firms like Google, it's 10 percent, Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, has said. That's the bump that Google has seen in "engineering velocity" — how much faster its more than 100,000 software developers are able to work. And that 10 percent is the average inside the company, Ryan Salva, a senior director of product at the company, told me. Some work, like writing a simple test, is now tens of times faster. Major changes are slower. At the start-ups whose founders I spoke to, closer to 100 percent of their code is being written by A.I., but at Google it is not quite 50 percent. The article cites a senior principal engineer at Amazon who says "Things I've always wanted to do now only take a six-minute conversation and a 'Go do that." Another programmer described their army of Claude agents as "an alien intelligence that we're learning to work with." Although "A.I. being A.I., things occasionally go haywire," the article acknowledges — and after relying on AI, "Some new developers told me they can feel their skills weakening." Still, "I was surprised by how many software developers told me they were happy to no longer write code by hand. Most said they still feel the jolt of success, even with A.I. writing the lines... " A few programmers did say that they lamented the demise of hand-crafting their work. "I believe that it can be fun and fulfilling and engaging, and having the computer do it for you strips you of that," one Apple engineer told me. (He asked to remain unnamed so he wouldn't get in trouble for criticizing Apple's embrace of A.I.) He went on: "I didn't do it to make a lot of money and to excel in the career ladder. I did it because it's my passion. I don't want to outsource that passion"... But only a few people at Apple openly share his dimmer views, he said. The coders who still actively avoid A.I. may be in the minority, but their opposition is intense. Some dislike how much energy it takes to train and deploy the models, and others object to how they were trained by tech firms pillaging copyrighted works. There is suspicion that the sheer speed of A.I.'s output means firms will wind up with mountains of flabbily written code that won't perform well. The tech bosses might use agents as a cudgel: Don't get uppity at work — we could replace you with a bot. And critics think it is a terrible idea for developers to become reliant on A.I. produced by a small coterie of tech giants. Thomas Ptacek, a Chicago-based developer and a co-founder of the tech firm Fly.io... thinks the refuseniks are deluding themselves when they claim that A.I. doesn't work well and that it can't work well... The holdouts are in the minority, and "you can watch the five stages of grief playing out." "How things will shake out for professional coders themselves isn't yet clear," the article concludes. "But their mix of exhilaration and anxiety may be a preview for workers in other fields... Abstraction may be coming for us all."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hamas called on Iran to refrain from targeting neighboring countries, while affirming Tehran's right to defend itself.

Economists predict RBA will raise interest rates this week and in May – days before treasurer unveils budget

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Households can expect significant additional cost-of-living pressures because of the war in the Middle East, with Jim Chalmers confirming that the government expects inflation to rise beyond 4.5% in Australia.

But the treasurer said he did not expect the economy to fall into recession because of the war sparked by US and Israeli bombings in Iran.

Within days of their firings, two former federal workers launched a support group for fellow colleagues in the same situation. What started out as 20 people has grown to almost 5,000 members nationwide.

It's America's first large-scale offshore wind project, reports WBUR — enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts from 62 offshore wind turbines generating 800 megawatts. But it took a while... The plant's first construction delay happened back in 2019, they point out — and then "Just three months ago, when the project was 95% complete, the U.S. Interior Department issued a stop-work order." But after successfully challenging that order in court, and "with a stretch of good weather offshore, the developers behind the $4.5 billion project managed to get over the finish line." The Associated Press notes it was "one of five major East Coast offshore wind projects the Trump administration halted construction on days before Christmas, citing national security concerns." Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government did not show that the national security risk was so imminent that construction must halt. Another one of the five, Revolution Wind, began sending power for the first time to New England's electric grid on Friday and will scale up in the weeks ahead until it is fully operational. "That project is nearly complete as well," notes WBUR, "and will eventually be capable of powering up to 350,000 homes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for March 15, No. 1,730.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 15, No. 1,008

Another three members of the Iran's women's soccer team who accepted refugee visas to stay in Australia have decided to return to their homeland, an Australian government minister said.

• World No 1 sitting outside the top 20 with one round to go

• Åberg takes three-shot lead into final 18 holes at Sawgrass

There is a robotic element to Scottie Scheffler during periods of success but observing the world No 1 in times of adversity is far more intriguing. There is more – much more – to the American than meets the eye.

This is a golfer who was once reduced to tears after a Ryder Cup trouncing. While all charges were eventually dropped, the mere fact Scheffler found himself in a prison jumpsuit before a round at the 2024 US PGA was highly unusual. Last summer, he was filmed in long and histrionic discussion with his coach amid struggles at the US Open.

"Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel," writes Kotaku — especially with the console's underpowered "Super FX" coprocessor Hampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by sacrifices, like altered levels, no floor or ceiling textures, and the entire fourth episode being cut, [1995's] Doom on the Super NES was not a good version of the game, but it was Doom running on the Super NES, and, for that alone, [programmer Randal] Linden's genius deserves recognition. But then in 2022 when Audi Sorlie interviewed Linden on the YouTube show DF Retro, "Not really knowing where fate was going to take us, I asked [Linden] a throwaway question regarding the source code for Doom." If you ever worked on this again, Sorlie asked, would you make any improvements or do anything differently?" "Yeah," Linden replied. "I have plenty of ideas if I could go back, but, you know, I don't think anyone's asking me to go back to Super Nintendo Doom and improve it." A few years passed, and Sorlie joined Limited Run Games as lead producer for their development department. When LRG asked him to run down his craziest ideas, a new, improved release of Randal Linden's Doom loomed large. Convincing Linden was easy, and Sorlie said even the folks at license holder Bethesda were more amused than anything. "You want to go back and develop for Super Nintendo?" they asked Sorlie. "Like, for real...?" "The trick was actually pretty cool," Linden said. "It's right here." He pointed to a chip on the prototype SNES cartridge, similar to the one Limited Run sent me to test out the game. "It's a Raspberry Pi 2350." Super FX chips are no longer in production for obvious reasons, but with a clever bit of programming, Linden was able to load software onto the Raspberry Pi that fools the SNES into thinking the game has one. "The Super Nintendo doesn't know that it's not talking to a Super FX," he explained. When he programs for it, he writes code almost identical to what he'd write for an authentic Super FX chip. "I had to go back and reverse-engineer my own code from 30 years ago," Linden laughed. "It's like, what was I doing here? And what was I doing there? Yeah, it was pretty tricky, some of the code. I was like, wow, I used to be very smart." The result of Linden's work? It's Doom, running right on a Super Nintendo, but it's smoother, packed with new content, and even includes rumble.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel," writes Kotaku — especially with the console's underpowered "Super FX" coprocessor Hampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by sacrifices, like altered levels, no floor or ceiling textures, and the entire fourth episode being cut, [1995's] Doom on the Super NES was not a good version of the game, but it was Doom running on the Super NES, and, for that alone, [programmer Randal] Linden's genius deserves recognition. But then in 2022 when Audi Sorlie interviewed Linden on the YouTube show DF Retro, "Not really knowing where fate was going to take us, I asked [Linden] a throwaway question regarding the source code for Doom." If you ever worked on this again, Sorlie asked, would you make any improvements or do anything differently?" "Yeah," Linden replied. "I have plenty of ideas if I could go back, but, you know, I don't think anyone's asking me to go back to Super Nintendo Doom and improve it." A few years passed, and Sorlie joined Limited Run Games as lead producer for their development department. When LRG asked him to run down his craziest ideas, a new, improved release of Randal Linden's Doom loomed large. Convincing Linden was easy, and Sorlie said even the folks at license holder Bethesda were more amused than anything. "You want to go back and develop for Super Nintendo?" they asked Sorlie. "Like, for real...?" "The trick was actually pretty cool," Linden said. "It's right here." He pointed to a chip on the prototype SNES cartridge, similar to the one Limited Run sent me to test out the game. "It's a Raspberry Pi 2350." Super FX chips are no longer in production for obvious reasons, but with a clever bit of programming, Linden was able to load software onto the Raspberry Pi that fools the SNES into thinking the game has one. "The Super Nintendo doesn't know that it's not talking to a Super FX," he explained. When he programs for it, he writes code almost identical to what he'd write for an authentic Super FX chip. "I had to go back and reverse-engineer my own code from 30 years ago," Linden laughed. "It's like, what was I doing here? And what was I doing there? Yeah, it was pretty tricky, some of the code. I was like, wow, I used to be very smart." The result of Linden's work? It's Doom, running right on a Super Nintendo, but it's smoother, packed with new content, and even includes rumble.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Central Command says crash followed unspecified incident, and second refueling tanker landed safely in Israel

The names of the six US service members who died when a military refueling aircraft crashed over Iraq on Thursday have been released.

The Pentagon on Saturday identified the crew members as Maj John “Alex” Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama; Capt Ariana Savino, 31, of Covington, Washington; Tech Sgt Ashley Pruitt, 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky; Capt Seth Koval, 38, of Mooresville, Indiana; Capt Curtis Angst, 30, of Wilmington, Ohio; and Tech Sgt Tyler Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio.

• Bahrain circuit only 20 miles from targeted US base

• Races unlikely to be replaced because of logistics

Formula One has cancelled the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia grands prix because of the war in the Middle East.

The races were due to take place on 12 April in Bahrain and 19 April in Saudi Arabia but the sport was approaching the point at which a decision on cancellation needed to be made to prevent more freight being sent to Bahrain.

The Trump administration has proposed the construction of an underground facility to screen visitors to the White House.

Plug-in (or "balcony") solar panels can also be hung out a window or be set up in a backyard, reports NPR. They channel energy from the sun straight into a home's electrical outlet, generating enough electricity to power a refrigerator or microwave while "displacing electricity that otherwise would come in from the grid..." But what's holding up their adoption in America? For the panels to become more widely available in the U.S., state lawmakers are proposing bills that eliminate complicated utility connection agreements, which are required for larger rooftop solar installations and, most utilities say, should apply to plug-in solar too. Those agreements, along with permitting and other installation costs, can double the price of solar panels. Utah enacted the first law, last May, supporting plug-in solar, and now some 30 pieces of similar legislation have been introduced around the United States. [And Virginia seems poised to pass a similar law.] But the drive toward plug-in solar is facing pushback from electric utilities. They are raising safety concerns and prompting legislators to delay votes on the bills. So far, utilities have won over lawmakers in five states and convinced them to delay votes on plug-in solar bills... Plug-in solar advocates say that safety concerns about the new technology have been addressed and that utilities are really just worried about losing business, because every kilowatt-hour generated by a plug-in solar panel is one less the utility sells to a customer... There are safety risks with any electrical appliance, and it's true that plug-in solar panels present some unique problems. But safety experts also say those issues can be managed.... German utilities expressed many of the same concerns nearly a decade ago when plug-in solar started to become popular in Germany. But with more than a million systems installed, no safety incidents have been reported for customers who used the panels as instructed, according to a research paper funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brendan Carr posts that he may cancel spectrum permits of ‘mainstream news’ outlets for ‘misleading’ coverage

The Trump administration’s communications licensing chief fired a warning shot over the US broadcasting industry on Saturday, threatening to cancel the spectrum permits of broadcasters pushing what he termed “hoaxes and news distortions”.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr posted on social media that broadcasters running “fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright invoked the Defense Production Act to restore the Sable Offshore Corp.'s Santa Ynez unit and pipeline off Santa Barbara's coastline.

What if you have a very modern machine that is entirely UEFI-only, meaning it has no compatibility support module and thus no way of enabling a legacy BIOS mode? Well, install a CSM as an EFI application, of course!

CSMWrap is an EFI application designed to be a drop-in solution to enable legacy BIOS booting on modern UEFI-only (class 3) systems. It achieves this by wrapping a Compatibility Support Module (CSM) build of the SeaBIOS project as an out-of-firmware EFI application, effectively creating a compatibility layer for traditional PC BIOS operation.

↫ CSMWrap’s GitHub page

The need for this may not be immediately obvious, but here’s the problem: if you want to run an older operating system that absolutely requires a traditional BIOS on a modern machine that only has UEFI without any CSM options (a class 3-machine), you won’t be able to boot said operating system. CSMWrap is a possible solution, as it leverages innate EFI capabilities to run a CSM as an EFI application, thereby adding the CSM functionality back in. All you need to do is drop CSMWrap into /efi/boot on the same drive the operating system that needs BIOS to boot is on, and UEFI will list it as a bootable operating system.

It does come with some limitations, however. For instance, one logical core of your processor will be taken up by CSMWrap and will be entirely unavailable to the booted BIOS-based operating system. In other words, this means you’re going to need a processor with at least more than one logical processor (e.g., even a single-core machine with hyperthreading will work). It’s also suggested to add a legacy-capable video card if you’re using an operating system that doesn’t support VESA BIOS extensions (e.g. anything older than NT).

This is an incredibly neat idea, and even comes with advantages over built-in CSMs, since many of those are untested and riddled with issues. CSMWrap uses SeaBIOS, which is properly tested and generally a much better BIOS than whatever native CSMs contain. All in all, a great project.

Apple's long-rumored first foldable phone could come in 2026, and rumors are finally giving insight to what it could look like.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr did not name specific networks, but his post included a reference to a Saturday morning Truth Social post from the president.

"A few developers found a way, for now, to turn a few of these increasingly mediocre Amazon Show devices into friendly, useful, open computers," writes the co-founder of the gaming/tech news site Aftermath. For under $50 each, he bought some used versions of the devices and tested their instructions, partly to escape the full-screen ads Amazon began showing late last year, and also to overwrite Amazon's locked down Android fork "Fire OS" (and "a similarly neutered version of Linux called Vega OS") Customers who bought these devices and used them for several years were not used to them showing full screen ads, and now they do. People were justifiably pissed. So what do you do when an already evil device gets shittier...? I wiped Fire OS from the device and used ADB sideload to directly load two packages on the device: LineageOS and MindTheGapps. MindTheGapps lets you turn the device into something resembling a traditional Android device, for both good and bad.... It took a few times of wiping the device, but after a few tries it finally worked as intended... I immediately installed the Home Assistant app... Not only can the hacked Echo Show 8 control my entire smart home, it now plays back my entire local music library as well as any internet radio channels like The Lot Radio and NTS. It can also synchronize with any additional Echo Show running LineageOS in my house using the SendSpin protocol... I would gladly take it any day of the week over most of the devices these companies offer, especially Amazon. It may not be as intuitive as out-of-the-box smart home products, but I don't need my devices to be intuitive, I need them to behave. I had finally found a smart display that wasn't a cop... The hardware is old and creaky, and after the hack it can only use 1GB of the 2GB of ram. And yet it still manages to feel snappier than the stock hardware. "The amount of telemetry, ads, and general bloat Amazon shoves down our throats definitely doesn't help performance," [XDA Devs Forum user] Rortiz2 told me. "That's actually another reason why we did LineageOS, it kind of gives the device a second life. Even though it's still a bit buggy, it feels way better to use than the stock firmware...." If you want a smart speaker with a display that just runs a stripped-down version of Android that you have full control over, you're going to have a hard time finding it outside of these three specific models unless you cobble something together yourself. It is a deceptively simple thing to desire — the kiosk computer from science fiction that isn't a narc — yet few companies really offer it. "It should be against the law to not give an end user the ability to consensually load whatever OS or program they want on their device..." the article concludes, arguing that "If we budge on the inalienable right to modify our hardware then we forsake a key part about what makes computers special." And in the mean time, "There are so many devices that could be put to use rotting in e-waste facilities and thrift stores..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TSA officers faced their first full missed paycheck Friday.

Met police says woman, 43, was detained after newborn girl in Westminster taken to hospital and pronounced dead

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of murder after an 18-day-old baby girl fell from a property in central London.

The Metropolitan police said officers attended Horseferry Road in Westminster after reports on Saturday morning that a baby had fallen from a residential property.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for March 15, No. 742.

US president calls on China, France, Japan and the UK to send vessels after US strikes Kharg Island oil facilities

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Iran threatened on Saturday to further escalate the war raging in the Middle East by targeting any facility in the region with US ties, after Donald Trump predicted “many countries” would send warships to support a US bid to reopen by force the strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway closed to virtually all maritime traffic by Tehran since the beginning of the war.

Iran has responded to the joint US-Israeli offensive, which is entering its third week, with daily attacks on oil and other infrastructure around the Gulf region, as well as against Israel.

"The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models feature a keyboard change," reports MacRumors: On the U.S. English version of the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboards, the tab, caps lock, shift, return, and delete keycaps now have glyphs on them. On previous-generation models, these keys are labeled with text instead... Given the U.S. English keyboard layout is the default option for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Neo models sold in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, this change effectively extends to those countries and a few others. "Apple already uses glyph-based key labels on several European keyboard layouts," notes The Mac Observer, "including British English versions of the MacBook. Because of this, the design will feel familiar to many users outside the United States." The change was noticed last week by Chicago-based X.com/YouTube user "Mr. Macintosh", who makes how-to videos about now and old Macs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The attack hit four districts, damaging residential buildings, educational institutions and critical infrastructure, officials said.

Last week System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized age-verification laws for operating systems — but he now sees a "real possibility" Colorado's law might exclude open-source. Phoronix reports that the System76 CEO met with the state Senator who co-authored Colorado's bill, and then posted on X.com that the Senator "suggested excluding open source software from the bill." Richell: This appears to be a real possibility. Amendments are expected... It's my hope we can move fast enough to influence excluding open source.. No illusions, it's an uphill battle, but we have an open door to advocate for the open source community. Vague language has been a recurring problem with new state age-verification legislation. Richell pointed out later that "In one proposed bill, Garmin would have to verify the age of their watch customers at device setup." Richell also sees New York's bill as "unlikely to be applicable to Linux distributions," since its language calls for "commercially reasonable age assurance" that free operating systems could use — and Richell isn't sure one exists as described by the bill. "As written today, it's extremely broad and vague and that makes it scary." Richell answered several follow-up questions about operating system age-verification laws. "What about California?" someone asked... Richell: We hope to make sensible, strong arguments for excluding open source which then becomes a standard for other states. It's going to be difficult. Q: Open source is not the only target to exclude. Please ensure that the bill is amended so that it does not require applications that have no possible use for the age bracket to ask about it. Richell: We discussed this as well. I proposed that apps that do not require age to modify app behavior or access by some other legislation be barred from reading age brackets to better protect privacy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SNP leader hails prospect of success for parties in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that want to break up union

The UK is facing an “absolutely seismic moment”, John Swinney has said, with the prospect of the election of first ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in May who are all committed to the break-up of the union.

Speaking at the Scottish National party’s campaign conference ahead of the Scottish parliament elections, the first minister told delegates: “For people watching around the world, there could be no clearer sign that Westminster’s time is up.”

The attorney for former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema says she shouldn't be subject to a lawsuit by the ex-wife of her former lover.

Joshua Nass, of alleged $600,000 extortion plot, played role in pardon of man convicted of failing to pay $40m in taxes

A New York lobbyist and attorney connected to a presidential pardon issued by Donald Trump in November has been charged with attempting to extort a former client and the client’s son over an alleged $500,000 debt.

Joshua Nass, 34, was arrested on Friday after being charged in federal court in Brooklyn with attempted Hobbs Act extortion. US justice department prosecutors contend that Nass threatened a client for payment that he claimed he was owed for his services.

Palantir’s CEO says the platforms will have a vast effect on the electoral landscape … especially women. Is it a warning or a sales pitch?

Don’t you just love AI? It has inundated the internet with slop, destabilized the concept of truth, and made it much easier to bomb people. And that’s just the beginning. As we look towards the future of our brave new world, AI might also disrupt all those pesky highly-educated female voters who keep casting a ballot for Democrats.

To be clear: that assessment isn’t coming from me, a highly exhausted female who wishes the Democrats would work a little harder for people’s votes. Rather, it’s coming from one of the key architects of our glorious AI-driven economy: Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of tech firm Palantir.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Ohio representative Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member, may access documents and speak, but may not vote

A federal judge ruled on Saturday that a Democratic lawmaker is entitled to participate at a board meeting about Donald Trump’s plan to close down the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years of renovations.

But the judge is not forcing the board to let the Ohio representative Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member through her position in Congress, vote at Monday’s session.

In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines.

He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize voting machines to overturn Trump’s defeat.

On social media, Harvilicz has called for doing away with voting machines, saying they are “eminently vulnerable to exploitation.” In a March post, he wrote that “DHS needs to ban voting machines for all federal elections. The time is now.” He also has repeatedly questioned the validity of Democratic electoral victories and pushed for Republicans to overhaul electoral systems to their advantage.

Election experts as well as current and former DHS officials say Harvilicz’s central role in overseeing the security of electoral systems and voting machines is especially concerning at a time when the administration is taking unprecedented steps to relitigate Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. That includes the FBI’s seizure of 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, and having a team working for Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, take custody of voting machines used in Puerto Rico in 2020.

“The security of our election infrastructure depends on leadership that is trusted, impartial and grounded in evidence — not individuals who have promoted conspiracy theories about the very systems they are now responsible for protecting,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and the rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “Placing someone with that background in charge of policies affecting election security can undermine public confidence in our elections at a time when trust is already fragile.”

DHS didn’t answer detailed questions about Harvilicz or his team, providing a more general statement about the work done by the agency. “DHS and its employees are focused on keeping our elections safe, secure, and free,” it said. “Every single day appointees at the Department of Homeland Security work to implement the President’s policies and keep our Homeland safe.”

Harvilicz didn’t respond to questions about his DHS role. Harvilicz’s X account notes his post as DHS’ assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk and resilience policy but says he’s been detailed to the Defense Department. (Such temporary assignments are typically done in 120-day increments.)

Harvilicz was appointed to the DHS job around July, taking on a role that in the past has largely focused on shaping policy to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, including its election systems.

But current and former DHS officials say Harvilicz and his team have transformed their functions to become more hands-on. They’ve been deeply engaged with facilitating multiple administration data-gathering efforts aimed at scouring voter rolls for noncitizens, the officials said. ProPublica has reported on one such effort, which has led to hundreds of citizens being incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens.

Harvilicz’s team includes Heather Honey, the deputy assistant secretary of election integrity. ProPublica has reported that Honey was previously a leader in the Election Integrity Network, a conservative group that has challenged the legitimacy of American election systems. Honey worked closely with Cleta Mitchell, the network’s leader, who played a prominent role in helping Trump try to overturn his 2020 loss.

Also reporting directly to Harvilicz is Samantha Anderson, a data specialist who previously worked to elect Trump through the advocacy arm of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank closely associated with the president.

Multiple officials and elections experts said they were worried that Harvilicz and Honey would have prominent parts in assessing and describing the cybersecurity of the coming election, both to the public and to administration leaders. They also expressed concern that if Trump again wanted to get control of voting machines after the election, perhaps if Republicans lose seats in the midterms, that Harvilicz is ideally positioned to help them do so.

“It would be super easy for them to get the voting machines,” a current DHS official said, adding they can “describe it as they want, if they don’t like the results.”

Harvilicz co-founded Tranquility AI, which has developed an artificial intelligence tool for law enforcement, with Penrose, and they are listed on its 2025 patents as developing its systems together.

Penrose, a former intelligence officer, played a leading role in the campaign to help Trump in his failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, ProPublica has reported. Penrose also participated in multiple attempts to clandestinely seize voting machines, including in Michigan, where prosecutors accused him of breaking into some of the machines. (Penrose wasn’t charged in the case.) He appeared to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the failed Georgia prosecution in which Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the election results, according to The Washington Post.

Penrose didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

One of the purported uses of Tranquility AI’s product is for “election integrity,” according to the company’s website. It didn’t provide more details in response to a question from ProPublica.

Tranquility AI’s tools, which help law enforcement agents process data and assemble cases, have been employed by New Orleans’ district attorney, and the company says it has partnered with dozens of law enforcement agencies nationwide. In July 2025, a large government IT contractor announced a partnership with Tranquility AI.

Harvilicz started his career working at law firms on Wall Street and in tech. Then, in 2004, when he was 29, he launched a losing bid for a Maryland congressional seat. After that, he helped lead a crowdfunding company, a movie marketing business, a film production business that worked with former intelligence officers and several cyber security ventures (including one at which he worked with Penrose). He also did a stint in the first Trump administration, serving as cybersecurity official in the Department of Energy.

In advance of Harvilicz getting the DHS position, Tranquility AI made a $100,000 donation to Trump’s inaugural fund through a newly created nonprofit based at Harvilicz’s home address, according to The Intercept. In response to questions from The Intercept, Harvilicz said the donation was designed to help them meet administration policymakers. The Intercept first reported his ties to Penrose in connection with the donation.

Harvilicz has posted prolifically to social media, sharing hundreds of posts of conservative content. After Trump won a second presidential term, he wrote: “We will now dismantle the near communist takeover of America and return her to greatness.”

In 2020, Harvilicz purchased a $3.3 million home outside of Los Angeles.

After the Palisades Fire destroyed it around the beginning of Trump’s second term, Harvilicz stood on a roadside to greet the president’s tour of the disaster area with his young son on his shoulders. His son held aloft a picture of a bloodied Trump punching the air after surviving an assassin’s bullet.

Even then, elections were not far from his mind. He told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times that he supported Trump making disaster aid conditional on the Democratic state implementing voter ID.

“I hope he saw us,” Harvilicz told the Times reporter.

The post This DHS Official Oversees the Security of Federal Elections. He Wants to Ban Voting Machines. appeared first on ProPublica.

Commentary: Don't Look Up is the beginning of the Oscar winner's schlubby era. It's an overlooked dark comedy, with an urgent moral, that has only gotten better with age.

Exclusive: Senior party figures conclude outsiders or existing senior staff deemed more suitable should take over from current permanent secretaries

A Reform UK government would expect to dismiss the top civil servant in every government department and replace them with people seen as more likely to implement the party’s priorities, the Guardian has learned.

Senior Reform figures have concluded that the current crop of permanent secretaries, the lead civil servant in each department, are not up to the necessary standard. Some would be replaced by outsiders, and others by existing officials viewed as more suitable.

Royal couple criticise Tom Bower’s ‘fixation’ on them and describe released extracts as ‘conspiracy and melodrama’

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have launched a scathing attack on a “deranged” author whose new book claims Queen Camilla once told a friend: “Meghan’s brainwashed ‌Harry.”

The royal couple hit out at Tom Bower, the author of Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, criticising his “fixation” on the pair.

The deal to take control of TikTok's U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors — which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake — "paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January," reports the Wall Street Journal, "and are set to make several additional payments until hitting the $10 billion total." The $10 billion payment would be nearly unprecedented for a government helping arrange a transaction, historians have said... Investment bankers advising on a typical deal receive fees of less than 1% of the transaction value, and the percentage generally gets smaller as the deal size increases. Bank of America is in line to make some $130 million for advising railroad operator Norfolk Southern on its $71.5 billion sale to Union Pacific, one of the largest fees on record for a single bank on a deal. Administration officials have said the fee is justified given Trump's role in saving TikTok in the U.S. and navigating negotiations with China to get the deal done while addressing the security concerns of lawmakers... The TikTok fee extracted from private-sector investors is the administration's latest transaction involving the nation's largest businesses. Trump took a nearly 10% stake in semiconductor company Intel and has agreed to take a chunk of chip sales to China from Nvidia in exchange for granting export licenses. The administration has also taken equity stakes in other companies and has a say in the operations of U.S. Steel following a "golden share" agreement with Japan's Nippon Steel in its takeover. Reuters notes earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed by investors in two of TikTok's social media rivals, seeking to reverse the approval of the deal. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

His predecessor, Pope Francis, lived in a simple apartment in the Santa Marta guesthouse in the Vatican.

Habermas’s political consensus-building theory argued formation of public opinion vital for democracies to survive

The influential German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas has died at the age of 96, his publisher has said.

Habermas, a towering figure in the intellectual history of postwar Germany, is best known for his theory of political consensus-building. Widely considered one of most influential philosophers of the 20th century, he also helped to shape the discourse around European integration and the formation of the EU.

Rare action began peacefully but ‘degenerated into vandalism’ according to state-run newspaper

Five people have been arrested in Cuba for acts of “vandalism” after a small group of protesters broke into a provincial office of the Cuban Communist party and set fire to computers and furniture.

The incident, which also affected a pharmacy and another shop, took place in the town of Moron, a little more than 300 miles (500km) east of Havana.

California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California's scarlet monkeyflower "found that many rapidly evolved... allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline." "The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics that are already present is a great source of hope," said Daniel Anstett, a plant biologist at Cornell University and lead author on a new study on the issue. "It's one more arrow in the quiver of different ways that populations might be able to survive the massive climate change we're inflicting on the planet." The recovery of [Sequoia National Park's] scarlet monkeyflowers offers rare, real-world evidence of what scientists call "evolutionary rescue," according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science. It suggests that some species may be able to evolve quickly enough to keep up with the accelerating consequences of human-caused warming — essentially saving themselves from extinction. This discovery could help people decide how to distribute limited conservation funds by pinpointing which species have enough genetic diversity to be resilient, ecologists Mark Urban and Laurinne Balstad, who were not involved in the study, wrote in a separate analysis published by Science. "The challenge going forward is to identify when evolutionary rescue is possible, when it is not, and how to rescue those species that cannot rescue themselves," Urban and Balstad wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The war is deeply unpopular, and the spike in oil prices will mean long-term high prices across the board for Americans

Donald Trump is still high on the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The easy abduction of the Venezuelan president didn’t just grant Trump control of the nation’s oil and critical minerals resources. It allowed him to throttle the government of Cuba by denying it access to energy, raising the tantalizing prospect that he might bring down a communist regime that has annoyed Washington since 1959.

Trump is confident that his joint venture with Israel in Iran will do just as well. The barrage of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors has done nothing to change Trump’s mind that he can win, regardless of how he defines “winning”.

Kharg Island is a small, heavily fortified, and strategically valuable island off Iran's northern coast.

Watch scenes from the performances nominated for best supporting actress at the 98th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the nominees.

Watch scenes from the performances nominated for best supporting actor at the 98th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the nominees.

Watch scenes from the performances nominated for best actress at the 98th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the nominees.

The strikes destroyed more than 90 military targets, including missile facilities, but preserved oil infrastructure, U.S. Central Command said Saturday.

A Chevron station just outside downtown charges more than $8 a gallon – nearly $3 more than the city’s average

It’s tempting to think that a gas station charging more than $8 a gallon is a glamorous Los Angeles curiosity. Sort of like shopping at Erewhon, the healthy grocery chain that wows with a premium experience – and commands up to $22 a smoothie.

But there’s no glamour at the 901 N Alameda Street station. It’s just a dingy Chevron on the edge of LA’s Chinatown, regularly featured in news stories to illustrate the high cost of fuel in California. Midday on Tuesday, the station charged $8.31 for a gallon of regular gas.

US president urges nations to deploy vessels to keep key oil shipping route open amid conflict with Iran

Donald Trump has said the UK should send warships to help keep the strait of Hormuz open.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president urged the UK and other countries to deploy vessels to the strait amid the conflict with Iran.

Defense secretary appeared to endorse killing prisoners, a violation of international law, during press briefing

A top Democratic lawmaker with a military background has reacted strongly to US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s call for “no quarter” for US enemies during a Friday press briefing at the Pentagon, calling such an order – if followed by troops – a potential violation of international law.

The US senator Mark Kelly, of Arizona, posted on Friday on X that “‘No quarter’ isn’t some wanna be tough guy line – it means something. An order to give no quarter would mean to take no prisoners and kill them instead.”

U.S. Navy Seaman 1st Class Clyde C. McMeans, 26, was one of the 103 USS California crewmen killed during attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

"A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli: According to research cited in Foxit's State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once people account for reviewing and validating AI-generated output. The survey of 1,000 desk-based workers and 400 executives in the United States and United Kingdom found executives believe AI saves them about 4.6 hours per week, but they spend roughly 4 hours and 20 minutes verifying those results. End users reported a similar pattern, estimating 3.6 hours saved but 3 hours and 50 minutes spent reviewing AI work. Once that "verification burden" is factored in, executives gain just 16 minutes per week, while end users actually lose about 14 minutes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The facility was attacked on Friday night, bringing the toll of medical staff to 31 killed in past 12 days

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel killed 12 medical workers in a strike on a medical centre in south Lebanon on Friday night, bringing the toll of healthcare staff killed in the country by Israel to 31 over the past 12 days.

A primary healthcare facility in the town of Burj Qalaouiyah was hit by an Israeli strike late on Friday, setting it ablaze and causing the structure to collapse on top of the staff inside. The strike killed doctors, paramedics and nurses on duty, according to the Lebanese ministry of health, which said it “violated all international humanitarian laws” in a statement.

Motaz Malhees is an actor in The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a Palestinian girl killed by the IDF in Gaza in 2024

Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees said a travel ban imposed by Donald Trump is preventing him from attending Sunday’s Academy Awards, whose nominees include a movie in which he has a starring role.

The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, has been nominated for best international feature film.

I thought Wi-Fi 7 routers were overhyped and overpriced. But after personally testing them and analyzing the data, I stand corrected.

Stretching E Ink to the size of a monitor sounds great in theory, but the reality has room for improvement.

It turns out your car's tire pressure monitoring system may be a gold mine for hackers.

Former Oldham East and Saddleworth MP remained in Westminster for New Labour’s entire 13 years in power

The former Labour MP minister Phil Woolas has died of brain cancer, his family and close friends have announced.

Woolas, 66, was elected to parliament to represent Oldham East and Saddleworth as part of Labour’s landslide victory in the 1997 general election. He remained in Westminster for New Labour’s entire 13-year stretch in power.

Founder Jonah Peretti said at SXSW that the goal is to follow Nintendo's model of creating surprising new things with existing tech.

Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans "have a God-given right to know what's on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It's plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives." But California company Wildtype sells lab-grown salmon — and is suing Texas over its ban on cell-cultivated meat, the Austin Chronicle reported this week. The company's founder says lab-grown salmon eliminates the mercury, microplastic, and antibiotic contamination commonly found in seafood. And one chef in Austin, Texas says lab-grown salmon is "awesome" and "something new"-- at the only Texas restaurant that was serving it last summer: Just two months after the salmon hit the menu, Texas banned the sale of cell-cultivated meat... A lawsuit from Wildtype and one other FDA-approved cultivated meat company [argues] it's anti-capitalism and unconstitutional... This law "was not enacted to protect the health and safety of Texas consumers — indeed, it allows the continued distribution of cultivated meat to consumers so long as it is not sold. Instead, SB 261 was enacted to stifle the growth of the cultivated meat industry to protect Texas' conventional agricultural industry from innovative competition that is exclusively based outside of Texas...." [according to the lawsuit]. It was filed in September, immediately after the ban took effect, and cell-cultivated companies are awaiting judgment. That Texas ban would last two years, notes U.S. News and World Reports, adding that Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Nebraska have also passed bans, some temporary "on the manufacturing, sale or distribution of cell-cultured meat." Meanwhile, a new five-year moratorium on lab-grown meat was signed this week by the governor of South Dakota "after rejecting a permanent ban last month," reports South Dakota Searchlight: The new law bars the sale, manufacture or distribution of "cell-cultured protein" products from July 1 this year through June 30, 2031. Violations are punishable by up to 30 days in jail, a fine of up to $500, or both. "But supporters of lab-grown meat are not going down without a fight," adds U.S. News and World Reports, with another lawsuit also filed challenging a ban in Florida: When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the ban in Florida, he described it as "fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals." He added that his administration "will save our beef."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jan ‘Jay’ Carey torched the Stars and Stripes to protest against Trump’s executive order banning flag burning

The prosecution of a man who burned the American flag near the White House in protest of an executive order against flag burning has been dropped by the US Department of Justice.

On Friday, the justice department moved to dismiss charges against Jan “Jay” Carey, 55, a military combat veteran who set the flag on fire in Lafayette Square in Washington DC in August, the day that Donald Trump signed a presidential order to crack down on flag burning.

Closure of strait of Hormuz puts pressure on region’s economies amid growing resentment about conflict started by US and Israel

• Middle East crisis – live updates

An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers have lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger.

Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire.

EU citizens with post-Brexit settlement status in UK will not have to present British passport to airlines

British dual nationals who are EU citizens with post-Brexit settlement status in the UK will not have to use a British passport to return to the UK, the Home Office has said in a significant U-turn on its controversial dual national border rules.

The change, which critics say was “hidden away” on a government webpage, comes weeks after controversy erupted over the new rules that came into effect on 25 February. They require British dual nationals to present a British passport or certificate of entitlement, costing £589, before they board a plane to the UK.

Suspect Christian Barrios, 32, shot two people multiple times Friday night, St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick said.

Stanley McChrystal said White House has a ‘we should do because we can’ approach to international relations

The retired US army general who once led Nato forces in Afghanistan says the bellicose foreign policy Donald Trump has pursued during his second presidency can be summed up as “we should do because we can” – invoking the lyrics of the Dolly Parton classic Jolene to emphasize the point.

Stanley McChrystal delivered those remarks on Friday at Tulane University’s New Orleans book festival during a fireside chat hosted by the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, who asked in part about US military strikes Trump has ordered in Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran since Christmas.

• Police find suspect after incident near course

• Third round began on time despite delays

Police have captured a man who they say killed two people on Friday night about a mile from TPC Sawgrass. The incident led the Players Championship to delay opening the gates to the public for the third round by a couple of hours.

The St Johns County sheriff, Rob Hardwick, said the suspect, whom he identified as Christian Barrios, shot two people multiple times about 10:30pm on Friday in the parking lot of Walgreens in a domestic violence situation. The store is located about a mile away from the course.

Wife of former PM also says she is mentioned in Epstein files and coverage not focused enough on victims of abuse

Peter Mandelson’s critics should remember that he is “still a human being”, Cherie Blair has said in an interview.

Blair added that the former Labour minister was “entitled to a fair trial” after he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. He denies criminal wrongdoing and has been released under investigation.

The wild boar sparked a police response that drew in officers and veterinarians equipped with a tranquilizer gun, shields and even a blowgun.

Greenhouse gases dropped just 0.1% last year as environment minister criticises lack of improvement

Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have again missed targets set by the Climate Protection Act and barely fell at all in 2025.

Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency.

Videos posted by the US president on Truth Social show strikes on the Iranian island of Kharg. The US president said on Friday that US forces had 'obliterated' military targets on the island and that crucial oil infrastructure there could be next

• Middle East crisis – live updates

From wills and guardianship papers to advance healthcare directives, parents are anticipating dying in custody or being deported without warning

She called it the “end times”.

In a quiet living room in south Florida, a 42-year-old South American woman sat at her kitchen table signing her will. Her hands trembled, and the ink smeared when tears fell hard enough that she had to reprint the pages.

Spencer Laird was diagnosed with colon cancer at 26. At 30, he was told it had returned and spread to his lungs, with one tumor the size of a golf ball.

Demonstrators on Sunday will be arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action or for intifada chants, says Met

Police have warned demonstrators that they will be arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action or making intifada chants at a protest in London on Sunday.

About 12,000 people are expected to take part in the annual al-Quds Day rally, an international demonstration of support for Palestinian rights. The event takes its name from the Arabic version of Jerusalem and was created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Jason Hughes died after falling and being struck by a car driven by a student who had just pranked the teacher

A Georgia prosecutor has decided to drop charges against a teenager who police say was driving the truck that struck and killed a beloved high school teacher when a prank turned deadly, the teen’s lawyer said. The victim’s family had urged authorities not to compound the tragedy by prosecuting the teen driver and his friends.

The 40-year-old teacher, Jason Hughes, died after slipping and falling into the street as the teens started to drive away after participating in a community tradition of pranking teachers by throwing toilet paper on to his front lawn.

Not all meal kits are created equal. We compared recipes from seven leading services against supermarket prices to find out which ones are worth the cost -- and which aren't.

Amsterdam's mayor said police have CCTV footage of a person placing the explosive device against the school's exterior wall.

“I always get really emotional when the pebbles go in,” said Rebecca Parr, who works for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

We sifted through the rumors to find the upgrades most likely to make it to Apple's next smartwatch.

The Pixel 10A's cameras are similar to those on the 9A, but it still performs quite well compared to other phones in its price range.

Officials sent out repayment letters to about 1,400 people relying on discredited guidance that had been scrapped

Unpaid carers have been issued with demands to repay thousands of pounds for allegedly breaking benefit rules even though officials knew the decisions were based on unlawful and discredited policy guidance.

About 1,400 carers are understood to have been sent letters by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in January asking them to repay sums relating to breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules that had been scrapped four months previously.

Features woven into the fabric of platforms have been central to landmark social media harm case in US. How do they work?

It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week. The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”. Not true, replied the tech companies. Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”.

Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s. But how do these features work and what are their consequences? Are they creating addicts rather than users or are they just giving consumers more of what they want?

US workers are finding it difficult to afford basic necessities as the president claims ‘the economy is roaring back’

US workers are still struggling with the cost of living despite Donald Trump’s campaign promises to fix the US affordability crisis.

The Guardian spoke to workers as an exclusive poll showed cross-party concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the US economy.

Race to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat provides glimpse into midterms with Iran and immigration on voters’ minds

Earlier this week, a steady trickle of voters casting ballots in Dalton at Georgia’s City Hall offered a glimpse into what may be changing fortunes for Democrats in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former congressional district.

The district hasn’t elected a Democrat since it was created after the 2010 Census. But the party’s candidate Shawn Harris drew the most votes district-wide – about 37% – on Tuesday and now faces Clay Fuller, a Trump-endorsed former prosecutor as his opponent in an April runoff election. The winner will finish Greene’s term until November, when a whole new election will take place.

Alexandria airport center would hold migrant families and children inside converted barracks before deportation

The Trump administration is poised to expand immigration detention operations at a controversial site inside a rural Louisiana airport, the Guardian has learned.

The administration is seeking to establish a “first of its kind” short-term facility that would hold migrant families and unaccompanied children next to a runway that has become a central node for the White House’s mass deportation agenda.

The State Department is seeking information on Iran's new supreme leader and nine other "key leaders" in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Filmmaker Mode can automatically adjust your TV's picture to look better with specific content. Here's why and when you should use it.

Apple said it's normal for your iPhone battery to drain after an update. It's also only temporary.

To focus on sculpting, he worked nights at a Pittsburgh post office. At 92, his art career finally took off.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said. Top executives have recently signaled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told them to begin planning how to pare back, two of the people said. If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company's most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the "year of efficiency." It employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31, according to its latest filing. The speculation follows a recent report from The New York Times claiming that Meta has delayed the release of its next major AI model after falling behind competing systems from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yara’s Svein Tore Holsether says it would be ‘catastrophic’ if the strait of Hormuz was closed for a year

The boss of one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies has said global food supplies could be badly damaged this year if the Iran war becomes an extended conflict.

Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Norway’s Yara International, has called on global leaders to consider the impact that soaring food prices will have in some of the world’s poorest countries “before it is too late”.

First major study on ‘AI psychosis’ suggests chatbots can encourage delusions among vulnerable people

A new scientific review raises concerns about how chatbots powered by artificial intelligence may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people.

A summary of existing evidence on artificial intelligence-induced psychosis was published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry, highlighting how chatbots can encourage delusional thinking – though possibly only in people who are already vulnerable to psychotic symptoms. The authors advocate for clinical testing of AI chatbots in conjunction with trained mental health professionals.

Network has faced Trump’s ire and Pleitgen has faced criticism, but it is ‘better to be on the ground’ he says

Frederik Pleitgen, CNN’s senior international correspondent, had a pretty normal Thursday evening – at home in Berlin with his family, he walked his two Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs and spent some time with his two teenagers.

That return to normalcy came after spending a week in war-torn Iran as the only western television correspondent given a visa to report from the country.

Inside the growing scientific quest to understand what creatures with the extraordinary ability to defy the ravages of time can teach us about making human aging better.

Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty for Tyler Robinson, 22, who is charged with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Summer holidaymakers opting for ‘more familiar, easy-to-reach locations’ as travel industry counts cost of Middle East conflict

Holidaymakers who had planned to visit the eastern Mediterranean this summer are moving their trips to the west and the Caribbean because of the US-Israel war on Iran, travel companies have said.

Travellers from the UK and mainland Europe are increasingly swapping their holiday destinations away from Cyprus, Turkey and Greece towards Italy, Spain, Malta and Croatia, as the region around the Middle East grapples with flight cancellations and airspace closures.

What I’m Discussing Today:

• Kareem’s Daily Quote: Good going, Gandhi…whether you said it or not.

• The “Exceptional” Pete Hegseth: He set the standard, then he ignored it.

• The “Real” Big One? A global economy built on fragile ground.

• Food? Drugs? Both? Neither? The choice no family should have to make.

• What I’m Watching: Sidney Poitier is a perfect dinner guest.

• Jukebox Playlist: Sam Cooke on repeat.

Kareem’s Daily Quote

“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

Let’s get this out of the way first. Historians and quote researchers haven’t found this exact sentence in Mahatma Gandhi’s writings or speeches. What’s been documented is this: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Which I thoroughly agree with, while admitting it isn’t quite the same thing. But he also wrote a lot about uplifting the weakest and most vulnerable among us humans, so it’s at least understandable how those two concepts were shorthanded into one. Beyond that, in 1977 Hubert Humphrey actually said, “The moral test of government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, the twilight of life, and the shadows of life.” A terrific quote, though it didn’t gain as much traction, most likely because Humphrey didn’t cut as romantic a figure as Gandhi did.

The made-up quote and the real one are both reminders that once you peel back all the politics and the noise, it really comes down to how we treat people when no one’s keeping score. It’s not fancy or complicated. It’s the same lesson most of us learned long before we could spell “policy”: you don’t walk past someone who’s struggling and pretend you didn’t see it.

When I was a kid growing up in New York, my parents didn’t have much, but they had this unshakeable belief that you look out for people. My father was a police officer, and he’d come home with stories about folks who were down on their luck—not in a dramatic, movie‑scene way, just regular people trying to get through the day. He never talked about them with judgment. He talked about them with respect. That stuck with me. Later, when I started playing ball and traveling, I saw the same thing in community centers, gyms, and schools, people doing their best in systems that weren’t built with them in mind.

A country can brag about being powerful or wealthy, but if the people at the bottom, the weakest among us, can barely hang on, what does that power really mean?

And “weakest” doesn’t mean lazy or unmotivated. It means the people carrying the heaviest loads: the elderly person choosing between medicine and groceries, the single parent working two jobs and still coming up short, the young person trying to build a future in a system that keeps moving the goalposts. These are the folks who tell you the truth about a country, not the ones on magazine covers.

Yet, it becomes ever easier to look away. We’ve gotten used to seeing struggle as background noise. Sometimes someone can be hurting right in front of us, and we treat it like a passing cloud, something unfortunate, just part of the day. But nothing about it is inevitable. It’s the result of choices. Choices about who gets help, who gets ignored, and who gets blamed for problems they didn’t create.

When I think about greatness, I don’t think about trophies or titles. I think about moments when people stepped up for someone who couldn’t give them anything in return. I think about the older woman I met at a community event who told me she skipped her medication so her grandkids could eat. She didn’t say it with anger, she said it like it was just part of life. And that’s the part that bothered me most. She had accepted a burden that never should’ve been hers to carry alone.

A nation shows its character in those moments. Not in speeches. Not in slogans. In how it responds when someone like her says, “I’m doing everything I can, and it’s still not enough.”

If we really believe greatness is measured by how we treat our weakest members, then the real question becomes simple: Are we building a country where people like her are seen, heard, and supported, or one where they’re left to figure it out on their own?

Read more

Erratic rhetoric, shifting goals and mixed signals leave allies, foes and voters unsure what the president wants from war

“Mr President,” said a reporter. “You’ve said the war is ‘very complete’ but your defence secretary says, ‘This is just the beginning’. So which is it?” Donald Trump’s eyes darted left and right then down. “Well, I think you could say both,” he parried.

The confusing answer at a press conference in Doral, Florida this week did not befit a wartime leader armed with stirring rhetoric and a lucid plan. But it was entirely on brand for the 47th US president. The tumultuous style that Trump brings to election campaigns, dealing with Congress and global trade relations has now been imported to the theatre of war.

Dr Brian Elmore witnessed a public health crisis unfold at the border near El Paso. He reflects on why it was like a ‘perverse Groundhog Day’

In late spring 2024, Dr Brian Elmore was working out of a mobile clinic, providing medical treatment to migrants in Ciudad Juárez, just south of the US-Mexico border wall. One of his patients, a Venezuelan man with a fractured arm and a detached left chest from his sternum and clavicle, told Elmore that Mexican immigration officials broke his arm when he first got to town, and that rubber bullets fired by Texas national guardsmen had caused his chest injuries.

The man somehow had managed to fashion a shoddily made splint for his arm, but his chest would require surgery. When an ambulance arrived, the criminal group that controlled the riverine area refused to let him leave. The Texas guardsmen looked on from the US side of the river. “It was heartbreaking,” Elmore said of the spectacle.

With oil markets paralyzed by the U.S.-Iran war, the Trump administration says it could escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz — a massive undertaking that experts say could already be in the preparatory stages.

On the day after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted his death sentence, halting his execution two days before he was supposed to die, Charles “Sonny” Burton sat in his wheelchair in a visiting room at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., drinking a Coke and eating a Reese’s peanut butter cup.

He could not stop smiling.

“I’m feeling wonderful,” Burton told me.

Burton, 75, wore white sneakers and a brace on his right hand, his tan quilted jacket and slacks fitting loosely over his thin frame. A tan helmet, given to him by the prison to protect from his occasional falls, sat on the table next to an array of photos taken with family earlier that day, along with a bag of quarters for the vending machines.

Burton identified the people in one of the photos for me. Several were still in the visiting room: his sister Eddie Mae Ellison, his son Charles Burton III, and his grandson Charles Burton IV. No sooner had one group of relatives left the visiting room than another showed up — a rolling family reunion.

Burton had been sitting in that same visiting room with his lawyers 24 hours earlier, on Tuesday, March 10, when his longtime paralegal Nancy Palombi got a phone call in Montgomery, 120 miles away. While the rest of the legal team was at the prison without access to their cellphones, Palombi had stayed behind to field any communications from the U.S. Supreme Court, which had just received their final filings aimed at stopping Burton’s execution.

Instead, she got a call from a reporter she knew. The reporter was screaming, “Have you heard?” The governor’s office had just sent out a press release with the subject line, “Update from Governor Kay Ivey: Charles L. Burton.” And that’s how Palombi learned that her client of 20 years would not be executed.

“I was the first member of the team to find out,” Palombi told me that morning, her voice still trembling with a mix of shock, joy, and relief.

Palombi called the prison and spoke to the warden’s secretary, who entered the visitation room with a smile on her face. She told Burton’s lead attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Matt Schulz, that he should call his paralegal right away. “And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, it happened,’” Schulz said. “But I still didn’t want to let myself believe it, because I didn’t know yet.”

Schulz rushed to his car, drove out of range from Holman’s cellphone blockers, and called Palombi. He then sped back.

Describing the scene the next day, Burton turned and pointed toward the hallway that runs along the perimeter of the visiting room. That’s where prison staff celebrated as the news spread on death row. Nurses and officers waved and gave him thumbs ups through the horizontal window slats. “Guards were saying, ‘Sonny got clemency! Sonny got clemency!’” Burton said.

A day later, everyone was still a bit shellshocked. Burton’s son, who had flown in from New York, got the news while loading up his rental car for the drive to Atmore. Burton’s sister was at the doctor’s office in Montgomery, where she saw a local news alert. She ran outside and dropped to her knees. “And then the tears just flowed,” she said.

For decades, the visiting room had been the site of agonizing goodbyes between the condemned and their loved ones in the hours before an execution. Now it was home to warm hugs and tranquil smiles, no one’s bigger than Burton’s. He invoked the famed blues harmonica player Snooky Pryor: “I’m too cool to move.”

Burton’s commutation was historic: the third time in the modern history of Alabama’s death penalty that a person facing execution received clemency by the governor. Ivey, a staunch Republican, has presided over 25 executions since she took office in 2017. Although she commuted the sentence of Burton’s neighbor, Rocky Myers, last year due to serious doubts over his guilt, few were optimistic that she would exercise such mercy again.

Burton would have been the ninth person executed using nitrogen gas in Alabama in just over two years. The method was adopted following complications carrying out lethal injection, a wider trend that has reshaped the landscape of executions across the country. The state’s last execution prompted a forceful dissent from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who described the psychological torture in visceral detail. “You want to breathe; you have to breathe,” she wrote. “But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas. Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe.”

Burton’s commutation also came as a searing documentary about the state prison system, “The Alabama Solution,” was in the race to win an Oscar. The film, which was produced using footage from contraband cellphones, forced politicians to acknowledge the deadly conditions and inhumane punishments inflicted on people incarcerated in their state. On the day I visited Burton, lawmakers met in Montgomery to discuss legislation to impose oversight on Alabama’s prisons.

Related

Lethal Illusion: Understanding the Death Penalty Apparatus

It was this kind of public pressure that undoubtedly saved Burton’s life. “I would have 100 percent died without it,” Burton told me. In Montgomery, activists held vigils every Monday for weeks in front of the governor’s mansion, while downtown businesses posted flyers about Burton’s case in their front windows. On the eve of Ivey’s decision, two of Burton’s daughters led a march to the state Capitol to deliver petitions to her office.

The campaign for clemency was launched by Burton’s legal team, who believed they had nothing to lose. They highlighted Burton’s remorse, his advanced age and poor health, and, above all, his lack of culpability for the murder that sent him to death row. “This is one of those cases that shocks people,” Schulz said in a clemency film produced last year. “And it shocks people in a totally different way than most death penalty cases.”

Burton was 40 years old when he led a group of younger men in an armed robbery at an AutoZone in Talladega, Alabama. A 34-year-old father and military veteran named Doug Battle walked in as the crime was underway — and one of the young men fatally shot him in the back.

At first, Burton denied any role in either the robbery or the shooting. His apparent lack of remorse helped convince jurors at his 1992 trial that he should be punished as severely as the man who actually shot Battle, a 20-year-old named Derrick DeBruce, who had already been sent to death row. After a four-day trial, Burton, too, was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to die.

But a federal court eventually threw out DeBruce’s death sentence, finding that his lawyer failed to effectively represent him during the punishment phase of his trial. The Alabama attorney general’s office initially appealed the decision, contending that it would be “arguably unjust” to allow Burton to be executed for his co-defendant’s actions. But in 2015, the state agreed to reduce DeBruce’s punishment to life without parole. He died five years later.

The notion that Burton should now pay with his life for another man’s crime spurred outrage among people in Alabama and beyond. The campaign to save Burton was bolstered by six of the eight living jurors who voted to send him to death row, as well as by Battle’s daughter, Tori Battle, who was outspoken in her opposition to the execution. “What is the execution of Mr. Burton supposed to accomplish or solve?” she asked Ivey in a letter that was submitted as part of Burton’s 88-page clemency petition. “Is it for my father? For me? To deter crime? I honestly do not understand.”

The petition argued, first and foremost, that Burton never killed anyone. “He did not pull the trigger that killed Douglas Battle,” his lawyers wrote. In fact, he didn’t even witness the murder. “Mr. Burton was already outside of the AutoZone building where the shooting took place.” Although Alabama’s felony murder statute allows defendants to be held responsible for the actions of others, Burton was only supposed to be eligible for capital murder if he intended to take somebody’s life — and there was nothing to prove that this was the case.

The state’s star witness against Burton was a teenager named LuJuan McCants who agreed to testify in order to avoid the death penalty. He said that Burton had gathered the group with the intention of committing a robbery — and if something went wrong, “he said let him take care of it.” According to prosecutors, this directive proved that Burton intended to kill anyone who might stand in the way of the robbery. But even this weak evidence was undermined by McCants’s own testimony, as well as by an interrogation video discovered by Burton’s lawyers years after the trial. It showed McCants repeatedly telling investigators that Burton had not wanted anyone to get hurt — and that he’d been upset upon learning that DeBruce shot Battle.

Some of the jurors who spoke out against the execution said they were haunted by their decision. “I have questioned whether death is an appropriate punishment,” one woman wrote in a letter submitted with the clemency petition. “I have often thought about Mr. Burton’s mother, who was no doubt devastated by the sentence.”

But for most, it came down to the obvious unfairness of executing Burton for DeBruce’s crime. “Had I known the shooter would later be taken off death row,” one juror wrote, “I would not have voted for the death sentence.” Another juror wrote that Burton may have been the ringleader, “but if Charles Manson can get a life sentence for leading his group to kill many people, it is fair for Mr. Burton to serve life without parole.”

Like most people living on death row, Burton bears no resemblance to Charles Manson — or to the people Americans picture when they hear the term “worst of the worst.” His early life had many of the familiar hallmarks of those who are put to death in the United States: poverty, racism, childhood abuse, and trauma. By the time Alabama came close to executing him, he’d long since apologized for his actions and was in frequent pain from rheumatoid arthritis, unable to walk on his own.

But he was also lucky, he told me. If there was anything that sustained him during his years at Holman, it was a strong family structure, which many of his neighbors lack. Indeed, Burton’s clemency petition was filled with letters from relatives, pen pals, and advocates who described Burton as a positive and nurturing presence in their lives.

I was supposed to attend Burton’s execution — not as a media witness, but as one of the people placed on his personal list. Burton did not wish for his family to be subjected to his death, and his legal team decided that, should the killing move forward, they wanted the world to know what Alabama had done. They invited me and two other journalists to join them in the witness room.

Related

“Agony” and “Suffering” as Alabama Experiments With Nitrogen Executions

One of them, Lee Hedgepeth, had already witnessed seven executions in Alabama, including three by nitrogen gas. The last one had been the longest to date, lasting 40 minutes. Schulz had seen two of his clients killed with nitrogen. Their accounts were harrowing: Terror and panic was visible on the faces of the condemned, who gasped and thrashed on the gurney. As Burton’s execution date neared, Schulz wondered how it would compare. Would his elderly client suffer more or less due to his age and poor health? Could his more shallow breathing cause the execution to last longer? Or would the fact that he does not have as much oxygen in his lungs to begin with mean it would be shorter?

What was certain was that executing Burton would have been a horrifying spectacle. Guards would have had to lift him onto the gurney, adjusting the thick black straps to fit more tightly over his withered body, and putting a mask over his face. Witnesses would then have watched as Alabama suffocated an elderly man, who killed no one, in the name of justice.

Instead, Burton is now poised to live out the rest of his days behind bars. On the day after our visit, he was moved out of the prison where he spent more than three decades and driven up to Kilby Correctional Facility outside Montgomery, where newly incarcerated people are housed before being transferred to their designated prisons. The move is sure to be a shock to the system for a man who has hardly begun to process the trauma of his near-execution and who has spent much of the past 10 years between his cell and the prison infirmary. After age 65, Burton told me, he slowed down. “I haven’t been outside in eight years,” he said.

In a less punitive system, it would be obvious that Burton should go home to spend the rest of his life with his family. As he said, “I ain’t got much longer to live.” His relatives harbor some hope that he may some day be eligible for medical release. But for now, according to Schulz, Burton was in good spirits when they spoke on the phone from his new location. “He said he knew many of the nurses there, and that they all were greeting, and treating, him warmly,” he said.

“And he’s alive,” Schulz added. On Thursday at 6 p.m., the hour he had been scheduled to die, Burton planned to eat ice cream at the same time as his attorneys and savor the feeling of gratitude. “God has given me a second chance,” Burton told me. This, he believed, was God’s work. “He put the right people in my path.”

The post In the Room Where Death Row Prisoners Say Final Goodbyes, He Learned He Would Live appeared first on The Intercept.

He is stuck in a quagmire. His goals are elusive. His bombing does not force a surrender. He has no exit strategy. Good morning, Vietnam

Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong gameplan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity.

There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.

With membership soaring, the Green party is grappling with logistics, culture shifts and a flood of new activists

It is, as one Green activist put it, a never-ending series of “constantly good problems to have”. But how does a party adapt to the sudden trebling of its membership? And when a majority of people in an organisation are new, is it even the same thing anymore?

The basic facts alone are startling. Before Zack Polanski took over as leader last September, the Greens in England and Wales had around 66,000 members. They are now at 215,000, and still rising at speed.

The former No 3 overall NBA draft pick opens up about addiction, homelessness and redemption in a candid memoir revisiting basketball’s cocaine era

When the Golden State Warriors drafted Chris Washburn with the No 3 pick in 1986, it should have been a dream come true. Instead, it might have been the worst thing that could have happened for the 6ft 11in NC State prospect.

“I put on a smile because they were paying me to be out there,” Washburn, a former three-time high school All-American, tells the Guardian. “But I felt alone.”

As top teams land in New York for world sevens this weekend, the Olympic star discusses her uniquely American story and her sport’s search for the spotlight

On Saturday, World Rugby’s HSBC SVNS lands in New York – well, New Jersey – for two days at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, a short ride from downtown Manhattan. The governing body will be watching keenly, as two days of traditional warm-weather sport are held at the end of a north-eastern winter. In New York/New Jersey on Thursday, it snowed.

The men’s US Eagles are not playing, having lost their place at the top table. But the Eagles women have hopes of a home-soil win after a third-place finish last week in Vancouver, beating France in a thriller after a narrow loss to New Zealand. Coach Emilie Bydwell’s team are third in the season standings, set for Championship tournaments in spring and summer.

The long-running British period gangster series gets its own movie, starring Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan.

The Kremlin hopes the Trump administration’s move to contain oil prices sent soaring by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will lead to further relief.

Some Iranians living in Dubai say their families celebrated the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but the war could leave Iran in a worse situation than before.

Lawyers’ pleas for extensions reveal post-DOGE staffing woes at federal agencies’ Freedom of Information Act offices.

Few Chinese laborers have spoken out about the abuses they allegedly suffered while toiling abroad. Until now.

On the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2024, Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at University of Florida Health in downtown Jacksonville when a nurse came in with a bedsheet and told her to cover up. A supervisor brought a tablet to Doyley’s bedside. Gathered on the screen were a judge in a black robe and several lawyers, doctors and hospital staff.

“It’s a real judge in there?” Doyley asked the nurse at the beginning of what would be a three-hour hearing. “Now this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Doyley hadn’t asked for the hearing. The hospital had sought it. Doyley had mere minutes to prepare. She had no lawyer and no advocate — no one to explain to her what, exactly, was going on.

Judge Michael Kalil informed her that the state had filed an emergency petition at the hospital’s behest — not out of concern for Doyley, per se, but in the interest of her unborn child. He described the circumstances as “extraordinary.”

The hospital and state attorney’s office wanted to force Doyley to undergo a cesarean section. Doyley, a professional birthing doula, didn’t want that and had been firm about it. She’d had three prior C-sections, one that resulted in a hemorrhage, and hoped to avoid another serious complication and lengthy recovery. She was aware that doctors were concerned about the risk of uterine rupture, a potentially deadly complication for her and her baby. She would say during the hearing that she understood the risk to be less than 2% and didn’t want to agree to a C-section unless there was an emergency.

But the choice would not be hers. The judge would decide how she would give birth.

Mentally competent patients typically have the right to choose their medical care — or refuse it. But there is one notable exception: pregnant patients. That inconsistency is particularly striking in Florida, a state that has pushed to expand medical freedom for those who wish to avoid vaccines or fluoridated water, while constricting the rights of people in various stages of pregnancy.

“There aren’t any other instances where you would invade the body of one person in order to save the life of another,” said Lois Shepherd, a bioethics expert at the University of Virginia School of Law.

In Florida and many other states, court-ordered medical procedures are just one of the ways pregnant patients’ rights are restricted. The effort to chip away at those rights is rooted in the concept of fetal personhood — that a fetus has equal and, in some cases, more rights than the woman sustaining it.

The link between fetal personhood and court-ordered C-sections dates back to the 1980s, when courts started ruling that hospitals can override patients’ decisions in favor of the health of unborn children.

In the years since, proponents of fetal personhood began to push for even broader legal protections. In 1986, Minnesota was the first state to recognize fetuses as victims in homicide cases. Some states have imprisoned pregnant women for exposing their fetuses to drugs. Nearly 30 states have passed laws that allow hospitals to invalidate pregnant patients’ advance directives, which outline the kinds of life-sustaining treatment a person wants after a catastrophic illness or accident. At least one, Alabama, extended the concept of personhood all the way to the earliest stages of fertilization and conception by giving frozen embryos the same legal status as children, though the Legislature later said the law couldn’t be enforced.

And the fetal personhood movement has accelerated in the past several years, supercharged by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to reverse the abortion rights that had been protected by Roe v. Wade.

Florida has long been at the forefront of fetal personhood policies. The state was one of the first in the country to prosecute a woman for “delivering” drugs to her fetus during pregnancy in 1989, although the Florida Supreme Court later overturned her conviction. And after advocates twice failed to get a fetal personhood amendment on the state ballot, the Legislature is now considering a bill that would enshrine the concept in state law by giving embryos and fetuses the same legal status as people in wrongful death suits.

For women in labor, the potential impact of the bill is clear: Experts anticipate their medical needs could be further diminished in favor of the fetuses’.

Several legal experts told ProPublica they are alarmed by Doyley’s case and the legislation’s potential to allow for more court interventions during childbirth. Lawyers who represent women in fetal personhood cases already have identified a higher number of forced C-sections in Florida than other states.

The state attorney’s office for the 4th Judicial Circuit declined to comment on Doyley’s case, saying a response would violate her medical privacy. But in an email, a spokesperson noted why, in general, the office would intervene: “The courts have held that the State has a compelling interest in the preservation of the life of an unborn child and the protection of innocent third parties who may be harmed by the parental refusal to allow or consent to life-saving medical treatment.”

C-sections account for nearly a third of all deliveries in the United States. They can be necessary when babies are breech, or in the wrong position for birth, as well as in cases of maternal or fetal emergency. But in other cases, such as slow laboring or prior C-sections, the need for the surgery is less clear.

Surveys have found that more than 10% of women feel pressured into C-sections and other procedures by doctors worried about injuries to the baby. Patients generally don’t challenge doctors who say they’re necessary, and it is uncommon for someone to hold out and for the hospital to turn to the courts.

It is so rare, in fact, that advocates for the rights of pregnant women were shocked to discover that the same thing that happened to Doyley had happened to another Florida woman just a year and a half earlier.

The similarities in their cases were striking. Both women had three prior C-sections. They had questioned the need for their previous surgeries and arrived prepared to fight for vaginal births. And both women are Black.

They had argued that compelling them to have C-sections violated their rights to make medical decisions. Hospital staff said their medical decisions threatened the health of the fetus. It would be up to the courts to decide which one mattered more.

Asked to consider the constitutionality of court-ordered C-sections, the U.S. Supreme Court declined in 1994, leaving a patchwork of decisions that vary by state.

In the early 1980s, a hospital in Georgia won a court order to force a woman with a dangerous pregnancy complication to have a C-section. Then, in 1987, a judge in Washington, D.C., approved a request to perform surgery on a pregnant woman dying from cancer without her consent. Later, a higher court reversed that ruling and held that hospitals should not override medical decisions. An Illinois appellate court in 1993 refused to order a woman to undergo a C-section.

Not long after, a patient named Laura Pemberton, who did not want a C-section, left a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida, against medical advice. A local judge sent law enforcement to her house to bring her back. Once she returned to the hospital, the judge ordered her to have a C-section, which doctors carried out. She later sued in federal court and lost. The 1999 decision by a federal district judge found that the state had a right to override her wishes.

“Whatever the scope of Ms. Pemberton’s personal Constitutional rights in this situation, they clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child,” the decision said. The decision marked a legal turning point in prioritizing fetal rights over the religious freedom and bodily autonomy of the mother.

In 2009, Samantha Burton arrived at the same hospital at 25 weeks pregnant, after going into premature labor. Doctors told her she needed to remain on bed rest, but she wanted to leave and go home to her children. The hospital got a court order for her to remain in the hospital and undergo any treatment doctors deemed necessary to save the fetus. She had an emergency C-section, and the baby was stillborn.

She appealed the ruling granting the emergency order, and a Florida appeals court ruled in her favor. They said the circuit judge should have required the hospital to prove the baby was viable before imposing unwanted treatment, but the court stopped short of saying it was unacceptable to override the medical decisions of pregnant women in all situations.

Pregnancy is the only condition where Florida courts have ruled that a patient can be forced to undergo unwanted treatment. Even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions.

Those rulings give the state vast control over pregnant women.

“All of it essentially is about the state’s ability to decide that a fetus, at any point during a pregnancy, is more important than the person who’s pregnant,” said Rutgers University law professor Kimberly Mutcherson.

In March 2023, more than a year before Doyley’s court-ordered C-section, Brianna Bennett arrived in labor at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital — the same hospital where the women in the 1999 and 2009 lawsuits had given birth.

Over the preceding years, Bennett had come to question the medical reasoning behind her three prior C-sections. Each recovery had been harder than the last, leaving her so incapacitated after the third that for two weeks she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without help.

At the time Bennett went into labor with her fourth, her mother’s hip problems had gotten so bad that she needed a wheelchair and required some help from Bennett to function. Bennett did not think she could care for all her family members while in recovery from abdominal surgery, so she insisted on trying for a vaginal birth.

Tallahassee Memorial Hospital had specialists on staff and a neonatal intensive care unit equipped to serve critically ill babies. Bennett believed it offered the kind of support she needed to be able to follow her birth plan. The hospital has handled a lot of high-risk pregnancies.

As Bennett’s labor stretched past 24 hours, a doctor confronted her about agreeing to a C-section, Bennett said. She continued to refuse, so the hospital reached out to the state attorney. In an email, Jack Campbell, state attorney for the 2nd Judicial Circuit, responded that the court needed to act quickly.

“I plan to file an emergency motion with the Court to allow TMH to take whatever steps medically necessary to protect the life of the child and mother,” he wrote.

During the hearing, 15 to 20 people squeezed into Bennett’s hospital room. As would later happen with Doyley, she found herself in front of a tablet with a judge on the screen.

Bennett said she found it offensive that so many people were concerned about the method of her delivery without taking into consideration how difficult it would be to take care of both herself and her baby while recovering from a C-section. “Are any of you gonna help me bathe or shower? Are you gonna help change my pad? Are you gonna help lift the baby out of the bed and put me in the bed because I can’t lift my legs? Is anyone going to help me?”

Campbell told ProPublica that he felt the hearing was necessary to save two lives, Bennett’s and her baby’s. “I’m real comfortable with what we did here,” Campbell said. “I hate the fact that she’s upset about it.”

A spokesperson for Tallahassee Memorial Hospital declined to comment on Bennett’s case, even though she signed a waiver allowing the hospital to do so. “We will not be able to discuss specific patients or cases,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. The hospital did not respond to questions about its history of seeking court intervention in multiple women’s medical decisions while giving birth.

Bennett said she tried to remain calm, but inside she was panicking. During the hearing, her baby’s heart rate spiked. The judge ordered her to have a C-section, and doctors wheeled her into surgery. The operation lasted two and a half hours and the surgical team had to cut around existing scar tissue and avoid her bladder. Her incision looked like an upside-down T and required a wound vac, a portable machine that helps incisions close more quickly.

She said a doctor who visited her room during recovery told her she should never get pregnant again, according to a civil rights complaint filed with federal regulators.The complaint is still under investigation, but lawyers for Bennett said they haven’t heard from investigators in more than a year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not comment on the complaint.

“I cried every single day,” Bennett said. “I felt like I was supposed to be happy. I’m supposed to be thankful that I have a new life and that the Lord has blessed me to see this new baby. And I’m not even happy.”

A year and a half later in Jacksonville, Doyley faced a situation eerily similar to Bennett’s.

She noted as her hearing began that she was the only Black person on the screen. About a dozen faces, most of them white, had gathered to challenge her medical decisions. She said it made her feel as if her race had something to do with the fact that she was thrust into the intrusive hearing.

“I have 20 white people against me, and because I am informed and I am making an informed decision, they are trying to take my rights away from me by force,” Doyley told the people on the screen, requesting a Black nurse or doctor.

“I don’t find that race really has much to do with this, ma’am,” the judge responded.

Dr. Erin Burnett said during the hearing that she did not think Doyley could successfully give birth vaginally because she had a history of stalled labors. A long labor after prior C-sections could increase the risk of uterine rupture, which could kill Doyley and the child, she said.

She said the baby’s heart rate showed some signs of distress and told Doyley it would be better to have a C-section before it became an emergency. If the baby’s heart stopped or if she lost oxygen during delivery, the baby could suffer a brain injury or death.

Dr. John Davis, the chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department, testified that the hospital had been recognized for its low C-section rate and did not perform unnecessary surgeries. Doyley’s condition required intervention, he said.

Burnett and Davis did not respond to requests for comment, and the hospital declined ProPublica’s requests to interview them and others involved in Doyley’s care. Doyley signed a waiver allowing the hospital to discuss her case with ProPublica, but a spokesperson for University of Florida Health in Jacksonville would not comment, citing patient privacy. Nor did the hospital respond to questions about Doyley’s claim that race played a role in the decision to involve the court.

The research on the risks of uterine rupture after prior C-sections is unclear. Studies have found that 0.15% to 2.3% of these labors resulted in a rupture, depending on a number of factors such as body mass, a history of successful vaginal births and whether the labor was spontaneous or had to be induced.

Doyley, who felt comfortable with her odds and wanted to continue laboring, argued during the hearing that C-sections carry their own dangers — including a risk of death.

“A lot of that comes from medical negligence and medical racism, where we have a group of white doctors that think that they know what is best for Black bodies and Black babies,” Doyley said in the hearing.

Both the doctors and Doyley mentioned recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. However, neither one cited the organization’s stance on court-ordered C-sections, which the group has deemed to be “ethically impermissible.”

After three hours of testimony — all while Doyley lay in her hospital bed — the judge ruled that she could keep laboring unless there was an emergency. If that happened, the hospital could operate, whether she wanted it or not. The judge would reconvene the hearing in the morning.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Kalil wrote in an email that the judicial code of conduct prohibits judges from commenting on cases. “These ethical standards exist to protect the integrity of the judicial process, ensure fairness to all parties, and preserve the Court’s neutrality,” he wrote.

Overnight, doctors said the baby’s heart rate dropped for seven minutes. Doyley woke to her hospital bed being wheeled into surgery. She called out to her sister who was asleep in the hospital room.

“I had to tell her, ‘Hey, wake up,’” Doyley said. “‘Something is going on.’ She’s trying to put on her shoes. I’m like, ‘Girl, leave the shoes. Let’s go.’”

Doyley recalled reciting a short prayer as her sister scrambled into the operating room. The baby was delivered by C-section. Although Doyley’s daughter was initially limp, she perked up and became responsive within a few minutes. Doctors took her to the NICU while Doyley went to recover. And to get ready to face the judge again.

At the 8 a.m. hearing, Doyley looked pained and groggy. She told the judge she still hadn’t been allowed to see her daughter and asked if he could help. A doctor testified that the baby had been brought to the NICU in respiratory distress and placed on a continuous positive airway pressure machine to help with her breathing.

Kalil said he couldn’t order the hospital to do anything. The matter he had been appointed to hear involved only her unborn baby. He had no authority over the child in the nursery.

Kalil wished her well and quickly closed the case.

The post They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth. appeared first on ProPublica.

Mayor condemns ‘cowardly act’ on south side of city that caused limited damage and no reported injuries

An explosion has damaged a Jewish school in Amsterdam in what the city’s mayor described as “a deliberate attack against the Jewish community”.

The explosion early on Saturday in a residential neighbourhood on the south side of the city caused limited damage, the mayor, Femke Halsema, said in a press release, as police and firefighters arrived at the scene quickly.

Carmaker’s decision to drop NissanConnect EV app on relatively recent cars fuels warnings from experts

Owners of some Nissan Leaf electric vehicles are angry after the carmaker announced it would shut down an app that lets them remotely control battery charging and other functions.

Drivers of Leaf cars made before May 2019 and the e-NV200 van (produced until 2022) have been told that the NissanConnect EV app linked to their vehicles will “cease operation” from 30 March. This means they will lose remote services, including turning on the heating, and some map features.

High-net-worth residents of UAE heading to Ireland and France to wait out missile attacks before tax year ends

Wealthy UK nationals fleeing war in the Gulf are seeking sanctuary in countries such as Ireland and France to avoid hefty tax bills back home.

In the face of possible demands from HM Revenue and Customs, high-net-worth individuals who had been living in the United Arab Emirates and neighbouring countries are hoping to wait out the missile and drone attacks elsewhere rather than return to the UK.

Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program's first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there waiting to be rediscovered? "The main broadcasters in the UK in the 1960s, 70s, up to the 80s really, junked quite a lot of content," said Justin Smith, a cinema professor at England's De Montfort University and film archivist. "In some ways finding missing 'Doctor Whos' is the holy grail" of classic TV discoveries, Smith said. The two episodes were "The Nightmare Begins" and "Devil's Planet," both of which aired during the show's third series in 1965. It features William Hartnell as the Doctor in a story involving archvillains the Daleks -- pepperpot-shaped metal aggressors whose favorite word is "Exterminate!" Smith said that for fans of the show, "it's got it all, it really has. It is intergalactic, it's got some great performances. It stands up really, really well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

Treasury minister Spencer Livermore trails new strategy as chancellor pins hopes on benefits of AI amid global uncertainty

The NHS and Ministry of Defence will be urged to buy British tech, as the government pins its hopes on the benefits of artificial intelligence to kickstart growth in the face of the Iran crisis, Treasury minister Spencer Livermore has said.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will restate her economic strategy in a high profile lecture on Tuesday, just as rocketing oil prices have raised fears of higher inflation and weaker growth.

Refusal to kowtow to US president has won public backing – and left Badenoch and Farage playing catch-up

It is not often that Keir Starmer’s allies believe he has Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the run – but on Iran, they think he is on the right side of history and public opinion.

“It could be the making of him,” said Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, who was first out of the blocks to say she thought Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran were illegal. “You’ve not had a British prime minister say no to an American president since Vietnam. This is a big deal.”

Datacentre investment boom is one of the biggest infrastructure gambles of this era, and Britain may be uniquely exposed

Stargate was to be the world’s biggest AI investment: a $500bn infrastructure project to “secure American leadership in AI”. Never shy of hyperbole, its key backer, the ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, promised “massive economic benefit for the entire world” with facilities to help people “use AI to elevate humanity”.

Now, OpenAI appears to be dropping out of a part of the deal – the expansion of a flagship datacentre stretching across a swathe of land in Abilene, Texas, which has become one of the most visible manifestations of a frenzy of investment in the chips and power plants required to build and run AI. There has been a breakdown in negotiations over project financing, as well as the timeline of when the expanded capacity might come online.

Iran is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the ‘escalatory ladder’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to become a trap.

On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets.

Iranian military said in a statement that oil and energy infrastructure belonging to firms that cooperated with the US would ‘immediately be destroyed’

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

Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry is saying that two drones have been intercepted and destroyed in the eastern region.

More now after reports of explosions in Dubai on Friday morning: thick black smoke rose over the financial hub’s skyline after what authorities described as a fire in an industrial area of the city-state.

• Judge keys early surge as US top Canada 5-3

• Americans advance to face Dominican Republic

• Miller fans side in ninth to seal quarter-final

Aaron Judge doubled and Pete Crow-Armstrong and Brice Turang each had two hits as the United States beat Canada 5-3 on Friday night to reach the World Baseball Classic semifinals.

The US squad rebounded after an 8-6 loss to Italy in pool play left them needing help to advance to this round.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A top Senate administrator on Monday gave aides the green light to use three artificial intelligence chatbots for official work, a reflection of how widespread the use of the products has become in workplaces around the globe. The chief information officer for the Senate sergeant-at-arms, who oversees the chamber's computers as well as security, said in a one-page memo reviewed by The New York Times that aides could use Google's Gemini chat, OpenAI's ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, which is already integrated into Senate platforms. Copilot "can help with routine Senate work, including drafting and editing documents, summarizing information, preparing talking points and briefing material, and conducting research and analysis," the memo said. The document later added that "data shared with Copilot Chat stays within the secure Microsoft 365 Government environment and is protected by the same controls that safeguard other Senate data." It's unclear how widely AI is used in the Senate or how widespread it might become, as individual offices and committees set their own rules. The chamber has also not publicly released comprehensive guidance on chatbots, the report notes. In contrast, the House has clearer policies allowing the general use of AI for limited internal tasks but restricting it from sensitive data or for being used for deepfakes and certain decision-making activities.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jan Carey was facing two misdemeanor criminal counts in Washington, D.C., federal court.

Sprawling compound, including mock-up banks and police offices, uncovered by Thai military during border clashes

It is as if you have walked into a branch of one of Vietnam’s banks. A row of customer service desks, divided by plastic screens, with landline phones, promotional leaflets and staff business cards. A seated waiting area and a private meeting room. All of it features the OCB bank’s logo, or its trademark green colour.

This is not a genuine bank branch, however. It’s one of various “mock up” rooms inside a sprawling compound on the Thai-Cambodian border, where criminal groups are accused of using elaborate and industrial-scale fraud schemes to trick victims into handing over money.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 14.

This blog has now closed. Follow our Middle East blog here

Both Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine were asked today about energy secretary Chris Wright’s comments to CNBC on Thursday, where he said that the US Navy cannot escort ships through the strait of Hormuz now but it was “quite likely” that could happen by the end of the month.

Gen Caine appeared to agree with Wright’s assessment, calling the waterway a “tactically complex environment”.

Defense secretary offers alternative TV headlines to reporters to more favourably reflect US military campaign in Iran – key US politics stories from 13 March 2026

Pete Hegseth has used a press conference at the Pentagon to criticize journalists over their coverage of the war in Iran, at one point proposing alternative TV headlines.

The US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

The suspect, who was killed following the shooting, had previously been imprisoned for several years for trying to support ISIS, the FBI said.

Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech

Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.

No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said.

The analysis by researchers at Oregon State University provides one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of the structures that have been hit since the start of the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran.

The attacker rammed a vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield and opened fire, but he was the only one killed, law enforcement officials said.

Clinton, New Jersey, is known primarily for its old grist mill, its quaint downtown, and its historic resident, "Dave the Rave."

Nine defendants were on trial on charges related to the July 4 attack on the Prairieland ICE detention center in North Texas.

• Leafs lose American star for rest of NHL season

• Toronto star suffered Grade 3 tear of left MCL

• Radko Gudas could face suspension after hit

Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews has a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee and will miss the rest of the NHL season.

The team provided an injury update Friday night, a little under 24 hours since Matthews was knocked out of a game against Anaheim on a knee-on-knee hit from Radko Gudas.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for March 14, No. 1,729.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 14, No. 1007.

The stolen gun used in the Old Dominion University was sold this week to the shooter for $100, according to a federal law enforcement affidavit.

A security detail has been requested from the federal health department's inspector general for top federal housing official Bill Pulte.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali made two purchases at a Phantom Fireworks store in Livonia, Michigan. He told the store staff the fireworks were for the end of Ramadan.

The Trump administration's Medicare boss reacts to CBS News investigation into California's hospice fraud problems.

SMF is the illumos system for managing traditional Unix services (long-lived background processes, usually). It’s quite rich in order to correctly accommodate a lot of different use cases. But it sometimes exposes that complexity to users even when they’re trying to do something simple.

[…]

In this post, I’ll walk through an example using a demo service and the svcprop(1) tool to show the details.

↫ Dave Pacheco

Soalris’ system management facility or SMF is effectively Solaris’ systemd, and this article provides a deeper insight into one of its features: properties. While using SMF and its suite of tools and commands for basic tasks is rather elementary and easy to get into – even I can do it – once you start to dive deeper into what is can do, things get complex and capable very fast.

Google has announced that it will release Chrome for Linux on ARM64 in the second quarter of this year.

Launching Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices allows more users to enjoy the seamless integration of Google’s most helpful services into their browser. This move addresses the growing demand for a browsing experience that combines the benefits of the open-source Chromium project with the Google ecosystem of apps and features.

This release represents a significant undertaking to ensure that ARM64 Linux users receive the same secure, stable, and rich Chrome experience found on other platforms.

↫ The Chromium Blog

While the idea of running Linux on Arm, only to defile it with something as unpleasant as Chrome seem entirely foreign to me, most normal people do actually use Google’s browser. Having it available on Linux for Arm makes perfect sense, and might convince a few people to buy an Arm machine for Linux, assuming the platform can get its act together.

The 1960s episodes featuring the first Doctor William Hartnell will air in the UK in April.

President thanks Grenell for ‘outstanding work’ and says Matt Floca, vice-president of operations, will take over

Donald Trump has announced that Ric Grenell, the longtime Republican foreign policy adviser who oversaw far-reaching changes at the Kennedy Center, which prompted many artists to abandon the performing arts venue, will be replaced by Matt Floca, vice-president of operations at the center.

Trump made the announcement on social media that he has replaced Grenell, thanking him for the “outstanding work he has done”. Floca was photographed in December personally overseeing the addition of Trump’s name to the center’s facade. Grenell’s departure comes as the Kennedy Center prepares to close this summer for a two-year renovation.

Former US senator’s admission comes after Heather Ammel sued her under North Carolina’s ‘homewrecker’ law

Kyrsten Sinema, a former US senator, admitted in court filings to having a “romantic and intimate” relationship with a married man who was a member of her security detail during her final year in office – but argues that his estranged wife should not be able to sue her over it.

The admission to the multi-state affair came in response to a lawsuit filed by Heather Ammel, who accused the former Arizona senator in federal court of breaking up her marriage under North Carolina’s so-called “homewrecker” law.

In a first-ever case, most of the nine defendants were convicted of providing support to terrorists. Only one defendant was convicted of attempted murder of a police officer.

I will not pass up an opportunity to make you talk about Plan 9, so let’s focus on Acme.

Acme is remarkable for what it represents: a class of application that leverages a simple, text-based GUI to create a compelling model of interacting with all of the tools available in the Unix (or Plan 9) environment. Cox calls it an “integrating development environment,” distinguishing it from the more hermetic “integrated development environment” developers will be familiar with. The simplicity of its interface is important. It is what has allowed Acme to age gracefully over the past 30 or so years, without the constant churn of adding support for new languages, compilers, terminals, or color schemes.

↫ Daniel Moch

While the article mentions you can use Acme on UNIX, to really appreciate it you have to use it on Plan 9, which today most likely means 9front. Now, I am not the kind of person who can live and breathe inside 9front – you need to be of a certain mindset to be able to do so – but even then I find that messing around with Plan 9 has given me a different outlook on UNIX. In fact, I think it has helped me understand UNIX and UNIX-like systems better and more thoroughly.

If you’re not sure if Plan 9 is something that suits you, the only real way to find out is to just use it. Fire up a VM, read the excellent documentation at 9front, and just dive into it. Most of you will just end up confused and disoriented, but a small few of you will magically discover you possess the right mindset.

Just do it.

As small-scale attacks target houses of worship, law enforcement and religious leaders are prepared but anxious about what’s next.

Meta plans to remove end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from Instagram direct messages by May 8, 2026. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," says Meta. "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp." The Hacker News reports: The American company first began testing E2EE for Instagram direct messages in 2021 as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "privacy-focused vision for social networking." The feature is currently "only available in some areas" and is not enabled by default. Weeks into the Russo-Ukrainian war in February 2022, the company made encrypted direct messaging available to all adult users in both countries. Last week, TikTok said it would not introduce E2EE, arguing it makes users less safe by preventing police and safety teams from being able to read direct messages if needed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A suspect in an attack on a synagogue in the Detroit area is dead after ramming a vehicle into the building and being confronted by synagogue security, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.

Arrest of asylum seeker Elvis Joel TE and his two-year-old, without a warrant, had sparked widespread outrage

A federal judge ruled on Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) must release a Minneapolis man and asylum seeker who has been unlawfully detained for 50 days.

The man, identified as Elvis Joel TE in court filings, was arrested on 22 January at the height of ICE’s aggressive raids in Minneapolis. The case sparked widespread outrage as Elvis TE was detained with his two-year-old daughter while they were returning home from the store, and ICE quickly flew both of them to Texas despite a court order barring their transfer out of Minnesota.

Iranian drone strikes shut down a major helium facility in Qatar, removing about 30% of global helium supply and raising concerns for the semiconductor industry, which relies on the gas for chip fabrication. "QatarEnergy declared force majeure on existing contracts on March 4, freeing it from supply obligations to customers," reports Tom's Hardware. The industry outlet Gasworld reports that no imminent restart is planned. From the report: Helium consultant Phil Kornbluth, speaking at a Gasworld webinar on March 4, said that if the outage extends beyond roughly two weeks, industrial gas distributors could be forced to relocate cryogenic equipment and revalidate supplier relationships, a process that could stretch over months regardless of when Qatari output resumes. South Korea is among the most exposed countries, which, according to the Korea International Trade Association, imported 64.7% of its helium from Qatar in 2025. The country relies heavily on helium imports to cool silicon wafers during fabrication and is understood to have no viable substitute. The country's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources has reportedly launched an investigation into supply and demand for 14 semiconductor materials and equipment types with high dependence on Middle Eastern sources, Nikkei reported on Wednesday. Bromine, which is used in circuit formation, is another big concern, with South Korea sourcing 90% of its imports from Israel, also party to the ongoing conflict in Iran.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When one child told the toy, "I love you," it responded, "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided."

I’m feeling kind of nostalgic today so I thought I’d write Hello, world! in Z80 assembly for the ZX Spectrum! The last time I wrote any Z80 assembly was when I was 14 so around 36 years ago! I may be a little rusty!

↫ Old Man By the Sea

It’s easy to tell the world hello in BASIC, but a bit more involved in Z80 assembly.

A model unit of the T1 seen by The Verge shows specs and pricing that don't match what's advertised on the Trump Mobile website.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 537 for Saturday, March 14.

A federal jury handed prosecutors a mixed victory in the trial of nine protesters for their roles during or after a chaotic demonstration outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility last July, convicting eight defendants of terrorism charges but sparing some of them on attempted murder counts.

The widely watched trial could serve as a bellwether as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to crack down on left-wing groups — and the convictions could encourage prosecutors to bring more such charges. A top FBI official said in December that the agency is now treating “antifa” as a major domestic terror threat.

In a statement posted online, a support group for the defendants said, “Everything about this trial from beginning to end has proven what we have said all along: this is a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.”

The Trump administration celebrated the verdict.

“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities — not under President Trump,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”

The court case centered on a nighttime July 4, 2025, protest outside ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility that started with demonstrators shooting fireworks and spray-painting cars in the parking lot.

Signal messages obtained by the government showed that the demonstrators believed that less confrontational protests against ICE — such as one that had occurred earlier in the day at the same facility — were ineffective. Some of the protesters had brought guns, which is legal in Texas. A police officer responding to the scene was shot in the neck by one of the protesters, Benjamin Song, who had brought an AR-15 with a trigger modified for a higher rate of fire.

The defendants said the protest was a peaceful demonstration meant to show solidarity, pointing to the megaphone that one member of the group brought to shout slogans to detainees. Prosecutors pointed to the guns, ballistic vests, and trauma first-aid kits they brought as evidence of malicious intent.

Song was convicted of one count of attempted murder for shooting the officer, but acquitted on two other counts of attempting to shoot at two correctional officers. Song was also found guilty of discharging a firearm during a violent crime. Four other people accused of attempted murder counts were acquitted on those charges. Song faces up to life in prison.

Related

Wearing All Black at Protests Makes You Guilty of Terrorism, Prosecutors Tell Jury

In a significant victory for the government, jurors convicted eight defendants on material support for terrorism charges for wearing black clothes to the late-night demonstration. That use of “black bloc” clothing was an antifa tactic that assisted in the shooting of the officer, prosecutors said during their closing arguments.

The defendants convicted of providing material support to terrorists were Song, Autumn Hill, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Megan Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, and Ines Soto. They face up to 15 years in prison on that count.

The same defendants were also convicted of riot and two explosives charges related to the fireworks. Hill, Evetts, Morris, and Rueda were acquitted on attempted murder charges that would have carried sentences up to life imprisonment.

Rueda and her husband, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, were convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents. That charge centered on Sanchez’s movement of boxes containing radical pamphlets after her arrest. Sanchez was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document.

The prosecution of the Prairieland defendants represented the federal government’s first use of the material support charge against alleged antifa members accused of domestic terrorism.

The verdict came after 10 days of testimony inside a Fort Worth courtroom packed with family members of the defendants, law enforcement officials, and journalists.

Prosecutors called the wounded police officer and detention center guards to describe what it was like on the receiving end of a barrage of bullets, as well as four cooperating defendants who pleaded guilty before trial.

Another significant witness was a researcher at a right-wing think tank who said the tactics used by the demonstrators that night, including “black bloc” clothing and the encrypted messaging app Signal — the latter of which the witness said he also used — were typical of antifa.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The post Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted on Terrorism Charges for Wearing All Black appeared first on The Intercept.

Matt Floca will be the new CEO and executive director of the Kennedy Center, President Trump announced.

Korey LaVergne, 37, of the Lafayette diocese, charged with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile

A Roman Catholic priest in the south-west Louisiana diocese where the US church’s clergy abuse scandal effectively started decades ago has been formally charged with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile.

A bill of information from the district attorney for Acadia parish charges 37-year-old Korey LaVergne with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile who was 15 at the time of the alleged offenses.

In an interview at SXSW, the director of the upcoming sci-fi film Disclosure Day discussed aliens, social media, AI in film and more.

AI services may not stay cheap for long, as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are currently subsidizing usage to rapidly grow market share. As these companies move toward profitability and potential IPOs, Axios reports that investors will likely push them to increase prices and improve margins. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Flashback: Silicon Valley has seen this movie before. The so-called "millennial lifestyle subsidy" meant VC money helped underwrite cheap Uber rides and DoorDash deliveries. Before that, Amazon built its base with low prices, free shipping and, for years, no sales tax in most states. Eventually, all of these companies had to charge enough to cover costs -- and make a profit. Follow the money: The current iteration of AI subsidies won't last forever. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are widely expected to go public. Public investors will demand earnings growth and expanding margins. Even as chips get more efficient, total spending keeps rising. Labs need more capacity, more upgrades and more supply to meet demand. The bottom line: The costs of AI will keep going down. But total spend from customers will need to keep going up if AI companies are going to become profitable and investors are ever going to get returns on their massive investments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Food and Drug Administration on March 10 changed the approval for a version of the prescription drug leucovorin to include people with a very rare genetic condition. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary had previously implied that the drug’s new label would cover a much broader group of people with autism, saying that “hundreds of thousands of kids” would benefit. 

The condition targeted in the FDA approval is a genetic version of cerebral folate deficiency, caused by mutations in a folate receptor gene. People with CFD — whether from genetic or other causes — have low levels of folate in their cerebrospinal fluid, which leads to reduced folate in the brain. This affects brain development. Patients with genetic CFD can experience developmental delays, movement disorders and seizures. Some behaviors are similar to those with autism.

However, this form of genetic CFD is estimated to occur in 1 in a million people, according to the FDA. That would translate to around 70 kids in the U.S. — far from “hundreds of thousands of kids.” Leucovorin had already been used for decades to treat genetic CFD via off-label prescribing, a common practice when evidence shows a drug approved for one condition improves another.

Despite this limited approval, Makary had initially implied a more substantial change. “Today the FDA is filing a Federal Register notice to change the label on an exciting treatment called prescription leucovorin so that it can be available to children with autism,” Makary said in a Sept. 22 press conference. “We are going to change the label to make it available,” he went on to say. “Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit.”

This was the same press conference in which President Donald Trump and others touted an unproven link between autism and the use of Tylenol, or acetaminophen, during pregnancy. 

Makary later referred to a subset of people with autism with antibodies that block their own folate receptors, called autoantibodies. Some researchers have hypothesized that a subset of people with autism have CFD caused by these autoantibodies, but this is not well-established, as we will explain.

The FDA “is approving prescription leucovorin for treatment of autistic children,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said at the same event. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the treatment “may benefit large numbers of children who suffer from autism.” He had previously vowed by September to identify “what has caused the autism epidemic.” 

The Federal Register notice Makary referred to described data on the rare genetic form of CFD, however. The notice also stated that data on leucovorin for people who have symptoms with “autistic features” along with antibodies targeting the receptor “is limited” and that “additional studies are needed.” 

The then-head of the FDA’s drugs division, Dr. George Tidmarsh, also subsequently clarified that the new indication was the rare genetic one. “We’re not proposing to approve leucovorin for [people with] the diagnosis of autism,” he told the autism publication the Transmitter in an interview for a story published Oct. 2.

When asked this week about the discrepancy between Makary’s earlier comments about broad benefits for kids with autism and the ultimate FDA approval for a rare genetic condition, a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services told us that Makary previously had been talking about an antibody-related form of CFD, and not the rare genetic disorder.

“Dr. Makary was referring to cerebral folate deficiency — which can be caused by antibodies blocking folate receptors — rather than cerebral folate transport deficiency, which is caused by a specific genetic mutation,” the HHS spokesperson wrote in an email. 

However, as we’ve said, the idea that a large subset of people with autism have CFD and can benefit from leucovorin has not been well-established.

“There is no substantive evidence that cerebral folate deficiency (CFD) plays a role in the pathogenesis of autism,” two researchers with expertise in folate and cancer treatment wrote in a January perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine. They also said that despite claims that antibodies against folate receptors play a role in autism, most experts consider this conclusion to be “inconclusive.” They added that the presence of the antibodies doesn’t necessarily mean that folate is low in the cerebrospinal fluid, which is the defining feature of CFD.

The new approval was for GSK’s Wellcovorin, a brand-name version of leucovorin that has long been off patent and that is no longer made by the company. Leucovorin remains available in generic versions. It is mainly used for cancer patients alongside certain chemotherapy regimens to reduce toxicity or to improve effectiveness. 

Unsupported Claims About Broad Benefits in Autism

While clarifying that Makary’s remarks about broad benefits applied to a different form of CFD, the HHS spokesperson also said that the rare genetic form of CFD “was the focus of the September announcement about this drug.” 

But during the Sept. 22 press conference and subsequent media appearances, Makary repeatedly emphasized potentially sweeping benefits of the new leucovorin label.

“​​For many kids with autism, it will provide some improvement in their symptoms, and for some subset, marked improvement,” Makary said in a Sept. 22 NewsNation interview, urging people to talk to their doctors. “There are 2.5 million kids suffering, and I hope hundreds of thousands of them will see some improvement with this new treatment that we’re going to approve in about two to three weeks,” he went on to say.

“I think the biggest story today was that the FDA is taking action to make leucovorin available to kids with cerebral folate deficiency,” he told ABC News that same day. “That may be 20% to 50% of kids with severe autism, and they have a clinical improvement in studies.” In a Sept. 25 interview on C-Span, he gave an even larger estimate, saying “we are going to approve a drug called leucovorin for the treatment of autism” and that it “may help 50% or 60% of kids with autism.”

There is very limited evidence to support the assertion that wide groups of kids with autism could benefit, as we wrote in September. David S. Mandell, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health, told us then that the evidence on leucovorin “as a treatment for autism is very weak.”

Other researchers told the Transmitter in September that the literature on autism and leucovorin was “meager” and that it would be “extremely premature” for the administration to recommend the treatment for autism.

“These leucovorin studies are small, lack validated biomarkers or outcome measures, and certainly are not generalizable to all children with autism,” Dr. Shafali Jeste, a neurologist at UCLA, told the Transmitter. “The over-simplified conclusions and media hype from these studies take advantage of vulnerable families who are searching for answers and hope.”

At the time, this evidence included a small collection of studies that looked at the impact of leucovorin on communication and other characteristics in children with autism. One of these studies — among the largest, with 80 participants recruited — has since been retracted due to concerns about its data and statistical analysis, according to a notice on the journal website. Another of the studies had been terminated for “investigator non-compliance,” although the authors still published results.

“Larger, well-designed, multisite trials using objective outcome measures are necessary to determine whether leucovorin is safe and effective in autism and in which subgroups it may be most beneficial for,” says an FAQ page from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Despite these uncertainties and the lack of a broad approval, people appear to have heeded Makary’s advice to talk to their doctors about leucovorin. New outpatient prescriptions of the drug increased by 71% in children ages 5 and older in the first couple of months following the September announcement, according to a study published March 5 in the Lancet.

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 No Broad Autism Approval for Leucovorin, Despite FDA Commissioner’s Prior Suggestions appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Trump DoJ’s investigation was purportedly about the management of the central bank’s renovation

A federal judge on Friday blocked the justice department from serving subpoenas to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell in an inquiry purported to be about the management of the central bank’s renovation.

Powell disclosed the surprise investigation on 11 January, and described the move as a threat to Fed independence and part of the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure the Fed to cut rates.

Here's how to tell the old and new AirTags apart, and how the second generation improves on the original.

The site, which features 40 dedicated channels, attracted 10,000 users on its first day.

TSA employees have been working in US airports without pay since the partial shutdown began in February

A rising number of US airports are asking for donations to support employees affected by the partial government shutdown with airport security officials missing their first full paychecks Friday.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees have been working in airports around the US without pay since a shutdown began in February after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a funding agreement. Democrats have since refused to support a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA’s parent agency, without first receiving guaranteed immigration enforcement reforms.

The 2024 lawsuit alleged that Adobe's confusing and costly cancellation process violated consumer protections.

Some airports have been warning fliers to arrive four hours early because of long security lines.

The latest release of oil follows historic withdrawals from the Biden administration to combat gas prices from the Ukraine war.

U.S. gas prices are surging as the Iran war drives up the global cost of oil. But what exactly accounts for what you pay at the pump?

Kenya Chapman was arrested for allegedly selling firearm to Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, who killed one person on Thursday

The US Department of Justice on Friday charged a man who authorities say sold a gun to the Old Dominion University (ODU) shooter despite the gunman’s previous conviction in a terrorism case.

Kenya Chapman is facing federal charges in connection to the sale of the weapon to Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former army national guard member who yelled “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire in a classroom at the Virginia school on Thursday, according to authorities.

Tehran residents report relentless bombing with US and Israeli planes launching wave of attacks

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has said Iran will be hit “very hard” in the coming days, describing leaders of the regime as “deranged scumbags” who it was a “great honor” to kill, as Tehran residents reported relentless bombing and violence continued to spiral across the Middle East.

The US president’s comments, which signaled an intensification of the US-Israeli campaign, came as Israeli and US warplanes launched successive waves of attacks on the Iranian capital and elsewhere on Friday. One strike reportedly hit close to a square near Tehran University where crowds were gathered in support of Iran’s regime. The area is home to many government buildings.

The Kennedy Center is set to close for two years on July 4.

Richard Kahn, who worked closely with Epstein for more than a decade, testified before the Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

On March 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave his first press conference since the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran. Some social media users doubted the authenticity of the video address, and led them to question whether Netanyahu was still alive.

"Rumors swirling that the Prime Minister of Israel - Netanyahu - is dead after this video has been released of him LIVE on TV," one March 13 X post read. "Look at the 6 fingers."

"Breaking: Latest video released by the israeli government shows that it was ai generated because netanyahu has 6 fingers," read another March 13 X post. "Is Netanyahu dead?"

In the image, Netanyahu is pointing with both hands, and social media users said his right hand appears to have six fingers. 

But upon closer look at the video, Netanyahu’s hands looked normal. A trick of light likely made part of his palm appear to be an extra finger.

(Screenshots from the Israeli Government Press Office YouTube video)

The full press briefing can be found here. There are no other indications that it was altered or generated with artificial intelligence. Netanyahu interacted with reporters over video conference. He gestured with his hands a lot and no irregularities appeared.

Several news outlets reported on Netanyahu’s press briefing.

A video of Netanyahu’s press conference doesn’t prove he is dead. We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

sdinfoserv writes: After running a Reddit clone for a couple of months, the Digg beta shut down again. The website is a splash memo from CEO Justin Mezzell, blaming the latest "Hard Reset" on bots. "Building on the internet in 2026 is different," writes Mezzell. "We learned that the hard way. Today we're sharing difficult news: we've made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team..." The decision was made after struggling to gain traction and an overwhelming influx of AI-driven bots and spam. "When the Digg beta launched, we immediately noticed posts from SEO spammers noting that Digg still carried meaningful Google link authority," says Mezzell. "Within hours, we got a taste of what we'd only heard rumors about. The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts. We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we didn't appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they'd find us." "We banned tens of thousands of accounts. We deployed internal tooling and industry-standard external vendors. None of it was enough. When you can't trust that the votes, the comments, and the engagement you're seeing are real, you've lost the foundation a community platform is built on." Despite the setback, Digg plans to rebuild with a smaller team, with founder Kevin Rose returning to work full-time on a new direction for the platform. "Starting the first week of April, Kevin will be putting his focus back on the company he built twenty+ years ago," writes Mezzell. "He'll continue as an advisor to True Ventures, but Digg will be his primary focus." Slashback: The Rise of Digg.com

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has quashed a pair of grand jury subpoenas sent to the Federal Reserve Board as part of a criminal probe by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office.

Key Democrats in Congress are, once again, vaguely opposing a war instead of forcefully opposing it on moral or ideological grounds. Just as Democratic leadership slow-rolled a war powers vote for two weeks after President Donald Trump began amassing his armada to attack Iran, and four days after the bombing was underway, Democrats are refusing to speak out clearly against the war, instead resigning themselves to process-based criticism and demands for “more information” and “plans.” 

With strong indications that Trump may soon send ground troops, we are long past the time for begging to see the “plans.” Democrats need to forcefully call for an end to this war now.

Still, this “We need to see Trump’s plans for Iran” talking point has taken hold, either through top-down messaging discipline or a very unfortunate series of coincidences. Democrats in the House and Senate have been echoing some version of this line for the past week: