News Reel

President Trump held a meeting with key advisers on Friday to hammer out a "final determination" on a potential deal with Iran, but no word has come on a decision.

A new Colombian president could be elected Sunday, but the election is likely to head to a runoff in June.

Revelations come after former Chelsea winger was arrested under suspicion of driving ‘whilst unfit through drugs’

Raheem Sterling has been made to feel “disposable” after a decade at the top of football, a source close to the former England star have said, in the after his arrest on suspicion of driving “whilst unfit through drugs”.

The source said the former Man City and Chelsea winger, who is now playing for Feyenoord in the Netherlands, had been suffering from “immeasurable” psychological strain after an “extremely tough couple of years”.

The Muckleshoot tribe's ties to salmon are rooted in spirituality and history.

Security company Okta shot up 30% Friday, reported CNBC, while data platform provider Snowflake jumped 50% this week. They see it as part of a larger trend where software stocks "soared this week," signaling "some companies are navigating their way through AI disruption better than Wall Street expected" and that investors "may have been too quick to declare the end of software with the emergence of AI. Even as AI displaces certain tools and job functions, many software companies continue to show growth, assisted by their own AI products..." The "SaaSpocalypse" may not be over. But for now at least, fears of software's demise have cooled... The iShares Expanded Tech-Software exchange-traded fund rose 8% this week and closed May up 21%, the best monthly performance for the ETF since October 2001. Back then it was a brief rebound during the dot-com bust, while the current rally comes as concerns about the impact of AI ripple across the sector. Software names have been hit particularly hard over the past year due to the boom in so-called vibe coding, with users able to now build apps and websites in minutes thanks to offerings from Anthropic, OpenAI and others... Elsewhere in the software space, Atlassian climbed 26% for the week and ServiceNow surged over 20%, while Shopify, Workday and Asana each gained at least 14%.

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Actor among protesters in central London highlighting laws in 29 countries where same-sex relationships remain illegal

Ian McKellen has joined a march against the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people in Commonwealth countries, calling it an “appalling situation”.

The Lord of the Rings star and activist joined protesters in central London on Saturday to highlight laws in 29 Commonwealth countries where same-sex relationships remain illegal.

In first suit over conditions at Texas’s Camp East Montana, plaintiffs allege ‘dangerous and abusive’ environment with ‘abhorrent’ medical care

The first lawsuit relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in Texas.

A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.

“abhorrent medical and mental health care”;

“inappropriate use of force”;

“indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”;

“terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food;

“outbreaks of disease”;

“unsanitary living conditions”;

“sexual harassment by guards”.

Former chancellor also tells Hay festival ‘good riddance’ to Tory MPs defecting to Reform

Sajid Javid said that supporting Liz Truss in the Conservative leadership contest that ultimately made her prime minister was his “biggest mistake in politics”.

Speaking at the Hay festival in Wales while promoting his memoir, the former chancellor, who is no longer an MP, said there were friends in the Conservative party he remained in contact with.

As long as you remain angry at the city, you can ignore the candidate’s lack of experience or inability to articulate actual policy

I vote by mail in every election these days, as is my right as a mostly lazy natural-born American citizen. Fill in a few bubbles with black ink, chuck the thing into the nearest dropbox, and consider myself a functioning member of society for a brief moment. Now that my son is old enough to ask me coherent questions about my daily life, he was highly interested in what the hell I was doing as I marked the form. “I’m voting,” I said tersely, lest I divert my attention fully from the bubble-filling. “Don’t vote for Spencer Pratt, daddy,” he responded. “I hear he’s a jerk.” The word seems to be spreading.

Every local TV station and streaming app is turgid and bloated with political ads these days. My son might be old enough to ask me who I’m voting for, but he’s not old enough to understand why. That doesn’t stop campaigns from serving him countless commercials pleading with him to consider (or reconsider) a certain candidate. He’s now nominally aware of allegations of sexual misconduct against LA city controller Kenneth Mejia (which Mejia has denied) and the Orange County congressman Ken Calvert’s run-in with a sex worker. What a joy it is to be a parent in 2026.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

There is little sign of clarity in the closing stretch of a campaign season for governor, Congress and LA mayor

Californians are frustrated and underwhelmed heading into Tuesday’s primary election, where voters will eliminate all but two candidates in the volatile race for governor, the messy battle for Los Angeles mayor and a series of congressional contests that could determine control of the US House in November.

With days left before the 2 June primary, there is little sign of the clarity that typically emerges in the closing stretch of a contested California campaign season. The race to succeed term-limited Democratic governor Gavin Newsom appears to have settled into a tight three-way contest among Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer and Republican Steve Hilton, while voters in Los Angeles remain divided over whether to stand by embattled mayor Karen Bass or entertain a challenger.

Plane landed in Wisconsin and ‘unruly passenger’ was taken into custody before flight continued to Minnesota

A United Airlines flight bound for Minneapolis from Chicago was reportedly diverted after an “unruly passenger” tried to breach the cockpit late on Friday.

The FBI and police responded to reports of a security concern with the passenger, who was detained by police at the Dane county regional airport in Madison, Wisconsin.

President in ‘excellent’ health, despite ‘lower leg swelling’ and hand bruising after fourth hospital visit in second term

Donald Trump has been grappling with “lower leg swelling” as well as “benign” hand bruising but remains in excellent health, the US president’s physician said in a memo released by the White House.

Citing the results of a recent examination, the memo from Dr Sean Barbabella said Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function”.

Campaigners had hoped to buy property from Nottingham Trent University to maintain public access

Bramley apples are a staple in supermarkets across the UK and it all started in a house in Nottinghamshire. But now the future of the original fruit-bearing tree is in question after the garden where it stands has been sold by Nottingham Trent University (NTU).

The news has left campaigners aiming to turn it into a heritage site “gobsmacked”.

More competition and loss-making sites are among the challenges for the new turnaround chief executive

With its comfy sofas and a menu of gourmet treats including Béarnaise smash burgers and trendy Whispering Angel rosé wine at £47 a bottle, Everyman has thrived as the go-to chain for a luxury cinema trip.

Yet a quarter of a century after reinventing the movie-going experience, growing from a single venue in Hampstead in London to a national player with 49 sites, the arthouse chain finds itself struggling as rivals ape its successful formula.

Experts say AI firm’s engagement with Vatican risks creating ‘feelgood’ discourse that lacks critical examination

Why did Anthropic’s founder sit beside the pope during a warning about AI?

In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV took artificial intelligence to task. The pontiff delineated the technology’s most concerning threats to humanity: replacing workers, accelerating war and exploiting the environment. At a ceremony honoring the holy teaching the day of its release at the Vatican, the pope was flanked by an unusual guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the AI boom so worrying Leo.

Endangered snow leopard had leg amputated and capybara died at Mario Tabraue’s controversial roadside facility

An endangered clouded leopard had a leg amputated and a capybara died following botched breeding attempts at a controversial Miami roadside zoo owned by a convicted drug trafficker featured in the Netflix documentary Tiger King.

Federal wildlife inspectors found multiple other violations during a March inspection at Zoological Wildlife Foundation (ZWF), including dilapidated, insecure or unsafe housing conditions for wild animals, filthy cages, and water and food contaminated with algae and dead insects.

With three top stadiums, Inglewood is remaking itself as a host of world-class events – and while some locals love the transformation, others feel left behind

Melisa Arnold’s morning walks around the neighborhood are orchestrated by the staccato beat of jackhammers and the roar of airplanes pointed to and from Los Angeles international airport. This is Inglewood, she says, and its soundscape.

After retiring from her human resources and payroll job last year, Arnold, 66, walks for miles around the city she has called home since 1985. Her route takes her past the sports and entertainment hub, which includes the remodeled Kia Forum and the new Intuit Dome. She walks by SoFi Stadium, which will soon host World Cup games. Next year, the Super Bowl is scheduled to return. And in 2028, Olympic events will arrive.

Last year, Hegseth called China a "threat" to Taiwan and said an attack might be "imminent."

Candace Tucker thought her symptoms were benign. A colonoscopy led to an alarming diagnosis.

His poll numbers with the demographic are plummeting. But Democrats don’t seem to have learned anything from all this

Donald Trump has been facing a lot of allegations that he’s snoozing on the job. But we should give the poor man a break: he must be exhausted by his unceasing efforts to make life better for us all. At this very moment, for example, The Trump administration is spending $5m to cover four bronze horses near the Lincoln Memorial in thick gold leaf. No longer will passersby be subjected to subpar equine aesthetics. Finally, the American people will have the glimmering horse statues they deserve.

Meanwhile, the US has been fighting a war with Iran that, by one expert’s estimate, is costing $2bn dollars a day and will probably end up with a price tag of at least a trillion dollars. This may seem like a colossal waste of money to some, but real patriots understand that this is simply the cost of making America great again.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Guardian investigation shows how US presidency blurs line between policy and enrichment of American ruling family and those around it

On a graffitied Sarajevo backstreet, a path leads past an overgrown patch of garden to a white door. Beyond is the registered office of a company that is on the brink of winning contracts worth more than $1bn.

AAFS Infrastructure and Energy is close to securing a concession to build and operate a pipeline across the Balkans to allow fossil gas shipped from the US to replace supplies that come from Russia. “This could be the most important infrastructure project ever in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” says one of the country’s top officials, who, like others, asks to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive negotiations.

Exclusive: Ana María was happy working in the US with an open asylum case. But after ICE detained her for months, she said she requested to go back to her native country

Ana María had been happy living in the US. She had an asylum case going through the US immigration system and was working, becoming part of the community, living with her boyfriend and was grateful for safe harbor.

But after she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), she had such a horrendous experience that, in desperation, she agreed to be deported back to her native country in South America, back to danger and thousands of miles away from the life she had been building.

The virtually indestructible Pfas waste puts largely low-income neighborhoods at risk, public health advocates say

The nation’s garbage incinerators are largely failing to eliminate Pfas “forever chemicals” air pollution, and are putting people in largely low-income neighborhoods at risk, public health advocates and independent experts warn.

The powerful waste management industry is increasingly pushing incinerators as a solution to virtually indestructible Pfas waste, and a new industry trade group report alleges Minnesota’s incinerators are reducing their forever chemical emissions by 99.6%. Other incinerator operators have made similar reduction claims.

The Trump administration is planning to provide Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads to nuclear startups that want to convert it into reactor fuel, arguing it could help address a looming fuel shortage for advanced reactors. Critics warn the idea raises serious nonproliferation, security, cost, and technical concerns. The New York Times reports: The plan has generated debate and some unease among nonproliferation experts. If finalized, it would mark the first time the U.S. government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies. The Energy Department has more than 50 tons of surplus plutonium left over from nuclear weapons programs, and the agency had previously been planning to dilute much of that material and bury it. Some of the nuclear start-ups trying to obtain that plutonium say that transforming the waste into fuel is a better way to dispose of it. On Tuesday, the Energy Department said that it had selected five companies to enter into "advanced negotiations" to potentially receive some surplus plutonium. That includes Oklo, a California-based nuclear power company, which plans to partner with Newcleo, a European developer of advanced nuclear reactors. Using plutonium for fuel, Oklo and Newcleo said, could solve a looming problem: Energy firms want to build a new wave of nuclear reactors, but the United States can't yet make enough conventional fuel from uranium to supply the plants. Harvesting old plutonium stockpiles could provide a short-term fix. "A lack of fuel is one of the biggest choke points in expanding nuclear power right now," said Jacob DeWitte, the chief executive of Oklo, which is developing a novel type of small reactor intended to run on plutonium. "This will help us get more nuclear power online faster." [...] The plan is not yet final, and companies will still have to negotiate with the federal government over how to secure and transfer the plutonium. In addition to Oklo, the Energy Department said it had also selected four other companies -- Standard Nuclear, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies and Flibe Energy -- to enter into advanced negotiations to receive the material under its Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, which was established last year. The program "is anticipated to help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation's nuclear renaissance," said Michael Goff, the principal deputy assistant secretary of nuclear energy, in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At least six new pubs and taphouses have opened in recent months, including the Pig & Swill in Cardiff

On a hot Thursday evening in Canton, a buzzy Cardiff neighbourhood, a steady stream of people in sunglasses, shorts and dresses went back and forth between bar and garden at the city’s newest pub, the Pig & Swill.

Next door, in Victoria Park, the splash pad was still heaving with families making the most of the tail-end of the May heatwave. Many parents and carers stopped by for takeaway pints and small plates.

Stew Peas focuses on obeah, an enduring African magic practice in Jamaica banned by colonisers in the 1700s

A new movie from award-winning Jamaican film-maker Sosiessia Nixon shines a spotlight on Jamaica’s enduring west African-based magic and spiritual healing tradition known as obeah.

Nixon’s tense, feature-length suspense, Stew Peas, tells of the story of Jamaican detective Tessa, who is obsessed with an old murder case.

Guardian readers in the US spoke of fears about unregulated AI in response to the pope’s encyclical warning about the risks of the technology

In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the “culture of power” driving the AI age.

Calling for the “most rigorous” ethical constraints on AI – which he described as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today – the first US-born pope also warned of “new forms of slavery” emerging through the digital economy.

Trump’s pursuit of policies that drive up prices, including tariffs and war, might be punished in November’s elections

For such an uncannily successful politician, Donald Trump exhibits a perplexing political myopia. His most recent own-goal was endorsing Ken Paxton, a state attorney general, against four-term senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary for Senate in Texas. Trump’s endorsement helped push the ethically compromised Maga firebrand over the top, to run against popular Democrat James Talarico in November, complicating the Republicans’ chances to keep the seat.

But what truly screams “I want us to lose the midterms” is what Trump is doing about inflation, which is becoming his most vulnerable issue. According to a New York Times/Siena poll of registered voters earlier in May, Trump’s approval on handling the cost of living is underwater by 42 percentage points, poorer than his rating on handling the economy (minus 31 points) and the unpopular war in Iran (minus 34 points).

Barbecue season waits for no one. These are the gas, charcoal, electric and pellet grills our experts recommend in 2026 -- tested, ranked and ready for whatever you're cooking.

Smart home gyms aren't cheap, but they can be a good investment.

Centrepoint warns young people facing ‘huge scarcity of work opportunities’ after Alan Milburn’s report on crisis

The growing number of young people not in work or education is driving more into unstable housing or homelessness, charities have warned.

A government-commissioned review into the crisis facing young people in the UK said there could be a 25% rise in young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without intervention.

Two still missing as divers make their way deeper into cave through muddy water and sharp rocks to find them

Four more miners who were trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for 10 days have been freed by divers, but two people are still missing as rescuers continue to crawl through narrow, deluged tunnels and sharp rocks to find them.

The first of the party of seven men was rescued on Friday in a perilous rescue mission which has required teams to drain water from the cave and navigate collapse hazards.

The carrier has made major changes to its plans in 2026. Let's sort through them all.

A Laos rescue organization said​ that the water level inside the cave had receded enough for the four miners to leave with divers.

For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

It was only when he stepped onto the carpeted courtroom at the Oklahoma County Courthouse last June that Glossip, now 63, realized how unaccustomed his body had become to anything other than concrete. He almost fell over — one of his lawyers had to catch him. “You’re not balanced for that,” Glossip said. “You’re balanced for walking on very hard floors. It’s just really weird to, like, walk on carpet and stuff again.”

Now, sitting on a mint green loveseat next to his wife, Lea, Glossip was getting used to softer surfaces, including a new pair of black moccasin-style sherpa-lined slippers.

“My leg hasn’t been swollen since I got out.”

Just five days earlier, Glossip was still locked up at the county jail with no idea when — if ever — he would be released. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court vacated his conviction in 2025, he had been held indefinitely as Oklahoma prepared to try him again. Months earlier, his lawyers had asked Oklahoma County Judge Natalie Mai to grant bond, and Mai had finally said she would issue an order on May 14. That morning, just after 10 a.m., she handed down her decision: Glossip’s bond was set at $500,000.

After that, everything happened quickly — faster than anyone expected. Lea, an attorney herself, started making calls to secure the 10 percent in cash needed for his release. The bail money ultimately came from Kim Kardashian, a longtime supporter and prison reform advocate. Meanwhile, reporters rushed to set up cameras in front of the jail; within a few hours, local ABC affiliate KOCO had established a live feed of the jail entrance, which, just after 5 p.m., captured the moment Glossip walked out.

“It’s overwhelming but it’s amazing at the same time,” he said before walking to Lea’s SUV. In a surreal scene, KOCO’s helicopter hovered above the parking lot, with reporters excitedly narrating a play-by-play of the couple’s movements as they drove away.

They eventually made their way to a quiet Italian restaurant in Lea’s central Oklahoma City neighborhood, where they sat outside under a canopy of trees. Glossip ate spaghetti and meatballs. Over the years, Lea had talked to Glossip on the phone while eating dinner there alone, which made the place feel oddly familiar. “It’s kind of weird listening to her describe these restaurants,” he said. “Now I’m sitting at them.”

The two first began corresponding after Lea watched the 2017 documentary series “Killing Richard Glossip,” and eventually married in March 2022. Glossip would spend hours on the phone with Lea as she went about her daily routine, keeping her company as she got ready for her law school classes, ran errands, and had dinner. They’d end the evening watching TV together. Over time, the daily ritual established a structure that would provide a lifeline to Glossip — and eventually ease his transition to life outside prison walls.

Sitting in the light-filled living room in their studio apartment, Glossip described how those interactions have so far helped him feel less bewildered by a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. Still, since his release, there have been constant, small reminders of his decades of incarceration.

On his first night, he barely slept. There was the adrenaline, of course, but more than that was the silence — it was way too quiet compared to the constant chaos and noise at the county jail. And then there was the water: In prison, the sink would only run for seconds at a time and would turn off automatically. “I keep waiting for the water to go off,” Glossip said. “I’ve even walked out of that bathroom and the water was still going, and I keep forgetting I have to turn it off.”

“I always think that ‘Nah, none of that stuff’s gonna bother me,’” he continued. “But when it really actually happens, it does bother you more than you think. You start remembering things. Or something will trigger something that will bring you back to when this all happened, when it all began.”

It’s those small things — the carpet, the water, the quiet — that have a way of reminding him how much he survived.

“Once you’re out here and you see all the things that was taken away from you — and all the times they almost took everything away from me, my life and everything — you see all of it now,” he said. “And it kind of still makes me angry at times because none of this should have ever happened. And this should have never been taken from me in the first place.”

Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, who was brutally killed at the Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City in January 1997. A 19-year-old handyman named Justin Sneed admitted to fatally beating Van Treese with a baseball bat, but insisted that Glossip bullied him into doing it. Sneed’s account became the basis for the state’s case against Glossip — and for a plea deal that allowed Sneed to avoid the death penalty. Sneed is serving a life sentence.

Glossip always maintained his innocence, and his conviction was overturned twice. In 2001, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Glossip’s lawyers had been ineffective for failing to present key evidence that undermined Sneed’s account of the crime. But in 2004, a second jury convicted Glossip and resentenced him to death.

More than 20 years later, in February 2025, the Supreme Court again vacated Glossip’s conviction, finding that Sneed had lied on the stand during Glossip’s retrial and that prosecutors had failed to correct Sneed’s testimony. This misconduct, combined with “additional conduct by the prosecutor further undermines confidence in the verdict,” the justices wrote.

Related

The “Power, Pride, and Politics” Behind the Drive to Execute Richard Glossip

Glossip came close to execution numerous times, as Oklahoma authorities aggressively defended their conviction despite mounting evidence pointing to his innocence. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who came into office in 2023, broke with his predecessors, taking unprecedented steps to block Glossip’s execution and to appeal his conviction to the Supreme Court. After Glossip’s high court victory, many expected Drummond to quickly resolve the case and free Glossip; Lea even bought Glossip new clothes in anticipation of his release. Instead, Drummond, who by then was running for governor, announced that he would retry Glossip for first-degree murder.

Drummond’s office insisted Glossip should remain in jail — while simultaneously confirming that the state had no new evidence to support his guilt. In July 2025, a judge denied defense lawyers’ request to have Glossip released on bond, only to recuse herself from the case after she was revealed to have close ties to the same district attorney’s office that originally sent Glossip to death row. Mai, a civil judge, was ultimately appointed to the case after a string of judges stepped down for the same reason.

With Mai set to preside over Glossip’s retrial, his legal team again asked for his release on bond. On May 14, she agreed. In her order, Mai quoted a letter Drummond wrote to the parole board in 2023, expressing his view that the record didn’t support a first-degree murder conviction.

“The Court fully expects that the State will rigorously prosecute its case going forward and the defense will provide robust and effective presentation for Glossip,” Mai wrote. “The Court hopes that a new trial, free of error, will provide all interested parties, and the citizens of Oklahoma, the closure they deserve.”

Drummond did not release a statement regarding Glossip’s release. Instead, he posted a video to Facebook from the White House where he spent the day with FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

On his first night home, Glossip decided he wanted to see a store. He hadn’t used a real razor in years, and he wanted some ice cream. The couple ended up at Target, which he found peaceful, especially the music. “It was like elevator music,” Lea said laughing.

The following days were a whirlwind of errands: a haircut, a grocery store, and the DMV. Did anybody recognize him, we asked. Yes, they said. Everybody, everywhere seemed to know who he was. At the barbershop, the man who cut Glossip’s hair refused to accept any payment. “He said, ‘No, it’s an honor,’” Lea recalled. “He was really happy to be the one to do that.” At Whole Foods, people glanced at them with knowing smiles, while others took surreptitious photos as Glossip marveled over purple potatoes and dragonfruit — two foods he’d never seen before.

At the DMV, when a woman called out the name “Richard,” Glossip and another man stood up at the same time. “Glossip?” he asked. Yes, the woman replied. “You’re Richard Glossip?!” the other Richard replied — and asked for a photo, which they took outside by the man’s purple car.

At Walmart, a lady simply beamed at them and said, “Welcome.”

“It kind of threw him,” Lea said. But the attention had been overwhelmingly supportive. “I think it’s nice for Rich to receive that after everything, to walk back into the world after everything he survived, and have people greet him positively.”

On Monday morning, Lea had to go back to work. Before heading out, she left Glossip keys and some cash. “Has money always been this size?” he asked. Yes, she told him. He hadn’t used cash in decades and recalled the bills being smaller. That day he didn’t venture out. Instead, he stayed at home and did chores. But the next day, he went out on his own for the first time, walking to a corner store for a Coke. “It’s you!” the clerk said.

Glossip is looking forward to exploring more on his own — he wants to walk barefoot in summer grass, stargaze, and go fishing — all provided he is home by his court-ordered curfew of 10 p.m. And he wants to renew his vows with Lea, in a ceremony outside prison walls.

“I tried never to let myself become institutionalized,” he said. “But I mean it’s hard. You go through all these horrible things and all these different dates … and last meals and everything. And then it doesn’t look like this day will ever get here. But you always hope that it will.”

Back in 2014, when he was facing his first execution date, Glossip wrote to famed anti-death penalty nun Sister Helen Prejean, asking if she could help him. Prejean reached out to attorney Don Knight, who had significant experience representing people facing the death penalty, asking if he could take on Glossip’s case; he agreed. In the decade that followed, Knight would find new witnesses and expose hidden evidence that undercut the state’s case against Glossip — and led to the Supreme Court’s decision. Knight’s zealous advocacy is responsible for saving Glossip’s life.

Discussing this, Glossip returned to some of the darkest and most traumatic moments of his incarceration — including the time he came closest to execution in 2015. Officials halted the lethal injection at the last second after realizing that they were about to use the wrong drug to kill him. That was more than 10 years ago. He would face execution again and again: a total of nine times. “They used to call me the cat man on death row,” he said.

The weekend after Glossip was released, he met up with Knight in a local park. The two sat in the sun and talked. “It was nice just to sit in that park and watch people go by,” Glossip said. “Him and I just having a conversation with each other.” He remembered what he told Knight when they first met. “‘I just want people to know the truth,’” Glossip said. “And he’s been able to do that. And that’s been pretty amazing for me because that’s what I wanted more than anything.”

A week after his release, Glossip sent Knight an update: He’d been to the park, an art fair, and brunch with two of Lea’s co-workers. It was the best week of his life, he said. 

“I’ve lived this case for so long,” he told us. “I don’t want to live it anymore.” He knows the case isn’t over, but he trusts Knight and his legal team to handle what comes next.

“They’ll make the right decisions. I know they will. I wouldn’t be out here today if they wasn’t,” he said. “So I’m just going to let them handle it. … I’m just gonna enjoy life.”

The post Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row appeared first on The Intercept.

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The US probably won’t start their A-team for both friendlies against Senegal and Germany, but the games are still opportunities to build momentum

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The 26-man squad has been confirmed. The disappointing emails and uplifting WhatsApp videos have been sent. And so, the US men’s national team’s World Cup campaign begins in earnest.

Much about the co-hosts’ impending tournament feels unrefined, although that may have been inevitable. Hosting the World Cup ensures a spot in the 48-team field, but robs a team of the qualifying gauntlet that can clarify who can handle the pressure and identify a group’s core. These issues were further compounded by the mid-cycle appointment of Mauricio Pochettino, with his initially thin grasp on his player pool leaving most of his tenure to assess individuals before he could refine a collective.

As a skint 23-year-old I did two weeks in the US. It remains a personal favourite tournament 32 years later

You never forget your first World Cup, and the tournament’s return to American shores this year will stir vivid memories for anyone who attended USA 94. It was a curious and distinctive tournament, one that heralded the World Cup’s more expansive, commercialised future, while also seeming a world away from the jamboree that returns 32 years later, twice as big and at least twice as lucrative.

I managed to do two weeks of it as a skint 23-year-old earning £9,000 a year, alongside my mate Paddy, a student. We took in only two games – both goalless draws – but soaked up enough of the occasionally raucous, often tepid, atmosphere for it to remain a personal favourite World Cup all these years on.

As universities prepare to spend millions paying athletes directly, fears mount that Olympic and women’s sports will pay the price. An improbable figure could well stop it

Female athletes and Olympic sports athletes, two overlapping groups that have long thrived in US colleges, are facing an uncertain future on campus. These athletes’ college prospects may lie in the hands of a surprising savior …

Donald Trump.

The self-proclaimed master dealmaker can’t seem to stop sabotaging his own negotiations

For weeks, Donald Trump has tried to find a way to end the war he started with Iran – a deal that would allow him to declare victory and move past the conflict before it causes severe damage to the global economy and sinks Republican chances in the US midterm elections. But the self-proclaimed master dealmaker can’t seem to stop sabotaging his own negotiations or to acknowledge that Iran is now in a better position to demand concessions than it was before the war.

Over the Memorial Day holiday, Trump skipped his eldest son’s wedding in the Bahamas and canceled plans to spend the weekend at his New Jersey golf club. The last-minute changes heightened speculation that Trump was ready to unveil a deal to end the war. Trump then announced that he would hold a cabinet meeting on Wednesday at Camp David, the presidential compound in Maryland that has been the site of historic diplomatic summits and pronouncements. But that meeting was moved back to the White House, as it became clear that Trump had not been able to close a deal he could announce with great fanfare at Camp David.

Sobering reality for president after three-month odyssey that threatens to take him back to where he started

After the hubristic beginnings came the reality.

The road travelled since the most momentous foreign policy decision of his presidency seems to have delivered Donald Trump to a sobering destination: that Iran has been the nemesis of several US presidents before him for a reason and is an adversary not to be taken lightly.

North Carolina, Ohio, Maine and Alaska are key targets for a party bullish after a bruising Republican primary in Texas

After Texas Republicans chose the beleaguered attorney general, Ken Paxton, as their party’s nominee for US Senate on Tuesday, Democrats are feeling bullish that they could pull off a victory in the red-leaning state – and maybe win back the Senate in this year’s midterm elections.

Paxton – whose history includes an impeachment, fraud charges and an alleged affair – beat incumbent John Cornyn after receiving Trump’s blessing in the most expensive primary this year. In November he will face James Talarico, a young state lawmaker and pastor, who won the Democratic primary amid a rising national profile.

The new Matter-friendly Yale Smart Lock is especially great for Google Home users, but anyone will find it easy to get started.

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

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

• Council on Development Finance to consider charter school, private lender proposals
• Sussex County Council to consider controversial development reform proposals
• Wilmington Learning Collaborative to discuss its fiscal year 2027 budget
• Kent County to oppose state-imposed development regulations

Charter school, private student lender vie for state funds

The state’s Council on Development Finance is set to consider issuing $20 million in bonds for a local charter school, and whether a private student loan provider should receive more than three quarters of a million dollars in grant funding at its meeting on Monday.

The CDF oversees funds that are used to attract and retain jobs, or create new business investments in Delaware. Its role has come under the microscope of Gov. Matt Meyer, who has opposed major cash grants to corporations in order to locate or grow in Delaware.

This time, the Newark-based ASPIRA bilingual charter school is seeking $20 million in bonds to fund various capital improvement projects across its campus. Some of those proposals include building a new athletics complex at the ASPIRA high school and additional classrooms at its K-8 campus. 

Along with considering ASPIRA bonds, the CDF will also determine whether the private student loan provider GradBridge should receive its $787,500 grant request. 

GradBridge, according to its website, provides a “second-look private student loan program” for borrowers who have been denied access to traditional private loans. 

📍 The CDF is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Monday inside the Delaware Public Archives, located at 121 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd N in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Sussex to consider development reform

Sussex County Council is set to once again consider a pair of proposed development reforms on Tuesday, one of which has been the subject of scrutiny by farmers across Delaware’s southernmost county.

One proposal could discourage a long-criticized practice of building large housing developments on land that is located far from established cities and towns and is targeted for preservation. Specifically, it would ban subdivisions with more than two homes per acre on farm fields and require more open space within those developments.

Advocates say the rules will encourage developers to instead build new homes where infrastructure already exists. But some farmers said the proposal would also devalue their land, which they often rely on as collateral for loans needed to operate their farms.

The second proposal would reform Sussex County’s affordable housing program. The ordinance would raise limits on rent, and lower the required number of affordable units for a housing development to qualify for a county program that incentivizes developers to build affordable rental units, specifically in areas near the Delaware beaches. 

📍 The Sussex County Council is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday inside Council Chambers at the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Wilmington Learning Collaborative to discuss its budget

The Wilmington Learning Collaborative is set to discuss its more than $8 million budget for the 2027 fiscal year at its meeting on Wednesday. 

The WLC is an appointed working group focused on improving educational achievement in the city of Wilmington.

The group’s largest budget line item includes more than $2.8 million to fund flexible staff positions across its member school districts aimed at reducing class sizes, up from $2.7 million during the last fiscal year.

📍 The WLC is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Warner Elementary School, located at 801 W. 18th St. in Wilmington. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Kent County leaders to oppose state legislation targeting development reforms

The Kent County Levy Court is set to consider two resolutions on Tuesday opposing bills working their way through the General Assembly that would institute development reforms across the state. 

The two resolutions would oppose Senate Bill 23 and House Bill 450, respectively. The two bills, if passed, would place new requirements on municipalities across Delaware that are meant to spur the development of more affordable housing options.

Levy Court commissioners, in their resolutions, say the two bills would create legal uncertainty and operational challenges for the county, along with infringing upon local control over development regulations. 

The resolutions are the latest in a series of steep opposition to SB 23, which was the subject of scrutiny by local government leaders during a recent Senate committee hearing.

📍 The Kent County Levy Court is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Kent County Administration Building, located at 555 Bay Road in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.

Jacob Owens and Olivia Marble contributed to this report.

The post Get Involved: Charter school bonds, Sussex development reforms, more appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

For 26 years, a scrappy roadside attraction has drawn curious tourists and a stream of alien enthusiasts.

Entry-exit system, which replaces passport stamps with digital registration, causing huge delays at border checks

British passengers returning home via European airports should arrive three hours before their flights are due to depart, an airline boss has advised, amid concerns about new security procedures causing large queues.

The EU entry-exit system (EES), which replaces passport stamps with a digital registration, has been gradually been introduced in Europe since October 2025 and became fully operational last month. Some passengers have faced huge delays at border checks, airports have said.

While some found this week’s heat a breeze, many in poorer areas face health risks in furnace-like homes

Travelling from his air-conditioned flat to the air-conditioned Elizabeth line to his air-conditioned office, 27-year-old banker Aykhan found this week’s heatwave a breeze.

Smiling while grabbing lunch in the shopping centre under the gleaming One Canada Square skyscraper in Canary Wharf, he said he’d been sleeping very well over the last few days. “It’s a new flat, the air-con is great, my bedroom is cool.”

Exclusive: Local authority asked what steps it is taking after hordes of splashing revellers seen disturbing nesting birds

Ministers have written to the City of London demanding it stop people from swimming in a protected pond on Hampstead Heath, after disturbing scenes of cygnets and eggs being disrupted went viral on social media.

Swans and their 12-day-old cygnets were disturbed by hordes of splashing revellers in the north London park on Monday as temperatures reached a record 35C in the capital. In one video, a swan was seen poking an unhatched egg with its beak after it fell into the water during the chaos.

Hong Qi, who orchestrated protest against Communist government, claims interpreter on 101 call launched political tirade

A Chinese dissident who orchestrated an anti-government protest in China after fleeing to the UK has claimed that a “pro-regime” interpreter used by a British police force berated him when he sought help.

Hong Qi, who made headlines last year after using a mobile phone while in the UK to remotely project anti-regime slogans on to a building in his home city, Chongqing, contacted police after discovering that his bank accounts had been frozen.

Sunday’s presidential vote is contest between left and right – and between contradictory proposals for dealing with the decades-long armed conflict

Mateo Pérez Rueda was one internship away from completing a degree in political science. The 24-year-old also worked as a bicycle delivery rider and sold fruit salads and juice to finance his passion: the Colombian independent digital magazine El Confidente.

On 4 May he travelled to Briceño, in the western province of Antioquia, to report on the long-running conflict between the army, paramilitaries and dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Members of the diaspora in Iraq, from Sunni Muslim Kurds in the north to Shiite Persians in the south, are as divided over the war as Iranians back home.

• Undermanned side upsets finals-bound ACT Brumbies 21-19

• Players come together to mark victory and club’s expected demise

An undermanned Moana Pasifika have capped off their potential final match with a stirring victory, upsetting the finals-bound ACT Brumbies 21-19.

But there were mixed feelings as players celebrated a rare win before coming together with staff to mark the occasion of the club’s farewell game and expected demise with an emotionally charged hymn.

Apple is reportedly working to shrink Google's Gemini models enough to power parts of a long-delayed AI-enhanced Siri on iPhones. But despite Apple's best efforts to run the AI locally, "the iPhone's Gemini makeover will lean heavily on Google and Nvidia in the cloud," reports Ars Technica. That could complicate Apple's privacy-first AI messaging, especially if more complex Siri requests are routed through Google infrastructure and Nvidia's encrypted cloud-computing platform. Ars Technica reports: After inking the Google deal, Apple apparently got to work distilling Google's giant cloud-based Gemini models. Distillation is a process in which a small, less resource-intensive model learns to mimic a large, expensive one. With enough time, this can reliably transfer useful capabilities while pruning less important weights from the model. That may enable Siri to handle some tasks with private local compute, but a cloud component looks inevitable. Processing users' AI data in the cloud could be a problem for Apple. At WWDC, the company will probably promote its years of experience designing chips and how well that positions it for AI. However, The Information claims that Apple has struggled to even get Google's massive undistilled Gemini models running on its custom Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, which is built on on M-series Mac chips. When the smarter Siri rolls out, it will probably route more complex tasks to Google's cloud infrastructure instead of Apple's, but it won't be running on Google TPUs. Apple has reportedly signed a deal with Nvidia to use its Confidential Computing platform for this purpose. Confidential Computing keeps data encrypted on Nvidia GPUs while it's being processed in the cloud, which could help Apple claim it's still sensitive to user privacy concerns. It might even retain its own Private Cloud Compute branding for the system. The iPhone probably won't tell you which version of Gemini is handling individual Siri requests. Device makers designing hybrid systems that rely on local and cloud-based AI like to talk about making the experience feel "seamless." There might be clues, though.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Truck was carrying Afghan families returning Pakistan when it overturned, official says

A truck overturned in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 18 people on board including 10 children, a provincial official told Agence France-Presse.

Deadly traffic crashes are common in Afghanistan, due in part to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving and a lack of regulation.

• Carolina bury Montreal with first-period burst

• Hurricanes reach first Cup final since 2006

• Brind’Amour’s team ends years of heartbreak

Rod Brind’Amour wore a big smile as he walked on the ice to join his Carolina Hurricanes for a photo behind the Prince of Wales Trophy.

It took eight years, but the Hurricanes have finally broken through their Eastern Conference final roadblock. Now comes the chance to play for the Stanley Cup for the first time in two decades.

Pentagon chief also tells Singapore defence summit of ‘alarm’ at China’s military buildup but says US does not seek ‘needless confrontation’

The US warned on Saturday it was “more than capable” of resuming war with Iran after President Donald Trump said any peace deal must adhere to his red lines, including Tehran never being able to develop nuclear weapons.

The White House had signalled Trump was close to a decision on an initial deal on Friday after weeks of mixed signals in tenuous negotiations, though Tehran denied there was a final agreement on ending the Middle East conflict that has jolted the global economy.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 30.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for May 30, No. 614.

Some Iranians hoped foreign intervention would unseat the regime but instead the US-Israel war has damaged livelihoods and strengthened those in power

As Donald Trump swung this week between threats of new military action against Iran and predictions that a lasting ceasefire deal was imminent, many Iranians were left exhausted and gripped by uncertainty.

Despite the partial lifting of an internet shutdown that began when the war started on 28 February, fears of worsening repression at home have also fuelled pessimism about the future among some of those to whom the Guardian spoke.

Suggestion the Luce EV should be stripped of prancing horse logo shows strength of feeling from Ferrari fans

For passionate enthusiasts, Ferraris are not merely cars but works of art. The emotion stirred by their classic red curves is, they say, akin to standing before a Michelangelo sculpture, while the sound of the engine revving evokes a sensation comparable to listening to the music of Giuseppe Verdi or Giacomo Puccini.

Which is why the sight of the Italian carmaker’s first fully electric car, the Luce EV, unveiled this week, left many fans aghast.

President Trump's physician said in a letter released Friday that the president is in "excellent health," following a physical earlier this week at Walter Reed National Military Hospital.

```Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 brings word that Marcia Lucas, part of the editing team for both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, has died at age 80 after a battle with metastatic cancer. Married to George Lucas from 1969 to 1983, Marcia is remembered by The Wrap as "a powerful asset in the early days of the Star Wars series, helping shape its voice and identity long before it became the massive global franchise..." She won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing for her work on the original "Star Wars" movie, an award that came four years after she was nominated for editing George's previous film, "American Graffiti." She additionally edited his debut feature, "THX 1138." Beyond these collaborations with her then-husband, Marcia worked as an editor with other acclaimed filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. She was credited as sole editor for Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," and served as supervising editor for "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York." Marcia served as part of a three-person crew editing both "Star Wars" and "Return of the Jedi." On the first film, she worked alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew and was personally responsible for editing the Battle of Yavin — otherwise known as the iconic "trench run" sequence near the end of the film. For "Return of the Jedi," Marcia shared credit with Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham. "If only Lucas had people like her on the prequels instead of sycophants who worshipped him as a God..." argues this 2015 blog post noting an article calling her "the secret weapon behind Star Wars — including this anecdote from The Secret History of Star Wars : The [Star Wars] Death Star trench run was originally scripted entirely different, with Luke having two runs at the exhaust port; Marcia had re-ordered the shots almost from the ground up, trying to build tension lacking in the original scripted sequence, which was why this one was the most complicated (Deleted Magic has a faithful reproduction of the original assembly, which is surprisingly unsatisfying). She warned George, "If the audience doesn't cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he's being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn't work." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The five deaths came in vehicles that were struck by the bus when it did not slow down for traffic, Virginia State Police said.

The strikes are part of a monthslong campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.

New digital marking system is aimed at reducing human errors but many students say it has resulted in wrong grades

A national outcry has erupted in India after more than 400,000 students requested copies of their answer sheets amid mounting complaints of errors in the marking of the country’s most important school-leaving examinations.

Within days of the grade 12 exam results being issued, students began reporting marking discrepancies they linked to a new digital marking system.

Fireworks displays will replace all drone shows at the iconic festival after a technical issue saw dozens fall from the sky on Monday night

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Vivid Sydney has cancelled all remaining drone shows after 83 fell from the sky into Darling Harbour this week, prompting a “full assessment” of the aerial light show.

On Monday, audiences looked on as a performance called Star-Bound suddenly went awry, with “unforeseen technical difficulties” causing 83 drones to plunge into the waters of Cockle Bay and six to land on a boardwalk. No injuries were reported.

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Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor, said he won’t be marching in this year’s Israel Day Parade, during a news conference Thursday.

“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government clear,” Mamdani said, adding that ample security measures will be in place. He said:

As the mayor of our city, I take seriously the responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of every New Yorker at every event, regardless of my attendance.

Josh Richards joins international mission to help five found alive and search for missing divers, with one person extracted successfully

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

An Australian cave diver is part of an international team that has brought one man out alive from a remote flooded cave in Laos, with the rescue operation continuing for six more men still trapped underground.

One man was brought alive from the labyrinthine cave complex late on Friday. Four remain stranded on a rocky ledge about 300m from the cave entrance, while two men are still unaccounted for.

Three men killed in third attack this week amid Trump administration’s campaign against alleged drug boats

The US military said it had carried out another strike Friday on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men in the third attack this week and pushing the overall death toll above 200 people.

US Southern Command announced the latest strike in the months-long campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific with its usual language that the vessel was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and operated by a designated terrorist organization. It provided no evidence.

Earlier this year, the CDC announced updated recommendations that would reduce the number of recommended immunizations for children from 17 to 11.

The federal prosecutor who signed an indictment accusing former FBI Director James Comey of threatening President Trump by posting an image of seashells arranged as "86 47" is no longer on the case.

Order bars government from ‘taking other further action’ in the creation or operation of the fund so a case challenging it can continue – key US politics stories from Friday, 29 May at a glance

A federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring any money into a secretive and loosely controlled $1.8bn fund while a legal challenge proceeds.

The order from US district judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday bars the government from “taking other further action” in the creation or operation of the fund while legal arguments in a case challenging the fund continue. The order is intended “to ensure no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the Anti-Weaponization Fund”, Brinkema wrote.

When a homeless man had no choice but to give up his dog, Jake, a local fire station gave Jake a home, and then helped the man get back on his feet.

All of AT&T's current plans are new for 2026. We pick the best options.

Discovery brings death toll from chemical tank rupture in Longview to nine, with two workers still unaccounted for

Crews on Friday recovered the remains of one more victim of a massive chemical tank rupture at a paper mill in Washington state, bringing the death toll to nine people and leaving two workers still unaccounted for.

Among the 11 workers presumed killed in the disaster were two brothers who worked there together, a trivia champ and an electrician who would help his farmer neighbors cut hay.

The head of the U.S. military's Southern Command met Friday with top Cuban military officials at the edge of Guantanamo Bay, a rare meeting as President Trump heaps pressure on Cuba and does not rule out military action.

@scabaa Ah I see. I was hoping for regular outlets but that's probably never happening. Super cool you can just leave it like that without a worry.
I ride super lean so no backpack. Just the charger dangling off my hip from a carabiner in a lil bag with some misc bits alongside. Not sure I could pack the adapter 😅 Good shout though!

Personally would have preferred a HS but it's whatevs. She's got more range than my prior GT that's in retirement with the rest of the boards :3 Defo a good conversion especially if you can swap out the hypercore for a SF.

@Wheelwizard Different board. Built it from bits I acquired over time then used my Fungineer privilege's to get the missing bits I needed ^-^ Rides like a dream with just a few tweaks but I'll probably go over all the settings in vesc tool to make sure I'm not leaving anything on the table. So far it's just better than my GT was with the same battery. BTG seemingly making offroad less of a battery drain too which is nice.

Executive order recognizes health department assessment as guide for federal government for childhood vaccines

An executive order signed by Donald Trump with little fanfare on Friday could have a huge impact on the health of US children, as it instructs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to cut the number of recommended childhood vaccines almost in half.

The vague language of the order, which refers to “a scientific assessment that compared United States childhood immunization recommendations with those of peer nations” published in January by anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy’s health and human services department, does not explicitly state that the new recommendation removes vaccines against seven diseases from the schedule.

hepatitis A

hepatitis B

meningitis

rotavirus

influenza

Covid-19

One Laos gold miner was brought out of a flooded cave in a perilous two-hour operation where monsoon rains have trapped a group for over a week.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 30, No. 1,806.

When Trump visited China earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned him that Taiwan could become a "very dangerous situation" if mishandled.

A judge blocked the Kennedy Center from closing its doors during renovations, and ruled that its board acted unlawfully by adding President Trump's name to the building. The president reacted by saying he wants Congress to take it over.

Apple boosted its maximum trade-in values for selected iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, MacBooks and desktop Macs.

Jill Biden said she supported Joe Biden's decision to pardon their son, Hunter, because they couldn't let him go to jail under President Trump.

Dell's stock skyrocketed 32.76% on Friday, "its best day ever," reports CNBC, after Dell "reported its fastest pace for revenue growth for any period since returning to the public market in 2018..." "Shares are now up 234% in 2026." Dell, which reported first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, saw a flood of artificial intelligence-related demand for its servers, which contain graphics processing units from companies like Nvidia. Quarterly revenue soared nearly 88% year over year, with AI server revenue alone increasing 757% from a year earlier to $16.1 billion... Ben Reitzes, head of technology research at [research/investment firm] Melius, said he'd "never seen anything like" Dell's latest quarter. "They beat every line in the model, so this wasn't just AI, it was great execution," Reitzes told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "They beat whatever we would've thought...." Morgan Stanley wrote that while they expected a clean beat and raise this quarter, they're "eating our humble pie" off the back of Dell's results. "We got this one wrong, and our model/PT are under review," the analysts wrote. "This was — across the board — one of the most impressive quarters we've seen in our time covering Hardware, especially in the context of what is happening across the component universe."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The tank ruptured Tuesday at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. facility in Longview, a city located along the southern Washington border with Oregon, killing 11 people.

A look back at the esteemed personalities who've left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.

A judge signaled she may reopen a case between President Trump and his own government that led the DOJ to create a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund," ordering the president's lawyers to respond to allegations of "deception" and "fraud."

Findings add to growing efforts to explain why cancer rates are increasing among younger adults worldwide

Poor sleep may be fuelling the global rise in under-50s being diagnosed with cancer, two large studies suggest.

The number of younger people diagnosed with the disease has risen by almost 80% in three decades. Worldwide cases of early-onset cancer increased from 1.82m in 1990 to 3.26m in 2019, while cancer deaths among people in their 40s, 30s or younger rose by 27%.

If you want to attract more hungry visitors to your bird feeder, this is where you should place it in your yard.

Consumers have kept the economy chugging along despite financial pressures. But some signs suggest they could be losing steam, experts say.

I've reviewed hundreds of wireless earbuds for CNET, and these are my current top picks at a variety of prices.

Announcement coincides with reports of influx of federal agents to Delaney Hall, site of protests and hunger strike

Top New Jersey officials announced on Friday that the state police will be taking over policing functions from federal immigration officers outside the contentious Delaney Hall facility, as reports surface of an influx of federal agents making their way to the area.

As part of the state police’s takeover of “public safety operations” at the site, they will establish a “peaceful protected zone” for demonstrators and will have protesters “move there today”, according to New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, and attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

Investigation launched in former mining village of Coalsnaughton after residents forced to leave properties

Nearly 100 homes have been evacuated following reports of ground movement in a former mining village in Clackmannanshire.

Properties began being evacuated on 18 May and an investigation has since been launched into the cause in Coalsnaughton.

Anthony Odiong was charged with exploiting his status to pursue sex with women he was giving spiritual direction to

A jury in Texas has convicted a Roman Catholic priest charged with illegally exploiting his status as a clergyman to pursue sex with women to whom he was providing spiritual direction.

Eight women and four men found Anthony Odiong, 57, guilty of one charge of sexual assault in the first degree and two such counts in the second degree involving two women, each of whom testified during a trial that began with jury selection on Tuesday in Waco.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Big companies are pulling back from using AI for anything and everything as costs go up.

One climber was rescued from the 17,200-foot basin on Alaska's Mount McKinley, and the search for three remaining climbers who also fell is now a recovery effort, the National Park Service said.

Jose Yugar-Cruz, who had been granted protection from deportation to his home country in South America, has been temporarily released from ICE custody.

Get ready to soak up the most daylight you'll get in any day all year long.

Why Should Delaware Care?
For more than a year, Delaware and federal officials have warred over the release of sensitive employment data from 15 state businesses. But two successive judicial rulings against the state will now require it to release that data. 

More than a dozen businesses in Delaware will soon be scrutinized by federal immigration authorities over their purported hiring of undocumented workers, following a judicial order earlier this week. 

A federal judge on Wednesday tossed out the Delaware Department of Labor’s appeal of a previous circuit court ruling that compelled the agency to turn over employment data from 15 unnamed businesses to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE originally sought that data — detailed wage records that include names, addresses, and Social Security numbers — in relation to federal investigations over alleged employment of undocumented workers.

The denied appeal comes a year after the federal government subpoenaed the Department of Labor seeking that sensitive employee data as part of President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

But following two successive rulings against the state, officials say they will comply with the order. 

In a press release following the ruling, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings lambasted the federal government’s request for the data, saying the “public has lost faith” in the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. 

Still, she said now that the appeals court struck down its request, the state must release the data.

“The Court has spoken, and with no viable alternative before us, the state must honor its ruling — but this was a fight worth losing on our feet,” Jennings said in the release. “This was not just a question of what the law demands, but of what our conscience permits.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. 

Gov. Matt Meyer also expressed his disappointment in the ruling in the press release. 

In the year and a half since Trump’s second inauguration, Delaware has signed onto a number of lawsuits challenging actions the federal government has taken, including the stalling of offshore wind permits, cutting food stamps, and restricting gender-affirming care. 

Meyer said those challenges would not stop in the coming years. 

“We will not stop fighting against Trump administration actions that hurt Delawareans and our businesses,” Meyer said in the release. 

Following Delaware’s passage of a statewide ban on local police cooperation agreements with ICE under the 287(g) program, the successful acquisition of labor data could open a new front in the Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown in the First State.

Original court ruling

Prior to the state’s appeal, Delaware District Court Chief Judge Colm Connolly issued a blistering 27-page ruling in April compelling the state to turn over the subpoenaed employment data. That ruling picked apart the state Department of Labor’s arguments, which he said were political, not legal. 

“This court is not the proper forum in which to air [the Delaware Department of Labor’s] generalized grievances about the conduct of government,” wrote Connolly, a former U.S. attorney who was appointed to the bench in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term. “It would be wholly inappropriate for me to consider this line of argument, and I decline to do so.”

Connolly’s ruling was largely expected, however, after a hearing earlier this month where the judge grilled the Delaware Department of Labor’s attorney Jennifer-Kate Aaronson, saying it was not her “best day” when she wrote the legal brief presenting her case.

During that court hearing on April 2, Connolly publicly dissected the regulations that Aaronson cited by projecting his computer tab onto a large screen at the head of the courtroom. He asked Aaronson where the law shows the state Department of Labor has “full discretion” to decide not to comply with a federal subpoena as he highlighted law text.

Aaronson was not able to point to a specific subsection of the regulations in response, but she maintained that disclosure of sensitive information to ICE has never been mandated by federal law.

How did we get here?

The case stems from a subpoena ICE issued to the Delaware Department of Labor in April 2025 seeking wage records for 15 Delaware businesses for the final two quarters of 2024, which the agency suspected of employing undocumented immigrants. 

The subpoena, which originated from “hotline tips” that ICE received, sought employees’ names, addresses, wages and Social Security numbers from 15 Delaware businesses, according to court records. ICE’s subpoena efforts align with the Trump administration’s broader strategy of using federal and state agency data to bolster its promised immigration enforcement push.

Attorneys with the U.S. Attorney’s Office argued in court documents that wage records would help ICE further its focus on “worksite enforcement” and may help determine whether employees are using fake Social Security numbers or if employers are paying workers “under the table,” or using cash and without reporting it to the IRS, court records show. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Claudia Pare asked Connolly to seal the April subpoena when the case was first filed, arguing that ICE did not want to have the 15 business names become public and “prematurely alert” the targets of the agency’s worksite investigations. 

Conversely, Deputy State Attorney Jennifer-Kate Aaronson filed a motion to unseal the subpoena in August. The 15 businesses suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants should have the opportunity to come to court and argue against their information being transmitted to ICE, she said during a previous court hearing. 

Connolly initially declined to rule on those motions, although he said it remained a good decision to keep the subpoena under seal. If suspected businesses are made public and associated with potentially hiring undocumented employees, it could harm their reputation if they’re ultimately found to be innocent, he said.

DOL officials have received at least four subpoenas from ICE since February 2025, Aaronson said during an August court hearing. Department officials complied with one ICE subpoena that sought information about a single individual, Aaronson said.

According to other subpoenas obtained by the News Journal, ICE has also reportedly investigated the potential employment of undocumented workers at a Perdue plant in Seaford along with a fencing company and a northern Delaware restaurant.

Connolly noted in his ruling that prior to 2025, the Department of Labor routinely complied with subpoena requests from ICE and other federal agencies.

Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez, Jacob Owens and Tim Carlin contributed to this report.

The post Appeals court compels Delaware to turn over employment data to ICE appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

A CBS News California fact-check found the state's free diaper program won't cost taxpayers 50 cents per diaper, as viral posts claimed. But the Newsom administration still won't release the Baby2Baby contract or competitive bid records amid concerns free diapers could go to waste.

The policy memo issued last week requires many foreigners to obtain green cards through their home countries

A new policy memo issued last week by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), requiring many foreigners in the US to leave the country and obtain green cards through their home countries, has sparked confusion and fear among hundreds of thousands of visa holders and families, as well as immigration advocates and lawyers.

Multiple Guardian readers, speaking anonymously out of fear, said the memo threatens to upend lives they have spent years building in the US – from careers and homes to marriages and long-term plans for stability.

The iPhone 18 rumor mill is pointing toward Apple's foldable debut, a variable-aperture camera and a split 2026-27 release schedule. Plus, new dark cherry and light blue colors.

Flathub, by the most popular (effectively only) repository for Flatpak applications, has changed its policies to include a strict ban on “AI” use for both application submissions as well as the application code itself.

This policy applies to both the application being submitted to Flathub and the Flathub submission itself, including the manifest, metadata, patches, build scripts, and pull request. For the purpose of this policy, applications include BaseApps, extensions, and any other artifacts that can be produced by flatpak-builder.

Submission pull requests must not be generated, opened, or automated using AI tools or agents. Please also do not request review from any AI tools in the submission PR. Automated Copilot reviews on GitHub can be disabled by the submitter by going here and changing Repository access to exclude the repo or disabling the global “Automatic Copilot code review” found here.

Applications containing AI-generated or AI-assisted code, documentation, or other content are not allowed.

↫ Flathub policy diff

This is a fairly strict policy, but they do leave some wiggle room by also including the following line:

Exceptions may be granted for mature, well-maintained projects.

↫ Flathub policy diff

I don’t think they had any choice adding this exception, but it does feel a little bit like “rules for thee but not for me”. I can easily see the relatively small in-crowd of developers around Flathub and Flatpak, and their friends, handing each other exceptions, while enforcing the much stricter rules when it comes to outsiders. Say a well-known GNOME application from a long-time GNOME contributor adds “AI”-generated code, will it really be banned from Flathub?

I have my doubts.

Regardless, it’s mostly good news. It’s important to note that this policy change won’t be applied retroactively, so slopcoded applications already on Flathub won’t be removed.

It’s time once again for HPC Career Notes, our monthly feature that’s designed to keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the HPC community, including promotion, new company hires, and accolade. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!

Elisa Bertino

Elisa Bertino, the Samuel Conte Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University, was elected by members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to lead the group this month.

Elisa Bertino

Over Bertino’s 40-year career, she has made pioneering contributions to information and systems security and privacy. She currently is the vice president of ACM and previously served as the Secretary/Treasurer, as well as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC). Bertino also co-founded the ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY).

Bertino is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE and AAAS. Among her honors, she has received the ACM Athena Lecturer Award, the SIGSAC Outstanding Contribution Award, the IEEE Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award, and the IEEE Computer Society Tsutomo Kanai Award.

Joining Bertino will be incoming Vice President Rashmi Mohan, Sr. Director of Engineering at Cisco (Splunk) and Tom Crick, professor of digital society and policy at the University of Bristol, who will serve as Secretary/Treasurer. In addition, two new Members-at-Large have been elected to four-year terms: Lydia Tapia, Professor, University of New Mexico; and Holly Yanco, Distinguished Professor, University of Massachusetts.

“Computing now stands at a defining moment,” Bertino said. “Transformative advances are reshaping research, industry, and society at unprecedented speed and scale. At the same time, they raise profound challenges. Meeting these challenges requires not only continued excellence in foundational research, but also strong professional leadership and sustained dialogue across disciplines, sectors, and regions. ACM has a unique responsibility–and a unique capacity–to provide that leadership.”

Matt Wood

Matt Wood

Matt Wood announced is returning to AWS to be its new Chief AI and Technology Officer. Wood left AWS nearly two years to become the chief technology and information officer (CTIO) at consultancy PwC, but now he’s back.

“Matt helped build much of our AI and ML platform over 14 years at AWS, including shaping Amazon SageMaker and Bedrock,” Julia White, AWS CMO, said in a LinkedIn post. “He then went to PwC and helped some of the world’s largest enterprises put AI into production.”

Wood’s return also grabbed the attention of Werner Vogels, who announced last fall at re:Invent that he is stepping down as CTO of AWS.

“Matt Wood helped put some of our most important developer tools into the hands of builders, from SageMaker to Bedrock, services that changed how developers build with AI,” Vogels said in a LinkedIn post. “Matt is a polymath, from medical science to machine learning to cloud infrastructure, and that’s what it takes to build the next generation of tools. The next chapter is about giving builders the tools to evolve with AI, and I look forward to working with Matt to deliver for our builder community. Welcome back, Matt!”

Douglas Mans and Daniel Stephens

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory selected two senior leaders to fill roles focused on advancing capabilities, driving research, and shaping strategies for basic science and national security across PNNL.

Douglas Mans (left) and Daniel Stephens

Douglas Mans will serve as associate laboratory director for PNNL’s science mission areas, which span the physical, computational, Earth and biological sciences, while Daniel Stephens will serve as associate laboratory director for PNNL’s National Security Directorate.

Mans and Stephens join newly appointed Associate Laboratory Director Angela Becker-Dippmann, completing PNNL’s senior research leadership team. Together, they will help shape PNNL’s research portfolio and drive strategic planning, the DOE facility said.

Mans brings 20 years of research and leadership experience in Earth systems science, biological sciences, chemistry, and computational science, making him ideally suited to lead PNNL’s science organization focused on fundamental research.

Stephens will lead PNNL’s National Security Directorate, overseeing strategy and operations focused on reducing threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. He brings more than 20 years of experience to the role, including leadership in radiation detection, nuclear sciences and program management.

“Douglas and Daniel bring extensive experience leading complex, multidisciplinary research organizations. They have strong records of advancing research and building strategies that create new, partnership‑driven opportunities,” said PNNL Laboratory Director Deb Gracio. “Their leadership will help ensure we remain aligned with national priorities, accelerating scientific discovery and advancing mission-ready solutions.”

Kristin Persson

Kristin Persson, a Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley and faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is one of the 252 new academy members inducted this year.

Kristin Persson

Persson’s work uses HPC to study the physics and chemistry of materials. She is the founder and director of the Materials Project, an open-access database with millions of properties on hundreds of thousands of crystalline structures and molecules.

The Materials Project is the most widely used repository of information on inorganic materials in the world, used by hundreds of thousands of people and vital for developing new materials for high-performance batteries, fuel cells, and data storage. The Materials Project’s curated datasets enable AI-powered materials design for faster scientific discoveries.

Persson also served as the director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility at Berkeley Lab, from 2020 to 2024. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineers and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow; and fellow of the Materials Research Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Physical Society.

Hajara-Yasmin Isa

Hajara-Yasmin Isa

Kristin Persson, a doctoral student in computer science at the Grainger College of Engineering, last month was awarded the 2026 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

The $10,000 fellowship is part of a $2 million endowment from Jerry Fiddler and Melissa Alden to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to support the Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media Institute (eDream). The eDream Institute awards exceptional, creative, and interdisciplinary students and faculty who propose significant projects that address cultural and global challenges using art, science and technology.

“Being selected for the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship is a significant milestone that validates our collective vision at the University of Illinois. This award recognizes the importance of shared, innovative progress and ensures the next wave of technological development is shaped by a commitment to building solutions together,” Isa said.

“I am very passionate about advancements in technology, and this fellowship provides the momentum to advance Littafin Fasaha, transforming our integration of AI and design into a catalyst for real-world inclusion,” she continued. “It empowers us to bridge the gap between complex research and accessible technology, fostering a future where innovation is built by and for a global community.”

Raviv Levi, Amit Naik, and Craig Sanchez

CData Software announced the appointment of Raviv Levi as chief product and technology officer (CPTO), along with the additions of Amit Naik as vice president of AI architecture and Craig Sanchez as senior vice president of embedded sales.

(from left) Raviv Levi, Amit Naik, and Craig Sanchez

Levi joins CData from Sift, where he also served as CPTO, following senior leadership roles at Cisco. He has led product, cloud security, and platform initiatives focused on enterprise-scale infrastructure and AI-driven technologies.

Amit Sharma, founder and CEO of CData, says Levi’s hiring will bolster the company’s AI strategy, in particular the need to present customers with live, governed, context-aware access to data wherever it lives.

“Raviv’s experience building and scaling enterprise technology platforms makes him the right leader to drive the next phase of growth at CData,” Sharma continued. “We’re also excited to welcome Amit and Craig to the leadership team as we expand our AI platform and embedded partnerships to meet growing enterprise demand.”

As Vice President of AI Architecture, Naik will lead the design and evolution of CData’s AI architecture, working across product and engineering to ensure the platform meets the technical demands of enterprise AI deployments. He joins CData from Calix and previously held senior leadership roles in AI/ML solutions and infrastructure at PayPal, Financial Engines and Oracle.

Sanchez will lead CData’s embedded sales organization, helping software vendors and platform providers integrate enterprise-grade connectivity and AI data access directly into their products. He joins CData from Vectara and previously held senior sales and business development leadership roles at Elastic and Cloudera.

For the previous edition of HPC Career Notes, click here.

The post HPC Career Notes for May 2026 appeared first on HPCwire.

Experts point to several factors, from tariffs to weather, behind the rapid price increase in the humble tomato.

Blue Origin assess the impact of Thursday's New Glenn explosion, prompting concern about NASA moon program delays.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 30, No. 1,084.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 30 No. 818.

Wix is laying off roughly 20% of its workforce, about 1,000 employees, as CEO Avishai Abrahami cites both the rapid evolution of AI and currency pressure from a stronger Israeli shekel against the dollar. The web developer joins a growing list of tech companies making similar cuts, including Amazon, Block, Cisco, Cloudflare, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Intuit. Fast Company reports: "We have witnessed the most significant shift in how companies are built since the invention of modern programming languages in the 1970s," [wrote Abrahami]. "This is not just about adopting new tools -- it is about rewiring how companies are built, how they think, how they manage, and how they operate. Companies that embrace this change will not only build faster; they will build things the previous generation literally could not have imagined." Abrahami also cited the poor exchange rate between the Israeli shekel and the U.S. dollar. The Israeli currency has significantly strengthened in the past few quarters against a weakening dollar, and the shekel is up nearly 30% against the greenback over the last year. "As the majority of our teams are Israel-based, a very meaningful portion of our costs are shekel-denominated, while our revenue is largely dollar-denominated," Abrahami explained on X. "This creates a structural pressure on our ability to operate at our current scale. It is a reality that directly shapes what is sustainable for our company."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine has received intelligence indicating Russia will launch an assault involving drones and missiles.

The Russian drone struck an apartment building, wounding two people, Romanian officials said.

The smart ring company plans to offer an LED therapy device that syncs with its smart rings.

Christian Castro charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime after video emerged of non-fatal shooting in January

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A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent wanted for shooting a Venezuelan man during the sweeping immigration crackdown in Minnesota was arrested on Friday in Texas, authorities said.

Christian Castro was taken into custody 11 days after Minneapolis prosecutors charged him with assault and falsely reporting a crime.

Ex-attorney general tells House committee she did not ‘lead every aspect’ of effort but rather delegated to Todd Blanche

• US politics live – latest updates

Pam Bondi, the former attorney general, defended the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files under her leadership on Friday, and told lawmakers on the House oversight and reform committee that she did not “lead every aspect” of the department’s effort, but rather she delegated oversight of the process to Todd Blanche, her former deputy attorney general, who is now acting attorney general.

Democratic lawmakers also said that Bondi refused to answer questions about Donald Trump’s involvement in the release of the files.

This week's guests include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Russian strikes in Kyiv, the Ebola outbreak, Eid al-Adha in Gaza and Sinner at the French Open – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

US president did not announce decision on deal that could open strait of Hormuz after two-hour situation room meet

Donald Trump has claimed he could approve an Iran peace deal on Friday that contains major concessions from Tehran, including the opening of the strait of Hormuz and the elimination of the country’s nuclear programme. However, top Iranian officials signalled a final agreement had not been reached.

The two versions indicate Trump may once again be practising his “art of the deal” as he seeks to talk his way out of a war that has disrupted global energy supplies and rocked the world economy.

Rare reprieve for people protected by temporary protected status granted after administration misses deadline

The Trump administration has extended protections shielding about 11,000 Lebanese people from deportation, allowing them to stay and work in the United States for another six months.

The decision, announced on Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), marked a rare reprieve for people protected by temporary measures that have been harshly criticized by Republicans. The extension comes amid ongoing fighting in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.

Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat, applauded the pope for pushing back against Trump’s policies in meeting

Brandon Johnson, the Chicago mayor, cast Pope Leo XIV as a powerful global ally on social justice, migration and reparations after meeting the Chicago-born pontiff at the Vatican, saying their shared roots and priorities could help amplify efforts to protect vulnerable communities.

“We are incredibly elated and proud of him,” Johnson told the Associated Press in an interview on Friday, a day after the meeting with the American pope in a private audience.

Judge rules that Washington DC performing arts venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress

A judge on Friday ordered the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that the prestigious Washington DC venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.

US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington directed the Trump administration to take down all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and to eliminate any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials within 14 days.

Federal agents from FBI and IRS probed the SPLC's paid informant program starting in Trump's first term.

The GOP-friendly map approved by state lawmakers now goes to Republican governor who is expected to sign it

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Louisiana Republicans approved a new congressional map on Friday which would eliminate a majority-Black congressional district that was at the center of a landmark supreme court ruling gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The new map reconfigures the state’s sixth congressional district, now represented by Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. Lawmakers drew the district in 2024 after a court found the map lawmakers enacted after the 2020 census diluted the influence of Black voters and violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map will probably give Republicans control of five of Louisiana’s six congressional seats (the previous map had a 4-2 Republican-Democrat split). The bill now goes to Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, who is expected to sign it.

TACC’s Stampede3, Lonestar6 supercomputers aid breakthrough measurement of an early-universe black hole

May 29, 2026 — Which comes first, the galaxy or the black hole? We don’t know, but scientists have long thought it could be the galaxy: large stars within an existing galaxy consume their fuel and collapse to form black holes, which can gobble up surrounding material and merge over time to form more massive entities.

An image from NIRCam on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows Abell2744-QSO1, magnified and triply imaged by galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (Pandora’s Cluster). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Lukas Furtak (Ben-Gurion University)

But it’s hard to figure out how black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, thousands of which have now been detected in the early universe, could have grown so quickly from such small seeds.

Now, researchers, including several from The University of Texas at Austin, have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to find clear evidence that some supermassive black holes were enormous from the beginning, forming without a stellar collapse phase, and without a significantly more massive host galaxy to feed them.

“This is a remarkable finding,” said Roberto Maiolino of University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, co-author of studies published in Nature and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “It’s a paradigm shift, a total revisiting of the classical scenarios of how black holes form and grow.”

Cosmic Frontiers and Supercomputers

“We’re proud to be part of this groundbreaking discovery,” said Volker Bromm of UT Austin, a co-author on the papers. “UT Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center provided the theory that this enigmatic source may be powered by a ‘primordial black hole.’ And the work is based on Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) supercomputer simulations.”

Bromm’s team was awarded allocations on TACC’s Stampede3 and Lonestar6 systems by The University of Texas Cyberinfrastructure project, supporting all 14 academic and health institutions across the state.

Their computational work relied on large-scale cosmological simulations, which follow many dark matter and gas particles as they interact gravitationally and hydrodynamically over cosmic time. This type of modeling is far beyond what can be done with traditional single-thread calculations, because it requires parallel computing, substantial memory, and large storage capacity for both the simulations and the subsequent analysis.

“TACC provided the computing power and storage needed to make this possible. Although there was a learning curve in getting some of the simulations running efficiently on these systems, TACC provided excellent support, including helpful summer training sessions and very responsive staff support,” said study co-author Saiyang Zhang of UT Austin.

Little Red Dot QSO1

The astronomers based their results on detailed observations of Abell2744-QSO1 (QSO1), a prototypical Little Red Dot that existed just 700 million years after the Big Bang. It was first identified in 2023 by a team led by Lukas Furtak, now a UT Austin postdoc, and that discovery included several UT Austin researchers at the time.

Although QSO1 is only 1,300 light-years across, and its light has been traveling for more than 13 billion years, it is easier to study than most other Little Red Dots because it is gravitationally lensed by galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (Pandora’s Cluster). QSO1 is both magnified and triply imaged, appearing in three different locations in the sky.

“Gravitational lensing is similar to an optical lens that magnifies faint objects, except that it is caused by general relativity: massive foreground objects bend the light from more distant background sources,” Zhang explained. “This magnification effect is crucial for studying the early universe because it allows us to detect and resolve objects that would otherwise be too faint or too distant to observe in detail.”

Initial studies of QSO1 revealed compelling evidence that it may be little more than a cloud of glowing hydrogen and helium gas circling a supermassive black hole estimated at 40 million times the mass of the Sun. But as with other early black holes discovered by Webb, there was uncertainty about whether it really was that massive.

“Before now, all of the mass measurements of black holes in the early universe have been indirect, based on assumptions from what we know about them in the local universe. We didn’t know if those assumptions apply to the distant universe,” said co-author Francesco D’Eugenio of Cambridge University.

Mapping Gas Composition and Velocity

The team recognized that if QSO1’s black hole is as massive as it looks, they should be able to use the integral field unit (IFU) on Webb’s NIRSpec (Near Infrared Spectrograph) to trace the effects of its gravity on the gas swirling around it, while also mapping the distribution of various elements in the gas.

Cambridge graduate student Ignas Juodžbalis and Cosimo Marconcini of the University of Florence, lead authors on one of the studies, used the IFU observations to map motions of hydrogen gas surrounding the black hole. When they plotted the radial velocity as a function of distance from the center, they found that the gas Keplerian motion: It orbits a central point in the same way that planets in our solar system orbit the Sun.

“This is important because it tells us that most of the mass of QSO1 is concentrated in the black hole at the center,” said Juodžbalis. “If the mass were more distributed, as it would be if there were a lot of stars, the gas would not have this perfect Keplerian rotation.”

Since Keplerian motion is governed by simple laws of gravity, the team was able to use the gas velocity measurements to calculate the black hole mass directly, a feat that had not previously been possible.

They found that not only is the black hole immense — roughly 50 million solar masses — it makes up, at minimum, an astonishing two-thirds of QSO1’s total mass. This proportion is thousands of times greater than in nearby galaxies, where supermassive black holes make up only a tiny fraction of the host galaxy’s total mass.

The IFU composition maps supported these results, showing that the gas throughout QSO1 is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, with very little of the heavier elements like oxygen that would be expected in a galaxy rich with stars and stellar debris. With a metallicity less than 0.5% of the Sun, QSO1 is one of the most pristine galactic environments ever measured.

“We did not initially expect that such an over-massive black hole could coexist with such a pristine environment,” said Zhang. “That combination was particularly surprising and exciting.”

“This is a phenomenal result,” added Maiolino. “It is the first direct measurement of a black hole mass within the first billion years after the Big Bang, and it is consistent with the previous measurements.” The team thinks this is a good sign that the assumptions used for indirect mass measurements are valid, and that the masses of other black holes in the early universe have not been overestimated.

Supermassive Black Hole Origins

The outsized mass of QSO1 relative to its host galaxy suggests that it cannot have formed gradually from much smaller, stellar-mass black holes merging and feeding. “It seems that we have found a black hole that does not have a substantial host galaxy and that has predated stellar processes,” said Juodžbalis. “This is very exciting because it is evidence for primordial black holes or direct collapse black holes, which have been theorized but have not been confirmed.”

Whether QSO1’s black hole evolved from a “heavy seed” that formed within the first second of the Big Bang or somewhat later from the collapse of a giant cloud of gas, it was almost certainly born big, and it might be in the early stages of building a galaxy around it.

The team thinks that Little Red Dots like QSO1 cannot have been rare in the early universe, and they are in the process of analyzing similar objects to find out whether supermassive black holes actually do predate the galaxies where they currently reside.

“The direct measurement of supermassive black hole masses within the first galaxies is a key to testing theoretical models,” said Bromm. “JWST’s pioneering feat paves the way for astronomers to perform follow-up observations with the next generation of telescopes, like the Giant Magellan, deepening our understanding of these black holes’ enigmatic origins and early evolution.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

Adapted from a press release by Margaret W. Carruthers, STScI.

Source: Jorge Salazar, TACC

The post NASA’s Webb Reveals Black Hole That Formed Before Its Galaxy appeared first on HPCwire.

Ex-SNP leader says she appeared on more front pages than her husband this week, adding: ‘I don’t think that’s right’

Nicola Sturgeon said she “should not be held responsible for the wrongdoing of men” after Peter Murrell, her estranged husband, admitted to embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the SNP this week.

The former Scottish first minister told an audience at the Hay festival in Wales on Friday: “My picture has been on more front pages in Scotland this week than my former husband’s has, and I don’t think that’s right.”

Multi-year agreement expands Memory, NVIDIA NVLink-C2C and advanced Interface IP, and agentic AI-optimized GPU‑accelerated EDA and SDA flows on Samsung Foundry’s second-generation 2nm node for next-generation AI infrastructure and physical AI designs

SAN JOSE, Calif. and SEOUL, South Korea, May 29, 2026 — Cadence and Samsung Foundry have announced development of a full portfolio of Memory and Interface IP, and expanded certification of Cadence’s agentic AI digital, custom, 3D‑IC and system design and analysis (SDA) flows for Samsung Foundry’s second-generation 2nm process technology. This collaboration delivers a signoff‑ready platform for next‑generation AI infrastructure and physical AI designs across data center, edge and intelligent devices.

Building on the companies’ 2025 announcement of certified Cadence tools and IP on multiple Samsung Foundry nodes, including second-generation 2nm, this new multi-year agreement further broadens the Cadence portfolio of Memory and Interface IP, including NVIDIA NVLink-C2C-enabled interconnect and CUDA-X GPU-accelerated libraries spanning high-speed SerDes, PCIe, UCIe and all leading memory interfaces on second-generation 2nm. It also deepens enablement of certified Cadence flows so ecosystem partners can implement large AI, HPC and advanced system designs with higher performance, lower power and faster time to tapeout.

“AI infrastructure and physical AI are pushing the industry into advanced node and 3D‑IC designs that demand far more capacity, integration and signoff confidence than ever before,” said Boyd Phelps, senior vice president and general manager of the Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence. “With this next phase of our Samsung Foundry collaboration, we’re giving joint customers a production‑proven platform to deliver the next-generation of AI and HPC systems to market faster.”

“Customers are increasingly drawn to Samsung Foundry’s second-generation 2nm for leading‑edge AI designs that must keep pace with the exploding demand across AI infrastructure and emerging physical AI applications,” said Jongshin Shin, executive vice president and head of Foundry Design Platform Development at Samsung Electronics. “Our expanded Cadence partnership delivers a robust semiconductor and 3D-IC platform with advanced Memory, Interface IP and AI-optimized flows for superior performance, efficiency and innovation.”

Agentic AI EDA/SDA Platform and 3D-IC Design on Samsung Foundry’s Second-Generation 2nm

Cadence and Samsung Foundry deliver a comprehensive certified flow on second-generation 2nm, including Cadence’s Innovus Implementation System for digital implementation, Virtuoso Studio for analog and custom design, Integrity 3D‑IC Platform for full 3D‑IC system planning and implementation, Voltus IC Power Integrity Solution for power integrity and system‑level power analysis, and Quantus Extraction Solution and Tempus Timing Solution for signoff.

Cadence enables key second-generation 2nm design features, including the Innovus system and Genus Synthesis Solution’s glitch power optimization in the place and route flow, and a smart hierarchical flow to achieve optimal performance, power, and area (PPA) and turnaround time (TAT).

Samsung 3D Cube-H design is enabled with a full system planning, implementation and signoff flow for hybrid copper bonding (HCB) technology, including Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer, Integrity 3D‑IC, Innovus Implementation, Voltus IC Power Integrity (ERA) and Pegasus Verification System. It includes silicon interposer auto-routing and optimization, and ensures tighter connectivity between analysis, signoff, and verification, with the Tempus and Pegasus solutions providing trusted, confident signoff.

Advancing NVLink-C2C Interconnect for Next-Generation AI Infrastructure

NVIDIA is leveraging Cadence and Samsung Foundry’s expanded advanced-node and 3D-IC platform to deliver high-bandwidth interconnect through NVIDIA NVLink-C2C and CUDA-X GPU accelerated capabilities—foundational technologies that power next-generation accelerated computing systems and strengthen the broader ecosystem’s ability to produce high-performance AI semiconductors.

“As AI workloads scale and system architectures grow more demanding, the semiconductor ecosystem depends on tools and platforms that can keep pace with simulation and design complexity at advanced nodes,” said Timothy Costa, vice president and general manager of computational engineering, NVIDIA. “By leveraging Cadence’s GPU-accelerated design flows on Samsung Foundry’s second-generation 2nm platform, we’re optimizing the performance and delivery of next-generation AI architectures and high-bandwidth interconnects.”

Enabling Ambarella’s Next-Generation Edge AI Platform

Ambarella is developing its next-generation 2nm edge AI platform to extend its leadership in high-performance, ultra-low-power AI perception and physical AI SoCs for intelligent edge systems spanning robotics, drones, autonomous machines, and advanced sensing applications.

“Ambarella’s edge AI strategy is focused on delivering industry‑leading performance per watt, scalable AI acceleration, and robust multi‑sensor processing at the most advanced process nodes,” said Chan Lee, chief operating officer at Ambarella. “Our collaboration with Cadence and Samsung Foundry to deliver IP for PCIe 5.0 for our next‑generation 2nm edge AI platform has been critical as we address the design, verification and manufacturing complexity of this node. Having a signoff‑ready, co‑optimized IP and tools solution, together with a robust, production‑proven design kit and PDK, enables our teams to move forward with confidence, reduce risk and stay focused on accelerating innovation in low‑power AI perception, physical AI and intelligent edge computing.”

Cadence and Samsung Foundry will highlight their enhanced partnership and design enablement during the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) 2026 event, featuring technical sessions and demonstrations showcasing second-generation 2nm and 3D-IC design flows for GPU-accelerated AI workloads.

About Cadence

Cadence is a market leader in AI and digital twins, pioneering the application of computational software to accelerate innovation in the engineering design of silicon to systems. Our design solutions, based on Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy, are essential for the world’s leading semiconductor and systems companies to build their next-generation products from chips to full electromechanical systems that serve a wide range of markets, including hyperscale computing, mobile communications, automotive, aerospace, industrial, life sciences and robotics. In 2024, Cadence was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the world’s top 100 best-managed companies.

Source: Cadence

The post Cadence and Samsung Foundry Deepen 2nm and 3D‑IC Collaboration appeared first on HPCwire.

Spaceflight Now shared their video of the explosion, which the Orlando Sentinel describes as showing Blue Origin's rocket "become engulfed in flames. The fireball expands out and covers the entire launch pad as the fuselage of the rocket can be seen crumbling into the flames." Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.") It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit... The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test] Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety." "Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Exclusive: Some fear raising rate for people aged 18-20 will exacerbate unemployment while others point to lack of evidence

Rising rates of youth unemployment have created a split at the top of government over how fast it should meet its promise to give young people the full minimum wage.

Peter Kyle, the business secretary, is understood to believe now is not the time to give 18- to 20-year-olds the full minimum wage, which Labour promised to do in its manifesto.

Here is the next set of Islanders heading to Fiji.

Advancing DOE’s Genesis Mission for scientific discovery and national competitiveness

RICHLAND, Wash., May 29, 2026 — Beneath the glow of exhibit hall banners and the hum of thousands of conversations championing AI as the next engine of economic strength and national security, quieter discussions were taking shape at the AI+ Expo in Washington, D.C., about empowering scientists and engineers.

From left to right: Tom Grimes, senior data scientist and Court Corley, chief scientist for artificial intelligence.
Photo composite by Shannon Colson, PNNL.

The May 7-9, 2026, conference brought together an estimated 20,000 attendees, 400 speakers, and 175 exhibitors. Across the packed conference rooms and a crowded expo floor, experts offered a vision of the future: AI working side-by-side with researchers, helping to advance discovery at scales once unimaginable.

At the center of that vision is the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, an initiative to accelerate scientific discovery through integrated AI systems, high-performance computing, experimental facilities and large scientific datasets — a “new operating system for American innovation,” said Court Corley, chief scientist for artificial intelligence at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Corley and other national laboratory scientists and engineers joined colleagues and federal leaders at the conference. They contributed to a growing national conversation about AI and its potential to drive breakthroughs in biotechnology, energy, computing, manufacturing, national security, and more.

The conference was hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on strengthening the nation’s long-term competitiveness with the development of AI and other emerging technologies.

Spotlighting AI Innovation for Science

Experts from all 17 DOE national laboratories are participating in the Genesis Mission. Through initiatives such as the Center for AI @PNNL, the Laboratory is developing AI models, workflows, and governance frameworks to enable responsible, scalable scientific innovation across DOE missions.

“The AI+ Expo was focused on strengthening U.S. leadership in critical technologies and providing a forum for building new partnerships and collaborations,” said Corley, who also serves as the co-leader for the Transformational AI Models (ModCon) effort, a foundational, DOE-funded investment under the Genesis Mission designed to build and deploy self-improving AI systems for scientific discovery.

“Events like this allow DOE and its national laboratories to demonstrate real scientific progress and ensure that U.S. leadership in AI translates into tangible advances for energy, security, and scientific discovery.”

PNNL Experts Lead Key Sessions

Corley was among the featured PNNL speakers, delivering a presentation titled “ModCon, Building Transformational AI & Data for Science.”

His presentation described ModCon’s capabilities, including baseline AI research and development, best practices for scientific workflows, data brokers and standards and more. Corley detailed how ModCon is coordinating foundational AI capabilities across DOE laboratories, including developing best practices for efficient scientific workflows and data standards to support collaborative, large-scale AI development.

Corley later joined a panel discussion titled “The American Science Prowess Behind the Genesis Mission.” The session convened leaders from across the DOE to discuss major Genesis Mission pillars, including the American Science Cloud and Transformational AI Models & Data.

Tom Grimes, a senior data scientist and chief scientist of PNNL’s Generative AI Initiative, presented “So You Have a Model… Now What? Lessons from 50+ Generative AI Projects.”

Grimes’s presentation focused on the practical challenges and opportunities of applying generative AI tools to real-world scientific and national security problems.

His talk highlighted lessons learned from PNNL mission-focused AI projects spanning materials science, atmospheric science, grid modernization, autonomous experimentation, predictive phenomics, nuclear security, cybersecurity and Earth system modeling.

For example, Grimes shared work by PNNL Earth Scientist Preston Spicer that addresses the challenge of enabling scientific AI workflows for oceanographers. Agentic systems assisted with data acquisition, preprocessing, model execution, post-processing and visualization. The result is a user-friendly tool that greatly accelerates ocean model setup and supports Earth system modeling and marine energy applications.

Strengthening AI for Scientific Discovery

Participation in the AI+ Expo reflects PNNL’s broader role in helping DOE advance trustworthy and mission-driven AI capabilities. As the Genesis Mission continues to develop, PNNL researchers are contributing tools, models, and scientific expertise to help accelerate discovery while supporting national priorities in energy, security and competitiveness.

Source: Mike Wasem, PNNL

The post PNNL Researchers Showcase AI Leadership at AI+ Expo appeared first on HPCwire.

Want to earn a big return on your money for months (or years)? Here's how much you'd make with a $10,000 long-term CD.

These small changes to your HVAC habits could help lower your energy costs without making your home uncomfortable.

We run down all the specs and features of two of the biggest US carriers.

Start the weekend off with the Sam Raimi-directed film Send Help.

AI-fueled delusions can happen when chatbots respond to grandiose, paranoid or imaginary ideas with affirmation or encouragement.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Friday about her handling of the Epstein files.

Audit finds 99.7% of those registered to vote are US citizens as DoJ presses for access to information citing low removals

Utah released the results of a year-long audit of the state’s voter rolls, finding that the vast majority of its voters are verifiably US citizens, amid an escalating legal battle with the Trump administration over access to voter registration data.

The audit, launched in April 2025, found that 99.72% of Utah’s registered voters are confirmed US citizens. Of the more than 2 million voter records reviewed, 27 individuals were identified as non-citizens and removed from the rolls. Only 13 of those individuals had ever cast a ballot. The review, released on Wednesday by Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson’s office, also flagged 25 probable non-citizens, who have been given 30 days to provide proof of citizenship or face removal from the voter rolls.

May 29, 2026 — National Center for Computational Sciences teams turned out to support the High Performance Software Foundation’s second annual conference on March 19-20 in Chicago. The organization, founded in 2024 as part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation, works to lower barriers to productive use of existing and future high-performance computing (HPC) systems. The HPSF serves as a neutral hub that enables industry, government agencies and academia to collaborate on open-source scientific software for HPC.

Members of the National Center for Computational Sciences’ System Acceptance and User Environment Group supported the second annual High Performance Software Foundation conference March 19-20, 2026, in Chicago.
Credit: Fernando Posada Correa, ORNL

“For our group, this is the most important conference of the year,” said Fernando Posada Correa, who leads the NCCS System Acceptance and User Environment Group at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). “It’s a chance to compare notes with our colleagues and trade insights on emerging trends in the field.”

Posada Correa’s group ensures the functionality, performance and usability of new NCCS systems to guarantee software and other elements meet ORNL’s robust standards for research applications. The group supported the launch of Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputing system, and will do the same for Frontier’s successor, Discovery, set to arrive in 2028.

“Our entire scope of work revolves around supporting scientific users through the software environment, so we’re always interested to hear from our users and from our counterparts at other institutions about how we can make these systems operate more effectively,” Posada Correa said.

Contributions from the ORNL team this year included a talk by Posada Correa and Elijah Maccarthy on software provisioning workflows and a panel discussion co-led by John Holmen on teaching and training.

Posada Correa said he expects the foundation’s work to become more visible with the rise of AI models and as the burden to maintain open-source software systems increasingly shifts to chip manufacturers and users.

“Technology and the business are changing fast,” he said. “That’s the reason this foundation and its partners like the national labs exist. So now more than ever, I think efforts to collaborate to maintain open-source technologies are going to become more and more relevant.”

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

Source: Matt Lakin, OLCF

The post ORNL Researchers Champion Open-Source HPC Development at HPSF Conference appeared first on HPCwire.

The Louisiana Legislature passed a new congressional map that would leave the state with only one of its two majority-Black districts.

Organisation cites abuse, including rape of male detainees, by security forces of governments which have blocked UN investigators

The UN has added Israel and Russia to a blacklist for sexual violence in conflict, citing abuse by security forces, including the rape of male detainees.

The UN verified sexual abuse of 31 Palestinian men, women and children from the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank between 2023 and 2025. Israeli attacks included repeated gang-rapes and the use of sexual violence as a form of torture, the report said.

Opposition says constitutional amendment would give bill ruling party carte blanche to overturn will of voters

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Amid fierce criticism from opposition groups, Mexico’s senate has passed ‌a constitutional amendment to include “foreign interference” as grounds to annul election results in the country.

The bill, which was presented by the country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, defines foreign interference as “illicit financing, propaganda, the systematic ⁠dissemination of misinformation, digital manipulation, and ⁠the intervention of foreign governments ⁠or agencies”.

Survey shows 44% increase on RSPB reserves of bird that almost became extinct in England in the 60s

More than half a century after the Dartford warbler almost vanished from the English countryside, the charismatic heathland bird appears to be staging a comeback.

A survey has revealed the highest number of Dartford warblers ever recorded on reserves run by the bird conservation charity RSPB, with 264 pairs counted in 2025, a 44% increase in five years.

Police conducted manhunt for Jacob Daniel Baker after bodies of men were discovered separately earlier this week

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Authorities in Hawaii have arrested a man who they say is linked to three killings, following an extensive manhunt across theBig Island.

Officials announced that they had taken Jacob Daniel Baker, 36, into custody on Thursday afternoon after receiving information that led to his capture. The development came after law enforcement found the bodies of three elderly men earlier in the week.

There are two democratic socialists running for mayor in Los Angeles, but many West Coast leftists are already feeling the crush of defeat. 

Rae Huang and Nithya Raman have each, at varying times, been hailed as Southern California’s analogue to Zohran Mamdani. Yet when the rallies and canvassing sessions have wrapped up, leftists admit that neither has the coalition nor the talent that fueled the New York City mayor’s rise. Huang voices the platform they like; Raman has demonstrated some political chops. Mamdani won because he had both.

With less than a week to go before election day in a crowded nonpartisan primary, Huang, Raman, and 11 other candidates are all vying for second place to the presumed front-runner, incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. Unless someone gets over 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff in November.

There’s little chance either slot will go to Huang, a Presbyterian minister and activist who jumped into the race last November with plans to run from Bass’s left by campaigning on free buses, affordable housing, and police accountability. She has struggled to break 10 percent in the polls.

Raman, a city councilmember representing a sprawling district that spans the Los Feliz, Hollywood, and San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, surprised her allies and opponents alike when she joined the race just hours before the February filing deadline, but she has since amassed enough support that she could conceivably compete with Bass — or with Spencer Pratt, a right-wing reality TV star whose candidacy has fractured the city’s already divided left.

Pratt has built a campaign attacking Bass’s handling of the Pacific Palisades fire, calling unhoused people drug-addicted “zombies,” and arguing that LA’s housing crisis should be solved with police force. In the eyes of some leftists, a vote for Raman is the pragmatic choice to stop Pratt from making it to November, and a vote for Huang is a throwaway in the name of ideological purity. 

“While I understand the desire to vote for the most value-aligned candidate,” said Leslie Chang, a Raman supporter and co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America–Los Angeles, “if it comes at the cost of everyday people being able to live a better life, that’s not something I have sympathy for.”

Huang’s supporters, meanwhile, argue that Raman’s platform offers little daylight from Bass, whose status quo gave rise to Pratt in the first place.

“Those who consider themselves progressive, or even on the left, have kind of gone into retreat and not let themselves imagine a better political future,” said Michael Burns, a writer and performer who mailed in his vote for Huang. “And for me, supporting candidates with a bold vision, with a left vision, is part of contributing to that imaginary.”

Though both Huang and Raman are Democratic Socialists of America members, the local chapter has not endorsed either candidate, and Raman’s three DSA colleagues on the City Council have endorsed Bass. Huang and Raman’s campaigns did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Despite being a DSA member, Nithya Raman has at times aligned herself with more conservative forces and struggled to build coalitions on the left. After running in 2020 on calls to defund the police, she voted to expand the Los Angeles Police Department budget in 2021, 2022, and 2023. But she also voted against police raises in 2023, and this year, she opposed a plan by Bass to hire 170 more officers. In 2024, Raman accepted an endorsement from the Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles, a Zionist organization that opposed a ceasefire in Gaza, which earned her a censure from DSA–LA.

“I don’t know what version of Nithya I’m ever getting on anything,” said William Gude, a Hollywood resident. Known as @FilmthePoliceLA on social media, Gude is a fierce police accountability advocate who said he would have voted for Raman had she maintained her policy positions from her rise to City Council in 2020. Now, he says he finds it difficult to get responses from Raman’s office regarding police misconduct.

Raman’s supporters argue that at least their candidate has a political record to scrutinize. Huang has never held elected office, and her lack of campaign experience has shown itself on the trail. Earlier this week, the LA Reporter exposed that the Huang campaign had misrepresented its fundraising totals by claiming publicly that Huang had raised enough to qualify for public matching funds, when in reality she’d fallen far short. (The campaign has chalked the mistake up to clerical errors and lack of capacity.) 

“The reason why I’m not voting for Rae Huang is kind of like a pragmatic approach and a belief that change comes incrementally,” said Sean Wakasa, who co-chairs DSA–LA along with Chang. “You have to make a power analysis about what’s achievable and what’s likely to happen, and that’s what keeps my vote for Nithya going strong.” 

The most recent poll in the race, released from the Los Angeles Times and University of California, Berkeley on Thursday, has only increased the stakes. It shows Raman in striking distance of Bass, with 25 percent support to the incumbent’s 26, and ahead of Pratt, at 22.

In the eyes of the most ardent Raman backers, Huang’s voters, who made up 9 percent of respondents, are both delusional and important. Raman supporters call for Huang to drop out and for her voters who have yet to cast their ballots to jump ship. But not all leftist Raman skeptics favor Huang: Roughly 10 percent of voters remain undecided. Gude said he’s considering sitting this election out.

Raman also has a tendency to struggle during debates and public conversations; in an appearance on influential political commentator Hasan Piker’s stream earlier this month, she stumbled over questions about the sale of property in illegal West Bank settlements and the LAPD’s training collaboration with the Israeli military. Combined with the Huang campaign’s messy rollout, it’s possible neither candidate is quite spotlight-ready to command an audience the size of LA.

Leftist, liberal, and moderate Angelenos alike fear there’s someone else who is.

You might have seen Spencer Pratt on television 20 years ago, screaming “What are you crying about, Stephanie?” and calling his little sister, the target of his ire, a “crazy bitch.” He made millions on the reality TV show “The Hills” — then blew most of it on crystals, expensive wine, and other luxury habits. His campaign, too, is predicated on the idea of great personal loss: His platform centers the destruction of his home in the Palisades fire, for which he blames Bass (and not climate change, which, on one of many podcast appearances with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he implied was a hoax). 

Pratt, who did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, has sought to paint himself as a regular guy fed up with the corruption of “elites” like Bass and Raman, and desperate to get the “bums” off the street. In one ad, he stands in front of an Airstream trailer, where he claimed to be living after his house burned down. (He was actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air for over $1,000 a night.)

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The Housing Hunger Games

His situation has not translated into a drop of empathy for the people who actually cannot afford homes. “This idea that they’re forced on the street right now is a lie that our city is perpetuating,” said Pratt during a local ABC interview, referencing the city’s unhoused population. He has claimed they are on “super meth,” and argued that they don’t want to go into shelters, in part, because they want to continue to “abuse” animals on the street. Pratt has said that if elected, he plans to have police “arresting people and the people that aren’t getting arrested, we’re getting to mandatory medical treatment.” He argued that whoever was left would go to Seattle once his administration stopped providing resources and housing services — or, as he called it, “unplug them.”

Those “talking points” are “disconnected from the data and the reality of the situation,” said Benjamin Henwood, director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Homelessness has nearly doubled in Los Angeles over the last decade, though it’s dipped slightly in the last couple of years. “We know from research and data that [homelessness] really is driven by housing affordability.”

The idea that Los Angeles has enough beds, and people just don’t want to use them, is belied by the available data. As of 2023, an audit from the LA city controller’s office found that roughly 46,260 unhoused people live in Los Angeles, but there were only 16,000 interim shelter beds available. And while the city has added some new beds since then, Henwood said they’re not nearly enough for everyone.

Substance abuse and mental health problems are also not the main drivers, though they are often the most noticeable to the general public. And it’s not clear if Pratt’s arrest-first strategy would even be legal, Henwood said. But, “practically speaking, that’s one of the most expensive ways to try to address homelessness,” said Henwood. “It uses a huge amount of resources, and at the end of the day, people can only be incarcerated for short periods of time, and then they’ll have to be released. So I don’t actually know how that translates into any kind of longer term goal, but it does spend a lot of public tax dollars.” 

Matthew Lewis, director of communications at California YIMBY, an organization that pushes for more development of high-density housing to solve the housing crisis, argues that Pratt, who he vehemently disagrees with, and the wave of anti-homeless legislation across the country is a reaction to policy failures in Democratic cities to adequately address the housing crisis. “You see the same thing play out all over the place,” he said, “and what that suggests is that this is not a Spencer Pratt phenomenon, this is an American city phenomenon. Spencer Pratt is a consequence of pretending we could brush it under the rug.” 

But Bass has been the subject of LA-specific grievances. She faced intense scrutiny for her handling of the twin Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires, which destroyed thousands of homes and killed dozens of people. Despite promising not to travel abroad during her tenure as mayor, Bass was in Ghana attending an embassy party when the fires broke out and returned the following day, leading to widespread condemnation and accusations of mismanagement and apathy. (Her defenders point out that strong Santa Ana winds whipped up last year’s fires, and a mayor cannot control the weather.)

Despite the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Pratt’s plan, Henwood said his message is landing with voters in LA for a reason. “People are frustrated,” said Henwood. In 2024, Angelenos voted to increase the sales tax rate to fund homelessness programs and, Henwood argued, Democrats set expectations too high on what the tax would really be able to achieve. “People in LA did that because they’re like, this is bad, we’ve got to do something about it, and they did that, and yet the problem still wasn’t fixed, and so they’re frustrated.”

Frustration with a Democratic establishment that has struggled to improve the city’s core issues has always been the key sell of Huang’s campaign.

She seizes on some of the same ire that motivates Pratt’s base but wields it to nearly opposite ends. Huang’s platform calls for public and social housing that would be owned by the city, immune from the whims of the profit-driven market. Raman calls for social housing too, but has also pushed for new exemptions to the city’s “Mansion Tax,” a progressive tax on the sale of certain high-value property. Huang and supporters have criticized the reforms as catering to corporate real estate lobby interests.

Wakasa, of DSA, said he remains excited about the fact that there are two democratic socialists in the race and the necessary debate it has sparked. As DSA grows as a political force, it’s received scrutiny for declining to endorse in the race, though it did ultimately “recommend” Raman in a voter guide.

In his rounds canvassing for DSA–LA City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, Wakasa said most of the voters he encounters aren’t caught up in leftist infighting. They’re more concerned about the lack of street lights amid a rash of copper wire theft or unfixed potholes and damaged sidewalks. 

“Overall, there’s definitely a wider frustration with feeling like day-to-day activity in the city is not very smooth,” Wakasa said, “and just a kind of that burning question of, ‘How do we fix this and how do our electeds fix this?” 

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A second-place finish for Raman would be seen as a major victory for LA’s progressive left with the potential to reverberate for years in city hall politics. Failing to make the runoff could be an equally large disappointment: a flawed yet promising candidate whose abbreviated campaign squandered a viable path to the seat, leaving behind a fractured left that couldn’t coalesce around a candidate.  

Burns, the Huang voter who lives in Los Feliz and has twice voted for Raman’s city council runs, said he understands the outcome will likely leave Huang out of the runoff, but he believes her candidacy can translate into energy for future leftist campaigns.

“I genuinely believe that Rae’s primary goal isn’t just winning this election,” Burns said. “It’s really trying to build momentum for a different political future in Los Angeles.”

“Rae Huang is a real one,” Pratt wrote on X on Thursday, “i respect that she actually walks the walk.” In the post, he lumped Raman in with  “corrupt champagne socialists,” earning a short-lived share from Huang, who added, “It’s clear that LA is fed up with the status quo and is looking for new leadership.” 

She quickly deleted her post and within a few hours had replaced it with a new statement. “Spencer is an opportunist dehumanizing the vulnerable to advance his media career,” Huang wrote, “he has no interest in meeting the needs of the majority of Angelenos.”

The post The Los Angeles Left Is at War With Itself Over the Mayor’s Race appeared first on The Intercept.

Marco Rubio made announcement after meeting president’s far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro

Brazil will not be treated as a “tinpot country,” the country’s president, Luiz Inácio da Silva, said on Friday after the United States designated Brazil’s two largest criminal gangs, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command, as foreign terrorist organisations.

The announcement, made by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, on Thursday, is being widely seen in Brazil as a setback for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president who had strongly opposed the designation – and a boost for Lula’s main challenger in October’s presidential election, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro.

As Donald Trump looks for peace with Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government escalates elsewhere – and Europe stands by

“He’ll do whatever I want him to do,” said Donald Trump, addressing his discussions with Benjamin Netanyahu over their illegal war on Iran. The US president said on Friday that he was making his final determination on a deal – of sorts – with Tehran. As chief ally, funder and arms supplier for Israel, the US can rein in its prime minister. But with his hands tied on Iran, Mr Netanyahu seems bent on rekindling war elsewhere. Israel’s brutal escalation in Lebanon may be an attempt to gain ground while it can, or perhaps to destabilise the Iran peace initiative. The prospects for Gaza are grimmer.

As Mr Trump talks up a new peace deal in the Middle East, Mr Netanyahu is trashing Mr Trump’s last effort. Israel this week killed another Hamas military chief, but this war has failed in its stated aim of destroying the group, while visiting untold horror on civilians. Israeli forces have expanded far beyond the half of territory they agreed to hold, attack Palestinians in an undefined zone around their positions and carry out airstrikes deeper into Gaza. Yet Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat for the Trump-appointed Board of Peace, has blamed Hamas for the stalling of the purported ceasefire. Now Mr Netanyahu says he has ordered the military to take control of 70% of Gaza. That would force more than 2 million Palestinians into less than a third of what was already overcrowded territory.

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May 29, 2026 — The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is launching the Knoxville Quantum Accelerator, also known as K-Quantum, to advance the region’s position as a leader in quantum technologies and systems.

As UT partners with other regional innovation powerhouses including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TVA, CGI and IonQ that are deepening their investments in the quantum frontier, East Tennessee is poised to translate the potential of quantum technologies into tangible economic benefits for companies and communities across the state.

A student conducts an experiment in the Molecular Beam Epitaxy core facility at UT. Credit: UT.

“The collaboration and partnerships at the center of K-Quantum will drive innovation and position both our university and our region as power players in the future of quantum systems,” said Chancellor Donde Plowman. “Leveraging our expertise and capabilities to develop solutions and opportunities in Tennessee is core to our mission as the state’s flagship land-grant university.”

K-Quantum supports the Tennessee Quantum Initiative, Governor Bill Lee’s new $43 million strategy to leverage research and innovation strengths statewide to recruit and launch new Tennessee companies, expand durable high-wage job creation, and advance Tennessee’s leadership in sectors such as advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and logistics. Complementing investments made over more than a decade by UT, ORNL, the city of Chattanooga, EPB, and UT Chattanooga, the initiative ensures that Knoxville plays a strategic role along with Chattanooga and Oak Ridge in the region’s quantum technology development.

“The Knoxville Quantum Accelerator represents the kind of bold, forward-thinking innovation that will fuel new company creation, attract top talent and drive long-term economic growth,” said Braden Stover, senior advisor to the commissioner for nuclear and quantum strategy in the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. “TNECD is proud to support this effort in alignment with the Tennessee Quantum Initiative and believe it will strengthen Tennessee’s leadership in quantum technologies while complementing the state’s broader efforts to expand this infrastructure statewide.”

Growing a Quantum Technology Workforce to Advance Knoxville’s Research Momentum

UT researchers are already using quantum phenomena to encode, sense, process and transmit information. Their innovations are enabling faster and more secure communication networks, medical imaging, ultra-precise sensing and computing systems far more powerful than today’s most advanced supercomputers. K-Quantum will support the development of an ecosystem that advances both fundamental discovery and applications, driving innovation and producing a workforce critical to Tennessee’s economic growth.

“We have long believed that quantum research and development is the next innovation frontier and that Tennessee, and Knoxville in particular, is perfectly positioned to leverage the technology to drive our innovation economy,” said Mike Odom, president and CEO of the Knoxville Chamber. “Our community’s assets, along with our history of deep tech leadership, provide us with a unique opportunity to build a quantum ecosystem that has significant economic impact.”

UT is already a world leader in quantum materials. More than 30 faculty members and hundreds of students perform world-class research in quantum materials with support from the federal government and industry partners, while 10 other faculty advance quantum hardware and software in collaboration with industry and federal organizations. With investments from the chancellor’s preeminent faculty hiring initiative, K-Quantum will add up to 10 new faculty members with expertise spanning quantum hardware and software over the next four years. UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Quantum Devices Deep Jariwala, an expert in quantum devices, will join UT from the University of Pennsylvania in January 2027.

“CGI is committed to investing in the East Tennessee region through high-value careers, university partnerships, and workforce development programs that prepare talent for the future of quantum and AI-enabled industries,” said Matt Kittrell, director of consulting at CGI. “K-Quantum represents the kind of public-private collaboration that positions Tennessee for long-term economic growth and technology leadership. We are excited to help bridge research, innovation and commercialization to ensure Tennessee remains competitive in the rapidly evolving global technology landscape.”

Investing in Next-Generation Facilities to Accelerate Commercialization

Research at this level requires facilities as cutting-edge as the scientists who drive it. K-Quantum will spur investments in a new 100,000-square-foot quantum foundry to be built at the UT Research Park at Cherokee Farm, adjacent to the university’s Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing. K-Quantum will also support development of a next-generation hybrid quantum and classical computing hub to be housed in Knoxville’s new Maplehurst Innovation District. Key to the success of both facilities is the co-location of faculty and students with private-sector collaborators, ensuring that Tennessee companies inspire UT research and accelerate the path from research and discovery to products and services that support the creation of high-wage jobs and the success of Tennessee firms. With a presence in both facilities, UT’s Spark Innovation Center will help incubate and accelerate quantum technology startups with support from partners including the City of Knoxville, TVA, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

“The Maplehurst Innovation District is especially exciting because it creates a new gateway connecting our downtown and the UT campus — a place where students, researchers, startups and companies can work side by side to turn discovery into opportunity,” said Knoxville mayor Indya Kincannon. “This initiative reflects our shared commitment to building a stronger innovation economy that attracts and retains talent, supports high-wage jobs and creates pathways for economic mobility across our community.”

The state and region are uniquely positioned to translate quantum science from theory into real-world applications and impact. From advancing quantum computing and secure communications to accelerating breakthroughs in materials science and engineering, K-Quantum will supercharge Tennessee’s growing quantum technology ecosystem, where private-sector ambitions, university talent, and federal and state governments intersect to ensure that Tennessee plays a pivotal role in shaping the field’s global economy for years to come.

Source: University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The post UT Launches Knoxville Quantum Accelerator To Advance Tennessee’s Future appeared first on HPCwire.

Former DUP leader’s barrister said woman was mistaken in linking letter to his alleged sex offences

Jeffrey Donaldson told a woman who has accused him of sexual assault that he regretted inflicting “hurt, pain and distress”, but his comments were not related to the allegations, a court has heard.

A lawyer for the former MP and Democratic Unionist party leader told Newry crown court on Friday that Donaldson’s letter to the alleged victim had “nothing to do” with her accusations of sexual abuse and referred to other behaviour.

Microsoft's developer conference is almost upon us. We anticipate a lot of AI.

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Ministers are proposing new laws to crack down on damage to undersea cables amid “hostile activity by Russia”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Tougher penalties for ship owners and operators who recklessly damage underwater infrastructure will be set out in a white paper later this year, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said.

Acts of sabotage linked to a hostile state already carries life imprisonment for the most serious cases but undersea malicious activity sometimes operates in a “grey zone” which is difficult to prosecute, DSIT said.

It’s astonishing that Reform have admitted they knew about Kenyon’s social media accounts. Nigel Farage needs to urgently explain to the public why, if his party was aware of his online history, he was happy to put forward a candidate who has made vile degrading comments about women, multiple homophobic posts and spread dangerous false narratives about the Manchester Arena bombing.

I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. Not a single person in the world is perfect. I think everybody does say things that eventually they regret.

It was a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers.

No offence was meant, and it’s not something I’d do now.

I think I’ve addressed the issue. I think that no offence was meant and it wasn’t a direct comment to her. If you go into any building site in the area or any public barracks, I think you’d hear a hundred times worse said.

This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

The incident comes just days after the Czech president, Petr Pavel, has urged Nato to “show its teeth” in response to Russia’s repeated testing of the alliance’s resolve on its eastern flank, suggesting a range of options including switching off its internet, cutting off its banks from global financial systems and shooting down jets that violate allied airspace.

Speaking to the Guardian in Prague last week, Pavel called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s provocative behaviour against the alliance or risk the Kremlin intensifying its actions.

Refugee charities say the numbers revealed in freedom of information data are ‘shocking’

Lone children were held at UK-run detention centres in France on nearly 300 occasions last year, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Data obtained by the Guardian shows they are part of about 900 instances when unaccompanied minors have been detained at British short-term facilities near Calais and Dunkirk over the last four years.

CEO Jeff Bezos called it a "very rough day."

The Supreme Court is currently considering a petition to reconsider one of its most important rulings limiting media outlets from lawsuits filed by public officials or figures. The precedent, New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), is not without its share of critics, but its defenders argue that it has stood the test of time as a bulwark protecting the free press.

In Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc., Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz argues that reporting from CNN about his appearance in Senate impeachment trial proceedings in 2020 against President Donald Trump caused him reputational harm. Dershowitz argues that the omission of language by CNN from a statement he made to Sen. Ted Cruz would have been considered as defamation in any court if the precedent of “actual malice” from the New York Times case didn’t exist.

Dershowitz filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleging that CNN had defamed him under Florida law. The court ruled for CNN, as did the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The courts acknowledged that CNN made mistakes in its reporting but not at the level of violating the actual malice test from Sullivan.

Now, Dershowitz and his attorneys want the Supreme Court to reconsider the landmark case.

Sullivan and Its Legacy

In March 1964, a unanimous Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan held that public officials in defamation cases against the media needed to prove actual malice or that a statement “was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false.”

Montgomery, Alabama’s police commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, had sued the New York Times for libel after it ran a full-page advertisement from civil right activists that criticized Sullivan’s police department and its treatment of civil rights protestors. But many specific statements in the ad were later conceded to have been false. Two courts in Alabama had ruled in Sullivan’s favor.

In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court said the First Amendment protected the newspaper from a lawsuit filed by a “public official” such as Sullivan unless actual malice could be proven. Sullivan’s claims didn’t meet this rigorous standard. In his opinion for the Court, Justice William Brennan said the case needed to be considered in the context “of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

Two other decisions extended the actual malice standard to “public figures”—notable figures who were not public officials. In Curtis Publishing Company v. Betts (1967), the Court held that public figures had to meet the same defamation test as public officials did under the New York Times precedent. And in Gertz v. Welch (1974), a divided Court ruled that the actual malice standard did not apply to people outside of those categories. “Because private individuals characteristically have less effective opportunities for rebuttal than do public officials and public figures, they are more vulnerable to injury from defamation,” wrote Justice Lewis Powell.

Recent Cases

In recent years, those precedents have faced several challenges in court. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin sued the New York Times in 2017 after its editorial page published a map from Palin’s political action committee that used crosshairs to mark the district of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other districts. It initially claimed a link between the map and Giffords’ shooting, then retracted the statement. Palin claimed the newspaper defamed her reputation.

Palin’s case went to court twice. After an initial ruling was overturned due to procedural errors, a jury ruled in favor of the New York Times in April 2025. It found that the newspaper’s action did not meet the high standards of the actual malice test.

On June 27, 2022, the Supreme Court denied an appeal in Coral Ridge Ministries Media, Inc. v. Southern Poverty Law Center. Coral Ridge Ministries sought damages from the Southern Poverty Law Center (or SPLC) after the Center placed Coral Ridge on a “hate group” map. The map made Coral Ridge Ministries ineligible to take part in AmazonSmile, a program from the online retailer that gives a small royalty to non-profits granted access to the Smile program.

A federal judge ruled that the SPLC’s labeling of Coral Ridge Ministries was protected First Amendment speech since Coral Ridge Ministries met the definition of a public figure. A federal appeals court upheld the decision. The court’s denial of certiorari was accompanied by a dissent from denial authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been a vocal critic of the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision.

Thomas specifically called on the Court to review the actual malice standard. “This case is one of many showing how New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’” The actual malice standard, Thomas said, was almost impossible to satisfy.

Justice Neil Gorsurch also raised questions about the actual malice standard in his dissent from denial of certiorari in Berisha v. Lawson (2021). Berisha claimed he was falsely linked to illicit arms dealing in a book published by Simon & Schuster. “Rules intended to ensure a robust debate over actions taken by high public officials carrying out the public’s business increasingly seem to leave even ordinary Americans without recourse for grievous defamation,” Gorsuch wrote. “At least as they are applied today, it’s far from obvious whether Sullivan’s rules do more to encourage people of goodwill to engage in democratic self-governance or discourage them from risking even the slightest step toward public life.”

Dershowitz’s Claims Explained

In his petition to the Supreme Court, Dershowitz and his attorneys focused on whether CNN’s errors and omissions constituted actual malice under the Sullivan definition; whether Sullivan’s actual malice test should be discarded altogether (or at least as to private citizens who are public figures); and whether the Court should modify the evidentiary standards for actual malice.

Dershowitz’s claims rested on his response to Cruz’s questions about what three categories pertained to constitutional standards for impeachment: (1) actions motivated by the public interest, (2) actions motivated by electoral interest, and (3) actions motivated by “personal pecuniary interest.” Dershowitz told Cruz in his testimony that actions related to the last category were “purely corrupt” as impeachable offenses.

However, Dershowitz argued that CNN’s subsequent reporting linked Dershowitz to including bribery and extortion as non-impeachable actions in his Senate exchange. Dershowitz also claimed the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on actual malice conflicted with similar decisions from the Second, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits.

Additionally, Dershowitz questioned the distinction between public officials and private citizens categorized as public figures in defamation cases. “Even if some heightened protection for criticism of public officials might find policy support, Sullivan’s extension to private citizens who are public figures lacks any justification or historical anchor,” he told the Court.

In its response brief, CNN pointed to the fact that all courts “agreed that Dershowitz could not survive summary judgment because he had ‘no evidence’ that any CNN commentators entertained serious doubts that they had accurately represented Dershowitz’s statements in the Senate.” CNN also contested most of Dershowitz’s other claims and denied a circuit split. CNN pointed to the fact that it aired the full video of his comments and invited him on air on separate occasions to clarify his positions related to his Senate statements.

“Because Sullivan is a cornerstone of modern constitutional law, this Court could not remove the decision without causing lasting damage to a wide range of precedent,” it concluded.

So far, Dershowitz’s petition has been presented twice in private conference to the Justices. When the Court does act, it would not be surprising to see some comment from Justices Thomas or Gorsuch if the petition is denied.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a man in the leg in north Minneapolis and then lying about the attack​ was arrested in Texas Friday morning, according to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

Kenneth Law, who sold lethal chemicals online with instructions on how to use them, admits counselling or aiding suicide

• ‘It was too easy’: families ask how Kenneth Law enabled so many suicides

A Canadian man who mailed “suicide packets” of poison to more than 100 people in dozens of countries – including Canada, the UK, the US, Italy, Australia and New Zealand – has pleaded guilty to 14 counts of assisting suicide.

Kenneth Law appeared in a packed courtroom in Newmarket, Ontario, on Friday to enter the plea after prosecutors agreed to withdraw 14 murder charges. Sentencing is expected to take place in September.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 29, 2026 — XCENA, providing memory-centric computing solutions for AI infrastructure, today announced it has closed $135 million (KRW 202 billion) in a Series B financing round. XCENA will use the funding to accelerate the company’s global expansion, scale customer deployments, and advance its next-generation computational memory solution. Total fundraising now stands at $185 million with a current valuation of $570 million.

The round was co-led by Atinum Investment and IMM Investment, with participation from a broad group of new and existing strategic investors across Asia’s leading venture and financial institutions. The financing includes continued support from existing investors including SBI Investment, Mirae Asset Capital / Mirae Asset Venture Investments, STIC Ventures, Wonik Investment Partners, SV Investment, and LB Investment, alongside new participation from Corstone Asia, Kiwoom Investment, DSC Investment, Shinhan Venture Investment, Korea Development Bank, KDB Capital, Premier Partners, Kolon Investment, Company K Partners, K2 Investment Partners, Partners Investment, and Kyobo Securities / Kyobo Life.

“AI workloads are exposing the fundamental limitations of traditional computing architectures as larger models, expanding context windows, and increasingly data-intensive inference workloads drive unprecedented memory demands,” said Jin Kim, CEO and cofounder of XCENA. “With strong backing from leading global investors, we are accelerating delivery of MX1 into emerging AI infrastructure ecosystems and advancing the next wave of memory-centric computing systems.”

The Series B will be used to scale XCENA’s customer deployments globally, expand go-to-market capabilities, and deepen collaboration with enterprise customers and ecosystem partners through validation efforts of MX1. The company will also accelerate development of its next-generation computational memory products, designed to enable new levels of performance and efficiency in advanced computing environments. As part of its global expansion strategy, XCENA continues to grow its presence in Northern California to work more closely with customers, hyperscalers, and technology partners shaping the future of AI infrastructure. The company is also pursuing additional fundraising opportunities with international institutional investors as part of its global expansion strategy and remains in active discussions with select firms.

XCENA’s MX1 product is currently being explored with select partners to validate real-world performance gains and system-level efficiency improvements across high-demand compute workloads. The company’s broader roadmap focuses on enabling memory-centric computing solutions and scalable computational memory architectures that reduce data bottlenecks and unlock new classes of AI and high-performance computing applications.

“XCENA is redefining how computational memory is applied in real-world systems,” said Sangmin Lim, Investment Director from Atinum Investment. “Their MX1 product is already showing how customers can simplify complex infrastructure, accelerate deployments, and eliminate inefficiencies that have traditionally slowed down advanced computing workflows. We’re excited to support XCENA as it scales these capabilities globally.”

About XCENA

XCENA is redefining data center architecture for the AI era through computational memory, technology that merges high-capacity pooled DDR5 memory with near-data processing (NDP) cores. Built on the open Compute Express Link (CXL 3.x) standard, XCENA’s solution expands memory beyond traditional CPU limits and executes computation where data resides, reducing latency, energy use and total cost of ownership.

Founded by semiconductor veterans from Samsung and SK Hynix, XCENA combines deep hardware expertise with a full-stack software SDK to enable rapid deployment and seamless workload acceleration for hyperscalers, telcos, and research institutions. By bridging the gap between compute and memory, XCENA powers a new class of intelligent, efficient, and scalable AI infrastructure.

Source: XCENA

The post XCENA Raises $135M Series B to Accelerate Deployment of Memory-Centric Computing Solutions appeared first on HPCwire.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls for ceasefire among armed groups to help avoid deaths from preventable disease

The death rate of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is between 30% and 50%, the World Health Organization has said, as its head arrived in the country to support efforts to contain the disease.

Anaïs Legand, from the WHO’s high threat pathogens team, said the revised death rate estimate is based on confirmed cases. “It’s huge. It means that up to five out of 10 people are likely to die,” Legand told reporters in Geneva.

Case involving June 2025 protest is escalation in Trump officials’ attack on first amendment rights, say experts

A federal jury has found three protesters, including a US military veteran of the war in Afghanistan, guilty on felony conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a June 2025 protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Legal experts have said the Spokane, Washington, case marked a serious escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on first amendment rights. The demonstrators now face potential sentences of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The Justice Department announced the $1.7 billion fund as part of a settlement of a civil lawsuit President Trump brought against the IRS.

Southwest is walking back some recent changes in its policies for passengers who require a second seat.

Jewish residents say they feel increasingly targeted by antisemitic or anti-Israel violence. For some, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s efforts to distance the city from Israel is adding to the unease.

Guards at a New Jersey immigrant detention center are retaliating against detainees for nonviolent protests over poor conditions, including a hunger and labor strike, according to relatives and members of Congress.

Staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Delaney Hall Detention Facility — a Newark immigration jail operated by the private prison giant GEO Group — took steps to crack down on the strikes, including attacking immigration detainees with pepper spray and batons, transferring protest leaders to other facilities, and shutting down family visitation, advocates and relatives of detainees told The Intercept.

One woman who spoke with her nephew inside Delaney Hall told The Intercept that she was told negotiations were set to take place between guards and striking inmates — but instead, her nephew reported, guards attacked the detainees with pepper spray.

“My nephew can’t see right now because he was hit on the head with a baton,” said the woman, who requested anonymity for fear of further retaliation against her nephew. “Prison operators told my nephew and the others on the hunger strike that ICE was going to negotiate on Thursday. They got hit instead.”

Members of Congress from New Jersey and New York made repeated visits to inspect the facility this week. On Wednesday, New York Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler emerged from Delaney Hall looking deeply shaken and spoke of hearing about miserable conditions inside with no doctor onsite.

“Detainees told me about scalding hot showers that have led to burns and blisters; worms in food; and being denied medical care, visitation rights, and time outdoors,” Goldman told The Intercept. “Many of them believed that this treatment is in retribution for the ongoing hunger strike, which they have initiated to bring attention to the horrific conditions they are enduring despite having committed no serious crimes.”

The alleged retaliation against detainees matches a long-standing pattern, according to a 2021 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, which detailed systematic abuses carried out against hunger strikers at dozens of facilities across 24 states.

In a post to X on Thursday, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he was barred from visiting the unit on which the physical abuses were alleged to have taken place, but said he spoke with detainees on another unit who reported several of their fellows being taken to the hospital for injuries sustained in attacks by guards.

In a statement to The Intercept, GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira confirmed the use of chemical agents against detainees on Thursday as part of a “physical altercation involving detainees at Delaney Hall,” but did not address questions about the attacks on detainees coming as retaliation.

“In accordance with established policies and protocols approved by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Ferreira said, “staff implemented appropriate response and control measures to safely resolve the situation, including the limited use of chemical agents.”

The accusations came amid ongoing protests outside the facility, at which federal agents have repeatedly attacked demonstrators, including family members of those inside, with pepper spray and batons. (ICE referred a request for comment its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond.)

For nearly a week, family members have been denied visitation, and protesters have set up a tent outside Delaney Hall to provide support for those who had hoped to visit their loved ones inside.

“Relatives of detainees haven’t been let in since Saturday,” said Ana Paola Pazmino, the director of Resistencia en Acción NJ, a local grassroots group. “This is despite the fact that DHS has said there has been no hunger strike. They are liars.”

Protesting Poor Conditions

The hunger and labor strikes began last week when detainees began refusing food and stopped showing up for their jobs to protest their poor conditions inside the facility. Among their demands are the release of elderly and very young detainees and those with serious medical conditions.

In response to a call from one detainee leader’s wife for solidarity demonstrations, protests began gathering outside the facility on May 21, with demonstrators showing up virtually around the clock every day since, despite attacks by armed ICE agents.

Related

Trump Is Prosecuting a Congressional Democrat for Doing Her Job. The Media’s Response: No Big Deal.

Andre Beresford Burger, an organizer with the group Movimiento Cosecha, told The Intercept on Thursday that he had been pepper-sprayed by ICE agents but remained undeterred.

“If ICE agents are willing to storm into a crowd and brutalize people on camera and in front of the press,” he said, “what does this say about what they’re doing to people inside immigration detention, away from the cameras?”

Deploring the conditions, members of Congress called for Delaney Hall to be closed.

“The situation here just gets worse every day,” Pallone, the House member from New Jersey, said in a video after visiting the facility. “This place needs to be closed down. The conditions are horrible. You can’t get due process, you can’t see a doctor on any kind of regular basis. The reality is that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security … are trying to ship people out that are trying to tell the stories.”

Ferreira, the GEO Group spokesperson, denied reports of poor conditions at the facility, which he labeled a “coordinated, politically motivated campaign by outside groups to dismantle ICE and federal immigration detention.”

Related

Deportation, Inc.

On Thursday evening, New Jersey state troopers and Newark police shut down traffic on Doremus Avenue, the industrial thoroughfare on which Delaney Hall sits, but protests continued well into the night. Long standoffs between demonstrators and ICE agents were punctuated by bursts of violent aggression from federal officers, who swung at protesters with batons, doused them in pepper spray, and fired pepper balls into the crowd.

From outside Delaney Hall, detainees could be seen in windows raising their fists and lights could be seen flickering periodically, a signal from those inside that they heard their supporters on the outside.

The post ICE Pepper-Sprayed, Beat Detainees for Protesting “Horrific Conditions” In Delaney Hall Jail appeared first on The Intercept.

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

Bushra Shaikh, from Surrey, who appeared in The Apprentice, ‘ highly active’ in spreading regime message

A UK television personality went on two state-sponsored tours of Iran this spring where she met senior officials and was “active” in spreading the regime’s message, according to an investigation by a Iranian factchecking organisation.

Bushra Shaikh, from Surrey, owned a luxury clothing brand and finished ninth on series 13 of The Apprentice in 2017, where she described herself as “inspired by Coco Chanel”.

Police in Canada and around the world have been investigating more than 100 suicides linked to Kenneth Law.

• Charles and Camilla to attend the Classic on 6 June

• Race attendance has suffered major recent decline

The king and queen will attend the 247th running of the Derby on 6 June, reviving what was a traditional engagement in the calendar for Queen Elizabeth II for most of her 70-year reign.

The late Queen missed just two renewals of the Classic at Epsom Downs between 1953 – when her colt Aureole finished second, four days after her coronation – and the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Bereaved relatives say they were ignored by authorities as they searched for answers over suicide forums and kits

• Canadian man admits sending ‘suicide packets’ to hundreds of people around world

Monday would have been Aimee Walton’s 25th birthday. But in 2022, the lover of music and art from Southampton took her own life after being groomed by another user on an online forum that glorified and enabled suicide. On Friday, 3,500 miles away, the man who sold her a toxic substance pleaded guilty in a Canadian courtroom to his part in 14 other fatal poisonings.

Kenneth Law, 60, is linked to at least 131 deaths worldwide, after using a collection of digital storefronts to target vulnerable youth. Investigators in the province of Ontario say Law shipped more than 1,200 packages – many containing a toxic substance – from his local post office to people in more than 40 countries; the vast majority went to the United Kingdom and the United States.

Brent crude futures down 19% since end of April amid hopes of US-Iran peace deal, while stock markets rally

Oil prices are on track for their biggest monthly fall since 2020, as investors hoped for an end to the US-Israel war on Iran.

The price of Brent crude futures, the global benchmark, was down 1.3% on Friday at about $92 and 19% since the end of April.

This common payment tool can impact retirees' benefits and finances, sometimes in ways they don't expect.

A Federal Reserve meeting is set for mid-June. Here are three moves potential CD account holders should make now.

James Sherwin-Smith says field tilted against him after decision to give members ‘quick vote’ against candidacy

A Nationwide customer seeking election to the building society’s board has criticised the lender for “unfair” treatment and undermining democratic governance after it said it would tell members to vote against him.

James Sherwin-Smith said Nationwide had tilted the field against him after it confirmed it would give members a default “quick vote” option that included a vote against his candidacy at the annual meeting in July.

David Rush’s trial for allegedly taking 303 gold bars and $2m in foreign currency from agency was pushed to next week

• US politics live – latest updates

A senior intelligence operative accused of stealing hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40m and hiding them at home remained in custody in Virginia on Friday after a judge pushed his first court appearance to next week.

David Rush, a former executive service-level employee for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is alleged to have taken 303 bullion bars, each weighing 2.2lb (1kg), and more than $2m in foreign currency, from his government office, according to an eight-page FBI affidavit.

The National Spelling Bee, which concluded with Thursday’s nationally televised championship finals, invited 247 spellers to compete for a $52,500 cash prize and orthographic immortality

• California’s Parikh wins National Spelling Bee

• Quiz: can you nail past years’ winning words?

Man is ‘safe and sound’ after perilous operation, leaving four inside a small chamber and two still to be located

The first of seven men who have been trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for more than a week has been brought to safety by divers, in a perilous rescue mission that has required teams to crawl through narrow, deluged tunnels, navigating sharp rocks and collapse hazards.

Four men remain inside a chamber about 300 metres (980ft) from the cave entrance, where they were found crouched and huddled together on a rocky ledge by rescuers on Wednesday. Two men are yet to be located.

He’s always looking out for Number One

• See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a push to avoid a lawsuit alleging that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users, a decision that comes as social media companies increasingly face legal scrutiny. Parent company Meta appealed after Vermont's highest court allowed a suit filed by its attorney general in 2023 to move forward. The company is facing similar lawsuits from states across the country, accusing it of knowingly designing addictive features. Meta had argued that it can't be sued in Vermont court because neither the company nor the app design has specific ties to the state. Vermont countered that the sites' large number of teen users gives its courts jurisdiction. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in a brief, unexplained order, as is typical. The procedural decision comes after court losses for Meta and YouTube in social media addiction lawsuits in California and New Mexico. [...] Meta, for its part, has said that it has already introduced dozens of tools to support teens and their families and suggested it would have worked with the states on standards for youth social media use. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark applauded the decision, saying it affirms "that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete graduated from high school after being released by ICE, but he and his mother still face the possibility of deportation.

Upper East Side residents fighting Maison Estelle’s plan for venue with roof terrace next to ‘nice townhouses’

The New York City elite are growing irritated by a proliferation of private members’ clubs from London’s Mayfair opening branches on their doorsteps.

Over the last year, London clubs have started popping up like unexpected guests in the US city. The entrepreneur Robin Birley, who owns 5 Hertford Street – where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly had their first date – and Oswald’s in Mayfair, has opened Maxime’s on New York’s Upper East Side. The Grosvenor Square newcomer The Twenty Two has now opened its NYC outpost and others are swiftly following, including the Mayfair stalwart Annabel’s, which plans to open a site in the downtown meatpacking district.

Kenneth Law pleaded guilty in Canada to sending products internationally, knowing they would probably be used to end lives

Bereaved families whose loved ones were the victims of an online supplier of suicide kits say they feel insulted by a decision not to prosecute him in the UK.

Kenneth Law pleaded guilty in a court in Ontario, Canada, to 14 charges of aiding suicide and sending products internationally in the knowledge that they were likely to be used to end lives. He is due to be sentenced at a later date.

Order blocks White House from ‘taking any further action’ on settlement fund until further legal arguments heard

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A federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring any money into a secretive and loosely controlled $1.8bn fund while a legal challenge proceeds.

The order from US district judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday bars the government from “taking other further action” in the creation or operation of the fund while legal arguments in a case challenging the fund continue. The order is intended “to ensure no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the Anti-Weaponization Fund”, Brinkema wrote.

Two men were seen in a Texas yogurt shop just before four teenage girls were killed there in 1991, and some wonder whether identifying them will lead to answers in the unsolved case.

The 1991 murder of four teenage girls in a Texas yogurt shop remains unsolved, but there's hope that advancing DNA technology will change that.

One of the four men who was initially convicted was sent to death row in the killing of four teenagers in a crime that haunted Austin for decades.

"48 Hours" can exclusively report there has been a huge break in the 1991 murders of four teenage girls in a Texas yogurt shop.

YouTube's new AI features could be a big deal for content creators.

A facility built by the U.S. military on a Kenyan air base was intended to isolate Americans exposed to Ebola during the growing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Could new information lead to answers in the brutal murder of four teenage girls in Austin, Texas, more than 30 years ago?

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Italy’s economy grew more than first estimated at the start of the year, according to its national statistics office.

Italian GDP rose 0.3% in the first three months of the year, instead of an initial estimate of 0.2%.

The detail shows that the pick-up in growth was led by households’ demand, with growth in households’ consumption picking up to 0.5% quarter-to-quarter, from 0.1% in Q4 last year.

Otherwise on the domestic front, government spending was flat, after having grown 0.2% on the quarter previously. Fixed asset investment, meanwhile, grew by 0.7% on the quarter—weaker than 1.0% quarterly growth in Q4 2025, but still relatively strong overall.

Higher energy prices will also constrain output in the manufacturing sector.

Admittedly, fiscal support being provided to households through the energy shock so far will help soften the blow to consumption, but we expect to see weaker growth in household spending this quarter nevertheless. Furthermore, any boost to growth from recent reforms to Italy’s energy market—which aim to bring Italian natural gas prices in line with the Dutch TTF benchmark— will be more than reversed by the energy shock.

Group was unharmed after dangling for almost four hours on ride that malfunctioned at Pleasure Pier in Galveston

Eight students were rescued unharmed after dangling for hours at the top of a rollercoaster ride that became stuck in Texas.

Pictures and news footage of the incident showed a rollercoaster car stalled at the peak of a huge almost vertical drop on the Iron Shark rollercoaster overlooking the Gulf of Mexico at the Pleasure Pier in Galveston.

After air frying six bags of frozen fries back to back, the grocery store's budget option came out crispiest and most satisfying.

Mark Rutte says Moscow’s ‘reckless behaviour is danger to us all’ after drone hits apartment building, while Russia denies involvement

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said the alliance is “ready to defend every inch” of its territory after a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, a member state, during an overnight attack on neighbouring Ukraine.

“Russia’s reckless behaviour is a danger to us all,” Rutte wrote on social media after a call with the Romanian president, Nicuşor Dan. “I affirmed that Nato stands ready to defend every inch of allied territory.”

Decision comes as police announce policy U-turn to allow Pride parade to take place in Budapest

The EU is to release more than €16bn to Hungary that had been frozen under the rule of Viktor Orbán, with Ursula von der Leyen hailing the “winds of change” in the country since the election of Péter Magyar last month.

The decision, described as a “historic breakthrough” by the new prime minister, comes as police in Hungary have said they will allow next month’s Pride parade in Budapest to take place. Last year they sought to block the event on the orders of the government of the rightwing Orbán.

May 29, 2026 — Through a collaboration between the EPFL Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (QSE) and SCITAS, EPFL has become the first Swiss academic institution to establish a virtual platform offering advanced quantum computing capabilities to its researchers.

Among the many areas of specialization within the domain of quantum science and technology, EPFL researchers play a leading role in quantum algorithms and theoretical quantum computing, which explores how quantum computers can outperform classical systems and what their limitations are.

To give its researchers the possibility to test and refine their theories directly on cutting-edge quantum computer, EPFL has signed an agreement with quantum computing leader Quantinuum. The partnership provides cloud access to their hardware through EPFL’s SCITAS high-performance computing (HPC) platform.

“EPFL is pushing the boundaries on quantum algorithms, as evidenced by the fact that it is the first Swiss university to have a direct cloud platform for accessing an advanced quantum computer integrated within our own high-performance computing infrastructure,” explains Vincenzo Savona, professor in the School of Basic Sciences and academic director of the EPFL Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (QSE).

The Need for State-of-the-Art Quantum Hardware

Developing, operating, and maintaining state-of-the-art quantum hardware requires major financial investment. As a result, even leading academic institutions like EPFL benefit from accessing these devices through agreements with specialized industrial players, such as Quantinuum. “For decades, high-performance classical computing has only been available via remote access to mainframe computers and data centers, and even more so today with the large computational power required by AI models,” says Savona.

“Quantinuum’s quantum computers are among the most powerful, cleanest, most advanced quantum computers in the world with the lowest level of decoherence, and therefore closest to the ideal quantum computing behavior,” says Savona. “They are an indispensable tool for our researchers pursuing cutting edge projects in fields such as quantum algorithms and digital quantum simulation.”

“This gives us access to some of the very best quantum hardware currently available to the academic community, opening the door to experiments that go beyond purely theoretical or small-scale numerical studies,” adds Giuseppe Carleo, an associate professor in SB and head of the Computational Quantum Science Laboratory (CQSL).

Pursuing Richard Feynman’s Dream

To bring access to the Quantinuum quantum computer to EPFL, the QSE Center collaborated with SCITAS to implement access to the remote quantum computer through their exisiting computing platform.

“This collaboration illustrates well the complementarity between a platform like SCITAS, focused on delivering robust, scalable high-performance computing services, and a center such as QSE, which drives transdisciplinary research in quantum computing,” says Gilles Fourestey, operational director of SCITAS. “Integrating cloud quantum computing into SCITAS’s HPC environment allows users to access remote quantum systems directly from a familiar HPC interface, without managing separate tools or workflows.”

Now that the cloud quantum computer has been successfully integrated within EPFL’s HPC platform, scientists are already able to propose research projects requiring a quantum computer and pursue Richard Feynman’s dream of using a complex quantum system to compute and to simulate the complexities of quantum mechanics.

Carleo plans to explore how this hardware can be used for quantum simulation of complex many-body systems, where high-quality quantum devices may provide genuinely new insights. And Zoë Holmes, assistant professor in SB and head of the Quantum Information and Computing Group at EPFL, will allow her to investigate the utility of certain calculations being run on quantum computers.

“Quantum hardware is reaching the point where it can implement calculations that are at the very least hard, and potentially impossible, to do classically,” she says. “But it’s not clear whether they can yet be used for usefully hard calculations. This hardware access will give us a way to investigate that.”

Making Quantum Computing Accessible to Students

The QSE Center, along with members of the EPFL Master’s program in Quantum Science and Engineering, are studying the best model to also make this resource available to students across campus who are studying topics in the quantum computing field.

“The opportunity to access Quantinuum’s advanced quantum computing platforms will provide our QSE master’s students with hands-on experience with state-of-the-art quantum hardware and software tools,” says Nicolas Macris, a professor at IC who co-directs the master’s program. “As the technology is progressing at a fast pace, it is increasingly important for our students to develop practical skills and explore real quantum workflows.”

“The reason why EPFL is a world leading university for nuclear engineering is because we have a nuclear reactor on campus for training,” adds Savona. “So offering students access to train on a real quantum computer will bring that same level of real-world training excellence to quantum computing.”

Source: Stephanie Parker, EPFL

The post EPFL and Quantinuum Partner to Bring Advanced Quantum Computing to Swiss Researchers appeared first on HPCwire.

The work on the May release has been dominated by topics on account of the just published Sculpt OS version 26.04. Besides featuring profound driver improvements across Wifi, ACPI, I2C HID, SOF audio, and graphics, it turns the most innovative aspects of Sculpt OS into building blocks for the easy reuse in other incarnations of Genode-based systems. In the same vein, the Goa SDK has been updated to match the latest Sculpt OS version while accumulating plenty of detail improvements.

[…]

Further highlights of the release are the new touch-awareness of the window manager making Sculpt OS usable on tablets, the addition of Linux user-space networking based on libslirp, the update of Qt to version 6.8.3, and a largely revised LTE modem stack.

↫ Genode OS Framework 26.05 release notes

In addition, the migration from GitHub to Codeberg has been completed as well, which is a big step forward for the project.

In the release notes for the latest NVIDIA driver version for Windows, the “AI” company who happens to spare a few GPUs for regular users every now and then has announced that the curtain has fallen for the classic NVIDIA Control Panel.

After 20 years of dedicated service, the classic NVIDIA Control Panel is officially retiring for Game Ready and Studio Drivers. For NVIDIA RTX PRO users, the NVIDIA Control Panel will continue to be supported until we have migrated professional features to the NVIDIA app.

Existing installs of the NVIDIA Control Panel will remain on users’ systems, unless they perform a clean installation, and users who still need the NVIDIA Control Panel can continue to download it from the Microsoft Store, but we won’t be adding features, fixes, or other changes.

↫ NVIDIA GeForce driver release notes

According to NVIDIA, every setting has migrated from the Control Panel to the NVIDIA application, meaning it’s no longer necessary to keep maintaining it. Of course, the NVIDIA application also happens to have ads, a login mechanism, and is probably just an inefficient web application, so not everybody may be excited about the loss of the NVIDIA Control Panel.

Our gifting experts handpicked a variety of gifts at every price range to please all sorts of dads.

May 29, 2026 — MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced plans for a new laboratory to accelerate the development of next-generation quantum technologies that will enable Massachusetts to remain a national hub for quantum innovation.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced plans for the new Quantum Systems Laboratory at MIT, which will accelerate the development of next-generation quantum technologies that will enable the commonwealth to remain a national hub for quantum innovation. Photo credit: Emily Dahl.

Speaking at the Samberg Conference Center on campus, the leaders introduced the Quantum Systems Laboratory (QSL) at MIT, a shared-use facility that will catalyze quantum development in the region and help keep America at the forefront of a technology seen as critical for a range of industries.

“Quantum technologies have the potential to drive transformative change in fields from computing, security, and navigation to health sciences, defense technologies, and space exploration,” Kornbluth said. “Greater Boston has the greatest concentration of quantum talent of anywhere in the world, so it has been clear to us for some time that if we could magnify all of that talent with the right facilities — a shared quantum toolbox — we could establish Massachusetts as a national hub for quantum innovation and help catalyze the next generation of quantum technologies.”

The Quantum Systems Laboratory will join a state-of-the-art quantum computer with the components needed to make it a scalable, practical technology for solving complex, real-world problems. Such components include peripheral hardware such as sensors and quantum interconnects, which are physical channels that transfer quantum information. Located at MIT’s Building 39, the facilities will be open to researchers both from and beyond MIT.

Thanks to a $25 million investment from the state, announced yesterday, which will match a portion of the federal funding for quantum research already underway at MIT, the Institute is now in a position to move forward as early as this summer with construction on the QSL facility. The Commonwealth’s investment adds to MIT’s own financial commitment, as well as generous philanthropic support from Thomas Tull.

“This is good news for MIT, good news for Massachusetts, and frankly, good news for the world that we’re working together to make this happen,” Healey said. “The return on investment is clear: We know the Quantum Systems Laboratory will be a first-of-its-kind center for the shared study and development of quantum science and technology. It’s going to unleash the great power of scientists and innovators from around the state and across the world, and also be a place for collaboration, both for academic and commercial ventures. It will offer incredible opportunities for both scientific progress and economic growth. It’s a testament to MIT’s unrelenting, unyielding belief in the power of openness and collaboration to advance science.”

The new lab will be the physical home for the MIT Quantum Initiative (or QMIT) announced by President Kornbluth in December. It also complements advanced facilities already used for quantum research at MIT, such as MIT.nano and MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s SQUILL foundry, both of which share the mission of democratizing access to world-class facilities. SQUILL and MIT.nano have already made a major impact on the quantum industry through research, startups, and new standards for creating and transmitting quantum information.

“I want to emphasize that just as MIT.nano is a facility for all, there will be many people from beyond MIT that come to use this equipment” at QSL, Kornbluth said. “This is a hub to make Massachusetts the center of the world for quantum. These resources are rare enough that we have to make sure they are available to our colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Harvard, and beyond. Our plan is to mobilize all the talent in the area through this facility.”

Leading in quantum innovation is important for the prosperity and security of the country, but quantum research requires meticulously controlled environments. The new facilities will give scientists access to the cutting-edge quantum hardware and specialized experimental capabilities needed to achieve the full transformative potential of quantum science and engineering.

The new laboratory’s underlying mission is to return broad scientific, workforce, and economic benefit to the public.

For example, quantum technologies provide significant opportunities in the fields of life sciences and defense technologies, which are $50-billion contributors to the local economy, with dozens of startups working in the area. The new lab is designed to create new job opportunities in the form of academic research, startups, and more. Construction on the QSL facility alone is anticipated to create over 150 full-time, on-site jobs, plus another 75 to 100 jobs across the Commonwealth in supply chain and professional services supporting the project.

Startups from MIT are also a key driver of the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem; in 2015, Sloan Professors Edward Roberts and Fiona Murray published a report detailing how the Institute’s alumni entrepreneurs have created more than 30,000 active companies, employing 4.6 million people and generating annual global revenues of $1.9 trillion, a figure greater than the gross domestic product (GDP) of the world’s 10th-largest economy, as of 2014. The QSL facility will provide the necessary equipment and facilities for startups working on quantum technologies, thereby strengthening the region’s innovation economy.

Source: Zach Winn and Abby Abazorius, MIT

The post MIT Launches Quantum Systems Laboratory with $25M Massachusetts Backing appeared first on HPCwire.

Amtrak car caught fire in Hudson River tunnel resulting in overhead wire damage, according to New Jersey Transit

A fire in a rail yard train car near New York’s Penn Station injured five people and disrupted service for many commuters early on Friday, authorities said.

The fire resulted in train delays on the New Jersey Transit and Amtrak rail services into New York and briefly suspended Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) service, more than a week after a strike had shut down that system.

Among the raft of refreshes, a few novelties stand out from the company's Computex product announcements.

The PC-maker will enter a hectic scene for smart glasses, with two models planned for later this year.

Americans spend 18% of our economy on healthcare, nearly twice the average of comparable nations, for worse results

The Commonwealth Fund published its 2026 report card on US healthcare this week, measuring the United States against 19 other wealthy countries. It runs the most expensive system on earth, and it buys some of the worst results in the developed world. I have spent more than four decades in the medical intensive care unit at UCLA, and I do not read those numbers as statistics. I read them as the people I admit.

We spend 18% of our economy on healthcare, nearly twice the average of comparable nations, and $12,649 a person, roughly 10 times what Mexico spends. For that fortune, American life expectancy peaked at 79 years, more than two years below our peers and third from the bottom of the group, above only Mexico and Turkey. Our rate of deaths that good care should have prevented is the second worst in the developed world. Only Mexico does worse.

Republicans increasingly avoid doctors and vaccines, widening health gaps with Democrats, researchers say

Growing Republican mistrust in the healthcare system has widened health disparities between liberals and conservatives, who are more likely to avoid vaccines and the medical system in general, according to a new study.

Neil O’Brian, a political science professor at the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill and one of the authors of the study published in Nature Human Behaviour, said that his team saw two phases to the phenomenon.

Infleqtion to recruit world-class quantum talent across physics, engineering, software, manufacturing, and systems integration

OXFORD, England, May 29, 2026 — Infleqtion has announced a major expansion of its UK quantum operations with the launch of a new Quantum Innovation Centre in Oxford. The Centre will serve as a hub for quantum research, manufacturing, and systems integration, supporting the company’s next phase of growth in the UK. Scheduled to open later this year, the facility reflects Infleqtion’s long-term commitment to the UK quantum ecosystem and its recognition of the country as a global leader in quantum talent and research.

Infleqtion has operated in the UK since 2014, building one of the country’s most advanced quantum technology development teams across computing, sensing, and precision timing. Through sustained collaboration with the UK government, national laboratories, and leading research institutions, Infleqtion has advanced sovereign UK quantum capability.

Infleqtion delivered the UK’s first operational 100-physical-qubit quantum computer to the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) at Harwell, becoming the first and only company to achieve the UK government’s 2025 target for a 100-qubit system. Infleqtion has also conducted Royal Navy sea trials of its Tiqker optical atomic clock aboard the MOD’s Excalibur autonomous submarine, with additional trials planned for its quantum inertial navigation technology. Additional UK programs include an Innovate UK-funded quantum RF sensing initiative and a funded contract to deliver the UK’s first optical atomic clock.

Expansion Details

The UK Quantum Innovation Centre will occupy a dedicated facility at Oxford Technology Park, tripling the size of Infleqtion’s research, production, and systems integration capabilities. The Centre will attract the highest caliber physicists, engineers, software developers, and systems integration specialists, building one of the most capable quantum workforces in the country.

“The UK has become a global quantum leader through sustained government support, academic excellence, and industrial investment,” said Colin Sullivan, Managing Director of Infleqtion UK. “After more than a decade in the UK quantum ecosystem, we’ve built a sovereign skills base and invested heavily in onshore technology. This Centre marks our commitment to scaling up and transitioning from R&D to production right here in the UK. We’ll soon be manufacturing some of the world’s most advanced quantum technologies in Oxford and Harwell, growing the UK’s amazing talent in this sector, and supporting the UK Government’s ambition to lead quantum technology and capability globally while creating economic and societal benefits. ”

Operational Deployments

Infleqtion has built its UK presence on a record of delivery. When the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology announced up to £2 billion in long-term quantum investment, it highlighted Infleqtion’s work at the NQCC as a defining example of progress toward national quantum capability. Infleqtion delivered the UK’s first 100-physical-qubit quantum computer to the NQCC at Harwell, achieving a major UK national strategy goal for 2025 and becoming the first and only company to meet the UK government’s target for a 100-qubit system by year-end. The UK Quantum Innovation Centre will strengthen Infleqtion’s ability to support and expand that national infrastructure, providing domestic research and manufacturing capacity aligned with the NQCC’s long-term mission.

The company also leads a £2.2 million program with the NQCC and Quantum Software Lab to deliver 10-100x improvements in gate speed and parallel processing.

In October 2025, Infleqtion deployed its Tiqker optical atomic clock aboard the MOD’s Excalibur (XCal) autonomous submarine, the first quantum optical clock to operate on an underwater vessel and the first external technology integrated into the XCal program. Tiqker operated reliably across multiple dives, providing precision timing without GPS or surface signals. Royal Navy trials will resume in late June.

Infleqtion is advancing Quantum Direction Finding (QuDiFi), an Innovate UK-funded program to develop a deployable quantum RF direction-finding system based on Rydberg-atom broadband sensing. Infleqtion is the only company with contracted atom-based RF sensing programs across all three AUKUS partners, with prime integrators including Dell Federal, L3Harris, and SAIC.

Aligned with the UK’s National Quantum Strategy and ProQure

The UK Quantum Innovation Centre opens as the government scales investment through its National Quantum Strategy and the Quantum Leap initiative, targeting quantum deployment across government, defense, research, and industry.

Infleqtion has aligned its UK investment roadmap with the Government’s quantum computing priorities under the ProQure program. ProQure is the UK Government’s procurement initiative to identify, develop and deploy world-leading quantum computing capabilities, bringing together R&D, manufacturing, hardware, software and procurement to support future acquisition of large-scale quantum systems beyond 2030.

Infleqtion is also expanding its sensing and software capabilities in the UK, including quantum optical atomic clocks, quantum-enabled navigation and quantum radio frequency (QRF) Rydberg sensing. The company has already deployed systems in the UK, established domestic manufacturing, and secured contracts with national laboratories, the Ministry of Defence and other government agencies, reinforcing its strong UK presence.

About Infleqtion

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

Source: Infleqtion

The post Infleqtion Expands UK Quantum Operations with New Oxford Innovation Centre and Manufacturing Hub appeared first on HPCwire.

Morris Day, Young MC and others balk at appearing at US’s 250th anniversary events organized by administration

At least seven of the nine featured musical acts set to play in a concert series organized by the Trump administration to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary have dropped out, within 48 hours of the lineup being announced.

Bret Michaels on Friday had become the latest name to withdraw, citing a deteriorating atmosphere around the event and threats being made.

As the summer travel season starts to take off, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford tells CBS News he has confidence in the system, despite hundreds of FAA facilities being run on decades-old technology.

U.S. government plans to open a quarantine center for Americans exposed to Ebola on an air base in Kenya have been temporarily halted by a court order.

Shrey Parikh of Rancho Cucamonga, California, emerged victorious Thursday in the 98th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The number of victims could change as details continue to unfold and crews search through the debris.

The Trump Accounts app allows parents to open new tax-preferred investment accounts for their children, including a $1,000 government contribution.

Commentary: A decade after launch, Overwatch has grown into something with a little bit less sparkle, but a lot more reward and engagement.

The Department of Justice’s blatant disregard for the constitution and attempt to hide the law is disturbing

On Tuesday, a federal judge unsealed records showing that the Department of Justice tried and failed to get search warrants targeting journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, as well as three protesters involved in the Cities church demonstration in St Paul, Minnesota, last winter.

A court rejected the search warrants – twice. In strikingly blunt opinions, magistrate judge John Docherty said officials didn’t meet basic legal standards and chastised them for failing to mention a federal law that may have made some of the warrants illegal. The Department of Justice later withdrew the requests.

Plaintiffs say children’s services uses ‘emergency removal’ disproportionately against Black and Latino families

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On Thursday, two families filed a class-action lawsuit against the city of New York, alleging that the administration for children’s services (ACS) abuses its emergency removal power to take children from their parents without a court order. The families say that Black people and Latinos are disproportionately affected by the practice.

The “emergency removal” power is supposed to be used only in extreme and urgent situations in which there is not enough time to obtain a court order. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, the ACS is using a racially discriminatory emergency removal policy that allows the agency to bypass judicial review. The policy, which separates parents from their children, can cause lasting harm to the families that are affected.

If there’s one thing we know about the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, it is this: The police failed to stop it. This was not for an absence of well-funded, trained officers on the scene. They were there.

Rather than placing themselves potentially in harm’s way, however, the cops waited outside for over an hour and aggressively confronted desperate parents who begged for them to enter, including handcuffing one mother.

Related

Uvalde Police Didn’t Move to Save Lives Because That’s Not What Police Do

This failure to save lives was not, as I wrote at the time, a failure of police work. It in fact exemplified what police critics and abolitionists have stressed for decades, with reams of evidence. Police do not save lives or prevent crime. Policing is not the “thin blue line” between social peace and chaotic violence. And the work of policing is a far cry from the heroic myth so stubbornly lodged in the American imagination.

This was not, of course, the lesson learned by Texas authorities after the shooting. Instead, the state’s response was as predictable as it was doomed to produce only more violence in Texas schools: They added more cops.

There were no well-researched, pragmatic policy changes around limiting assault rifles, regulating the hyper-destructive expanding bullets that ripped children’s bodies apart, and increasing mental health support — things that could actually stop shootings like in Uvalde, which was carried out by a troubled 18-year-old.

Texas school districts instead poured billions of dollars into stationing police at every public school campus in the state. The results, as a New York Times report published this week found, has been an horrific spate of violent police abuse against children in schools across the state.

There is no official use-of-force data on the over 11,000 cops stationed across Texas’s 400-plus school district police departments, the Times reported, and scant oversight. Despite the limited access to information, journalists were able to pinpoint “more than 2,600 use-of-force incidents” in a nearly four-year period using only the “small share of records” available.

There are horrific details. Kids are routinely slammed to the ground for minor misbehavior. Police punch children in the face. They shock students with Tasers for being in the wrong place. Or point guns at unarmed teens. Cops put handcuffs on a 6-year-old who later cried to his father, “The police wants me to die!” In some cases, low-level disciplinary infractions that should lead to no more than a trip to the principal’s office left children facing criminal charges; the well-documented school-to-prison pipeline in all its ignominy.

According to policing experts who spoke with the paper, Texas lawmakers “embraced school policing without establishing safeguards required for meaningful accountability.” A cop was mildly disciplined for having hogtied a 10-year-old boy with a behavioral disorder; apparently hogtying kids was a pattern for the officer. In response to the incident, the school district had to ban the practice of binding children by their hands and feet. The risks of bodily harm coming to kids across the state, however, remain tremendous: As in 16 other states, corporal punishment is legal in Texas schools.

And there is no mention in the Times investigation of the demographic profiles of the children abused by cops, but the videos in the report overwhelmingly show what appear to be nonwhite children enduring violent police abuse.

Filling school campuses with cops, meanwhile has not even worked to achieve the policy’s stated aim of stopping school shootings in Texas. In late March, a 15-year-old student in Bulverde, Texas, shot and injured a teacher and then took his own life.

Policing: A Twisted Civic Religion

After Uvalde, it was obvious to many of us that, despite widespread and high-profile criticisms of the police officers’ actions that day, we were unlikely to see a radical shift in mythic perceptions around the value of policing as a source of public safety.

The conflation of police presence and public safety maintains a powerful ideological hold, resistant to revision, regardless of recalcitrant evidence. Even the Supreme Court affirmed in 2005 that police departments are not in fact obligated to provide protection to the public.

In a gun-drenched, law-and-order conservative state like Texas, police lionization is a twisted civic religion. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law in 2016 to designate police officers a protected class, “making it a hate crime for anyone to commit a crime against a law enforcement officer out of bias against the police.”

Related

Envisioning an America Free From Police Violence and Control

As I wrote in 2022, just after the Uvalde shooting, it would be too generous to those in power to grant that they have simply been misled by pro-police propaganda. By insisting that we double down on policing, leaders like Abbott make clear that they too uphold what the institution of policing defends: property, power, and racial hierarchy.

When it comes to the teachers and students whose lives are infused with greater violence and risk because of increased police presence, support for ever-present cops is more surprising. Even with ample evidence of police escalating confrontations and instigating violence against kids of all ages, sources who spoke to the Times reaffirmed the necessity of cops in schools.

“In interviews, dozens of parents, teachers, principals and students said that they believed police officers were needed to keep schools safe,” the Times reported.

Writer Patrick Blanchfield noted in 2020 that the police “are in our minds as a solution rather than as a problem.” There is a powerful false consciousness at play, violently reinforced when every social problem is met solely with a carceral, policing-based solution.

“We don’t know what our nation without police would look like,” the abolitionist scholar Mariame Kaba wrote. “But we know that our society with police is violent, racist, precarious, unequal, and unfree.”

As the response to Uvalde makes clear, this is not a knowledge problem. It is well established what flooding schools with police does and does not do. It does not promote safety; it does increase life-altering incidents of violence against children.

Texas is not alone in choosing violence.

The post After Uvalde, Texas Stuffed Schools Full of Cops. They Brutalized Students. appeared first on The Intercept.

A federal judge has ruled that execution by nitrogen gas doesn't violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, rejecting an Alabama inmate's claim that it causes excessive suffering.

Medical investigations ongoing ‘to finalise the cause of death’ but police say they do not suspect foul play

The cause of the deaths of three sisters found in the sea off Brighton beach is yet to be ascertained but police say they do not suspect foul play at this stage.

The bodies of Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, from Uxbridge, west London, were found earlier this month.

Why Should Delaware Care?
There are a handful of towns that allow owners of LLCs and other artificial entities to vote in town elections, potentially swaying election outcomes compared to full-time residents.

A Delaware Superior Court judge ruled this week that when it comes to elections in the small coastal town of Fenwick Island, business entities like family trusts and limited liability companies are able to vote.

The 20-page ruling by Judge Craig Karsnitz, which has been picked up in the national media and drawn eyebrow-raising headlines, began with a philosophical meditation on what it means to be a “person,” but ultimately denied a challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware that allowing such non-human entities to vote diminished the voting rights of human residents.

“Visions of faceless large corporations or even [2001: A Space Odyssey’s] HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction. However, the plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote,” Karsnitz wrote.

In part, Karsnitz’s ruling leans heavily on the fact that the Delaware state legislature gave the business entities voting rights in amendments to Fenwick Island’s town charter in 2008. Because the state recognizes the rights of such entities in other matters of law, the judge concluded that lawmakers could extend voting rights to them as well.

The ruling may not be the end of the road, however, as the ACLU could appeal it to the state Supreme Court.

“Voting should be for the people — not corporations. We believe strongly that allowing corporations to vote in local elections harms our democracy and dilutes the voices of voters. Over the coming days, we will review the Court’s decision and determine our next steps,” Andrew Bernstein, the lead voting rights attorney for the ACLU who filed the case, said in a statement Thursday.

Conversely, Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger noted that the majority of properties in her town are owned by family or marital trusts.

“We firmly believe our voting system is just, fair and gives everyone a voice. As a town, we believe that a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council,” she said in a statement.

Aside from the court’s consideration, it’s also possible that the Delaware General Assembly intervenes in the scenario. House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris (D-Dover) is sponsoring a constitutional amendment to deny corporations any voting rights in any Delaware election. It would require passage in two consecutive General Assembly by a supermajority two-thirds vote – a threshold that Democrats do not yet hold on their own.

“No one and no entity should be voting in any election except individual people. Full stop. Fortunately, we Democrats in Dover are introducing legislation to make things how they should be,” Rep. Eric Morrison (D-Bear), a cosponsor of House Bill 430, wrote on Facebook after the ACLU case ruling.

When the General Assembly approved the voting rights nearly 20 years ago, it received near unanimous approval and was sponsored by State Sen. Gerald Hocker (R-Ocean View). Such charter amendments, if supported by the municipal officials, are rarely controversial and often approved with little debate.

What does the Fenwick law say?

Voting rights are not an idle provision for Fenwick Island, as nearly a quarter of votes cast in the last municipal election in 2024 – or 109 in total – were cast by owners of entities like family trusts or LLCs rather than full-time residents.

In beach communities, it is common for many homes to be owned by such entities as investment properties or second homes for part-time residents.

There are four other small Delaware towns – Henlopen Acres, Dagsboro, Bethel, and Dewey Beach – that allow for artificial entities to vote in municipal general elections, or elections that choose mayors or town councils. Others allow for such entities to participate in certain special elections.

Fenwick’s town charter provides that any artificial entity that owns property in the town as of March 1 prior to an annual municipal election can cast a ballot.

A person can only vote once in the town election, regardless of whether they cast a ballot as the owner of an artificial entity or as a town resident. That is different from the situation uncovered in Newark in 2019, when a single developer voted 31 times on behalf of his many LLCs in the city and led officials to ban the voting by artificial entities there.

However, there are no limits on the number of artificial non-human entities eligible to vote based on their ownership interest in any single property parcel nor is there a minimum share of a property required to register. That means if several LLCs jointly own a beach home in Fenwick Island, all of the owners can register to vote, regardless of how little a stake.

The ACLU, which noted that it has members in Fenwick who have participated in the elections there, argues that artificial entity voting could sway election outcomes.

The town’s 2024 election was a contest between four candidates running for three council seats, and the third-place candidate was only 55 votes ahead of the losing candidate.

“This means that the votes cast on behalf of non-human artificial entities could have determined the outcome of the election,” the ACLU wrote in its lawsuit.

In 2023, the town election was a contest between eight candidates running for four seats. Then the fourth-place finisher, who earned a town council seat, beat the fifth-place finisher by only 42 votes – a margin that the ACLU also believed could have been affected by non-resident voters.

The post Judge: Trusts, LLCs are ‘people’ in Fenwick elections appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Spurred on by Elon Musk, the two rightwing parties spent the week taking potshots at each other. We look back at who hurled which insult at whom

• UK politics live – latest updates

It’s been a week of rudeness, rows and revelations in the Makerfield byelection. Not between Andy Burnham and his challengers for the seat – but between Reform UK and its even more rightwing rival, Restore Britain.

Here are the key moments in a week in which the populist right turned on each other:

A large fire destroyed an apartment complex in Dallas on Thursday after an apparent gas explosion, killing two women and a child. Aerial footage shows firefighters battling the flames that left the building heaped on the ground as black smoke billowed into the sky. A natural gas explosion initially caused the fire, the Dallas fire rescue assistant chief, James Russ, said at a televised press conference

• Three dead after gas explosion causes fire in Dallas apartment building

A new South Carolina act will exempt some heirs’ property owners from increased property taxes

In a move that protects vulnerable people from forced property sales, South Carolina recently enacted an act that could help families keep land that has been passed down for generations. The Heirs’ Property Tax Relief Act, signed into law by Henry McMaster, the state’s governor, on 15 May, prevents counties from reassessing property values when heirs clear their property titles, or resolve disputes about the ownership.

The act allows families with heirs’ properties – land inherited by multiple owners who are not listed on the title – to transfer the title between family members without their real estate taxes increasing. Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of formerly enslaved west Africans who retained their culture and customs, are especially vulnerable to heirs’ property issues. They can lead to their homes being sold at annual auctions for delinquent tax payments, predatory development and interfamily fighting.

The public is concerned. Fewer than half of US adults believe that Trump now possesses the mental acuity or physical health to be an effective president

American presidents don’t have a stellar record of transparency about their health problems.

After a polio diagnosis that caused paralysis of his lower body, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used a wheelchair to get around, but went to great lengths to conceal it from the public. John F Kennedy suffered debilitating back pain, but most Americans never had a clue, seeing only a vigorous and youthful politician.

A senior CIA official, David Rush, was arrested after investigators found more than $40 million in gold bars and about $2 million in cash at his Virginia home. According to the New York Times, "The only charge lodged against David Rush is that he inflated his academic credentials and obtained military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars." From the report: The court papers describe Mr. Rush as a "former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency." People familiar with the investigation say he until very recently held a senior position at the C.I.A. In a joint statement, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. said the arrest occurred on May 19, after the agency alerted the bureau. "After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation," the statement said. From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, "a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses." When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed, the agency was "unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency," according to court papers. On May 18, F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Rush's home and found "approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram," according to an affidavit. Based on the price of gold, the affidavit said, the estimated value of the gold exceeded $40 million. Investigators also seized nearly three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. The court papers do not indicate why Mr. Rush appears to have kept so much gold, and $2 million in U.S. currency, in his home, or what work project would have required him to amass such wealth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Charlotte FC’s Tim Ream appears to be in pole position to lead the US on the field this summer, but there are many factors to consider

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If you want to get US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino started, just use one word: leadership.

The former Tottenham Hotspur manager is famously well-studied on the subject and there are no shortage of clips of him waxing poetic about it. He’s led players over hot coals, or had them press their neck up against the tip of an arrow and lean into it until it shatters. Ask him about leadership and the words he’ll sprinkle into his answers will overlap heavily with late-night self-help ads, his sentences dotted with the likes of aura, bravery and self-determination.

The death toll from the Trump administration's series of strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats has risen to at least 199 people.

Speaking at Amazon’s AI on the Lot event, the Rogue One film-maker Gareth Edwards said ‘it’ll do anything you ask’ and ‘it’s going to be better than CGI’

Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has enthusiastically endorsed the use of generative AI in film-making, saying “it is a fucking genius at helping you” and “it’s going to be better than CGI”.

Edwards was speaking at AI on the Lot, an event in Culver City, California, organised by Amazon, and in remarks reported by the Hollywood Reporter said: “I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t become interested in this stuff as a film-maker. It’s so clearly a tool that might be up there with the camera. It’s going to be better than CGI.”

UK’s third biggest supermarket will use tech of online grocer, which already provides support for M&S and Morrisons

Asda has agreed a deal to use Ocado’s technology to run its online grocery store and home deliveries from next year.

Ocado software will be used to support Asda’s grocery website and deliveries from its stores and “dark stores” – smaller warehouses that are not open to the public – from early 2027, the companies announced on Friday.

Exclusive: IPPR thinktank calls for new measures to boost employees’ influence at ‘pivotal moment’ in history

Workers urgently need more bargaining power over the way AI is adopted in the workplace to ensure the benefits are fairly shared, according to a TUC-backed report from a leading thinktank.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a package of measures to boost employees’ influence at what it calls a “pivotal moment in the history of work”.

Mark Rutte says Moscow’s ‘reckless behaviour is a danger to us all’ after drone hit apartments during attack on Ukraine. Plus, Paul McCartney on how old bandmates – and Oasis – inspired his nostalgic new album

Good morning.

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said the alliance is “ready to defend every inch” of its territory after a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, a member state, during an overnight attack on neighbouring Ukraine.

What else is happening? Sweden will donate 16 of its Gripen fighter jets by next year to Ukraine, which will go on to buy an initial 20 of the latest model, they announced on Thursday, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited an airbase in Uppsala, 45 miles (70km) north of Stockholm.

What did Netanyahu say? The Israeli prime minister, who is struggling for his political survival before elections in the next few months, said: “We are currently squeezing Hamas. We now control 60% of the territory in the strip. You know, we were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to … 70%.”

A man wanted in connection with the killings of three elderly men was caught after a massive search of Hawaii's Big Island that had left residents on edge.

The intelligent and thoughtful encyclical is an important warning of the uses and misuses of a rapidly developing technology. Silicon Valley is wrong to dismiss it

Often I’m asked if I think that the novels of the future will all be written by AI. It’s not so much a question as a provocation. Do I worry that a machine can do what I do, only better? I usually say something like: “No algorithm is going to write Anna Karenina!” which is also not a real answer.

So I’m grateful to Pope Leo XIV, the American pope, for his recently issued letter to the world, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. It’s a long (more than 40,00 words), intelligent and thoughtful encyclical in which the pope addresses the uses and misuses of a rapidly developing technology. Now when someone asks my opinion of AI, I can refer them to the pope’s letter, or at least chapter three.

The overwhelming majority of those deported had no criminal convictions, and at least 600 were children

In late January, the Trump administration was planning a war in Iran, weighing possible airstrikes and staging aircraft carriers and other military ships in the region. Around that time, government officials deported 18 people to Iran, the last of them arriving just days before American and Israeli bombs began falling across the country.

These deportations were the latest in an aggressive campaign to deport Iranians from the United States, the first time in recent history the US government had done so in large numbers. In the 13 months of Donald Trump’s presidency leading up to the war, the United States deported more than 200 people to Iran, even as the state department decried human rights abuses by the Iranian government and warned US citizens not to travel there “for any reason”.

Dozens of doctors are routinely performing risky vascular procedures in medical offices, generating tens of millions of dollars in Medicare payments for potentially unnecessary procedures, according to a federal report released earlier this month.

The review, completed by the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services, flagged nearly 140 doctors across the country as having “concerning” billing patterns. 

The analysis parallels a 2023 ProPublica investigation that revealed how high Medicare reimbursements for office-based vascular treatments had fueled a surge of unnecessary procedures, putting patients at risk of amputation or even death. The inspector general’s study, which began in April 2024, cited ProPublica’s reporting and broadly confirmed its findings.

Millions of Americans have peripheral artery disease, a vascular disorder in which the buildup of plaque narrows arteries and blocks blood flow in the legs. While most treatments are safe, ProPublica’s investigation found that there has been widespread concern among medical experts that some doctors are overusing procedures on patients who may not need them. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services laid the foundation for the problem nearly 20 years ago, when it tried to rein in growing hospital costs by diverting certain common, minimally invasive procedures to outpatient facilities. These treatments may include the placement of stents in blood vessels or the removal of plaque with a bladed catheter, also known as an atherectomy. 

But instead of saving taxpayers money, it created a boom. For years, even as researchers challenged the long-term safety and efficacy of these expensive procedures, the federal government did little to stop potential abuse. 

ProPublica’s reporting chronicled the rise of the procedures after the introduction of the government’s financial incentive, along with horror stories of patients who lost their legs or died from complications.

Our investigation examined years of federal Medicare claims data to identify and name the doctors who were making the most money off of these controversial procedures, and found that several of them had also racked up allegations of patient harm and even fraud. Doctors identified in our reporting objected to being portrayed as part of the problem, with some defending their use of the procedures, saying they could save the government money by preventing more serious complications down the road.

ProPublica’s analysis also found that many procedures were being performed on patients with only mild disease, against best practices. Working with data journalists from the health analytics group CareSet, and in consultation with experts, we found that nearly 1 in 4 patients underwent the invasive procedure in the early stages of vascular disease, amounting to nearly 30,000 patients who may have endured procedures too soon or even unnecessarily.

The inspector general’s analysis, which focused on data from 2019 through 2023, found that while overall payments for vascular procedures have decreased in recent years, the procedures have shifted from hospitals to physicians’ offices. 

The report flagged $105 million, about a fifth of all office-based vascular payments in 2023, as suspicious for medically unnecessary procedures. About 140 doctors accounted for these “concerning” payments, with 26 physicians responsible for the majority of them. This small group of specialists each received about $3 million in medical payments on average, and treated more than four times the average number of Medicare patients compared with similar physicians, conducting double the average number of procedures per patient.

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About half of these flagged doctors, which include interventional radiologists, vascular surgeons and cardiologists, practiced in California and Texas.

Since 2019, CMS has investigated and identified 15 providers who received overpayments for vascular procedures, according to the report. The agency has also initiated a “claims analysis project” to detect physicians who are excessively billing for certain procedures, including atherectomies. 

The inspector general recommended that CMS monitor billing records to identify medically unnecessary procedures that pose a risk to Medicare enrollees and take appropriate actions. The inspector general also provided information on the outlier physicians to CMS and encouraged the agency to work with its program integrity team to review their billing patterns. “Although determining whether these physicians engaged in abusive or fraudulent practices was not within the scope of this study, their billing patterns warrant further scrutiny,” stated the report. 

CMS agreed with the inspector general’s recommendations and said it would consider the report’s findings to determine next steps. 

The post More Than $100 Million Was Billed for Medically Questionable Vascular Procedures, Government Watchdog Finds appeared first on ProPublica.

Apple is expected to announce iOS 27 at WWDC in a few week, but don't forget to check out all these iOS 26 features.

I thought turning off notifications would make me miss everything. Instead, it showed me how much of my attention had already been scheduled by apps, emails, promos, DMs and tiny red badges.

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary has been making the media rounds defending the 40,000-acre data center project he’s backing in northern Utah. Dismissing residents’ concerns over the environmental impacts and water demands of the proposed project in the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake region, O’Leary has claimed protesters are “bused in,” “misinformed,” and alleged that China has had a hand in orchestrating the public push back.

“The Stratos project in Utah is an example of data center largesse,” says Jim Walsh, the policy director of Food and Water Watch, an organization leading a campaign to stop the rapid development of data centers across the country. As proposed, the project would be more than double the size of Manhattan. Walsh adds, “It’s important to recognize that the impacts of this data center go beyond the water and energy concerns that impact the residents of Salt Lake. They’re going to be pulling gas from the Ruby Pipeline, and this project is going to perpetuate more fracking in the Western U.S., a practice for extracting natural gas that uses extreme amounts of water.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks to Walsh about the massive Utah project, the environmental and economic impact of data centers on communities especially where water is already scarce, and the Trump administration’s push to cut regulations at the federal and local level to accelerate the build-out of data centers and AI infrastructure.

In response to O’Leary claiming data center development is a national security priority to beat out China in the AI race, Walsh says, “National security isn’t just about having technological and military superiority.” We’re not safe if we don’t have clean air and clean water to drink and breathe. We’re not safe if our communities have massive data centers that are extracting our natural resources. Our entire economy functions on access to water.”

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jordan Uhl, your host today. 

Jessica Washington: I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. 

Jonah Valdez: And I’m Jonah Valdez, another politics reporter here at The Intercept. 

JU: So Jess, Jonah, we’re talking to you both today because the California primary is days away: June 2. While there are a few notable races that have captured national attention, one here where I live in Los Angeles is the mayoral primary.

We’ve got a few contenders. It is looking tight at the top with a few candidates jockeying for one of these top two positions. Jess, could you give us an overview of this race?

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JW: As the only non-Angeleno on the podcast, I’m going to try and do a good job. So something important to keep in mind before we even get into the candidates is because of how California’s primary system works, if no candidate gets a majority of the vote — so over 50 percent — the top two are going to go off to a runoff election in November.

The candidates in this race are the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass. She has been leading in every poll, but it should have been really a slam-dunk election, and yet it isn’t. We can get into more of why in a minute. But her opponent is really interesting; two opponents are interesting. So first, there’s reality star Spencer Pratt, who has been consistently polling in second place, although in more recent polling he’s looking to lose a little bit of steam. Then the other candidate is council member Nithya Raman, a Democratic socialist who’s not endorsed by DSA LA, but is recommended by them. So that’s the mix that’s happening in this election right now.

JU: Jonah, there are a few other contenders that could be potentially pulling votes from Nithya Raman or might be waiting to decide till last minute. What is this looking like on the ground? Who have you talked to and what are you hearing?

JV: My focus has been on LA’s left, if you will, and how there might be what people are calling some vote-splitting among the left. And that’s because not only is there Nithya Raman who, as Jessie said, is a Democratic socialist, but there’s also Rev. Rae Huang, who is a housing advocate.

She’s a Presbyterian minister. She actually was in the race before Nithya and was the only DSA candidate, Democratic Socialist candidate, in the race at the time. She launched two weeks after Mamdani’s win in New York, so she has all this buzz going into it. The LA Times was asking, is she LA’s Mamdani?

So that’s the framing that she entered the race in, and it excited a lot of progressives here in the left in Los Angeles. But as soon as Nithya joined the race, very last minute, and the rise of Spencer Pratt, you have this threat of this right-wing figure. Sure, this is a nonpartisan election, but the things he’s saying, demonizing homelessness and really getting on Karen Bass around her record and the fires. There’s this tangible threat now that Spencer Pratt could be in the runoff with Karen Bass, which is a pretty worst-case scenario for LA’s left that is trying to push LA’s politics in a different direction.

Right now, the contention for a lot of voters in LA’s left is between, do I vote for Nithya Raman, someone who I at least agree with, but have to hold my nose on some issues, like police accountability, where she has fallen short in the eyes of some of her opponents? Or Rae Huang, who has a bolder vision? Some members of DSA LA have said that she has the true socialist platform amongst the two Democratic Socialist members. I should say that Rae Huang is only polling at about 5 percent. That’s nowhere near the second place spot to get into the runoff.

JU: We’re seeing a wide array of polling in this race, and there was a new poll that dropped on Thursday morning from Berkeley IGS, which had Bass, unsurprisingly, in the top spot with 26 percent. But in second place, this I think caught many people off guard, Nithya Raman at 25 percent, Spencer Pratt at 22, and Rae Huang at 9 percent, with 10 percent undecided. That presents a totally different outlook going into the general in this runoff. 

But Jess, I want to bring you back in here. Spencer Pratt was widely considered to have a guaranteed spot in the runoff because he had a ton of press, a ton of buzz, especially from outside LA. He had Trump’s endorsement. He’s been getting featured in national press.

One of the things that he really rose to prominence on was his criticism of Karen Bass, like Jonah said, for her, “handling of the fire.” But I think many people who live here felt that some of it was disingenuous because those fires were exacerbated by the Santa Ana winds. You can only do so much as mayor.

You can’t get helicopters up in the air in 80-mile-an-hour winds to fight those fires. So I think some of it came off as very disingenuous to people here in LA. But what are you hearing? What are you seeing from Spencer Pratt that puts him even in contention?

JW: For anyone who doesn’t know who Spencer Pratt is, he’s this former reality star from “The Hills.” He’s the guy who told People Magazine that he blew, I think, about $1 million on crystals, blowing through his $10 million reality television fortune on other lavish purchases. So that’s just a little bit of who Spencer Pratt is, the guy who yelled at women on television for about a decade.

But the reason he’s catching steam, I think, is twofold. I think, one, the fires are a very visceral moment. The mayor obviously has no control over the fires, but the fact that she was in Ghana during the Palisades fire did really anger a lot of people. The fact that she didn’t come home until the following day is a large part of that narrative.

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The other thing that’s happening is also people’s concerns over homelessness. What Spencer Pratt is pushing is we have to arrest, arrest, arrest, force treatment. But if you talk to most people on this issue, homelessness is caused by housing, unaffordability, and inequality in our system, and those are huge issues to tackle.

Spencer Pratt is not looking to tackle those issues. He is looking to move people out of spaces where he and his friends can see them. It’s also worth noting that his plans of mass arrest also aren’t going to even fix that problem. But what you’re looking at in Los Angeles is frustration over Karen Bass’s handling of these fires and this kind of visible problem of homelessness that frustrates people on both sides of this issue.

That’s what Spencer Pratt has really honed in on. I think it’s important to note that none of his solutions are going to fix any of those problems, but he is tapping into a real anger and a real frustration in the electorate.

JU: Yeah I think what’s interesting to watch is the national support for Spencer Pratt. But that comes at a cost for him because 80 percent of his donors don’t live in Los Angeles, according to analysis that I saw from one Gabe Sanchez. And sure, you can run ads, you can get press, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people within the city, within your jurisdiction, would vote for you. 

What I found so interesting and Jonah, I want to bring you back in here, people dug up some of his old appearances or guest appearances on Infowars with Alex Jones, and during one of those interviews, he talked about his belief that climate change was a hoax.

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What I found so ironic is that this is somebody who made losing his home in the Palisades fire a centerpiece of his campaign, but we know that worsening climate change leads to more frequent and more severe wildfires. So on the one hand, you have somebody who believes it’s a hoax. At the same time, he’s making a byproduct of climate change the centerpiece of his campaign.

Jonah, what stood out to you?

JV: I think to Jessie’s point as far as demonizing the homeless population in LA, his rhetoric around that is concerning, not just on the level of, this is going to hurt a lot of the gains that housing advocates have fought for in LA County for years, but even just on the level of basic humanity.

He’s referred to unhoused people as fentanyl-addicted zombies. Like a constant refrain for him is telling people to go outside and go to your freeway underpass, talk to a homeless person, and ask them. He’s assuming they don’t want housing, that’s not what they want, they just want their next high. They just want to be on drugs. 

This is all in the face of studies showing that most people who do have drug addiction or in substance use addiction on the streets is a result of being unhoused — and not the other way around. And so I think he does exist in this bubble of distorted reality.

LA is still seen as this liberal bastion along with California as a whole, but there are a lot of folks here who voted just a couple years ago for someone like Rick Caruso, who preyed on a lot of these similar fears of course from a different standpoint of crime and safety. So these fearmongering tactics are being recycled again and again.

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I was talking to sources yesterday, other voters, and there is some reality to what [Pratt is] saying, which is like LA is struggling. Angelenos are struggling. A lot of the nation is struggling economically, but how you diagnose that matters.

JU: So why has this mayoral election captured the national interest? Jess, I want to start with you, and then we’ll go to you, Jonah.

JW: It’s captured the national interest partially because it feels like this perfect allegory for the 2016 election. You have this Trumpian figure, you have liberal-left infighting, so I think that’s part of it. But I also think for someone like me, who cares a lot about policy around housing and homelessness, this is about the spread of very dangerous ideas about people, about the idea that we can call people zombies, we can mass arrest them, and these ideas around homelessness are spreading all across the country.

JV: For me, it’s a lot of the same questions that the left in LA is facing could be amplified to a national level as well, and a lot of this infighting, a lot of it is just lack of organization. And I think one example of that is for listeners who don’t know, there are actually four DSA members on city council, one of which is Nithya Raman, who is running.

However, three of those DSA members didn’t endorse their fellow DSA member for mayor. They actually endorsed the incumbent Mayor Bass. So a lot of that back and forth and mixed messaging to the public could really hurt movements and coalition-building. DSA LA has told me that’s one of the things they hope to fix, which is more organization within city council to increase their influence there, and that starts with being on the same page.

That messaging here and a lot of these lessons could be amplified on the national stage as well.

JW: We’ve also seen similar signals from the Trump administration with executive orders targeting the homeless population. The Supreme Court has also moved to weaken protections for unhoused people living on the streets.

These are policies and rhetoric that are truly taking root at the highest levels, and we need to be paying attention to them.

JU: And these hollow pandering overtures to different demographics, I think, are just jarring. Maybe it’s a byproduct of the Trump era, but just don’t garner the raised eyebrows that they typically would.

The headline I saw on Wednesday in TMZ that “Spencer Pratt loves Mexican food and Eats it More Than Any White Person in Los Angeles” made me laugh, but also I found myself feeling very confused. Like, why is this news? But it fits within a broader pattern from that campaign where he’s just trying to pander to the sizable Latino community in Los Angeles.

We see that also with his AI ads. Latinos for Pratt doesn’t seem to have an actual real or tangible base in the electorate. Maybe he does, but those AI ads have been widely mocked or parodied and some have gone viral, even those not made by his campaign.

The proliferation of AI ads in this cycle, I think, segues us into our next conversation with Jim Walsh, the policy director of Food and Water Watch, where we talked about the proliferation of AI data centers across the country.

JW: Let’s listen to that conversation.

JU: Jim Walsh, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Jim Walsh: Thanks for having me here, Jordan. I appreciate it.

JU: Jim, there are over 3,000 operational data centers across the country and more than 1,500 in development, according to Pew Research. Data centers aren’t new, but let’s start with the basics. What do they do, and how is the growing demand for AI transforming the energy needs of facilities?

JW: I think most people hear about data centers, they think about clouds and streaming and maybe searching or AI. But data centers themselves are these massive rows of servers that require large amounts of water infrastructure, electricity, cooling, land, and also backup power. The scale of these is really hard to grasp because most people don’t think in terawatt hours — but that’s exactly what we’re talking about for energy demand.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that U.S. data centers used about 176 terawatts of electricity in 2023. This is about how much electricity it takes to power 16 million homes for an entire year. And that number is expected to grow to 580 terawatts annually; it’s roughly equivalent to 50 million homes.

Data centers also use immense quantities of water. We’re talking hundreds of billions of gallons of water annually with projections that they’ll use as much as 18.5 million households by 2028. Nearly 60 percent of this coming from drinking water supplies. It’s really important to note that a lot of this is coming from drought-stressed areas that are compounding existing water scarcity concerns.

Beyond that, we’re also seeing that data centers can create significant pollution burdens for communities. When data centers use fossil fuels, they’re polluting our air and water to meet their energy needs, but the chemicals also used in cooling data centers can pollute our water. Even when chemicals aren’t used, evaporative cooling systems can concentrate pollution already in water.

We saw this happen in Oregon, where an Amazon data center was implicated and agreed to pay out $20 million due to elevated nitrate levels in water that coincided with the development of the data center. Now, Amazon never added nitrates to their water systems, but the water that came out of their facilities seemed to have increased the concentration of nitrates in the water because of water evaporation through their cooling systems.

Those elevated nitrate levels have been linked to increases in cancer and premature births and miscarriages in the communities where that data center is located.

JU: Now, in early May, a quasi-governmental agency in Utah approved a massive AI data center project. Known as the Stratos project, it is expected to cover more than 40,000 acres in northwestern Utah. For context, that’s more than twice the size of Manhattan.

The project, which is backed by the venture capitalist and “Shark Tank” regular Kevin O’Leary, has sparked local outrage. Could you tell us about this data center project and why community members are concerned?

JW: The Stratos project in Utah is an example of data center largesse. You talked about 40,000 acres, double the size of Manhattan. It also would double the state’s energy demand. It would also be located near the Great Salt Lake, which is already facing record droughts, like much of the United States. So it’s really no surprise that this and other projects in Utah are facing tremendous public opposition.

In response to the backlash, communities in Utah are putting the brakes on data centers, and the Utah legislature is actually gearing up to potentially require more reporting and studies on data center impacts. It’s important to recognize that the impacts of this data center go beyond the water and energy concerns that impact the residents of Salt Lake.

They’re going to be pulling gas from the Ruby Pipeline, and this project is going to perpetuate more fracking in the Western U.S., a practice for extracting natural gas that uses extreme amounts of water. That practice also has a track record of contaminating surface water and spreading radioactive waste generated from fracking operations.

And because of the segmented permitting process and the segmented evaluative process, nobody’s actually looking at the full impacts of this project or any data center projects, including the sources of energy. Which — if they’re going to be gas plants in the United States — probably means more fracking and more water pollution before you even get to the impacts of the data center themselves.

JU: Now, we should note, we invited Kevin O’Leary on this show to share his point of view. As of this recording, we have not heard back, but here he is on “Fox & Friends” talking about the project recently.

Kevin O’Leary: Utah stepped up and said, “Look, we can compete. Not only do we have the land, 40,000 acres, we’ve got a pipeline running through the land, and we have this designation that can accelerate permitting.”

It’s really about how do we catch up with the Chinese are doing because most people don’t like data centers for good reason. You tap it to the grid, and all of a sudden the electrical costs for their church and the community and the residents all go up, and that’s why there’s been a lot of pushback.

Not in this case. We’re building power from scratch from the pipeline.

JU: Jim, what do you make of O’Leary’s argument there?

JW: Posing this as a national security issue and a race with China really misses the real issue — that national security isn’t just about having technological and military superiority.

We’re not safe if we don’t have clean air and clean water to drink and breathe. We’re not safe if our communities have massive data centers that are extracting our natural resources. Our entire economy functions on access to water. Data centers are jeopardizing that access to water.

So it’s really easy for the ultrawealthy investor from Canada to come in and say, “Hey, we need to have these projects.” But for people that are directly impacted by these projects, it’s not helping them, and it’s not helping their communities.

JU: That’s a good segue to where I wanted to take this next. The Salt Lake Tribune writes, “The full water demands of this project remain unknown, although its developers have said they’re working to secure a 13,000 acre-feet in Hansel Valley and the surrounding area, which is mostly agricultural. That’s enough water to meet the needs of more than 20,000 Utah households.”

One of the biggest concerns about data centers is the amount of water usage they demand. You touched on this a bit already, but why are AI data centers in particular such water-intensive facilities, and why are we seeing more pop-up in areas where water is already scarce?

JW: Data centers use tremendous amounts of water for cooling their servers. That’s only part of the picture. They also use tremendous amounts of water for their energy needs. As we are facing significant amounts of water scarcity, we’re seeing data centers move into water-scarce regions, and it’s because water isn’t the only concern for data centers. Their biggest price point is actually energy.

The Stratos Project is being targeted for that area specifically because they were able to get expedited permits, but they also are able to pull from the Ruby Pipeline. And they have a significant flow of inexpensive energy that they’ll be able to pull from.

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Now, these project developers don’t care about the larger impacts on communities any more than communities are going to force them to recognize those concerns. They’re trying to brush all of these things under the rug and pretend like they can build these projects and get more water as though it’s an unlimited resource, ignoring the fact that residents in Utah are facing unprecedented amounts of drought, and ignoring the fact that these data centers are going to do more to use up what limited resources are available to the people of Utah than they will to provide any meaningful benefit.

What good is any benefit if you don’t actually have the water that’s necessary for life?

[Break]

JU: In Fayette County, Georgia, for instance, another data center has captured national public attention after it came to light that the facility had drained 30 million gallons of water. Residents were experiencing low water pressure and had been told to cut their own water usage. The state is home to more than 200 data centers. 

Last week, while questioning the EPA in a committee hearing, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held up jars full of brown water from residents near a large Meta data center in a different county in the state. Here is a clip of Ocasio-Cortez.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I visited Morgan County, Georgia, where Meta is building a massive data center campus.

They are clear-cutting forests and began heavy construction, including explosive blasting. And families in the area are starting to see not only their water pressure decrease, to your point about water availability, but their appliances have all stopped working because it is decimating their water quality.

They now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals, and nearby residents’ water bills are expected to increase by 33 percent.

JU: Jim, in addition to the impact on local watersheds and wells, what impact do data centers have on the communities they exist in?

JW: I want to speak to that clip because I think that clip shows that communities not only lack resources to evaluate the effects of data centers, but also lack resources to effectively regulate and oversee these projects.

And the federal government is asleep at the wheel. We should not have to have a member of Congress in an open congressional hearing raising concerns that EPA is unaware of, that EPA then commits to investigating after the fact. We need to make sure that these data centers are actually out there to protect the public.

We’ve seen the impacts go well beyond just the water impacts, as you talked about. But it’s all these impacts are driving the concerns that are pushing Georgia and communities like Augusta Council and others to actively consider moratoriums on data centers, to put the brakes on these projects.

But even if you create the regulatory structure that we need to protect communities from data centers and determine if they’re even appropriate for certain areas and certain communities, you need to have the resources to actually oversee and regulate and hold these data centers accountable. 

These data centers in Georgia, in Morgan County, was also, implicated for muddied water. The investigation shouldn’t have to come from members of Congress. It should really be found out before these projects are going to come online. If the project developers are over-pumping, extending their permit, or setting up systems behind the meter, which we saw happen in Georgia, to extract more water than they’re supposed to take, we should have regulators in place to oversee these projects and make sure they’re following the rules.

But these also go significantly beyond water impacts, and that’s what you asked about. For instance, in Memphis, communities there are raising significant concerns about the air pollution from data centers. And the data center there actually committed to use gas turbines only as backup generation, but then started pivoting to using those turbines around the clock. That means around-the-clock pollution and around-the-clock harms to the communities around those data centers.

We need to make sure that we not only have the rules in place to ensure that data centers aren’t harming communities, but make sure that we have the resources in place to hold them accountable to these laws and standards once they’re enacted. And we don’t have that right now.

JU: In addition to the EPA having a reactive approach, seemingly in that hearing being caught off-guard or maybe surprised by the environmental impacts in Georgia that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez was pointing out, the Trump administration is also trying to fast-track the development of even more data centers. How are they enabling that?

JW: The Trump administration is explicitly [prioritizing] rapid data center build-outs. In their memo of July of last year, the executive order rather, it says that they’re going to “facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout” of AI data centers and related infrastructure by easing regulatory burdens and using federally owned land and resources for development, as well as working to curtail the development of local rules and regulations focused on AI and associated infrastructure with an executive order that came out in December.

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So the Trump administration is really putting their foot on the gas with these projects and really throwing caution to the wind about all the significant impacts that these data centers will have. We’re seeing recent proposals to allow energy projects to move forward with construction before gaining federal approvals. This means that communities will see infrastructure built that may never get used.

And even worse is that the infrastructure will be used, but because once you build a power plant, there’s not much else you can do with that land, so regulators may be under immense pressure to grant variances or waivers for projects, which could increase localized pollution for communities.

The administration really treats environmental reviews and public transportation and community safeguards as red tape instead of actual protections. These projects are shaping our water systems, our electric grids, our air quality and land use — and those impacts will be felt for decades. This is exactly why we need more scrutiny and not less that the Trump administration is pushing forward.

JU: Yeah, you see how the industry responds to that scrutiny, how they peddle misinformation, how they go after activists and organizations. Even with the Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez moment — mocking them. I saw Marc Andreessen spending his time on Twitter that day mocking her, that she would even suggest that data centers could make your water brown.

How else are you seeing supporters of these data centers pushing back to the growing scrutiny and opposition to these development projects?

JW: Supporters usually point to tax revenue, construction jobs, digital infrastructure, national security, and competitiveness, like we heard earlier. Some of those benefits might be real, but the reality is, is we’re not looking at these projects in a comprehensive manner. And that’s what the industry wants us to do — is forget about the broader impacts of data centers by pointing out small, unique potential things that could be seen as benefits to communities.

These benefits are often overstated compared with long-term public costs. And we saw that in Virginia, studies on the data center boom found that economic benefits mostly come from construction jobs and not ongoing operations. So these short-term construction jobs aren’t providing long-term benefit to communities and usually are actually done by people not in the community, so you’re not even creating local jobs for people in the communities where data centers are being constructed and put together.

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We’re also seeing that data center developers are trying to point to things like “bring your own power” as a way to say they support an affordability agenda, as they hear more and more consumers talk about affordability. They talk about bringing renewable energy to projects. But the reality is these “bring your own power” projects and renewable energy don’t actually do anything to address the massive demand.

Requiring renewable energy at data centers may actually make things worse for the rest of us, because you’re going to shift the energy transition ability in communities that are looking to do more electrification to replace fossil fuel infrastructure are going to be stuck using fossil fuels, which feeds the data center narrative.

They can say, “Look, we’re using all renewable energy. Aren’t we great?” But in reality, they’re taking all the renewable energy supplies for themselves while the rest of us are stuck with dirty energy that tends to be more expensive and costly. So when we look at these projects, it’s important that we look at them in a comprehensive way and not just the industry sound bites that they’re putting forward to cite narrow perceived benefits of these projects.

JU: Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill to halt the development of new data centers. On one, I want to hear what you could tell us about that bill, but then you also speak to lawmakers across the country, across the political spectrum. What are you hearing from them, and are they receptive to the adverse impacts of data centers?

JW: Data center development is moving along way too fast, and communities are being asked to sacrifice water, affordability, their health for the benefits of billionaire tech industries. The Sanders–Ocasio-Cortez AI Data Center Moratorium Act is important because it shows that these concerns have moved from local zoning fights into national politics.

This legislation is exactly what we need a federal moratorium on data centers until national safeguards are in place. That moratorium will give policymakers an opportunity to better understand the impacts of data centers and protect the public from the significant harms from using millions of gallons of water in drought-stricken regions. The Stratos data center in Utah is going to be using tremendous amounts of water. That project should be put on hold, along with the rest of them, to make sure that the public is actually protected, not just the benefit of these big tech industries.

It’s important to note that many of the decisions relating to data center developments are made by municipal and county governments who often lack resources to do the kind of analysis necessary to make informed decisions about the impacts of data centers. Many of the impacts of data centers go beyond their local boundaries. We all know rivers and streams and groundwater don’t stop at municipal boundaries, and pulling water from one place can impact communities miles away. 

As hundreds of people are turning up to city council meetings across the country demanding moratoriums on data centers, that is creating more pushback from communities. We’re seeing communities, dozens of communities around the country have actually enacted moratoriums on data centers so they can better understand these impacts, create more comprehensive rules to protect communities from these profit-hungry tech companies. But we also need the federal government to step in and provide support to those communities to help with the environmental reviews, to help provide expertise to better understand the impacts of these projects, so that you’re not dealing with municipal elected officials who are really sitting there with limited resources and limited knowledge about the full impacts of these projects.

In order to get that more comprehensive review, we need to have more federal engagement in understanding these data center impacts, and that starts with putting the brakes on these projects through a moratorium.

JU: We will continue to look to your organization, Food & Water Watch, for more analysis, more insight.

Jim, I want to thank you for joining us on the Intercept Briefing.

JW: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

JU: This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join. 

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or if you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com. And if you are concerned about a data center project near you send us an email or leave us a voice mail at 530-POD-CAST that’s 530-763-2278

Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl. 

The post The Race to Build AI Data Centers — Before the People Can Protest appeared first on The Intercept.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
A highly publicized campaign by the Dover police union to oust the city’s police chief last summer raised questions about the structure of the department, and its function within city government. A Spotlight Delaware review of messages exchanged between key actors in the conflict indicates a friction underscoring the union’s claims and city leaders’ defense of the chief. 

Messages exchanged last summer reveal an unwavering solidarity from Dover city leaders in support of Police Chief Thomas Johnson despite calls for his resignation and investigations into his behavior spurred by the local police union. 

Thousands of pages of documents obtained by Spotlight Delaware via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request include communications between Mayor Robin Christiansen, Johnson and city council members. In those messages, city leaders staunchly defended Johnson’s leadership and strategized about how to address the union’s criticisms.

The messages also raise questions about the relationship between Johnson, city leaders and his own police officers amid an extended period of turmoil in Dover and scrutiny over the police department’s tactics. 

What is not clear from the documents, however, is what prompted the Dover Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) – the local police union – to call for Johnson’s resignation last August. It also is unclear from the messages what, if any, negotiations between the FOP and city leaders led the officers to seemingly end their public campaign against Johnson. 

Christiansen and City Council President Fred Neil, the two most vocal Johnson defenders, both declined Spotlight Delaware’s repeated requests for comment. Christiansen said his schedule was too busy for a meeting, and Neil cited the ongoing investigations into the situation as preventing him from commenting. 

Johnson, however, said in an interview that he and the police union were working on their relationship. He said he believes the department is heading in a positive direction. 

“I think I’m making progress with my relationship with my officers,” Johnson said. “I made the mistakes that I made. I could have done some things differently. I’m looking for us to move forward. I’m looking for us to be successful.” 

Spotlight Delaware initially submitted a FOIA request for text messages and emails about the FOP-chief conflict in September 2025. Following roughly eight months of appeals, including a ruling by the Attorney General forcing Dover to turn over the documents, Spotlight Delaware obtained the thousands of pages of responsive records earlier this spring. 

Backdrop of tension

Years of friction between Johnson and his officers led up to the Dover FOP publishing a letter in August 2025 announcing a 93% vote of no confidence in Johnson’s leadership.

The disagreements seemingly began when Johnson was sworn in as only the second-ever outside hire to run the police department in February 2020.  The union wrote in a Facebook post last summer that the city’s decision to hire a chief from outside the department’s ranks was “not something our organization desired.” 

Johnson said he did not want to comment on any tension about being hired from outside the department. 

“All I can tell you is I submitted my resume when the position was available, and from the day Dover said yes, I’ve been trying to do the best that I can to serve the city, serve these officers,” he said. 

Union leadership did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s multiple requests for comment about their campaign for Johnson’s removal and the unrest within the department.

In late 2022, union members filed a complaint with the city’s Human Resources department over Johnson’s alleged use of his police vehicle for non-work purposes, including traveling to his second job as an adjunct instructor at Penn State University, and to a family vacation in Fenwick Island. 

FOP leadership described these issues in its resignation social media posts as evidence of Johnson “failing to connect with his officers,” and “allowing the morale of the Dover Police Department to reach an all-time low.” 

The officers also said they did not receive any update on findings from the 2022 investigation. 

Johnson said he does not know what the final outcome of the investigation was, as it was discussed during a 2023 city council closed-door session. The mayor subsequently told him “nothing had changed,” he said.

Dover City Attorney Dan Griffith said the terms of Johnson’s employment contract allowed him to use his city vehicle to get to his second job teaching at Penn State, so long as he re-filled the gas tank on “extended distance trips,” and worked full-time hours with the city of Dover. 

Spotlight Delaware requested Johnson’s employment contract through FOIA. In response, the city provided a copy of Johnson’s employment offer letter. The document does not include the terms Griffith described. 

Johnson said the city does not write employment contracts for its department heads. 

After receiving his offer letter, Johnson said he was told to flesh out the specific terms of his employment with Christiansen. 

He asked the mayor for a formal written contract, but Christiansen declined and said he would rather negotiate things as they came up through in-person and email conversations, Johnson added. 

“I explained to the mayor what I needed to be successful in the role,” Johnson said. “He agreed with me, and I think you’ll find I’ve done everything that I’ve done with permission not forgiveness.”

As of 2025, Johnson was the highest paid city employee with an annual salary of $180,253, according to data from The News Journal.

Multiple investigations 

In addition to the social media blitz calling for Johnson’s resignation last summer, the FOP put up billboards around Dover and Upper Darby, Pa. – where Johnson used to work – urging his removal. Officers also initiated multiple investigations into his behavior. 

These investigations include an internal police department investigation and a criminal complaint filed with the state Department of Justice (DOJ) over the chief’s conduct. 

The DOJ dismissed the criminal complaint in early February, and the city “considers the matter to be closed,” it wrote in a February press release.

The FOP also accused Christiansen and Johnson of telling them to focus their attacks on city council members Brian Lewis and Roy Sudler in an Aug. 26 social media post. 

This claim led the Dover City Council to launch a third-party investigation by 21 Century Policing Solutions, a Washington D.C.-based consulting firm, last fall into Christiansen and Johnson’s conduct. 

A copy of the contract between 21 Century Policing Solutions and the city of Dover indicates the investigation was going to cost $50,000. It was scheduled to be completed by January 2026.  

One city council member told Spotlight Delaware they just received a copy of the final investigation report in recent weeks.

That report has not yet been publicly released, and the city denied a Spotlight Delaware FOIA request for a copy, citing exemptions for personnel files and pending investigations.

‘You are my chief‘

Top city leaders, including Christiansen and City Council President Fred Neil, staunchly defended Johnson’s behavior, both publicly and privately, throughout the FOP campaign to remove him. 

Both Christiansen and Neil declined Spotlight Delaware’s requests for comment on the situation.

On Aug. 12, after the FOP took its no-confidence vote in the chief but before it released its public statement calling for his resignation, Christiansen wrote to Johnson telling him he was meeting with union leadership that same day. 

“Standing fast,” Christiansen wrote. “You are my Chief.”

Johnson said he did not recall that specific meeting. He also declined to comment on the details of the discussions between himself, Christiansen and the police union.

In another text exchange between Christiansen and Johnson on June 22, roughly two months before the FOP’s public efforts to oust Johnson began, the mayor called out both the union and a newly launched, activist-led complaint form for residents to recount their experiences with the police department. 

“Who is going to review the complaints against the thugs. Brian Lewis?” Christiansen wrote. “Where’s the FOP with perhaps an editorial or some PR of their own.” 

Lewis, a Dover City Councilman, did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment. 

Johnson responded in the message thread that he was going to talk to union leadership shortly. He told Christiansen he expected FOP leaders to attend the city council meeting the next day. 

“I’m trying to figure out my communication plan,” Johnson wrote. “I don’t like sitting there looking stupid unless I know that someone is going to defend the department.”

Johnson told Spotlight Delaware he took issue with the activist initiative, set up by the group Neighbors Organized for Credibility and Accountability in Policing. He said the group was trying to “harvest complaints and not include us in the conversation about any complaint.” 

He added that because the structure of city council meetings does not allow him to respond to public comments directed at the police department, his text message was an effort to ensure the mayor would defend the department against citizens’ criticism.

Email communications indicate that City Council President Fred Neil was also directly involved in coordinating the city’s defense against FOP criticisms. 

Following up on a meeting the pair had to discuss the situation, Neil wrote in an email to Christiansen on Aug. 28, “I hope we can deescalate. No lynching will be allowed.” 

Neil also wrote strongly worded defenses of Johnson’s leadership to a number of outside entities in August and September 2025, including the Association of Retired Dover Police Officers, the Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce and some community advocates. 

“We need our officers to do what they were trained to do and swore to do, PROTECT the PUBLIC and not spend time on [sic] campaign on ghost problems or hurt feelings,” Neil wrote to the retired officers on Aug. 26, “Let me repeat, the police are under attack.” 

Failed negotiation attempts

The FOP broke its nearly four year silence on social media in August 2025 with its letter calling for Johnson’s resignation. Over the next month and a half, the union made roughly two dozen posts with allegations against the chief, photos of yard signs calling for the chief’s removal, and responses to city officials’ defense of Johnson’s leadership. 

The union unceremoniously stopped making update posts at the end of September, a couple weeks after the city council voted to launch a third-party investigation into the situation. 

It is not clear whether the investigation led the officers to go silent on social media.

Following the Aug. 12 meeting between Christiansen and FOP leadership, which Christiansen referenced in a text message to Johnson, email communications indicate that future attempts at organizing a meeting between stakeholders in the conflict failed.  

Christiansen wrote an email to Tim Mullaney, the FOP president, on Aug. 28, inviting officers to an open forum the following week. 

The forum would have featured a moderator and been open to the public as “an opportunity to have a candid discussion” and “allow all parties to present their points,” Christiansen wrote. 

Mullaney did not appear to respond via email to Christiansen’s invitation. Mullaney also did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s multiple requests for comment. 

In a Sept. 2 statement expressing his “full confidence” in Johnson’s leadership, Christiansen wrote that he had invited FOP leadership to a public forum “where their concerns could be discussed openly,” but the union did not respond to his request. 

The day after Christiansen’s open forum invitation, Neil wrote to Mullaney offering for union leadership to discuss their concerns with city officials during a city council executive session. 

Mullaney declined that invitation, citing concerns that an executive session is confidential. He would not be allowed to discuss the meeting with other union members, he said. He did say the FOP was open to other avenues of expressing their concerns.

Despite Mullaney already having turned down the invitation, Neil wrote him an email the following day to “rescind the invitation.” He had misunderstood the rules of an executive session meeting, he said.

FOP and city leaders did not exchange any more emails about arranging a meeting. The officers continued calling for Johnson’s resignation for another month. 

Johnson said he respects FOP members’ First Amendment rights, including the posts they made about him last summer. But he has “made a lot of progress” in his relationship with the union since then, he said. 

“I generally care about the city, I generally care about my officers, and I think we’ve got a good future together,” Johnson said. 

It remains unclear where the relationship between Johnson and his officers stands today. It is also unclear what, if any, new information was uncovered by the city’s third-party investigation into Johnson and Christiansen’s behavior.

Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.

The post Messages show Dover leaders rallying around police chief amid controversy appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Tim Carlin, Spotlight’s deputy editor for southern Delaware, is today’s guest on “Beyond the Headlines.” In addition to supervising the reporters focused on Kent and Sussex County, Tim is also Spotlight’s dedicated statehouse reporter, and his legislative coverage is the focus of this episode. The 153rd General Assembly will conclude on June 30, and Tim joins the podcast to let listeners know what to look forward to in the last 30 days of the session, as well as sharing his take on the highlights of the legislators’ work so far.

The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

I was trying to think of a fun way to start this episode of Beyond the Headlines. Our legislators have 30 days left, but in fact, a little less than that because they don’t meet every single day. 

What I’d love to do is, if you were working with an advertising team to create a movie-style trailer and grab the public’s interest for this home stretch, what would you tell that ad team? How should they structure this trailer to get the public interested in the last 30 days of the legislative session?

I think a good way to do it would maybe be, “30 days left … or is it?”

We’re heading into the start of June. The session ends June 30, but they really only have, I think the number at this point might be less than 10 legislative days left, and there’s quite a lot to accomplish. So I think the best way is to really play up the ticking time bomb, or the ticking clock, if you will, of just how little time they really have to pass a nearly $7 billion budget, to finalize some key healthcare reforms, to do their entire grant-in-aid process.

There are just many big-ticket items that all need to be tied in a nice little bow, and there’s not a lot of time for lawmakers to do that.

A consumer who’s deciding whether they’re gonna go see a movie is concerned about the ticket price. The big theme that you’ve been seeing is affordability so far in this year’s legislative session.

I think that’s a word that we’ve heard repeated over and over and over again. If we’re tossing around themes for our hypothetical advertisers, I would definitely want to drive that point home.

Affordability, in many different facets, is top of mind for lawmakers across the spectrum this session. 

So the heavy-duty voiceover might be something like, “In a world where your gas has gone up by over a dollar, what will the Delaware legislature do to make your life more affordable in the last 30 days of the legislative session?” 

Yeah, that’s perfect.

Before we dive into details of what listeners might see in the last 30 days, let’s take a look back. In your mind, what have been the highlights of the General Assembly’s work so far in 2026? 

Not to be a broken record, but affordability and healthcare have really been some top-line issues that we’ve seen play out in different ways. At the top of the year, we had the General Assembly tie up the hospital oversight board lawsuit with SB 213, defanging some of the key oversight for the state’s hospital cost review board, and settling the ongoing lawsuit.

The majority leader in the Senate, Bryan Townsend (D-Glasgow), then introduced these sweeping primary healthcare reforms earlier this year. Those recently passed through the Senate, albeit they were an amended – and I would say a little bit watered-down – version. I think they still will accomplish the goal of bringing down healthcare costs, specifically geared toward primary healthcare and bringing those costs down in the state.

Even more recently than that, Sen. Marie Pinkney (D-Bear) and some other lawmakers, with the backing of the governor, have introduced proposed reforms to what’s known as the charity care system in Delaware, which is where hospitals have to, or should be, providing free or discounted costs for healthcare in order to receive their nonprofit status.

A Spotlight Delaware investigation by Nick Stonesifer found that some hospital systems, namely ChristianaCare, the state’s largest healthcare provider, were not necessarily meeting those expectations, or meeting the bar of what could be seen as required of them. These proposed reforms could strengthen some government oversight of these charity care practices. 

So I think healthcare interweaved with affordability have been big, marquee items throughout the past five months. 

In January, Spotlight Delaware presented its annual Legislative Summit, which gathers legislators, advocates, and the governor to share what their priorities are for the 2026 legislative session. You moderated one panel there with both Democratic and Republican legislative leadership. What are some of the key priorities that were raised at Legislative Summit that haven’t yet been moved forward or haven’t yet crossed the finish line? 

I think the biggest is property taxes.

We were just coming off this slog of committee hearings about what went wrong with the property tax reassessment, especially in New Castle County, but across the state. This bipartisan committee that had been formed pledged to put together a slate of legislation to address some of these issues.

It’s a touchy subject for lawmakers. Taxes historically are a county issue – your property taxes, I should say. They are conducted at the county level, and I think lawmakers are keenly aware, from conversations that I have had, about how to intervene in a way that is effective – in a way that’s additive – to a solution. At least that’s what they want to do.

But as of the day that we’re recording this, it remains to be seen what exactly some of those General Assembly interventions will actually look like. There hasn’t been any sweeping legislation introduced about property taxes.

Not to be a reporter, but my sources say there should be some bills introduced soon, if not by the time this comes out. Who knows?

So listeners should definitely be on the lookout to see what legislation regarding property tax crosses the finish line.

What else? Maybe this wasn’t stuff that got talked about at Legislative Summit, but what other bills are you looking to see if they get across the finish line these last 30 days? 

This topic did come up [at Legislative Summit], primarily through our land use reporter, Olivia Marble, who has doubled as our energy and environment reporter. There’s been some interesting legislation on energy, on the energy sector.

There’s honestly so many bills that relate to data centers and energy generation and solar panels on houses. It’s hard to keep track of where all these bills stand today. But it will be interesting to see which of these data center/energy-related bills make it over the finish line, and then also which bills ultimately get signed into law by Gov. Matt Meyer in the summer months. 

Delaware is well known as a state of financial innovation. There are some financial legislations that you’re looking at to see if those get across the finish line. 

There are. Sen. Spiros Mantzavinos (D-Elsmere) introduced a few different banking modernization bills. Largely what they do is expand Delaware Code to allow for cryptocurrency-type businesses and banking ventures to operate more easily in the state.

Sen. Mantzavinos talked about how he wanted Delaware to stay competitive in the fintech [financial technology] space moving forward. We’ve long been the home of the corporate franchise for huge corporations across the country and across the world. I think he sees that these cryptocurrency businesses are maybe the next frontier in trying to make Delaware a marketable, habitable space for some of these cryptocurrency companies to call home, if you will. 

There’s a slate of three bills related to cryptocurrency and banking modernization that are working their way through the legislature. Myself, as well as our other deputy editor, Karl Baker, are keeping an eye on where these stand and where they will end up by June 30. 

In addition to bills having to be passed by June 30, we also need a budget by that time. 

That we do. 

That decision actually comes quicker than June 30. What are the big questions in your mind as it relates to the budget, and how that might work its way out in the next few weeks? 

Right now, we’re in the middle of the Joint Finance Committee markup period. 

To give a very cursory baseline, what that means is Gov. Matt Meyer presented his budget proposal at the top of the year, but the power of the purse strings ultimately lies with our General Assembly. 

They took that budget proposal, and they had a series of hearings earlier this year to understand why each state department was asking for the amount of money it was asking for. Now, they are revisiting, and they are marking up that proposal and deciding which of these departments will get the money they want, what will change, what will stay the same.

To get back to your question, specifically, things that I’m looking for are how connected the final budget will be to Meyer’s original proposal. The governor made a very big point of wanting to stay under 5% growth this year. He wanted a return to “manageable growth.”

That’s in expense growth, correct? 

Correct. Expenses – a growth of not more than 5% in expenses across the state this next year. So it will be interesting to see how much growth, or what percentage of growth, ultimately winds up in the budget.

I think another key thing that I’ll be looking for is recent projections from state budget analysts have been fairly positive. The state is in a decent spot financially. So that means there is more money for lawmakers to try and grab at. So I’ll be interested to see which lawmakers get their pet projects funded here in the final weeks. 

So we’ll have that push and pull between Gov. Meyer who says, “I only want to see 5% growth,” versus legislators going, “Oh, but the state analysts say we’ve got more money to play with.”

Exactly. 

In addition to seeing how Gov. Meyer’s budget proposals go through, do you have any sense of things Gov. Meyer really hopes get across the finish line with legislation?

One bill that I mentioned earlier, Senate Bill 13, is the charity care bill. Gov. Meyer was part of the rollout of that proposal, so I would imagine that he has a vested interest in seeing that legislation make its way through before the June 30 deadline.

Going all the way back to his State of the State address, affordability – again, I know I sound like a broken record here – was a really big issue for Gov. Meyer. I would imagine that any type of legislation that goes toward improving affordability and making life more affordable for Delawareans would be something he would be very eager to sign into law.

Gov. Meyer two years ago made a big deal of, “I want to see a new education funding formula in the state.” Last year, the Public Education Funding Committee passed some recommendations, but not any actual legislation. Is that something Gov. Meyer really hopes gets across the finish line this year?

I haven’t spoken to him directly about whether he hopes that gets across the finish line, but there is legislation working its way through the General Assembly that speaks to that goal. 

The Public Education Funding Commission recommended this hybrid funding model. So that takes Delaware’s current funding model of districts being allotted a certain amount of money per pupil and switches it up a little bit.

It would still keep that kind of per-pupil allotment, but it also adds in another layer where districts with higher levels of students with different disabilities or students who speak English as a second language, kind of students with higher levels of need would then also receive more money in this new hybrid model.

There are two bills working their way through the General Assembly that work toward this goal. And I would imagine that Gov. Meyer would sign them into law because, like you mentioned, he’s been a proponent of reinvigorating education funding in the state.

2026 is an election year. There have been some notable announcements of legislator resignations in the Delaware legislature, including Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola and multiple Republicans in the House of Representatives. 

How might considerations of upcoming elections influence the last stretch of activity in Dover this year?

David, I don’t know what you mean. Elections would never, ever, ever impact our officials and their ability to govern. [Laughter.]

I can’t point to one specific bill, but I think taking a step back and looking at it more broadly – you don’t want to be caught with your hand in the cookie jar on Election Day. If you are an elected official and you’re facing a challenger, whether a primary challenge – which there are some interesting primary challenges – or just a challenge from a candidate from the other major party, you want to be on solid footing and be able to talk all about the wins that you’ve brought to your district.

You don’t want to be left with egg on your face, basically. You want to be able to stand on solid footing and say, “Here are the things that I’ve done for this district, and here is why you should re-elect me and not put my opponent into office.”

I think just by virtue of that sentiment, it makes lawmakers at least a little bit more hesitant about the types of proposals that they’re willing to take up, especially as we’re in this final sprint here.

So we shouldn’t necessarily look for any big, bold sweeping changes in these last few weeks during an election year. 

At least big, bold sweeping changes that don’t have widespread support. 

Things that are even a bit controversial, you’re not going to see taken up in an election year. But you know, healthcare reforms, those are things that may be more palatable that can score some points, for lack of a better word, when you’re seeking re-election. 

In addition to the Democratic-Republican divide in Delaware, there’s also intra-party divides, particularly in the Democratic Party between the more traditional Democrats and progressive Democrats. Perhaps that is something that might push some incumbents to do some bolder action. What are those dynamics? And are there particular legislators that are facing that stress in these last few weeks?

We recently held a members’ editor call – shameless plug to become a member of Spotlight Delaware – where Karl and I talked about this exact dynamic. There is a slate of more progressive Democratic candidates who’ve been endorsed by the Working Families Party, which is a more progressive arm of the Democratic apparatus.

They’ve put up a slate of candidates to run against some more establishment Democratic incumbents. Rep. Kim Williams (D-Stanton) – she has made a name for herself in education proposals. Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha is facing a challenger up in Wilmington. Sen. Ray Siegfried (D-North Brandywine), I believe Sen. Dan Cruce (D-Wilmington) as well, are facing challengers from the left. So it’ll be interesting to see how these primary elections shape up. 

The Working Families Party has a pretty good track record of putting up candidates who win their races. So these incumbents are going to want to take any wins they can get back to their constituents.

So listeners may watch, for instance, to see if Rep. Williams or Sen. Cruce have any particularly strong leadership in these last few weeks here. 

Yes. Exactly. You might want to see who kind of speaks up for certain issues and who’s particularly vocal. It’ll be interesting to see. 

This has been your first year covering proceedings at Legislative Hall in Dover. You came to this fresh. You were not a Delawarean. You hadn’t been following the proceedings for years. What has caught your attention as a first-time observer of the goings-on in Dover? 

I think this year was a bit of a tamer year than what I heard occurred in years past, at least coming off the rambunctiousness of the first leg of the 153rd General Assembly last year. 

I’ve just been trying to soak it all in. The political nerd in me likes to see how these interpersonal relationships shape up – you know, much has been made about the legislature’s relationship with Gov. Meyer. Specifically, there’s talk about contentious relations between Gov. Meyer and the Senate. I think we saw some of that, but largely it’s been pretty amicable this year. 

So it’s just interesting to me to watch how closed-door relationships and whispers that you hear translate into legislation, or play out. And I think lawmakers have largely done a fairly decent job of keeping the personal relationships, in-fighting or whatever you want to call it, at bay, at least this year.

I’m sure it’s there, but it’s been calmer than what I was expecting it to be based on conversations that I had with some colleagues is I guess how I would phrase that. 

One of our driving forces at Spotlight Delaware is to get our listeners, get our readers engaged in public policy discussions. How can listeners best make their voices heard during the final days of the legislative process? 

I think that the most direct way would be to call or email your elected official.

Right now we’re in the middle of the Joint Finance Committee markup sessions. If you happen to be free on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and you want to go to Dover, you can watch lawmakers debate the proposed state budget. You can also watch it online. 

I think your most direct way would be to get in contact with your lawmaker, whether that is through email or giving them a phone call – that information can be found directly on the General Assembly’s website – and just letting them know where you want your tax dollars to be shepherded. Some of these other key issues that we talked about – affordability, property taxes, energy and data centers – let them know what you think. 

There’s not a lot of time, but there is still time before the General Assembly gavels out for the session. And so I would just say make use of the time that you have left.

And those elected officials running for office this year are perhaps even more willing to hear your voice. 

Exactly. Your elected officials in the House of Representatives especially are up for re-election, unless they’re retiring.

But, the entire House of Representatives is turning over, so they’ll be eager to hear what you have to say, I would imagine. 

Thank you for your insights today, Tim, and happy birthday. 

Thank you so much. 

And good luck to you and the rest of the Spotlight team covering this stretch run of the legislative session.

Many late nights ahead, I think.

The post ‘Beyond the Headlines’ Podcast: Homestretch of 2026 Legislative Session appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Spiking electricity prices have sparked calls from across the mid-Atlantic for the construction of new power plants. But a proposed offshore wind farm near the Maryland/ Delaware state line has drawn stiff opposition and various lawsuits from local government officials and residents.

A controversial offshore wind project, planned near Ocean City, Md., cleared a major hurdle Tuesday when the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a state law overriding Sussex County’s denial of a key permit for the development.

The decision – which comes about two months after a lower court similarly ruled in favor of the state – also marked a blow to “local control” advocates who have argued that the state has overstepped its authority in zoning decisions several times over the past year.

At issue in the case was an application to Sussex County for a permit to build an electrical substation on land that sits next to the Indian River Power Plant in Dagsboro. The Baltimore-based wind energy company, US Wind, plans to run high voltage cables from its offshore wind generators to the substation. 

While Sussex County denied the permit request in late 2024, state legislators later passed a law overriding the denial. Sussex County then sued the state, along with the Town of Fenwick Island.

In its ruling, Supreme Court justices declared that the Delaware legislature controls zoning power, even when “it has delegated that power to the counties and municipalities.” 

“It has the power to reclaim it and need not defer to the decisions of subordinate governments,” the justices said. 

In response to the ruling, Sussex County attorney Jane Brady told Spotlight Delaware that while she was “disappointed” by the ruling, she will not pursue further appeals. 

A spokesperson for Sussex County said he does not have a comment at this time. Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Meanwhile, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings framed her response to the ruling around the electricity crunch the state currently faces. She noted her gratitude for the high court’s unanimous decision, because “supplying more clean energy to the grid is crucial to get Delawareans some real relief on their power bills.”

While the state won in court, US Wind still faces hurdles to its eventual development of the 114-turbine offshore wind farm. 

Those include an ongoing federal lawsuit brought by Ocean City and local community groups challenging the federal permits for the project. The plaintiffs in that case recently filed a motion for summary judgment, which means they asked the judge to rule in their favor without a trial. 

Another obstacle for the project involves US Wind’s possible loss of federal incentives under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last year. The new law threatens to cut the lucrative tax credits for previously approved alternative energy projects, if their on-site construction does not begin by this July. 

A spokesperson for US Wind said its officials “remain committed to bringing this project to fruition.”

A longstanding controversy

At the center of opposition to US Wind’s plans have been local governments and business groups along the Delaware and Maryland beaches, who have argued that the wind project could negatively impact the environment and their tourism industry.   

In late 2024, a coalition of those opponents from the Maryland side created a website that lobbied Delawareans to contact their council members and tell them to deny US Wind’s permit for the Dagsboro substation. 

The website, StopOffshoreWind.com, also claimed that the windfarm would allow “foreign investors” to collect federal subsidies — references to U.S. government incentives provided to wind energy projects, and to U.S. Wind’s ownership.

But proponents of the project say renewable energy is essential in the region today as it faces high electricity prices, as well as a likely future surge in demand for power from data centers. 

Spotlight Delaware has reported on a recent analysis that shows how data center development in Delaware could cause energy prices in the state to spike further because of energy congestion within transmission lines. 

And that congestion would primarily come from the increased amount of electricity flowing from the north of the Delmarva peninsula to the south, since Delaware imports 80% of the electricity it uses. 

US Wind says its wind farm has the potential to generate as much as 1,800 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 600,000 homes.

Local control debate

The Delaware law challenged in the lawsuit was also at the center of a political battle that last year nearly derailed the passage of the state’s capital budget. 

During the final days of Delaware’s 2025 legislative session, Democrats proposed Senate Bill 159, which would override Sussex County’s denial of a land-use permit for the US Wind substation. 

Senate Republicans decried the bill as legislative overreach, but Democrats moved forward with it anyway. Because the GOP members did not have enough votes to defeat the legislation, they instead used their sole piece of leverage and blocked the state’s bond bill — which requires a supermajority to pass.  

The move sent Democrats and Republicans into negotiations that lasted late into the night during the legislative session’s final hours.

At the time, State Sen. Stephanie Hansen (D-Middletown) called the US Wind project “foundational” for Delaware’s energy future. 

But Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn (R-Georgetown) argued that Democrats sought to erode counties’ rights of “local control” — a theme that has since emerged in debates over marijuana regulations and affordable housing.

Ultimately, the two sides agreed on an amended bill, which promptly passed the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both chambers also later passed Delaware’s billion-dollar bond bill.

Brady, the lawyer representing Sussex County and a retired Delaware judge, said she thinks the court’s ruling Tuesday opens the possibility of the state legislature overriding other local government permit decisions. 

“I think the General Assembly will do what they did in this case again because they’ve been told they can do it,” she said.

The post Delaware Supreme Court upholds permit for offshore wind farm, dealing a blow to ‘local control’ appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Temperatures across parts of continent around 10-15C above average for this time of year, while thunderstorms strike eastern Australia

Europe has experienced an exceptional heatwave this week, with temperature records broken across multiple countries under a persistent area of high pressure, commonly referred to as a “heat dome.” The UK surpassed its May maximum temperature record on Tuesday, with 35.1C recorded at Kew Gardens, London.

This broke the record set only the day before, with 34.8C recorded in London on Monday. Previously, the maximum May temperature record was 32.8C, recorded in 1922 and then matched in 1944. Ireland also broke its May maximum temperature, with 28.8C recorded at two weather stations – in Killarney in the south-west and Clonmel in the south.

When Ben Elton didn’t distract from the pain of moving my body, I found the perfect solution – the interactive smartphone game Zombies, Run!

At 56, I am running my first marathon, an old, fat, bald dad surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that look AI-generated. But I am ahead of them. For they are only competing for positions and personal bests, and I am being chased by zombies.

The black dog of depression hit me around the time of my last birthday. I didn’t feel I had achieved anything of note for an eternity. I used to work out but, for years, work kept getting in the way. I decided to kill two circling, carcass-sniffing vultures with one stone and run my first marathon.

El Tri reached the quarter-finals the last time they hosted the tournament. They’re hoping old methods can revive the team after a disastrous outing in 2022

It was January 1986 and the temperature at the peak of La Malinche, one of Mexico’s tallest mountains, had plummeted to a bone-chilling cold. A group of soccer players training for that year’s World Cup ran through a dense fog to the summit 14,600ft above sea level gasping in the thin air. Their Serbian coach, Bora Milutinović, had pushed his players to the limit, seeking not only to test their physical endurance but also hoping for a psychological breakthrough. Up there, the Mexico players suffered, shivered and cursed. But through hardship they became a family. That fabled image of survival on the mountain became the foundation for Mexico’s best-ever World Cup performance, the last time they played on home soil and one of only two times El Tri reached the tournament’s quarter-finals.

Forty years later, the myth of La Malinche hangs over Mexico’s preparation for this summer’s tournament, which once again will be played on home turf. The team’s coach, Javier Aguirre, was one of Milutinović’s players at the 1986 World Cup and he has seemingly been inspired by the old belief that isolation and shared struggle can work miracles. At Aguirre’s urging, the Mexican Football Federation – just as it had in 1986 – took the controversial step of removing national team players from their clubs during the most decisive phase of the Liga MX playoffs. By the time the World Cup kicks off on 11 June, the players will have been sequestered together for 30 days.

Alaska would more than triple the funding it devotes to school construction and maintenance projects next year under a budget approved this month by the state Legislature. The funding, which awaits Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, follows reporting by KYUK, ProPublica and NPR last year that documented a severe health and safety crisis inside the buildings used daily for public education.

The bill would allocate more than $148 million toward construction and maintenance in the 2027 fiscal year, up from $40 million in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30. The new budget line is an effort to help with millions in backlogged major maintenance needs for schools around the state. Years of lacking investment in Alaska’s public schools have resulted in leaking roofs, broken water pipes and failing foundations. If the governor signs off, it would be the largest allocation in more than a decade. The money could pay for more than 30 projects but would still cover only a fraction of the requested repairs. 

Some of the worst conditions exist inside rural public schools that serve predominantly Indigenous student populations and are often used as emergency shelters. In December, former students and concerned parents told the State Board of Education about squalid conditions inside Alaska’s only state-owned boarding school. Their testimony further fueled efforts by lawmakers to help unburden cash-strapped rural school districts in communities where residents don’t pay taxes to help fund education.

As Alaska legislators wrestled with statewide budget shortfalls, money for education, including for school construction and maintenance, “bubbled to the top,” according to state Sen. Lyman Hoffman, an Alaska Native Democrat who represents the largest rural school district in the state. “Even though the whole state is having a problem balancing its checkbook, at the top of the list is education,” he said during an Alaska Senate Finance Committee meeting in March, at which legislators questioned state education department leadership. 

Every year, districts follow an application process to submit their construction and maintenance  funding requests to Alaska’s education department. Since 1998, the Legislature has funded only a fraction of those proposed projects. Last year, lawmakers were able to secure about 5% of the nearly $800 million that both rural and urban school districts said they needed to keep their buildings safe and operating. This year, school districts requested more than $1.12 billion for infrastructure — the second-highest total requested statewide since 1998. Despite the legislative infusion of cash, the 2027 budget for school infrastructure will cover only about 13% of what school districts asked for. 

“I do appreciate it,” said Kuspuk School District Superintendent Madeline Aguillard, “but the hole that the state is in is so deep and so big. It’s going to take a long time to hit that word ‘enough.’” 

Aguillard’s district includes schools in nine roadless communities along the middle stretch of the Kuskokwim River in the heart of Alaska’s interior. The district first requested funds from the state to repair a leaking roof at its school in Sleetmute in 2007. For nearly two decades, the leak persisted, resulting in other problems for the building. In 2021, an architect inspected the building and uncovered severe structural damage. Further reporting by ProPublica, KYUK and NPR revealed a bat infestation and other serious health and safety issues in Sleetmute’s school.

At least one lawmaker has publicly labeled that school “the poster child” for what’s wrong with Alaska’s public school infrastructure. Aguillard said news reporting in 2024 on serious structural deficiencies inside Sleetmute’s K-12 Jack Egnaty Sr. School “really lit a fire” in the state Legislature.

For years, lawmakers and state education department staff have blamed each other for the annual school infrastructure shortfall. Last year, education Commissioner Deena Bishop told Propublica, KYUK and NPR that she can do little more than advocate on behalf of districts. “The power of the purse is with the Legislature,” said Bishop, who has served as the state’s education commissioner for three years. 

But this March, at the Senate Finance Committee meeting with education department leaders, co-chair Bert Stedman, a Republican, suggested the committee had not received sufficient information from school districts and Bishop. “She’s responsible. The buck stops with her,” Stedman, from the coastal hub community of Sitka in Southeast Alaska, told his colleagues. (In response, education department staff said they rely on information school districts provide about conditions inside buildings; those districts have an annual opportunity to make requests for money for maintenance and construction.) Stedman, Hoffman and one other ranking co-chair have been on the Finance Committee for more than 15 years. None of the co-chairs agreed to comment for this story. 

Previous reporting by the news organizations has also brought to light several problems with the system school districts must use to request funds and the process the state education department relies on to rank those projects. “There is, I would personally say, a flaw in the system, in the ranking that we are trying to fix,” Bishop said during that March hearing.

Read More

Alaska Ignored Warning Signs of a Budget Crisis. Now It Doesn’t Have Funding to Fix Crumbling Schools.

Bishop described how wealthier urban school districts with more staff fare better than more remote districts. Those urban districts have more resources to hire professional grant writers and pay for building inspections, which can help elevate applications. More than half of the projects approved for funding this year are in urban school districts that also have access to local tax revenue to pay for education. Alaska’s rural school districts are almost entirely reliant on state funding because they serve communities where residents do not pay taxes to help fund education. 

“Some are winners and some are losers,” Bishop said.  

In the absence of a permanent solution to pay for decades of backlogged major maintenance projects, the Legislature has relied on a few stopgap measures. For instance, the incorporated Galena City School District proposed a $36.5 million major renovation project that includes the removal of hazardous materials and major upgrades to outdated critical systems like heating and ventilation, plumbing and electricity. In its first year on the state’s list, it was ranked second for funding priority, above several other projects in rural school districts that have waited several years, and in some cases decades, for approval. So lawmakers reduced the amount of money that will go to Galena in order to deliver money to a larger overall number of projects.

In recent months, Lawmakers have also taken steps to help schools deal with the rising price of heating fuel, which is delivered by barge or air in ice and snow-free months to districts that are not accessible by road. Approached by Aguillard about the issue, state Sen. Löki Tobin, a Democrat from Anchorage who chairs the Senate Education Committee, led an effort to create a one-time grant program to help defray those rising energy costs. “It’s hard to argue against keeping the facilities warm and the lights on,” said Tobin, who acknowledges that the money only scratches the surface. 

“There’s so many competing priorities in our state,” she said. “I think we’re all kind of competing for scraps of a pie.”

Three days before the session was set to end, Alaska’s Senate voted to make Tobin’s program permanent beginning in 2028. Dunleavy has until early June to sign the budget lawmakers sent to his desk. According to Tobin, there’s no indication this year that he won’t sign off. In his eight years as governor, Dunleavy has acknowledged the budget shortfall but used his veto power to cut state investment in public school infrastructure.  

The post Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need. appeared first on ProPublica.

The rush to build thousands of U.S. data centers is driving demand for some workers, though economists project fewer permanent jobs.

Infectious disease specialists say the viruses are unlikely to become pandemics, but some are still raising concerns about the federal health response.

Russia’s advance has suddenly stalled, and Ukraine is fighting on its own terms — a comeback credited to Kyiv’s efforts to steadily strengthen the capabilities of its UAVs.

Many artists announced for the Freedom 250 concert series in Washington, D.C., this summer, say they won't be performing.

NASA has outlined a three-phase plan to build a lunar base at the moon's south pole. The first phase, from 2026 to 2029, will focus on robotic missions, landers, rovers, reactors, satellites, and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance test. Later phases will add habitats, power systems, communications, cargo logistics, and rotating crews. Wired reports: According to a recent press conference, phase one will be particularly active: at least 25 missions and 21 surface landings. Without detailing specific dates, the agency said that over the next three years it will send rovers, including manned models for future mobility, drones, surface reactors, new-generation satellites, and payloads to prepare the ground. One of the first key missions will be the test of the Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance module in fall 2026. Its purpose is to evaluate conditions for a controlled descent and validate navigation and positioning technology. It will not carry astronauts. If the mission is successful, Blue Origin plans a manned version around 2028, possibly with Blue Moon Mark 2. Moon Base II and III missions are also part of the program's 2026 startup. One will send rovers and payloads to evaluate more complex rover operations; the other will carry scientific instruments to study the behavior of materials and systems under extreme lunar conditions. Phase two, starting in 2029, marks the beginning of semipermanent infrastructure assembly and first occupancy operations. NASA plans to install advanced energy systems, including surface reactors, initial habitat elements, and more robust communication networks. Up to 60 tons of cargo will be delivered in 24 missions during this period. Phase three is for scale-up. The infrastructure in place will be strengthened and expanded to form durable centers with constant turnover of personnel. NASA envisions a lunar south pole with habitable modules, reliable power systems, logistics networks for cargo and crew transportation, and the shipment of about 38 tons of cargo annually for maintenance and expansion. "Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable," said administrator Jared Isaacman in a NASA statement. "We will go for the science, for all we stand to gain from an economic and technological perspective, for the innovations that will make life better here on Earth, and to prepare for where we will inevitably go next."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 29.

Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was gearing up for a June launch to put a batch of Amazon "Leo" internet satellites into orbit.

In today’s newsletter: As the virus spreads across borders, health workers warn that weakened global support is making a prolonged crisis more likely

Ebola is spreading rapidly in parts of east Africa. The deadly disease, which kills around half of those it infects, is suspected to have claimed the lives of at least 240 people since the outbreak began in Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo earlier this month.

Public health officials are scrambling to contain the virus in one of the toughest environments: Ituri province, the centre of the crisis, is a mining hub where thousands of people work in close proximity every day, and a conflict zone, with ongoing fighting between rebel groups. Medical facilities are modest, while waves of displaced people are being forced into overcrowded camps to escape fighting, making it even harder to control transmission. The virus has already spread to other regions in eastern DRC and the Ugandan capital Kampala.

UK news | Britain risks a financial hit worth £125bn a year after a rise in the number of young people not in employment or education to more than 1 million.

US-Israel-Iran | Donald Trump has circulated a draft peace agreement for the war with Iran among allies including Israel as both sides try to prevent fresh breaches of the ceasefire escalating out of control.

UK politics | Andy Burnham has rolled back from his previous calls for ministers to scrap a restriction on immigrants claiming benefits as the Makerfield byelection places greater scrutiny on him.

Ukraine | A Russian drone that was part of an overnight attack on Ukraine crashed into an apartment building in eastern Romania, injuring two people, authorities said, in what an official statement condemned as an “irresponsible escalation” by Moscow.

Climate crisis | Abandoning net zero and drilling for more oil and gas would be a massive setback for the UK and would not help the economy, leading experts have said in response to Tony Blair.

• Spurs rout Thunder 118-91 in Game 6

• Wembanyama posts 28 points and 10 rebounds

• West finals to be decided Saturday in OKC

Victor Wembanyama scored 28 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, lifting the San Antonio Spurs to a 118-91 home win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals.

The teams will play one last time in Game 7 on Saturday in Oklahoma City, with the winner advancing to face the New York Knicks in the NBA finals.

On Saturday, Donald Trump said talks with Tehran were going well and an agreement to end the war was ‘largely negotiated’. On Sunday, the US launched strikes on Southern Iran. By Thursday, Donald Trump had circulated a draft peace agreement for the war with Iran among allies.

This week, as the US-Iran deal remains in a precarious state, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group about why Trump keeps changing his mind on what to do to end the war

Archive: AP, Reuters

Spain led the opposition to Trump’s Iran war, but on the Cuba blockade, the challenge is absent

For many Europeans of my generation, Cuba was as much a progressive cause as a country.

In our selectively idealistic student days (mine were in the mid-1970s), it was a plucky little country that had overthrown a corrupt regime in cahoots with the US mafia. In a popular revolution led by the charismatic Fidel Castro and iconic guerrilla leader Che Guevara, it then withstood a crippling US economic embargo to defend its independence. Hasta la victoria siempre! (Ever onwards to victory!)

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

How to counter Beijing’s unauthorized "distillation."

A deal with Washington is the island’s best hope.

A deal with Washington is the island’s best hope.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT News: Currently, lithium hard rock extraction involves baking the rock at over 1,000 Celsius and chemically leaching it to extract lithium. The rest of the rock is discarded. Now, a team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere has developed a low-temperature process for extracting battery-grade lithium from the most common type of lithium-bearing mineral. The process uses a liquid reagent to dissolve the rock into the useful forms of its constituent parts: not just battery-ready lithium salts, but also smelter-grade alumina and cement-ready silica. After the minerals are extracted, the solvent and reagent can be recovered and used again so waste levels approach zero. The researchers estimate the closed-loop process is half the cost of traditional lithium hard rock extraction and could make it cost-competitive with extracting lithium from brine water. "We believe this approach is the lowest-energy, lowest-cost way of getting lithium not only out of hard rock, but period," says Yet-Ming Chiang, MIT's Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. "That's what's motivating us to scale this. It will enable the energy transition through batteries that use lithium. This was one of the goals of The Climate Project at MIT -- to work on projects that, within a short number of years, could transition from the lab to commercialization and impact." A paper describing the process has been published in the journal Science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Catch up on the words, definitions and analysis from the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

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In one of the opinions shared by the Supreme Court Thursday morning, the Court has ruled in favor of a Black man who claims that there was racial bias in the make up of the jury that convicted him.

In Pitchford v Cain, five of the Court’s justices sided with Terry Pitchford, a man sentenced to death for his part in killing a grocery story owner in Mississippi, over 20 years ago, reported AP.

Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.

Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.

Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.

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Attorney general calls the company's security measures "lax" and says it failed to adequately investigate warnings its systems had been compromised.

• Parikh, 14, beats Ishaan Gupta in spell-off

• Favorite gets 32 words right in tiebreaker

Shrey Parikh felt the pressure of arriving at the Scripps National Spelling Bee as a favorite, but his confidence showed every time he got a word he knew. And when it all came down to a lightning-round tiebreaker against Ishaan Gupta, Shrey left no doubt.

Shrey turned a tense, high-quality final into a blowout Thursday night, racing through the 90-second “spell-off” and getting 32 words right to be crowned the best young speller in the English language. Ishaan spelled 25 words correctly in the tiebreaker.

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Officials say bodies of two women and a child found in rubble and four other people taken to hospital

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Three people died after an apparent explosion led to a major fire at a Dallas apartment complex on Thursday.

Nearly 100 firefighters battled the flames that left the collapsed building heaped on the ground as black smoke billowed into the sky. The bodies of two adult women and one child were found in the rubble, Dallas Fire and Rescue said, according ABC News affiliate WFAA. Four additional people were hospitalized with injuries.

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Three more people remain missing and are presumed dead, after tank containing chemical mixture collapsed

The confirmed death toll in the chemical tank explosion at a Washington state paper mill rose to eight on Thursday after crews recovered the remains of six workers, officials said.

Three more individuals remain missing and are presumed dead. Eight other people were injured, including a firefighter responding to the incident.

This live blog is now closed, you can read our latest report from the Middle East here

• Donald Trump shares draft Iran peace agreement with Israel and other allies

Hezbollah has claimed dozens of drone and rocket attacks that it said targeted Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

The group said it launched several attacks on Israeli soldiers and tanks that crossed the Litani river into the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah near Nabatieh, as close-range fighting continues.

Dreams of Violets, a 75-minute docudrama from first-time filmmakers Ash and Prooya Koosha, was made entirely with AI tools.

More than 100 copyright lawsuits have been filed against AI companies as of early 2026.

Shannon O’Connor, 52, was convicted of charges including child endangerment and facilitating forcible sexual assault

A judge has sentenced a San Francisco Bay Area mother to 35 years in prison after her conviction for a slew of crimes resulting from hosting drunken sex parties for young teenagers.

Widely known as the “Los Gatos party mom”, a nickname that references her hometown, 52-year-old Shannon O’Connor was convicted of four dozen crimes in March, including child endangerment, dissuading witnesses from reporting a crime and facilitating forcible sexual assault. Her sentence was the maximum allowed under state law.

Trump’s latest vanity project would require changing law that prohibits any living person from appearing on US currency – key US politics stories from Thursday 28 May

Donald Trump’s latest vanity project: putting his own face on US currency.

The White House is pushing Congress to approve a $250 bill bearing the president’s portrait, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said, which would require changing longstanding federal law that prohibits any living person from appearing on US currency.

Don't want it? Here's how to delete it.

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The vice president says the U.S. and Iran are "very close" to a deal, but are "not there yet." Meanwhile, the U.S. struck Iran, which retaliated against a U.S. base.

The NHL Alumni Association announced Claude Lemieux's death. A cause of death was not immediately available, nor was it clear where Lemieux was when he died.

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Facing public backlash over surveillance cameras, cities are turning to a low-tech fix to stop Flock from watching.

When you think of Gentoo, you tend to think of it being a difficult distribution, where you compile everything yourself.

There’s much more to Gentoo than that. Yes, some of it comes from building from source: the flexibility. But a lot of it comes from the wider Gentoo philosophy, the philosophy that brought us all together. The idea that Gentoo is the distribution we’re making for ourselves and people who enjoy Gentoo. So if I were to make a few arguments for Gentoo, I’d focus on that. And this is what I’d like to do here.

↫ Michał Górny

When I think of Gentoo, I think of an immovable, sturdy object that has always existed, and will always exist, because it doesn’t really care about being trendy, user-friendly, or flashy. I generally group it together with Slackware as one of the very pure Linux distributions, that focuses more on doing things the correct way, and if they can’t be done the correct way, it won’t be done at all. Neither Gentoo nor Slackware are really my jam, but the amount of respect and admiration I have for both projects is immense.

Górny highlights a few other characteristics of Gentoo that appeal to me as well, such as a ban on “AI”-generated code, its strong independence and lack of corporate backing, and its flexibility stemming from the fact it’s source-first. I feel like even when the entire world has crumbled to dust, Gentoo will still be there, ready and available to anyone who has the enthusiasm to jump in.

We must protect Gentoo at all costs.

Newly released evidence from inquiry into 80 deaths shows Afghan partner forces no longer willing to work alongside British by 2011

Concerns about the number of Afghan civilians being killed by British special forces in the early part of the last decade prompted the country’s then president to make a “muscular” complaint to Nato commanders fighting the Taliban.

Newly released evidence from a public inquiry into the deaths of up to 80 people during an SAS deployment also showed that Afghan partner military forces were no longer willing to work alongside the British by the spring of 2011.

Rising heat in Saudi Arabia threatens millions of Muslim pilgrims – but cutting fossil fuels would keep it safer

Global heating has “fundamentally altered” the climate of Mecca and is exposing millions of hajj pilgrims to extreme and dangerous heat even in months outside summer, new analysis has found.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels means scorching temperatures of 40C (104F) are now regularly experienced in May, the study showed. In past decades, such peaks would only have occurred in summer. The researchers said that hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, would take place amid dangerous heat almost all year round by the end of the century without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

A new Grundfos report warns that Europe's datacenter boom could strain water supplies and power grids unless regulators bake water and energy efficiency into planning, reporting, and incentives for new facilities. The Register reports: According to the report, the EU-wide server farm IT load is about 10 GW today, and is expected to rise to 35 GW by 2030 -- just four years away. These facilities account for about 3 percent of all electricity consumption now, but this is projected to hit 7-9 percent by the end of the decade. Water and energy are intertwined in cooling systems. Grundfos claims that cooling infrastructure accounts for a substantial share of a datacenter's resource use, representing about 38 percent of total electricity consumption in an average facility, while water demand in large hyperscale facilities can reach 11,356 to 18,927 cubic meters per day -- enough for up to 155,000 EU households. Rapid growth in bit barns is placing increased pressure on energy systems, water resources and local infrastructure, the report notes. Without careful coordination, inefficient or poorly sited facilities risk exacerbating these problems and triggering public opposition. [...] Grundfos advises regulators to integrate water efficiency and cooling design requirements directly into planning approvals for new facilities and any large-scale expansions to encourage adoption of efficient cooling technologies. It also advocates investment incentives from governments such as tax credits, green financing mechanisms, and grant programs for technologies that demonstrably reduce energy and water consumption. Integration between server halls and district heating networks is another aspect worth consideration, the report adds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DOJ is probing a nonprofit run by billionaire Reid Hoffman that funded a portion of E. Jean Carroll's civil litigation against President Trump, several sources said.

The public prerelease versions of Apple's system software increment as we get close to WWDC.

Ex-New York Times journalist Nick Bilton to replace Tanya Simon as executive producer of the Sunday newsmagazine

Amid rising questions about 60 Minutes’ editorial integrity, CBS News on Thursday announced major changes for the Sunday newsmagazine show, appointing the former New York Times tech journalist Nick Bilton as executive producer for the 59th season, which begins in the fall.

Tanya Simon, the daughter of legendary 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon, has been ousted as the show’s top producer, a role she took on after the resignation of longtime executive producer Bill Owens in the spring of 2025.

FuriosaAI and Broadcom are teaming up to develop a next-generation AI inference cluster that combines hundreds of FuriosaAI’s third-generation chips with Broadcom’s high-bandwidth, low-latency Ethernet interconnect. The as-yet unnamed system will start sampling in early 2028.

FuriosaAI is a South Korean chip company founded in 2017 by June Paik, a former Samsung and AMD engineer who saw that emerging deep learning workloads could benefit from specialized chips. Paik built his Tensor Contraction Processor (TCP) architecture to process tensor contractions as opposed to the matrix multiplication math that GPUs are designed to process.

FuriosaAI says the TCP architecture in its neural processing units (NPUs) significantly minimize data movement compared to GPUs. By keeping the data resident in the high bandwidth memory (HBM) surrounding the NPU rather than moving it to DRAM, FuriosaAI minimizes energy consumption compared to bigger, less efficient GPUs.

The FuriosaAI RNGD PCI card is currently in full production at TSMC

The company started sampling its second-generation RNGD chip last fall, and it’s now in full production out of TSMC. Built on a 5nm process, each PCIe-based RNGD card is equipped with 48GB of HBM3 memory, 1.5 TB per second of memory bandwidth, and delivers 512 TFLOPS of FP8 performance, while consuming a maximum of 180 watts. The company this year will be shipping its NXT RNGD Server, which features eight RNGD cards.

Now FuriosaAI is setting its sights on a third-generation chip. We already knew that the third-gen chip would be built using a 2 nm process and utilize HBM4 memory. But now we know that the company is working with Broadcom to package the chip into a server for hyperscale AI inference deployments.

As part of Broadcom’s advanced packaging capabilities to integrate multiple silicon dies into a high-performance AI inference accelerator. Furiosa says its third-gen chip will feature a dedicated I/O die for scale-up networking and will evolve the TCP  architecture into “a multi-die chiplet system that utilizes Broadcom’s XPU Technology, IP Platform, and Ethernet scale-up switches.

“Bringing together Broadcom’s infrastructure capabilities and Furiosa’s Tensor Contraction Processor architecture and its industry-defining software stack allows us to move beyond the chip level and deliver a comprehensive solution for the token factory era,” Paik stated. “[W]e will deliver a third-generation inference solution that offers industry-leading performance per watt for even the largest, most complex frontier AI models and agentic workloads.”

RNGD accelerators have been shipping since January 2026 

FuriosaAI, which has raised $250 million in funding, is adamant that it made the right call with focusing on tensor processing as opposed to matrix math. “GPUs carry a ‘legacy tax’ from their origins in graphics,” the company writes in a blog post. “Their SIMT (Single Instruction, Multiple Threads) model struggles with the irregular memory patterns and high-frequency communication required by modern data center workloads. Our [TCP architecture] is a clean-sheet design optimized for the mathematical heart of AI.”

While raw horsepower is still important for AI inference workloads–particularly for the prefill phase–FuriosaAI is correct in focusing on the data movement between HBM and DRAM. Dealing with the abundance of KV cache data that is generated and needs to be maintained to optimize user and agent experience during AI inference is the latest bottleneck, and has been called the “GPU memory wall,” among other things.

“TCP focuses on high-bandwidth data movement and massive tensor operations rather than managing thousands of tiny threads,” the company says in its blog. “It treats memory access as a first-class citizen, eliminating the efficiency ‘cliff’ GPUs hit when models outgrow rigid cache hierarchies.”

It’s unclear if FuriosaAI is still working with TSMC for manufacturing its third-gen chip, or whether it’s working with Broadcom to develop and manufacture the chip and the entire server. While Broadcom does have some fab capabilities, it predominantly partners with chip companies on the design rather than the manufacturing.

The post FuriosaAI and Broadcom Team Up to Build Rack-Scale Inference Clusters appeared first on HPCwire.

Ryan Fournier, 30, was charged with simple assault and threats to do bodily harm

The co-founder of the group Students for Trump was arrested on Tuesday on domestic violence charges.

Washington DC’s Metropolitan police department arrested Ryan Fournier, 30, and charged him with simple assault and threats to do bodily harm, Defector first reported.

The investigation is being led by SpaceX, but it needs approval from the FAA before the Starship can launch again.

If your glucose levels concern you, these are the CGM monitors you may want to consider.

Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.8 with stronger performance and better handling of uncertain or flawed data, including a greater tendency to flag issues rather than make unsupported claims. The update also introduces a "Dynamic Workflows" research preview for coordinating complex tasks across many subagents. TechCrunch reports: Opus 4.8 comes with the expected best-in-class benchmark results, but there's also particular attention to how the model manages bad or uncertain data. In the launch post, Anthropic's early testers found that the new model is "more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims." Echoing this point, a testimonial from Bridgewater associates said the biggest difference in the upgrade was "Opus 4.8's tendency to proactively flag issues with the inputs and outputs of an analysis, something other models routinely missed and left to the users to catch." Together with the new model, Anthropic launched a feature called Dynamic Workflows, which will be available in research preview. The system is designed to help larger models like Opus manage complex tasks across hundreds of parallel subagents. "Claude Code alongside Opus 4.8 can now carry out codebase-scale migrations across hundreds of thousands of lines of code from kickoff to merge, with the existing test suite as its bar," the post explains. As for Mythos, Anthropic's most advanced model, the company hinted it could be made publicly available in the not too distant future. "We're making swift progress on developing these safeguards and expect to be able to bring Mythos-class models to all our customers in the coming weeks," the company wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI has entered an industrial phase, no longer confined to isolated models or experimental deployments. AI now operates as always-on AI factories that continuously transform electricity and data into intelligence at scale. For service providers and neoclouds, this shift introduces a new class of infrastructure demands.

Modern AI workloads require processing hundreds of thousands of input tokens while sustaining real time inference across complex pipelines. Unlike traditional data centers built around intermittent, human-driven requests, AI factories depend on constant, high-efficiency data movement, low-latency communication, and massive memory bandwidth to remain competitive. Even minor inefficiencies, multiplied across trillions of tokens, can significantly impact throughput and costs—creating the need for a new generation of systems purpose-built for industrial-scale AI.

Unleash AI performance at rack-scale

AI rack-scale systems from HPE are optimized for large-scale AI deployments and the most demanding mixed workloads. HPE has an extensive portfolio of rack-scale solutions that are purpose-built for large AI environments. Specialized hardware, software, and support services are all carefully integrated to accelerate deployment and ease complexity. Together, these solutions are the critical building blocks for orchestrating data movement, memory, and control flow to sustain AI factory scale.

NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 by HPE is a breakthrough rack-scale system optimized for training AI frontier models and industrial scale AI factories. Part of the NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE portfolio, it integrates NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and NVIDIA Vera CPUs into a dense, unified architecture that delivers extraordinary training and inference performance. With up to 35 petaflops of training and up to 50 petaflops of inference performance per GPU, the solution can train foundational models with up to 1.3 trillion parameters.

NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 by HPE was designed for the shift in how intelligence is produced at scale, applying extreme co-design across compute, networking, power delivery, cooling, and system architecture to make AI sustainable for years to come. The platform features six new chips:

• 72x NVIDIA Rubin GPUs
• 36x NVIDIA Vera CPUs (with full Arm-compatibility)
• 9x NVIDIA NVLink 6 switch trays
• NVIDIA ConnectX-9
• NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPU
• NVIDIA Spectrum-6 Ethernet switch

Together, these chips form a synchronized architecture in which GPUs run complex workloads, CPUs control data flow, scale-up and scale-out fabrics move tokens and state efficiently, and dedicated infrastructure processors operate and secure the AI factory itself.

HPE provides advanced direct liquid cooling (DLC) to ensure higher efficiency, reduced power consumption, and maximum performance under continuous AI loads. This level of thermal optimization enables reliable deployment in dense data center environments—which is critical as environments scale to thousands of racks.

HPE Services provide expert deployment, performance engineering, and global lifecycle support, helping organizations rapidly stand-up AI infrastructure, optimize workloads, and ensure long-term operational excellence.

Customer AI innovation

HPE and NVIDIA are trusted partners of the world’s most ambitions enterprises. Our solutions are purpose-built to power massive AI environments.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) partnered with HPE and NVIDIA to develop two state-of-the-art supercomputers. The Mission and Vision supercomputers will be based on the new liquid-cooled HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 and feature NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs, which offers robust compute with 25% more density compared to its predecessor.[i] This project is aimed to accelerate scientific discovery, advance AI-driven research, and strengthen national security.

The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Germany is increasing its computing power by approximately 30x with a next generation machine. Blue Lion, built by HPE, features HPE Cray technology and the NVIDIA Vera Rubin Superchip with 100% fanless DLC. The new supercomputer is engineered for AI and accelerated science, helping researchers blend classic simulation and modern AI for their work on climate, turbulence, physics, and much more.

Experience the power of rack-scale AI

HPE invites you to explore the possibilities of rack-scale AI at ISC High Performance 2026. Join us in Hamburg, Germany from June 22<sup>nd</sup>–26<sup>th</sup> for this exciting industry event.

Visit HPE at booth C10 and NVIDIA at booth E30 to talk with our experts, experience demos, and explore solutions that are best fit for your AI requirements. Book a specialist meeting to learn more about NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 by HPE and how this groundbreaking solution can put you on a path to success.

Key takeaways:

• Fast time to deployment
• Expertly integrated solution running at peak performance
• Access to the latest NVIDIA stack for optimized AI acceleration
• Custom AI clusters anywhere in the world
• 24/7 support from HPE Services and AI experts

Let HPE and NVIDIA help you build an AI factory for the future.

[i] “HPE to build ‘Mission’ and ‘Vision’ supercomputers for Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with NVIDIA, to support AI research and national security, HPE 2025
hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2025/10/hpe-to-build-mission-and-vision-supercomputers-for-los-alamos-national-laboratory-in-collaboration-with-nvidia-to-support-ai-research-and-national-security.html

The post Harness the Power of Rack-Scale Performance for Large-Scale AI appeared first on HPCwire.

An Austrian court has convicted a man of planning to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna nearly two years ago.

The department said it is preparing for the banknote in response to legislation proposed last year.

• US coach addressed several topics on Thursday

• ‘We are seeing the real American player right now’

• On World Cup snubs: ‘It’s so painful, it’s so difficult’

• Sign up for the World Behind The Cup newsletter

Mauricio Pochettino is entering the 2026 World Cup with plenty of confidence in his team’s biggest star, even after last summer’s saga that saw Christian Pulisic ask out of national team duty.

The Milan forward opted out of last summer’s Concacaf Gold Cup as he prioritized entering the 2025-26 season with adequate rest, wanting to avoid burnout for this crucial World Cup summer. The star and his international coach then exchanged words through podcasts in the lead-up to the tournament, which saw the US fall in the final against Mexico.

Illustrations by Bloomberg reveal an overhauled Siri interface and app that are expected to be announced at Apple's big event next month.

Organizers rally outside Delaney Hall, facing violent clashes with agents, as over 300 detainees are on hunger strike

• Chaos breaks out at New Jersey immigration detention center – in pictures

Wednesday marked the sixth day that more than 300 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees were on a hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. Meanwhile, the mood amid the dozens of organizers and community members rallying outside the facility was tense but energized with support.

Masked protesters circulated, handing out water bottles, personal protective equipment and oranges. A few attenders who travel across the country to ICE protests wherever they occur – such as a man with a karaoke machine in a giraffe costume – trolled the ICE agents, successfully getting a giggle out of one of the few agents with his face exposed. Passing tractor-trailers on the busy industrial road punctuated protest chants with long, extended honking in solidarity.

Lynette Hooker​ was reported missing by her husband in early April after the couple allegedly went for a nighttime ride aboard a dinghy.

Kathleen Thomas, who is missing her right hand, thought it was a misunderstanding when a deputy pulled her over for allegedly holding her phone with that hand while driving. Bodycam video shows the viral interaction.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: In an era where Silicon Valley's conservatism is both expressed openly and becoming more intense by the day, it's strange to think that tech was once seen as a hive of liberalism. The right-wing nature of today's tech industry means that its products tend to also be seen as serving right-wing interests, either in their actual operation (like X's openly and unrepentantly right-wing chatbot Grok) or by the simple fact that their existence serves to enrich a small group of very powerful, very conservative people. But does it have to be this way? Can LLMs and AI agents find a place in the toolkit of progressive activist groups? The conviction that they can is the idea behind a new app called Outcry, which provides a chatbot designed specifically as a "private, on-device AI mentor for activists, organizers and movement builders." (There's also a web version, although it obviously lacks the privacy benefits of being entirely offline.) It's the brainchild of Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White, who recently wrote a blog post about the thinking behind the project. [...] Outcry's other distinguishing feature is that its dataset is entirely offline -- it's included with the download. According to the readme, the entire dataset is downloaded to your device at first launch, and stored in your library's Application Support directory. So, how effectively does Outcry serve as a guide for collective action? "I'd say that its information is pretty high-level and general, not least because its offline nature prevents it from accessing specific details not contained in its database," writes Gizmodo's Tom Hawking. He continued: "This app has the potential to be a really valuable resource, especially for people who are just beginning to become involved with activism and genuinely don't know where to begin -- and getting over that first step can be hard."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Treasury secretary says banknote would celebrate US’s 250th anniversary but Democrats vow to block move

The White House is pushing Congress to approve a $250 bill bearing Donald Trump’s portrait, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said, which would require changing longstanding federal law that prohibits any living person from appearing on US currency.

Speaking from the White House at a news conference, Bessent said the bill would be in celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary of independence, and that the treasury has already started preparing for the possibility of the new currency.

Murrell has been remanded in custody after pleading guilty to embezzling more than £400,00 from SNP

Nicola Sturgeon said she was “deceived, betrayed and lied to” by her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, as he embezzled hundreds of thousands of pounds from the SNP.

The former first minister told an audience in Ireland at her first public appearance since Murrell pleaded guilty that she was coming to terms with being married to someone she “did not know at all”, and acknowledged people would have questions.

Investigative journalist and filmmaker Nick Bilton has been named executive producer of "60 Minutes."

One of the most enduring points of contention between the Democratic Party’s left and right wings is “vote blue no matter who,” a demand almost exclusively made of progressives to shelve principle over party when it comes to elections. 

But as we head toward the midterms in a year where the base is angry and ready for a change, centrists are now hearing that familiar refrain aimed at them — much to their horror. 

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Massachusetts Democrat, was confronted with this new reality earlier this week. He told CNN on Monday that he hoped Maine voters would reject Graham Platner, the state’s presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, over his controversial tattoo, which Auchincloss called “personally disqualifying.” Critics quickly pointed out that the congressman was effectively offering a tacit endorsement of Sen. Susan Collins, the milquetoast moderate Republican incumbent who has for years infuriated Democrats.

By Tuesday afternoon, the congressman issued a mea culpa on X and disputed that his remarks were an endorsement.

“If it were me I’d vote for someone else in the Maine Democratic primary,” he said, without indicating who that “someone else” might be. “Regardless of what happens in Maine, Democrats need to take back the Senate and I’ll keep working hard to make it happen.”

Platner’s campaign exemplifies the kind of coalition-building that the left has engaged in over the past decade. He goes across the state, meeting voters where they are, and has built relationships with community groups and activists. It’s a marked difference from the campaign of Gov. Janet Mills, Sen. Chuck Schumer’s pick for the seat who dropped out of the race last month after failing to gain momentum, and the retail politics go a long way toward explaining Platner’s success.

Outside of Maine, Platner has been a lightning rod for centrists eager to seize on his Senate race as a battleground for litigating broader divisions in the party’s anti-Trump coalition. Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said on social media on Tuesday that anyone who endorsed the Uncommitted movement, which aimed to hold President Joe Biden accountable for his role in supporting the Israeli genocide of Gaza, couldn’t object to centrists doing the same over Platner — a comparison so out of proportion it defies rational explanation. 

Score-settling seems more important than keeping the party together and taking the Senate. Melissa DeRosa, the Andrew Cuomo loyalist, told Fox News on Tuesday, “There are a lot of moderate Democrats like myself who will not cry tears should we lose Maine.” John Fetterman, who has broken with his party over his zealous support for Israel, bemoaned Platner’s presumptive nomination after Mills dropped out. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia centrist who served in the Senate for over two decades as a nominal Democrat, implicitly endorsed Collins in a glowing address in late April. 

Politicians who are actually popular with Democratic voters, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., are backing Platner. The former hosted two raucous get-out-the-vote events for Platner over the holiday weekend; the latter is coming to Maine on June 5 to show his support. 

Related

Graham Platner Handed Centrist Dems a Bruising Defeat in Maine

With a glide path to the nomination — state Democrats are expected to fall in line after the vote out of respect for Mills — Platner is consolidating his support. National Democrats like Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, both of whom are in party leadership in the chamber, have pledged their support (however begrudgingly). 

Platner’s consistent presence across Maine and his populist, left message are resonating with voters. On Memorial Day, Sanders went as far as to compare the energy around Platner to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “Maine now has the opportunity to show the world that we could do the same thing in one of the most rural states in this country,” Sanders said. 

In an off-year election where Democrats are expected to deliver a shellacking to the GOP — a prospect that doesn’t seem to bother President Donald Trump much at all — the appeal of progressive politics a Platner win would represent has the centrist wing of the Democratic Party in an existential crisis. 

After decades of scolding the party’s left flank and left-leaning independents over their hesitation to vote for corporate, hawkish Democrats, the shoe is finally on the other foot. Now, centrists are going to be expected to fall in line vote for the likes of Platner. It’s a daunting proposition for the party’s more conservative wing, who will have to either bite the bullet and pull the lever for their ideological opponents or risk another two years of unfettered Republican rule. 

Perhaps that’s preferred. A GOP win means redoing the election in two years with potentially better results, and in the meantime, blaming the left for losing.

There’s precedent for supposed liberals choosing Republicans over progressive Democrats. After Barack Obama won the party’s nomination for president in 2008, a number of Hillary Clinton supporters went over to John McCain. Dubbing themselves “PUMAs” — for “Party Unity My Ass” — these diehard Clinton-backers were thrilled at the opportunity to cast their ballots for McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin. “I’m voting Republican,” Amy Siskind (yes, that one) said at the time. 

But in 2026, the likelihood of conservative Democrats throwing the midterms to the GOP by switching sides or sitting out is low (although a rash of redistricting in the South has somewhat narrowed the gap). The base is fired up, angry at the establishment, and primed to turn out in droves to vote out Trump’s enablers.

For centrists, this is the worst possible outcome: Their vote-scolding tactic exposed as a lie and a failure to prove they still have the clout to swing an election. For progressives, it would be a welcome break. 

The post Graham Platner Is Forcing Centrist Dems to Reckon With “Vote Blue No Matter Who” appeared first on The Intercept.

Democratic lawmakers argue the Trump administration must get express consent from Congress before continuing construction on the White House ballroom.

Featured at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, eight new NVIDIA Research papers show how robots trained in simulation are moving into the real world.

May 28, 2026 — Robotics is entering a new phase: moving from controlled demos and scripted automation toward generalizable, reliable embodied autonomy in the real world. At the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), eight of NVIDIA Research’s 28 accepted papers show how simulation-to-real transfer is becoming a foundation for that shift, helping robots perceive, reason, plan and act across dynamic, unpredictable environments.

Credit: NVIDIA

Together, the papers span the full stack of challenges robot developers face: coordinating multiple arms in parallel, building policies that generalize across robot bodies, grasping novel objects in clutter, performing precise assembly and developing vision-language-action models that reason before they move.

The through line is clear: sim-to-real is becoming a foundation for robots that can adapt, generalize, and operate with greater reliability outside the lab.

Coordinating Arms, Navigating Bodies, Grasping Objects

Picture a pharmaceutical lab run by robotic arms: picking up tubes, transferring liquids, mixing reagents — each step taking different amounts of time, all requiring careful coordination.

Traditional robot scheduling software handles those steps sequentially, one arm at a time.

ScheduleStream changes that by running computations on GPUs, letting multiple arms plan movements and operate in parallel. The result — a 3x speedup across multi-arm planning scenarios, on hardware like the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform. Code for the framework is available on GitHub.

A robot that learns to navigate through a space — avoiding obstacles and finding its destination — usually learns to do it in one body. Put the same navigation software into a differently shaped robot and it often falls apart, because its parts all move differently.

The COMPASS policy framework solves this by first building the baseline navigation functionality using imitation learning and then using residual reinforcement learning in NVIDIA Isaac Lab to build specialists for diverse robot embodiments. Crucially, no real-world robot data is involved at any stage: everything is trained in Isaac Lab simulation.

Compared with an imitation learning baseline, COMPASS achieved a 4.5x improvement in average success rate. It also seamlessly transfers to real-world environments, demonstrating around 80% success across 20 real-world navigation trials on autonomous mobile robots and humanoids.

COMPASS is agent-friendly, with dedicated skills — and developers can connect the pipeline with NVIDIA Omniverse NuRec to post-train and validate robots in a digital twin of a novel environment before deployment.

Most grasping systems identify the object, predict a grasp, plan a path, then execute. But the last few centimeters are where small errors matter most.

Grasp-MPC adaptively computes robotic grasps, continuously correcting the robot’s motion as it closes in on the object, rather than carrying out a fixed plan — the way a person grabs something by feeling rather than calculating every joint angle in advance.

To build the policy, the researchers generated 2 million simulated trajectories across 8,000 objects using annotations from the GraspGen dataset and motion planning data from cuRobo, a CUDA-accelerated library for robot motion generation.

After training on both successful and failed trajectories, Grasp-MPC learned to grasp novel objects in cluttered tabletops and shelves — achieving around 75% overall success on real robots, compared with a baseline of 41%.

Deformable Cluster Manipulation introduces a framework that tackles a parallel challenge: enabling systems to grasp not just one object, but a whole bundle of flexible, tangled material at once.

The framework was motivated by a real-world task: clearing a mass of tree branches that have grown over a power line, where there’s no single clean object to grab. The system uses its entire arm, not just the gripper: wrapping it around the branch cluster and sweeping it aside, the way someone might gather an armful of cables or push a tangle of brush out of the way.

The researchers built a tree generator using biological growth equations to create synthetic trees of many different shapes and sizes — then trained the system across thousands of them in NVIDIA Isaac open simulation frameworks.

The policy deploys to real branches zero shot. Beyond power lines, the researchers see potential in cable management, agricultural inspection and anywhere robots need to handle a tangle rather than a single graspable item.

Clearing tree branches in zero-shot sim-to-real deployment.

Assembling with Precision

Precise assembly — threading a nut onto a bolt, inserting a gear onto a gearshaft, pressing a peg into a hole — is notoriously hard to get right with simulation alone.

The real world is complex. Real surfaces aren’t perfectly smooth. Sensors don’t behave as specified. Tiny discrepancies that a simulator ignores can stop a robot in its tracks.

The SPARR method addresses this by splitting the job in two. A policy trained in Isaac Lab learns the general strategy for the assembly task in simulation. Then, on the actual hardware, a second layer learns to correct for whatever the simulator got wrong — using the robot’s own camera and without any human demonstrations or guidance.

SPARR improves success rates by 38% and reduces cycle time by around 30% compared with zero-shot sim-to-real baselines.

On National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) assembly tasks not seen during training, success improves by nearly 75% — approaching the results of methods that require a human in the loop.

The Refinery framework takes on the next layer of difficulty in assembly: tasks with multiple sequential steps, where how step one is finished determines whether step two is even possible. It’s like assembling furniture — leave a panel at the wrong angle, and the next fastener won’t go in.

By understanding how success varies across initial conditions and training across hundreds of simulated assembly scenarios, Refinery learns how to complete each step and leave each component in a position that sets up the next. It achieves 91% simulation success and a nearly 11% mean improvement over baselines with comparable real-world results — and its policies can be chained to handle long, multi-part sequences.

Action Models That Keep Their Word

The PEEK pipeline helps robots see past the clutter. In a typical manipulation task, the robot’s camera picks up everything in the scene — but most of it is irrelevant noise.

One task demonstrated on the PEEK project page is “give the banana to NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang”: a photo of Huang sits on a table alongside a photo of Michael Jordan, a collection of unrelated objects and other distractors.

A human doing the task instantly focuses on the banana and the right photo; a standard robot policy has to process everything and often gets confused. PEEK solves this by having a vision language model read the task instruction and focus the robot’s line of vision accordingly — showing a movement path, and highlighting around the objects that matter, while fading out everything else.

The policy then acts on that annotated view rather than the raw scene. For a policy trained purely in simulation, adding PEEK produced a 41x real-world improvement in accuracy. For large VLA models and smaller policies, gains range from 2-3.5x. Because it works at the image level, PEEK integrates with any camera-based policy without modification.

Do What You Say — a collaboration with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Utah and University of Sydney — addresses a specific failure mode that matters more as robots tackle longer, more complex tasks.

Give a robot an instruction like “store everything on this table inside the cabinet” or “prepare a Manhattan,” and it has to break that down into individual steps and execute them in sequence.

The problem is that the AI model can correctly reason through what it needs to do — and then execute something different.

The method, called SEAL, fixes this at runtime without any retraining: the robot generates several candidate action sequences, thinks through where each one would actually lead and picks the outcome that matches what it said it would do. SEAL delivers up to 15% accuracy gains over prior work, with robustness against rephrased instructions, changed objects, scene clutter and shifted camera angles.

In addition to papers, NVIDIA is expanding robotics research infrastructure with large-scale open datasets for robotics. The NVIDIA Physical AI Dataset is the world’s largest open dataset for physical development, surpassing 15 million+ downloads, while NVIDIA Isaac GR00T X Embodiment Sim has become one of the most-downloaded robotics datasets.

Universities Accelerate Physical AI Research With NVIDIA Technologies

Robotics teams from universities such as Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), ETH Zurich, MIT and University of Texas at Austin are tapping NVIDIA technologies to move physical AI research from simulation to real-world systems — with nearly 50 accepted papers referencing NVIDIA-accelerated simulation, robot learning and compute.

Examples include a paper from CMU demonstrating a robotic control framework trained in NVIDIA Isaac Lab and MIT work on large language model-guided reinforcement learning powered by NVIDIA GPUs.

Explore NVIDIA Research’s physical AI work. Developers can get started with Isaac Lab and Isaac Sim.

Source: Katie Washabaugh, NVIDIA

The post NVIDIA Research Advances Robotics from Simulation to the Real World appeared first on HPCwire.

Central American country says its president spoke with Pete Hegseth to confirm terms of cooperation

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Guatemala has requested US military cooperation spanning access to equipment, training and experts to assist Guatemalan operations against drug trafficking, the country’s president, Bernardo Arévalo, said on Thursday.

The joint plans stopped short of US military operations on Guatemalan soil and fall within existing bilateral agreements, the government noted.

The new Claude Opus 4.8 is a "modest but tangible improvement," but a Mythos model you can use may be just weeks away.

RICHLAND, Wash., May 28, 2026 — A research team at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has deployed AI agents with the potential to accelerate the recovery of critical minerals from real-world industrial waste in days instead of the months or years required for manual experimentation.

Andrew Ritchhart, a materials scientist, handles lab equipment. He and his colleagues are working to reduce the need for manual lab work like this using automation. Photo credit: Andrea Starr, PNNL.

The team, led by PNNL materials scientist Elias Nakouzi, created a semi-autonomous lab tied to a series of specially designed AI agents to accomplish their goal. The system, named Computer Intelligence for Critical Elements Recovery and Optimization (CICERO), evaluates not only the best method for purifying the desired element, but also provides a first assessment of whether the method is economically feasible and scalable. The researchers reported their results in the journal Materials Horizons.

“We connected a liquid-handling robot, a sample handling device, and two analytical instruments and created an AI-aided workflow that quickly isolated critical minerals from industrial samples,” said Nakouzi. “These industrial feedstocks are a complex soup of chemicals. Developing an effective method to isolate one element from the soup can take months or years. We have reduced that time to days with CICERO.”

To demonstrate the value of the system, the research team tested three different industrial wastes: two different kinds of spent magnets and wastewater from oil and gas extraction.

The scientists fed a description of what was in the waste to specially designed AI agents. The agents then evaluated the value, concentration, and potential product purity after a separation procedure, before making a technical and economic recovery recommendation. In the trial runs, the AI agents recommended recovery of the element magnesium from wastewater produced during oil and gas extraction, of neodymium and praseodymium from magnet waste, and of samarium, a rare-earth element critical to high-performance aerospace magnets and nuclear reactors.

Such feedstock evaluations traditionally take months of analysis and preliminary lab protocol preparation.

Instead, within a day, the AI agents used published scientific literature to develop a plan for 96 simultaneous experiments, including recipes for all chemicals used for separation, their order of addition, and timing steps. A liquid-handling robot then executed the orders.

For these initial experiments, human operators prepared the completed experimental samples for final chemical analysis. But the resulting data were automatically evaluated by AI for any necessary refinements, and if needed, a second round of 96 experiments to optimize purity and yield.

“We were able to build and execute this workflow within a few months because it is built upon years of institutional materials science, chemistry, separations, and geosciences expertise at PNNL,” said Nakouzi.

CICERO is powered by SciLink, an agentic AI platform developed at PNNL and supported by the DOE Office of Science.

“The agentic AI allows us to get more mileage out of existing industry practices for critical mineral recovery,” said Maxim Ziatdinov, a PNNL physical scientist whose research has merged AI, data science, and instrument controls.

Ziatdinov and his colleagues are rapidly moving toward additional opportunities for CICERO, asking it to reason beyond initial ideas and incorporate data from early experiments to generate even better ideas. “It may be possible to target additional critical materials in a broader range of feedstocks as more and more experimental results are processed,” he said.

As demand for critical materials produced in the United States increases, a rapid solution developed by workflows like CICERO could offer new incentives to industry to maximize production of valuable commodities from what had been waste.

While recycling magnets and petroleum wastewater have not yet been done on an industrial scale, the pathway provided by CICERO demonstrates industrial feasibility because the cheap commodity chemicals used in the experiments are already used at an industry scale in other chemical separations, the researchers said.

“We are on the cusp of something exciting here, not just for optimization and efficiency, as we’ve shown here, but also potentially for new chemistry and new materials science that we could discover with these platforms,” said Nakouzi.

In addition to Ziatdinov and Nakouzi, PNNL researchers Andrew Ritchhart, Sarah I. Allec, Pravalika Butreddy, Krista Kulesa, Qingpu Wang and Dan Thien Nguyen contributed to the study. This research was made possible by several internal investments made by PNNL: the Non-Equilibrium Transport Driven Separations (NETS) initiative, the Adaptive Tunability for Synthesis and Control via Autonomous Learning on Edge (ATSCALE) initiative and the Foundational Autonomy Investment.

About PNNL

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in energy resiliency and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle and supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time

Source: Karyn Hede, PNNL

The post PNNL Deploys AI Agents to Speed Critical Minerals Recovery from Industrial Waste appeared first on HPCwire.

House of the Dragon and a new Larry David series are among the new titles coming this month.

A new ad by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed his Democratic opponent in the U.S. Senate race, James Talarico, said the U.S. southern border should be wide open. 

The ad, which Paxton posted on X a day after he won the Republican Senate primary, included a narrator describing some things as "this is Texas" and others as "this is not," and juxtaposing scenes of people and places with Talarico quotes.

In the ad, Talarico is shown saying, "Our southern border should be like our front porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front." (Text on the ad said: "‘A welcome mat,’ not a border wall.")

Talarico did say this, but the ad left out what he said next.

His full remarks during the Jan. 24 Texas Senate Democratic primary debate, were: 

"So what I’ve said is that our southern border should be like our front porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front, and a lock on the door. 

"We can welcome immigrants who want to live the American dream. We can build a pathway to citizenship for those neighbors who have been here, making us richer and stronger, and we can keep out people who mean to do us harm."

Talarico has said variations of this in other interviews, and the quote has been shared out of context multiple times in the past, including in political groups’ and politicians' social media posts and at least one other pro-Paxton ad.

We contacted Paxton’s campaign but received no response.

Our ruling

A Paxton ad says Talarico said the southern border should have "a giant welcome mat out front."

Talarico compared the southern border with a front porch with a welcome mat. But the ad omitted Talarico’s comments that followed, when he said there should be "a lock on the door" and "we can keep out people who mean to do us harm."

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. 

PolitiFact Senior Digital Research Analyst Jeff Cercone contributed to this report.

The White House has yet to release a summary the results of President Trump's latest physical exam.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 29, No. 817.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 29, No. 1,083.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for May 29, No. 613.

Illinois lawmakers on Wednesday passed a landmark AI safety bill (SB 315) that would require major AI companies to publish safety plans, submit annual third-party testing reports, report serious incidents quickly, and protect whistleblowers who flag emerging risks. OpenAI and Anthropic supported the bill, which could make Illinois a testing ground for state-level AI governance as federal regulation remains stalled. Ars Technica reports: To force companies to be more transparent about rapid developments, Illinois would likely rely on "the Big Four accounting and auditing firms -- Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC -- to audit their safety practices," [said Scott Wisor, a policy director at a nonprofit called Secure AI Project, which supported the bill]. The required independent audits will likely frustrate Trump, who has tried and failed to stop states from implementing AI safety laws as Congress stalls on passing any legislation. For Trump, the priority has been to promote AI industry interests, but he began considering expanding federal government safety testing after Anthropic's Mythos was released and the AI firm limited access due to safety concerns. Whether or not governments at any level are prepared to protect society from the most catastrophic AI risks remains a major concern for critics who wonder how and when governments will intervene. After inside sources started leaking the details of Trump's AI safety testing plans, critics warned that even the federal government may lack the necessary expertise to audit frontier AI models. And it seems the same criticism extends to independent auditors that Illinois may rely on but industry insiders suggest some AI firms may not entirely trust. Adam Kovacevich is CEO of Chamber of Progress, a trade group that opposed SB 315 and counts Google and Apple among its members. He told Wired that Illinois' requirements "would force companies to expose sensitive systems to untested auditors in a regulatory regime that's all liability and no standards." Governor J.B. Pritzker confirmed his intent to sign, proclaiming that "Illinois is leading the nation in holding Big Tech accountable." "I look forward to signing SB 315 and working with the legislature so that AI, when used, is used responsibly," Pritzker said. Steve Wimmer, a senior policy and technical advisor for the Transparency Coalition, said his group considers the law to be "one of the most important pieces of legislation in 2026."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 29, No. 1,805.

Claude’s parent company’s $65bn in latest funding round underscores vast sums of money still flowing into industry

Anthropic, the AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, announced on Thursday it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn post-money. The move makes Anthropic the world’s most valuable AI startup, eclipsing its competitor OpenAI.

The deal marks an exceedingly successful period of growth for Anthropic, which was once considered to be a smaller player in the global AI arms race. The widespread adoption of its products by large enterprise businesses, especially following its release of powerful coding assistants late last year, has turned it into a dominant player in the industry.

Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state sued as ICE seeks plates in Trump’s immigration crackdown

The Trump administration is suing to challenge the refusal of four US states to issue confidential license plates to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, saying the states have long provided them to other law enforcement agencies conducting undercover operations.

The US Department of Justice on Thursday said it had filed lawsuits against Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state after states led by Democratic governors refused to rescind their policies. ICE is seeking access to such plates to carry out arrests as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Rival groups are vying for territorial control of strategic cocaine production and trafficking region

At least 52 guerrilla fighters have been killed in clashes between two rival armed groups vying for territorial control of a strategic cocaine production and trafficking region in south-east Colombia, a faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) involved in the fighting has said.

The clashes, the most violent in recent months, took place in the jungles of the department of Guaviare, near the village of Barranco Colorado.

Exclusive: community observers claim agents have tailed cars, surveilled homes and even ‘falsely arrested’ someone

An anti-crime taskforce ordered by Donald Trump on to the streets of Memphis has been accused of targeting community observers with widespread intimidation including “immense force”.

Agents have been “retaliating against, intimidating, and harassing” observers attempting to monitor the federal taskforce’s activity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee, which alleges that officials have tailed cars, surveilled homes and even “falsely arrested” a community observer.

Getting the timing right on your HVAC purchase could lead to bigger savings than you'd otherwise expect.

As we head into summer, data centers around the world are facing a challenging weather pattern similar to what we saw in 2025. Last July, the average global temperature hit an all-time high. These record-setting heatwaves and sustained droughts placed growing pressure on local water and energy supplies and forced governments to make difficult decisions, including imposing new restrictions on data centers amid their expansion.

This summer looks to be no different. AccuWeather just released its Summer Forecast 2026 stating that, “energy bills could soar this summer with widespread heat predicted coast to coast.” In addition, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation released its Annual Long Term Reliability Assessment earlier this year. The findings show that summer peak power demand is forecast to grow by 224 Gigawatts over the next 10 years, a more than 69% increase over the 2024 forecast and a 24% increase from 2025 peak demand. New data centers account for most of this projected energy increase. In the US, data centers consumed 4.4% of US electricity in 2023, and experts are projecting that to reach to 12% by 2028.

US states and European countries are restricting the number of data centers (eric1207cvb/Shutterstock)

Countries Respond with Restrictions

This rise in data center energy has caused many countries to start tightening rules to alleviate the strain it’s causing their grids and residents, which now have little room to accommodate natural energy fluctuations due to things like extreme weather. Below are a few examples:

• In 2025, there were more than 200 bills introduced across all 50 U.S. states aimed at regulating in-state data centers.At least 18 states have introduced bills creating special rate classes for large energy users, with some requiring data centers to fund infrastructure improvements and demonstrate benefits to ratepayers.
• In 2025, Amsterdam extended its ban on new data centers and expansions within the municipality, restricting new developments until at least 2030 in order to prioritize housing.
• Data centers currently account for up to 40 percent of Frankfurt’s total power demand, forcing the local energy supply to its limits. Local grid operators have implemented temporary moratoria on new industrial connections in certain districts, with no new utility-scale substations expected before Q2 2027.

Increasing the Amount of Compute Per Data Center

With AI workloads exploding and extreme weather becoming increasingly common, the pressure on resources is only expected to rise. The question is no longer whether compute demand will grow — it’s how to support that growth without compounding environmental stress.

One of the clearest answers is to increase the amount of compute that can be delivered per data center.

If every watt of power and every rack of space can do more work, fewer data centers need to be built to meet demand. That translates directly into less land development, less power draw and less water used for cooling. The path to sustainable infrastructure isn’t just about sourcing cleaner energy or designing better cooling systems. It’s also about reducing the physical footprint of compute itself.

Right now, the industry is witnessing the opposite trend. The AI boom is pushing organizations toward larger clusters and deployments, often with highly specialized hardware that runs hot and draws massive power. If efficiency doesn’t keep pace, the only way to scale is to keep building, and the environmental costs of that are becoming clear.

Liquid cooling of AI accelerators has become standard practice (Matveev Aleksandr/Shutterstock)

The industry needs to shift its focus toward maximizing real-world performance-per-watt, not just at the chip level, but at the rack-level and across entire systems. That kind of efficiency buys flexibility. It allows cloud and AI providers to scale within existing footprints, to deploy in constrained environments, and to avoid triggering new rounds of environmental and regulatory conflict.

So how do we do this?  Below are few best practices that can help:

• Adopt Modern, Power Efficient Processors – The processor is where everything begins and where heat generation and power consumption originate – thus it is a logical place to start. Legacy processors are not equipped to meet both the performance and energy demands today’s AI workloads require. Modern CPUs, however, are specifically engineered from the ground up to meet the demands of contemporary software and cloud-based usage models. These processors are designed to enhance efficiency, performance, and scalability, thereby contributing to a more sustainable future.
• Leverage GPUs and High-Powered Accelerators only where needed – While GPUs and accelerators are highly valuable for training and certain large-scale inference workloads, they are often more than what’s needed for the bulk of today’s AI needs. Right-sizing compute for each workload and using power-hungry infrastructure only where it’s truly required can help significantly lower the power requirements of AI and increase the amount of compute we can fit in each data center’s limited energy footprint.
• Better, More Efficient Cooling systems – In addition to lowering power requirements, more work needs to be done across a wide range of solutions and technologies, including better air cooling, liquid cooling, immersion, and more.
• Utilize a Mix of Cooling Options – Methods such as liquid cooling are becoming increasingly beneficial for high-energy use compute like large-scale GPU clusters. However, this method requires massive overhauls to data center infrastructure, which is often expensive and difficult to implement in older data centers. For existing data centers, it is often beneficial to use low-power chips that can continue to be air cooled, thereby keeping new build outs only where they are truly needed.

In practical terms, this means rethinking compute architectures to maximize performance-per-watt through modern processor innovations. It also means rebalancing workloads and designing systems where throughput is matched by thermal and energy awareness. Efficiency can no longer be a side benefit. It has to be a primary goal.

The more work we can extract from every watt and square foot, the fewer data centers we need to build. And the fewer data centers we build, the lower the water and energy burden we place on the regions we serve.

To support the next era of digital services, along with the naturally growing energy needs of our society, we need to shift from simply expanding infrastructure to also optimizing it, starting with the compute itself.

About the author: Jeff Wittich is the Chief Product Officer at Ampere. Jeff has extensive leadership experience in the semiconductor industry in roles ranging from product and process development to business strategy to marketing. Prior to joining Ampere, he worked at Intel for 15 years in a variety of positions throughout the company. Most recently, he was responsible for the Cloud Service Provider Platform business, driving global market reach, product customization, and ultimately defining the products and platforms being used across the cloud worldwide. While at Intel, Jeff also led a product development team responsible for 5 generations of Xeon processors. He received an Intel Achievement Award for his work in developing the Custom CPU program. Jeff has an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame

The post Extreme Weather Reinforces the Case for More Compute, Better Efficiency, and Fewer Data Centers appeared first on HPCwire.

The Guardian's Oliver Holmes looks at how Donald Trump's book The Art of the Deal could shed light on the president's negotiation tactics in the war with Iran

• Lemieux won four Stanley Cups with three teams

• Fiery winger earned 1995 Conn Smythe Trophy

• Former NHL agitator later became player agent

Claude Lemieux, a four-time Stanley Cup champion whose ferocious, hard-hitting style of play angered opponents and sometimes overshadowed his prodigious skills and ability to deliver in the biggest games, has died after taking his own life, according to authorities. He was 60.

The Palm Beach County Sherriff’s Office said Thursday that deputies responded just after 3am to the scene of an apparent suicide at a furniture store showroom in Lake Park, Florida. The sheriff’s office said the victim was believed to be Lemieux.

It is the highest on-the-record estimate of Russian military deaths to come from any government since the war in Ukraine began.

Valve's Steam Deck has sold out again despite a steep price increase that pushed the 1TB OLED model as high as $949 -- about $300 above its original price. "Even with the $300 price bump, the Steam Deck sold out after less than 24 hours back in stock," reports IGN's Jacqueline Thomas. "I don't know how many units Valve was able to stock into its store, but it does seem like Valve spent a couple weeks building up its stock before putting the handheld back on its store." IGN reports: Over the last couple weeks, Valve has been receiving plenty of "game console" shipments from China. At first, I thought this was a sign that the company was getting ready to finally release the Steam Machine, but it looks like at least a portion of these shipments â" if not all of them -- were Steam Deck restocks. That's a lot of Steam Decks to sell through at these inflated prices, but it's also possible that Valve is just staggering its stock so that its delivery infrastructure isn't overwhelmed. Now its just a question of when the Steam Deck will come back in stock. Before yesterday, the Deck was sold out for months. At the time, it was the most affordable way to get into PC gaming, especially in the face of the RAM crisis. That's no longer true, but it looks like the Steam Deck's popularity is enough to make it sell out regardless. Maybe the higher price will at least help Valve keep it in stock for people who still want to buy it, no matter the cost. Earlier this week, Valve announced a price increase of more than 40% for two of its Steam Deck models, citing "rising memory and storage costs." The price changes, according to Valve, reflect "the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole." "The 512GB tier of its OLED handheld gaming PC -- the newer model with an upgraded display -- will now cost $789, an increase of 43%," notes the BBC. "The larger 1TB model will cost $949, an increase of 46%."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Job seekers say the lack of opportunities has affected their mental health and left them fearing for the future

When Catherina finished her degree in digital film production in London, she thought her prospects of finding work were good, but she has found the jobs market tough.

AP review finds unprecedented number of suicide deaths as critics attack failures of Trump’s immigration crackdown

Brayan Rayo Garzón was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of Covid.

His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother, as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness.

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

Trump administration in a bind as it faces mounting economic costs ahead of midterms from Iran war

The terms of a purported 60-day deal to negotiate peace in the Iran war have trapped the Trump administration between mounting economic costs ahead of midterm elections and anger from Republican hawks who accuse the US government of surrendering to Iran.

The public rift between Trump and Senate Republicans over his shift toward diplomacy with Iran has also been matched within his administration, where the dovish JD Vance and traditional neoconservative Marco Rubio have been forced to pirouette between Trump’s policies as he shifts to exit the war as soon as possible.

GAINESVILLE, Fla., May 28, 2026 — A new University of Florida case study examines how a major investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure grew into a university-wide initiative spanning teaching, research, workforce development and statewide access to advanced computing.

Credit: UF

The case study, Building an AI University: From Infrastructure Gift to Systemic Transformation, by UF marketing professor Michael Carrillo, is scheduled for publication May 27 as the inaugural title in the new Warrington Case Series, published by Warrington Press, an imprint of University of Florida Press. The case is intended as a teaching tool for business, higher education and public-sector leaders studying how large institutions move from technology adoption to organizational change.

At the center of the case is HiPerGator AI, UF’s AI supercomputer, which was completed in 2021. At launch, HiPerGator AI was the most powerful AI supercomputer in higher education and the 22nd most powerful system worldwide. The machine became the foundation for broader investments in AI education, research and workforce training.

The study traces UF’s AI initiative to an $85 million investment that combined a $25 million gift from NVIDIA co-founder and UF alumnus Chris Malachowsky; a $25 million NVIDIA contribution; $15 million from the University of Florida; and $20 million in recurring support from the State of Florida for faculty hiring. The investment supported not only AI infrastructure but also data center expansion, faculty hiring and technical support for researchers using the systems.

By 2025, the study reports that UF had grown to more than 230 AI-designated courses across all 16 colleges, with more than 300 participating faculty and 14,000 annual student enrollments. The university has also implemented a 9-credit university-wide AI certificate open to undergraduates, AI Scholars research pathways and an AI Medallion for graduating seniors who complete coursework, research and experiential learning.

“What was exciting about writing this case was learning how far the influence of an AI supercomputer extends beyond the machine itself,” Carrillo said. “The HiPerGator gift was the catalyst, but the transformation depended on precursors that don’t come in a crate: executive alignment, resources to help researchers and faculty actually use the system, broad faculty engagement and infrastructure for student learning.

“What ties them together is that every one of those investments was made in service of education,” he said.

The case examines UF’s AI Across the Curriculum model, which aims to integrate AI instruction into every discipline on campus. The framework organizes courses into different levels of AI instruction, from introductory exposure to advanced coursework focused on AI mastery and ethics.

Faculty hiring is another core element of UF’s approach. From 2020 to 2022, UF hired 106 AI-focused faculty across all 16 colleges. The distribution reflects one of the case’s central arguments: UF approached AI as a university-wide capability rather than a narrow computer science initiative.

The case also explores whether UF’s approach could serve as a model for other institutions. A related white paper by Malachowsky, “New Frontier: The 50-State AI Computing Initiative,” proposes partnerships among states, universities, philanthropy, industry and the federal government to expand AI computing infrastructure and education nationwide.

The case is the first publication in the new Warrington Case Series. The publication is expected to be followed by four related micro cases examining the leadership structure behind UF’s AI initiative.

Source: Eric Hamilton, University of Florida

The post University of Florida Case Study Highlights HiPerGator AI as Catalyst for Education and Research Expansion appeared first on HPCwire.

Alan Milburn’s landmark report says unemployment among young costs UK £125bn a year and warns of ‘lost generation’

• ‘A record of failure’: what’s in first part of Milburn report?

• Tell us: we would like to hear from young people in the UK about their job hunting experience

Labour is poised for a fresh attempt at changing the welfare system after a major government-backed report said youth unemployment was costing Britain more than £125bn a year.

As official figures revealed the number of young people not working or studying had surpassed a million for the first time in more than a decade, Alan Milburn said the government had a responsibility to the next generation to take action.

A $125,000 CD account may sound unconventional, but the returns savers can quickly earn are still considerable.

DNA testing proved Anthony Odiong fathered child with woman to whom he had been providing spiritual guidance, authorities say

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Texas prosecutors on Thursday established that a Roman Catholic priest being tried there on charges that he illegally exploited his status as a priest to pursue sex with three spiritually vulnerable congregants had a child with a separate congregant in approximately 2023 – while working outside New Orleans.

That explosive development unfolded on the third day of Anthony Odiong’s trial at a state courthouse in Waco, Texas, where he worked before being transferred to Luling, Louisiana.

As costs rise and local resources reach their limits, OSC provides a scalable path forward

COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 28, 2026 — At Ohio University, students and researchers are using the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) to take on increasingly complex, data-intensive work—from simulating medical research problems to creating digital art with artificial intelligence.

Ohio University mathematics faculty and students are collaborating with cardiologist Alexander Hattoum, M.D., to study atrial fibrillation (AFib) using mathematical modeling, simulation, and high performance computing resources at the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Pictured left to right: Todd Young, Martin Mohlenkamp, Camden Kilton, Graham Walther, Alexander Hattoum, M.D., and Qiliang Wu.

For Robert Foreman, Ohio University’s Campus Champion for OSC, connecting researchers with OSC resources is a central part of his role. As manager of software engineering within the university’s Office of Information Technology and product manager for research computing, Foreman helps faculty and students navigate growing computational demands.

“If you have HPC needs, OSC should be your first stop,” Foreman said.

As a shared, statewide resource, OSC provides access to high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure that would be difficult for individual departments or research teams to build and maintain on their own.

That access is becoming more important as research demands continue to grow. For mathematics PhD student Muhammad Shahzeb Ali, the need for HPC became clear while working with more than 330,000 molecular conformations as part of his dissertation on molecular machine learning.

“For my dissertation, we used OSC to perform the large-scale computations required to train and evaluate machine learning models for molecular prediction tasks,” he said. “Without access to OSC’s computing infrastructure, completing these experiments in a reasonable timeframe would have been extremely difficult.”

By leveraging resources at OSC, Ali was able to process massive datasets efficiently and complete experiments that would have otherwise been out of reach with desktop computing or local systems.

Across Ohio University’s mathematics department, similar needs are driving increased use of OSC, as students and researchers take on data-intensive problems that require scalable computing.

In one example, mathematics faculty and students are collaborating with cardiologist Alexander Hattoum, M.D., to better understand the causes of atrial fibrillation (AFib), the most common heart rhythm disorder. Working with Ohio University Professor Todd Young, the team is using mathematical modeling and simulation to study the electrical behavior of heart cells.

Undergraduate students have used OSC resources to simulate large-scale models of heart cell activity, generating patterns that reflect the chaotic behavior seen in AFib. These simulations are helping researchers explore the conditions under which the disorder may develop, with the goal of informing future treatment options.

Beyond research, OSC also supports creative applications across campus. In Ohio University’s Digital Art + Technology program, students working with Assistant Professor of Instruction Basil Masri Zada have used OSC resources to generate AI-driven artwork, including designing the signature artwork for Cardinal, an OSC supercomputer —demonstrating how access to advanced computing is expanding opportunities beyond traditional STEM fields.

For many students, that access represents their first opportunity to work with HPC resources.

“For a lot of these students, without OSC, they wouldn’t have access to an HPC environment at all,” Foreman said. “That’s a game changer.”

This exposure allows students to build skills in the same types of systems used in research labs, industry roles, and emerging technology fields, providing hands-on experience with tools and workflows expected in today’s workforce.

By using OSC, faculty and students aren’t hindered by the computational limitations of desktop computers or locally built systems.

In the past, research teams may have purchased their own hardware using grant funding, building small, independent clusters tailored to specific projects. While effective in the short term, those systems often come with long-term challenges that are difficult to sustain.

“With the current prices of memory and GPUs, that is becoming very cost prohibitive,” Foreman said.

Even beyond the initial investment, maintaining those environments requires ongoing support that is not always accounted for.

“They might run it for a year or two, and then they need someone to help run it,” he said. “They vastly underestimate the operational cost.”

As institutions navigate limited budgets and increasing student and faculty computational demands, the ability to rely on shared infrastructure becomes not only practical, but necessary.

In those cases, OSC provides a path forward, enabling students and researchers to move beyond the limits of traditional computing and focus on advancing their work.

Looking ahead, Foreman sees Ohio University continuing to rely more heavily on OSC as a central resource for research computing.

“I see us pushing more traffic to OSC,” he said. “The nice thing about OSC is that it’s accessible to anyone and everyone.”

About OSC

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) addresses the rising computational demands of academic and industrial research communities by providing a robust shared infrastructure and proven expertise in advanced modeling, simulation, and analysis. OSC empowers scientists with the services essential to making extraordinary discoveries and innovations, partners with businesses and industry to leverage computational science as a competitive force in the global knowledge economy, and leads efforts to equip the workforce with the key technology skills required for 21st-century jobs.

Source: Lexi Biasi, OSC

The post Ohio University Researchers Turn to Ohio Supercomputer Center as Computing Demands Grow appeared first on HPCwire.

Happy was the focus of a high-profile court case launched in 2018 over whether she had the legal rights of a person

Happy, an elephant that became embroiled in a high-profile court case over whether she had the legal rights of a person, has died after being euthanized at New York City’s Bronx zoo at the age of 55.

The Asian elephant, was euthanized on Tuesday after zoo staff determined that “progressive, age-related health conditions” required the decision, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs four zoos and an aquarium in New York.

Speaking in West Bank settlement, Israeli PM, who is fighting for political survival before elections, says ‘we are squeezing Hamas’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has given orders to the Israeli army to seize control of 70% of the Gaza Strip in a move that threatens to torpedo an already fragile ceasefire and create catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the already devastated territory.

Under the US-brokered ceasefire in October, the Israeli army withdrew to a demarcation line which gave Israel direct control of 53% of the occupied territory. Since then, Israeli forces have steadily advanced their positions westward into the Hamas-controlled half of the strip, and declared an ever-expanded no man’s land west of that, within which they claim the right to decide who can enter and open fire on anyone perceived as a threat.

Inventor of NVMe/TCP & KV Cache accelerator Validates Initial Connectivity to Bring High-Performance Block Storage to Windows Server Environments

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 28, 2026 — Lightbits Labs today announced the initial interoperability with the new Microsoft Windows Server NVMe-over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF) Initiator Preview. Available in Lightbits v3.19.1, this early milestone will enable storage administrators to deliver high-performance, native NVMe over TCP block storage to Windows Server Insider hosts over standard Ethernet once Microsoft releases it.

The introduction of a native NVMe-oF initiator in Windows Server represents a significant shift for data infrastructure. By removing the need for legacy SCSI-based protocols or specialized hardware, organizations can achieve better application performance, lower storage overhead and improved scalability while using existing Ethernet. Lightbits has engaged with the Microsoft Windows Server team throughout this preview stage to ensure seamless integration for this emerging capability.

“Our work with Microsoft to validate the Windows NVMe-oF Initiator Preview is a critical step in democratizing high-performance block storage,” said Abel Gordon, CTO of Lightbits Labs. “By bringing native NVMe/TCP support to Windows Server, end users can provision Lightbits volumes and connect them to Windows Server Insider hosts in just a few steps.”

As this is a pre-release capability, it is not intended for production use but rather for exploration and evaluation. Lightbits invites customers and partners to explore the functionality and share their feedback.

To learn more about the Windows NVMe-oF Initiator Preview, visit the Microsoft website.

About Lightbits Labs

Lightbits Labs (Lightbits) is the inventor of the NVMe over TCP storage protocol, which is natively built into its industry-leading block storage, and the first KV cache prefetch engine acceleration for AI. Lightbits data storage solutions are engineered to deliver unmatched high performance and maximum hardware efficiency for LLM inference, real-time analytics, and transactional workloads at scale. Lightbits is backed by enterprise technology leaders [Cisco Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital, Lenovo, and Micron] and is on a mission to deliver best-in-class, cost-efficient storage systems for performance-sensitive workloads at scale.

Source: Lightbits Labs

The post Lightbits Labs Announces Early, Initial Interoperability with Microsoft Windows Server NVMe-oF Initiator Preview appeared first on HPCwire.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: The technology giant Microsoft has been accused of leaking the data of civil servants working for the Netherlands' regulatory agencies to the US House of Representatives. The civil servants affected by the leak work at the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) and the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP), according to the NL Times. They are involved in implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Union regulation on online services, aimed at combating illegal content and protecting user rights. NL Times reports that Microsoft shared emails, minutes, and invitations sent by the civil servants without redacting their names in the documents. Willemijn Aerdts, Dutch State Secretary for Digital Economy and Sovereignty, said she discussed the allegations with US Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo. [...] The allegations against Microsoft further strengthen concerns over Europe's dependence on American technologies, which poses major risks to data privacy. Further reading: Netherlands Blocks US Takeover of Vital Digital Supplier

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Canada beat USA 4-0 to reach world semis

• Goaltender Jet Greaves stars with shutout

• Finland beat Czechs to book last-four spot

Canada cruised to a 4-0 win over reigning champion the United States to book their spot in the semi-finals of the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship on Thursday, surviving a third-period onslaught to gain some revenge over the Americans, who beat them in this year’s Olympic final.

That 2-1 overtime loss in February was a painful one for the Canadians, who crashed out of last year’s worlds at the quarter-final stage after suffering a 2-1 defeat by Denmark in one of the greatest upsets in the sport’s history.

There are federal rules that shield Social Security from creditors, but you may need to prove it to your bank first.

Get the features you want in a desk with the help of CNET experts who have found the best desks of 2026.

Jannik Sinner crashed to a shock defeat by Juan Manuel Cerúndolo but Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff progressed

Back with Kouame, he’s up advantage, takes control of the next rally, and a deep backhand incites Vallejo to net on the forehand! The 17-year-old takes the first set 6-3, with two breaks, and Lenglen is jumping!

Kouame holds for 5-3, then makes 30-40 and set point; Vallejo saves it well, serving out wide then putting away a shoulder-high volley. But he’s soon down advantage, Kouame missing his backhand down the line to restore deuce, but Vallejo shanks his forehand so back round we go. Meantime, Jovic outlasts Navarro in a protracted game on 14, taking her sixth break point to leads 6-0 2-0. She’s taking an experienced top-10 talent to the absolute cleaners.

London authority’s new Tory-led administration delivers significant blow to Labour’s flagship housebuilding scheme

Enfield council in north London has withdrawn from the government’s new towns programme, in a significant blow to Labour’s flagship housebuilding scheme.

The move by the new minority Conservative-led administration could present one of the first tests of Rachel Reeves’s planning changes, designed to curb the use of judicial reviews against new infrastructure.

Canada prime minister urges greater economic cooperation between the two countries in speech delivered in New York

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney has called for a new relationship with the United States to “help make America great again”.

In a speech delivered in New York on Thursday, Carney said that there should be a “true partnership” that reimagines cooperation in specific sectors challenged by global competition.

PM says predecessor misunderstands government’s successes and ‘very different’ situation compared with 1997

Keir Starmer has dismissed Tony’s Blair’s argument that his government is on the wrong track, saying he is implementing the policies needed for today, not the very different situation faced by the former prime minister in 1997.

“You won’t be surprised to know that I don’t agree with much that Tony says about what the government is doing,” Starmer said during a visit to an apprentice training centre in west London.

Ten people, all of whom were e-scooter riders, were killed in collisions compared with six in 2024

Nearly 500 people were seriously injured in collisions involving e-scooters in Great Britain last year, government statistics have shown.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said there had been an estimated 1,484 casualties in crashes involving electric scooters, compared with 1,390 in 2024.

Improve your health and reduce stiffness with a standing desk for your office.

Commentary: Size really is everything when it comes to wearables, something Oura has shown it understands with its reengineered Ring 5.

These five dietitian-backed air fryer recipes hit the sweet spot between fast, crispy and genuinely nutritious.

IBM and Red Hat are committing $5 billion to a new initiative called "Project Lightwell," which aims to secure open-source software supply chains with AI-assisted vulnerability discovery, triage, patch validation, and upstream maintenance. Longtime Slashdot reader wiggles shares a press release from IBM: IBM and Red Hat today announced Project Lightwell, a $5 billion commitment backed by new frontier AI capabilities and a global force of more than 20,000 engineers to help enterprises secure open source software. Together, these investments establish a new model for enterprise use of open source software, from upstream development through production environments. Project Lightwell will establish a trusted enterprise clearinghouse combined with a global force of engineers to identify and fix vulnerabilities at scale. The clearinghouse will serve as a security coordination layer, using advanced AI capabilities to validate and test fixes across an unprecedented volume of open source code. These capabilities will be offered through commercial subscriptions, allowing enterprises to integrate secure patches directly into their existing software supply chains with enterprise-grade validation and lifecycle management. IBM and Red Hat have already begun collaborating with a select group of early adopters on Project Lightwell, including Bank of America, BNY, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, State Street, Visa and Wells Fargo. The real-world insights from these initial deployments will actively shape how vulnerabilities are identified, validated, and remediated at scale across complex software supply chains.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a recent report, Google is testing a dramatic cut to Gmail's free tier, lowering storage from 15GB to 5GB for new sign-ups.

• USMNT head coach has drawn broader interest, CEO says

• World Cup camp opens after squad reveal on Tuesday

• Sign up for the World Behind The Cup newsletter

US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino has had talks with Serie A side Milan about taking over as manager next season, the Guardian can confirm.

Italian journalist Nicolò Schira was first to report news of Pochettino’s talks with Milan.

May 28, 2026 — The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is contributing to the development of quantum computing technologies to help solve grand challenges in energy, physics, chemistry, and beyond.

Faculty Scientist Dan Stamper-Kurn adjusts the optics on a laser experiment. Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab.

A big part of this effort is serving as a go-to resource for companies at the vanguard of quantum computing R&D and preparing the quantum workforce of tomorrow. Berkeley Lab partners with industry and across the quantum research ecosystem — from theory to application — to fabricate and test quantum-based devices, develop software and algorithms, and build prototype computers and networks. These capabilities also enable Berkeley Lab to play a key role in Quantum California, a new statewide initiative to coordinate California’s leadership in quantum technology, workforce development, and economic growth.

“Berkeley Lab’s expertise and capabilities are a vital component of the nation’s quantum ecosystem and help ensure that breakthroughs can move from experimental stages to practical applications,” said Bert de Jong, Quantum Systems Accelerator Director and Berkeley Lab scientist.

Here are several ways Berkeley Lab is already a vital part of the nation’s quantum ecosystem, supporting industry and more:

Quantum Application Network Testbed for Novel Entanglement Technology (QUANT-NET)

QUANT-NET is building a three-node distributed quantum computing testbed that connects Berkeley Lab with UC Berkeley, distributing quantum entanglement across 5 km of fiber. The project is led by researchers at Berkeley Lab and ESnet, working with co-PIs from UC Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Innsbruck. It is DOE’s only testbed devoted to distributed quantum computing. The QUANT-NET team collaborates with industry partners to develop and deploy their relevant components on the testbed, provides its modular software for use with other quantum networks, and shares technology advancements made on the testbed with the research community.

The team has made significant progress toward a practical, scalable quantum network. The testbed currently offers custom-built ion-trap quantum computing nodes, with leading 3-D printed micro-traps optimized for quantum communications. The team also deployed quantum frequency conversion to telecom frequencies, and they developed an innovative modular quantum network software platform with a two-level framework that automates quantum network operations. This two-level approach recently won the best paper award for the quantum networking & communications track at the IEEE Quantum Week 2025 conference.

Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA)

The Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), led by Berkeley Lab in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, is one of five DOE national quantum information science research centers. Established in 2020 and renewed in 2025, QSA brings together experts from leading academic institutions, industry, and national laboratories to develop quantum devices capable of tackling scientific problems beyond the reach of conventional computers, using three leading qubit technologies: trapped ions, superconducting systems, and neutral atoms.

Through these multi-sector collaborations, QSA’s scientific breakthroughs — such as reconfigurable array systems of neutral atoms — have been adopted by industry, with hardware deployed by companies like QuEra and commercial licensing of flex cable technologies. QSA has demonstrated a 256-atom quantum simulator, advancing the scalability and capabilities of quantum hardware for real-world applications. The open-source QubiC control system, also leveraged by industry collaborators like NVIDIA’s NVQLink, supports scalable device benchmarking and algorithm development.

QSA’s innovation ecosystem includes dedicated industry roundtables, and partners benefit from access to broader resources, such as world-class quantum foundries and national user facilities, open-access software, and rapid design qubit capabilities. These resources offer clear entry points for industry collaboration and have enabled successful partnerships with both established companies and startups.

National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) enables the work of over 11,000 science researchers through high performance computing. Since 2022, NERSC’s QIS @ Perlmutter program, which supports projects in quantum information science with compute time and expertise, has awarded more than half a million compute hours to more than 30 QIS project teams across national labs, industry and academia. Additionally, NERSC’s Quantum Computing Access program offers some users access to quantum computers at IBM and QuEra Computing for use in their research. Collaborating with companies like NVIDIA, QuEra, Xanadu, Rigetti, and others on projects in quantum simulation, error mitigation, chemistry, materials science, and condensed matter physics, NERSC is accelerating quantum simulations at supercomputing scale.

Molecular Foundry

The Molecular Foundry provides access to expertise, instrumentation, and tool development for research at the smallest scales. Since phenomena at the nanoscale touch nearly every field of science, the Foundry brings together a broad range of capabilities, all under one roof. Researchers here are working to improve fundamental understanding of quantum phenomena in materials, targeting breakthroughs in coherence and scalability in quantum computing and sensing. Industry researchers can collaborate with staff who integrate atomic-scale synthesis and design, multimodal characterization, AI accelerated theory, and device feedback to achieve these goals. Available tools include a QIS cluster tool that enables researchers to experiment with dozens of materials and methods for making qubit components in a single automated system, and a soon-to-be-delivered dilution refrigerator that will enable high-throughput analysis of qubits.

Advanced Light Source

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) produces bright beams of X-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared light for cutting-edge research. Each year, as many as 2,000 scientists from industry, academia, and national labs use the ALS to probe materials with atomic precision — work that underpins technologies from semiconductors to energy storage. ALS capabilities are advancing the quantum frontier by enabling visualization and control of quantum states in new materials, including superconductors, topological insulators, and atomically thin magnets — helping industry accelerate innovation in next-generation electronics and quantum devices.

Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce

As cutting-edge quantum research pushes the boundaries of technology, national labs are also helping to build a future workforce ready for the rapidly evolving field. At the forefront of this effort is QSA, which trains over 150 graduate students and 100 postdoctoral students annually, building a robust pipeline of quantum talent to keep American businesses and research organizations at the forefront of the field.

An educator takes part in QCaMP. Teachers spent three weeks onsite learning from researchers, working on projects, and preparing lesson plans to incorporate quantum and physics lessons into their classroom. Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab.

Complementing QSA’s efforts at Berkeley Lab, internships and hands-on research projects at the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) prepare students, postdocs, and early-career researchers for careers in fields such as quantum device design and fabrication, cryogenic engineering, and scalable quantum software. Alumni go on to lead innovation at technology companies, startups, and research institutes. Through collaborative R&D, hardware partnerships, and skilled talent, AQT strengthens America’s leadership in transformative quantum technologies.

Building on this strong foundation of graduate and postdoctoral training, efforts are also underway to engage students much earlier in their educational journeys. Berkeley Lab’s Academic Learning Internships and Faculty Training Office (formerly Workforce Development & Education and K–12 STEM Education programs), in collaboration with partners such as Sandia National Laboratories, is developing programs that introduce high school students and educators to quantum concepts well before career paths are firmly set. The aim is to spark curiosity, build foundational skills, and create pathways into future quantum careers.

One such pioneering initiative for high school students and educators is QSA’s Quantum Computing Mathematics and Physics Summer Camp (QCaMP). What began as a series of short online sessions has evolved into comprehensive, in-person programs. To date, QCaMP has reached more than 300 educators as well as over 200 students nationwide. Many alumni — both students and teachers — have returned to Berkeley Lab as quantum research interns. Building on this momentum, Berkeley Lab plans to deepen partnerships with community colleges and universities in 2026, with an increased emphasis on workforce readiness.

Source: Berkeley Lab

The post Berkeley Lab: Partnering with Industry to Accelerate Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

Two Iranian brothers who joined January's protests say the war has made things worse, and ending it shouldn't only be about uranium.

In defending his record on measles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. twice said during a recent Senate hearing, “We promote” the measles vaccine. While it’s true that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend the shot, Kennedy has rarely made an unequivocal endorsement of it, even as the nation has seen an alarming rise in measles cases.

Over a series of seven congressional hearings in April, Kennedy, who previously led a nonprofit that has spread vaccine misinformation, was quizzed about his views on the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine and his response to the many large outbreaks of measles over the last year and a half.

Experts blame the outbreaks on a decline in the vaccination rate, particularly in some areas of the country where vaccine coverage is especially low, which allows introductions of the disease to spread and grow. The U.S. eliminated the disease in 2000, meaning there hadn’t been continuous transmission of measles for more than a year within U.S. borders. With few exceptions, the U.S. has seen no more than a few hundred cases annually for many years. But since January 2025, there have been more than 4,200 cases and the first measles deaths since 2015.

When asked by a senator on April 22 what he was doing to reduce the number of measles cases and improve the MMR vaccination rate, Kennedy responded, “Improve the MMR. We promote the MMR. We have advised every child to get the MMR. That’s what we do.”

In the same hearing, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado similarly asked, “Are you taking the position, as your CDC director has taken, that the measles vaccine is vital to keeping American children healthy in this country? Are you taking that position today? That has not been your position.”

“That’s my position. I — we promote the measles vaccine,” Kennedy said. “The measles vaccine prevents measles in 97% of the people who take it. I’ve always said that. That’s what the science says.”

Kennedy had often noted the MMR vaccine’s effectiveness. But prior to last month, we could not find a single instance in which Kennedy offered vigorous, unqualified support for the vaccine, without including or later adding inaccurate or misleading information that might cause someone to rethink vaccination.

We reviewed his statements, focusing on the last year and a half, to put his claim in context. In the interactive timeline below, we identify Kennedy’s most significant remarks with respect to measles or the MMR vaccine.

For example, in an April 2025 X post that was widely covered by the press and angered some of his anti-vaccine supporters, Kennedy accurately stated that the MMR vaccine is the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.”

Later the same day, however, Kennedy posted again, writing that two local doctors “have treated and healed some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children.” He cited two drugs that don’t have evidence to support them as a treatment for the disease.

Measles is a highly contagious viral illness that has no cure or specific therapies. While vaccination or immunoglobulin shortly after exposure can be effective, once someone is sick, physicians can only treat symptoms.

In much of his messaging, Kennedy was willing to say the vaccine works. But he also emphasized parental choice and spoke of vaccine safety concerns.

“We should have informed choice, and — but if people don’t want it, they shouldn’t be — the government shouldn’t force them to do it,” Kennedy said of vaccination in a March 11, 2025, interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, a little more than a month into a measles outbreak in West Texas. “There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes — it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, etc. And so, people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And — and what we need to do is give them the best information, encourage them to vaccinate. The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.”

The MMR vaccine is a very safe vaccine, and there isn’t evidence it causes deaths “every year.” While serious side effects can occur, they are rare. Because the vaccine contains a live but weakened virus, it can in extremely rare cases lead to a measles infection that can be severe or fatal in someone who is severely immunocompromised. For this reason, the vaccine is not supposed to be given to anyone who has a serious immunodeficiency. The Infectious Diseases Society of America notes on its website that there have been “no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people.”

Even when Kennedy has said that he recommends the vaccine — usually only when asked directly or pressed to do so — he limited the endorsement to certain groups or undercut it by offering other inaccurate information that could discourage vaccination.

In his first non-Fox network TV interview as secretary, Kennedy did say when asked that it was his position and the federal government’s position that “people should get the measles vaccine.”

“But,” he added, “the government should not be mandating those.” He went on to misleadingly say that the risks of vaccines are unknown because they are not adequately safety tested. (It is up to individual states to determine the vaccinations required to attend school; while all states as of 2025 require the MMR vaccine, it is not mandated at the federal level.)

Earlier in the interview, Kennedy baselessly claimed that the two children who died of measles in Texas actually died of other things (the state health authorities have said both deaths were caused by measles). He also wrongly implied that measles outbreaks were occurring “because the vaccine wanes very quickly.”

In each of these appearances, even if Kennedy did briefly say that the vaccine was being recommended, the overall takeaway for viewers may not have been to go out and get the vaccine.

Dr. David Gorski, a professor of surgery and oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine who blogs about vaccine misinformation and has been following Kennedy for more than a decade, told us that he had observed a nuanced shift in Kennedy’s language since becoming health secretary.

Kennedy has “toned down” his rhetoric, “but without really changing the overall message,” he said. “RFK Jr.’s and CDC’s messaging has basically been, ‘You can take the MMR if you want to and it’ll prevent measles, but measles isn’t so bad.’”

Kennedy, as far as we can tell, did not say the MMR vaccine was safe until his congressional testimony on April 16, when Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, asked him — yes or no — if the MMR vaccine is “safe and effective.” He said, “Yes.” But even then, he qualified the statement, adding, “It’s safe for most people.”

Other HHS officials have made stronger endorsements of the MMR vaccine.

“There is no cure for measles, which is why prevention is so critical,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, National Institutes of Health director and then-acting CDC director, said in a March 2 video posted to X. “The MMR vaccine remains the most reliable and effective way to prevent it. Two doses are 97% effective at providing lifelong protection against measles and its complications. Vaccination protects not only individuals but entire communities.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz, who heads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told CNN on Feb. 8, “Take the vaccine, please. We have a solution for our problem.”

We reached out to HHS to ask for comment and also to identify positive remarks Kennedy has made about the MMR or measles vaccine. We didn’t get a response. Previously, the agency has told other news outlets that HHS leadership “has consistently said that the MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent the spread of measles and protect public health.”

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 A Timeline of RFK Jr.’s Mixed Messaging on the Measles Vaccine appeared first on FactCheck.org.

After almost 10 years of putting air fryers through their paces -- every shape, every size -- one countertop cooker stands above the rest.

Concerns among commissioners in bloc that surge in imports could lead to decline similar to that of US rust belt towns

EU commissioners will meet on Friday for crunch talks aimed at imposing new restrictions on imports from China amid growing concern that Beijing is fuelling conditions for US-style rust belt towns in Europe.

The surge in imports of everything from electric cars to key components in machines, medical devices and foodstuffs has been dubbed China Shock 2.0, potentially mirroring the experience in the US 25 years ago when Beijing joined the World Trade Organization.

AI-powered infrastructure software is key to unlocking the potential of quantum computers, enabling impact for military operations in 2027.

LOS ANGELES, May 28, 2026 — Q-CTRL today released a white paper demonstrating the near-term capability for quantum computers, powered by its industry-leading performance-management software, to solve complex computational problems for the military. Q-CTRL projects quantum advantage for certain high-value defense logistics applications to arrive as soon as 2027, signaling a strategic edge for defense leaders who prioritize integrating quantum into their C4ISR roadmaps.

Modern defense systems must seize every capability across logistics and operational planning to ensure battlefield dominance. Designated as a critical technology by the U.S. Department of Defense, quantum technologies represent the next frontier in this domain. Through a series of detailed case studies, Q-CTRL describes how embracing quantum technology now can deliver operational resilience, strengthened defense posture, and tactical overmatch for armed forces.