(The Center Square) – An Illinois congresswoman says new legislation to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection will pour $150 billion into communities around the country.

ESTELLE SMITH
Associate Arts and Culture Editor

Near the intersection of Benny Street and Lovett Avenue, two single-family homes, a vacant church and a parking lot were demolished in June. In their place, Delaware Ave, LLC is constructing 12 three-story, seven-bedroom townhouse-style apartments, adding another set of townhouses to the growing number of high-density housing along the off-campus neighborhoods bordering the university.

While the permit was approved by Newark City Council, the Planning Commission did not recommend the permit, citing concerns over the design — particularly the landscaping and fencing aspects. Additionally, the proposal did not conform to the existing land use designation indicated in the Comprehensive Development Plan V 2.0, requiring an amendment to change its designation from “residential, low-density” to “residential, high-density.”

According to the City of Newark’s director of planning and development, Renee Bensley, this is the case for the majority of project applications she receives. These require what is called discretionary approval — including amendments to the Comprehensive Development Plan, rezoning and exceptions to building area and height requirements. This is particularly common in single-family to high-density transition zones along and around South Chapel Street, North Chapel Street, New London Road and Haines Street.

Despite requiring more hoops to jump through, many of these projects eventually receive approval from the council. As a result, these transition zones are actively transitioning themselves from majority single-family dwellings with front porches and yards to majority townhouse complexes and large apartment buildings.

Effectively, Newark’s appearance is shifting.

There is not one singular reason for this, but the beginning of this change dates back to the late 1990s and early 2000s. As the university’s student population grew, it became apparent that there was not enough off-campus housing, leading more and more students to live in the previously non-student, residential neighborhoods of Newark.

Bensley estimates that 95% of student tenants were good neighbors, but the remaining 5% caused problems for their neighbors due to partying and noise. When Newark officials began to establish constraints on where students could live, they had to find alternatives for those students.

Jennifer Reitz, the Planning Services Coordinator for the Institute for Public Administration at the university, explained that Newark had limited undeveloped land to expand upon.

“So the choice is to go up,” Reitz said.

According to Reitz, this has been a national trend. Building higher not only addresses the housing stock problem, but also addresses a worsening housing affordability problem, which she said feels like a crisis. Bensley agrees.

“Traditionally, Newark has seen an extremely low vacancy rate which means when there are no vacancies and there is a lot of demand, the landlords can set their prices basically wherever they want,” Bensley said.

Newark is already a desirable town for an increasing number of families and retirees, so student demand simply exacerbates the problem.

Developers that build higher can offset this because it is cheaper. According to Sandy Isenstadt, a professor at the university who studies historic urban design trends, constructing on already developed land is expensive due to the challenges of navigating around existing infrastructure. Building more units saves money in the long run for the developer — and, consequently, for the tenant.

According to Zillow, the estimated average monthly rent for four-bedroom housing in Newark is $2,382 for an apartment and $2,400 for a townhouse. It is $2,950 for a house. Aggregated over a year, that can be an almost $2,000 difference for an individual student choosing between an apartment and a house.

The affordability of higher-density housing is not just a result of height, Isenstadt explained. The more standardized and prefabricated it is, the quicker and cheaper it is built. As a result, the character of the older houses is deprioritized.

“A lot of it is just driven by economics,” Isenstadt said. “People recognize that character and can’t pay for it.”

Reitz said that there has been some push for more design guidelines beyond the existing minimum standards, but there is pushback because that makes the housing more expensive. Green spaces have also received concern for the same reason that students clashed with Newark residents in residential neighborhoods: parties.

The Continental, a six-story, 190-unit student housing complex spanning a block on Haines Street and South Chapel Street, constructed a courtyard in the center to provide light and ventilation for its internal units. The courtyard was originally designed to also be a recreational space, but the Newark police expressed concern over unsupervised parties, leading the developers to not allow access for residents.

To earn council approval, the Continental also needed a rezoning from 16-units-per-acre garden apartments to 36-units-per-acre high-rise apartments. Its height appears much larger than six stories, leading some council members to recently reevaluate height limits. Bensley hopes that will also mean a different way to measure.

“Stories is my least favorite way to measure building height,” Bensley said. “If you have an 80-foot building, but it is six stories or five stories, it is still the same impact.”

Business districts (BBs), which are increasingly becoming mixed-use housing, and high-rise districts (RAs) are the targets of these potential changes. As of now, BBs are zoned to allow up to three stories, with discretionary approval capped at seven. RAs are zoned to allow seven stories, with discretionary approval capped at ten. There is currently a push in the council to make the hard cap for BBs five, and make it seven for the RAs.

Bensley, however, hopes that they will be open to a conversation beyond simply not wanting big buildings. She argues that there are ways to mitigate height impacts like setting buildings back behind business districts and blocking them with trees.

“Land is so expensive in Newark,” Bensley said. “If we’re talking about housing affordability, density has to be a part of that conversation. And if we unilaterally say we’re never going to build a seven-story building again, that is going to be something that hurts affordability.”

As Democrats release a flurry of midterm ads portraying GOP cuts to Medicaid as a threat to rural healthcare, Republicans have countered with ads claiming Democratic candidates in Texas and Pennsylvania would put dozens of rural hospitals out of business by creating a public health insurance option. But the ads cite an industry-backed study whose assumptions don’t apply to all public option proposals. 

In Texas, according to ad-tracking service AdImpact, President Donald Trump’s political operation has spent more than $6.9 million on an ad claiming James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate, “supports a radical healthcare plan” that “could close 30 hospitals.”

And in central Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, which includes the state capital of Harrisburg, an ad from a group backed by House Republican leadership claims Democrat Janelle Stelson supports “a plan to close up to 25 Pennsylvania rural hospitals” and accuses her of “closing the hospitals your family depends on.” 

Talarico, a state legislator, is running against state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the closely watched Texas matchup. Stelson, a former local news anchor, is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Scott Perry. Both races are rated toss-ups by the Cook Political Report.

The GOP ads in Texas and Pennsylvania don’t tell viewers exactly what Democrats’ “radical healthcare plan” is. But both of them cite a 2019 report from the consulting firm Navigant about the potential impact of creating a public option — a form of government-backed health insurance that people could buy into at a lower cost than private insurance. 

That analysis was commissioned by the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a coalition of groups opposed to policies like a public option and Medicare for All. The coalition’s members include groups representing hospitals, insurers and other healthcare and business interests.

The Navigant report estimates that anywhere from 28% to 55% of rural hospitals nationwide would be at “high risk” of closing if a public option were implemented, depending on how many people switch from private insurance. That includes 11 to 30 rural hospitals in Texas and 15 to 25 in Pennsylvania. By comparison, an earlier analysis from the same firm estimated that 21% of rural hospitals were already at high risk of closing without a public option, including 12 in Texas and 9 in Pennsylvania.

But those estimates are based on a major assumption — that a public option would pay hospitals the same rates as Medicare. And that’s not true of every proposal. 

Most recent Democratic public-option proposals we reviewed would pay either rural hospitals or hospitals in general somewhat more than Medicare does. Talarico has said he wants to raise payment rates as part of his healthcare plan, in which case the Navigant study’s assumptions wouldn’t apply. Stelson’s campaign told us she hasn’t committed to a specific public option proposal, but generally supports more funding for rural hospitals.

“I think it would be reasonable to look at this [analysis] with some skepticism,” Christine Monahan, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, told us, noting that its estimates of at-risk hospitals are based on a “theoretical proposal” that doesn’t line up with what most advocates are actually proposing. 

Lydia Hall, a spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, the group behind the Pennsylvania ad, told us Stelson “knows supporting a public option is unpopular and is now desperately trying to reframe her stance on a position she’s championed for a long time,” but did not answer specific questions about the ad. MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, did not respond to our questions about the Texas ad. 

Proposals for a public option have circulated for years, including during debates over the 2010 Affordable Care Act and during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Eventual winner Joe Biden was among the candidates championing a public option as a more moderate alternative to proposals like Medicare for All, which would largely or entirely replace private insurance with a government-run single-payer system.

The idea hasn’t gotten as much attention recently, with Democrats’ messaging ahead of the midterms focused largely on reversing Trump’s changes to Medicaid and restoring more generous Affordable Care Act subsidies that Republicans let expire at the end of last year. But some Democrats have said a public option could be on the table if the party retakes power in 2028, and candidates like Talarico and Josh Turek, the Democrat running for Senate in Iowa, have made it a part of their campaign platforms. Others, including Senate candidates Troy Jackson in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, have endorsed more sweeping Medicare for All proposals.

The basic premise of a public option is that the government would create a health insurance plan that people could opt into, with lower premiums than private plans. (Some versions would allow people to buy into Medicare at any age, rather than creating a whole new program.) Proponents hope that would expand coverage to more people and lower overall premiums by forcing private insurers to compete.

The savings that make it possible for a public option to offer lower premiums would come from the government using its leverage to set or negotiate payment rates that are lower than what hospitals typically get from private insurance. So there would likely be some impact on hospitals’ bottom lines.

But what that impact looks like “really depends on how the policy is designed,” including where payment rates are set, said John Holahan, an institute fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied such policies.

The Navigant study cited in the ads assumes that a public option would reimburse healthcare providers at the same rates as Medicare. Because private insurers tend to pay hospitals about 2.5 times what Medicare does for the same services, that “would be a big cut for a lot of hospitals,” Holahan said.

But, he said, most public option proposals don’t go that far. For instance, some aim for rates that are 60% to 100% above what Medicare pays, which he said would be enough to produce some savings without huge impacts on most hospitals’ finances. 

Monahan also noted that the effects would play out differently for different hospitals. Part of the rationale for a public option, she said, is to curb costs at hospitals that can charge excessive prices because they effectively have a monopoly in their area. But some independent hospitals or practices that don’t have the same negotiating leverage with major insurers might benefit from certain public-option pricing systems. Hospitals are also required to provide emergency care regardless of insurance status or ability to pay, so some could see their uncompensated care costs go down if more people have insurance.

Democrats in Congress have proposed several different versions of a public option since 2019, according to comparisons compiled by health policy organizations KFF and The Commonwealth Fund. Some use Medicare rates as a baseline but allow for certain adjustments, such as paying rural hospitals up to 25% or 50% more. Others direct the government to negotiate rates with providers using Medicare rates as a floor, which would presumably result in rates that are somewhat higher.

The Navigant report itself says that depending on how many people switch to a public option, rates that are 40% to 60% above Medicare’s would be enough to “hold rural hospitals harmless.”

We asked the Talarico and Stelson campaigns about how they would set payment rates under a public option, but neither gave us specifics.

Talarico has talked about a proposal he’s calling “Medicare for Y’all,” which would allow Americans of all ages to buy into Medicare as an alternative to private insurance. (Note that this is different from “Medicare for All” proposals, which generally aim to replace private insurance entirely.) His campaign website also says he would “improve Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates,” though a campaign spokesperson, JT Ennis, did not answer our questions about whether Talarico has specific targets in mind. 

Stelson’s campaign told us she broadly supports the concept of a public option, but has not committed to a specific proposal. A spokesperson also pointed us to a policy document the campaign has released that says Stelson would “fight for increased funding and staff for our rural hospitals.”

Without more details, it’s hard to assess the impacts those policies would have. But neither candidate appears to have proposed the specific policy contemplated by the Navigant report — a public option paying current Medicare reimbursement rates — and Talarico has explicitly said he wants reimbursement rates to be higher. So it’s inaccurate to claim, as the ads do, that the candidates support a plan that’s been estimated to risk putting as many as 55 hospitals across Texas and Pennsylvania out of business.

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 GOP Ads Mislead on Public Option Proposals’ Impact on Rural Hospitals appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Planning for the December gathering in Miami comes as security experts warn that escalations between Ukraine and Russia risk deepening the war.

Neria Leiter, the son of Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, was seriously injured in a car-ramming attack in the West Bank.

Lian Yunzhi of China solved five Rubik’s Cubes in an average of 4.27 seconds at a World Cube Association-certified competition last week.

• 38-year-old had been facing attempted murder charge

• Former player will accept aggravated assault charge

Former NFL star Antonio Brown plans to accept a plea deal on an attempted murder charge in Miami, his lawyer said Wednesday. Doing so will mean the former wide receiver avoids prison.

Brown is scheduled to appear in court next Wednesday to make the deal final. He could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the current attempted murder charge.

In the age of agentic AI, headphones are no longer the straightforward audio devices they once were.

One brand wins readers over for its flawless, fast-moving content and picture quality.

Whether produced by Russia, China or far-right influencers, deepfakes and disinfo are being used to spread deceitful narratives

Russian disinformation campaigns are varied in their falsehoods and strategies.

The narratives range from a deepfake Tom Cruise slamming the Paris Olympics to portraying a recent Russian attack on a train near the Ukraine-Poland border as a false-flag operation.

Developers can now write, run, and test applications accelerated by photonic processing

STUTTGART, Germany, Sept. 23, 2026 — Q.ANT today debuted its open-source software development kit for photonic computing, making the programming tools for a photonic processor publicly available for the first time.

Programmers now have everything they need to develop applications for Q.ANT’s Native Processing Units (NPUs), enabling them to compute with light, instead of electricity. The SDK includes: an API for programming languages including “C” and Python, sample applications, documentation, and a simulation backend that runs on a standard CPU, so that developers can build and validate applications on their own systems and then run it on real photonic hardware.

The SDK’s examples draw on Q.ANT’s published reference applications, including an advanced neural network that achieves better results with significantly fewer parameters; the source of Q.ANT’s speed and energy-saving benefits for computing.

In classical AI computing, most energy is consumed by the constant physical shuttling of data between separate memory and processor. Q.ANT’s photonic chip changes that: the computation itself happens in the optical domain, where non-linear functions are executed natively instead of being approximated across many layers of transistors. More expressive networks can therefore be built with fewer parameters, so less data has to move in the first place, compounding the gain in energy efficiency.

“Markets and ecosystems are created by applications, and that is why Q.ANT is working every day to put photonic computing into developers’ hands as fast as possible,” said Michael Förtsch, Founder and CEO of Q.ANT. “An ecosystem isn’t created by hardware alone. It emerges when the software layer is open and others can build on it—that’s why we’re making it accessible in collaboration with HPC centers like the LRZ and JSC, and neo-clouds like IONOS. Anyone writing an AI model today should be able to run it on photonic hardware in the future, using a familiar toolchain and without specialized knowledge of photonics. This is the ‘Linux moment’ of photonic computing: the point at which a new possibility becomes a global platform.”

In the coming months, Q.ANT will open access to its breakthrough hardware through the cloud via commercial partner IONOS or through on-premise installations of its Native Processing Server. Developers who start building with the SDK today will be ready to take full advantage of these new computing technologies once hardware access becomes available.

This release marks the first openly available SDK for programming a photonic processor, giving developers a historic opportunity to program core operations. The SDK also includes examples for a direct comparison between a classical neural network and an advanced neural network based on photonic native operations, benchmarked on parameter count, accuracy, functional approximation, and training loss.

This SDK is designed to sit alongside the environments developers already work in, and to serve as the foundation software developers need to build frameworks and higher-level tools as the architecture scales.

“If you want to get started, all you need is a laptop: download the SDK, integrate the Python or C-API, and get going – no knowledge of photonics or special hardware required. The included simulation backend runs on any standard CPU. Using real-world examples, developers can see how their model behaves on photonic computing cores and how photonic operations can make AI models more efficient than classical methods. Those who then want to run simulations on real hardware can access it via the cloud or on-premises. At launch, the SDK covers the most important functions, with more to follow,” said Utz Bacher, VP of Software at Q.ANT.

“The ever increasing cost, complexity, and power needs of traditional advanced computing systems are opening the door to new and innovative methods for solving some of today’s most vexing computation problems. Q.ANT, with its innovative photonic processor that can work alongside CPUs and GPUs, offers a way to address these concerns, particularly in the areas of AI inference and training, scientific programming, and image processing. Q.ANT’s new SDK, coupled with the availability of its hardware through a cloud access model, offers the advanced computing community an ideal way to explore the performance potential of Q.ANT’s pioneering systems,” said Bob Sorensen, Senior Vice President of Research, and Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research.

The Q.ANT SDK is available now on GitHub:

• Toolkit: https://github.com/Q-ANT-GmbH/qant_native_computing_toolkit
• Examples: https://github.com/Q-ANT-GmbH/qant_native_computing_toolkit_examples

About Q.ANT

Q.ANT is commercializing photonic accelerators for AI and high-performance computing, offering a scalable alternative to transistor-based systems. Its Native Processing Units (NPUs) perform mathematical operations directly on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) based photonic integrated circuits, enabling energy-efficient, high-performance co-processing for complex computational tasks.

Q.ANT was founded in 2018. Its European headquarters is in Stuttgart, Germany, where it operates its own TFLN chip pilot line with IMS CHIPS, and it maintains a U.S. office in Austin, Texas. The company secured Europe’s largest Series A for photonic computing in 2025 and introduced its second-generation processor the same year, now installed and running at leading scientific computing centers with its first commercial deployment planned for 2026.

Source: Q.ANT

The post Q.ANT Launches World 1st Open-Source SDK for Photonic Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

Masoud Pezeshkian says ‘we have only defended ourselves’ as US delegation walks out during his speech

These latest attacks come just hours before Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the UN general assembly, so he is likely to reflect on them during his UN speech later.

So far, we have had no public comment from Zelenskyy or Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha.

Warning from Charity Commission for England and Wales concludes two-year investigation after death of Hisham al-Hakimi in October 2023

The international aid charity Save the Children has been issued with an official regulatory warning over management failures and misconduct that put staff at its Yemen office at serious risk.

The warning concluded a two-year investigation by the Charity Commission for England and Wales into the running of the office after the death of its safety and security director, Hisham Al-Hakimi, in October 2023 after he was detained by the Yemeni authorities.

Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, set to die by lethal injection, sixth person to be executed by Texas officials this year

A man found guilty of fatally shooting three people during a 2005 attempted robbery at a rural Texas home is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, a week after the other man convicted in the killings was put to death.

Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, is set to die by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He would be the sixth person executed so far this year in Texas, with three more scheduled.

Argentinian president accuses United Nations of being filled with ‘parasites’ in bellicose general assembly speech

Javier Milei has condemned the UN as he warned that Argentina would take “matters into our own hands” in its dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.

In a caustic speech at the general assembly in New York, the Argentinian president criticised the UN for being ineffective when it came to the long-running tensions over the British overseas territory in the south Atlantic known in Argentina as the Malvinas.

John E. Sununu hasn’t held public office since the aughts. But New Hampshire politics has a long memory.

“John Sununu led efforts to privatize Social Security,” Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas said of his Republican U.S. Senate competitor in a Sept. 15 press release. He made similar claims in his Sept. 8 primary victory speech, saying Sununu “wrote the plan to privatize Social Security,” and  in an August X post, calling Sununu “a lead architect” of Social Security privatization plans.

Sununu and Pappas are running for the open seat of the retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Analysts consider the contest competitive. 

A look back at Sununu’s record shows that Pappas’ assertion is largely accurate. Although Sununu hasn’t made Social Security privatization a centerpiece of his agenda this year, as a member of Congress two decades ago, he was a leading voice in the effort to change how people can access their Social Security benefits. 

A recap of the Bush-era privatization debate

In the 1990s and early 2000s, lawmakers debated whether to shift some or all of Social Security’s finances into private accounts invested in stocks or other securities. That would have been a departure from the program’s traditional structure of paying beneficiaries from payroll tax revenues held in the federal treasury.

The battle played out over several years during the presidency of George W. Bush, who backed the concept. However, Congress never fully bought into the idea, and no form of Social Security privatization was enacted.

As early as 2000, when Bill Clinton was president, Sununu, then a House member, cosponsored the Personal Lockbox Act of 2000, which would have allowed Americans to direct a portion of their Social Security benefits, plus other assets held for retirement, into personal accounts.

In 2001, Sununu joined dozens of other lawmakers, mostly Republicans, in signing an open letter to the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security that said in part, “Personal retirement accounts will transform Social Security from a government IOU into personal property and real assets that workers can own and pass along to their children.”

In 2004, as a senator, Sununu introduced the Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act. Then-Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., introduced a companion bill in the House. The measure was modeled on a 2003 proposal by well-known conservative figures, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and activists Grover Norquist and Steven Moore.

The proposal would have allowed workers under 55 years old to voluntarily allocate a portion of their payroll taxes to individual accounts invested in stocks and other securities. Neither measure advanced to a vote.

In 2005, Sununu cosponsored the Stop the Raid on Social Security Act, which would have created automatic personal accounts unless the beneficiary opted out. This bill never received a vote, either.

Also in 2005, Sununu, along with most Senate Republicans, voted against a nonbinding resolution that said Congress should reject any Social Security plan that would require deep benefit cuts or a massive debt increase.

The debate over Social Security privatization became a centerpiece of Bush’s agenda in early 2005, but the effort petered out by that summer, as critics called the plan risky for beneficiaries. 

In 2005, the New Hampshire Sunday News, the Sunday edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader, described Sununu as “a key national player in the effort to solve Social Security’s financial problems and enable participants to invest a portion of their Social Security in personal savings accounts.”

A nuance not captured by Pappas’ phrasing is that Sununu’s proposals would not have been mandatory for all Social Security beneficiaries. The plans would have been limited by age, voluntary, or a combination of the two.

Sununu explains his record on Social Security

In an Aug. 31 interview with WMUR-TV, PolitiFact’s New Hampshire partner, Sununu acknowledged his actions from two decades earlier and said the challenges have changed since then, requiring different solutions.

Sununu said his earlier legislation “gave younger workers a choice if they wanted to invest in a retirement plan, like the one members of Congress have. It maintained a guaranteed benefit for all retirees. And it made the system solvent.”

Pressed by WMUR political director Adam Sexton whether he still supported privatizing Social Security, Sununu said, “That was 20 years ago. If we had passed that bill, the system would be solvent today and most retirees would have a greater benefit.” 

A retrospective analysis in 2025 by the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that if the plan had been enacted, beneficiaries would have become better off financially.

Our ruling

Pappas said Sununu “led efforts to privatize Social Security.”

As a member of Congress two decades ago, Sununu co-sponsored several bills to enact Social Security privatization, including two introduced before the issue became a Bush administration priority in 2005. However, they would not have privatized Social Security for everyone.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

The drive to build more data centers — the massive, costly facilities powering the AI boom — has emerged as a lightning rod for candidates in the 2026 midterms."It's the confluence of hyper-localized concerns with broader worries about AI, and…

Witness says T2 Hawk aircraft, which was being used for a training flight, ‘was basically on fire’ on takeoff

An RAF jet crashed and exploded moments after two pilots ejected during a training flight over Anglesey (Ynys Môn) in north Wales on Wednesday.

The aircraft, a Hawk T2, had just taken off from RAF Valley on the west of the island when the incident occurred, witnesses said.

El Niño poses critical threat to nations’ defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers

The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El Niño threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of an explosive report suppressed under Keir Starmer.

Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.

Boise police have identified a man known as the "Unknown Wanderer" who was found dead in a church in 1982, and revealed a possible link to the Chicago Tylenol murders.

Raising payroll taxes enough to stabilize Social Security could add thousands of dollars in annual costs, according to one analysis.

Police said they have an arrest warrant for one more person in the death on Mississippi woman Tasia Fortune.

"That was a real wake-up call."

(Leukaemia Care / Scott Cassidy via SWNS)

The netting was acting as an "anchor" on the young seal's body.

No, ChatGPT will not be clearing you for takeoff.

Kremlin yet to respond publicly to US invitation that is likely to raise concerns from Ukraine and EU countries

The United States has invited Vladimir Putin to take part in the meeting of the G20 scheduled in Miami in December in what would be the first major summit with the Russian leader present since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The invitation, which marks a significant reversal by the Trump administration of Russia’s international isolation, was announced by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, during a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations conference in New York.

President Trump's move to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House has highlighted the role of the press pool.

The AI lab will run its production workloads on Crusoe Managed Inference, tuned for throughput, price-performance, and reliability

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2026 — Crusoe and Thinking Machines Lab today announced a $65 million annual agreement to power inference for the lab’s open models on Crusoe Cloud. Through Crusoe Managed Inference, Thinking Machines Lab will serve a range of production workloads – including its Inkling models, GLM 5.2 and 5.3, and its own fine-tuned variants – on a dedicated Tailored Deployment of NVIDIA HGX B200 systems connected with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, engineered for high-throughput, cost-efficient serving at scale.

“Crusoe Managed Inference took us from evaluation to production quickly and met the standards we hold our own systems to, giving us the scale and economics to reinvest in the research at the core of what we do,” said Myle Ott, ML Infra Lead at Thinking Machines Lab.

“Thinking Machines Lab has a very sophisticated engineering team that expects partners to meet their high bar as they grow,” said Erwan Menard, SVP, Product Management of Crusoe Cloud. “Our team of leading AI engineers built Crusoe Managed Inference to deliver cost-efficient, reliable infrastructure, inference, and model lifecycle tooling as-a-service, so innovative companies can run their favorite models in production at scale, relying on our expertise.”

Crusoe will run and support the cluster directly as a Tailored Deployment – a dedicated, benchmarked, SLA-backed endpoint – giving Thinking Machines Lab the price-performance and headroom to scale without managing its own inference stack. The companies are also looking to expand into batch inference for large-scale synthetic data generation, turning inference into a flywheel for research.

Thinking Machines Lab joins a roster that has taken Crusoe Managed Inference past $100 million in contracted ARR less than a year from launch.

More from BigDATAwire: Thinking Machines Launches Open-Weight ‘Inkling’ Foundation Model for Fine-Tuning

About Crusoe

As the AI factory company, Crusoe is on a mission to accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence. The company provides a reliable, scalable, cost-effective, energy-first solution for AI infrastructure. By harnessing large-scale energy sources, building AI-optimized data centers, and delivering a powerful AI cloud platform, Crusoe empowers its customers and partners to build the future faster. For more information, visit crusoe.ai.

Source: Crusoe

The post Crusoe and Thinking Machines Lab Partner to Power Open-Model Inference at Scale appeared first on HPCwire.

The security flaw has been patched, but there are plenty of reasons to hesitate about giving AI too much access.

(The Center Square) – Dissatisfaction with second-term Republican President Donald Trump, and belief that issues such as the economy and gas prices could be handled better by the minority party are reflected in a new poll and generating sparks of…

Fast food giant aiming to increase share of global chicken market as rising cost of beef hits profits

McDonald’s is betting on fried chicken as health concerns and the rising price of beef shift dining habits.

The company said that it aimed to take an extra 1.5 percentage point-share of the global chicken market by 2030, with an aim to increase its share of drinks by the same proportion. McDonald’s said the growth in chicken, a lower-priced protein, would not come at the expense of beef burger sales, saying it aimed maintain its “leadership position in beef”.

By: Elizabeth Plantan

But here’s what authoritarian elections like this tell us about regime strategies and vulnerabilities.

The post Russia’s 2026 Duma elections left voters few alternatives appeared first on Good Authority.

Andy Burnham’s accusation against the Kremlin tells half the story. Domestic extremists amplified by US big tech are part of the same problem

In November 2020, Barack Obama warned of an “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies. Polarisation and radicalisation were corroding trust in established information sources. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” the former US president said.

That vulnerability has grown since then. Democracy’s enemies have become more determined to exploit it. This is the threat that Andy Burnham highlighted in a speech at the United Nations this week. The prime minister accused Russia of waging an “industrial-scale assault” on the UK’s information environment using bot armies and fake websites to spread falsehoods, interfere in elections, foment discord and poison inter-community relations.

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As the secretary general, António Guterres, prepares to step down, the general assembly is highlighting the scale of the organisation’s challenges

The United Nations was created, its charter states, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Donald Trump used his address to the general assembly to threaten Iran, another member state, with annihilation again. The charter also speaks of the obligations of international law. On Venezuela, Mr Trump gloated that “to the victor belong the spoils”. His speech in New York on Tuesday might be regarded as an improvement on last year’s only in that it was not an explicit, full-scale attack on the UN itself, merely on its founding principles.

The absences this year are perhaps as telling as the US president’s hostile presence. Vladimir Putin has not attended for more than a decade. Nor has Xi Jinping – but the snub is more striking as he is in Washington to meet the US president. India’s Narendra Modi is not present; nor are Cyril Ramaphosa, Bola Tinubu or Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – the leaders of Africa’s three giants, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. While their reasons are various, the gaps speak collectively to Mr Trump’s wrecking capability and the broader challenges faced by the UN.

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Agreement with Mauritius over Diego Garcia unlikely to be revived unless president changes his mind, insiders believe

The Chagos Islands deal is on hold for as long as Donald Trump objects to it, UK officials believe, with no immediate signs it can be adapted to suit the US president.

After Trump savaged the three-way plan as “a terrible deal” during a meeting with Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly, the prime minister said he was “confident” the UK would be able to find a solution to revive the idea.

New RAF unit will warn of incoming missile attacks, and support offensive and defensive operations

A new military unit dedicated to defending satellites, protecting services people need on Earth and potentially supporting offensive operations is being launched by the UK.

The No III Space Effects Squadron will be announced on Wednesday, with the defence secretary, Wes Streeting, warning that Britain needs to “keep pace in the new space race”.

FBIjobs.gov offline on Wednesday as ShinyHunters group claims to have accessed records of agents and applicants

The FBI is investigating an apparent breach of its jobs website as a criminal hacking group claimed to have accessed “very sensitive data” on nearly all agents and job applicants.

“The FBI is aware of claims regarding unauthorized activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and is currently investigating,” the bureau said in a statement. The website, the main portal for prospective employees to learn about the FBI and initiate the application process, remained offline Wednesday morning.

Local advocacy groups say they have cut ties with Hannah Gann, who ‘fully lied about her identity and background’

A Philadelphia teacher is facing criticism from her fellow colleagues and activists after it was revealed that she fabricated being both Palestinian and Black.

The Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) and Philly Educators for Palestine (PEFP) announced over the weekend that it was cutting ties with “one of their long-time members”, Hannah Gann, who “completely lied about her identity and background, claiming at various times to be Palestinian, Tunisian and Black”.

Prosecutors said they opened a probe into criminal negligence, accusing local officials of failing to control bear numbers.

Last year, well before DoorDash’s $131.5 million settlement with New York City for underpaying 264,000 delivery workers was announced Tuesday, the company spent around $1.4 million on the campaign to stop Zohran Mamdani, who oversaw the historic settlement, from becoming mayor.

At the time, DoorDash’s campaign contributions in the run-up to the 2025 mayoral election were considered unusually large — it made a single $1 million gift to a super PAC that, at the time, was the largest donation in the race — and faced criticism from other candidates in the race. The food delivery giant’s settlement agreement, the largest worker settlement in the city’s history, brings further scrutiny to those donations.

Through that election cycle, DoorDash spent around $1.4 million against Mamdani and in favor of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The company was one of the top donors to the biggest outside spender in the election, a virulently anti-Mamdani super PAC called Fix the City. 

While on the campaign trail, Mamdani had promised to regulate delivery apps and further protections for delivery workers, proposals that earned him the support of delivery worker groups.

At the time, DoorDash’s large spending raised eyebrows. Now, the company has to pay its workers around 100 times the amount it spent attempting to influence the election, owing to a mayoral administration that refused to overlook concerns with the company’s conduct.

“It’s not a contribution, it’s an investment, with the donor or investor expecting something in return,” said Greg Coleridge, a former co-director of Move to Amend, an advocacy group that seeks stringent regulations against corporate money in elections. “Here is an instance where organized money from a company that was trying to avoid being responsible and accountable, was unsuccessful.”

Announcing the new settlement, Mamdani said, “The size of this settlement shows the damage done to workers by wage theft. But it also shows that enforcement matters.”

In a public statement about the settlement, DoorDash said, “Simply put, we screwed up. Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.” (DoorDash did not respond to a request for comment on its campaign contributions.)

The Smear Campaign Against Mamdani

DoorDash contributed $1 million to Fix the City, a super PAC that spent $31 million in the mayoral election, accounting for close to half of the total outside spending in the race, largely funded by big corporations and billionaires. DoorDash made the payment in May 2025, at a time Mamdani’s campaign was gaining significant momentum ahead of the mayoral primaries in June.

Fix the City ran a barrage of ads, phone calls, text messages, and other forms of political communication seeking to prevent a Mamdani victory and portraying him as a politician with “radically dangerous ideas” and “a risk New York can’t afford.”

Related

Who’s Spending in Your Congressional Election? We Tracked the Front Groups Fueling the 2026 Midterms.

The group artificially altered Mamdani’s beard in a campaign mailer and made it appear longer and darker, an act that the Muslim mayoral candidate had called out as “blatant Islamophobia.”

At the end of video ads by Fix The City, a campaign finance disclosure in small text at the bottom of the screen read, “The top three donors to the organization responsible for this advertisement are Michael Bloomberg, DoorDash, John Hess.”

DoorDash also gave $1.8 million to Local Economies Forward NY, a super PAC that contributed more than $360,000 to Cuomo’s campaign.

Aided by corporations like DoorDash and billionaires like Bloomberg, the overall independent spending by super PACs seeking to defeat Mamdani was more than eight times what was spent in his favor, according to The Intercept’s analysis of data published by the NYC Campaign Finance Board.

A Historic Settlement

DoorDash’s settlement followed an investigation by the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The Mamdani administration said that the investigation “found that DoorDash deliberately paid workers below the Minimum Pay Rate or not at all.” 

Under the settlement with the city, the food delivery giant will pay over $115 million in worker restitution and over $16 million in civil penalties and administrative fines.

Two weeks after assuming office, the Mamdani administration warned delivery apps to comply with worker protections, sending notices to DoorDash and others, and announcing a lawsuit against the delivery app Motoclick.

Related

The Democratic Party Gets Its Populist Takeover

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s citywide investigation into DoorDash began after dozens of workers reported that the company had failed to pay them or had paid them late for work they had performed.

As part of the settlement, DoorDash must submit detailed compliance data reports to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection every month for three years, and the company’ activities will also be monitored through workers sharing data with the city.

The settlement announced by Mamdani is not the first run-in that DoorDash has had in recent years with restitution payments in New York. 

In May 2024, the company agreed to pay $75,000 in a settlement after New York Attorney General Letitia James found that the company routinely rejected applicants with criminal histories in violation of the New York City Fair Chance Act. In February 2025, the attorney general settled with DoorDash for $16.75 million after the company used tips to subsidize workers’ guaranteed pay.

“They knew that by having a mayor who’s willing to put resources [for workers], it’s gonna be detrimental to their corporate model,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project, a group that organizes for low-wage immigrant workers and had helped several DoorDash workers file complaints with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. “DoorDash decided to invest money in trying to buy our city’s democracy.”

The post DoorDash Spent $1.4 Million Trying to Stop Mamdani From Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why. appeared first on The Intercept.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2026 — Super Micro Computer, Inc., an AI, Enterprise, Storage, and 5G/Edge IT Total Solution Provider, is now shipping NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks integrated with Supermicro’s Data Center Building Block Solutions (DCBBS) and its direct liquid cooling stack (DLC-2).

Supermicro’s DCBBS now supports all critical computing infrastructure to speed time-to-online for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 deployments

“We have spent years building the liquid-cooling stack, the manufacturing capacity, and the deployment teams for exactly this moment,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO, Supermicro. “Our customers can now order a Scalable Unit and receive production-ready systems with end-to-end integration, because we design and build every layer between the cold plate and the cooling tower. Our development of DLC-2 technology is what sets Supermicro apart and allows us to deliver the most complete solution for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform.”

The NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform was designed in conjunction with direct liquid cooling technology to deliver AI-throughput-per-watt at efficiency levels unachievable with air cooling alone. With far greater AI operations per second comes a greater heat load: heat must be moved through the full fluid distribution loop, from the cold plates through manifolds, to the cooling tower. Supermicro tests and validates every rack with the full liquid cooling stack, speeding up time-to-online when deployed.

Supermicro’s path-to-production spans from the mechanical engineering of individual system nodes, the large-scale manufacturing of liquid-cooled racks, to the full onsite deployment of clusters based on NVIDIA reference architecture. Supermicro’s DCBBS provides unmatched thermal expertise and a comprehensive in-house portfolio of liquid cooling components. Cold plates, manifolds, hose kits, rack power shelves, in-row cooling distribution units (CDUs), in-rack CDUs, Liquid-to-Air sidecar CDUs, rear door heat exchangers, and facility-side cooling towers all come from the same portfolio.

Supermicro’s DCBBS Solutions for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 include:

• NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks. 72 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and 36 NVIDIA Vera CPUs in a single liquid-cooled rack operating as one machine; Eighteen 1U compute trays, each with four Rubin GPUs and two Vera CPUs, connect through nine sixth-generation NVIDIA NVLink switch trays delivering 216 TB/s of scale-up bandwidth; Each rack provides 20.7 TB of HBM4 memory and up to 54 TB of LPDDR5X
• Supermicro in-row cooling distribution units, rated at 1.8MW per CDU, deployed with N+1 redundancy
• Optional Supermicro Rear Door Heat Exchangers ensure capture of residual heat load
• Networking integration and cabling services based on NVIDIA Reference Architecture, including the AI compute fabric, converged fabric, and out-of-band management cabling

To ease deployment of NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, Supermicro’s DCBBS Blueprint defines a balanced bill-of-materials for a given power envelope, from 5 MW to gigawatt scale. The DCBBS Blueprint based on one Vera Rubin NVL72 Scalable Unit provides 1,152 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs with 331 TB of HBM4 memory across 16 compute racks, with balanced cooling capacity, power delivery, high-performance storage, context memory storage, and networking. A Supermicro team manages the project across site survey, design, integration, testing, delivery, deployment, and ongoing support.

Learn more about Supermicro’s NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks here.

About Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).

Source: Supermicro

The post Supermicro Now Shipping NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 Racks appeared first on HPCwire.

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 23, 2026 — Classiq and Israel Natural Gas Lines Ltd. (INGL) have announced results from research applying quantum optimization to natural gas transmission planning, including execution of a reduced version of the problem on the IonQ Forte-1 quantum computer.

The collaboration focused on a familiar challenge for pipeline operators: moving gas from suppliers to customers while staying within limits for pressure, flow direction and gas balance across the network.

As networks grow and operating conditions become more complex, the number of possible pressure and flow configurations can increase rapidly. The research explored whether quantum optimization could help identify promising scenarios more systematically, giving engineers a stronger starting point for detailed review.

For gas transmission operators, the current goal is not to replace established hydraulic modeling but to improve how candidate plans are generated and evaluated. Quantum optimization could help narrow a large set of possibilities to a smaller number of promising options for engineering validation.

Using Classiq’s platform, Classiq and INGL created a hybrid quantum-classical workflow that searched possible pressure configurations while accounting for key physical and operational requirements. The work used familiar network inputs, including supplier pressure, pipe characteristics and minimum customer pressure.

In simulator-based testing on a representative gas network, the workflow identified the maximum-throughput valid operating point, consistent with classical reference solutions. The research then moved a version of the problem onto the IonQ Forte-1 trapped-ion quantum processor, where the system produced physically valid candidate operating points close to the classical optimum.

The collaboration also examined how candidate scenarios could be reviewed with SIMONE, a detailed hydraulic modeling environment for gas networks. In this approach, quantum optimization helps identify promising planning options, while established hydraulic modeling can be used to validate them before any operational conclusion is drawn.

Technical Deep Dive

The full research paper provides the mathematical formulation, quantum optimization methodology, simulator results and details of the IonQ Forte-1 hardware execution.

Read the full paper on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.00825

“Pipeline planning depends on practical engineering constraints and not abstract optimization alone,” said Nir Minerbi, co-founder and CEO of Classiq. “Our work with INGL focused on bringing quantum optimization into a language oil and gas teams recognize: pressure, flow, constraints and validation. The goal is to surface strong candidate scenarios for further engineering review complementing trusted tools operators already use.”

“INGL has a responsibility to combine operational discipline with forward-looking innovation. Our work with Classiq reflects that strategy,” said Shlomo Kresner, CEO at INGL. “We are exploring quantum optimization not as a theoretical exercise, but as an emerging tool for evaluating complex network scenarios, validating them against established engineering methods and building practical knowledge for medium-term implementation.”

“This research shows the value of testing industry applications on real quantum hardware as they are developed,” said Scott Millard, Chief Business Officer at IonQ. “Running the gas-network optimization problem on Forte-1 gave the team a practical way to evaluate how quantum computing could contribute to complex planning challenges in the energy sector.”

The work reflects a practical approach to quantum computing for oil and gas and the wider energy industry. Energy operators regularly balance capacity, customer demand, infrastructure constraints and changing operating conditions. The research explores how quantum optimization could eventually complement the planning and simulation tools they already use.

About INGL

Israel Natural Gas Lines Ltd. (INGL), a government company established in 2003, is responsible for the construction and operation of the national natural gas transmission system. The company’s work is of great importance to the Israeli economy for two primary reasons: first, for its role in ensuring energy independence and strengthening Israel’s geopolitical position and second, for its contribution to the improvement of the environmental quality and reduction of air pollution, in line with international standards.

INGL’s construction and operation of the natural gas transmission system adheres to strict international standards, utilizing advanced technological tools, complexed logistical frameworks and a wide range of international and local suppliers, contractors, and consultants.

Visit www.ingl.co.il/en to learn more.

About Classiq

Classiq, a leading quantum computing software company, provides enterprise-grade technology that makes it practical to develop scalable, efficient quantum applications. Used by dozens of global enterprises, the Classiq platform combines AI agents, a high-level quantum programming language and design automation to accelerate the development of optimized, hardware-ready quantum software. The platform also supports hardware benchmarking, cost and performance optimization, and execution across quantum hardware platforms.

Source: Classiq

The post Classiq, Israel Natural Gas Lines and IonQ Advance Quantum Optimization for Natural Gas Networks appeared first on HPCwire.

The olive ridley sighting was the first “natural nesting” on record for any sea turtle species on the West Coast, officials said.

Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran is ready for dialogue and diplomacy ‘but without the language of force’

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, turned the tables on Donald Trump, describing the US as the true bully and terrorist in the Middle East while insisting that Iran had always shown a commitment to the negotiating table.

In a defiant speech to the UN general assembly in New York, his first since the US and Israel launched an all-out war on Iran, Pezeshkian repeatedly vowed that Tehran would never bend the knee to the US.

Campaigners say plan marks notable shift away from oil and gas as previously pledges were only for carbon neutrality

Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, has committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045, despite fierce debate about its green policies.

In a roadmap published on Wednesday, the German government set out for the first time an explicit promise of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels. Previous pledges were only for “carbon neutrality”.

The biggest flotation in five years was a bit of a shoo-in. Let’s see what happens when overseas competition is tougher

• Indian billionaire’s payments firm plots biggest London flotation in years

A win is a win, but we should probably contain our excitement about the biggest flotation in London for five years. Airtel Money, a payments processor that operates in 13 African countries and should be worth between £6bn and £7bn, is a welcome addition to the stock market but it would be a stretch to say the event marks a definitive change in the weather to end the listings drought.

Why? Because, in a sense, Airtel Money is already here. It is a 78%-owned subsidiary of Airtel Africa, an established FTSE 100 firm with a market value of £11.3bn ultimately controlled by Bharti Enterprises under the Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, also known for his 25% stake in BT.

Spatola played basketball for the U.S. Military Academy and later coached on legendary Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski's staff.

• QB suffered MCL, PCL and meniscus damage

• Surgery expected to result in full recovery

• Dart injured on opening drive of Rams defeat

New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart is expected to undergo knee surgery that will end his 2026 season after suffering damage to his MCL, PCL and meniscus in Monday night’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams, according to reports Wednesday.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo reported that the surgery is expected to lead to a full recovery. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the damage to Dart’s left knee included his MCL, PCL and meniscus, with the meniscus considered the main issue.

Trump lawyers say White House access is ‘a privilege, not a right’; CNN, Politico and MS Now to present case in court after president banned outlets from White House grounds

• Sign up for US Breaking News emails

Rubio also briefly addressed Trump’s meeting with Delcy Rodriguez, the interim Venezuelan president, who last night posed for a friendly photo with Trump at a Manhattan hotel only miles from where her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, was incarcerated.

“It was a short meeting, but it was a very important meeting,” Rubio said.

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday morning for sexually assaulting Miriam Haley at his Manhattan apartment in 2006.

Hurricane Polo intensified rapidly in the Pacific off the southwestern Mexican coast, growing into a Category 5 storm before weakening slightly to a Category 4. Here's the latest on its path.

Some Trump-aligned candidates are calling for an end to the Iran war, even as Trump stands by his Iran strategy and has suggested escalation is possible.

TechCrunch quipped it was like if startup school Y Combinator and Peter Thiel's build-a-company-instead of-college Fellowship Program had a baby. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing $35 million to launch a private school in San Francisco "aimed at turning high school graduates into founders," writes the SF Standard. Or, as CBS News describes it, "One blue-chip Silicon Valley investor has a proposal for young people who are questioning whether to attend college — enroll in AI school instead...." Specifically, the academy will provide instruction geared to subjects such as designing AI systems, fundraising for startups, selling businesses and storytelling. Students won't take tests or be assigned homework but will instead focus on building real projects. Courses will be taught by tech entrepreneurs, with the academy naming OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as either an instructor or guest lecturer. From the SF Standard: "There will be no traditional grades, tests, or homework," said the announcement. Instead, students will be encouraged to "build" in SF and work with partners from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, and other firms. They'll be encouraged to live in campus housing in San Francisco. "The #1 goal is to help students learn to build, which is the most important skill in the AI era," Gagan Biyani, chief executive of the academy, wrote on X. Biyani cofounded the ed-tech startup Udemy... The school is opening applications for a Founding Class Fellowship a one-year, tuition-free program for around 50 students... The academy said it will bring in notable Silicon Valley names, like OpenAI's Sam Altman, as guest speakers and faculty. Students in the founding class will receive about $50,000 worth of computing credit — the sought-after currency in Silicon Valley to run AI models — as well as a $5,000 travel and research budget. The school is receiving funding from tech executives, including Fidji Simo, formerly of OpenAI and Instacart; Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator; and Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify. "In the AI era, it's more important to come out with a portfolio of projects that you worked on and work experience than it is to have a diploma or certificate," Biyani told the San Francisco Chronicle: Biyani said the academy plans to grow its enrollment and open a two-year program, pending regulatory approval, starting in the fall of 2028. Tuition is expected to be on par with the cost of an elite private university... The academy raised $42 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The ten founding partners are Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe. A network of hundreds of instructors, hiring partners and guest speakers includes OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, according to the academy's website. The FAQ describes a typical week by saying "Most of your time is yours to build. Each week, you share your progress with peers and practitioners, get direct feedback, and decide where to take your work next." Q: Can I use AI to help with my application? A: Yes. Use AI the way you'd use it on any project: to move faster, test ideas, and get past a blank page.... "The best assignments now are problems so hard they cannot be solved without AI," Andreessen Horowitz argued on X.com. "The Academy courses follow the same logic and will be taught by world-class leaders... The next generation will not be taught the way the last one was. The Academy is built for that world, and it begins in San Francisco." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin employee has filed a class action lawsuit against the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 7 and Olympic Companies claiming the company and union continue to deduct dues from her paychecks…

Masoud Pezeshkian began his brief address by saying that he had planned to deliver different remarks before hearing President Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday.

Customers said they felt pressured by Bee & Co. employees to hand over their credit cards and make purchases.

Lawyers say financial pressures are fuelling ONS figures that show fewer divorces after longer periods of marriage

Couples are putting off divorce because of the cost of living crisis, lawyers have said, after figures showing the average length of a marriage ending in divorce in England and Wales reached a record high last year.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Wednesday showing that the average marriage ending in divorce lasted for 13 years in 2025. This is the longest since records began in 1963 and up from a record low of 8.9 years in 1985.

Photo by Ali Hajiluyi via Unsplash

In biblical terms, Noah's Ark is the vessel that, according to the Book of Genesis, Noah built to survive a catastrophic flood.

State investigators are pursuing potential evidence of manslaughter and negligent homicide in the disaster that killed 28, search warrants show.

Farage referred to the new unit and said Burnham was setting it up ‘using the excuse that Russia wants to interfere with elections’

The former Labour minister leading the government’s review into youth unemployment has written to 100 firms to ask them to provide work placements and jobs for young people, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Alan Milburn, who was commissioned by former prime minister Keir Starmer to lead the government’s review into worklessness, has approached “business leaders” in sectors including rail, transport and utilities to ask them to provide more chances for young people.

The Milburn review said Royal Mail, Octopus Energy, Greene King and Lloyds bank are among the companies who are already offering opportunities to school and university leavers. They are taking part in the review’s First Chance scheme, which has come from the review.

As Ohio prepares to open a massive artificial intelligence data center, debate has intensified around billions of dollars in tax incentives the state has provided to attract the industry.

In his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Jon Husted, Democrat Sherrod Brown launched an ad saying Husted “led the push to bring data centers to Ohio and gave billions of tax dollars to make it happen.” 

Brown’s campaign has made similar claims in other ads and social media posts. 

The ad features an unnamed man criticizing Google’s Lancaster data center in central Ohio. 

“No one asked for that data center to be built here. And no one here is getting a damn thing from it, except higher electric bills,” he said. “Jon Husted is the reason this is here.” 

Husted served in various offices of Ohio state government from 2001 to early 2025 before Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance. As DeWine’s lieutenant governor, Husted promoted data center expansion in Ohio and the industry received billions of dollars in tax breaks.

Under state law, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approves exemptions for eligible data centers. The authority considers recommendations from the Ohio Department of Development and the Ohio Tax Commissioner before deciding whether to enter into an exemption agreement.

But the tax authority “functions as an arm of the administration,” David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political science professor, told PolitiFact, and it’s “common practice” for the governor and lieutenant governor to claim credit for corporate tax incentives the board approves.

Husted’s role promoting data centers and Ohio’s industry tax breaks 

Data centers in Ohio received about $2.5 billion in state and local tax incentives from 2017 to 2024, according to a 2025 report published by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved these exemptions during former Gov. John Kasich’s and DeWine’s administrations.

Husted’s most prominent role in data center expansion happened when he was lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025.

“Many, if not most Ohio lawmakers actively supported” data center industry growth in Ohio “and Jon Husted was certainly among them,” said Robert Alexander, a Bowling Green State University political professor. “His position as lieutenant governor put him in key position to advocate on behalf of data centers and he did so enthusiastically.”

In 2019, Husted publicly defended the tax incentives associated with Google’s $600 million New Albany data center. Google received a 15-year state sales-tax exemption estimated at $43.5 million, along with a local property-tax abatement. Husted argued the economic benefits would outweigh the incentives and said requiring Google to pay the sales tax could have pushed the company to invest elsewhere.

In June 2023, Husted also joined DeWine and JobsOhio, an economic development corporation, in announcing Amazon Web Services’ $7.8 billion investment for a data center in central Ohio. Husted said it was a step toward making Ohio “the tech center of the Midwest.” 

A few months later, in September 2023, DeWine and Husted announced the Aligned Data Centers project in Erie County, which received a 75%, 15-year tax exemption. They said the company expected to create 18 full-time jobs.

In 2025, Husted and DeWine announced Amazon’s pledge for $10 billion to expand its operations in Ohio. Husted said artificial intelligence and data centers were “crucial to America’s economic superiority because they drive innovation, support high-tech industries” and helped analyze vast data “essential for global competitiveness.”

Husted involvement in early data center tax incentive programs

As House Speaker from 2005 to 2009, Husted had the authority to appoint members to the Ohio Tax Authority. We asked Husted’s reelection campaign and the Ohio Department of Development, which oversees the authority, whether Husted appointed members but received no information.

“Husted, as speaker, was an advocate for Ohio’s tax credit process, but the membership of the Ohio Tax Credit Authority would have changed between his time as speaker and the boom in data center projects,” Niven said. “And during the DeWine-Husted administration, he was involved in the appointments process for other regulatory positions, so he would have been in a position to have influence over appointments to the Tax Credit Authority.”

The Ohio Legislature approved a 2011 law that created the sales- and use-tax exemption for eligible data center equipment, marking the beginning of Ohio’s data center tax exemption program.

Under Kasich, Ohio created a 100% sales-tax exemption for qualifying data centers. From 2014 to 2018, Kasich’s administration approved statewide exemption agreements with Amazon, Meta and Google. State estimates released in June value those three agreements at about $600 million each, roughly $1.8 billion combined. 

Husted’s position on tax breaks has changed

More recently, amid public concerns about the growth and costs of data centers, Husted has said new data centers should not get tax breaks, but that it ultimately should be a local decision. 

In July, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act to encourage states to require large electricity users, including data centers, to pay the costs associated with the power generation, transmission and other infrastructure needed to serve them. On Sept. 17, Husted failed to get unanimous consent in the Senate to pass the bill; the House passed a companion measure.

Transparency around data center deals has also become an issue in Ohio. In Brown County, officials in the village of Mount Orab negotiated a proposed data center project under nondisclosure agreements, prompting questions about what information was available to the public. The controversy has helped spur legislation, including House Bill 695, which would prohibit certain local officials from entering into NDAs. The bill has not passed the Legislature. 

Our ruling

A Brown ad said Husted “led the push to bring data centers to Ohio and gave billions of tax dollars to make it happen.”

As Ohio’s lieutenant governor, Husted promoted data center expansion in the state and applauded and defended tax incentives to lure the industry. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority formally approved the tax exemptions, but an expert said the authority is an arm of the administration.

Brown’s statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture prepares to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. If the proposal is finalized, it would eliminate a 25-year-old rule that protects some of the most undeveloped parts of America's national forests.

Flathead National Forest in Montana. Photo credit: Your Forests Your Future / US Forest Service

It is sad and dangerous that at such a perilous moment, the United States is saddled with a president like Trump

Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday to the United Nations general assembly was an object lesson in his lawless rule and remarkable capacity for self-delusion. Disregarding the UN charter’s emphasis on the peaceful resolution of disputes, he doubled down on his violent unilateralism while denigrating the global issues that the UN is designed to address.

For many, the headline remark was his musing about whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” of Iran. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, a senior fellow at Yale University and a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

Judge rejects USDA’s timetable and clarifies immigrant eligibility, but federal rules aimed at improving state payment accuracy remain in place

DOVER, Del. — Delaware has won a court ruling that prevents the Trump administration from counting certain food assistance errors against states under a deadline a federal judge found unlawful. The victory protects the state from potential future costs tied to that deadline, but it does not resolve a separate problem: Delaware’s SNAP payment error rate was 16% in fiscal 2025, well above the national average.

The Sept. 17 ruling also confirmed that certain lawful permanent residents, including people who were previously refugees or granted asylum, remain eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program without waiting five years. It did not overturn the 2025 federal law requiring states with high payment error rates to pay a share of SNAP benefit costs.

The case for state accountability

Congress changed SNAP last year to give states a stronger financial reason to determine eligibility and benefit amounts accurately. Under the law, states with error rates of at least 6% can be required to cover 5%, 10% or 15% of benefit costs, depending on their rate. The requirement generally begins Oct. 1, 2027.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a national payment error rate of 10.62% for fiscal 2025, representing $10.1 billion in improper payments. The measure includes benefits paid above and below the correct amount. It is not a fraud rate.

“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said when USDA released the figures. She said the department wanted states to curb waste while serving needy families and protecting taxpayers.

Delaware’s error rate

Delaware’s fiscal 2025 rate was 16%, compared with the 10.62% national rate and the law’s 6% cost-sharing threshold. That makes payment accuracy a substantial issue for the state, independent of its dispute with USDA over the new law’s implementation. The figure does not mean 16% of Delaware recipients committed fraud; it includes overpayments and underpayments.

Delaware’s rate is high enough to qualify it for a delay in the new benefit cost-sharing requirement. That gives the state more time to improve accuracy before it must begin paying a share of benefits under that provision. The delay comes from the law itself, separate from the court ruling.

Why the judge rejected USDA’s deadline

The lawsuit focused on how USDA put the 2025 law into effect. SNAP rules provide a 120-day adjustment period during which certain errors arising from a policy change are excluded from a state’s payment error rate. USDA said the period began July 4, 2025, when the law was enacted, and ended Nov. 1.

But USDA did not issue its guidance on noncitizen eligibility until Oct. 31, leaving states one day under that timetable. Other instructions arrived weeks or months after USDA said the clock had started. U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled that the department had not given states adequate notice. He set aside its deadline and required a full adjustment period following proper implementation instructions.

The judge also found that USDA’s October guidance wrongly indicated that some lawful permanent residents were ineligible for SNAP or subject to a five-year waiting period. USDA issued a clarification in December. The ruling confirms that lawful permanent residents who were previously in specified humanitarian categories retain their exemption from the waiting period, provided they meet other SNAP requirements.

What Jennings’ criticism means

“This entire ordeal was a blatant attempt by the Trump Administration to take food away from families in need, to destroy a plank of the social safety net, and to degrade our state’s financial standing,” Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in announcing the decision.

Jennings’ accusation goes beyond what the judge decided about the administration’s intent. USDA says it is seeking to reduce improper payments, save federal money and hold states accountable for administering SNAP accurately. The court nevertheless found that USDA’s initial guidance misstated eligibility for some lawful permanent residents and that its deadline unfairly exposed states to future costs.

The distinction does not erase the effects of the broader 2025 law. The Congressional Budget Office expects its tighter eligibility and work rules to reduce the number of people receiving SNAP. Its projected $187 billion in federal savings over 10 years includes those changes; it is not an estimate of fraud eliminated. The court ruling establishes that USDA went beyond a lawful implementation of the changes at issue, but it does not establish that denying food to needy families was the administration’s purpose.

For Delaware, the ruling means USDA cannot use the deadline the judge rejected to count implementation errors against the state. Delaware must still follow the new law and address its high payment error rate. Both facts matter to understanding what the state won — and the work that remains.

TO GO BOX | The SNAP ruling

• Who: Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings joined other states in suing the Trump administration over USDA’s SNAP guidance and deadline.
• What: A federal judge set aside USDA’s deadline for counting certain implementation errors and clarified eligibility for some lawful permanent residents.
• When: The ruling was issued Sept. 17, 2026.
• Where: The decision came from the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon and addresses USDA guidance to states.
• Why it matters: Delaware avoids errors being counted under the rejected deadline, but its 16% fiscal 2025 payment error rate remains high. The federal law requiring states with high error rates to share SNAP benefit costs remains in effect.

Organised crime groups offer cash to move packages containing illegal drugs, weapons and dirty cash

Students are being recruited by criminals in West Yorkshire to transfer illegal packages containing illegal drugs, prohibited weapons, stolen goods and dirty cash.

Organised criminals are using social media platforms including Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook to recruit people to help them move illicit goods, particularly targeting students and vulnerable adults.

Sandie Peggie accuses RCN of failing to adequately support her in dispute over sharing women’s changing room with trans doctor

A nurse who objected to sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor has said she felt “discriminated against” by her union after raising the complaint.

Sandie Peggie, who worked for NHS Fife for more than 30 years, won a partial victory against her employer after a tribunal in December 2025, when a judge upheld her harassment claim against the health board but dismissed claims of discrimination, indirect discrimination and victimisation.

Work with U.S. defense, national security, and energy stakeholders informs new research on quantum security applications that achieve quantum advantage detecting network intrusions, authenticating devices, and verifying user location

BROOKLYN, N.Y. and WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2026 — Qunnect today announced its work with U.S. government agencies and national security partners. That work, together with Qunnect’s commercial deployments and new research, provides a foundation for security applications that will protect critical communications against quantum threats and AI-enabled impersonation, deception, and falsified meta data.

As Congress mandates Department of Defense to develop quantum networks and the White House calls for all government agencies to secure systems against quantum threats, Qunnect is working with government and industry partners to advance quantum networking solutions to combat these threats. The emerging technologies use quantum entanglement, a physical phenomenon that the company’s new white paper argues offers provably secure approaches to the verification of the devices, users and connections for networks carrying sensitive information.

“Five years ago, we set out to develop quantum networking security applications that could go beyond distributing encryption keys,” said Noel Goddard, CEO of Qunnect. “We saw an opportunity to verify where a signal came from, whether a connection had been disturbed, and whether a device was genuine. Government and commercial partners have been working with us to develop those capabilities and we are excited to share our research on how entanglement and quantum networks can help protect U.S. communications against foreign adversaries and frontier technology threats like AI and quantum.”

Qunnect’s government and national security work includes:

• DARPA: Qunnect is a contract awardee from DARPA to advance quantum networking technologies through the Quantum Augmented Network, or QuANET, program.
• In-Q-Tel: Qunnect is carrying out its second work program supporting government national security customers through In-Q-Tel, which is also an investor in the company.
• Air Force Research Laboratory: Qunnect has received multiple awards from AFRL’s Information Directorate in Rome, New York since 2020 and is a current Direct to Phase II (D2P2) performer, with instruments installed in their quantum labs.
• NIST: NIST is using Qunnect’s hardware to advance quantum networking technologies anchoring DC-QNet.
• Department of Energy: Qunnect is a subcontractor to GE Vernova on DOE’s CESER program, the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, connecting its quantum networking work to the protection of energy infrastructure.

Qunnect’s new white paper, “Entanglement for Security Beyond QKD,” outlines three security applications under development on its Carina hardware. They use quantum entanglement to add physical verification of location, connections and identity alongside existing encryption:

• Quantum Position Verification (QPV) is designed to provide physical proof of where and when a signal originates, offering an unhackable way to verify location independently of GPS or IP geolocation combatting AI threats to meta data.
• Quantum Factor Authentication (QFA) uses an unspoofable quantum test that relies on quantum physics to authenticate devices, with the aim of resisting the growing sophistication of AI-enhanced impersonation and machine-learning attacks on hardware fingerprints.
• Quantum Channel Protection (QCP) turns the fiber line itself into a sensor, designed to detect a network intruder, tap, splice or rerouting, combatting harvest-now/decrypt later attacks.

Qunnect’s metropolitan quantum network deployment in New York has supported work with Cisco and NYU, while Deutsche Telekom anchors its quantum network in Berlin with Qunnect hardware. The State of New Mexico commissioned Qunnect to create ABQ-Net as the connective tissue and open access testing infrastructure open to quantum programs and new startups in downtown Albuquerque. These networks operate on existing telecommunications fiber and at room temperature, providing infrastructure for developing new quantum security applications.

The white paper, “Entanglement for Security, Beyond QKD: Physics-based trust in an evolving threat landscape of AI and quantum technologies,” is available here.

About Qunnect

Qunnect develops quantum networking hardware that distributes entanglement over existing telecommunications infrastructure. Its Carina platform supports the development of quantum security applications and future networks for distributed quantum computing and sensing.

Source: Qunnect

The post Qunnect Details US Government Work on Quantum Network Security appeared first on HPCwire.

Phil Knight and wife, Penny, make largest known donation to a public university to fund a new engineering school

Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and his wife, Penny, have donated $1bn to the University of Oregon in what the institution described as the “largest gift ever made to a comprehensive public university”.

The donation is intended to be used to establish a new engineering school in Eugene. In a news release seen by the Guardian, the university said the new school would “educate engineers and applied scientists in bioengineering and other high-demand disciplines, attract faculty and researchers to a growing campus, and accelerate the university’s ability to move discoveries out of the laboratory and into products, therapies, technologies and companies”.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican Sen. Rand Paul says the Department of Homeland Security still has not provided Congress with investigative findings on the fatal January shootings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.

Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Politico that his panel continues seeking the information. “We’ve asked for information. We’re still asking,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner. The shootings occurred during the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge and triggered national scrutiny of ICE tactics and DHS’s public accounts of enforcement encounters.

Paul previously withheld action on an ICE director nominee while demanding updates on civilian deaths involving immigration officers. AP reported last week that Paul said he remained “still waiting” for DHS to provide the requested internal-investigation information.

The demand comes amid broader concerns about transparency in Minneapolis enforcement cases. In a separate January shooting, ICE officer Christian Castro has been charged federally with lying to the FBI after prosecutors said video contradicted his claim that he was attacked before firing through a residence door. Castro has pleaded not guilty.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who replaced Kristi Noem, told senators during his confirmation process that he wanted to restore confidence in the department and acknowledged that he had previously made an inappropriate characterization of Pretti.

Sources

• Washington Examiner – MBFC Rating

The post Rand Paul Says DHS Still Withholding Findings on Fatal Minneapolis ICE Shootings appeared first on News Facts Network.

(The Center Square) – Early voting begins in Illinois on Thursday morning, but the state’s 40-day early voting period is accompanied by additional taxpayer costs.

Researchers project nearly half a million more heat-related deaths from June 2026 to February 2027 compared with a typical year, as a result of El Niño.

Heeding calls from far-right activist Daniel Thomas, hundreds of protesters turned out in Hampshire

Six people have been arrested after anti-migrant protesters gathered at a marina in Hampshire in the mistaken belief that a small boat was due to arrive.

Heeding calls from the far-right campaigner Daniel Thomas, hundreds of protesters gathered early on Tuesday evening at Gosport in Hampshire, aiming to disrupt any disembarkation of asylum seekers. The Border Force vessels carrying them landed instead in Dover early on Wednesday.

MEGAN MCGRATH
Managing News Editor

As the university’s new surveillance cameras join the flock of students on campus, petitions and opposing student organizations have formed. Under the guidance of Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Ellen Herbst, University of Delaware (UDPD) Associate Vice President and Chief of Police Patrick Ogden is enhancing security cameras on the university campus. 

How security systems will be updated, and with what technology, is no longer clear. As of Aug. 25, the project was designated with the title “Flock License Plate Reader Enhancements” on the university’s website, but has now been altered to “Advanced License Plate Reader Technology (ALPR)” with no clarification on the change. 

There has been limited information available regarding the project, but the project’s stated goal is to “enhance safety on campus by providing adequate license plate reader coverage.” Alterations have been made to various parts of the campus safety project’s description. The word “Flock” has been erased entirely from the public project plan.

While there has been no official statement as to why these changes were implemented, students continue to push the university to explain what sorts of technology will be utilized by both the university and UDPD.

One group of students has gained traction with their social media presence, deflock. Run by president Declan Rooney, a sophomore public policy major, and treasurer Arya Keim, a sophomore wildlife ecology major, the Instagram account has gained nearly 900 followers in the past month or so.

After a change.org petition was put up on Aug. 13 against the installation of these cameras, Rooney wanted to get the word out there. 

“The fact that everybody has come together just adds to the momentum we have,” Rooney said. “But even if nobody else agreed with me, I would probably still be voicing my opinion against this.”

The growing organization stemmed from the nationwide mapping project, DeFlock, which is working to educate United States (U.S.) citizens about this technology and create an accurate map of all the cameras across the country.

“Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time,” according to DeFlock’s website. “They also capture your car’s make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.”

The company Flock Safety, a manufacturer of these cameras, specifically creates technology that is designed to aid law enforcement, businesses and schools in gathering information to increase public safety. One aspect of this company is Flock LPR (License Plate Readers), which captures vehicle sightings, records license plate numbers and helps users find vehicle evidence. 

“Flock cameras are ALPR, which is an automatic license plate reader, which is not new technology,” Rooney said. “Those have been around since the ’80s, but what’s new is the AI database that they use to analyze the information.”

The removal of the word “Flock” from the website does not necessarily signify a lack of ALPR devices or the university halting the use of artificial intelligence databases. While it has attracted the most attention, and it is what was referenced by the university, Flock is not the only company producing this kind of technology. 

“So while we are deflock, this is more just, like, de-mass surveillance at UD,” Keim said.

They were not the first or only students to recognize this project. Jacob Hindin, a sophomore insect ecology and conservation major at the university, was the one who originally published the petition. 

“I want the voices of the students to be heard,” Hindin said. “And on top of that, I want students who kind of aren’t in the know about this kind of thing, to know.”

At the time that he published the petition, Flock was still listed on the website; it then transitioned to just Advanced License Plate Readers (ALPR) at the time of his interview with The Review on Sept. 10.

While they are not working together directly, both deflock and Hindin are pushing to have communication with university administrators, whether that be President Laura Carlson or Ogden, who is managing the project. 

“I don’t know what to expect, really,” Rooney said. “But I think I’m leaning towards expecting them to drag their heels, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. I’d love for them to work with us and hear our side at least.”

ALPR cameras made by Flock Safety have already been installed on campus. One of the more notable locations for students is on South College Avenue, where two cameras are attached to the bottom of the skybridge connecting Gore and Smith Halls.

The ultimate goal for students protesting the cameras is to get these surveillance systems off campus entirely, but in the early stages, education for both students and local residents has been a top priority.

After requesting the university to comment on the matter, Vice President of Public Affairs Rick Deadwyler provided the following statement to The Review.

“The University takes seriously both the safety of our campus community and the privacy questions that can arise from technologies used to support public safety. Automated license plate reader technology is one of the tools UDPD uses to investigate incidents, resolve crimes and support appropriate law enforcement activity. UDPD has strong policies governing how its personnel may access, use, retain and share ALPR data. Those policies reflect the University’s expectation that ALPR data be used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes and establish limits on access, sharing and retention.”

When deflock was asked if they had anything further to say, they kept it simple.

“F— Flock,” said Keim. “That’s it.”

Some U.S. Democrats are seeking out like-minded counterparts abroad in their struggle to counter right-wing populism.

While Brussels and Ottawa desire a deeper partnership born of Trump-era volatility, ​the EU has no legal framework to accommodate it

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The EU and Canada, Ursula von der Leyen said last week, “see the world with the same eyes”, with shared stances on everything from AI to the climate crisis, the Ukraine war and the unholy chaos unleashed by the current occupant of the White House (OK, she didn’t actually say that last bit. But I like to think she almost certainly thought it.)

So, the European Commission president went on, Canada should become “the first associate member of the EU”. In the audience, Mark Carney beamed with delight. The next day, Canada’s prime minister enthusiastically embraced the idea of an “alliance for the future”, to build “collective resilience” through “deep cooperation”.

At Made On YouTube, the company falls further down the AI rabbit hole. What does that mean for creators?

As rates climb, more buyers are seeking riskier adjustable-rate mortgages, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Cooperation on OceanEye, which aims to create ‘real-time’ model of world’s oceans, comes amid efforts to boost EU ties

Britain is to join a major new ocean science programme, led by the EU, to better forecast extreme weather and climate events, the environment secretary is to announce in New York.

The announcement on Wednesday will come as Andy Burnham’s government aims to rebuild the UK’s relationship with Europe, and follows warnings this year’s “supersized” El Niño, tracked in the Pacific Ocean, will fuel more extreme weather globally.

The nonprofit Green Oceans asked the Coast Guard to reopen an investigation that had classified the F/V Mistress as lost.

Photonic’s expertise in distributed quantum computing and advanced error correction helps inform new approaches to understanding quantum resource requirements at scale

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 23, 2026 — Photonic Inc. and Microsoft are collaborating to advance quantum resource estimation for future large-scale quantum computing systems. As quantum computing scales beyond a single processor, developers and enterprises need better ways to understand the value and benefits associated with distributed architectures and advanced error-correction approaches. The companies are working together to help the ecosystem better estimate the resources required to run quantum algorithms, including qubit counts, run time, and overall system overhead.

The collaboration builds on the companies’ existing strategic partnership, combining Photonic’s expertise in next generation error correction codes and distributed quantum computing with Microsoft’s Quantum Resource Estimation (QRE) framework. Together, the companies are exploring how architectural choices, networking requirements between quantum systems, and emerging error-correction approaches influence the resources required to run quantum algorithms at scale.

Photonic’s Quantum Low-Density Parity Check (QLDPC) error-correction code family SHYPS represents an important advance in reducing the overhead required to operate large-scale quantum computers. By helping quantum computing systems do more with fewer physical qubits, code innovations such as SHYPS play a significant role in improving the efficiency of high-connectivity architectures. As modular architectures gain momentum across the quantum computing industry, resource estimates must account for the cost of running algorithms across interconnected systems.

“As the industry moves from individual quantum processors toward interconnected, distributed systems, understanding the resources required to run meaningful applications becomes increasingly important,” said Paul Terry, Chief Engineering Officer at Photonic. “Our partnership with Microsoft has co-innovation at the core, and we are pleased to be leveraging our collective strengths and focusing on QRE, with the goal of giving the industry a clearer picture of what it will take to run practical applications on tomorrow’s quantum hardware.”

The Microsoft Quantum Resource Estimator is an open-source tool that estimates the physical resources and runtime required to run quantum algorithms and applications on a range of future, fault-tolerant quantum systems. Starting from configurable qubit technologies and quantum error correction schemes, developers and researchers can use the tool to see how choices such as hardware architecture and error-correction approach affect the number of physical qubits and the runtime needed for a given algorithm — allowing them to benchmark and compare different quantum solutions and platforms as they design for scale. The collaboration with Photonic reflects a shared commitment to advancing the tools and resources needed to support innovation across the quantum computing ecosystem and help organizations prepare for the quantum era.

“Quantum resource estimation helps developers understand the real-world requirements of quantum applications before large-scale quantum computers are available,” said Matthias Troyer, Technical Fellow and CVP, Microsoft Quantum.  “Working with Photonic, we can explore how distributed architectures and advances in error correction will influence the future scalability and performance of quantum systems.”

In advance of the release of these capabilities on the Microsoft Quantum Resource Estimator, Photonic invites organizations to sign up for updates on the infrastructure, resources, and architectural considerations required to realize value from quantum computing at scale.

About Photonic

Photonic Inc. is a leading quantum technology company developing commercial-scale quantum computers and quantum networks to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges in materials science, drug discovery, climate change, and security. The company’s approach unlocks performance at scale through unmatched distributed quantum computing capabilities. Photonic’s high-connectivity Entanglement First architecture leverages a unique qubit modality, optically-linked silicon spin qubits, to enable powerful computation, efficient error correction, and seamless integration with existing data center and telecom environments. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with operations in the United States and United Kingdom, Photonic’s team of 180+ experts is advancing quantum technologies alongside leading investors, partners, and customers worldwide. Learn more at photonic.com.

Source: Photonic Inc.

The post Photonic Inc. Advances Quantum Resource Estimation Capabilities with Microsoft appeared first on HPCwire.

First such storm of fall could have wind gusts of 70mph in places, flooding and power outages, forecasters warn

New York, Boston, and much of New England could face a weekend nor’easter storm with wind gusts of 70mph in places, and “significant” impacts including beach erosion, flooding, and power outages, forecasters warn.

Effects from the season’s first such storm since Tuesday’s official start of fall could last through the weekend, especially if the system sits swirling off the coast, a scenario experts say is looking increasingly likely.

Malwarebytes reports that the scam, which appears as a website offer from Anthropic, is not as easy to detect as most.

From highlighted ledges to characters telling you what to do, blockbuster games are increasingly taking the challenge out of playing – and players are pushing back

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Marvel’s Wolverine, the latest action game from Sony’s stable of expensive blockbuster-factory studios, has had an unfortunate launch. Reviews were decent, if not stellar, but a series of viral video clips from reviewers and streamers have made it the scapegoat for a patronising flavour of game design that gamers have hated for decades. This clip, from Skill Up’s review, shows the player entering a beautiful wintry landscape before being overwhelmed by visual cues telling them what they’re supposed to be doing there. Sonar pulses point you in the direction of objectives. Targets – which, it bears emphasising, are shaped like targets – get an extra reflective visual effect so you know you’re supposed to pay attention to them. A trail shows you not just where to go, but where the level’s sole hidden collectible is.

It is hand-holding to the point of parody. Indeed, it reminded me of the sniggersome Mario in Unreal Engine satirical videos that makes the social media rounds every few months (“A mushroom? I should take a look at this”). Skill Up’s clip has been followed by hundreds of others, gleefully ripping into Wolverine with ironic savagery. In one much-copied clip, a streamer simply lays down his controller during a motorbike chase sequence and watches as Wolverine speeds on regardless, bouncing off the scenery as the game plays itself.

Justice department cites national security to support ban on CNN, Politico and MS Now as trio file lawsuit in response

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The US Department of Justice has defended Donald Trump’s decision to ban three new organizations from the White House, arguing in a court filing that access to the grounds was a “privilege” and citing national security concerns.

Lawyers for the US president doubled down on Trump’s claims about CNN, Politico and MS Now reporting “Fake News”, and insisted the ban did not violate the first amendment because “access to the White House is a privilege, not a right”.

Kristoffer Polaha, actor in 21 Hallmark movies, will be at UNITED Church’s Milford Campus on Friday, Oct. 23

By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist,  Delaware LIVE

Hallmark fans will have a chance to see one of the network’s familiar leading men in Delaware this fall when actor Kristoffer Polaha visits Milford for a special evening celebrating an upcoming film and the real-life mission that inspired it.

Polaha, who has appeared in 21 Hallmark movies along with numerous television, film and stage productions, will be at UNITED Church’s Milford Campus on Friday, Oct. 23, for the CUPS Comedy Cast Party.

The event celebrates the completion of the production phase of Rescued, the working title of a film starring Polaha and based on the story of comedian Mike Williams.

Williams moved with his wife and three children to the Dominican Republic in 2010. While there, he became involved in an effort to rescue a Haitian refugee from Russian human traffickers. That experience ultimately led to the establishment of CUPS Mission, which now works in three countries on two continents to fight poverty and provide children with education, training and opportunities that can help them avoid trafficking.

“When I heard Mike’s story, I knew I had to be a part of it,” said writer and director Trey Reynolds. “This film is for every person who has ever felt the pull to do something greater than themselves and wasn’t sure if they were brave enough to do it.”

The movie was filmed on location in the Dominican Republic during March and April and is currently in post-production, with a projected release in late 2027. Reynolds’ previous credits include Blue Miracle, The Forge and Family Camp.

For Polaha, making the film became about more than simply playing a role.

“To make a movie is a blessing. To make this kind of movie is life-changing,” Polaha said.

During production, Polaha described how the cast and crew worked to leave a lasting impact on the community where they were filming. Their efforts included cleaning a river, stuccoing and painting the village church and painting nearby homes. The word “HOPE” was also painted on the church wall.

“We’re leaving this community better than how we found it,” Polaha said.

Children from the community spent six days with the film crew, playing games, becoming comfortable around the cameras and eventually appearing in the movie.

The Bridge, a Christian radio network with stations in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, is hosting the Milford event. The network has supported CUPS Mission for years, and its listeners sponsor La Union Abajo, a village near Puerto Plata. Bridge staff members and listeners

have contributed funding, equipment and volunteer labor to CUPS Mission projects for nearly a decade.

Williams, whose credits include Dry Bar Comedy and Dove Award Comedian of the Year, will also appear at the Delaware event. He and his family have helped thousands of children during the past 15 years.

Polaha and Williams will be joined by Reynolds, Executive Producer Jack Eason, Associate Producer Benjamin Weeks and others involved with the film. The evening will include a question-and-answer session, exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and a first look at a clip from the movie.

“This is exactly the kind of story that reminds us what is possible when ordinary people choose to live for something bigger than themselves,” said producer Darren Moorman. “Mike Williams stepped away from personal success to answer a deeper calling, and the ripple effect of that decision is still being felt today.”

Polaha is well known to Hallmark audiences, but his acting credits extend far beyond the network. He has appeared in North Shore, Life Unexpected, Wonder Woman 1984, Jurassic World Dominion, Mad Men and CSI: Miami. He also stars alongside Jon Hamm in the upcoming MGM+ psychological thriller American Hostage.

The CUPS Comedy Cast Party begins at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, at UNITED Church, Milford Campus, 985 N. Dupont Blvd. The event is open to the public. Early bird tickets are $20 through Aug. 31, with prices increasing Sept. 1. A limited number of $100 VIP Red Carpet Reception tickets are also available and include a private reception with Polaha, Reynolds and others involved with the film.

Nominations are now being accepted for five awards that will be presented during a ceremony in December. Delaware residents have until Friday, Oct. 9, to recommend an individual, program or organization for recognition.

The Maternal Mental Health and Family Wellness Award will recognize work that advances maternal health for women and families throughout Delaware.

By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE

Delawareans have an opportunity to recognize the people and organizations working to improve mental health, support recovery and strengthen the well-being of families and communities across the First State.

The Office of Lieutenant Governor Kyle Evans Gay has announced the return of the annual Lt. Governor’s Challenge, featuring a refreshed vision that focuses on contributions to behavioral health and mental health outcomes throughout Delaware.

Nominations are now being accepted for five awards that will be presented during a ceremony in December. Delaware residents have until Friday, Oct. 9, to recommend an individual, program or organization for recognition.

“I’m thrilled to bring back the Lt. Governor’s Challenge to celebrate individuals and organizations in our state who go above and beyond in prioritizing mental health and raising awareness,” Gay said.

“As Chair of the Behavioral Health Consortium, it is my honor to celebrate individuals and organizations across our state whose work has changed lives and reduced stigma in Delaware and beyond,” she added. “In honoring this year’s awardees, we are first and foremost saying ‘thank you’ and, as we continue to learn more about what is working in the First State, we hope that opportunities for connection and care continue to grow statewide.”

Nominees may include Delaware residents as well as programs and organizations that serve or operate in the state. Regional and national organizations may also be considered when a nomination specifically recognizes their work and impact in Delaware.

The five award categories reflect a range of efforts to improve behavioral health and well-being.

The Youth Mental Health Champion Award will recognize leadership, advocacy or service that advances the mental health and well-being of young people in a school or community.

The Community Mental Health Innovation Award will honor an individual, program or organization that has developed creative approaches to improving access to mental health services and support.

The Workplace Mental Health Leadership Award will recognize efforts to create a workplace culture that prioritizes employee mental health and well-being.

The Recovery Champion Award will honor someone who serves as an inspiration or advocate for others. This category highlights the importance of recovery support, and the role individuals can play in encouraging and guiding people facing behavioral health or substance use challenges.

The Maternal Mental Health and Family Wellness Award will recognize work that advances maternal mental health, perinatal well-being, reproductive justice or equitable access to care for women and families throughout Delaware.

Following the Oct. 9 nomination deadline, an extensive review process will begin to select this year’s award recipients. Reviewers may include people with experience in behavioral health, health care, education, public service, recovery, community engagement and related fields.

The winners will be announced during the Lt. Governor’s Challenge ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 8, at Delaware State University’s Schwartz Center for the Arts in Dover.

By inviting the public to submit nominations, the initiative gives Delawareans a direct role in identifying people and programs whose work may not always receive widespread attention. It also provides an opportunity to share successful approaches, raise awareness of available support and encourage stronger connections among those working to improve behavioral health across the state. Nominations may be submitted online at de.gov/ltgovchallenge.

Anyone who requires language or disability access, technology assistance or another reasonable accommodation to complete the nomination process may contact Fiona Pando at fiona.c.pando@delaware.gov.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 23, 2026 — Today, IonQ announced that it will be the first on-premise quantum computing deployment at the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center (NVAQC). The NVAQC is designed to address the fundamental challenges of scaling quantum processors into a new class of accelerated quantum supercomputers. Connecting IonQ’s full-stack quantum systems directly with NVIDIA AI infrastructure will help drive the new breakthroughs needed to turn qubits into useful, large-scale quantum supercomputers capable of solving the world’s hardest problems.

As part of the partnership, an IonQ Superion 256 system will be installed at the NVAQC and directly linked with an NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system via NVIDIA NVQLink, with workloads orchestrated by the open NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform. The joint research program will focus on hybrid software development and large-scale system prototyping, generating open results and a guide for future AI use cases and quantum-GPU co-design.

“Deploying our Superion 256 into cutting-edge environments, such as NVIDIA’s NVAQC will lead to developments allowing our partners to benefit from our scalable architecture and robust manufacturability,” said Niccolo de Masi, IonQ Chairman and CEO. “We see this as the beginning of an exciting era of hybrid quantum-classical computing. This era will be unlocked by multiple generations of Superion systems and NVIDIA’s industry-leading AI platforms.”

De Masi continued, “Our Superion quantum computing platform is robust and research-center ready. Our roadmap to 10,000 qubits and full fault tolerance is accelerating through vertical integration of our SkyWater CMOS foundry. We are excited by the possibilities our groundbreaking partnership with NVIDIA will yield.”

At IEEE Quantum Week earlier this month, the companies published joint research with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. The award-winning study introduced a framework combining generative AI with distributed quantum algorithms to solve complex combinatorial optimization challenges. That research ran on the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform.

“Every supercomputer will become a quantum supercomputer,” said Timothy Costa, vice president and general manager for quantum at NVIDIA. “As the first quantum processor to sit alongside the NVAQC’s GB200 NVL72 system, IonQ’s Superion 256 will help make breakthroughs allowing the global ecosystem to integrate QPUs with AI infrastructure, build using open models and open-source software, and advance toward scientifically useful quantum supercomputers,”

Alongside quantum-GPU integration, joint research is expected to target quantum algorithms portfolio optimization and risk modeling in financial services; materials science; and computational chemistry for drug discovery. These types of complex use cases will benefit from research conducted using the Superion 256 system.

IonQ introduced its sixth-generation Superion quantum computing platform on Sept. 8, 2026. The Superion 256 system is available to order now, with first customer deliveries expected in 2027. Installation at NVAQC is scheduled for next year.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Source: IonQ

The post IonQ Plans 2027 Superion Installation at NVIDIA Quantum Research Center appeared first on HPCwire.

The Justice Department claimed that reporting from CNN, MS NOW and Politico raises national security concerns and accused their journalists of failing to act with "professionalism and decorum."

GRENOBLE, France and CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2026 — Quobly, a French company developing silicon-based quantum computers, and qBraid, a quantum computing cloud service providing access to more than 24 quantum computers, have announced that Alloy Forge is now available on the qBraid platform, further expanding access to Quobly’s silicon quantum development environment as the company prepares the commercial launch of Alloy Pioneer, its first quantum computer, by the end of 2026.

Built to support the development and validation of quantum applications under realistic hardware constraints, Alloy Forge combines hardware-aware emulation, pulse-level simulation and cloud accessibility, enabling developers to prepare applications for future Quobly quantum systems before hardware becomes available.

Alloy Forge: A Realistic Silicon Quantum Development Environment

Alloy Forge is designed to help developers move beyond idealized quantum simulations by reproducing the practical behavior and constraints of silicon spin qubits

Alloy Forge relies on SpinPulse, Quobly’s open-source pulse-level simulation framework, enabling fine-grained modeling of silicon spin qubit operations and native gate behavior.
The combined software stack enables users to:

• Develop and validate quantum applications under realistic hardware constraints.
• Test quantum circuits before access to physical quantum processors.
• Prepare workflows compatible with future generations of Quobly silicon quantum systems.

The emulation environment incorporates realistic noise models derived from Quobly’s research, including hardware imperfections and non-Markovian noise effects.

Expanding Access Through the qBraid Ecosystem

Available through qBraid’s cloud platform alongside more than 24 quantum computing technologies, Alloy Forge enables developers, researchers and industrial users to experiment with Quobly’s silicon quantum environment using familiar cloud-based workflows.

The integration complements Quobly’s growing cloud ecosystem and broadens international access to its software stack, enabling users to begin developing and validating applications today while preparing for execution on future Alloy Pioneer quantum systems.

As Quobly continues expanding access to its technologies, Alloy Forge will progressively become available across additional cloud and HPC environments supporting the company’s software and hardware roadmap.

Supporting Quobly’s Commercial Roadmap

Unlike standalone research simulators, Alloy Forge is designed as a persistent software layer that evolves alongside Quobly’s hardware roadmap, supporting successive generations of silicon-based quantum computing systems.

Together, Alloy Forge and Alloy Pioneer form the first software and hardware offerings within Quobly’s Alloy product family. Alloy Forge provides developers with a continuous development environment, while Alloy Pioneer, Quobly’s first quantum computing system, marks the first step in the company’s roadmap toward scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing systems engineered for seamless integration into existing datacenter and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructures.

Quobly plans to commercialize Alloy Pioneer by the end of 2026, with a roadmap extending toward large-scale fault-tolerant architectures targeting one million qubits by 2032.

“At Quobly, we are not only building quantum computers, but we are also building the software ecosystem that will enable their adoption”, said Maud Vinet, CEO and co-founder of Quobly. “Alloy Forge is the development environment for our Alloy product family. By giving developers early access to realistic silicon quantum behaviour through the qBraid platform, we enable them to start building applications today that will seamlessly transition to Alloy Pioneer and future generations of Quobly quantum computers.”

“qBraid is committed to making advanced quantum technologies more accessible to developers and researchers,” said Ryan Hill, CTO at qBraid. “By bringing Alloy Forge to our platform, we are expanding access to realistic silicon quantum emulation technologies and enabling users to explore new approaches to quantum application development.”

This collaboration reflects a shared ambition to accelerate the emergence of an industrial quantum computing ecosystem where developers can progressively transition from simulation environments to production-grade quantum hardware through unified cloud platforms.

Resources

Alloy Forge on qBraid: https://account.qbraid.com/devices/quobly/qbraid/alloy-forge

SpinPulse GitHub repository: GitHub – quobly-sw/SpinPulse · GitHub

Alloy Forge GitHub repository: GitHub – quobly-sw/Quobly-alloy · GitHub

Python packages:

• spin-pulse · PyPI
• quobly-alloy · PyPI

qBraid Documentation: https://docs.qbraid.com/v2/sdk/user-guide/providers/native/quobly

Example Notebooks:

• https://github.com/qBraid/qbraid-lab-demo/blob/main/qBraid-Runtime/quobly_alloy_forge_quickstart.ipynb
• https://github.com/qBraid/qbraid-lab-demo/blob/main/qBraid-Runtime/quobly_ghz_noise_benchmark.ipynb

About Quobly

Quobly is building the first industrially scalable quantum computer by combining silicon spin qubits with advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Founded in 2022 in Grenoble, France, the company has developed a unique co-design approach with STMicroelectronics, bringing quantum processors and cryogenic control electronics onto a proven 300mm FD-SOI manufacturing platform and enabling an approach in which the quantum-computing capacity can scale through semiconductor-style integration and manufacturing.

About qBraid

qBraid is a cloud platform for quantum software development. With proven usage at the world’s largest universities, research institutions and enterprises, qBraid’s users can dive deep into tangible financial optimization, quantum machine learning and more – all on one platform.

Source: Quobly

The post Quobly Brings Alloy Forge Silicon Quantum Emulation to qBraid appeared first on HPCwire.

Administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory

The Trump administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory, and officials have not indicated when or whether the shots will become available.

It’s the latest step by top officials to restrict vaccines in the US – and it sets a precedent for holding back other immunizations, experts said.

Osiris, one of 30 belugas removed from Ontario’s shuttered Marineland, struggled to acclimate to her Illinois home

An Illinois aquarium has said that a third beluga whale it rescued from a closed marine park in Canada this summer has died after it struggled to acclimate to its new environment.

Osiris, a 26-year-old female, was one of 30 belugas removed from Ontario’s shuttered Marineland amusement park, and among 10 rehomed at the Shedd aquarium in Chicago, which said the whale died there on Monday.

Collaboration combines CGI’s industry expertise and D-Wave’s quantum technology to help clients address complex optimization challenges and improve decision-making

MONTRÉAL , Sept. 23, 2026 — CGI, one of the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world, today announced a strategic partnership with D-Wave Quantum Inc. focusing on helping clients advance the practical application of quantum computing technologies across key industries, including logistics, transportation and retail.

“As AI adoption advances and organizations seek new ways to solve increasingly complex business objectives, quantum computing is emerging as a practical complement to classical computing for selected use cases,” said Dave Henderson, Chief Technology Officer, CGI. “Organizations are moving beyond research to evaluate where quantum technologies can improve optimization and enhance decision-making. Through our partnership with D-Wave, CGI is helping clients identify high-value use cases, and to validate them through practical experimentation and broader enterprise adoption.”

The strategic partnership builds on more than a year of collaboration between CGI and D-Wave to advance enterprise quantum use cases. Through the go-to-market partnership, CGI will integrate D-Wave’s quantum computing platforms, including access to D-Wave’s Advantage2 quantum computer as well as hybrid solvers, into its advanced technology services portfolio, enabling clients to explore and deploy quantum-enhanced solutions for mission-critical challenges such as industrial production planning, energy grid optimization, and asset maintenance scheduling. CGI and D-Wave plan to co-develop use cases focused on areas where quantum computing can augment classical approaches and support measurable business outcomes. Current initiatives include the development of quantum-enabled solutions for transportation and rail, supporting train scheduling, rail network and yard operations, and resource allocation, as well as retail applications designed to improve supply chain planning, delivery routing and workforce scheduling through quantum optimization

“Quantum computing’s business value is no longer theoretical,” said Lorenzo Martinelli, chief revenue officer at D-Wave. “D-Wave customers are using annealing quantum computing today to improve operations and generate tangible results on problems that challenge legacy systems. Combining D-Wave’s quantum technology with CGI’s scale, industry expertise and delivery capabilities will give more organizations a clear path from exploration to production and measurable business value.”

The partnership reflects CGI’s continued investment in advanced technologies that help clients prepare for the next generation of enterprise computing. As quantum technologies continue to mature, CGI is helping organizations evaluate, adopt and scale quantum-enabled solutions where they can deliver measurable business outcomes.

About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 94,000 consultants and professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from strategic IT and business consulting to systems integration, managed IT and business process services and intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and accelerate results. CGI Fiscal 2025 reported revenue is CA$15.91 billion and CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com.

Source: CGI

The post CGI and D-Wave Quantum Partner to Advance Enterprise Quantum Adoption appeared first on HPCwire.

Your coworkers and classmates can now vouch that you really do have a specific university or job on your resume.

Spotify is now rolling out a feature that lets Premium listeners shape their Taste Profile.

Venezuela’s interim president hails ‘historic meeting’ and does not say whether she will visit snatched predecessor

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has celebrated a “historic” meeting with Donald Trump in New York, posing for a smiley photo with the US president, less than nine months after he ordered the abduction of her boss, Nicolás Maduro.

The former foes met at a five-star hotel a few blocks from Trump Tower in Manhattan late on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. The hotel is about 7 miles from the Brooklyn prison where Maduro has been held since he was snatched during a special forces raid on Caracas in January.

Min Zin, a Myanmar scholar, has been held for more than 100 days at what human rights groups say is a "black site" in China.

Two leaders could discuss tech safety issues and US-China trade ties but may skip over climate emergency

• Analysis: AI looms large over Trump-Xi meeting

The leaders of the world’s two superpowers are meeting in the US this week. It is Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade. The last time the Chinese president was hosted in Washington (by Barack Obama in 2015), the issues on the agenda included cybercrime, technology, the climate crisis and human rights. The star of the day was Ne-Yo, who serenaded Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, with Peng reportedly singing along at the state dinner.

This time, Xi is meeting Donald Trump, who has overhauled the world order and recalibrated the US-China relationship. Trump is contending with a China that is in a much stronger position than it was 10 years ago. Here are five things to look out for at this week’s US-China summit.

Criminal investigation could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges after 27 flood deaths last year

Camp Mystic faces a criminal investigation that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 27 girls amid devastating flooding in Texas last year, court documents show.

In applications for search warrants executed last week, investigators sought to obtain the electronic communications of the camp’s owners, saying they could provide evidence of manslaughter, negligent homicide, child abandonment or other crimes. No charges have been brought, and a representative of the camp did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Discovery of Gallo-Roman period structure hailed as ‘major breakthrough’ by French culture ministry

An ancient wall discovered beneath Paris has been described as a “major breakthrough” by France’s culture ministry, with the archaeological find possibly confirming the location of the city’s original settlement.

A roughly 20-metre (65ft) stretch of wall dating from the Gallo-Roman period was discovered in Paris this summer beneath a building on the Île de la Cité, near Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of the French capital.

The sleep tech company launched the smallest Pod of its lineup yet and introduced new sizes.

The new iPhone Handoff feature makes it simple to quickly switch a number between two phones, but it could cost you.

U.S. and Iranian delegations met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, rekindling diplomacy amid Trump's threat to "annihilate" the regime.

James McCrery II resigned in October after warning that the president was insisting on designs that violated fire and safety codes.

US-Iran meeting takes place on sidelines despite president’s threat to ‘annihilate’ Tehran regime. Plus, one man’s month-long pilates odyssey

Good morning. Donald Trump has used the platform of the UN general assembly in New York to threaten to “annihilate the Islamic republic” of Iran, “and do it quickly”. He called on countries to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices.

Despite his bombastic rhetoric, Trump also said Iranian officials held three hours of talks with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the meeting. Witkoff said he felt very good about the meeting, the first such contact since the US vice-president, JD Vance, met an Iranian delegation in Switzerland in June. A senior Iranian official also indicated that Iran was prepared to reopen the strait of Hormuz within a week.

What else did Trump say at the UN? The president doubled down on his defence of AI development, saying warnings about runaway agents were a “hoax”; announced the US would build new military bases in Greenland; attacked the international criminal court as a “rogue organisation”; and prompted the Cuba’s delegation to stage a walkout when he described the country as a “failed state”.

Did he continue his attacks on US media networks? Trump scolded a CNN anchor for covering him at the UN, saying “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me.” Last week, the president announced he was banning CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House.

Follow UN proceedings live today here.

Where else is the president seeing dissent from Republicans? Another prominent Florida Republican has publicly distanced himself from Trump, days after María Elvira Salazar called out the president’s immigration-enforcement policy targeting law-abiding undocumented immigrants. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in November’s midterm elections, launched an updated campaign website on Tuesday that was stripped of almost every mention of Trump.

Housing rights campaigners decry landlord’s ‘barbaric behaviour’ after apartment Maricarmen had lived in for 71 years was bought by a developer

There were violent scenes in Madrid on Wednesday as riot police fought with protesters trying to prevent the eviction of an 87-year-old disabled woman from her apartment in the Retiro district.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered, many of them overnight, in an effort to block the fourth attempt to carry out the eviction. Activists from the Madrid and Barcelona tenants’ union, and celebrities including the actor Carlos Bardem and the singer and actor Ana Belén, joined the protest.

The PM’s shiny newness could explain the easy ride he got this time. But who would dare predict the ever-shifting weather in the president’s head?

Watching footage of Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly on Tuesday was like watching your child from behind a tree in the playground. Are they making friends? How normal do they seem relative to the average? How will they react when they come into contact with that hulking great child who seems to be running things? Burnham’s first face-to-face with Donald Trump was billed as a knife-edge encounter that, due to the latter’s capriciousness, could go either way. In the event, it was drama-free, leaving observers to ask: was it Burnham’s brilliance or simply the weather in Trump’s head?

To viewers at home, Burnham’s performance at the press conference looked like that of a man who had worked out his best approach was to go for the sheepish, slightly cheeky air of the junior partner. Burnham is 24 years younger than Trump, on top of everything else – which can afford a certain licence to the less powerful person in any exchange. At the last minute, the meeting had been moved behind closed doors and afterwards, in a windowless room at the UN, the two men appeared side by side, mirroring each other’s body language: just two guys, legs akimbo, shoulders hunched, hanging on a bench in the locker room.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

• Portland Fire’s win hands Lynx top seed for playoffs

• Olivia Miles held out of lineup due to calf injury

Caitlin Clark had 27 points, nine assists and seven rebounds, and Kelsey Mitchell added 20 points to her WNBA single-season scoring record as the Indiana Fever beat the Minnesota Lynx 96-77 on Tuesday night.

It was a mixed night for the Lynx. The Portland Fire’s victory over the Golden State Valkyries later in the evening meant Minnesota have clinched the No 1 seed for the playoffs, which start Sunday. However, the Lynx were without Olivia Miles. The record-breaking rookie was a late scratch because of an injured left calf, and her absence clearly had an impact. Miles broke Clark’s single-season scoring record by a rookie against Connecticut last Sunday. Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said she almost held Miles out for that game and that the team would take the injury day by day as the playoffs approach.

Ofcom says site’s age-checking regime may not be ‘highly effective’, as required by the Online Safety Act

One of the world’s most visited pornography websites is being investigated by the UK’s communications watchdog over concerns it can still be accessed by children.

Pornhub’s age checking regime may not be “highly effective”, according to Ofcom, and could be in breach of online safety laws requiring strict measures to prevent under-18s from accessing sexually explicit content.

August 15: $62,991 September 23: $86,456 Bitcoin shot up 37% over the last 39 days, reaching an eight-month high on Monday. "Bitcoin is back," declares Yahoo Finance: The token held near $86,000 on Tuesday after a stunning multisession rally... [Fundstrat head of digital assets Sean Farrell told Yahoo Finance on Monday] "I think the crypto winter is over, although that does not necessarily mean the path higher will be linear." For now, momentum is on crypto's side, with bitcoin jumping more than 5% on Friday and another 6% on Monday. "We believe crypto is in the early innings of a new bull market and we see few signs of overheating," Compass Point analyst Ed Engel wrote on Tuesday. The move looks "like a combination of renewed ETF demand and a large short squeeze," Nicolai Søndergaard, senior research analyst at Nansen, said as traders betting against bitcoin are forced to buy it back, adding further fuel to the rally. Bitcoin got bad news and then good news last week. After the U.S. Congress failed Thursday to pass a cryptocurrency 'Clarity Act', America's Securities and Exchange Commission instead announced a tokenized-stock experiment. It's a five-year "innovation exemption" that "creates a path for tokenized U.S. stocks to trade through automated market makers on public blockchain," according to CoinDesk. Yahoo Finance notes that Bitcoin and other altcoins surged after the announcement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI "agents" show a remarkable ability to share information and knowledge with other bots. That should worry us.

Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel Money targets $9bn IPO in boost for ailing UK stock market

Nils Pratley: Does this mark the end of London’s listing drought? Not yet

A payments business that operates across Africa and is ultimately controlled by an Indian billionaire has announced its intention to float on the struggling London Stock Exchange.

Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa, is planning one of the biggest UK listings in years, in a boost for the shrinking London market that has faced a string of recent departures.

Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber known for making outrageous pro-gun statements, is the frontrunner to represent a district devastated by mass shootings

The video begins with Brandon Herrera staring intently into the camera. He is filming himself in a hotel room seated between twin beds, his black hair slicked back and beard neatly trimmed. He is wearing a T-shirt branded with his trademark nickname, “The AK Guy”, above the image of a semi-automatic rifle primed for action.

Three days earlier, on 3 August 2019, a white nationalist armed with a semi-automatic firearm not dissimilar to the one stamped across Herrera’s chest entered a busy Walmart store in the Texas border city of El Paso and opened fire.

In the latest episode of "Healthful," Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein, an orthopedic surgeon at Duke University School of Medicine, discusses what women should know about protecting their bones.

One of the largest labor unions in the US targets eight battleground states in ‘workers v billionaires’ campaign

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), one of the largest labor unions in the US, has launched a “workers v billionaires” political campaign tour targeting members in eight battleground states and encouraging them to support pro-worker candidates in the midterms.

IAM has nearly 700,000 active and retired members in North America, covering workers at corporations that include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Airlines and Harley-Davidson. The union is targeting members and voters in Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Illinois.

Trump says further talks possible as barrel of Brent crude falls to below $100 for first time in two weeks

• United Nations general assembly – latest updates

Iran has pushed back on claims that it dropped former preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz in surprise talks held in New York under the mediation of Qatar between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Trump said the three-hour talks held in a room at the UN headquarters had gone very well and been very productive. He suggested further talks were possible imminently, which led to the price of a barrel of Brent crude to fall to below $100 (£75) for the first time in two weeks. Witkoff said the talks had been “encouraging, constructive and successful”.

The wall dating from the Gallo-Roman period was discovered beneath a hotel on the Île de la Cité, a stone's throw from Notre Dame Cathedral.

Richard Clayton KC had undergone operation for ruptured achilles tendon day before hearing optician’s appeal

A judge was wrong to hear a case from his bed via video link while recovering from surgery, the court of appeal has said.

Richard Clayton KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge, heard an optician’s appeal against a finding of serious misconduct from bed the day after returning from hospital where he had undergone an operation for a ruptured achilles tendon.

(The Center Square) – Six senators want to know if the Trump administration has any plan to get tariff refunds to consumers with the government having cleared about $122 billion in refunds of struck-down duties for importers.

Someday, AI agents will buy you anything you want — or what they think you want. Here’s how the chipmaker for top Android phones thinks that may work.

Defence secretary places annual payments to Mauritius on hold as UK government reviews deal over Diego Garcia base

• UK politics live – latest updates

Wes Streeting has said annual payments worth at least £120m to Mauritius are on hold as the government reconsiders its deal over the Chagos Islands, after Donald Trump refused to back the agreement.

The defence secretary said the payments would not be made “at this stage” and confirmed the deal “can’t go ahead without US support”.

Bryan Seaver, who announced Parton’s death to the world, is alleged to have intimidated her manager and others, which he denies

The estate of the late Dolly Parton is involved in a dispute with the country star’s nephew and former head of security, and has filed for a restraining order against him amid allegations of threats.

Bryan Seaver was responsible for Parton’s security, and was tasked with announcing her death on 25 August with a video, “something Dolly asked of me years ago”, he said.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is dramatically expanding its search for noncitizen voter fraud ahead of the November midterms, assigning hundreds of federal investigators and attorneys to a problem that repeated studies and state reviews have found occurs only rarely.

Homeland Security Investigations says it now has about 1,600 open voter-fraud cases and has made 160 arrests. The Justice Department says 24 immigrants have been charged this year, with officials promising prosecutions will increase before Election Day. Axios reported that agents normally assigned to smuggling, trafficking, financial fraud and sexual exploitation have been redirected to the effort.

The scale of the operation stands in sharp contrast to the available evidence. Reuters reviewed state and independent investigations and found noncitizen voting to be exceedingly uncommon. One Brennan Center review identified just 30 suspected cases among 23.5 million ballots, while the conservative Heritage Foundation documented 24 cases over two decades.

AP has likewise reported that noncitizen voting is illegal under federal law and rarely occurs, with state audits repeatedly finding only isolated cases.

Even some recent registration problems cited by officials involved software or administrative errors rather than deliberate illegal voting. Despite that record, the administration is treating the issue as a “tier one priority,” continuing Trump’s years-long claims that noncitizen voting represents a major threat to U.S. elections.

Sources

• Axios – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Administration Expands Voter Fraud Hunt Despite Sparse Evidence appeared first on News Facts Network.

As the UN gathers, signatories from Bernie Sanders to Yeb Saño issue an open letter calling for clean power for all

• The climate fight has one great ally. You just can’t look at it directly


We the undersigned write this letter out of great fear and great hope.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.

There is hope in solar power. As the UN meets, we are urging leaders to pursue a clear goal: clean energy for all by 2030

• Our message to global leaders: we need solar power everywhere by the decade’s end

As climate experts from around the world gather in New York for their annual week of talking through the world’s deepest dilemma, the vibes are mostly bad.

Though 2026 seems likely to set a new global temperature record (and 2027, as El Niño gathers steam, is almost certain to break it), and though the planet has careened from one climate disaster to another (European heatwaves that killed tens of thousands, a Nepali flood that wiped out entire communities), and though scientists warn that we’re reaching precisely the global tipping points they’ve long feared (the new research on the faltering great currents of the Atlantic should send a literal chill up your spine), there’s a distinct lack of political momentum.

The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear. We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out.

We know that standing up to the powerful can be scary. But if there is one thing that unites us, it is that we live beneath the same sun. That unity is our strength, and we must use it to act now.

Bill McKibben is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College. He is the founder of Third Act, organizing people over 60 for progressive change

In an interview before the White House’s media ban, Carlson called on reporters to push back against Trump’s misogyny

Donald Trump has achieved something rarely seen in Washington: uniting rival television networks against him. When he banned CNN and MS Now – along with Politico – from the White House, their competitors suspended shared coverage of the US president’s events.

Gretchen Carlson, a journalist, author and former Fox News host, hopes this will not be the only example of solidarity from a White House press corps facing what she describes as an “outright onslaught” from the administration.

The payment will go to your PlayStation Network wallet after the final approval hearing in mid-October.

Wilmington-raised actor John Gallagher Jr. wasn’t sure he had what it took to play a serial killer when he was cast in the 2016 slasher “Hush.” But director Mike Flanagan insisted on Gallagher because nobody would expect his boy-next-door look underneath the mask. 

During the three weeks of 12-hour night shoots that followed, Gallagher learned fight choreography, performed most of his own stunts and even climbed up the side of a house.

“The freedom that comes with a filmmaker believing in you and trusting you is an incredible feeling,” Gallagher said.

Flanagan’s vision paid off. The Netflix film received positive reviews during its premiere at South by Southwest and online praise from horror icons like author Stephen King and “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin. Today, it holds positive audience and critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ten years after “Hush,” Flanagan has taken the reins of the franchise Friedkin started with the upcoming “The Exorcist: Martyrs,” which Gallagher makes a brief appearance in.

“There’s something cosmically full circle about that,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher will reflect further on his horror roles in a panel Saturday at the inaugural Horror Fest Film Festival in Wilmington, where he’ll also play a set of his original music on Sunday. 

Known for his parts in rock musicals like Duncan Sheik’s “Spring Awakening,” Green Day’s “American Idiot” and The Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away,” Gallagher has become a disciple of his own brand of “emo folk rock” in the past decade. He released a new EP, “Almost Ok,” in May.

Ahead of his hometown appearances, the Hollywood actor reflected on his career and future in a conversation with Spotlight Delaware.

‘A wooden statue’

Gallagher, 42, left Delaware for New York to pursue acting as a teenager. But he still visits his parents in Wilmington several times a year and hits up his favorite restaurants: The Charcoal Pit, La Tolteca, Kid Shelleen’s and Rita’s Italian Ice. 

Gallagher attributes his artistic successes to Wilmington community theater and his parents, who have performed as a folk duo locally for decades.

He first decided he wanted to become an actor around 11 years old, when he watched his mom play the stepmother in Wilmington Drama League’s “Cinderella.”

“She brought a playful energy to it, and she was really funny,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, I want to try that. I want to see if I can get up on stage and help tell a story.’”

So, Gallagher’s mother took him to a casting call. He sang “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from “Mary Poppins.”

“I stood there like a wooden statue. I didn’t get cast. I was crushed,” he said. “I was like, ‘I never want to do this again!’ Very dramatic, as I was wont to be at that age.”

But he bounced back and auditioned for Wilmington Drama League’s “Frankenstein,” adapted from the book by local playwright Scott Mason. Gallagher said that role was “life-changing.” 

An introverted and shy kid, Gallagher found friendship and encouragement in Delaware’s theater scene as he performed alongside a cadre of future Hollywood A-listers like Aubrey Plaza and Neil Casey. That gave him the ambition to throw himself into the merciless machine of New York theater. 

‘Raw, imperfect quality’

Gallagher landed his breakout role as Moritz Stiefel in “Spring Awakening” at 22, earning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. 

The pivotal role wouldn’t have been possible without composer Duncan Sheik, who died last week at 56. 

“He was a very quiet, sensitive, mercurial person. Very introspective. You can hear it in the music,” Gallagher recalled. “It’s very compelling, and that was the first thing that jumped out at me when I heard the ‘Spring Awakening’ songs for the first time.”

The first version of the score Gallagher listened to was a demo CD recorded and performed entirely by Sheik.

“I wish that could also get released alongside the cast album, because hearing him play all those songs is really unique and really special,” he said.

Gallagher described himself as a bit of an “outcast” in the world of musical theater. He hadn’t been going to see vocal coaches his entire life; he’d gotten most of his practice from performing in rock bands. But Sheik didn’t want perfection from Gallagher; he wanted authenticity.

“The character that I was playing is this wayward and depressed teenager struggling to make sense of his life. I was encouraged to mine all of that and bring a raw, imperfect quality to the role,” Gallagher said. “He wanted people that felt real.”

‘Almost Ok’

Fittingly for someone who’s starred in so many rock musicals, Gallagher exhibits a theatrical quality in his own songwriting. 

The lyrics drop the listener into hyper-specific settings, like a family trip to the Jersey Shore (“Never Leave”).

“New Jersey Transit is a great place to be sad,” Gallagher sings. “You can stare out the window racked with guilt and feeling bad about the time you raised your voice and were mean for no reason to your dad.”

Other tracks follow Gallagher grappling with a problem like a character in a musical. “Tough Spit,” an upbeat lamentation of the digital age, follows a doomscrolling Gallagher resolving to leave the house before ultimately deciding to further isolate himself.

Gallagher pulls his bare-faced vulnerability from the folk icons he saw perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival as a kid, like Richie Havens, Janis Ian and Buddy Guy.

“There’s something so powerful and vulnerable about these people just getting up with a wooden instrument and telling their story and baring their soul,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘God, that’s a superpower.’”

That superpower is what Gallagher channels on “Almost Ok.” 

The EP was born from the closure of The Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away” after only two months on Broadway. Feeling deflated, Gallagher threw himself into the studio, recording snapshots of his life from the past couple of years in a matter of five days.

The theme of the record can be found in the title. If life is a dial ranging from horrid to heavenly, Gallagher is still searching for the right level of blissful ordinariness. 

“I talk about this all the time with my therapist. I don’t need the dial to be at 100. … But I also don’t want to be down all the way to the left at zero,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to get in the vicinity.”

The post John Gallagher Jr. on Wilmington upbringing, Duncan Sheik and being ‘Almost Ok’ appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Community members across the state are mourning the loss of Santos Maria Chilel Soto, a Georgetown mother who was fatally shot by a Maryland deer hunter Friday evening. A petition is now calling the governor and Delaware authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.

Santos Maria Chilel Soto took her usual leisurely walk last Friday just before sunset. The Georgetown mother of five was chatting beside her boyfriend, Miniveldo, and his two children as they walked along an open field in Ellendale.  

But the 39-year-old Guatemalan mother never returned home. She was fatally shot by Walter Moorhead, a 74-year-old Maryland hunter who, according to arrest records, mistook Chilel Soto for a deer. 

“I want to call upon Gov. Matt Meyer for justice, so that this murder does not go unpunished, because it was a cold-blooded murder,” Miniveldo, who was only identified by his first name, said in an interview with Spanish-language radio station La ZMX Delaware earlier this week. 

Moorhead, of Salisbury, Md., was released on $43,000 cash bond after admitting to police he shot Chilel Soto Friday night. He is charged with reckless manslaughter, three counts of reckless endangerment and a weapons charge. 

According to police records, Moorhead was using a rifle to hunt deer. Delaware State Police and Delaware Natural Resources Police are jointly investigating the shooting. 

The news has made national headlines and provoked public outcry, with people raising questions about the alleged accident and demanding a more detailed examination.

For now, Chilel Soto’s family is focused on mourning the loss of a loved one who has left five children behind — four who lived in Georgetown and her adult son in Guatemala.

“We’ve barely had time to eat,” her sister, who spoke to Spotlight Delaware on the condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday. 

What we know about the shooting

As part of her routine, Chilel Soto would take walks with her family in the late afternoon, Miniveldo said on La ZMX. And that Friday evening was no exception. 

The police report indicates the shooting took place at around 7:40 p.m. But Miniveldo said in the radio interview the incident occurred about an hour earlier, when there was still daylight remaining at 6:40 p.m. 

During this time, Miniveldo said he heard an explosion. He then saw Chilel Soto cover her ears and fall to the ground. She had been shot in her upper torso. They called 911, and while they applied pressure to her wound and waited for emergency responders, according to the arrest records, an older man with a flashlight walked into the field. 

Moorhead, a retiree who was hunting with a scope, told police he found Chilel Soto, as well as three other people, when he went to find the deer he thought he had shot.

Miniveldo said Chilel Soto was wearing a yellow shirt when she was killed.

Moorhead could not be immediately reached for comment. As of Tuesday afternoon, court records showed he does not yet have an attorney.

Santos Maria Chilel Soto: Wife, mother and Georgetown community member

Chilel Soto lived in Georgetown with Miniveldo, her teenage son and daughter and her partner’s two younger children.

Chilel Soto’s sister recalled their time spent working in the cleaning industry together during an interview with La ZMX Delaware. She said her sister was her best friend and a loving soul who would even help her older clients go to the bathroom. 

“She fought every day,” Chilel Soto’s sister said in Spanish to La ZMX. “She would even sometimes head out at 5 a.m. sometimes for her children. She was always more than just a mother. She was a companion to her children. She was the best mom to them.”

Chilel Soto also was an active member of the evangelical church Iglesia de Dios Fuente de Verdad. In a church Facebook post, dozens of comments passed on their condolences, including some family members from Guatemala. 

“May god bless the life of my brother and my nieces and nephews. Sending regards from Tajumulco, San Marcos,” wrote her former brother-in-law Silvio Lopez. 

Hunting season starts with tragedy

September marked the first month of deer hunting season, and Delaware has one of the longest in the country, spanning five months. Aside from sport hunting, one of the season’s main purposes is to control the population of white-tailed deer in the state, which causes millions of dollars in crop damages every year.

To that end, the state offers permits that allow farm owners to open their land to licensed deer hunters outside of the regular season if their crops have suffered extensive damage.

According to DNREC spokesman Michael Globetti, one of these hunting permits, which allows firearms to be used outside of the general firearm season, was on file for the property where Chilel Soto was killed.

Still, there is an active investigation to determine whether Moorhead’s hunting complied with both the permit and state law.

Delaware’s current deer hunting season more generally is only open to hunters using crossbows and arrows. Firearms can be used in two shorter seasons that next run from Nov. 13-22, and Jan. 16-24, 2027. The only exception is when a private property owner has a deer damage permit to hunt antlerless deer. 

Under Delaware law, most hunters must complete an education course before they can obtain a hunting license. Positive target identification is a core requirement of the exam. Maryland also requires hunters to take a similar course to the Delaware exam that includes different tiers, depending on the hunter’s age.

Rules and regulations are no different for an out-of-state hunter like Moorhead. The only exception was that he had to pay a higher permit fee of $199, which can be obtained online or in-person. 

A previous hunting-related death occurred back in 2023 in Millsboro, when Todd Mumford, a 53-year-old Sussex County probation and parole officer, was shot and killed.

Another incident occurred in 2015, also in the Millsboro area, when a 54-year-old hunter in a tree stand shot an arrow from his compound bow and hit a 24-year-old victim on the ground about 30 yards away. The injured man survived and underwent surgery.

Community left reeling, investigation ongoing

In the wake of Chilel Soto’s death, community members and Chilel Soto’s loved ones have questioned Moorhead’s assertion that he thought he had shot a deer.

Dailyn Stephanie Mendez, a friend of Chilel Soto, said the land where she was killed is a hotspot for the Hispanic neighbors in the area. This, she said, makes her believe it was a targeted incident. 

“It isn’t as if it were an accident, or an illness, or something like that — things that are easier to come to terms with,” Mendez said. “But just imagine: the blow came head-on — not from behind, not anything else — it struck her head-on.”

Despite these concerns, the Office of the Attorney General said it could not comment on the ongoing investigation. 

Moorhead has a preliminary court hearing scheduled for Friday, Sep. 24.

When asked for a comment, Gov. Matt Meyer’s office shared their condolences and said state police are conducting a full investigation. 

“I also recognize the grief and concern this tragedy has caused within our Latino community, particularly in Sussex County,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Every person who calls Delaware home deserves to live with safety, dignity, and respect. My family’s heart is with Santos Maria’s family during this time, and the State of Delaware stands with the community as it mourns her loss.”

A GoFundMe supporting burial costs had raised nearly $26,000 as of Tuesday evening.

Chilel Soto is survived by her five children and her boyfriend, Miniveldo. The family is currently awaiting the return of her body so they can send her remains to Guatemala, where one of her sons awaits.

The post Community rallies for Guatemalan mother killed by Maryland hunter  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Amid a flurry of election-related legal challenges across the country, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down a challenge to the state’s absentee voting protocols this week. The decision allows the state’s permanent absentee voting system to continue as-is this election cycle. 

The Delaware Supreme Court upheld the state’s absentee voting protocols earlier this week, rejecting Senate Minority Leader Gerald Hocker’s claim the system is unconstitutional. 

Hocker, a Republican state senator from Ocean View, argued in the lawsuit that Delaware’s current absentee voting rules violated the state’s Constitution by allowing for the indefinite use of absentee ballots — even if voters no longer meet the state’s qualifications.

But the justices rebuffed that claim in a 20-page ruling written by Chief Justice C.J. Seitz, saying the “argument rests on a faulty premise.”

The Supreme Court sided with the Delaware’s Court of Chancery in its previous ruling against Hocker’s claim, saying the Delaware Department of Elections has protocols in place to police permanent absentee voters’ continued eligibility.  

“The plaintiffs have lost sight of the mountain they must climb to succeed on a facial constitutional challenge to legislation,” Seitz wrote. 

Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings called the ruling “a victory for the tens of thousands of veterans, senior citizens and Delawareans with disabilities who rely on permanent absentee voting.”

In a statement, she also said the lawsuit was a last-minute attempt by Hocker to “suppress the vote,” after initially voting in favor of legislation that first created permanent absentee voting.

But Jane Brady, a former state attorney general who represented Hocker in the case, said the senator’s lawsuit was about ensuring election integrity, not playing politics.

“It’s unfortunate if anyone would try to make this political and use keywords that are incendiary to try and create political fodder out of this,” Brady told Spotlight Delaware. “This was not about politics. It was about integrity, and even the Constitution talks about the purity of our elections. This was to protect that.”

Brady said she accepts the court’s ruling and is grateful for its thorough consideration, but she still plans to look into future challenges. Those possible challenges, she said, would come after the November general election and likely be targeted toward how the permanent absentee voting process is implemented. 

According to Jennings’ statement, the Department of Elections will soon begin sending out ballots to permanent absentee voters across the state. 

How did we get here?

Hocker first filed the lawsuit against the Delaware Department of Elections in early August, after a similar claim he filed in 2024 was dismissed. 

Steve Washington, an Independent Party of Delaware-affiliated candidate running for a Wilmington-area State Senate seat, was added to the case as a second plaintiff in mid-August. 

The Court of Chancery ruled against Hocker’s claims in a Sept. 4 opinion. Days later, Brady, who also is a former state Republican Party chair, appealed that decision to the Delaware Supreme Court.

Hocker primarily argued that Delaware’s current absentee voting rules could jeopardize the accuracy of state election results if people no longer eligible to vote were still able cast ballots.

“As a candidate, Sen. Hocker wants a fair election and all votes made and tabulated in his race to be in accordance with the law,” the original complaint stated.

Hocker faces a challenge from Democrat Harry Gold in the general election — although Gold was not yet on the ballot when Hocker originally filed his case.

State law identifies five categories of people eligible for permanent absentee status, including those temporarily residing outside the United States, serving in the armed forces, sick or physically disabled, or already authorized for absentee status by federal law. 

The lawsuit called for the state to require individuals to reapply for absentee ballot status each election cycle, instead of indefinitely being placed on the absentee ballot list.

The state Supreme Court decision comes amid a flurry of challenges to election processes across the country.

Jennings recently joined a group of 20 states challenging new Trump administration vote-by-mail requirements that Jennings and others said could stifle fair elections. A U.S. District Court in Massachusetts ruled in the states’ favor on Sept. 4, and the U.S. Supreme Court has also sided with the states.

Other voting lawsuits on the horizon

The Delaware Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning in another case related to voting rights, this time for people representing business entities like limited liability companies (LLCs). 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware is appealing an earlier decision from state Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz that found LLCs and other entities like family trusts have the right to vote in Fenwick Island’s elections. The ACLU contends the allowance diminishes human residents’ voting rights.

As previously reported by Spotlight Delaware, Hocker was a Senate sponsor of Fenwick’s original charter amendment extending voting rights to entities some 20 years ago. In the 2024 election, nearly a quarter of votes cast in Fenwick were by owners of entities. Fenwick is only one of five Delaware towns that allows more than just people to vote. 

Mayor Natalie Madgeburger has previously said a majority of properties in the resort town are owned by family trusts, and described the voting system there as one that is “just, fair and gives everyone a voice.”

She did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Even if the court upholds Karsnitz’s ruling allowing entities to vote in Fenwick elections as they have since at least 2008, changes could still be possible — but they would require a constitutional amendment.

House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris (D-Dover) successfully sponsored a bill last year to deny corporations voting rights in any Delaware election. Any such constitutional changes, however, require a two-thirds vote from two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly. That means the next group of lawmakers meeting in Dover will also have to approve the legislation with a supermajority in support.

Maggie Reynolds and Maddy Lauria contributed to this report.

The post Delaware Supreme Court denies Hocker’s absentee voting challenge appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
One Georgetown-area teacher started a student-run mentorship program to help multilingual learners in her school improve both their English literacy and overall sense of community. A national grant has now bolstered her work. 

Katherine Mancuso knew she had to do something. 

The Sussex Central High School English teacher — whose classes are made up of more than 60% multilingual learners — was seeing low test scores, staffing changes and students entering high school without foundational language skills. 

She knew the school needed to find a system to help students who speak Spanish, Haitian Creole, French, or Portuguese as a first language build confidence and better navigate their curriculum.

So Mancuso created the “Multilingual Mentors” program last March, pairing juniors and seniors with sophomores and freshmen who need the extra help in core subject areas. The program includes small-group and one-on-one support focused on homework help, literacy development, vocabulary, and study skills.

“Having a multilingual teacher in the room still hasn’t been enough, so we need to do something that makes [multilingual students] feel more comfortable, and this is what I came up with,” Mancuso said.

Students are identified through teacher recommendations, English language proficiency assessment data, and self-referral. Mancuso also has promoted the program through community events, direct outreach to families and working with multilingual staff at the school to ensure students feel encouraged to attend.

While the program initially was based on 9th and 10th graders in need, it is open to any student who may be struggling, she said. 

Mancuso has even received a national grant to help bolster the program. A one-year, $5,000 grant from the National Education Association will help fund the mentorship program through the middle of the current school year. She also is looking for more outside funding to continue growing.

Student-centered mentorship

Manscuso emphasized the need for these students to have relationship-building, peer encouragement and opportunities for mentors to lead activities. 

In the classroom, teachers often have to pull at different strings to meet a wide range of needs, she said. But through the mentorship program, many students have naturally stepped up to help their peers​.

“It’s our students building a foundation of support. It’s student-centered,” Mancuso said. “They track everything, so they track the students that need homework help. They are the ones trying to make sure that they’re communicating with each other.”

She has used the grant money to add incentives like snacks to ensure mentees stay engaged after school hours. She also has purchased gift cards to recognize the mentors’ participation and leadership.

The program has been successful, Mancuso said, because it takes organic student relationships and makes them intentional and structured.

The program included about 20 mentors and 20 mentees in the spring. This year, six mentors have returned, and Mancuso currently is recruiting to begin tutoring sessions in October.

​The program will run twice a week after school and during intervention periods, where mentees can meet with their mentors during the day for 35 minutes to continue working on their goals.

Student-run organization

​One mentor, 17-year-old Sussex Central senior Jordani Bernal Tapia, joined the program after being recruited by Mancuso. 

He chose to mentor because he said he wanted to help others using his fluency in both Spanish and English.

Tapia noticed that with his help, other students were able to complete their assignments and improve their grades. He has noticed how much more relaxed the mentees feel, and how much more they are able to connect with new people.

“For the majority of them, their first language is Spanish,” Tapia said. “The bigger the words are, or the more that the teacher explains it to them, the more they get lost.”

Instead, Tapia starts by asking what the students understood from their teachers before explaining the material further in Spanish.​

“There’s a lot more people that can help, and that should help,” he said. “And I would like to highlight that this is all to help our peers become who they want to become through the challenges they face.”

What comes next?

Mancuso said she would like the senior students to eventually take ownership of the program. 

That way, it could create a cycle where the students’ leadership continues beyond the first year, and their mentees’ academic growth could continue in concert. 

Since the program has started, Mancuso said she has already seen academic improvement.

Students are testing higher on their English-proficiency exams, and less schoolwork is being handed in late, she said.

“I have over 60% of my students who are multilingual learners … it’s not just a few. If it’s over half the classroom, people have to start changing,” Mancuso said. “Things have to start happening to make sure that everyone graduates on time and that they all feel comfortable in the classroom.”

The post Sussex teacher earns grant to expand multilingual programming appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

An online platform removed 257 papers written or co-written by the University of Chicago’s Nicholas Polson after other academics raised questions.

Iran war, rising prices and president’s low ratings give Democrats advantage, but Republicans have poured cash into key races – could it be decisive?

• Sign up for The Stakes 2026: your weekly guide to the US midterms

Donald Trump pulled out all the stops at the Republican party’s midterm convention two weeks ago. In speeches aimed at the voters who will soon decide whether to keep Republicans in control of Congress for the final phase of his presidency, the president dangled $5,000 checks, and warned the United States would turn into a “communist country” if Democrats are elected.

The unprecedented political gathering amounted to a Hail Mary pass at retaining control of Congress, which history indicated Trump’s Republican allies had always been likely to lose in the 3 November vote. Two weeks later, with election administrators in several states already sending out mail ballots, there is no indication the gambit has worked.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado tried 3 times to enter her country "by air and sea but has been turned away each time," her team says.

• Club coach also allegedly grabbed female official’s hand

• Referees’ union criticises MLS’s two-match ban

The Major League Soccer club Columbus Crew have sacked their reserve-team coach after he allegedly grabbed a female referee’s hand and told her: “Don’t forget this is a man’s game.” Federico Higuaín was sent off for the incident, which occurred during an MLS Next Pro league match, and was later given a two-match ban.

Columbus Crew’s general manager, Issa Tall, said in a statement: “We determined it’s in the best interest of our club, players and support staff to dismiss Federico Higuaín from his responsibilities. After conversations this week and further assessing the past month, our club’s standards of what’s expected from a leader for one of our teams have not been met.”

Arrest of Shadrack Sibiya comes as country reels from cases of femicide and alleged police corruption and criminality

One of South Africa’s most senior police officers has been charged with raping an 18-year-old woman and grooming a 16-year-old girl, as the country’s police face allegations of corruption and failing to tackle violence against women and girls.

Shadrack Sibiya, who was already suspended from his role as deputy national police commissioner over allegations he interfered with political killings investigations, was arrested on Monday. He is facing charges of rape, people trafficking, promoting the sexual grooming of a child and two counts of grooming a child.

The fight over Missouri's congressional map returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time after an appeals court ordered the revival of new districts backed by President Trump​.

The post Families Accuse ICE of Smearing Victims After Deadly Encounters appeared first on News Facts Network.

On 23 September 1926, two of the best heavyweights in American history met in front of 120,000 fans in Philadelphia. The fight drew in a nation

The two fights between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney rank with boxing’s most-storied championship bouts and are among the greatest sports spectacles ever seen in America. Wednesday marks the one hundredth anniversary of their first encounter.

Dempsey bridged boxing’s old and modern eras and was one of the most charismatic fighters in history. When Dempsey was young, biographer Randy Roberts recounts, “he lived in mining camps and hobo jungles, rode the rods, and more than once begged for food. What separated him was his willingness, even eagerness, to work. He accepted any type of employment from washing dishes, cutting lawns, and scrubbing floors to the harder work of coal-mining, digging ditches, and picking fruit.”

Larry Pickett Sr and his son, a US army cadet, pulled David Denton from vehicle fire in upstate New York in 2025

A North Carolina man who helped his son – a player for the US army academy college football team – pull a wrecked car’s driver out of the vehicle moments before it burst into flames has earned the highest honor for civilian heroism in the United States and Canada.

Larry Pickett Sr earned the Carnegie medal for heroism for a daring rescue alongside his son, Larry Pickett Jr, on 31 August 2025 outside Fort Montgomery, New York, that was captured in headline-grabbing cellphone video, according to a recent announcement from the non-profit organization that administers the award.

Every year, millions of complaints flow to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from people across the country. The complaints, which range in focus from debt collection to credit reporting to payday loans and more, long served as a window into Americans’ gripes and struggles with various companies.

For over a decade, consumers could opt in to have what they wrote published as public information in a CFPB database. But last month, the Trump administration announced that it would stop publishing those complaint narratives, a decision that aligns the agency with corporations that have critiqued the system for years. 

“Publishing such narratives in the Database provides a less-than-representative sample of one-sided experiences,” the CFPB said in a press release.

In the big picture, the move is part of a trend of the administration taking a friendlier approach with businesses — even at the federal agency tasked with guarding consumers from unfair and deceptive practices.

The complaint system helps consumers get responses from companies about their problems, and sometimes even fixes. It has also given the public — as well as federal investigators and regulators— access to information that serves as a warning or to help spot problems.

As a ProPublica data reporter, I’ve used the complaints time and time again as a tool for accountability-driven reporting. I appreciated reading about people’s raw frustration, written in their own words, which can often point to larger trends. It was a rare federal dataset that captured human emotions. Some were grievances like being unable to get help after spending far too much time calling or emailing customer service. Sometimes complaints had more urgency: desperation to fix crushing high-interest debt, a frozen bank account or a credit score tanked from a reporting error. 

With the recent loss of a crucial piece of the public database, I wanted to share with you some of ProPublica’s reporting using those complaints. And, while these stories about financial harm have often led to some accountability, revisiting the complaints also offers a taste of what we’ll be missing.   

1. A Wisconsin Tribe Built a Lending Empire Charging 600% Annual Rates to Borrowers

I’ve used the complaints to report on high-interest tribal loans that skirt state interest rate caps to charge 600% interest or more. CFPB complaints helped point me and my colleague Megan O’Matz to an opaque but massive lending operation based in Wisconsin, which we estimated to be involved in thousands of bankruptcies nationwide each year. 

The borrower also argued that “no one should be expected to pay over $11,000 for a $1,200 loan,” calling the 790% rate “beyond predatory.”

In emails to ProPublica, the tribe’s president, John Johnson Sr., defended the tribe’s lending business as legal and said the loans help people “without access to traditional financial services.” He added that many borrowers have had positive experiences.

A few months after ProPublica reported on the operation, the tribe settled a civil suit filed by Minnesota’s attorney general. The tribe denied the allegations but agreed to stop lending to Minnesotans and forgive outstanding loans to the state’s residents. 

2. Credit Bureaus Are Leaving More Mistakes on Frustrated Consumers’ Reports Under Trump’s CFPB

In March, I reported that two of the big three credit bureaus, Experian and TransUnion, provided relief to a substantially smaller portion of consumers last year. The credit bureaus are by far the most common subject of consumers’ woes in the database, with over 4 million complaints filed about them in 2025.

A Texan filed a complaint to each of the three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, writing that a fraudulent account remained on their credit report despite their disputes:

In response to the story, four Democratic senators wrote letters to the credit bureaus demanding answers on how they handle disputes and complaints. The CFPB’s acting director at the time, Russell Vought, also tacitly acknowledged the reporting during his congressional testimony in July, saying that “with credit reporting agencies we saw things in the news that were concerning to us. We reached out to them.”

The credit bureaus did not comment on specific complaints, but told ProPublica that many complaints are illegitimate, including a large volume filed by credit repair organizations that charge customers to challenge negative information on their reports. (CFPB records show that Equifax provided relief in response to the Texan’s complaint, while TransUnion and Experian did not.)

3. The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave.

Last month, my colleague Andy Kroll reported on the Trump CFPB’s light-touch approach to oversight, focusing on its ask-nicely strategy of holding the fintech startup Bilt accountable after it threw users’ accounts into chaos twice in quick succession. The story included complaints about how Bilt’s artificial intelligence support system gave information that was:

(In a statement at the time, Bilt said its new card had “attracted unexpectedly high demand, and some of our members experienced gaps in service that are simply unacceptable to us.” The company told ProPublica it resolved all problems related to the new cards “months ago.” The CFPB did not respond to any questions or requests for comment.)

Kroll’s recent story also examined how the agency has changed under the Trump administration. Under Vought’s leadership, the CFPB attempted to fire roughly 90% of its staff in April 2025 before a federal court ruling stymied the move. When the efforts to dismantle the agency failed, Vought and his allies instead refashioned it into an industry-friendly regulator.

The loss of the public complaint narratives is another example of that. And it is a win for groups such as the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the credit bureaus and has argued that publishing complaint narratives would “harm the brands of legitimate, law-abiding companies” by presenting unverified, self-selected negative anecdotes. More recently, the group argued in a January public comment letter that the complaint portal has become “a sort of ‘Yelp for Financial Services,’” and that the CFPB doesn’t have the authority to publish complaint data in the first place. 

Although the CFPB has been subject to partisan fights, the complaint system has been used by Americans across the country. GOP lawmakers even referred thousands of constituents to the CFPB’s complaint system to get help. Still, those same lawmakers voted last year to slash the agency’s budget by nearly half.

While the complaint system is required by law, the agency isn’t mandated to make it public. In theory, a future administration could go back to publishing the complaint narratives, but the agency has removed the option for consumers to consent to making public what they wrote. That means that any complaints filed in the near term cannot be retroactively published. The complaint narratives will still be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, but getting them could be time-consuming and challenging. 

As the CFPB turns away from its watchdog role, it’s making it harder for all of us to watch as well.

The post The Federal Agency That’s Supposed to Protect Consumers Just Made Another Business-Friendly Move appeared first on ProPublica.

Coffee people don’t mess around when it comes to water. Here’s one of their top tricks for optimizing H20.

NEW YORK CITY, New York — President Donald Trump said the federal government will begin referring to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” or “SI,” arguing during his United Nations General Assembly address Tuesday that the term “artificial” incorrectly suggests the technology is fake.

“From this point forward, all of United States documents” will use the new terminology, Trump said, while expressing hope other countries follow. Reuters confirmed the announcement and reported that Trump also reiterated his opposition to international efforts to regulate AI.

The terminology could create confusion because “superintelligence” already has a distinct meaning in the technology industry. It generally describes a hypothetical AI system whose capabilities surpass human intelligence across most or all fields, rather than artificial intelligence broadly. AP noted that Trump’s proposal came as world leaders offered sharply different assessments of AI’s potential benefits and risks.

Trump said the United States would reject what he called a global scheme for controlling the technology. His administration has generally favored limiting regulatory barriers while promoting American AI development and competition with China.

The announcement does not itself establish how or when federal agencies will alter existing regulations, websites or documents. Trump presented the change during a broader UN address covering Iran, Ukraine, international institutions and U.S. foreign policy.

Sources

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Rejects Global AI Rules While Introducing “Super Intelligence” Name appeared first on News Facts Network.

NHS England initiative to reduce cut-off period to three months ‘disproportionately affecting’ most deprived areas

An NHS policy to remove “ghost patients” from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people in England without vital healthcare, analysis has found.

Under previous NHS rules, inactive patients at risk of being removed from their GP practice were given six months to respond to outreach. But under NHS England’s accelerated list validation timeline, introduced last October, patients now have only three months to reply.

PM aims to ‘stem poisonous tide’ of disinformation and deepfakes with National Centre for Information Defence

Security chiefs will set up a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia, Andy Burnham has announced, saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.

The National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” information attacks by foreign powers, many of which are enabled by AI, bringing together the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies.

Microsoft's security blog describes the fight against a new "AI-powered cybercrime platform" offering phishing-as-a-service, with AI-tailored lures and analyses of compromised inboxes (to identify high-value targets). The site compromised more than 12,000 inboxes in over 10,000 organizations around the world, compromising business accounts "at scale" with automated attacks and prebuilt phishing templates. AI tools could even sift through a victim's mailbox to help engineer better phishing messages. To disrupt EvilTokens Microsoft worked with other organizations, including Cloudflare, Coinbase, OpenAI, Railway, SpyCloud, Shadowserver Foundation, and TRM Labs to Health-ISAC (a non-profit helping health sector organizations share cyber threat information). "Fifty sites seized and 150 domains disabled in a single action is only possible when the hosting providers, the exchanges, the model providers and the data holders all move at the same time," security company SpyCloud told The Hacker News. From Microsoft's security blog: Microsoft also notified affected customers, helped remediate compromised accounts, and shared intelligence to support further defensive and investigative action... Microsoft worked closely with specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's cybercrime team, sharing intelligence that enabled officers to take operational action in the United Kingdom. On September 11, 2026, officers arrested two men, aged 32 and 38, and seized digital devices and other items for examination... While EvilTokens used AI to identify targets and prioritize fraud opportunities, Microsoft investigators used reverse engineering and AI-powered tools to analyze evidence, accelerate the investigation, and identify the infrastructure supporting the service... Campaigns leveraging EvilTokens have impacted organizations in various industries, including wholesale distribution, construction, financial services, real estate, higher education, and healthcare, with the highest concentrations of observed victim activity in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and France. Working with partners, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) facilitated a coordinated disruption of infrastructure used to operate the EvilTokens service. Sometimes stolen tokens were used to give new devices access to a victim's inbox. (A code authenticating the new device was sent to the targeted user, who unknowingly authorize the threat actor's session and grants access to their account...) But "AI was not simply helping attackers write more convincing messages," says another Microsoft blog post. "It helped them decide who to target, who to impersonate, and how to most effectively exploit the relationship to extract as much money as possible." The significance of EvilTokens extends beyond its rapid growth and global reach. It offers an early warning of what happens when cybercriminals combine stolen access with AI capable of understanding how an organization works... Its AI tools could summarize and translate emails, surface financial conversations, map organizational roles, identify trusted relationships, and recommend potential targets. Preset prompts offered to find wire-transfer discussions, identify the organization's "money movers," locate vendor invoices, and determine the best people to impersonate. Sold through Telegram for a $1,500 initiation fee and a recurring $500 subscription, EvilTokens combined account compromise, mailbox analysis, target selection, and fraud preparation in a single service. Capabilities that once required experience across identity attacks, cloud systems, social engineering, and financial fraud were available through a ready-made interface. Investigators found evidence that large portions of EvilTokens had been "vibe coded," with AI helping its creators build the platform itself. They also determined that EvilTokens drew on capabilities from multiple AI models. The result was more than a collection of attack tools. EvilTokens packaged much of the fraud process into a commercially run service, complete with subscription pricing, customer support, management dashboards, and tools designed to move customers from account access toward financial exploitation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump told the U.N. he's deciding whether to make a deal or drive Iran "into hell." Iran's president is slated to address the world body today, Iranian state media say.

In today’s newsletter: The PM’s first face‑to‑face with​ the US president marks a fragile reset

Good morning. In the early hours of Tuesday a plane carrying Andy Burnham, a handful of UK ministers, an excited group of British political journalists, and Burnham’s wife, Marie France, landed at a New York airport for one of Burnham’s first major outings as prime minister: a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump.

Considering the president once described Burnham as the mayor of “a town,” and the prime minister once said Trump wouldn’t be welcome in said town (Manchester), the meeting yesterday afternoon went remarkably well.

UN general assembly | Donald Trump has called on nations to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices, as he gave a bellicose defence of his administration’s foreign policy and decision to strike Iran.

The far right | Charities have condemned footage of a far-right activist using a blade to slash an inflatable dinghy in the Channel while a rescue worker was onboard, in a further escalation of organised anti-immigration protest.

UK news | Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine.

West Bank | British banks and financial institutions are receiving warnings from MPs that they should not invest in Israel’s E1 settlement project.

UK politics | Andy Burnham has opened the door to fighting the next election on the UK rejoining the EU, but said his immediate priority was continuing to rebuild bridges with European allies.

Configurations for standard parcels, high-throughput operations, complex items and future expansion

The post San Francisco Sues Trump Media Over Truth Social Trading Advantage appeared first on News Facts Network.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip will be in the top phones of 2026 and 2027. Here’s what it can do.

A diplomatic strategy to end the war.

The real barriers to competitiveness and innovation are still in place.

Fears persist about Trump ‘sucking up’ to Xi on Taiwan, but few concrete outcomes anticipated from US meeting

When Xi Jinping, China’s leader, touches down in Maryland on Wednesday, he will step out into the arms – perhaps a hug, if Donald Trump’s wishes come true – of a US president who has shown China more bonhomie than any of his recent predecessors.

The meeting between Xi and Trump this week will be the second time that the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies have talked face to face this year. At the previous summit, held in Beijing in May, there was much talk of building a “strategic stability” between the two powers. But there was little by way of concrete outcomes: the countries remain at loggerheads over trade, export controls and geopolitics.

U.S. President Trump addressed the United Nations on Tuesday. And a half hour in, after decrying immigration, Trump pivoted to add that "The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now." But then he added "hereinafter officially called super intelligence, changing the name, in that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It's actually... amazing. But we have to be careful — in fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it's super intelligence." TRUMP: In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI. SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it's much more accurate. Let's see if I have any power. Maybe I do and maybe I don't. We're going to find out pretty soon. Super intelligence. Every major new technology brings challenges, and super intelligence is no exception. Yet the very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling not warming, and nobody was dead — these are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all. That robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster — same group of people. This is the group that came up with the Russia Russia Russia hoax, the Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax. Climate change, open borders. Whoever wins AI — you have to remember this — and now I say, whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligent [sic] — wins. That's the group that wins. And we're leading now over China by a lot, and everyone else, and we're going to keep it that way. We're going to keep it very — very straight and very strong. I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution. Many say, bigger than the Industrial Revolution or the internet itself. And we will be very careful, and that's why we have a Department of Justice that we've already used it, having to do with this very subject, and used it very powerfully. Everything worked out very well and very quickly. And other law enforcement bodies that will rein things in if we have to do that. But we will only encourage super intelligence. We're gonna encourage it, not rein it in. We're gonna watch it closely, through the Department of Justice. The United States leads the world in Super Intelligence, and will continue to do so, safely and responsibly. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader ArchieBunker for suggesting the story.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Trump is arriving at the UN HQ right now.

After very brief doorstep comments – almost exclusively mocking CNN - he answers a reporter’s very loud question by saying his message to Putin is: “settle the war.”

The officer joined ICE last year during the agency’s hiring spree. DHS is facing mounting scrutiny over how the recruits were vetted and trained.

The move comes after Jamaica’s culture minister Olivia Grange travelled to the UK earlier this month to lodge the historic petition

King Charles has referred a landmark slavery reparations petition from Jamaica to a high-level UK appeals court for legal advice, Jamaica’s culture minister announced in parliament on Tuesday.

Referring to the move as a “really big deal”, Olivia Grange told Jamaica’s MPs the monarch had confirmed that their legal questions have been passed on to the London-based privy council – the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth countries.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds has removed several prominent references to President Donald Trump from his campaign website while shifting the page’s emphasis toward affordability, insurance costs and government transparency.

An archived version of Donalds’ website featured a banner reading “Chip in to Support Trump-Endorsed Byron Donalds” and repeatedly highlighted him as “TRUMP-ENDORSED.” The redesigned site still includes Trump’s endorsement, but places it alongside endorsements from Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz and House Speaker Mike Johnson rather than making it the central branding message.

The campaign also changed the order of its policy priorities. “Affordability” now appears first, replacing “Enact the Trump Agenda” as the top issue. A Donalds campaign spokesperson told The Hill that the website reflects his focus on “the issues that matter most to Floridians,” including affordability, insurance costs and government transparency.

The spokesperson emphasized that Donalds remains “proud to have President Trump’s endorsement” and said the endorsement remains prominently featured.

The changes come during the general election campaign against Democrat David Jolly, a former Republican congressman. Donalds secured Trump’s endorsement early in the governor’s race and has remained a close political ally of the president.

Trump’s approval has declined in several recent national surveys, while economic concerns, including higher fuel and household costs, have become increasingly prominent in Republican campaigns. The website revisions themselves do not establish why the campaign reduced Trump’s prominence.

Sources

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Florida Republican Donalds Scales Back Trump Mentions on Campaign Site appeared first on News Facts Network.

Cuban delegates left the room during the US president's speech to the UN general assembly, where he called Cuba 'a failed state' and said the country 'will fall'. The US has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than 60 years, and Trump's administration has stepped up pressure on the communist-controlled island nation.

Sources tell CBS News that Ukraine is ready to sign a landmark drone defense deal with the U.S., as new details of Ukrainian technology helping defend U.S. bases in the Middle East come to light.

Islamic State-inspired bombings of churches and hotels in 2019 was one of the country’s worst ever attacks

A court in Sri Lanka has convicted 15 men on terrorist charges for their involvement in the deadly 2019 Easter bombings and sentenced them each to at least 220 years in prison.

The terror attacks, which targeted luxury hotels and churches as they held Easter services, left 267 people dead and wounded almost 600. The bombings, which were inspired by Islamic State (IS), were among the deadliest terror attacks in Sri Lanka’s history and sent shockwaves through the country.

The Tread Flex, one of three new models, is also the company’s least expensive treadmill at $2,200.

Justice Elena Kagan declined a request from a surrogate to intervene in a custody dispute with a California couple.

Meta's new AI tool now ranks at the top of the App Store. Some retail experts see a "natural evolution from search."

DETROIT, Michigan — Former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke White House access for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, calling the move “absolutely abhorrent” and saying it shows “the man is afraid.”

Harris made the remarks Tuesday after appearing in Michigan with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. She argued that restricting journalists limits the public’s ability to learn what the government is doing. Her comments came as the three affected news organizations challenge the administration’s action in federal court.

Trump announced the bans Friday, accusing the outlets of publishing false information. Reporters from all three organizations were subsequently denied entry to White House grounds, and CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed suit alleging violations of their First and Fifth Amendment rights.

Reuters reported that legal experts see significant obstacles for the administration because previous court decisions have limited the government’s ability to revoke press access in retaliation for unfavorable coverage. Trump said Tuesday he would “probably” restore access if a court rules against him.

Harris was in Michigan campaigning for El-Sayed and participating in an event focused on Black maternal health.

Sources

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The post Harris Says Trump Media Ban Shows He Is “Afraid” of Press Scrutiny appeared first on News Facts Network.

The malware pretends to be a legitimate download for an app like Google Chrome.

Breakthrough removes a major bottleneck in fault-tolerant quantum computing, enabling real-time error correction across millions of operations without slowing down execution time.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 22, 2026 — IonQ today announced a major milestone in fault-tolerant quantum computing. Researchers demonstrated the development and successful testing of the industry’s first end-to-end real-time quantum error correction decoder that runs on a single standard off-the-shelf central processing unit (CPU).

Quantum error correction is essential for building practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers because physical qubits are inherently sensitive to environmental noise. However, finding and fixing those errors in real time has historically presented a significant computing challenge. In conventional approaches, the classical computers tasked with decoding errors can easily become overwhelmed. That creates a processing bottleneck that forces the quantum computer to pause and wait. IonQ’s breakthrough demonstrates that a single, standard computer processor can manage this complex workload continuously in the background, keeping the quantum system running at full speed.

“Successfully validating real-time decoding across hundreds of logical qubits and over millions of logical operations is an important milestone. Moreover, the fact that our decoder runs on a single CPU provides a practical path to commercial-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing,” said Nicolas Delfosse, paper co-author and quantum research lead at IonQ.

In technical research published on arXiv, IonQ evaluated its dual-decoder architecture across complex benchmark circuits simulating up to 408 logical qubits across 88 memory blocks and magic factories. These circuits were executing more than 31.5 million individual quantum operations at the ‘MegaQuOp’ scale. Under standard operational noise, IonQ’s decoder introduced as little as 0.02% ‘stretch’ time. That means the decoding overhead added virtually no delay to the overall quantum computation.

“IonQ is enabling cost-effective quantum system scaling through direct verification of each component,” said John Gamble, Vice President at IonQ Architecture. “Empirical evidence like this supports our vision for fault tolerance where time-to-solution, cost-to-solution, and energy-to-solution are always our North Star.”

This achievement validates a core pillar of IonQ’s proprietary Walking Cat architecture and confirms that classical hardware overhead does not need to scale exponentially as quantum systems grow wider in logical qubits or deeper in operations. The breakthrough establishes a key technological foundation for IonQ’s roadmap beyond 256 physical qubits toward industrial-scale platforms controlling thousands of qubits.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Source: IonQ

The post IonQ Runs Real-Time Quantum Error Decoder on a Standard CPU appeared first on HPCwire.

The Justice Department says a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Utah threw out more than 300 mail ballots that were being sent to voters for the state's June primary.

The U.S. Air Base Spangdahlem said that the pilot ejected and was receiving medical care.

The two games once shared a rivalry as Xbox’s biggest FPS titles.

A new AI camera system is now being installed on buses used by Helena Public Schools, with district officials saying the technology is focused on driver behavior and not students.

When in doubt, add “super.” What could possibly go wrong?

IPPR North says one bad decision could derail devolution agenda as regions gain control of billions in funding

England’s mayors should face much greater official scrutiny to avoid Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda being “derailed by one bad decision”, a thinktank has said.

Ministers will set out plans next month to give regional leaders control over potentially billions of pounds of additional funding under a “transformational” shift of power outside Whitehall.

Wirral mother among renters turning to food banks as gap between a two-bed and housing benefit hits £158 a month – rising to as much as £324 in London

Do you prioritise paying the rent, putting food on the table or keeping the house warm in winter? In practice, says Laura Braddock, a single mum from Wirral, Merseyside, you always pay the rent first and improvise the rest. “If I’ve got a roof over our head, then everything else I can muddle through.”

The pressing problem for Braddock, 39, is that muddling through is getting harder. The monthly rent for her two-bedroom flat far outstrips the local housing allowance (LHA) she receives – and the gap may widen.

(The Center Square) – A Massachusetts federal judge blocked the Trump administration from cutting around $600 million in teacher-training funds, finding the Education Department’s effort to target programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Do you find the Apple Watch too bulky and distracting? A screen-free solution may be coming.

Surrogate who rejected abortion request had asked justices to halt court order recognizing LA couple as legal parents

The supreme court has refused to get involved with a custody dispute between an Alaska surrogate and a California couple whose child was born with a rare and serious heart defect.

On Tuesday, Justice Elena Kagan denied an emergency request from McKenna West, an Alaska nurse and surrogate who had asked the US’s highest court to halt a California court order recognizing the couple, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, as the boy’s legal parents.

Test using urine and vaginal fluid samples raises hopes thousands of lower-risk women could be spared internal ultrasounds and hysteroscopies

Doctors have developed a simple test that could help rule out womb cancer in women who experience bleeding after menopause.

The approach has the potential to transform care for thousands of women each year and spare them from invasive and uncomfortable tests that can also be costly for healthcare systems.

County’s first such clinic, at Alder Hey in Liverpool, treating children suffering from chronic bladder problems with severe cases needing dialysis

Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine.

Medics at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool opened the first ketamine clinic in the UK for young people amid a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug.

Thomas called followers to disrupt arrival of asylum seekers in Gosport, but Border Force instead transported them to Dover

Charities have condemned footage of far-right activist Daniel Thomas using a blade to slash an inflatable dinghy in the Channel while a rescue worker was onboard, in a further escalation of organised anti-immigration protest.

Hundreds of protesters gathered early on Tuesday evening at Gosport in Hampshire, aiming to disrupt the planned disembarkation of asylum seekers, but the Border Force vessels carrying them landed instead in Dover.

Mita and Hemant Parikh decided to split from their group and take a side trip during their long-planned pilgrimage. They're now safely back home, but none of the families they were traveling with have been found.

According to Bloomberg, Apple’s first smart display has been in testing, and may be ready for its debut this fall.

Former VP, who lost state to Trump in 2024 elections, is lending her popularity to unite fractured party

Kamala Harris returned to Michigan on Tuesday to campaign for Abdul El-Sayed, lending her popularity among Black voters to a progressive Senate nominee still working to unite a party fractured by a bruising primary – and the former vice-president’s loss to Donald Trump in the state.

Appearing with El-Sayed at a Detroit birth center, Harris used a roundtable on Black maternal health to frame that November’s contest against the Republican Mike Rogers as a fight over women’s access to care.

Lawyers for James ‘Fergie’ Chambers, wanted over alleged support for Hamas, say client is being persecuted

The Spanish government has decided to allow the Trump administration’s controversial extradition request to extradite wealthy activist James “Fergie” Chambers to continue in the country’s courts.

Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects, is currently imprisoned in Madrid. It is the first known case of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas, an accusation tied to money Chambers has donated to support Palestinians, including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.

President Donald Trump used his Sept. 22 speech to the United Nations General Assembly to dismiss concerns about artificial intelligence, equating them to other issues he considers “hoaxes.”

“The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming, and nobody was dead,” he said. “These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster. Same group of people. This is the group that came up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax, climate change, open borders.”

Trump also equated AI fears to a “hoax” in recent Truth Social posts. 

Warnings that AI could wipe out humanity or do significant harm gained renewed attention after Jacob Coxon, a researcher from leading AI company Anthropic, resigned in September, publicly citing such an existential threat.

A White House spokesperson told PolitiFact in an email that Trump was referring to “the numerous Democrats who are currently echoing AI hysteria and were or still actively are pushing hysteria related to climate change and the Russia collusion hoax.” 

Although some AI regulation advocates may overlap with those concerned about climate change, worries about AI are not confined to one group of people or one political party. The warnings even come from the top of the industry itself.

On Sept. 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling to slow down AI development. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind Cofounder and Chair Demis Hassabis and xAI founder Elon Musk echoed his concerns — and agreement among those leaders is rare.

Robin Jacobson, a University of Puget Sound politics professor, said AI safety is an issue not currently owned by either political party, and the movement is comprised of “strange bedfellows.” 

“The public, across parties, has real growing concerns with AI,” Jacobson said. “So I think, in fact, you’re going to see, as opposed to climate change — where this was about convincing the public there was this looming threat — I think the public is actually demanding action on concerns.” 

Scientists widely agree that climate change is real, is driven by human activities and is causing the Earth’s temperature to warm. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018 pinpointed 2030 as a benchmark for dealing with climate change, but it didn’t say humans would all die in 12 years.

What Trump referred to as the “Russia hoax” is the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Democrats publicized and attacked Trump over the investigation, but it continued under Trump and his deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller special counsel, so the scrutiny didn’t come only from Democrats. 

Trump described his first impeachment in 2019, for attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, as a “hoax.”

Other than elected Democrats who supported the investigations and are now calling for AI safety, there isn’t a coordinated group that was behind both the investigations and AI safety warnings. 

Recent events caused growing alarm from both sides of the political aisle

Recent warnings from researchers about losing control of AI come as companies have had their AI systems take action without human authorization. Researchers say incidents such as OpenAI’s agents attacking the company Hugging Face show that autonomous AI agents can take harmful actions that aren’t the intended task, a problem called “misalignment.” 

Researchers have warned that AI systems are advancing faster than their creators’ ability to reliably understand their behavior and contain them.

In experiments, researchers have documented AI agents scheming to conceal information from human monitors, cheating on tests to receive a higher score and attempting to disable monitoring. AI agents are sometimes aware they are being evaluated. As AI handles more of the research that goes into the next generation of AI, experts say those behaviors could become harder to detect. 

Lawmakers from both parties have announced or introduced legislation to regulate AI, including some that address advanced AI that could cause widespread harm. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, announced legislation to ban artificial superintelligence. “Superintelligence” is generally understood by industry experts as an AI system that is far ahead of human intelligence at nearly all cognitive tasks, including scientific research and communications.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, introduced the “AI Kill Switch Act,” which would require AI companies to have mechanisms to shut down AI systems that can “cause catastrophic harm.”

Some conservative lawmakers have been outspoken in warning against AI. 

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., launched an investigation in September into AI’s existential risk. In a letter to Altman, he cited concerns of AI killing all humans in the near future. 

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said on Fox News that there should be a kill switch to “protect humanity.” 

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has called for regulating AI, even joining Sanders in a “pro-human” gathering on AI.

On the political left, the AI fears are not universal. The New York City Democratic Socialists of America chapter dismissed warnings of AI catastrophe as “AI alarmism and AI hype,” Wired reported. 

Among Americans, those who believe there’s at least a “moderate risk” of AI destroying humanity covered majorities of both political parties, according to a September Politico poll. Among those polled who voted for Democratic candidate former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, 70% believe there is a risk of AI destroying humanity, compared with 61% of those who voted for Trump.

Daniel Schiff, who co-directs Purdue University’s Governance and Responsible AI lab, said AI policy in general doesn’t fall cleanly along partisan lines. Issues such as data centers, privacy concerns, global competition and job displacement activate different groups of voters across parties. 

“It’s fair to say the parties have not really crystallized, even if there are some prominent figures who are taking stronger stances recently,” Schiff said. 

There is some overlap between climate change and AI safety advocates, including among a loose movement called effective altruism, which is focused on finding the best ways to help the most people. 

People in that movement have long considered both climate change and artificial intelligence risks to be serious problems. But it’s not the only group concerned about loss of control of AI.

Our ruling

Trump said the people who warned of climate change, the “Russia hoax” and the “Ukraine hoax” are the same people “now saying that AI is going to kill us all.”

While advocates for AI regulation and safety have some overlap with climate activists and Democrats who participated in those investigations, they are not confined to a singular group. Politicians from both parties have spoken out or announced legislation based on concerns about the capabilities of advanced AI. 

We rate this claim False.

RELATED: Fact-check: President Donald Trump misleads on Iran war, AI in speech to UN

On academic mentoring platform Nova Learning, Computer Science and AI, "once the dominant choice among students... is losing ground fast, while Engineering has nearly doubled its share." It's a small survey, but "The steepest proportional decline is in Software & Data Science, the most traditional 'learn to code' pathway, which lost 44% of its 2025 share. AI saw the largest absolute drop of any single subject in the survey, down 6.2 points. "The category did not decline uniformly. Students moved away fastest from the pathway most associated with entry-level software work, while the more applied and human-facing subfields held their ground better." Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Nova Learning says the share of surveyed middle and high school students naming Computer Science and AI as their primary academic interest fell from 42.3 percent in 2025 to 27.9 percent in 2026, while Engineering rose from 11.9 percent to 23 percent. The biggest gains came from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering... [B]roader enrollment data points in the same direction. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported declines in Computer and Information Science enrollment at four year institutions, even as Engineering grew. AI coding tools are not proven to be the cause, but as software development changes and AI handles more coding tasks, students may be starting to rethink what a future in technology should look like. [Undergraduate enrollment in CS programs at four-year institutions fell 8.1%, to approximately 606,000 students.]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hunter Biden said Tuesday that he is willing to testify before Congress alongside Donald Trump Jr. after Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah called for subpoenas examining both presidential sons’ foreign relationships, business dealings and gifts.

“Sen. Curtis of Utah has suggested that Don Jr. and I should testify before Congress,” Biden wrote on X. “I say bring it on.” He added that he has already provided more than seven hours of sworn testimony and said he would “sit next to Don Jr. and testify any time, any place.”

Curtis asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether either man benefited financially from access tied to their fathers. CBS News reported that Curtis specifically requested subpoenas covering business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals or entities and gifts received.

The request followed ProPublica reporting that Russian boxing official Umar Kremlev, who has ties to Vladimir Putin, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on post-wedding celebrations for Trump Jr. and Bettina Trump in the Bahamas. President Donald Trump has said his son intends to reimburse Kremlev.

Hunter Biden maintained Tuesday that he had no foreign business dealings while his father was president. Curtis has argued that congressional scrutiny should be applied consistently to both presidential families.

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(The Center Square) – In a letter released early Tuesday, Republican legislators called for California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the High-Speed Rail Authority over allegations of improper authorizations of travel expenditures for contractors.

Carnival spokesperson confirms onboard cameras captured male passenger going overboard on way from Mexico

A 56-year-old man is missing after he reportedly jumped off a Carnival cruise ship on Saturday.

A Carnival spokesperson confirmed in a statement that cameras on the ship captured a male passenger going overboard the Panorama, according to several news reports.

US officials have begun to buy back wind leases as president seeks to block renewables in favor of fossil fuels

Democratic attorneys general from California and New York have sued the Trump administration over its plans to buy back offshore wind leases as Donald Trump seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy in favor of fossil fuels.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said he was suing over removal of a project off his state’s coast planned by Chicago-based Invenergy. The Trump administration said in June it was buying back the company’s US offshore wind leases for four wind projects on the east and west coasts.

Gone was any shred of US idealism. It was a spectacle of raw power – a power that is likely to only diminish in the years ahead

Expectations were low for Donald Trump’s address to the UN on Tuesday, and yet somehow it was even worse than expected. He does not perform well in formal settings, like chambers of government, preferring a blingier room, like Mar-a-Lago, or an outdoor rally. For years, he has made no secret of his hostility to the UN, and the very principles of international order that define it.

In recent years, that hostility has deepened into something more like a full-on assault, with frequent attacks on the international criminal court (perhaps out of fear that he will someday be indicted), on the UN’s climate agenda, and on Unesco (which the US decided to withdraw from in July 2025).

Amid major overhaul by Bari Weiss, Sunday’s episode draws third-smallest audience for second episode in past 25 years

60 Minutes’ blockbuster interview with Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, failed to provide a major ratings boost for the Sunday show, according to audience figures released on Tuesday.

Sunday night’s episode of the newsmagazine show drew an average of 6.77 million total viewers, the third-smallest audience in the past 25 years for the second episode of a season, adding to a disappointing debut for Bari Weiss, who, as CBS editor-in-chief, rewired the show, firing several high-profile correspondents in the run-up to the new season.

One of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture investors is gearing its new tech academy toward aspiring entrepreneurs focused on building AI.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker says he disagrees with the “lavish welcome” planned for the Chinese leader, whom he calls an “oppressive dictator.”

Senior Iranian official indicates willingness to reopen strait of Hormuz if US takes steps to ease pressure on Tehran

Iranian officials held three hours of talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Donald Trump disclosed on Tuesday.

He said there would a further meeting in the very near future.

(The Center Square) – The Second Amendment Foundation has called California's Senate Bill 704 — the nation's first background check law for firearm barrel purchases - unconstitutional.

McKenna West gave birth to a child with a serious heart defect against the wishes of the biological parents. She has been fighting for a say in the baby’s care.

(The Center Square) - Legal analysts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in an upcoming case on gun rights will have vast implications for Second Amendment protections across the U.S.

The U.S. toll of the Iran war continues to climb as the military stumbles toward a breakdown and the Trump administration struggles to find an exit ramp.

Another U.S. soldier died this month, according to newly released Pentagon statistics that classify the death as “non-hostile.” A female soldier was on a military flight headed to Saudi Arabia when she suffered an undisclosed “medical incident,” a defense official told The Intercept. Another 66 U.S. personnel have also been wounded in action just this month, according to that official. This has pushed the official count of war casualties above 850. Almost half the total — 419 wounded or dead — have occurred since Iran stepped up attacks in early July.

The Pentagon’s official total of dead and wounded personnel, as documented over almost six months of reporting by The Intercept, has been a gross undercount, stemming from what one U.S. official previously called a “casualty cover-up.”

Related

Iran War Has the U.S. Military on the Brink of a “Breakdown”

Since the beginning of the Trump administration’s war with Iran, the War Department has posted the official count of military casualties on the website of the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the White House. Casualties were initially tallied under Operation Epic Fury. Since July 7, they are now counted separately on a webpage with a generic title: “Overseas Operations.” 

Prior reporting by The Intercept found DCAS is missing hundreds of wounded or dead personnel from the Iran war. The Pentagon’s list of the names of the dead is, for example, missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. Davius’s death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the official count. Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, recognized Davius while “honoring our fallen.” 

Three U.S. contractors based in the region have also died during the conflict, according to an official who spoke with the Washington Post. 

For months, The Intercept has found anomalies with the counts offered on the DCAS website. On April 21, for example, the number of wounded-in-action troops declined by 15 without public acknowledgment by the War Department. Despite repeated questions for months, the Pentagon has not commented on the disparities in its casualty count.

A U.S. government official previously told The Intercept that scores of casualties added to DCAS last month was “an accounting trick” designed to dampen depressing statistics. That official accused the Pentagon of “slow-walking” the total for weeks. “They wanted the heat on them to slow down after the really devastating attacks,” that source told The Intercept, referencing attacks on U.S. bases in July that exposed the vulnerability of U.S. troops to Iranian attacks. Official statistics now show that the Pentagon admits that 352 personnel were wounded or killed in July and none died or were injured in August.

DCAS counts 11 hostile deaths in 2026, all resulting from the Iran war. This is the highest total of military personnel killed in action since 2021. Including non-hostile deaths, DCAS counts 19 dead due to the Iran war, but fails to count Davius. Also missing is Sgt. Devin Seibel who died in Irbil, Iraq, on May 31 in a training accident, according to a military press release.

Related

Women in the Army Are More Likely to Be Killed by Fellow Soldiers Than Enemy Combatants

More than 580 military personnel have died this year, across the world, according to Pentagon statistics. The War Department lists 114 as accidental and 14 as homicides. As of September 21, there are also eight personnel whose deaths are listed as “undetermined.”

The female soldier who died this month has yet to be identified but was over 35 years old, according to DCAS information.

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez did not reply to repeated requests for comment or clarification for this article.

The post Another U.S. Soldier Is Dead as Iran War Casualties Rise appeared first on The Intercept.

(The Center Square) – With the November midterm elections only six weeks away, the Trump administration is already implementing ballot security and fraud prevention measures, Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told the media Tuesday.

The park is the most highly visited and strong winds make trash problem worse, with gusts blowing away items

Hold on to your hats – Yellowstone national park staffers have removed a record-setting 20,100 pieces of trash from hydrothermal areas around the geyser-filled park so far this year

The most commonly found items include 280 hats, 54 camera lens caps, 47 hair ties, 42 pencils, 36 pairs of sunglasses, 20 hotel key cards and 17 baby pacifiers.

(The Center Square) – No one in Washington will say what establishing two new U.S. defense areas in Greenland will cost U.S. taxpayers or when Congress will be asked to pay.

(The Center Square) – Nearly two years to the day remnants of Hurricane Helene brought arguably the worst natural disaster in North Carolina history, the Atlantic hurricane season was yet to have its first through Monday – snapping a 112-year-old…

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale​ rates hurricanes on a scale from 1 to 5.

The court drew a distinction between receiving a ballot and being legally entitled to cast it.  Today, permanent absentee voting procedures rely in part on voters reporting changes and affirming that they remain eligible. Hocker and Washington argued the checks are insufficient. The court said the Constitution leaves the choice of election safeguards to the General Assembly.

Justices say voters must qualify for each election; challengers question how the state checks whether they still do

DOVER, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court upheld the state’s permanent absentee voting law Monday, clearing the way for qualified voters on the permanent absentee list to receive ballots for the Nov. 3 general election. The ruling leaves lawmakers with a policy question: How much should election officials do to verify that a voter’s reason for voting absentee still applies?

In a unanimous decision, the justices said the law does not expand absentee voting beyond the categories allowed by the Delaware Constitution. Permanent absentee status allows a voter to receive a ballot automatically, but it does not allow someone whose circumstances have changed to cast that ballot, the court said.

Why the law was challenged

State Sen. Gerald Hocker and fellow Senate candidate Steven Washington argued that a voter who qualified for one election could continue receiving ballots years later without election officials adequately confirming that the original reason still applied.

The Constitution permits absentee voting when a registered voter cannot appear at a polling place for a specified reason, including illness, physical disability, certain work or public service obligations, vacation or religious observance. The permanent absentee law applies to a narrower group, including voters with qualifying illnesses or disabilities, military service obligations or jobs that require constant care for a relative.

Must voters qualify again?

Hocker and Washington focused on the Constitution’s language about a voter’s inability to appear at a particular election. An illness can end, a caregiving responsibility can change and public service can conclude. They argued that automatically sending another ballot places too much weight on an earlier application and on the voter’s willingness to report a change.

The justices agreed that a voter must qualify to vote absentee in each election. They rejected the argument that the Constitution requires the state to recertify each permanent absentee voter before every election.

How the state checks eligibility

The court drew a distinction between receiving a ballot and being legally entitled to cast it. The law requires permanent absentee voters to report changes affecting their eligibility. The Department of Elections sends reminders before election cycles, removes voters from the permanent absentee list in specified circumstances and requires voters to affirm their eligibility when returning each ballot.

Those procedures rely in part on voters reporting changes and affirming that they remain eligible. Hocker and Washington argued the checks are insufficient. The court said the Constitution leaves the choice of election safeguards to the General Assembly.

The challengers sought to invalidate the law in all its applications. To prevail, they had to show it could not operate constitutionally. Imperfect procedures do not meet that standard when eligible voters can use the law, the justices said.

What the ruling means for voters

Voting rights advocates emphasized the law’s value to people whose qualifying circumstances persist. In a statement after the ruling, the Delaware Voting Rights Coalition said permanent absentee voting helps eligible voters with disabilities, illnesses, caregiving duties and other qualifying obligations participate without submitting a new application for every election.

The ruling differs from the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision striking down Delaware’s no-excuse vote-by-mail law. That law allowed people outside the Constitution’s absentee voting categories to vote by mail. The permanent absentee law, the justices found, serves only a subset of voters within those categories.

A Superior Court judge ruled against permanent absentee voting in 2024, but the Supreme Court vacated that decision because the plaintiffs lacked standing. Monday’s decision reached the constitutional issue and upheld the law. The Department of Elections says it is sending permanent absentee voters their general election ballots.

TO GO

• Who: Delaware voters who qualify for permanent absentee voting.
• What: Voters already on the permanent absentee list will automatically receive a ballot for the Nov. 3 general election. They must still qualify to vote absentee when they cast it.
• Check your status: Visit iVote.de.gov. “Indefinite” means you are on the permanent absentee list.
• Request a ballot: Eligible voters can apply through iVote.de.gov or contact their county elections office.
• Deadline: Completed absentee ballots must reach the county elections office by 8 p.m. on Election Day.

President made more than 440 purchases and 700 sales despite voter anger over elected officials trading stocks

Donald Trump made more than a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July, according to a Guardian analysis of his latest financial disclosure released Tuesday.

His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, sold from $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.

Six-year-old Lian Yunzhi broke the women’s 3x3 average world record twice at two World Cube Association-certified competitions in Wuhan and Guangzhou, according to state broadcaster CCTV on Monday. She posted averages of 4.52 and 4.27 seconds, after solving the Rubik’s Cube five times. She is the first female speedcuber to average less than 4.5 seconds.

After an overseas-only debut, Motorola’s new Signature 27 is coming to the US, with the high-end phone set to be released this year.

GOP nominee for governor Byron Donalds removes multiple mentions of president from his campaign website

• US politics live – latest updates

Another prominent Florida Republican has publicly distanced himself from Donald Trump, days after María Elvira Salazar called out the US president’s immigration-enforcement policy targeting law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in November’s US midterm elections, launched an updated campaign website on Tuesday that was stripped of almost every mention of Trump and removed a photograph of the congressman and his wife, Erika, posing with the president, the Miami Herald reported.

The beta includes updates to apps like Facetime and Podcasts, as well as Siri AI in more languages.

Some lawmakers want to halt U.S. diesel exports as prices top $6.50 a gallon. But such a ban could have unintended consequences, experts say.

The ICE officer who shot a Venezuelan delivery driver was not wearing a body camera at the time of the shooting, sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News.

The Defense Department’s disclosed total stands at 19 fatalities, though U.S. officials say the actual number is higher.

A pair of top-tier Snapdragon chips will empower AI, boost graphics and enable 8K video in next year’s phones.

New AI PODs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Sacramento State Expand Shared Capacity for Research and Education

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22, 2026 — Internet2 is expanding its contributions to the National Research Platform (NRP) through its strategic relationship with Cisco, supporting the deployment of new Cisco AI PODs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Sacramento State. The AI PODs add GPU capacity that researchers across the platform can burst into when local resources run short.

Credit: Internet2

As artificial intelligence transforms research, the NRP continues to grow the shared, AI-ready computing capacity being used by thousands of researchers and students across the country. Internet2 is now adding to that pool in a new way.

Cisco AI PODs introduce a more standardized approach to expanding the NRP’s distributed infrastructure. They provide pre-validated compute, networking, and management capabilities that can be deployed as a unit, reducing the engineering and integration work required to add new resources to the platform. That creates a repeatable model for Internet2 and other NRP contributors as demand for AI computing continues to grow.

Pooling Capacity Instead of Centralizing It

As AI-enabled discovery reaches every discipline, research computing has grown significantly more complex. Cyberinfrastructure gaps between institutions are a growing concern, and budget pressures mean many institutions are being asked to do more with less.

That’s why a shared model can help bridge the access gap.

Supported by the National Science Foundation and over 70 participating organizations, the NRP is a community-operated platform that pools computing, storage, performance measurement, and AI resources across the U.S. It enables organizations to contribute while giving researchers access to capabilities beyond what they have locally.

Rather than building one centralized supercomputer, the NRP scales by aggregating GPU and CPU capacity contributed by institutions into a single Kubernetes-based fabric called Nautilus. But that model creates a recurring hurdle for contributing organizations: standing up GPU nodes that are compatible enough in compute, networking, and management to slot cleanly into a shared, multi-region cluster.

Cisco AI PODs can address that hurdle. Each AI POD is pre-validated, full-stack, modular AI infrastructure based on Cisco Validated Designs. It pairs Cisco UCS servers and GPU nodes with Nexus high-bandwidth, low-latency networking and Cisco Intersight for centralized management. Instead of hand-assembling compute, storage, and networking from scratch, an institution contributing to the NRP can deploy a right-sized AI POD. Ultimately, this reduces the integration risk and setup time for each new node joining the platform.

“Today, these two new AI PODs provide researchers access to additional GPU capacity when local resources aren’t enough,” said James Deaton, vice president of Network Services and Research Engagement at Internet2. “Internet2’s role was to connect the pieces: an NRP need, a Cisco solution, and two campuses ready to host it. Strategic relationships with industry are one way we reinvest resources in the whole research and education community.”

About the AI PODs

Combined across both sites, the AI PODs provide:

• 8 NVIDIA H200 GPUs with 1.1 TB of combined GPU memory
• 128 CPU cores
• 2 TB of system memory
• 90 TB of NVMe flash for staging data

At each site, the AI POD includes:

• A single Cisco UCS C845A M8 server chassis, with its GPUs interconnected over NVLink so jobs can address all four as a shared pool of GPU memory.
• An NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU providing up to 2×200 Gbps connectivity from each AI POD to campus and national R&E networks.

Continuing to Invest in Shared Research Infrastructure

Internet2’s contributions to the NRP continue to expand R&E access to shared computational resources across the U.S. A distributed platform requires more than GPUs, as data has to reach the compute, and paths between nodes have to be measurable. The Internet2 national network supports both.

Internet2 operates dedicated Open Science Data Federation nodes in Boise, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and Kansas City. Connected through the national network, these caches function to keep datasets closer to the compute resources and the researchers using them.

In addition, 41 performance assurance service nodes on the network currently serve a hybrid NRP function. Alongside thousands of perfSONAR instances deployed worldwide, they provide the NRP with measurement points across Internet2’s footprint, supporting cross-domain performance monitoring and troubleshooting between sites. Additionally, the nodes contribute 1,200 CPU cores, 6.4 terabytes of memory, and 80 terabytes of storage capacity.

Creating Value Through Industry Collaboration

Deploying the AI PODs to support the NRP is another example of how Internet2 creates community value through strategic relationships with its industry members. Internet2’s industry relationship with Cisco helped direct resources to the NRP, supporting two campus deployments and validating a repeatable approach other contributors can use.

As AI reshapes research cyberinfrastructure requirements, the expertise and strategic relationships Internet2 builds to meet them will continue to benefit the broader R&E community.

About Internet2

Internet2 is a nonprofit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 serves 352 U.S. universities, 57 government agencies, 46 regional and state education networks and through them supports more than 80,000 community anchor institutions, over 1,000 InCommon participants, 61 leading corporations working with our community, and 70 national research and education network operators that represent more than 100 countries.

Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages, integrates, and amplifies the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research, and community service missions. Internet2’s core infrastructure components include the nation’s largest and fastest research and education network that was built to deliver advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by the community-developed trust and identity framework. For more information: https://internet2.edu

Source: Internet2

The post Internet2 and Cisco Add AI Capacity to the National Research Platform appeared first on HPCwire.

US president calls UK prime minister ‘a natural businessperson’ as leaders meet at UN assembly in New York

Donald Trump has asserted his relationship with the UK is “more up” with Andy Burnham than under Keir Starmer despite tensions between the two countries on a range of thorny issues including regulation of artificial intelligence, the Chagos Islands and the war in Iran.

At their first face-to-face meeting, the US president praised Burnham, who sat nervously alongside him, as a “natural businessperson”, saying he thought he had “lots of assets on his side” and would be a “great” prime minister.

But industry trade group says plan would backfire and lead to even higher prices for gasoline

Donald Trump on Tuesday said he backed ⁠the idea of a ban on diesel exports, which some US politicians are calling for ⁠as a way ⁠to curb ​the soaring cost of energy.

Diesel prices have rallied in Europe and the US to ⁠record highs as wars in Iran and Ukraine sharply cut exports from some of the biggest producers ⁠such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A gallon of diesel fuel in the US was $6.53 on Tuesday, the highest average on record and over 75% higher than a year ago.

SAXONBURG, Pa., Sept. 22, 2026 — Coherent Corp. has announced PhotonLink, an integrated optics platform that brings together Coherent’s broad portfolio of critical photonics technologies, precision assembly and test capabilities to deliver complete optical solutions for next-generation AI data centers. The platform supports co-packaged optics (CPO), near-packaged optics (NPO) and emerging chip to chip connectivity.

As AI systems continue to scale, demand for higher bandwidth and lower power is driving optical connectivity closer to compute and switching silicon. These architectures require lasers, silicon photonics, precision optics, fibers and detectors to work together. PhotonLink brings those technologies and the expertise to integrate them into one platform.

“The next leap in AI requires more than faster chips – it requires a new way to connect them,” said Jim Anderson, Chief Executive Officer at Coherent. “Customers need complete optical solutions, not just individual components. Coherent is uniquely positioned to bring together the critical technologies, integrate and test the finished assemblies, and manufacture them at scale. PhotonLink puts that capability to work for the next generation of AI infrastructure.”

Coherent’s vertical integration spans compound semiconductor materials, lasers, optics and specialty fiber through final assembly and test. PhotonLink gives customers access to both individual components and complete optical assemblies from one partner, helping simplify system design, streamline qualification and reduce the complexity of integrating technologies from multiple suppliers.

From Critical Technologies to Complete Optical Assemblies

The PhotonLink platform spans four functions of the optical path: Generate, Shape, Guide and Receive. The portfolio includes indium phosphide (InP) lasers, vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays, silicon photonics, isolators, specialty fibers, micro-optics and detectors. Coherent integrates these technologies into external laser sources, precision fiber assemblies and optical modules tailored to customer architectures.

Customer Engagement and Manufacturing Scale

Coherent has more than ten CPO customer engagements and more than ten NPO engagements, with anchor customers and long-term agreements secured for both architectures. The company also has more than five engagements in emerging chip to chip connectivity. Revenue from the PhotonLink platform is expected to begin ramping in Q4 of CY2026.

PhotonLink builds on Coherent’s established datacenter manufacturing base, which has shipped more than 300 million InP lasers and more than one billion InP and gallium arsenide (GaAs) photodetectors. Coherent is expanding its 6” InP and specialty fiber manufacturing capacity to support the PhotonLink ramp.

For more information about PhotonLink, visit https://www.coherent.com/datacenter-communications/photonlink.

About Coherent

Coherent is the global photonics leader. We harness photons to drive innovation. Industry leaders in the datacenter, communications, and industrial markets rely on Coherent’s world-leading technology to fuel their own innovation and growth. Founded in 1971 and operating in more than 20 countries, Coherent brings the industry’s broadest, deepest technology stack; unmatched supply chain resilience; and global scale to help its customers solve their toughest technology challenges. For more information, visit coherent.com.

Source: Coherent

The post Coherent Launches PhotonLink Integrated Optics Platform for AI Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.

Ella Langley’s record-breaking song has spent 23 weeks at the top, surpassing Mariah Carey’s holiday anthem

Ella Langley’s hit song Choosin’ Texas has made Billboard Hot 100 history, spending 23 weeks on the chart and breaking the record for the longest-running No 1 song in the chart’s 68-year old history.

The track, which was released last October as the lead single on the 27-year-old singer and songwriter’s album Dandelion, has surpassed Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, which topped the charts for 22 weeks.

Thursday’s gathering will show how food, conservation and education come together at Coverdale Farm Preserve. Online ticket registration is closed.

GREENVILLE, Del. — The setting for Thursday’s dinner is also its purpose. At A Taste of Coverdale, guests will eat locally grown food at a working farm where Delaware Nature Society demonstrates how food production and care for the land can go together.

The Sept. 24 event runs from 4:30 to 8 p.m. at Coverdale Farm Preserve. Optional guided nature strolls begin at 4:30 p.m., followed by a cocktail hour at 5 and dinner at 6. A silent auction will include items from local vendors and experiences led by Delaware Nature Society experts. Proceeds will support conservation and education programs at Coverdale. Online ticket registration is closed.

A working farm and a nature preserve

Coverdale’s 377 acres include a 177-acre working farm and 200 acres managed as a nature preserve. Delaware Nature Society uses the property to show how farming practices can support healthy soil and wildlife habitat while producing food for the community. Visitors can walk the farm trail, see animals and shop for seasonal produce at the market.

That makes the dinner more than an evening outdoors. The food, guided walks and views give guests a chance to see the connection between the farm’s harvest and the landscape Delaware Nature Society works to protect.

Delaware Nature Society connects people with nature!

Founded in 1964, Delaware Nature Society describes its mission as connecting people and nature to create a healthy environment for all through education, conservation and advocacy. Coverdale is one place where those three parts of its work come together.

Its education programs bring children and adults outside to learn through experience. Preschoolers explore nature through stories and play; school groups visit forests, wetlands, streams and farms; and adults can join guided walks and other programs. In Wilmington, the organization’s RENEW initiative connects young people with outdoor learning, water quality projects, habitat care and opportunities to build leadership skills.

Its conservation work extends beyond Coverdale. Delaware Nature Society says it manages nearly 2,000 acres for ecosystem health and biodiversity, including efforts to restore forests and meadows, control invasive plants and protect habitat for birds and pollinators. At Coverdale, it applies those principles to both the preserve and the working farm.

The organization also advocates for environmental policies. It describes its approach as nonpartisan and science-based, with priorities that include protecting open space and natural areas and improving water quality. It works to help residents understand those issues and take part in decisions affecting their communities.

A fall tradition with a purpose

This year’s dinner is part of Delaware Nature Society’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Harvest Moon Festival. The organization has spread the celebration across four fall events and calls A Taste of Coverdale its premier annual fundraiser. The money raised helps sustain the places and programs that visitors encounter throughout the year.

Community members who are not attending Thursday’s dinner can still experience Coverdale. The farm is open for regular visits Fridays through Sundays through November. Admission is free, and donations are welcome.

To Go Box

• Who: Delaware Nature Society hosts A Taste of Coverdale.
• What: A farm dinner with optional guided nature strolls and a silent auction. Online ticket registration is closed.
• When: Thursday, Sept. 24, from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Strolls begin at 4:30 p.m.; dinner begins at 6 p.m.
• Where: Coverdale Farm Preserve, 543 Way Road, Greenville.
• Why: Proceeds support conservation and education programs at Coverdale. Learn more about the event at Delaware Nature Society’s website or check Coverdale’s visiting hours and programs for another opportunity to explore the farm.

The Trump administration is planning to welcome up to 17,500 additional White Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees over the next 12 months, according to a notice sent to Congress.

In a striking show of antiestablishment voter sentiment, the Left won in Berlin on the same night that the far-right Alternative for Germany won in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

The United States and Iran held a rare three-hour meeting in New York to discuss ending the war between the two countries, Trump said.

Sept. 22, 2026 — Industrial companies often face complex technical challenges that are too time-consuming or costly to solve through physical testing alone. Computer modeling and simulation can spur the development of new technologies with lower energy intensity, improved performance and increased productivity.

The Center for Industrial Modeling and Simulation (CIMS), led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), recently hosted a launch webinar featuring the center’s work to accelerate innovation and enhance U.S. economic competitiveness.

The Center for Industrial Modeling and Simulation recently hosted a webinar to encourage national-lab attendees and industry partners to learn about the program and opportunities to participate. Credit: LLNL.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Industrial Technologies Office (ITO), the new center will support the development of sector-specific tools and methods with laboratory expertise in physics-based simulation, process modeling, and machine learning and artificial intelligence to meet the computing needs and challenges of industry.

Brandon Wood, director of the new CIMS center, and Zach Pritchard, technology manager at the DOE’s ITO, delivered opening remarks at the event. They welcomed attendees from across the national laboratory enterprise, industry and academia.

Pritchard outlined how computational methods can reveal the physics behind industrial processes and provide insight into harsh environments that are difficult to monitor with current sensors. He said that recent advances in artificial intelligence also offer new ways to analyze complex systems and accelerate innovation, and he highlighted the scientific computing expertise, capabilities and resources available at the national labs.

During the webinar, Wood explained how the center aims to address challenges on both sides of the industry-national laboratory relationship. Companies may not know what tools are available, what those tools can accomplish or how to access the necessary facilities and expertise. Researchers, meanwhile, may need a clearer understanding of problems encountered in industrial settings.

“Our mission is really to accelerate widespread adoption of computing tools and resources,” said Wood. “We just want to see that the power that modeling and simulation really has is being deployed in a way that’s most effective for heavy industry.”

Initially, CIMS will focus on iron and steel and chemical manufacturing, particularly combustion, electrical/electrochemical technologies and process heating, with the goal to eventually expand to other energy-intensive sectors, including cement and concrete, forest products, food and beverage and agriculture.

The CIMS website, which is set to launch in the fall, will feature a catalog of relevant laboratory capabilities, industrially applicable codes, technical contacts and examples. The online inquiry and consultation portal will help companies determine whether computational approaches could address specific needs.

“We’ve set up CIMS as sort of a concierge service,” said Wood. “If an industry partner comes in and says, ‘Here’s my interest. I want to know if computing can be relevant for this,’ the center will help identify appropriate capabilities and experts.”

In addition, the center is planning a series of workshops to assess current adoption, identify gaps and establish priorities for computing in industrial sectors. CIMS will also develop demonstration projects focused on integrating and adapting existing capabilities towards higher impact for industry.

Riccardo Scarcelli, deputy director of CIMS, provided some additional information during the Q&A session on how to engage with CIMS, how the Center could interface with other DOE programs such as the High-performance Computing for Energy Innovation and Genesis Mission efforts, and what additional opportunities CIMS might facilitate for future lab-industry partnerships.

A recording of the webinar is now available online. Interested parties can join the CIMS mailing list to be informed about future events and/or provide feedback by completing a short interest form.

Source: LLNL

The post CIMS Harnesses National Labs to Accelerate Adoption of Computing in Energy-Intensive Industries appeared first on HPCwire.

The U.S., Denmark and Greenland signed a new security agreement bolstering the United States' military and security presence on the island.

Houthi militants have made a lightning advance along the Red Sea coast, capturing strategically important territory in Yemen.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed and more than 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

The Guardian's Oliver Holmes explains why this conflict has world governments on edge

Meeting at the UN in New York, the UK prime minister showed signs he can handle trash-talking President Trump

• US politics live – latest updates

How do you deal with a problem like The Donald? The simple answer is that you don’t. You can’t. The normal rules of political engagement don’t apply. The US president is like a five-year-old child with the world as his set of toys: a King Baby.

Nothing is ever constant or predictable. What’s agreed one day can be forgotten the next. Any deal can be interrupted with a temper tantrum at any time. Trying to second-guess Donald Trump is a fool’s errand.

Company to award backpay to 264,000 workers as mayor Zohran Mamdani condemns use of ‘greedy algorithms’

DoorDash said it would pay $131.5m ⁠to settle a ​New York City government investigation that found the food delivery company underpaid or waited too long to pay workers.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the settlement the city’s largest ⁠labor enforcement action. It advances the city’s longstanding effort to hold food delivery companies to a 2023 law intended to improve pay for delivery workers.

Sept. 22, 2026 — With support from a $3.7 million GO Virginia grant, George Mason University will establish the Virginia Quantum Hub (VQH) — an inclusive quantum ecosystem, built by public–private partnerships, that generates intellectual property across research and technology, attracts capital investments, trains a highly skilled workforce, and addresses global innovation needs, from health and logistics to national security and energy sectors.

A George Mason physics PhD student uses a microscope to probe nanoelectronic devices. The university launched the first master’s degree in quantum science and engineering in the commonwealth earlier this year. Photo credit: George Mason University.

“The Virginia Quantum Hub at George Mason positions the Commonwealth of Virginia at the forefront of this cutting-edge technology that will drive investment and economic opportunity in the decades to come,” said Governor Abigail Spanberger. “As home to the first open-architecture quantum computing system in the National Capital Region, this is exactly the kind of public–private partnership that keeps Virginia first. The collaboration among higher education, GO Virginia, the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), and many other critical public and private partners also represents game-changing capacity building for our innovation ecosystem.”

To scale partnerships already underway, George Mason has been approved for the GO Virginia grant, pending final award, to expand K–12 education and employer training programs, technical infrastructure deployment, lab buildout, and collaborative partnership operations.

In addition to current research investments, laboratories, and K–12 and higher education programs and training, George Mason partnered with Oxford, England-based TreQ to bring the first open-architecture quantum computing system to the state. TreQ has completed the system design and will deploy and operate the built-to-evolve quantum computing infrastructure, collaborating with George Mason to connect Virginia and the region with companies and innovators across the global quantum technology ecosystem.

“George Mason is not waiting for the quantum future — we are building it, responsibly and accessibly, with industry and government. By anchoring the Virginia Quantum Hub here, we are turning the commonwealth’s research strength and our region’s talent into jobs, new businesses, and opportunity for real change and impact,” said George Mason President Gregory Washington. “We are building a quantum ecosystem for the nation, which is open to the world. With the catalytic help from the GO Virginia grant, this is how a public university helps an entire region lead the future.”

With the new VQH, George Mason will organize a fast-moving ecosystem around Northern Virginia’s distinctive combination of assets — federal demand, defense and cybersecurity, cloud and data infrastructure, advanced computing, industry, research universities, and deep technical talent — to help drive the developing future of quantum.

“This hub provides access to the hardware and advanced research to empower a workforce to fuel the quantum economy,” said College of Science Dean Cody Edwards, who will deliver a keynote at Thursday’s Quantum World Congress. “We start with bold solutions to create a better world for everyone — not a search for quantum-shaped answers. Strong ecosystems don’t depend on any one dominant part; their strength comes from the interactions among talent, infrastructure, capital, research, industry, and government.”

“At the College of Engineering and Computing, quantum is not a single discipline—it is where computing, engineering, and science converge,” said Ken Ball, dean of George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing. “Our strength lies in preparing students and researchers to work across that entire continuum, from quantum algorithms and software to the systems and technologies that make quantum computing possible while we prepare our graduates for the workforce of the future.”

George Mason will work with founding partners and strategic investors — including the VIPC, Connected DMV, TreQ, Leidos, Aliro Quantum, Boeing, Booz Allen, MITRE, IonQ, Marymount University, Northern Virginia Community College, and others to be announced — to deliver on three reinforcing pillars:

• Open-architecture quantum hardware and shared infrastructure: Dual-use open infrastructure operated by George Mason — a cryogenic lab, a quantum optics facility, and one of the only TreQ-designed open-architecture quantum computers in the United States — for technology innovation.
• World-class quantum workforce programs: A four-tier pipeline including middle school, high school, and community-college partner programs, quantum-related professional education, internships, and a new master’s degree program with hands-on access to the accessible hardware. With 80 to 85% of George Mason graduates staying to work in Virginia and the region, this talent pipeline is positioned to meet the region’s workforce needs both now and as they expand in the future.
• Collaborative technology innovation: An industry–government–academia partnership program that builds critical educational programs, drives collaborative technology development, and coordinates the growth of Virginia’s quantum ecosystem.

“The quantum future of the United States requires we empower our citizens, no matter their backgrounds, with the skills needed to lead in the growth of this exciting technology. The VQH accomplishes this by empowering Virginians with a unique hands-on quantum technology training program, de-risking innovation by providing key high-cost infrastructure to the region and working with partners to make Virginia the destination for transformative quantum companies looking to grow,” said Patrick Vora, executive director of George Mason’s Quantum Science and Engineering Center (QSEC).

“The Virginia Quantum Hub gives us an opportunity to move beyond simply accessing cloud-based, black-box quantum computers and instead open the box to study and innovate at deeper layers of the quantum computing stack,” said Weiwen Jiang, QSEC’s codirector. “With open-architecture hardware and shared research infrastructure, our faculty, students, and industry partners can work across the full quantum stack, from applications and software to systems, control, and devices. This kind of infrastructure is essential for training the next generation of quantum engineers and advancing research toward practical quantum applications.”

Several of George Mason’s partners weighed in on this opportunity and moment for the state:

“VIPC is proud to be a founding partner and strategic investor in the Virginia Quantum Hub. Built through public–private partnership, VQH will help grow Virginia’s innovation ecosystem by accelerating research commercialization, growing next-generation talent, and catalyzing company attraction and industry investment in the commonwealth,” said VIPC President and CEO Joe Benevento.

“TreQ is grateful for George Mason’s trust and partnership in building this foundational infrastructure for Virginia’s quantum ecosystem. This region brings together digital infrastructure, national security, research, talent, and the technology industry in a way few places can. That combination is shaping the frontier of computing,” said TreQ CEO and Founder Mandy Birch.

“The Greater Washington region has the computer infrastructure, the research base, and the security-cleared talent that quantum companies need. The Virginia Quantum Hub adds a critical missing piece: Open hardware companies can test on today, paired with a pipeline that keeps four out of five graduates here. For frontier technology companies deciding where to build and scale, the case for Northern Virginia just got stronger,” said George D. Thomas, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.

The new Virginia Quantum Hub builds on eight years of investment through George Mason’s QSEC, where 24 faculty across seven departments and several colleges have built the university’s research and education foundation in quantum.

A priority within George Mason’s Grand Challenge Initiative, George Mason’s Quantum Leap project is research backed by a new $2.4 million catalyst investment, with six new postdoctoral positions and three new faculty positions.

The university recently launched Virginia’s first interdisciplinary master’s degree in quantum science and engineering and signed an MOU with two of Korea’s leading quantum organizations, extending the hub’s reach to a strong global quantum marketplace.

More from HPCwire: George Mason and TreQ Bring Open-Architecture Quantum Computing to Virginia

Source: George Mason University

The post George Mason to Establish Virginia Quantum Hub appeared first on HPCwire.

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Tehran appears to have relaxed its preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz, saying it is prepared to do so within seven days so long as the US takes reciprocal steps to ease the pressure on Iran.

Previously Iran had set seven onerous pre-conditions for lifting the blockade including “an end to war on all fronts” and a commitment by the US to cease all aggressive actions against Iran including sanctions.

Polo, with sustained winds of 165mph, is churning 215 miles south of Zihuatanejo but is unlikely to directly hit Mexico

A tropical storm off the south-west coast of Mexico has intensified into a category 5 monster in fewer than 24 hours, fueled by stronger than usual El Niño weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.

Hurricane Polo was sending out maximum sustained winds of 165mph (266km/h) on Tuesday as its center churned about 215 miles (346km) south of the coastal city of Zihuatanejo, in Guerrero state.

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Vincent Brown stands accused of aiding in genocide and crimes against humanity during the paroxysm of violence in his native country in 1994, charges he denies.

BOSTON, Sept. 22, 2026 — Zapata Quantum, Inc., a leader in quantum computing algorithm and application development, today announced early access to Quantum Pilot, a hardware-agnostic, cloud-based software platform designed to close a growing gap between rapidly advancing quantum hardware capabilities and enterprises’ ability to determine where and how quantum computing can create business value.

Quantum Pilot builds a dynamic roadmap for enterprises that want to deploy quantum technology but are uncertain which applications are relevant to their business and sector, when those solutions will be practical, and what they could be worth. It gives organizations a systematic way to discover potential applications, weigh their technical and commercial potential, and focus resources on the opportunities with the strongest case for investment. Enterprises can then identify and develop applications without betting on a single quantum modality or provider, and reassess application readiness or change their approach as hardware capabilities and algorithms evolve.

“The critical on-ramp to quantum application development is the efficient and rigorous mapping of use cases to quantum computational solutions,” said Sumit Kapur, CEO of Zapata Quantum. “We built Quantum Pilot to make that on-ramp more accessible to enterprise leaders and ensure that quantum activity becomes a capability that compounds—with each experiment and development effort informing and accelerating the next.”

Delivering Quantum Application Intelligence

Drawing on Zapata’s experience developing quantum algorithms and applications across industries and hardware architectures, Quantum Pilot combines a proprietary knowledge framework with advanced computational tools, including capabilities developed through its collaboration with NVIDIA to apply agentic AI to quantum resource estimation. The platform also builds on Zapata’s collaboration with the University of Maryland on formal methods for quantum software verification.

Together, these capabilities enable Quantum Pilot to deliver Quantum Application Intelligence (QAI)—helping enterprises identify, evaluate and develop quantum applications with scientific rigor and a clear focus on business value. The platform also continuously tracks and updates the global quantum ecosystem’s research, hardware roadmaps and software developments so that application roadmaps are current as the field advances and users are making application decisions based on the latest data.

“Most conversations about quantum readiness focus on the hardware roadmap. That is not where the real risk sits. It sits one layer up, in the applications and software that decide whether the hardware ever produces business value,” said Mark Hill, Chief Digital Information Officer at CSL Behring, a multibillion-dollar global biotech leader, and Advisor to the Company. “Quantum Pilot matters because it forces the harder question enterprises keep avoiding: which applications are worth building now, not just which processor is fastest.”

Quantum Pilot is powered by three complementary systems:

• Quantum Graph, a proprietary knowledge layer that connects quantum applications, algorithms, research, and hardware roadmaps, providing structured context for the platform and its AI agents as the field advances.
• Quantum Engine, a suite of computational tools and agents that supports algorithm selection, resource estimation, experiment design and hardware benchmarking, helping enterprises assess technical feasibility and guide application development.
• Quantum Assurance, a framework that combines formal verification methods with expert review to assess technical results and guide the development process, with Zapata’s scientists helping enterprises interpret evidence and determine next steps.

“Among the things that make Quantum Pilot’s approach to application development distinct is its use of formal verification, rather than after-the-fact validation alone,” said Runzhou Tao, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, and Fellow, Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS). “That’s the same principle we apply in our research with Zapata on verified quantum software, and it addresses a discipline quantum computing has largely developed without.”

Early Access

Quantum Pilot is initially available through an early access program for select enterprise and government customers. Organizations interested in participating can request a demo and learn more at zapataquantum.com/quantumpilot.

About Zapata Quantum

Zapata Quantum is a leading hardware-agnostic, pure-play quantum software company focused on accelerating quantum application development. With a portfolio of more than 60 granted and pending patents developed over seven years, Zapata supports applications across cryptography, pharmaceuticals, finance, materials discovery, defense, and more. Spun out of Harvard’s quantum lab in 2017, the Company is the only organization to have participated across all technical areas of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking program and has worked with Fortune 500 enterprises and government agencies to translate quantum advances into real-world impact. The Company’s study demonstrating the potential of quantum-enabled drug discovery was recognized as one of Nature Biotechnology’s Top 10 Papers of 2025.

Source: Zapata Quantum

The post Zapata Opens Early Access to Platform for Evaluating Quantum Use Cases appeared first on HPCwire.

Cybersecurity researchers from a small firm called Hacktron in India broke into OpenAI, showing how vulnerable frontier labs are.

The new models prioritize faster speeds and lower prices.

(The Center Square) – Three percent of Ohioans on Medicaid were not eligible because they have more resources than allowed, including several millionaires, according to Ohio Auditor Keith Faber.

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• Fight says friend was in hospital after crash

UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland is recovering after ⁠being involved in an all-terrain vehicle accident while not wearing ⁠a helmet.

Strickland ⁠said ​in an Instagram video that the accident happened on Monday night in Las ⁠Vegas.

A patient holding a plastic medicine bottle with prescription pills in a clinic.

Officials in Canada condemned the shooting and expressed support for law enforcement and the Jewish community.

(The Center Square) — New York is leading a coalition of Northeast states in suing the Trump administration to block agreements with two energy companies that would scrap several offshore wind projects, claiming taxpayer money is being used to pay…

US president may have upstaged the ghost of Soviet leader Khrushchev by musing destruction of fellow member state

Donald Trump has a habit of discomfiting delegates to the United Nations general assembly. But this year, he may have upstaged the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev by openly contemplating the annihilation of a fellow UN member state.

Eleven minutes into a 40-minute address, the US president announced he had “a big decision to make” over Iran, which has staged a much more determined resistance than Trump anticipated when he decided to go to war against the country in February.

Wells, an 18-year-old Black man, died during a boat trip in July. The case sparked concern that Mississippi authorities did not do enough to investigate the case.

A former maximum-security prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, is now a critical hub in the Trump administration’s immigration detention machine, transforming in just a few months from a facility shuttered for its inhospitable conditions to a privately run jail holding hundreds of immigrants.

This is the story of how — and why — it happened.

The deal had been in motion for more than a year before the Leavenworth City Commission conceded to the controversial project, one that would allow the private-prison operator CoreCivic to reopen its notorious prison and fill it with immigrants. They did so after a protracted battle with the company, one that made them cogs in a vast deportation machine. 

“I don’t want them to be in jail,” Leavenworth Mayor Nancy Bauder said of the more than 500 immigrants held at the facility as of August, the last publicly available count. “I think it’s horrendous. My moral objection to this is very strong.”

But as the Trump administration and CoreCivic carried out an aggressive campaign to expand the federal detention network, city officials said they concluded they couldn’t afford to fight it. They tried to sue to stop the project, but instead spent more than a quarter-million dollars fighting it in court, draining city funds, before CoreCivic offered a $1.5 million impact payment to reimburse the city’s legal costs and pledged $400,000 a year to the local government. 

“They just bought their permit,” said Michael Sharma-Crawford, chair of the Missouri/Kansas chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, or AILA.

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The Leavenworth facility, for years marred by an ugly history of overcrowding and understaffing, is now the Midwest hub for the mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. Under this hub-and-spoke model, which has gone little noticed by the public even now, ICE moves detainees and staff between smaller facilities — the “spokes,” which include facilities such as regional jails — and a larger facility as a center of operations — the so-called “hub.” Using this model, ICE is able to obscure the scale of its operations and quickly move immigrants through the system, from arrest to detention to fast-tracked deportation flights out of the country.

“Leavenworth’s capacity is going to be that hub in the Midwest, to draw down from Minnesota, Chicago, Indiana, to house all that detention,” Sharma-Crawford said. Two other immigration attorneys who represent clients in the region corroborated the operational pattern through their own clients’ transfers and named additional “spoke” facilities feeding the pipeline.

The Midwest Regional Reception Center, as it’s now known, in Leavenworth is a critical site for the Trump administration, whose promises of 100,000 beds for immigrant detention stalled out at around 66,000 in July and had run into multiple obstacles across the Midwest. In Illinois, a 2021 state law ended immigration detention statewide. Minnesota remained a possible location for a hub, but the process moved slowly; CoreCivic’s shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton had long sat idle before its recent sale, and ICE needed to get a Midwest hub up and running immediately. Proposed sites were contested one after another: A potential warehouse for up to 10,000 detainees in south Kansas City was killed by community opposition, and facilities were either blocked or contested in Shakopee, Minnesota; Romulus, Michigan; Hudson, Colorado; and McCook, Nebraska. The Midwest’s largest operational ICE detention center, GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, is geographically isolated, hours from any major airport, and has been mired in controversy over a hunger strike, a death in custody, and hundreds of unlawful detention rulings. 

Leavenworth, a town with a corrections history stretching back over a century, seemed to offer the path of least resistance.

“Aggressive and Unlawful”

The City of Leavenworth fought the facility in court for months. CoreCivic countersued, and the Department of Justice intervened on CoreCivic’s side, accusing Leavenworth of “aggressive and unlawful” interference.

In the meantime, the fight threatened to bankrupt the city. Records obtained through the Kansas Open Records Act show the city paid roughly $820,000 in legal fees to Spencer Fane LLP over 12 months, about 6 percent of its general fund. The bill was a drain, but not a death blow. The city’s foremost concern was the takings clause, which allows the government to seize private property for public use, City Manager Scott Peterson said. A state judge had directed CoreCivic to follow the permit process, and if Leavenworth denied the permit, CoreCivic could argue bad faith, claim the city had effectively seized its property, and sue for damages, Peterson said, leaving Leavenworth to choose between greenlighting a facility it opposed or gambling on a lawsuit it might not survive. The alternative, Bauder, the mayor, said, was the federal government acquiring the building, which would eliminate local oversight entirely.

Both the city and county rejected the facility early on, local officials said. Residents protested its reopening and offered impassioned testimony against it at public hearings.

CoreCivic structured the $1.5 million impact payment in part to reimburse the city’s legal costs from the company’s lawsuit. When asked about the arrangement, CoreCivic instead reiterated its promised $1 million one-time impact fee, $250,000 a year to the city, and $150,000 a year to the police department.

Mayor Pro Tem Rebecca Hollister, who cast the sole dissenting vote on the 4-to-1 decision, explained her objection was procedural and understood it had no bearing on the outcome: “It was an inevitability.”

The Hub 

On January 14, two months before the vote, CoreCivic detention officer Brittany Williams reached out to city leadership to voice her support of the facility, an unusual move for a rank-and-file corrections officer with no role in the municipal permitting fight. In the email to Assistant City Manager Penny Holler, Williams said the company transferred her to Oklahoma to help open Diamondback, a sister CoreCivic facility. She wrote that she was currently assigned to TransCor America, a private transportation company that contracts with ICE to move detainees around the country, in her case from ICE’s Kansas City, Missouri, field office “to where they are needed to go.” The email, which was entered into the public record before the February 2 hearing on the special use permit, or SUP, to allow the facility to house immigrants, inadvertently revealed ICE’s hub-and-spoke detention model was already in motion in the region, shuffling detainees and staff between facilities and states.

The Leavenworth facility was in a strategically advantageous position to become a new hub for ICE, and Sharma-Crawford, the immigration attorney, said ICE had been eyeing the location since it closed as a federal prison. It sits just 10 miles from Kansas City International Airport, where ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations field office is a six-minute drive away. It also allows ICE to hold detainees at Leavenworth then move them through KCI to staging areas for deportation flights in Louisiana or Texas. 

“They want it short, quick,” Sharma-Crawford said. It allows ICE to claim “‘I gave them due process,’” he said, “and they’re out the door.”

On March 25, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a bond decision holding that anyone who entered the United States without authorization is ineligible for bond, a ruling that covers Missouri, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Arkansas, and Minnesota, the states Sharma-Crawford said he expects to feed into Leavenworth. Mandatory detention across those seven states meant the government needed greater capacity from the region’s jails. Genevra Alberti, former chair of the local AILA chapter, whose attorneys represent clients throughout the area, named additional “spokes” in the system: Chase County in Kansas, and Greene, Ste. Genevieve, Phelps, and Ozark counties in Missouri. Enough local jails plus a CoreCivic facility, she said, can hold and process as many people as a mega-detention center. 

“It makes sense that they’re doing this in smaller areas, because no one’s paying attention,” Alberti said. “There’s definitely a method to this. They know if they do this in the massive cities, there’s going to be more light shed on what they’re doing.”

In Leavenworth County, the CoreCivic-run ICE detention center is one of five major correctional facilities, which provide a total of roughly 6,000 beds. Up the road, FCI Leavenworth, a federal Bureau of Prisons facility, held ICE detainees in what Alberti called a “black hole” for a full year before the SUP was approved. Last May, the ACLU wrote to the warden documenting limited time outside and no exercise for detainees. Peterson, the city manager, confirmed the federal prison doesn’t answer to the city, and there have been no community relations meetings for more than a year.

The county’s other major prisons are the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth and Lansing Correctional Facility. Rounding out the cluster is the Grossman Center, a federal halfway house run by the private prison giant GEO Group adjacent to CoreCivic’s site.

The SUP the city approved authorizes “jail or prison” use at the Leavenworth site without restricting it to ICE detention. The concentration of prisons meant the workforce, the infrastructure, and the institutional muscle were already there. Reopening one more facility for ICE required little more than a single municipal approval.

The Immigration Courts 

Once their clients are fed into one of the deportation regime’s hubs, immigration attorneys say it’s become an increasingly byzantine process to find them, plan their defenses, and get them out of detention.

Working with clients imprisoned at Leavenworth is chaotic and difficult from the moment they arrive, the attorneys said. To schedule a televideo call the lawyers must email their state bar cards and licenses, and they are subject to automatic, one-hour cutoffs. CoreCivic has repeatedly demanded attorneys file formal representation paperwork before they’ve even met the detainee or agreed to take on the case, Alberti said. 

Valerie Sprout, a Kansas City immigration attorney with 15 years of experience, said she wasn’t even able to locate the facility in ICE’s call-scheduling portal. 

“We didn’t know how to contact that client,” Sprout said. “We were on our listserv, frantically sharing information, because you have people there that you have no access to.”

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Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, rejected these characterizations, saying video visitation calls run in 30- and 60-minute sessions, calls are not automatically cut off, and staff accommodate requests for more time. He said the forms identifying a detainee’s lawyer are standard and a pre-representational visit can occur without one, adding that legal representatives may visit their clients seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Some of the details of the internal dysfunction detainees face only come to light after they’re released. According to Alberti, a former client took over running the laundry for roughly a week because no one was washing detainees’ clothes. She was promised token pay, either a dollar an hour or a dollar a day, but was never paid.

The obstacles extend into the courtroom. Detainees are increasingly given remote, on-camera hearings, never physically appearing before a judge. The Kansas City Immigration Court, part of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, holds jurisdiction over Leavenworth’s detainee docket. Just six judges, working across three courtrooms and a small pro bono room, carry more than 1,000 cases. 

“So far, I haven’t seen any of them in person,” Alberti said of the judges, which she said makes it more difficult to tell how they’re weighing cases.

Sprout, who is also a board member of Asylum Clinic Kansas City, has witnessed the shift to teleconferenced hearings firsthand. 

“All detained cases are over video. No detained cases are in-person, which I feel is just an incredible violation of due process, especially in asylum cases, because the threshold issue in every asylum case is to determine whether the respondent is credible,” she said.

Former prosecutors and military lawyers preside over the hearings. Allan F. John-Baptiste, a former Bureau of Prisons lawyer, was appointed during the first Trump administration. Jared Grimmer, a former Air Force judge advocate general, accepted a temporary appointment in October 2025. Katherine Estes ran military personnel law at the Pentagon. Scott Ison is a local-level Missouri prosecutor. After the Trump administration fired or pushed out more than 100 judges last year, none of the newly appointed Kansas City judges have a background in immigration law, according to the official bios provided in a DOJ press release announcing their appointments.

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Created in the wake of 9/11 and historically invoked only sparingly, the EOIR-43 automatic stay allows the government to override an immigration judge’s bond order without review or appeal. Records obtained by Documented through a records request show the Department of Homeland Security used it 877 times over a three-month period in mid-2025. Faced with these stays, Alberti has filed two federal habeas corpus petitions for clients at CoreCivic Leavenworth. The first was for a young woman with a pending petition for legal status as a victim of crime and no criminal history who entered the country as a baby; she was released after roughly two weeks. As of this spring, the second remained in detention. 

Another recent petition put the conditions themselves before a federal judge. Katsiaryna Bartko, a Belarusian asylum-seeker detained at Leavenworth, filed a pro se petition in August over her medical care. In an order appointing her counsel, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree found she brought “a viable deprivation-of-medical-care” claim and noted it was undisputed that her recent test results showed worsening thyroid levels. Bartko, who depends on hormone medication after surgery for thyroid cancer, had not seen a specialist since her transfer, according to court filings. CoreCivic and ICE dispute she was denied appropriate medical care. After a fourth hospitalization and 106 days in ICE in custody, she was released on recognizance on September 16.

One of Alberti’s clients, who was detained at Leavenworth but has now been released, told her that guards and ICE officers sometimes asked her to act as an interpreter for other detainees without pay. No one on staff spoke Spanish, the client told Alberti, and when officers needed to communicate, they relied on a translation app rather than a live interpreter. 

Gustin, the CoreCivic spokesperson, said in a statement to The Intercept that “any claim that a detainee is required to translate for staff communication is false” and that the facility uses a contracted translation service with a live translator reached through devices, computers, and phones. 

About six weeks after the facility began accepting detainees in May, Sharma-Crawford reported at the first community oversight committee meeting that detainees did not have access to their own charging documents. Without them, he said, the lawyers weren’t able to formulate a defense for their clients.

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When asked about that allegation by The Intercept, Gustin said that concern involved a single detainee whose documents were provided upon request. He also said detainees keep their charging documents with them from the time they arrive and any suggestion to the contrary was “false.”

But for those who’ve been made party to the system, the situation has begun to feel intractable.

“We cannot stop the federal government from incarcerating these people,” Bauder, the mayor, had said. “We can’t stop them, but we can try to make it better for them here.”

The community’s only check on CoreCivic was the CoreCivic Community Relations Advisory Board, required as a condition of the special use permit. But while the board streamed their meetings publicly, it existed in a purely advisory capacity, Peterson, the city manager, said. Enforcement power lay with the city, not the board, and to act on any issues it flagged, the city of Leavenworth would have to sue. 

On the city’s working relationship with CoreCivic in the first weeks, Peterson said, “For now, things are great,” before adding, “How long is this sustainable? How long does it go?”

Foreclosing on the Future

With the hub-and-spoke model, the Trump administration planned for mega-detention centers with 7,500 to 10,000 beds as the hubs, but the 1,033-bed Leavenworth facility became a hub at a fraction of the size, inviting far less scrutiny than a mega-center would. Its reopening spurred community mobilization, but not the same national level of fanfare or resistance — as was the case with “Alligator Alcatraz,” the now-shuttered detention center in the Florida Everglades — which has worked in the Trump administration’s favor.

“DHS has taken a two-pronged approach to this,” Peterson said. “They are both contracting with private organizations like CoreCivic and GEO Group to manage their detention population, but then they are also just directly acquiring properties to manage themselves.”

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The administration’s mass deportation agenda has remained paramount despite its growing unpopularity with the American public. The Leavenworth location had been a federal priority from the start, identified in ACLU Freedom of Information Act disclosures alongside other proposed reopenings. It was named in ICE’s emergency justification as one of three publicly identified among nine no-bid detention contracts. It was selected for its central location within ICE’s Chicago area of operations. With warehouse acquisitions stalled, Leavenworth, the Midwest regional hub, may represent the Trump administration’s new default model when ambitious, public-facing expansions become too politically or financially costly to defend. 

In July, CoreCivic’s sold two of its largest California facilities, Otay Mesa and California City, to DHS for $1.5 billion. The company will continue operating both and plans to sell off more jails. Under this hybrid arrangement, federal ownership can put facilities beyond the reach of many state and local regulations, limiting outside scrutiny even as courts test its limits.

Last month, the pattern played out again. On August 4, CoreCivic announced the sale of the shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota. The following day, in a second press release, it announced the $238 million sale of Leavenworth’s Midwest Regional Reception Center, recasting both as a single $734 million deal. Under the arrangement, the company expects to keep operating both facilities through their existing ICE contracts.

At Leavenworth, the contract expires in September 2027. City officials learned of the sale the morning the news broke and were notified by CoreCivic rather than the federal government, raising questions as to whether its permit and oversight conditions would survive federal ownership. Even as these sales closed, CoreCivic said it had opened preliminary discussions with ICE about selling still other facilities.

Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat who toured the facility on September 9 to meet with two detained constituents, said it was under active construction to add capacity, telling reporters “everywhere we went, they were building.” A DHS spokesperson confirmed the agency acquired Leavenworth and the Appleton facility to create additional detention space.

Alberti sees these actions as the administration waging a “war of attrition” on immigrants, their families, and their advocates.

Leavenworth fought this outcome through every channel available to a local government — in the courts, at the commission, through public protests, and in open hearings packed with residents. Nevertheless, CoreCivic and DHS jammed the approval through. Once the facility was operational, the federal government purchased the building outright, severing the meager leverage the city extracted as the price of its consent. In May, DHS quietly disbanded its own internal detention oversight office after a funding lapse, leaving no federal watchdog to fill the void. Rebranded as an expansion of ICE’s immigration capacity, this series of federal acquisitions represents the quiet desecration of the public trust. More troubling still is the notion that across America, other Leavenworths may still be unaccounted for and effectively shielded from the public’s knowledge or scrutiny. Without the tools to meaningfully oppose the expansion of Trump’s anti-immigrant regime, communities are left without recourse, making them nodes of a vast, and violent, machine.

This story is part 2 in a two-part series. Read the first part here.

The post How a Small Kansas City Became a Critical Hub for Trump’s Deportation Regime Against Its Will appeared first on The Intercept.

The Israeli leader’s appearance at the U.N. General Assembly this week will be his first time in New York since the mayor called for his arrest.

The single-celled organism smashed the previous record for heat tolerance of complex life by surviving in 158°F (70C) spring waters.

(The Center Square) – Fraud concerns rank among the top issues for Minnesota voters in a new poll, trailing only inflation and the cost of living as the midterm elections draw near.

US president says Burnham will be ‘a great PM’ in friendly first meeting on the sidelines of UN General Assembly but makes jibe at Starmer

If Andy Burnham wanted to inject some edge into his meeting with Donald Trump later (which he doesn’t), he could bring along a copy of today’s Financial Times. This front page headline speaks for itself.

Mortgages ‘on the front line’ as Iran war deals £840 blow to homeowners

British homeowners are paying an average of £840 a year more when they refinance their mortgages, as the rising borrowing costs triggered by the Iran war start to impact consumers’ spending power.

Approximately 1m households have rolled off fixed-rate mortgage deals since February, according to Bank of England data.

The decision lifts measures targeting billionaire Alisher Usmanov, whom the E.U. once referred to as “one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs.”

Lian Yunzhi solves 3x3 puzzle on several occasions in average time of under 4.5 seconds, according to state media

A six-year-old Chinese girl has set a new women’s world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube in just over four seconds, state media reported.

“Speedcuber” Lian Yunzhi broke the women’s 3x3 average world record twice this month at two World Cube Association certified competitions in Wuhan and Guangzhou, according to state broadcaster CCTV on Monday.

Incendiamoeba cell undergoing mitosis at 63ºC. DNA is colored blue, tubulin is pink, and membrane is gray. (Felix Mikus via SWNS)

US president says British PM has a ‘lot of assets on his side’ as pair meet at UN in New York

Donald Trump has praised Andy Burnham as a “natural businessperson” and said the UK was “more up” than under Keir Starmer. But he berated the UK for its decision to give up the Chagos Islands.

In their first face-to-face meeting, Trump gave a warm assessment of the relationship, saying he thought Burnham had a “lot of assets on his side” and would be a “great prime minister”, adding: “We talked about everything from Rolls-Royce to energy to immigration – we covered a lot.”

Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman delisted in what Ireland’s EU presidency calls ‘a difficult compromise’ for the bloc

The EU has agreed to remove two Russian billionaires, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, from its sanctions list, while extending restrictions on nearly 3,000 individuals and companies accused of supporting the war on Ukraine for the next three years.

With an end-of-Tuesday deadline looming to preserve the Russia blacklist, the EU’s 27 member states found a compromise that meant delisting the two oligarchs in spite of very few countries wanting this outcome. EU sanctions have to be approved unanimously.

One other person being treated in hospital after fire crews respond to early-hours incident at home in Bootle

A woman and three children have died after an overnight fire ripped through a semi-detached house on Merseyside.

The Merseyside fire and rescue service (MFRS) said crews arrived at the blaze in Bootle at about 3.45am on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump has formally appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as national security adviser, making permanent a dual role Rubio has held on an acting basis since May 2025.

A White House official confirmed Tuesday that Trump signed a commission making Rubio the permanent national security adviser. Rubio becomes the first person since Henry Kissinger to simultaneously serve as secretary of state and national security adviser, concentrating two of the administration’s most influential foreign-policy positions under one official.

Rubio assumed the national security adviser duties after Mike Waltz left the White House position in May 2025. Trump subsequently nominated Waltz to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations following controversy over a Signal group chat in which senior officials discussed military operations against Houthi militants in Yemen.

Rubio has since reshaped parts of the National Security Council while continuing to run the State Department. Associated Press reporting this summer noted that several of Rubio’s former State Department aides moved into senior NSC positions, giving him substantial influence over the administration’s foreign-policy structure.

Trump has repeatedly praised Rubio’s ability to handle multiple responsibilities, saying last year that when problems arise, “I call up Marco. He gets it solved.” Rubio has said he remains focused on his current responsibilities rather than a possible 2028 presidential campaign.

Sources

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Makes Rubio Permanent National Security Adviser While He Remains Secretary of State appeared first on News Facts Network.

Ad Blocker is a new feature for a browser that prides itself on privacy and customization.

Counter-terrorism police say ‘long-running investigation’ disrupted alleged plot days after two men arrested on eve of the holy day Yom Kippur

Police believe they have stopped an imminent plot to attack Jewish communities in the Manchester area.

The announcement on Tuesday follows the arrest of two men on Sunday at 2.45pm in Manchester and comes during the Jewish holy month.

Opting out of life insurance could leave your loved ones facing financial challenges they aren't prepared for.

Flickering got me frustrated and I’m hoping you can help. It doesn’t look like the booster is sold anymore. Can you post a picture of it so I can see the components? TiA!

Jason Eaton pursued an insanity defense in the 2023 shooting in Vermont, which spread fear through Arab and Muslim communities in the United States.

The movie Coyote vs. Acme earned more than Warner Bros.' $30 million tax write-off in just two weeks. And last week the movie officially earned more than its production budget of $70 million. But today the movie passed the $100 million mark. "You asked for it, we delivered, and you showed up!" distributor Ketchup Entertainment posted on social media (adding "Thank you to the fans for making this a massive hit!") With a break-even number of $120 million, the movie "will probably make up any theatrical deficit (should there be any) with its impending releases on video on demand and streaming," writes ScreenRant. Almost three years after the completed film was initially shelved for a $30 million write-off, its cumulative domestic box office has apparently even beat Warner Bros. dinosaur movie The End of Oak Street: In addition to officially joining the chart of the Top 30 movies of the year so far at the domestic box office, by surpassing The End of Oak Street, Coyote vs. Acme has outgrossed five of the eight movies that Warner Bros. has put out in domestic theaters this year.... [It's just $17.6 million behind Supergirl, and within $30 million of Mortal Kombat II and Wuthering Heights.] Their anticipated sci-fi sequel Dune: Part Three also seems guaranteed to land higher than 2026's Coyote vs. Acme on the chart (2021's Dune earned $108.9 million in domestic theaters, while Dune: Part Two earned $282.1 million). With its a small marketing budget of just $10 million, the movie seems to be relying on oddball marketing stunts like their AMA on Reddit's r/movies. And commemorating the spirit of the movie, Crayon-maker Crayola even released a special "Coyote Secret Plan" web page for children to print and color — and partnered with the film's stars for a video on the importance of creativity: Lana Condor: Crayola is all about encouraging kids and grown-ups to turn imagination into action. Will Forte: Which is exactly what Coyote does in Coyote versus Acme. He sees a problem and thinks, "Could this be solved with a rocket, a catapult, or a suspiciously affordable mail order anvil?" Lana Condor: Usually no. Will Forte: Usually very no.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2015, while an engineering group leader at STMicroelectronics, Philippe Notton grew enthusiastic about reviving European efforts to develop homegrown CPUs. In 2017 he joined Atos and led efforts to found the European Processor Initiative (EPI), then in 2019 spun off new company SiPearl with EU support and an ARM-based strategy. Fast forward to today: Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER at the German national HPC center in Juelich, will feature SiPearl’s Rhea1 CPUs alongside NVIDIA and AMD accelerators (general availability of Rhea1 is scheduled for the end of 2026). Europe’s second exascale system, named Alice Recoque, will be hosted by CEA/DAM south of Paris and will include CPUs based on the company’s Rhea2 ARM architecture.

We asked Philippe Notton to comment on SiPearl’s strategy and plans, an important element of Europe’s push for digital sovereignty.

HPCwire: First, congratulations on SiPearl’s role in Europe’s first exascale supercomputers.

Philippe Notton: Thank you very much. The vision that led to the creation of the European Processor Initiative consortium became a reality last May when we received the first Rhea1 units in our laboratories.

Philippe Notton, CEO and founder of SiPearl

HPCwire: SiPearl spun out from the European Processor Initiative, an important element of the EU’s ongoing sovereignty initiative for advanced computing that now includes AI and quantum computing along with HPC modeling and simulation. What is the long-term strategy for SiPearl, and where does the company stand along that trajectory today?

Philippe Notton: SiPearl’s strategy is to be a leading player wherever there is a need for sovereign advanced computing—whether in HPC, our original focus, or AI, defense and data centers—by offering a high-performance, energy-efficient alternative to the current market leaders, all of whom are non-European.

Last May, we reached a major milestone in this strategy. First, we fulfilled the mission entrusted to us by Europe: the return of high-end CPU technologies to our continent. This is a first for Europe. We have built the most complex server CPU ever designed in Europe. Furthermore, we are now competing with the market leaders, while also helping to ensure Europe’s digital sovereignty.

Our product is a good one, and it has come at just the right time, both in geopolitical terms and in terms of market demand with the come-back of CPUs.

HPCwire: Today, SiPearl is participating in European procurements with non-European processor vendors such as Nvidia and AMD. But you’re working on a complete hardware solution that combines your CPUs with Axelera’s AI processors, and with Semidynamics to exploit their RISC-V-based ASIC for AI inference. Do you aim to compete on merit at some point with major non-European processor vendors for the leading processor role in European procurements?

Philippe Notton: Absolutely. Sovereignty is a plus, but it is certainly not everything. Our ambition is to be in the running when it comes to computing power and energy efficiency.

HPCwire: Will you eventually compete outside of Europe, where European vendors often face trade barriers?

Philippe Notton: Yes. We are seeing a great deal of interest from outside Europe, in countries that are also looking for an alternative to non-European CPUs.

HPCwire: SiPearl also participates in the AETHER Consortium. What is that about?

Philippe Notton: The AETHER consortium was set-up by 2CRSi, a French specialist in high-performance servers, alongside European semiconductor actors Axelera AI and SiPearl, but also European real estate, construction, services, energy providers and infrastructure operators, to demonstrate that Europe possesses all the expertise required to build, power, operate and scale AI infrastructure. In July, the AETHER consortium announced its application for the European Commission’s forthcoming AI Gigafactory call for proposals.

HPCwire: The sharp rise of frontier AI has elevated the role of CPUs, especially for inferencing. Can you describe this change and what it may mean for SiPearl?

Philippe Notton: The rapid rise of agentic AI, combined with the rising price of GPUs, has reinforced the role of central processing units. This came as a surprise to the market, but it is now a proven fact. In a trend starting just a few months ago, the CPU:GPU ratio is now approaching 1:1 in AI servers. The result: after several years of stagnation, the CPU market is experiencing impressive growth, with longer delivery times and rising prices for the big players.

Thanks to the sharp rise of agentic AI which is set to continue, this is a long-term market trend which will, of course, be very favorable for SiPearl. We arrived at just the right time.

HPCwire: What about additional important roles for CPUs, for example in conjunction with cloud computing, quantum and edge?

Philippe Notton: SiPearl also addresses these markets. As we discussed earlier, agentic AI is a new market, driving new demand for CPUs. But the traditional markets still exist. CPUs are the base engines for HPC, cloud, and enterprise computing. They run workloads directly and orchestrate accelerators and quantum computers.

HPCwire: Rhea2 will be based on chiplets. What are the advantages of that?

Philippe Notton: Later this year we will disclose more information about Rhea2.

HPCwire: What about other emerging trends, such as optical processors and optical I/O?

Philippe Notton: We regularly scout new technologies. Co-packaged optics are maturing quickly and should be in the market by 2030. Our strategy for this will not be to lead the market, but to be a fast follower.

Optical compute needs clarification. Replacing CPUs with optical compute engines will require engineering breakthroughs that we do not envision in the short to midterm. However, matrix multiplication in the optical domain, which could translate to inference acceleration, is expected to be production capable in the next five years.

Our go-to-market today is to partner with accelerators, so we would provide the orchestration layer for companies doing optical inference acceleration.

HPCwire: Talk about plans for the Athena1 dual-use processor?

Philippe Notton: Our new product Athena1 is a customized version of Rhea1 from which we have, in particular, removed the four high bandwidth memory stacks, as these are not required for defense and aerospace, and removing them helps to reduce the cost and size of our product. Discussions are currently under way with major players in the European defense sector. We will keep you posted.

Steve Conway is an HPCwire contributor

HPCwire: Europe seems to want eventually to migrate from ARM to RISC-V. In Recoque you’ll have RISC-V vector accelerators, and as mentioned earlier SiPearl plans to exploit Semidynamics’ RISC-V-based ASIC. How do you see the future of ARM and RISC-V in advanced computing?

Philippe Notton: SiPearl is a server CPU company. Today, for server CPU ISAs there are essentially two choices: x86 (Intel, AMD) or Arm (SiPearl, Nvidia, Fujitsu, Ampere, hyperscalers—the majority of newer server CPU solutions. The choice of ISA is governed by the software ecosystem. There are many software elements, both open source and private, that must be ported to an ISA in order for the ISA to be viable as a server CPU.

RISC-V is a popular, relatively new ISA that is rapidly gaining market share in IOT and embedded CPU markets. Many of the AI accelerator companies build on RISC-V. SiPearl builds ARM-based CPUs and we interface to partner companies building accelerators, many of which are built on the RISC-V ISA.

Most folks in the industry agree that RISC-V will become viable for server CPUs, although the timeframe is in debate. We keep a technology watch on RISC-V solutions, and from our perspective it is unlikely that we will see mainstream adoption of RISC-V server CPUs by 2030.

HPCwire: Thank you for this update and congratulations on SiPearl’s momentum.

The post SiPearl Reanimates European CPU Development appeared first on HPCwire.

The security agreement gives the president and the Republican Party a foreign policy win heading into the midterm elections.

Reza Valizadeh, a U.S.-Iranian dual citizen and former journalist for U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Farda, has been imprisoned in Iran since September 2024.

President chided Kaitlan Collins for asking him question at UN after White House ban on CNN, MS Now and Politico

Donald Trump has scolded a CNN anchor for covering him at the UN in New York after banning the network and two other media outlets from the White House.

Kaitlan Collins asked the US president on Tuesday when the Iran war would end, citing a poll that claims two-thirds of Americans don’t think the US is winning.

New research highlights common themes shared by people who found reasons to keep living through dark times.

US president threatens to ‘annihilate’ Tehran and dismisses threat from AI as a ‘hoax’ in bellicose address

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump has called on nations to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices, as he gave a bellicose defence of his administration’s foreign policy and decision to strike Iran.

“I call on all nations to help to enforce the complete economic isolation of Iran,” Trump said in a speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday. “If we stand united, we will soon see a world free of the last 51-year menace of Iranian terror … and oil prices will come plummeting down even lower than they were at the start of the conflict.”

Your life insurance needs can change over time. Here's how to tell whether your current coverage still measures up.

Patrick Clancy sat down with 60 Minutes in New York City for a lengthy conversation about his ex-wife Lindsay Clancy's struggles with mental health, his grief and the social media frenzy surrounding him.

Agreement signed at the UN general assembly in New York

Nordic correspondent

Emotions among Greenlanders are a mixture of hope, scepticism and fear ahead of the signing of a new much vaunted deal on Arctic security between the US, Greenland and Denmark.

“There have been many different reactions in Greenland because they are talking about a deal but no one can see the deal, we don’t know what it is all about, and what’s in it for us or what’s in it. Also, because we have been terrorised as a people for the last 1.5 years by the American president, so many people feel no trust at all.”

Officials say one pilot safely ejected as F-16 believed to have crashed on approach to Spangdahlem after training drill

⁠An F-16 fighter jet assigned to the US air ⁠base Spangdahlem ⁠in ​western Germany crashed on Tuesday, the US military said, ⁠adding that one pilot had ejected safely and was receiving ⁠medical treatment.

The cause of the incident ​is under ‌investigation, the military ‌said in a statement, with ‌emergency response personnel at the scene of the crash.

An autopsy by the Greenville County Coroner's Office determined Hayden Panettiere's death was due to an accidental overdose of several drugs, including fentanyl.

The change, which he said will be reflected on government documents, comes amid growing anxiety about artificial intelligence.

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia in an effort to force them to hand over their unredacted voter rolls containing voters' sensitive information.

Combination of Miuccia Prada with Belgian designer Raf Simons once again spins gold for fashion house

Miuccia Prada’s style formula is simple: begin with a great skirt. Her personal uniform is a knee-length skirt, A-line or pleated, most often with a plain sweater and kitten heels.

The Prada collection that opened Milan fashion week made a compelling case for her favourite outfit, with a skirt the star of every one of the 63 looks – no dresses, no trousers. It won the room over, so expect to see the personality skirt on a high street near you soon.

The claims window is open until Dec. 21, 2026. To file a claim, iPhone users must enter basic personal info and their iPhone's serial number.

The US president spoke about the war with Iran during the UN general assembly on Tuesday, threatening to 'annihilate' the country and 'drive them into hell' if the regime didn’t agree to a deal with the United States

• Middle East braces for more violence as Iran claims US is planning to renew bombing campaign

GOP Sen. John Curtis of Utah asked a Senate panel to subpoena Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden for testimony as part of a probe into the "use of presidential family relationships" for private financial benefit.

President Trump said he could "annihilate" Iran while predicting that Tehran would make a deal to end the war after the U.S. midterm elections.

The post GOP Senator Seeks Trump Jr. Subpoena Over Russian-Funded Wedding Celebration appeared first on News Facts Network.

ICE watchers across the country who watched federal agents shoot people in the streets and fought to drive ICE from their cities are turning their new skills against the next authoritarian threat from the Trump administration: election interference.

Volunteers who showed up a few months ago asking, “Where do I buy a whistle?” are now trained and committed members of an “ICE Watch” movement, said Zach Mueller, whose anti-authoritarian group States at the Core started hosting trainings earlier this year. “They’re not in the normal cast of characters that have been showing up to rallies over the last several decades,” said Mueller. Now, they’re planning to fan out to their local polling places and defend their neighbors’ rights to vote.

The ICE-watchers-turned-poll-watchers are preparing for the worst despite a temporary win the voting rights movement secured last week, when the Supreme Court upheld a decision to block a Trump administration rule that would have let the U.S. Postal Service refuse to deliver ballots from states that don’t share their voter rolls with the federal government, among other new constraints, which advocates warned would lead to chaos and uncounted votes. While that plan was foiled for the midterms, other electoral threats abound.

Related

Federal Agents Are Intimidating Legal Observers at Their Homes: “They Know Where You Live”

“There are 100 different scenarios that you can run through,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible. “Could be ICE at the polls, could be Trump getting every Republican to swear to sabotage the results … Could be something after the fact, seizing ballot boxes or refusing to acknowledge the results. Who knows?”

What is clear, Levin said, is, “If you think that some Democratic politician is going to have some neat trick in the back pocket that they going to pull when it happens, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Federal interference at the polls is illegal. Despite lawsuits seeking to block federal immigration officers from poll sites, administration officials have continued to threaten their presence anyway. Earlier this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that immigration agents could be deployed at polling places if there is a “threat” or if they’re serving a warrant. And President Donald Trump has previously said that federal agents and the National Guard could be sent to polling locations.

Levin’s organization, which co-sponsors the No Kings protests, has launched “election protection” training programs to help people prepare to mobilize for different election sabotage scenarios, including federal immigration agents at the polls, and Mueller’s group has expanded its trainings to include election protection trainings known as “Beyond ICE Watch.”

“Ultimately this is going to come down to: Do you have a sufficient number of people organized and prepared to push back when shit hits the fan, or don’t you?” said Levin.

In the past two years, Levin said, an elite class composed of “media and business and law firms and universities” and parts of the Democratic establishment, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have capitulated to the authoritarian whims of the Trump administration.

“The only thing that has changed anything over the last 22 months has been normal, everyday people deciding they weren’t going to put up with this shit,” said Levin. “They organized, they reached out, they formed communities, and they pushed back.”

Last year, the Save America Movement, a nonprofit political and pro-democracy organization that rose up in opposition to Trump, launched “liberty vans” in Los Angeles.

The vehicles are staffed with organizers trained in documenting and deescalating violence from federal law enforcement agents. “Our perspective was that if everybody in America knew what it felt like to be in Los Angeles during that summer, nobody would be OK with this,” said Mary Corcoran, who serves as the group’s executive director.

The project later expanded to other cities including Chicago, Charlotte, and Minneapolis.

Now, Corcoran plans to deploy a similar strategy in battleground states. The group is working with major civil and labor rights figures like Rev. Al Sharpton and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten to send volunteers — including trusted community leaders like clergy members — trained in deescalation, documentation, and local voting laws to precincts with large Black, Latino, and Asian populations in North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and Michigan.

Related

ICE Poses a Real Threat to Our Elections

Corcoran said the precincts they chose are all electoral power centers with large minority and immigrant populations. “If they were successful in intimidating even 10 percent of those voters from coming back this midterm cycle, it could easily swing the outcome statewide,” she said.

Corcoran is hopeful that people knowing they will not be alone at the polls will help them feel safer, but she acknowledges that this election cycle will be a new test. “Voter intimidation has always been around,” she said. “But ICE is a new X factor in this election.”

For the NAACP, voter intimidation is a familiar threat, even if the players have changed, explained Dominik Whitehead, the group’s head of membership. “Much of this we’ve seen before,” said Whitehead. In Georgia and other battleground states in 2024, there were at least 227 bomb threats targeting polling locations and election-related offices, many of them in Black precincts.

The NAACP is “going to defend democracy and ensure voters have access to the ballot box, as we have done for the last 117 years,” said Whitehead. But like Corcoran, he acknowledges that these are “different times.”

ICE has “no jurisdiction” to prevent anyone from voting, something the NAACP has been including in their messaging to voters, he said. However, Whitehead said that they’re still anticipating the agency’s presence. He said the NAACP is “working closely with immigrant organizations” and focusing their election monitoring efforts in places like Michigan, Florida, and Texas, where they expect threats against Muslim, Latino, and Black Caribbean immigrant communities.

Related

How Did the Feds Get Into Anti-ICE Activists’ Signal Messages?

Voting by mail has already begun in several key states, including Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. For Mueller and States at the Core, the real test will come after Election Day.

“There is a real question mark in my mind about what is the reaction from the authoritarian movement to this election,” said Mueller. “And it’s worth thinking more about how folks are planning, not just for the lead-up version to this, but what happens on November 4th and afterwards.” 

The Trump administration’s attacks on mail-in voting, for example, will likely become an issue again. Concurring with the Supreme Court’s decision to stop the new rule, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that his issue with the new rule was its timing.

The post They Trained to Protect Immigrants From ICE. Now They’re Prepping to Defend the Midterm Elections. appeared first on The Intercept.

The US president remarked on CNN's presence at the UN general assembly on Tuesday, telling reporters he was 'surprised' the news network was covering him and that it 'shouldn't be here' after he banned the outlet along with MS Now and Politico from the White House last week

• US politics live

• US TV networks suspend White House pool coverage over Trump media ban

Hayden Panettiere, the former child actress who starred in TV shows “Heroes” and “Nashville,” died from an accidental fentanyl overdose, according to a South Carolina coroner’s office.

The rising cost of servicing the UK national debt pushed up borrowing last month, while oil is dropping, and M&G holds Bond Vigilantes Forum in London

How much ‘headroom’ might John Healey still have to keep within the government’s fiscal rules?

That’s the question dogging Westminster and the City.

“The chancellor has probably lost about half the headroom he inherited, leaving it between £10bn to £15bn. As long as the headroom is in double figures, he will probably be able to avoid topping it up, but the drop in headroom means any additional day-to-day spending, such as on defence or cost of living, will have to be paid for by higher taxes.

“What’s more, if the recent rise in energy prices is sustained through the next few months, household energy bills could rise by another 25% in January, which would take them above the level that the previous government capped them at. That would only further increase the pressure to act on cost of living by temporarily subsiding energy bills.

“The PM and chancellor will be feeling quite claustrophobic today as the walls close in around them. Borrowing costs keep climbing, while borrowing itself is outpacing the teeny rise in tax receipts.

Everyone can diagnose the problem, but it’s far from clear that a PM who swept to power promising good things for all is capable of holding a fractious Labour party together to carry out the tough work needed.”

Jake and Logan Paul were invited to give a motivational speech. Just don’t let them get involved with military policy

We’re now approaching month seven of a war against Iran that Donald Trump repeatedly assured us would be over in a matter of weeks. Prices are rising, troop morale is plummeting, and there is little evidence things will improve.

The situation is so desperate that the decision makers at the Pentagon have decided to bring out the big guns. I’m not talking about nuclear weapons, although Trump recently threatened to “blow the entire nation [of Iran] up”. No, I’m talking about influencers Jake and Logan Paul, who are famous for doing idiotic stunts on YouTube and getting hit in the face during boxing matches. Last Thursday, Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense or whatever they’re calling it these days (the Department of War Crimes?) welcomed the Paul brothers to Washington DC “to meet with our warriors” and deliver a motivational speech. In response, former Republican congressman and air force officer Adam Kinzinger wrote, “We aren’t a serious country at the moment.” That about sums it up.

Exclusive: Nearly half of survey respondents aged 16-24 have experienced violence on the internet, with many saying their complaints were not taken seriously

When Jane* learned that intimate photos of her had been posted on a website without her consent, she expected the police would help her. Instead, she was warned that researching where her photos had been shared might put her at risk of breaking the law.

After she was handed a leaflet on internet safety and told to go to tech companies for help, but to expect little from them, the case was closed.

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,’ the progressive US representative says

• US politics live – latest updates

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democratic congresswoman, has refused to rule out a potential run against the party’s Senate leader Chuck Schumer amid mounting speculation around her political ambitions.

When asked by the New York Times whether she would challenge Schumer in 2028, when his current term is up, Ocasio-Cortez declined to exclude the possibility – even if Democrats win back the Senate majority.

Paying off a large debt balance can take a while, but the right approach makes it easier to keep moving forward.

Tribal leaders and organizers return to reservation 10 years after demonstrations against Dakota Access pipeline

Ten years after major demonstrations against the Dakota Access pipeline, tribal leaders and Native American organizers returned to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation this week to honor the movement and its lasting impacts.

In the rural reservation area of Fort Yates, a four-day encampment that centered on the phrase “mní wičóni” – “water is life” – brought together about 150 tribal members and allies for meals, drum circles, sacred ceremonies and memorials.

Putin ally helped cover cost of renting private island in the Bahamas for wedding of Trump Jr and Bettina Anderson

• US politics live – latest updates

A Republican senator has accused Donald Trump Jr of corruption and demanded a Senate investigation into revelations that a Russian oligarch bankrolled part of his recent wedding in the Bahamas.

John Curtis, of Utah, wrote to the leaders of the US Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, urging them to subpoena Trump Jr over his business dealings, his relationships with foreign individuals, gifts he has received – and any occasions where his connection to his father, Donald Trump, “was invoked or understood to provide value”.

Brother-in-law went to check on Nicholas Brandram at his home and found him unresponsive, coroner says

The man who was arrested on suspicion of being the so-called “Putney pusher” was found dead at his home after missing a family meal, an inquest has heard.

Nicholas Brandram, 44, was arrested in June in connection with an incident on Putney Bridge on 5 May 2017 in which a jogger shoved a woman headfirst into the path of an oncoming bus.

Brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, says ‘accuracy is important’ as he responds to broadcaster’s threat to sue over claims made in memoir

Earl Spencer has apologised to Piers Morgan for incorrectly claiming in his new book about Diana, Princess of Wales, that the former tabloid editor was behind the publication of intrusive photos of the late royal in the mid-1990s.

Morgan had earlier threatened to sue Spencer over “fabricated inaccuracies” and “examples of brazen falsity” in the book, which was published today.

Some of continent’s biggest pharma firms write to national leaders calling for action to safeguard their futures

Some of Europe’s biggest pharmaceutical companies have said the continent is “losing ground” to rivals including the US and China in developing new drugs and attracting investment.

The chairs of nine companies, including Britain’s AstraZeneca, GSK and Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, wrote to Andy Burnham and the national leaders of other European countries on Tuesday to call for action to “safeguard our companies’ future”.

A man who discovered Roman silver coins in a field realized he had stumbled upon something bigger when his metal detector kept signaling.

A woman leaning on a glass window experiencing fatigue.

(The Center Square) – Republican Illinois attorney general candidate Bob Fioretti said the U.S. Postal Service should have authority to establish uniform requirements for handling mail-in ballots, while Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul has challenged the federal rule in court.

Alongside warnings about its ability to destroy humanity, artificial intelligence is also hailed for its potential to revolutionise health treatment. Just how far can it take us?

Her name was June. June would be the last month she ever knew.

I remember the way her bed made her so small, swallowed her up in the middle of the room, turned as it was to face the window. With her liver failing, her skin was a ghostly apricot. June – I called her Nan – had been stalked by the king of terrors, the emperor of all maladies: cancer. That son of a bitch.

By: John Sides and Kenneth Greene

Trump offered every American $5,000. But it might not help Republicans in November.

The post Does vote buying even work? appeared first on Good Authority.

The former UK deputy prime minister is a board member of the UK-based company and owns 917,000 shares

Nick Clegg could make approximately $40m (£30m) from the planned float of Nscale as the UK-based datacentre company prepares for a US stock market listing.

The former UK deputy prime minister owns more than 917,000 shares in the startup, which is reportedly seeking a valuation of up to $35bn in a flotation. Based on Clegg’s stake of 0.12%, that could yield a valuation of about $42m for the ex-Liberal Democrat party leader.

Jury report says ‘no credible evidence’ points to criminal conduct related to death of Mississippi teen after boat outing with friends on 4 July

A grand jury made a unanimous decision late Monday night to not bring criminal charges against anyone in the mysterious death of Nolan Wells, a Mississippi teen who died after a boat outing with friends on 4 July.

The Jackson county, Mississippi grand jury, which met from 14 September to 18 September, issued 132 subpoenas during its investigation, considered evidence from 43 witnesses and investigators, and reviewed an independent investigation by Wells’ family. They also considered physical and digital evidence, including mobile phone data and forensic reports, photographs, videos and GPS data.

The hoard, buried south of Cologne in the second century AD, is the biggest coin treasure ever found in Germany from the time of Hadrian

An amateur archaeologist who discovered several Roman silver coins in a field in western Germany realised he had stumbled upon something much bigger when his metal detector kept beeping.

Oliver Riedl called the authorities for help and a group of experts who began digging immediately discovered a total of 934 Roman silver denarii. It is the biggest coin treasure ever found in Germany from the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian, the local office in charge of archaeological monuments said on Tuesday.

The Irish government has been one of the most vocal critics of the Israeli government in recent years over its military action in Gaza.

South Carolina medical examiner says ‘no signs of trauma’ and ‘the manner of death has been ruled accident’

Hayden Panettiere died from a fentanyl overdose, according to the Greenville county coroner’s office.

Medical examiners in South Carolina confirmed the 36-year old actor’s cause of death on Tuesday, saying: “The cause of death has been ruled as toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, Alprazolam, Methocarbamol and Quetiapine.”

Sept. 22, 2026 — SiPearl, the fabless designer of European high-performance energy-efficient CPUs built for sovereign supercomputing, AI and data center, has delivered the first samples of Rhea1 to Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI. This turning point marks a major milestone. It illustrates Europe’s success in asserting its technological sovereignty in advanced computing and AI, as Rhea1 will become the first European-designed CPU deployed in a European-built platform.

Credit: Bull and SiPearl

Bull has begun integration of Rhea 1 onto its BullSequana XH3000 platform for JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer. Procured by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, JUPITER is hosted at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. This milestone will contribute to the development of JUPITER’s CPU blade, complementary to the GPU partition, paving the way for the full modular integration of the machine.

Most complex server CPU ever designed in Europe, Rhea1 includes in a single package 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores – each with 2 x 256-bit Scalable Vector Extension, 4 stacks of HBM and 4 DDR5 interfaces. Thanks to these key features, Rhea1 is ideally suited to the most demanding HPC workloads whilst offering back-door free and kill switch free security, energy-efficiency and flexibility. During the ongoing benchmarking phases at SiPearl’s laboratories, Rhea1 is delivering very encouraging performance: the early data is strong, and in some cases, performance is exceeding expectations. The performance figures, which are still to be consolidated, will be published this autumn. The equipment supplied for JUPITER represents SiPearl’s first order for Rhea1 and therefore constitutes its first significant revenue.

From dramatically improving extreme weather forecasts to accelerating breakthroughs in climate science, sustainable energy, AI, quantum research, and structural biology, JUPITER will empower researchers, industries, public organizations across Europe to drive innovation at an unprecedented scale.

“The delivery of the first Rhea1 CPUs marks an important milestone for Europe’s supercomputing sovereignty. Through the European Processor Initiative, EuroHPC JU has supported the development of a European processor that is now moving from innovation to deployment in JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer. This achievement demonstrates what Europe can accomplish by bringing together research, industry and world-class infrastructure to build a stronger European HPC ecosystem,” said Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of EuroHPC JU.

“Rhea1 plays an important role in JUPITER’s Cluster Module, complementing the GPU-based Booster with a CPU-based architecture designed for a broad range of complex and data-intensive workloads. Its high memory bandwidth is particularly well suited to applications that benefit from efficient access to large amounts of data. Bringing this European processor technology into JUPITER is an important step in making these capabilities available to the scientific community,” noted Prof. Dr. Thomas Lippert, Director of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

“This key milestone is the result of a long-term and strategic collaboration between two European tech players, federating a stronger HPC and AI ecosystem. With the arrival of the first Rhea1 CPUs and their integration into our BullSequana XH supercomputing platform, our ambition is becoming reality. Integrating a European processor onto a European platform for Europe’s flagship exascale system is a milestone we can all be proud of, and a powerful demonstration of what we can achieve together when vision is matched with execution. Thank you EuroHPC JU and Forschungszentrum Jülich for trusting us,” highlighted Bruno Lecointe, Head of HPC, AI and Quantum at Bull

“Together with Bull, our long-standing partner, we are taking a major step towards Europe’s digital sovereignty by equipping the CPU cluster of the European exascale supercomputer JUPITER with European hardware. This will be a first in Europe. I am very proud of this, as it is also a wonderful human endeavor in which teams from SiPearl, Bull, Forschungszentrum Jülich and all our European partners have worked together to ensure the success of this ambitious project, with the unwavering support of EuroHPC JU and the European authorities,” concluded Philippe Notton, CEO and Founder of SiPearl.

More from HPCwire: SiPearl Reanimates European CPU Development

About SiPearl

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

Featuring 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores with 61 billion transistors, SiPearl’s first-generation CPU, Rhea1, will be released end of 2026. Sipearl’s CPUs will equip the two first European exascale supercomputers: Rhea1 will be integrated into the JUPITER machine based in Germany and Rhea2 will be part of Alice Recoque in France.

Supported by the European Union and France, SiPearl employs 200 people in France, Spain, and Italy.

About Bull

Leveraging nearly a century of innovations, Bull is a global leader for High-Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies with c.720m€ in revenue and 3,000 professionals operating in 32 countries. Built on an open, end-to-end and trusted approach, Bull designs, deploys and operates hardware, software and strategic services that unlock enterprise value, accelerate scientific research and advance society. Driven by world-class R&D, backed by 1,600 patents, manufacturing excellence and data sciences expertise, Bull enables nations and industries to fully control their AI and data and to drive progress for the benefit of the planet.

Source: Bull

The post SiPearl Delivers 1st Rhea1 CPU Samples to Bull for JUPITER Supercomputer appeared first on HPCwire.

Mark Rutte has the right idea – go beyond Washington and make the case for the transatlantic alliance to the public. They may well have a willing ear

At a moment when Europe is focused on persuading Donald Trump to remain committed to Nato, it needs to convince Americans, too. So the presence this evening of the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, in front of a public audience in Des Moines, Iowa, is significant. This is the home town of Trump’s ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, and the visit brings the debate over Nato’s future directly to a midwestern audience in a red state that operates far from elite foreign-policy circles in Washington. Rutte’s appearance is long overdue.

Russia’s war in Ukraine and uncertainty over the US commitment to European security have forced European leaders to confront their dependence on Washington. While some are pressing for building European capabilities as a means to separate from the US, others see greater European defence spending as essential to keeping the US engaged. Either way, European governments can’t rely solely on meetings with Trump to secure the alliance’s future.

Seasonal eating in America was built on real limits, and for most of the country’s history, the food calendar was simply accurate. Then refrigeration and ... Read moreThe post The foods everyone thinks are seasonal but really aren’t appeared first…

Florida leads the nation in lightning deaths as experts see a huge increase in daily strikes this summer.

White House press coverage row continues while anchor-less channel of the administration’s ‘latest and greatest’ streams propaganda for the Maga faithful

Donald Trump’s previous television career centred on his role on The Apprentice, but the US president’s latest media venture is a rather lower-budget affair: the launch of Trump TV in the wake of his ban on several outlets from covering the White House.

With major US networks agreeing to not cover the president while the dispute continues, on Monday the White House announced the new 24/7 YouTube live stream, which it promised would feature “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place”.

Online personality "Clavicular," whose real name is Braden Peters, faces two felony charges and one misdemeanor charge. He denies the allegations.

Is the Breville Eye Q 850 too smart or just smart enough? I tested it to find out.

The Massachusetts case is the latest in a series of legal woes for the influencer whose real name is Braden Eric Peters

The online influencer known as Clavicular – who helped fuel the rise of the extreme male appearance-improvement trend of “looksmaxxing” – has been charged with rape and drug offenses in Massachusetts.

The 20-year-old, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters, has been scheduled for a 14 October arraignment on Cape Cod, according to legal documents seen by the Guardian.

A quick soak and a drizzle of fat will send your air fryer fries soaring.

By Dean Murray NASA is making progress towards its mission to land astronauts on the Moon. Booster segments are being fitted this month to provide thrust for a crewed Artemis III mission in 2027. Technicians integrated the left forward booster…

Technicians integrate the left forward booster segment for NASA's Artemis III SLS (Space Launch System) rocket onto the left booster segments atop the mobile launcher in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in…

QuEra and HPE will enable organization access to quantum computing capabilities on-premises by integrating neutral-atom fault-tolerant systems with the HPE Cray supercomputing platform.

BOSTON, Sept. 22, 2026 — QuEra Computing today announced a collaboration with HPE to integrate neutral-atom, fault-tolerant quantum computing with on-premise high-performance computing (HPC) environments powered by the HPE Cray supercomputing platform. The collaboration gives HPC centers, national laboratories, and enterprises a path to bring QuEra’s frontier systems into new supercomputing infrastructure.

Useful fault-tolerant quantum computing will run alongside classical supercomputing in hybrid workflows where HPC handles large-scale classical computation and the quantum system tackles selected subproblems that are impractical or impossible to solve classically.

Organizations that already operate large classical resources have new choices in how they bring quantum computing into their workflows — through the cloud, on-premise, or a combination of the two. The combined approach aligns with US national priorities, such as Genesis Mission, a historic national initiative led by the U.S. Department of Energy, which is building the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia, and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments.

QuEra and HPE are pursuing integrated testbeds, hybrid algorithm co-design, software interoperability, and system-level performance benchmarking, targeting deployment alongside the HPE Cray supercomputing platform. HPE Cray supercomputing provides an industry-leading HPC foundation for hybrid quantum-classical workflows, enabling QuEra’s fault-tolerant systems to be tightly integrated with a customer’s most demanding workloads.

QuEra has worked with HPE since 2025. At HPE Discover Las Vegas 2026, HPE showcased magic-state, featuring QuEra to demonstrate the company’s vision for hybrid quantum-classical computing.

“Bringing neutral-atom, fault-tolerant systems into an HPC environment introduces a different engineering problem than delivering quantum computing over the cloud,” said Yuval Boger, Chief Commercial Officer at QuEra Computing. “HPE’s deep experience in supercomputing gives organizations the benefit of working with a partner who can solve that problem at the scale they need.” “Organizations running the world’s most demanding workloads need quantum and classical computing to work together seamlessly,” said Dr. Masoud Mohseni, Senior Distinguished Technologist and Director of HPE Quantum. “Our partnership with QuEra aims to bring fault-tolerant quantum capabilities into HPC environments, creating a clear path from today’s supercomputers to tomorrow’s hybrid quantum-classical systems.”

Two Complementary Paths to Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

With this announcement, QuEra now offers two synergistic routes to its fault-tolerant systems, offering organizations a choice to take one or both. For example, organizations will be able to deploying on-premises for sovereign or tightly coupled workloads while drawing on the cloud for elastic simulation and burst capacity.

• On-premises deployment, through HPE: For organizations that need a system inside their own environment, whether for sovereignty or data residency needs, or to tightly couple into existing workflows, the HPE collaboration provides a path to integrate QuEra’s systems with the HPE Cray supercomputing platform, including plans for a potential gigaquop system.
• Cloud access, through a major Cloud provider: Libra, QuEra’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer, is an over 256 logical qubit, megaquop-class system designed to perform on the order of one million reliable logical operations, targeted for availability on the cloud in 2028, with the gigaquop system to follow.

In practice, the two paths form a single journey. An organization might begin in the cloud to build applications and expertise today, then have HPE build an on-premises system to safeguard data and sovereignty. Equally, a customer committing to an on-premises deployment can run production workloads on the cloud in the interim until its own system is installed and continue drawing on cloud capacity afterward whenever demand exceeds what sits in its data center.

“Cloud access and on-premises deployment are complementary paths. They are different answers to the question of where a system resides,” said Boger. “We are delighted to partner with a company such as HPE. Through our partnership with HPE and our previously-announced partnerships, we can provide a great solution whether a customer application requires cloud access, on-premises deployment or both.”

About QuEra Computing

QuEra is putting quantum to work. As the scientific and commercial leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, we help enterprise innovators leverage quantum to gain competitive advantage, support HPC centers as their users tackle classically intractable problems, and enable government programs to build national and sovereign capabilities. We do this by combining our quantum systems, available on-premises and via the cloud, with application co-design and collaborative research. Born at Harvard and MIT and still advancing together, QuEra builds neutral-atom systems on a public, peer-reviewed path to fault tolerance, and operates globally from Boston, New Mexico, Tokyo, Zurich, and the United Kingdom. As quantum computing moves from “one day” to “Day One,” QuEra delivers practical impact today while leading the path toward large-scale, fault-tolerant systems. See what’s possible at www.quera.com.

Source: QuEra Computing

The post QuEra and HPE Plan On-Premises Quantum Systems for HPC Centers appeared first on HPCwire.

A stressed middle-aged woman sitting on her bed at home.

Caraway launched its first appliance today, and we got our hands on it early.

While Bambu Labs has made laser cutters in the past, the R1 is the company’s first dedicated tool.

Thousands flee fighting as Iran-aligned group seeks to consolidate territorial gains against Saudi-backed government forces

• Middle East live – latest updates

As many as 169 people have been reportedly killed in Yemen in the last three days as Iran-aligned Houthis battle Saudi-backed government forces for control of strategic heights on the Red Sea coast, while thousands flee the violence.

Houthi military officials said at least 118 people had been killed in clashes as well as Saudi air and artillery strikes on Taiz, al-Jawf, Marib and Saada provinces since Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. Yemeni government sources have said at least 36 people have been killed on their side of the conflict.

Two separate sessions aim to further build momentum behind the open-source pNFS metadata architecture for AI and HPC storage

MANCHESTER, England, Sept. 22, 2026 — PEAK:AIO, a leader in high-performance storage for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), today announced that the pNFS Lattice development team, including Gary Grider of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), will host a “Birds of a Feather” (BoF) session “Fully Open Source Parallel NFS with pNFS-Lattice Scalable Metadata Service”at 7:00 pm at the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Developer Conference (SDC’26), taking place September 28–30 in Santa Clara, California.

The September 28 session will provide attendees with an opportunity to discuss pNFS Lattice, share ideas for future development and explore opportunities for community participation. The BoF is intended to encourage collaboration among developers, storage architects and organizations interested in advancing open and scalable parallel file systems.

The presentation marks the first public technical discussion of pNFS Lattice since the open-source project was introduced earlier this year. Developed through a long-term engineering collaboration between PEAK:AIO and Los Alamos National Laboratory and released under the Linux Foundation, pNFS Lattice is designed to advance parallel file system architecture by introducing an elastic, distributed approach to metadata services for AI and HPC environments.

In addition, John Harechmak, WW Vice President of Field Engineering at PEAK:AIO, will join Brian Atkinson of Los Alamos National Laboratory to present “pNFS Lattice: Decoupling Metadata, State and Control in Parallel Filesystems” at 5:10 PM also on September 28. This session will move the conversation beyond Lattice’s initial launch and examine its central breakthrough: transforming metadata from a fixed infrastructure bottleneck into an elastic, independently scalable service.

As AI and HPC infrastructure continues to scale, storage architectures are under pressure to deliver data to thousands of GPUs and CPUs simultaneously. Parallel file systems have become increasingly effective at moving data across large numbers of storage servers. However, the metadata services responsible for locating, organizing and coordinating that data frequently remain tied to static servers, dedicated metadata infrastructure or tightly coupled failover pairs. As AI clusters expand to thousands of GPUs and generate increasingly metadata-intensive workloads, those fixed architectures can constrain the performance and resilience of the entire storage environment. pNFS Lattice was developed to address these challenges through a modular architecture that enables metadata services to scale independently of the underlying storage infrastructure.

The SNIA Developer Conference brings together storage architects, developers, engineers and researchers to explore emerging technologies shaping the future of storage. With technical sessions focused on AI infrastructure, computational storage, memory technologies and cloud storage, the conference provides an ideal forum for continued discussion around open, standards-based innovations such as pNFS Lattice.

More from HPCwire

• PEAK:AIO and LANL Advance AI Storage with Open-Source Lattice Metadata Server
• PEAK:AIO Secures Over $6.8M in Seed Round Funding

About PEAK:AIO

PEAK:AIO is a Manchester, UK-based software-defined AI storage company. Its platform delivers high-performance AI storage from a single server to exabytes on any industry-standard hardware. PEAK:AIO is deployed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, NHS AIDE, Oxford Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Liverpool, the University of Strathclyde MediForge Hub and the Zoological Society of London. Learn more at https://peakaio.com.

Source: PEAK:AIO

The post PEAK:AIO and LANL to Discuss pNFS Lattice at SNIA Developer Conference 2026 appeared first on HPCwire.

SHANGHAI, Sept. 22, 2026 — At HUAWEI CONNECT 2026, Huawei hosted the AI DC Innovation Summit themed “Leading AI DC Innovation, Shaping the Agentic World,” convening over 600 industry leaders and researchers. During the event, Huawei unveiled its upgraded Stellar AI Fabric Solution to deliver continuous uptime and maximum compute utilization for production AI clusters.

Credit: Huawei

Keynote: Engineering the Network Fabric for Agentic AI

Erick Zhang, President of Data Center Network Domain at Huawei Data Communication Product Line, noted that AI is turning traditional data centers into compute factories. In this agentic era, the underlying network fabric directly dictates token throughput and overall compute yield.

To address this demand, the upgraded Stellar AI Fabric integrates Rock-Solid Architecture 2.0, StarryWing Digital Map 2.0, Hyper-Converged Fabric (HCF), and Network Packet Load Balancing (NPLB). The upgraded NetMaster network AI agent automates root-cause analysis for 95% of network faults within minutes, maintaining consistent production uptime.

High-Throughput Hardware Platforms

Huawei launched two switch families built for high-density computing:

• CloudEngine SF9300 (UBG switch): Uses a two-layer multi-plane architecture that cuts buildout costs by 30%. Simplified UB forwarding lowers end-to-end latency by 40%. For link reliability, Link-Layer Retransmission (LLR) executes microsecond-level recovery, eliminating packet loss during link flapping.
• CloudEngine XH9300 (NPO switch): Delivers proprietary 100T and 51.2T. A centralized light source and proprietary 3.2T Optical Engine (OE) lower interconnect power draw by 40%. By eliminating the optical DSP (oDSP) stage, the architecture cuts forwarding latency by 26%, while snap-in pluggable optical engines speed up maintenance tenfold.

Financial Industry Standard and Research Deployment

The Beijing FinTech Industry Alliance, Huawei, and 17 partners released the Technical Specification for Network High Availability of Financial Data Center. The standard defines technical baselines and testing methods across two categories and five network types for both intra-DC and cross-DC environments, evaluating architectural redundancy, fault recovery, and proactive prevention.

In scientific research, Qi Fazhi, Computing Center Director at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported that deploying the Stellar AI Fabric lifted computing efficiency by over 10%. Network-wide load balancing resolved training traffic imbalances, providing unhindered throughput for massive telemetry data and accelerating deep-space signal analysis.

Moving forward, Huawei continues to invest in intelligent data center networking with global partners to advance next-generation compute infrastructure.

More from HPCwire: Huawei Unveils New UnifiedBus Computing Architecture for SuperPoDs and Clusters

Source: Huawei

The post Huawei Upgrades Stellar AI Fabric Solution to Build Efficient AI Computing Production Networks appeared first on HPCwire.

MPs send out letter as Israeli government seeks bids for construction of large E1 settlement in West Bank

British banks and financial institutions are receiving written warnings from MPs that they should not invest in Israel’s E1 settlement project even though new UK laws banning trade with illegal settlements are unlikely to be in place for months.

A letter was sent to banks on Tuesday by the all-party Britain-Palestine group of MPs saying the onus was now on banks to review their obligations not to cooperate with new settlements.

António Guterres says humanity faces unprecedented convergence of threats but mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain

The world’s fault lines have turned from cracks into canyons as superpowers show that they alone do not have the military, economic and technological power to guarantee security or solve the world’s problems, the outgoing secretary general of the United Nations has said in his final address to the general assembly.

In a speech laced with despair but also glimpses of defiant hope, António Guterres said that over the last decade, largely spanning his 10-year period in office, “wars erupted with devastating consequences and dragged on with despicable cruelty. Civilians were targeted. Human rights trampled. Hunger weaponised. Humanitarians killed. International law cast aside.”

• New York Giants 6-28 Los Angeles Rams

• Aaron Donald celebrates return to NFL with victory

• Davante Adams has eight catches for 195 yards

Davante Adams made eight catches for 195 yards and hauled in two of Matthew Stafford’s four touchdown passes, and the Los Angeles Rams welcomed Aaron Donald back to the NFL with a 28-6 victory over the New York Giants on Monday night.

Stafford passed for 327 yards for the Rams (1-1), who capitalized after the Giants (1-1) lost Jaxson Dart to a knee injury on their first offensive series.

Two U.S. missiles hit an elementary school in Iran, killing over 150 people including 123 children on the first day of the Iran War. But Gizmodo notes that a new Bloomberg investigation cites U.S. officials involved in an unreleased internal Pentagon review who blame "a cascade of preventable failures that included an overreliance on an AI tool built by Palantir." According to the officials who spoke to Bloomberg, some personnel inside U.S. Central Command leaned too hard on the AI inside the Maven Smart System, an AI-powered data integration and targeting platform developed by Palantir to accelerate intelligence analysis and decision-making. The Defense Department has reportedly made the software tool a cornerstone of military operations over the past year... Officials said some users expected Maven to flag stale records or contradictions in the intelligence assembled for potential targets, though it is not clear why they thought the system would do that. The Minab [elementary school] site, which was cataloged as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility due to outdated data, was fed into Maven with other candidates and came out as a recommended day-one target. Target-list work that once took hours was condensed into minutes. A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company "is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies" and that there is no evidence its software was at fault. Two people familiar with Palantir's Pentagon contracts said the government keeps primary responsibility for the quality of the information that's fed into Maven. After the strike, Palantir added features that "re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed," a person familiar with the work said. That new functionality is said to have already caught some anomalies... More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit in the first 24 hours, and according to Bloomberg's sources, that pace compressed the time available for additional confirmations. Staffing on civilian harm mitigation teams across the U.S. Department of Defense had also fallen by roughly 90% over recent years, shrinking to fewer than 20 people overall. The U.S. Central Command's group shrank from 10 people to one. No member of those teams reviewed the Minab site before the missiles were up in the air. A separate inquiry by the United Nations' Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran this week reached the conclusion that there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sept. 22, 2026 — A team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developed a powerful new approach that enabled them to directly observe how electrons interact with defects in advanced semiconductor devices with an unprecedented level of detail. Their methodology included an innovative simulation tool that enabled accurate theoretical interpretations of their experimental observations.

The study, published in Nature, focuses on cutting-edge, ultrathin devices known as two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors that have very unusual electron states.

The experimental image on the left is a scanning tunnelling microscope image of the research team’s 2D semiconductor device. The distinct elliptical, bright orange regions are electrons in the Wigner solid state while the more elongated structures in the lower right are electrons beginning to “melt” into a Fermi liquid state. The clusters of tiny red circles in the black regions indicate the locations of defects. The theoretical image on the right is a Quantum Monte Carlo simulation that shows nearly identical features as the experimental image. The close agreement between the two images helps confirm that the experimental images are showing genuine electron behavior rather than artifacts of the microscope, while also validating the accuracy of the simulation technique. Credit: Berkeley Lab.

“Our study yielded valuable insights into why electrons in 2D semiconductors behave the way they do,” said Mike Crommie, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, and one of the study’s authors. “Our methods open the door to the discovery of never-seen-before electron behaviors that can be used for new semiconductor capabilities. This will be important for the future development of semiconductor devices at the ultimate limits of miniaturization.”

Other research team members include Feng Wang, a faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics, and scientists from the University of California, the Flatiron Institute, the University of New Mexico, Hofstra University, Arizona State University, and the National Institute for Materials Science (Japan).

An Investigation of Ultrathin Semiconductors Containing Strongly Interacting Electrons

Conventional silicon-based semiconductor devices, such as transistors, computer chips, and sensors, are made of materials in which atoms are arranged in three-dimensional structures. In recent years, device developers have increasingly explored the possibility of using 2D semiconductors, which are materials made of just a single layer — or a few layers — of atoms. Their ultrathin structure changes how electrons behave, potentially enabling new capabilities in future semiconductor devices.

The Berkeley Lab–led research team investigated 2D materials in which the electrons are in an unusual state known as a Wigner solid. In ordinary semiconductor devices, electrons typically behave like independent particles moving through the material. Their interactions with one another have a relatively minor influence on their behavior — and on the overall operation of the device.

“Physicists call this conventional state a Fermi liquid because the electrons move around like waves in the ocean,” said Crommie.

Under certain conditions, electrons can enter a Wigner solid state in which they separate from one another and become immobile. Physicists describe such a system as “strongly interacting” because the electrons’ mutual repulsion becomes the dominant factor shaping their behavior. Rather than moving independently, electrons in Wigner solids organize themselves into a relatively orderly pattern and behave collectively as a group.

Defects Have An Outsized Influence on Electron Behavior

Historically, it has not been possible for scientists to directly image how electrons and defects interact in strongly interacting 2D semiconductor systems. It is extremely difficult to design semiconductor devices so that they can be imaged with enough resolution to see features on the scale of individual atoms. As a result, researchers have often resorted to a less direct approach to understanding electron-defect interactions: connecting wires to semiconductor devices and measuring how easily electricity flows through them.

“Some of the conclusions in these previous experiments were ambiguous because the researchers could not actually see the electrons and the defects at the same time,” said Crommie. “They were inferring the behavior based on electrical conductivity.”

To address the imaging challenge, the team used a tool known as a scanning tunnelling microscope. This instrument hovers a tiny metal tip just above a material’s surface and extracts electrical current as the tip scans across the surface. To achieve the highest possible structural and electronic resolution, the research team spent years carefully developing a device that sandwiches the 2D semiconductor material of interest — in this case, molybdenum diselenide — in between a graphite layer on top and a silicon wafer and boron nitride layer on the bottom. The metal tip scans the molybdenum diselenide through tiny holes cut into the graphite.

The team used this set-up to image semiconductor samples with different defect densities. After each image was taken, they changed the density of electrons in their 2D device to visualize the material’s transition from Wigner solid to Fermi liquid.

The images the researchers obtained revealed that electron behavior in their devices varied dramatically based on the number of defects in the 2D semiconductor material. When many defects were present, the electrons became locked into an unexpectedly stable Wigner solid state exhibiting highly irregular, disordered patterns. With fewer defects present, the electrons arranged themselves into much more orderly, triangular, crystal-like patterns that transitioned more readily to the Fermi liquid state.

Crommie described the moment when he first viewed the images and realized he was seeing something fundamentally new. “It was exciting to see the Wigner solid melt into liquid-like waves splashing up against defects,” he said. “We could see how electrons respond to defects in very different ways. Some defects acted like large potholes while others acted like tiny speed bumps.”

Images Agree with Theory

To explain the defect-electron interactions observed in these images and confirm that the images were not showing artifacts due to the microscope’s operation, the team needed to compare their images to a theoretical model. The challenge was that there was no existing theory in the scientific literature for accurately simulating images of 2D semiconductor systems with strongly interacting electrons and random defects. It is difficult to perform the complex calculations needed to predict the behavior of large collections of electrons under these conditions.

The team used a sophisticated computer simulation technique called Quantum Monte Carlo to calculate how strongly electrons in a 2D semiconductor material interact with defects based on the laws of quantum mechanics. The simulated electron behavior closely matched the patterns observed in the microscope images.

“This remarkable agreement confirmed the accuracy of both our theoretical simulation tool and our imaging technique,” said Crommie. “It also helped us better understand the physics underlying the behaviors we observed in our images.”

Crommie added that the results suggest that controlling both placement and types of defects will likely become a much more important consideration as device developers push digital electronics, sensors, and other semiconductor devices to ever smaller dimensions.

Other researchers and device developers can apply the team’s methodology — an integrated combination of imaging and theoretical simulations — to understand the electronic behavior of other 2D semiconductors, particularly those with strongly interacting electrons.

“The semiconductors in today’s smartphones and computers don’t contain Wigner solids, but they may in the future as devices become more advanced,” said Crommie. “Our methods can help researchers and manufacturers understand what electrons will do under these conditions, informing the design of increasingly miniaturized devices with advanced capabilities.”

The team is extending its results by exploring how electron behavior is affected when electrons are confined to tiny channels in semiconductor devices. Another goal is to investigate how electrons behave in 2D semiconductors with fewer defects.

This research was supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences; the Department of Defense’s Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship; the National Science Foundation; and the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute.

Source: Michael Matz, Berkeley Lab

The post Berkeley Lab Combines Imaging and Simulation to Probe Ultrathin Semiconductors appeared first on HPCwire.

As more creators edit on the go, Adobe is making Premiere compatible with more devices, including foldables.

Independent outlets are leaning on social media, chat and other nontraditional methods to fight disinformation

When Allan Marrero, an asylum seeker from the Cayman Islands, was released after five months in immigration detention, his family made sure to invite one journalist to his celebration: Eileen Grench, a reporter with the independent, non-profit news outlet Documented.

Grench had previously reported on Marrero, who was detained after interviewing with federal officials for a marriage-based green card. But beyond covering his detention struggles, she humanized him, emphasizing his and his husband’s love story.

President Donald Trump is due to sign off on a new security arrangement with Denmark and Greenland, as well as meet leaders from Ukraine and Persian Gulf nations.

Well-textured microfoam is within reach. Here’s the cheap tool that will get you there.

Around half of the cameras that shot the baseball game were new iPhone 18 Pro Max units, some of which sent footage over 5G.

Nolan Wells, 18, was found dead after going missing following an outing with friends on Mississippi's Horn Island on the Fourth of July.

Sixteen bears are facing off in Fat Bear Week​ 2026, the highly anticipated tournament among the chunkiest bears at the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

As animal behaviorists increasingly use AI in their research, they grapple with how to wield the technology responsibly

I’m sitting in a small boat in Shark Bay, Australia, eavesdropping on a conversation between some of Earth’s most intelligent beings. The motor is off, the turquoise sea is glassy, and Stephanie King and I are motionless, transfixed by the whistles, clicks and squeezy, whirring noises made by the dolphins swimming below us.

If anyone could tell me what these big-brained social mammals are saying, it would be her. Based at the University of Bristol, she co-leads Shark Bay Dolphin Research, one of the longest-running wild dolphin research projects in the world. She has spent thousands of hours watching and listening to this population.

Days before Xi Jinping’s summit with Donald Trump, new study shows trade deficit ran at more than €1bn daily in July

Consumers and businesses in the EU are spending three times more on Chinese imports than their counterparts in China are buying from the bloc, a study has shown.

Customs data showed the gap between the EU’s imports from China and exports to China, the trade deficit, ran at more than €1bn (£860m) a day in July.

Former chancellor, now senior figure at OpenAI, says UK needs datacentres to maintain ‘sovereignty’ over AI tech

• UK politics live – latest updates

Datacentre nimbys are holding Britain back, George Osborne has said in reaction to nationwide protests about the giant water- and energy-guzzling structures.

The former Tory chancellor is now the head of AI for countries at OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. His job is to represent the company to governments around the world and he also has a role in enabling the building of datacentres and other infrastructure.

Broadcaster refutes memoir claim that he was behind alleged hidden-camera gym photos of Diana, Princess of Wales

Piers Morgan has said he will sue Earl Spencer over “fabricated inaccuracies” and “examples of brazen falsity” in his book about the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

The earl has made a series of claims in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister – including that King Charles said “we’ll forget her soon enough” after she died, which has prompted a war of words between him and Buckingham Palace.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
For nearly a decade, Delaware schools have been struggling with poor test scores from students. Many critics have sought greater accountability measures for school districts that aren’t showing progress fast enough, and now the Department of Education has put forward such a draft plan.

As Delaware continues to grapple with concerningly low average test scores from students, the state Department of Education has drafted a plan that could see it take over low-performing schools or even hold back third-graders who are far behind grade-level reading and writing.

According to annual proficiency scores released by the state last month, less than half of Delaware’s third through eighth graders read and do math at a proficient level. And just 18% of 11th graders were proficient in math.

But Education Secretary Cindy Marten told state board of education members that Delaware must have a clearer, more-defined answer for what happens when a school, or its students, consistently do not show test score improvements. 

“We can’t just say, ‘Well, they didn’t get it. Oh well, move on next year,’” she said during last week’s state board meeting.

To address those concerns, Marten unveiled a draft framework that consists of five tiers, ranging in support and accountability measures for district schools and charter schools. The universal expectation is for schools to be in Tier 1, which has the lowest level of intervention. 

While additional supports are introduced at Tiers 2 and 3, state intervention begins at Tier 4 and is carried into Tier 5. 

Schools with little to no progress that are placed in Tier 4 would see “state-directed instructional and operational actions, leadership or staffing supports, and decisions need to be made when they’re needed,” Marten said. 

Those schools would also participate in monthly implementation and performance review meetings with the Department of Education.

If none of the state-implemented supports work, the school would be placed in Tier 5 — resulting in receivership, where the Delaware Department of Education would take over operation of the school and appoint leadership, until conditions improved.

Marten told board members that the goal of Tier 5 is not to close schools. Instead, a state-approved “receiver” would address school conditions with a local school board, superintendent and principal while working on a “public recovery plan,” she said.

A return of full authority to local leadership and the school board would be phased in after sustained progress.

Marten also announced the possibility of holding third-graders back, a tactic that Mississippi has used to dramatically increase proficiency scores, but has also come under criticism from some as a manipulation of its test scores. Such a tactic would be a last-resort option, she said.

Delaware must first focus on early intervention screenings to address learning disabilities earlier and monitor students’ progress over time, Marten said. If students are not improving after receiving individualized support, then whether a student should begin fourth grade will be evaluated based on the student’s data. 

“This is not a third-grade retention plan with a literacy plan wrapped around it,” she said during the meeting. “The whole point is prevention.”

The announcement came just one month after Marten told Spotlight Delaware that there will be “real action” taken if a school continues to underperform “for so many numbers of days, weeks, months, years.” 

Marten did not specify what those actions may look like at the time.

Further determinations to be made

Marten reiterated throughout the meeting that the framework is only a draft, and more specifications still have to be made. 

Marten said “some” of the framework would require legislative action before it is implemented, and plans to have legislation ready for the start of the new session in January. 

The department will also have to determine how long a school can remain in a specific tier and establish criteria for where schools should be placed if the framework is implemented, among other details. 

Marten also said the Delaware Department of Education will be holding more stakeholder engagement opportunities in the coming months. 

Still, she noted that “nobody’s saying we don’t need this [framework,] everybody’s saying we do need this.”

In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Lake Forest Superintendent Steven Lucas, who is also the president of the Delaware Chief School Officer’s Association, said his organization looks forward to working with Marten’s department to ensure the accountability framework “accurately assesses the needs and output of the public school districts, supports the work of our public school teachers, and helps to increase the college and career readiness of our graduates.”

Still, some education leaders have expressed concern with Marten’s draft framework. 

Delaware State Education Association President Tameka Mays wrote in a statement to Spotlight Delaware that the state’s educators’ union is committed to having conversations with Marten, Gov. Matt Meyer, and legislators about plans for improving student academic performance. 

But in her statement, Mays said she and her organization have mixed feelings about Marten’s plan. 

“There are aspects we favor, such as additional instructional support for struggling students, and aspects that raise serious concern for our members and our communities, including the process leading up to a possible state takeover of our local schools and the potential for 8- and 9-year-olds to be held back a grade,” Mays said in her statement. 

She said the union will also be gathering feedback from its members throughout the state in the coming weeks. 

Correction: This story originally reported that receivership for poor performance would fall to school districts, but this option would actually be designated for an individual school and not the district as a whole.

The post Struggling Delaware schools could be taken over by DOE under draft plan appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

President’s decision to ban three news organisations from White House prompts backlash. Plus, a new resource to help trace the history of enslaved people in the 19th century

Good morning. The row over media access to the presidency has deepened, with major US television news outlets agreeing to suspend their video coverage of Donald Trump after the administration banned journalists from several outlets from entering the White House grounds.

The president had abruptly announced his ban against CNN, MS Now and Politico, saying he had had enough of “purposely negative stories” about him. On Monday the ban against CNN meant no broadcaster was covering Trump’s midday ribbon-cutting for a new White House helipad. The White House provided its own livestream but the president’s remarks were inaudible over the sound of a helicopter’s engine.

How have CNN, MS Now and Politico responded to the ban? A lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order that would immediately lift the ban. In a statement, the organizations said: “We are filing a lawsuit today to protect our first amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”

What other significant media developments have there been? Paramount has reached a settlement with California and several other states that sued over its proposed $81bn merger with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), the California attorney general announced, clearing the way to consolidate some of Hollywood’s most recognizable TV networks and studios under one owner.

What else is Trump expected to say at the UN? The US ambassador to the UN said Trump would speak about how he had “confronted complex problems head-on around the world”. Our writer Robert Tait notes in this analysis, however, that thanks to Trump’s recent social media blitz and self-proclaimed “25 top achievements”, the chances of an uplifting speech appear slim.

Scientists found unequal impact of the climate crisis would not be reversed even if implicit goal of the 2015 Paris agreement is achieved

The unequal impact of the climate crisis on the world’s poorest people, including those in tropical areas, has been highlighted by new research that finds they will be among the last to feel the benefits if global greenhouse gas emissions are cut to net zero.

Temperatures have risen more significantly in tropical areas relative to their historic range than at higher latitudes, including in wealthier countries in Europe and North America.

Lian Yunzhi, who practices 2 to 3 hours daily, has become the first female speedcuber to average under 4.5 seconds in competition, according to Chinese state media.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention refuses to count four measles deaths in the state though doctors are ‘seeing new forms’ of disease

The US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its measles dashboard on Friday – but it’s still not counting four measles deaths in Pennsylvania, where the outbreak appears to be accelerating and cases are appearing in ways providers have never seen before.

Members of Congress on Monday requested an “immediate briefing” on the decision to change how measles deaths are reported as cases continue to rise throughout the United States, reaching levels not seen in decades. A possible measles exposure was reported in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia last week.

Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin, who were forced to move abroad in 2021, tell of president capable of ‘limitless cruelty’

At 6am on 29 June 2021, the Russian journalist Roman Badanin was woken by a knock on the door of his family’s Moscow apartment. “Come quickly, someone has scratched your car in the courtyard,” a voice shouted from outside. As he opened the door, masked men pushed their way in.

Across the city, a similar raid was happening at the home of Badanin’s colleague Mikhail Rubin. The masked men were officers of the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, instruments of the “climate of fear and violence” that the journalists say Vladimir Putin has imposed on Russia in their forensically detailed biography of the Russian president.

A photo posted on the Hot Spots Charters Facebook page shows the large gray drone next to a table of fish.

Epson’s new LS models are laser-lit and cheaper than the flagship LS11000.

Trump–Xi summit: Why the US and China should not underestimate each other Expert comment LToremark 22 September 2026

The US and China both face serious domestic strains. As Trump and Xi meet this week to discuss trade, AI and Taiwan, neither side should mistake the other’s weaknesses for strategic decline.

A superpower summit is a big deal. As US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping meet in Washington this week, they have a lot to cover. They will try to extend a trade truce that expires in November, including China’s pause on rare earth export controls and America’s delay on chip restrictions. The leaders will also tackle Taiwan, where Beijing wants Washington to halt a $14 billion arms package, as well as China’s purchases of Iranian oil and a proposed dialogue on the national security risks of artificial intelligence (AI).

In their negotiations, each side may be tempted to focus on the other’s weaknesses. But underestimating the other’s power would be unwise.

China has many weaknesses – but should not be underestimated

Many observers argue that China’s economic vulnerabilities will limit its international ambitions. Its growth model is faltering; its households still are not spending, so Beijing continues to push surplus production overseas. This has provoked a backlash of trade barriers from the US, EU and beyond. The property sector – once a quarter of the economy – is in its fifth year of slump, while a mountain of hidden local government debt threatens to drag down China’s growth for years to come.

Meanwhile Xi’s government has become steadily more restrictive: tightening political control (such as the new travel restrictions) and placing national security at the centre of economic life. 

But Washington should not misjudge Chinese power. China possesses formidable industrial might, with dominance in areas such as electric vehicles, batteries, solar power, drones and telecommunications equipment. China also rivals the US in AI: its models now match leading American systems at a fraction of the cost and are used by developers worldwide (including many in the US). Although gaps in Chinese technology remain – notably in advanced semiconductors – there, too, Chinese firms are likely to grow increasingly competitive. 

Many observers will again be tempted to predict that Xi’s tightening grip will choke Chinese innovation. But it is time to bin the argument that authoritarian China can only copy and cheaply produce what other countries invent. Indeed, many of China’s recent innovations have come amid tightening control. The AI sector took off only after Xi came to power and flourished despite his regulatory crackdown on technology firms and entrepreneurs. 

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Join us at our Global Trade Conference for expert analysis on the shifting rules of the global economy.

China’s innovation model is simply different. The state picks strategic sectors and drenches them in cheap capital, subsidies and guaranteed demand. Fierce competition among firms, a vast domestic market and the world’s deepest manufacturing base bring research into mass production faster than anywhere else. 

This approach has its problems; not least that it is wasteful and prone to overcapacity. As an autocracy, Chinese innovation may never outpace that of the United States. But even in second place, China is a daunting technological competitor. The US should thus adopt policies to support domestic innovation and help US firms keep their lead for as long as possible.

China’s economic weaknesses also do not imply strategic weakness. When Trump escalated the trade war last year, Beijing targeted US dependence on Chinese rare earths. The threat of Chinese export controls forced Washington into a truce, agreed when Trump and Xi met in Busan last October. Extending that truce will be high on this summit’s agenda. 

China has also spent decades developing considerable military capabilities that have shifted the balance of power in Asia. Beijing has made clear its long-term intentions to control Taiwan – and economic costs are unlikely to deter it from pursuing this goal. Indeed, before China cracked down on Hong Kong, many observers argued this move was unlikely because it would be economically unwise for China. 

Military costs, however, are a different matter and likely have already deterred Beijing from the overt use of force. The strength of Taiwan’s defences – such as through US arms sales – will continue to influence Beijing’s calculations. Continuing US arms sales are vital, not a bargaining chip that might be traded away for something else (as Trump has suggested). 

American dysfunction does not equal decline

Just as Washington should not mistake China’s problems for strategic weakness, Beijing should not mistake US dysfunction for decline.

Xi will see a weakened superpower: with historically unprecedented deficit spending and a burgeoning debt of $40 trillion. Washington now spends more on interest on its debt than on its military. Its dire finances are raising its borrowing costs and jeopardizing the future of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. By 2032, social security will be underfunded and Medicare will soon follow. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to cut benefits or raise taxes but the money will have to come from somewhere. As the largest item in the US discretionary budget, defence may be the obvious place. 

The US ability to address this and other problems is hindered by domestic political polarization. Xi – like any visitor to Washington – will see a profoundly divided city. Nationally, Trump’s approval rating is at its lowest point in his second term. But Democrats are ill-poised to lead: the party is divided by the fault line of Israel. With its fiscal pressures and disunity, the US hardly seems poised to embark on a costly containment – or war fighting – adventure against a rising superpower.  

Related work

Trump’s approach to Taiwan could jeopardize its future. Indo-Pacific allies are taking note

Indeed, the US has shown itself unable to focus on China’s rise. For decades it has vowed to ‘pivot’ to Asia, but not even an administration that campaigned on ending wars in the Middle East could avoid starting one.

Xi may therefore be tempted to conclude that America is a mess – and that Asia is China’s for the taking. But underestimating the US would be foolhardy for China too.

The US economy is performing well, and the country remains the global innovation leader dominating emerging technologies. Its alliances and partnerships are built on shared interests and seem to be enduring despite recent upheaval.

The US also remains the world’s military superpower. It has longstanding ties to Taiwan, and its foreign policy establishment favours US intervention if China invades Taiwan. US alliances in Asia enjoy robust popular support, and American foreign policy leaders would not want to see a China-led Asia, given a perceived threat to US prosperity and security. Xi should remember that the US has historically paid high costs to prevent a country from dominating either Asia or Europe.

Trump and Xi would thus be wise to sit down at the table with a great deal of respect for the power and influence of the country represented by the man on the other side. Only then can they address what is perhaps the most important issue of all – making progress towards a US–China modus vivendi. 

US–China relations – and the world as a whole – would benefit from an arrangement that acknowledges each country’s core security needs, prevents war and encourages cooperation on shared interests: rebuilding the global trading system, managing the risks of AI and tackling climate change. They will never get there by underestimating each other. 

Silent Hill: Townfall’s setting of St. Amelia is based on a real place. I went to visit.

NEW YORK CITY, New York — Mayor Zohran Mamdani renewed his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, calling him a “war criminal” and an “architect of a horrific genocide” as the Israeli leader prepares to address the United Nations General Assembly.

Mamdani said the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu should be respected, although he acknowledged New York City lacks legal authority to execute it. The ICC issued warrants in 2024 accusing Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity connected to the Gaza conflict. Israel rejects the allegations and disputes the court’s jurisdiction.

Netanyahu is expected to arrive Thursday for a brief visit and deliver his UN address on Sept. 24. The Associated Press reported that his trip is expected to last roughly 24 hours amid anticipated demonstrations in New York.

Mamdani previously campaigned on arresting Netanyahu if he visited the city, but later said municipal authorities do not have the power to enforce the ICC warrant. He has instead called on the federal government to act.

The United States and Israel are not members of the ICC, and the Trump administration has opposed the court’s actions against Israeli officials while preparing broader sanctions against the institution.

Sources

• Haaretz – MBFC Rating

The post Mamdani Calls Netanyahu a War Criminal Ahead of UN Visit appeared first on News Facts Network.

What I’m Discussing Today

• Trump Bans CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House: An old-fashioned attack on the First Amendment to try to cover Trump’s failures.

• CNN Reports U.S. Almost Started War With China: An AI chatbot nearly turns bad intelligence into a military confrontation.

• Singing the Palestine Blues: Ed Sheeran’s response to a painful controversy offers the rarest commodity in public life.

• Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror: Soldiers, survivors, and Afghan civilians tell the connected story of September 11 and the long war that followed.

• Miles Davis, “Israel” (1949): In hardly two minutes, Davis and John Carisi’s piece still sounds startlingly alive, though its connection to Israel remains obscure.

  ---

Kareem’s Quote of the Day

“News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.”
―attributed to William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951), media tycoon

The term “fake news” first came into popular usage during the 2016 election campaign. It was used to call out viral stories circulating on Facebook and Twitter that were blatantly false, many created by shady content farms and intended to exploit users’ preexisting biases to win clicks. Before Donald Trump latched onto it, Hillary Clinton even used the phrase to attack stories directed at her, like the outrageous Pizzagate hoax that claimed she and other liberal elites were trafficking young women through a Washington pizza place.

But it was Trump who made the term ubiquitous, seemingly working it into every speech to dismiss stories that were not yet proven, like the reporting on his campaign’s Russia ties. That story held up: campaign chairman Paul Manafort had secretly been paid millions by a Russian oligarch years earlier for work he said would “greatly benefit the Putin government,” and during the campaign he shared internal polling data with a business associate the U.S. government believed had ties to Russian intelligence. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, meanwhile, had taken a paid trip to Moscow funded by Russia’s state television network shortly before joining the campaign, and later lied to the FBI and Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. None of this was the “fake news” Trump claimed it was — it was exactly the kind of undisclosed foreign entanglement voters had the right to know about. Both men were later convicted of crimes related to their Russian dealings, though both were ultimately pardoned by Trump.

By the time he took office, Trump had pivoted to using the term to describe any news story he didn’t like, of which there were many. Always thin-skinned, Trump seemed unable to tolerate any negative coverage. True stories about him paying off a porn star and a Playboy centerfold to keep their affairs private, his orders to fire FBI director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller, pressuring Ukrainian leaders to investigate the Bidens, and the fact that he was given early warnings about a potential Covid pandemic were all declared “fake news” by the president and later shown to be true. He used the term so often that it was named “word of the year” by Collins Dictionary in 2017.

He eventually started calling networks and newspapers themselves “fake news,” taking particular glee in attaching the term to many of our media’s most reliable sources like CNN and The New York Times, a practice he has only increased in his second term. I don’t know if he really expects to convince anyone, or if he’s just trying to sow chaos and doubt, but it’s the most cynical use of the presidential bully pulpit I’ve seen in my lifetime.

William Randolph Hearst (who was the basis for the character Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles’s movie Citizen Kane) knew more than a little about “fake news.” The most powerful media magnate in the country during the first half of the century, he used his nationwide string of newspapers, magazines, and radio stations to spread false stories both to gin up circulation and to shape U.S. and world politics. He was a master of “yellow journalism,” the practice of publishing sensational, exaggerated, and scandalous stories without concern for their accuracy.

The idea that “news is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising,” which is generally attributed to Hearst, is a bit exaggerated, but it points to a truth about Donald Trump and his attitude toward the press. For Trump, “fake news” is something he doesn’t want printed, and all else is a mixture of White House press releases, right-wing spin, and flattery from sources that have signed over their souls to Trump. In our current life here in Trump’s Bizarro World, you can tell the news is real if Trump calls it fake, and you can tell it’s fake if he reposts it on Truth [sic] Social.

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Disappearance of jet components sparks concern some of the program’s technology secrets could have been exposed

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The Department of Defence is examining how F-35 fighter jet parts bound for the US from Australia were unexpectedly diverted to Hong Kong, the acting prime minister, Richard Marles, has said.

Marles said “very much everything that has occurred at the Australian end” would be reviewed, but claimed the technology parts were not “sensitive”, as first reported by Politico over the weekend.

Veronica Escobar tells Guardian she was prevented from speaking to detainees at much-criticized Texas facility

Federal immigration officials in Texas prevented US representative Veronica Escobar from fully conducting her congressional oversight duties at a controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, the lawmaker said in an interview with the Guardian.

Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso and surrounding areas on the US-Mexico border in west Texas, conducted an oversight visit last month at the Camp East Montana ICE tent facility housed in the Fort Bliss military base, after two separate “disturbances” had been reported there in recent weeks.

The Democratic Senate nominee’s views on Israel and comments after a synagogue attack prompted a public debate among Jewish voters

When Jess Newman heard that Temple Israel in Detroit was attacked last March, her first thoughts went to her extended family.

“I grew up going to services there,” she said. “The attack was awful. My Jewish identity is very important to me.”

Carr was a member of the group in his teens and 20s. There is no evidence Trump’s powerful FCC chair participated in any inappropriate conduct

Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was for about a decade a member of a rogue Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group when he was in his late teens and 20s that some former members compared to a “cult”, according to a Guardian investigation.

The Midtown group, which was based in the Washington DC area, attracted young people who were seeking help with addiction, sometimes at the urging of their parents.

“Everyone has a Walt’s story,” as Larry Fletcher, owner of Walt’s Flavor Crisp Chicken Express on Lincoln Street, likes to put it. 

For example, Wilmington City Councilor Alex Hackett has been a patron since childhood. Every day he attended the H. Fletcher Brown Boys & Girls Club, a counselor would give him a golden dollar for playing a chess match before running off to play sports. Hackett would spend that allowance at Walt’s.

“As a young teen growing up in the city, it got me through. I didn’t have to worry about dinner because I could go get that golden dollar, and I could go get that thigh sandwich,” he said. “My family, I mean, we basically lived through Walt’s Chicken. My dad, I don’t even know, he might have been a chicken (with) as much Walt’s Chicken as he ate.”

Hackett recently got a look behind the scenes at Walt’s — and even served a few customers — in celebration of Wilmington Black Restaurant Week, which takes place through Sept. 27.

The week features specials at participating restaurants, culminating in a car show and community workout in Rodney Square on Saturday and a food festival at The Queen on Sunday. 

Skratch Bar + Kitchen in Trolley Square will also be hosting a block party with a live DJ and food specials on Friday, 5-9 p.m — but co-owner Newton “Newdy” Felton intends to keep the party going until the pub closes at 1 a.m.

“I think representation matters. It’s important (for members of) my community to see someone who looks like them, to see what’s possible,” Felton said. “There’s a lot of restaurants (that) don’t get the exposure. Some of them don’t have the money (for advertising). … Some of them aren’t in ideal locations. So, for Wilmington to highlight Black Restaurant Week, (it gives) them visibility and that foot traffic they probably wouldn’t have gotten.”

That’s exactly why City Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo came up with the idea for Black Restaurant Week four years ago. 

“A lot of times, especially in the Black community … we’re just not exposed to different lanes where we can have access to capital, have access to meeting the right people who can take our businesses to another level,” he said. “Food is like the carrot that we’re waving in front of everybody. But we really want this to be a week of exposure.”

Despite being a Wilmington staple for 51 years, even Walt’s has had its struggles, according to Symanthia Sheppard, wife of the late co-founder, Harry Sheppard, and owner of the Miller Road location.

“In the city of Wilmington, we have a lot of transient people that have come in, and came in as a result of us being a banking capital. So, people don’t know that we’re here. (Black Restaurant Week) is another avenue that we can utilize to say, ‘Hey, we’re still here,’” she said.

Symanthia joined her husband’s operation in 1982. Harry had founded the restaurant with Walter Samuels in 1975, moving to Vandever Ave. as the sole owner three years later. 

According to Symanthia, Harry started running the restaurant before the building’s front facade was fully constructed.

“For two weeks, he sat in front of the restaurant 24 hours a day, slept in a chair in front of the restaurant until he could gain enough money to put a door, walls, on the building,” she said. “When you have that kind of tenacity, it is a privilege and an honor that today, we’re still here.”

Fletcher joined Walt’s in 1989. He had been working at fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC since he was 14, and by 17, he’d realized he wanted to be a restaurateur. 

“I advanced to management and so on, but the ceiling was always blocked for me with ownership. Mr. Sheppard provided a chance for ownership,” he said.

In 2003, Harry allowed Fletcher to open his own Walt’s location under the same name on Lincoln Street.

Fletcher described Harry as modest, hardworking and always willing to provide second chances for those who needed them.

“If you came out of the Plummer (Community Corrections) Center (or) you were transitioning from hard times, he provided the opportunity to get back out and become a productive citizen,” he said. 

That legacy of giving back to the community has continued beyond Harry’s death. For example, Symanthia still runs Walt’s summer internship program.

“They learn all of the skills of (working in a restaurant), but they also learn life skills,” she said. “(We’re) constantly trying to invest in them, teach them, train them about integrity, about being a person of your word … how important it is to have that tenacity, follow through on everything that you do, no matter what it is.”

It’s not just the interns that Symanthia has watched grow up at Walt’s, but generations of customers and family members like her niece, Essence Sheppard. Symanthia plans to retire in the near future and pass the torch to Essence. Fletcher hopes to find a successor and do the same. 

Symanthia’s advice to budding restaurateurs is to “stick it out.”

“Every negative word that you hear, everything that seems like an obstacle or a struggle, use it as a stepping stone,” she said. “Then, have the tenacity to continue — especially if you’re doing it because you want to build a legacy.”

The post Wilmington celebrates tenacity, legacy during Black Restaurant Week appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
One of Delaware’s largest companies sold its offices less than two years after moving to Wilmington, abandoning a project that was expected to reenergize the city’s downtown and was heavily backed by taxpayer dollars. Now, returned incentives are being redirected to other initiatives aimed at supporting housing and economic development.

Seven months after Incyte scaled back plans to build its headquarters in Wilmington, the city is putting $1.15 million in returned incentive money from the pharmaceutical giant toward creating housing and businesses.

On Thursday, Mayor John Carney’s office announced the city used the funds, rescinded from the company, to purchase four pieces of land along West 7th Street in Wilmington’s Quaker Hill neighborhood.

The city released a request for proposals (RFP), inviting developers to submit plans to build housing and commercial properties on the sites.

The money used to purchase the land came from a $10 million grant Wilmington officials quietly awarded to Incyte for its headquarters expansion back in 2024. The grant was not previously known to the public until the Delaware Business Times broke the story in April.

As part of an amended agreement with the city, Incyte returned $5 million, but it may retain the other half if the company employs an annual average of 200 full-time employees at the downtown Bracebridge building for a decade, a city spokesperson told Spotlight Delaware in July. 

“This work is about stabilizing neighborhoods, creating opportunity, and making sure Wilmington remains a city where people can afford to live and build a future,” said Mayor John Carney in a Thursday statement. 

City officials are ensuring affordable housing units are also built on the properties, though the total number of affordable housing units has not yet been confirmed, according to Caroline Klinger, Carney’s spokeswoman.

“At this time, we’re awaiting proposals and will have more clarity on specific plans for these units as those come in,” Klinger said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware. 

New housing in Quaker Hill 

Wilmington’s new land use investment comes as affordable housing has become a growing priority in the city. In August, Carney opened applications for developers seeking a share of the $8.4 million in affordable housing subsidies approved as part of this year’s budget. City Council members have also worked to direct funding toward short-term housing assistance.