News Reel

Midland, Texas, police officers heard gunfire coming from a building in the southwestern part of the city and quickly responded.

Iran says a deal with the U.S. is not finalized and Trump accuses Iranian media of spreading fake terms, but Iran's top diplomat says an agreement is near.

Infineon is set to open a $5.8 billion power-chip fab in Dresden on July 2, backed by about $1.1 billion in EU Chips Act subsidies. The plant will make power semiconductors for AI data centers and could eventually add up to $5.8 billion in annual revenue as demand for AI infrastructure strains global electricity systems. Bloomberg reports: Infineon, traditionally a chipmaker for the automotive industry, has increasingly benefited from soaring demand for power chips used in AI data centers, which will be produced at the new facility. "The AI data centers currently being built and planned around the world will consume twice as much electricity in 2030 as they do today," [said Chief Operating Officer Alexander Gorski]. "That's as much as the entire Federal Republic of Germany." Chip production at the Dresden fab will be scaled over time depending on demand, potentially adding as much as 5 billion euros in revenue per year, Gorski said, declining to comment on when full capacity will be reached. The company has invested around 2 billion euros on construction and the remaining amount will be spent over time to add more machines to the fab, he added. The new facility is "a key catalyst," Bank of America analysts including Didier Scemama wrote in a note last week. Demand from Al customers is materially above Infineon's current capacity, they said, adding the imbalance could improve in the 2027 and 2028 financial years. The analysts raised their Al power revenue forecast for the company by 500 million euros to 4.5 billion euros for 2028. Infineon expects data center-related revenue to rise from around 1.5 billion euros in fiscal 2026 -- roughly 10% of sales -- to 2.5 billion euros in 2027, it said last month. The hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in AI are driving the rapid expansion of data center capabilities around the world. Infineon doesn't produce advanced AI chips, like those designed by Nvidia. But the power semiconductors it plans to produce in Dresden are still needed for AI infrastructure.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

⚽️ Canada tightens in anticipation | What is enough for US?
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail John

Five takeaways from the World Cup opener. These come courtesy of Matt Hughes who was in the Azteca (I can’t bring myself to say Mexico City Stadium).

How about this: you’re still tucking into your morning cornflakes and there’s already a World Cup daily pod to listen to. Jet-lag isn’t Jonathan Wilson’s friend but an evening in the Azteca lifted spirits, especially Raul Jimenez’s goal. Also, a glimpse behind the scenes at the first few days of Max and Barry living together in the US, insights from Barney Ronay and Jeff Rueter as well as your questions answered.

The SpaceX CEO's fortune on paper now rivals the annual economic output of many countries, according to World Bank data.

The advent of AI puts a premium on developing skills like critical thinking and communication, according to education experts. The liberal arts can help.

A federal judge continued to block the Justice Department's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, expressing skepticism with the administration's claims that the program is not moving forward.

SpaceX executives have rung the Nasdaq opening bell after a record-breaking initial public offering which values Elon Musk’s company at $1.77tn in share offering

SpaceX’s shares will be supported by a number of “forced buyers”, such as tracker funds.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, explains:

The Nasdaq index has tweaked its rules, which has allowed SpaceX to join the index on a fast-track basis. It remains to be seen whether the company will have a disproportionate effect on the index in terms of weighting, but in any event its inclusion guarantees some additional and significant buying pressure.

Iran earlier released a list of terms it said were in a draft memorandum of understanding with the US

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) has cautioned against media speculation about a potential memorandum of understanding to end the war, particularly on claims regarding the strait of Hormuz.

IRNA reported that Iran will not surrender its control of the strategic waterway and the US will have no role in its future management.

Contrary to some bizarre claims in the media, Iran in no way makes a commitment in this text to hand over its management or to restore the strait of Hormuz to the state before the military aggression of the US and Israel. The only point mentioned is the normalisation of transit through the strait of Hormuz upon the end of the war, the establishment of maritime security by the coastal states, the end of the illegal blockade, and the removal of threats to commercial shipping by the US and Israel. At Iran’s request, the US will have no role whatsoever in the future management of the strait of Hormuz. It has been made clear that the future administration of the strait will be based on an Iranian initiative and proposal, within the framework of a matter pertaining to the countries of the region. In this framework, discussions about the future of the strait of Hormuz will not take place even in negotiations after the signing of the agreement, and Tehran will directly resolve this issue in talks with Oman.”

Law due to expire at midnight tonight following unhappiness over Trump’s pick for intelligence chief

• A powerful US surveillance law is set to expire – what happens now?

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Donald Trump and his allies have discussed pushing lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding his first-term impeachments, the Wall Street Journal reported last night, citing people familiar with the matter.

“It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump said when asked about the resolution in a phone call this week with the Journal. “It was a rigged deal — it was a whole rigged situation.”

CD account interest rates are high across terms right now. Here are four of the best to consider this June.

The prime minister defended the ‘hard-edged decisions’ he has made to cut funding from other departments to spend more on defence

As armed forces minister, Al Carns was not involved in work on the defence investment plan (Dip). In his resignation letter, he said it was flawed not just because of the amount of funding involved; he also claimed it focused too much on the wrong capability. He said (and I’ve highlighted the key phrases in bold):

The character of conflict is changing faster than our procurement can keep up with. We are still purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one. Platforms that cost billions can be defeated by systems that cost thousands. Any serious defence investment plan has to start from that reality.

While I had no hand in the defence investment plan, that distance does allow me to say plainly that it is not built for the threat we face.

I want to see a higher percentage for uncrewed systems, AI, data – data is the new gunpowder – and we’ve got to move that forward if we are going to win the next war.

Too many working people in this country feel insecure even when they are doing everything right. They work hard, contribute, pay their taxes and still feel one setback away from trouble. Public confidence in our institutions is weakening and politics increasingly looks performative while everyday life gets harder.

The machinery of government itself has been left to decay. Decisions that should take days, take months. Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it. We are trying to govern a more dangerous world with processes designed for a calmer one, and the gap is now showing in the things that matter most.

City has become caught up in the drama as team stands on brink of a first NBA championship in 53 years

After the New York Knicks’ furious comeback over the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night, the last place anyone in the city wanted to be was at home. Taylor Swift and Larry David were among the celebrities who lingered at Madison Square Garden after the final buzzer sounded on the 107-106 victory as Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York washed over the arena.

The former Knick Iman Shumpert, sporting his old No 21 jersey, made a beeline from the arena to Times Square to join the stunned celebration. All over the city, car horns blared, raucous watch parties spilled on to the streets and perfect strangers greeted one another by barking “Go Knicks!”. As they might put it on Broadway: it was just one of those nights.

Public figures sign open letter calling for scheme to be moved from Home Office to independent body

• UK politics live – latest updates

The prime minister and the home secretary have been urged to remove the Windrush compensation scheme from Home Office control.

About 70 public figures have signed an open letter backing a call by the Windrush Justice Community Collective (WJCC) for a radical overhaul of the scheme, which was set up to compensate those, mainly Black Britons, who were wrongly classed as illegal migrants and stripped of citizenship rights over decades.

Trump administration created fund to resolve his lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns

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A US federal judge agreed on Friday to extend a court-ordered block on the Trump administration’s creation and operation of a $1.8bn settlement fund for compensating people who claim to be victims of a weaponized government.

Earlier this month, Todd Blanche, the acting US attorney general, told Congress that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a fierce bipartisan backlash. Government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot, but plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t satisfied by Blanche’s assurances that the fund won’t move forward.

Multiple tornadoes touched down in Livingston county, Illinois, on 12 June. One tore through the city of Streator, damaging homes and infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of people in the region were left without power

Users are reporting problems with the Meta social media apps.

PM promises to fight any leadership challenge, saying any successor would face same problems as him

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has said he knows he has to “turn things around” after a series of crises culminating in the resignation of John Healey, the defence secretary, but warned that any successor would face the same difficult decisions.

In an interview with the BBC after Healey’s departure in a row over defence spending, Starmer promised again to fight any leadership challenge from Andy Burnham or others, saying: “I’m not going to walk away.”

While venues could stay open until 2am, rising costs remain a far bigger concern for many landlords

Picture the scene: it’s 1am on a sultry July night and Jude Bellingham has just scored the decisive penalty to send England into the World Cup semi-final. Cue wild celebrations among millions of pub goers, fuelled by the realisation that there is still an hour until closing time.

Keir Starmer may have imagined a national morale-boosting spectacle such as this when his government told hospitality venues that they could stay open until 2am on some World Cup match days.

Exclusive A vast area of the Bellingshausen Sea should be covered by sea ice by now, with one expert calling the loss of ice ‘depressing’

Antarctica’s west coast is missing an area of winter sea ice the size of France, sparking concerns for threatened penguins other marine life and global sea levels.

One expert said the loss of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea was “depressing” and the failure of ice to form could have intensified a heatwave over the continent’s peninsular last week that saw daytime temperatures peak at 15.4C which is more than 20C above average.

The first big tech IPO of the summer includes Starlink, xAI and X. It could set the stage for expected public offerings by Anthropic and OpenAI.

New leaks point to a much larger battery and a summer launch alongside the Galaxy Watch 9.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Few business leaders have been as deeply embedded in popular culture as Elon Musk, the ambitious entrepreneur who has become a central figure in internet culture and amassed a fortune that has made him the world's first trillionaire. At a time when concerns about inequality are high and public attitudes toward the ultra-wealthy have soured, Musk has managed to retain a loyal following despite his stratospheric net worth and without the folksy persona that endeared other tycoons such as Warren Buffett to the masses. While admirers view Musk's no-filter style as part of his appeal, critics have accused him of wielding oligarch-like power, raised concerns about governance at his companies and objected to his increasingly partisan political interventions. Still, SpaceX, the sprawling rocket, satellite and AI company that together with electric-car maker Tesla form the center of Musk's empire, raised a record $75 billion in its initial public offering on Thursday, highlighting investor enthusiasm for his business ventures. Prior to the share sale, Forbes pegged his net worth at roughly $780 billion, far ahead of the man next in line, Alphabet co-founder Larry Page. "The second richest person has been hovering around $300 billion, so about less than one-third of what Musk can potentially be worth tomorrow," said Matt Durot, deputy editor at Forbes Wealth. "And only one other person, (Oracle founder) Larry Ellison, has ever been worth $400 billion." Most of Musk's wealth now rests with SpaceX, where he holds a stake worth roughly $866 billion. Along with Tesla and the rest of his properties, his net worth will exceed $1.1 trillion when the stock begins trading Friday, according to Forbes and Reuters calculations based on company filings.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Initial public offering for Elon Musk’s aerospace and AI company is likely to make him the world’s first trillionaire

SpaceX made the biggest stock market debut in history on Friday after nearly two and a half decades as a private company. With a valuation of $1.77tn, the company’s initial public offering is likely to make the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire.

“It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,” Musk said in an address at SpaceX’s headquarters. He reiterated the company’s mission to “make humanity multiplanetary” and “take the fiction out of science fiction”.

Investors will get their first chance to trade shares of Elon Musk's space company after the market opens at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Rising artificial intelligence demand has led to a nationwide construction boom of power-hungry data centers in recent years, driving concern about rising utility costs. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., recently called for raising taxes on companies building data centers and said they’ve increased electricity bills for Americans.

"If you live near one of these large data centers, your electricity bills over the last five years have gone up by as much as 267%," Warren said in a June 5 X post.

Warren used that same figure in a December 2025 letter she and other senators sent to tech firms when announcing an investigation into their effect on utilities costs. The letter cited a September 2025 Bloomberg article analyzing data centers’ effects on electricity prices.

That article found that wholesale prices in locations near data centers have risen, in some places, by "as much as 267%" compared with five years ago. But that figure was referring to the rate utility companies pay producers, not the rates people pay to the utility companies for their monthly residential electric bills. 

Warren’s office pointed us to reporting from CBS News and Fortune that also mischaracterized the Bloomberg analysis as an increase in consumer bills. 

Warren’s office also provided examples of reporting on residents’ energy bills in states like Virginia and Maryland with sizable month-over-month increases last winter, in some cases doubling or tripling compared with the previous year or months. Some articles cited data center demand, along with abnormally cold weather, as causes of the increases. 

Residential electricity prices have risen in the last five years, and data center demand is a big driver in some areas. But Warren’s specific figure misrepresented the data.

What is included in a residential electricity bill?

The Bloomberg article analyzed local pricing points, called nodes, on the power grid, and found wholesale prices at some nodes near data centers increased by 267% between April 2020 and April 2025. Looking at the broader market, wholesale prices have more than doubled in some markets since 2020, the article said, while prices elsewhere have risen less sharply. 

That local wholesale price is not the same rate residents pay, Kenneth Gillingham, an economist at Yale School of the Environment, said. 

"There are other parts of the electricity bills, and the wholesale nodal electricity prices only raise the ‘supply’ component of electricity bills," he said in an email to PolitiFact.

The supply cost makes up about 30% to 50% of a consumer’s electricity bill, Gillingham said. Other components include the cost of transmission, distribution and taxes. 

Wholesale prices are often passed on to all the grid’s customers, including businesses. Utility companies often need to get rate increases approved by state regulators before passing that cost on, Gillingham said. 

Data centers have increased electricity bills

On average, residential electricity costs across the U.S. have risen by 42% in the last five years, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Data centers aren’t the sole reason, but they’ve been a major driver in some places where costs have risen the most. 

Between March 2021 and March 2026, average residential retail electricity prices rose 94% in Washington, D.C., 74% in Maryland, 73% in Maine, and 58% in New York, according to the federal energy data.

In some regions, wholesale capacity markets — in which power plants are paid to be available based on expected demand — have been a contributor to price increases. PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, has seen record-high capacity prices three years in a row.

The Independent Market Monitor for PJM reported in 2025 that "data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including total forecast load growth, the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices."

The report found that current and projected data center demand increased capacity costs by $9.3 billion, or 174% for the 2025-26 delivery year, compared with a scenario with no data center demand. 

Reports from the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel and the District of Columbia Public Service Commission pointed to data center load as one cause of rising electric bills. 

Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, said Warren has a broader point that consumers could be subsidizing the data centers. 

"Data centers are causing tens of billions of dollars of price increases in wholesale power markets and driving utilities to spend tens of billions of dollars on delivery infrastructure," Peskoe said. "In general, these cost increases are spread to all ratepayers by the utility."

Costs are likely to continue increasing without policy changes. One 2024 study found that data center demand increases without investment in generation and transmission capacity could increase electricity rates in Virginia by as much as 70% in the next decade. 

Data centers aren’t the sole cause of rising electricity prices. Other factors include equipment costs, an aging energy grid and clean energy requirements, according to a 2026 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a federally funded research center. 

Our ruling 

Warren said, "If you live near one of these large data centers, your electricity bills over the last five years have gone up by as much as 267%."

The figure she cited referred to wholesale prices, not the prices residential consumers pay every month. Wholesale prices are part of just one component of a residential electricity bill — the "supply" component, which makes up about 30% to 50% of a consumer’s electricity bill. 

Warren’s statement has an element of truth because data centers have driven up electricity costs, and average consumer prices have nearly doubled in areas such as the District of Columbia. 

But her statement gives the wrong impression about the precise effect on consumers’ utility bills so far. We rate it Mostly False. 

Nitenpyram is the first generic animal drug authorized to treat screwworms in dogs and cats, according to federal regulators.

Northern Ireland police say they got calls from distressed Belfast residents as a list of home addresses circulated online amid anti-immigration riots.

One man died in Iowa after a tree fell on him as nearly 700 severe weather events were recorded over three days

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An Illinois man whose home was destroyed by a tornado on Thursday was pulled from the rubble by a police officer and a photojournalist, who captured the terrifying storm and subsequent rescue in dramatic video footage.

Scott Lasker, who describes himself as a storm chaser, recorded the tornado ripping through the town of Streator and was filming the damage it inflicted when he came across the man trapped in the debris of his house.

Bradford-born painter, who made his name with sunkissed visions of California and never stopped breaking barriers, going on to become one of contemporary art’s most important figures, has died
• ‘David Hockney caught the look of the modern world’
• David Hockney’s life in pictures

David Hockney, the iconic British painter who cast a revolutionary gaze across 20th-century art, has died aged 88.

He made his name as a pop artist during the swinging 60s and was perhaps best known for his paintings of swimming pools that helped define the Los Angeles aesthetic. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) depicted hedonistic scenes of love, lust and loss taking place below the city’s sun-soaked skies.

Despite no immediate evidence that they were connected, the detentions of two vocal commentators on Myanmar triggered alarm in the business and research communities.

If you want to try out a modern Amiga operating system, your choices are severely constrained. Both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 need PowerPC hardware, and at the moment, there’s little to no modern hardware available for purchase to run these operating systems on. The only AmigaOS 4 hardware you can buy is either incredibly outdated, incredibly expensive, or both, and while MorphOS does run on readily available Apple PowerPC machines, those, too, are getting quite long in the tooth and performance simply isn’t keeping up. Until the Mirari becomes available – with the project steadily progressing, I have high hopes – the reality for people wanting to try out AmigaOS or MorphOS is going to be expensive, at best.

Or is it? QEMU exists, and QEMU can emulate various PowerPC systems just fine. Shouldn’t it be possible to run these two unique operating systems in a virtual environment on your modern PC, thereby making it trivial for those of us interested in the world of Amiga to dip our toes into the water without having to spend inordinate sums for outdated hardware? It turns out that yes, this is entirely possible, and as I highlighted almost a year ago, George Sokianos has made this process effectively foolproof by developing a custom GUI frontend for QEMU specifically designed to make it incredibly easy to set up and run AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS in QEMU virtual machines.

We’re almost a year since that first version, and in that time, Sokianos has updated the tool, called Kyvos, to version 2. It costs a mere €9, and works on Linux (x86 and ARM), Windows (x86 and ARM) and macOS (x86 and ARM). You also get an incredibly detailed manual with step-by-step instructions for every supported operating system and specific emulated machine, which includes instructions for the convoluted AmigaOS 4 installation process, as well as a bunch of other information and helpful tips.

In addition, the manual includes links to where you can buy AmigaOS 4 – be sure to use these specific links to buy AmigaOS 4, because Sokianos gets a commission for sales through these links. AmigaOS 4 costs like €30, so it’s not a big investment. MorphOS can be downloaded for free, but after 30 minutes of use, the operating system will slow down and cripple itself, unless you pay for and register your copy for €79. I own a copy for my 17″ PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz, but I think copies are tied to hardware, so I haven’t tried registering it with my key yet. The MorphOS registration tool does not accept virtual machines, so you can’t use it to buy a copy for a virtual machine.

Kyvos’ graphical user interface mimics the UI of other virtual machine software like VirtualBox, and it will check to make sure you have all the correct dependencies and requirements installed. The guided setup processes for MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 virtual machines will tell you exactly which operating system ISOs and files you need and makes sure you have them, before setting up the QEMU virtual machines with the optimal settings. Once created, start the virtual machine, and they’ll boot from the installation media. Follow the included manual as you install the operating systems, including some post-install help, and you’ll end up with fully working, network-capable virtual machines running MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.

Both installation and setup procedures worked without any issues on my machine, and within like half an our I had to two fully working copies of MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 running on my Linux desktop gaming PC (I exempted myself from the Windows 11 incentive for this one, since my Linux gaming PC is by far the most powerful computer I own). Networking and sound works – AmigaOS 4 requires some post-install steps for those, listed in the Kyvos manual – and I could browse the web right away with the included web browsers. The online update tool for AmigaOS 4 also works perfectly, allowing me to upgrade to the latest version of the operating system and various included components.

I’m anything but a MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 expert, so I can’t confidently say much about performance compared to best real compatible hardware out there, but at least for MorphOS I can say it runs considerably faster in this virtual machine than it does on my old 17″ PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz. I feel like AmigaOS 4 runs a bit smoother than MorphOS does, as with the latter I experienced the occasional hiccup and stutter which were absent on AmigaOS 4. Still, both are entirely usable and a pleasure to use.

With how limited the hardware selection for these two operating systems is, using QEMU through Kyvos is by far the easiest and most straightforward way to dip your toes into the waters of the modern Amiga operating systems. For a total of around €40, you’ll be running AmigaOS 4 in a very capable and straightforward way, and if and when MorphOS allows registration for virtual machines (they really should), an additional €79 will give you a fully working installation of that unique operating system, too.

Kyvos is a complete no-brainer for anyone reading OSNews.

A manhunt is underway for an "armed and dangerous" suspect linked to a shooting at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto after an officer was fatally shot.

The goblin shark had only previously been seen when caught by fishermen and they died shortly afterward.

They came for the soccer but they're living for fast food and big box stores.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, already under investigation for alleged influence-peddling, facing questions over items found in office safe

The former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is being investigated for possible tax fraud and smuggling after police discovered jewellery valued at more than €1.3m (£1.1m) while searching his office safe as part of a separate inquiry.

Zapatero, who led two socialist governments between 2004 and 2011, is already under investigation for alleged influence-peddling and other offences relating to the state bailout of the Spanish Plus Ultra airline during the Covid pandemic. He is alleged to have overseen “a hierarchical structure of influence-peddling”, whose purpose was “to obtain economic benefits through intermediation and the exercise of influence before public bodies in favour of third parties, mainly Plus Ultra”.

With more than 177,000 people forcibly disappeared since 2011, short doc Maybe Tomorrow captures ‘the violence of waiting’ experienced by family

When Wafa Mustafa was a child, she remembers her father playing the music of Umm Kulthum non-stop at home in Syria, humming along to the legendary Egyptian singer’s melodic tones. One day, in an effort to encourage his daughter to appreciate music, he asked her to take a pen and paper and write the lyrics of a song she loved. Wanting to impress him, Mustafa chose an Umm Kulthum song called “Aghadan Alqak”, which translates to: “Will I meet you tomorrow?”

“The lyrics are literally about someone who’s gone, about the waiting for them and the love you have for them,” says Mustafa. “It feels like I knew what was coming … as if I manifested my life since I was very young.”

The Pentagon on Friday released a new group of documents and videos related to UFOs, or UAPs, with 72 more documents, images and recordings.

Cyber agency says BlackCore targeted John Swinney, as well as interfering in New York and French elections

France’s cybersecurity agency has accused the Israeli tech company BlackCore of interfering in the Scottish elections earlier this year by targeting the first minister, John Swinney.

The disinformation detection agency Viginum said BlackCore had this year used proxy social media accounts to target Swinney, the Scottish National party, and the Scottish government on four occasions.

The confusion over hantavirus and Ebola is a reminder that we must do better at explaining how to respond to an outbreak

Two unfolding outbreaks continue to command global attention. As a hantavirus outbreak tied to a cruise ship appears to be petering out, Ebola cases continue to mount in Africa. Alongside them have emerged familiar artifacts of the Covid era, including dashboards, trackers, maps, risk estimates, and a polarized mix of alarming and dismissive takes.

Once again, we’re able to watch disease spread in almost real time. Yet despite all the information, many people are left asking the same questions: what can I trust? How bad is this, really? What should I do?

Despite plunging border crossings, the Trump administration is circumventing laws to expedite building in a vast, pristine wilderness

The Trump administration has waived a slew of environmental and historical preservation laws that would allow it to build a towering border wall that cuts through Big Bend national park, a vast protected wilderness in south Texas.

Congress poured a whopping $46.5bn for border wall construction into the “Big, Beautiful” bill last year, supercharging Donald Trump’s ambition to wall off the southern border with Mexico. The longest unwalled stretches lie along a roughly 500-mile (800km) section of west Texas that Customs and Border Protection calls the “Big Bend sector”.

It's the second time this year that authorities detained a stowaway holding a huge stash of drugs in the same harbor.

Decision to not overturn fallen crypto mogul’s 25-year prison sentence was handed down by three-judge panel

Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday lost his bid to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence over the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.

The decision was handed down by a three-judge panel of the New York-based second US circuit court of appeals.

Nothing fancy just a few pics from my usual ride

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High-resolution 3D images of the pion offer new insight into how this key particle forms the atomic nuclei of all visible matter.

June 12, 2026 — A team of researchers has leveraged a supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory to reveal the internal structure of a pion in unprecedented detail. Pions are subatomic particles that help bind matter at some of the smallest scales in nature.

Graphic showing the transverse motion of a quark (green sphere) inside a proton whose spin is aligned to its direction of motion (large yellow arrow). Image credit: Valerie Lentz/Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Pions are closely connected to the strong nuclear force, the fundamental force that holds protons and neutrons together inside atomic nuclei. Understanding how pions work can help scientists explain how matter forms at its most fundamental level.

“Pions mediate the strong force that binds nucleons — that is, the protons and neutrons that account for an atom’s mass,” said Yong Zhao, an Argonne physicist and principal investigator on the project.

Scientists have long been interested in understanding how quarks are distributed within composite particles held together by the strong nuclear force. For the lightest of these particles, the pion, there are few experimental results available, so scientists rely on large-scale simulations to reveal their internal 3D structure.

The research helps resolve a fundamental mystery in nuclear physics: how visible matter forms from elementary particles such as quarks and gluons.

“Pion structure can be addressed at a profound level by quantifying its multidimensional structure,” Zhao said. ​“By probing the pion’s internal structure, we gain a deeper understanding of how quarks and gluons are confined to create visible matter.”

To investigate the pion’s structure, the team, which included scientists from DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, used the Polaris supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) in combination with advanced theoretical frameworks to simulate the physics of the strong force. Their simulations produced high-resolution 3D images of the pion, showing how quarks are arranged inside the particle. The ALCF is a DOE Office of Science user facility.

“Polaris allowed us to simulate how quarks move and correlate inside the pion, both along its direction of motion and across it,” Zhao explained. ​“The simulation captures hundreds of snapshots of our 4D spacetime, represented on a lattice with millions of grid points. This is a task possible only with large-scale parallel computing power like that of ALCF supercomputers. We thereby obtained high-resolution images of the quark structure inside a moving pion. These images reveal the transverse spatial distributions of quarks carrying different fractions of the pion’s momentum.”

The research team presented their results in a paper published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

The Polaris calculations revealed the quark generalized parton distribution (GPD) of the pion, which helped the team generate a detailed 3D image of it. The pion GPD is determined with controlled systematic uncertainties across different quark longitudinal momentum values. These values are measured both along the direction of the pion’s motion and perpendicular to it.

“Our results reveal that the transverse size of the pion decreases as the momentum in the direction of the pion increases — a pattern also seen in the proton — and that the effective size of the pion is smaller than that of the proton at moderate parallel pion momentum values,” Zhao said.

Because there currently are no experimental measurements of the pion GPD, the team’s theoretical results provide valuable guidance and support for upcoming experiments, including those at the DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and the future Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven.

“Our next step is to use the ALCF’s Aurora supercomputer to map the proton in three dimensions,” Zhao said. ​“Protons, together with neutrons, make up all the atomic nuclei that compose the visible matter in our universe.”

The team’s research was supported by DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.

Source: Nils Heinonen, Argonne National Laboratory

The post Argonne Supercomputer Reveals Pion Structure in Unprecedented 3D Detail appeared first on HPCwire.

• Breaks have been added at World Cup for player safety

• Fox missed small amount of action during break

Fox is facing criticism from fans in the US after introducing full-screen adverts while players take hydration breaks during its World Cup broadcasts.

Fifa introduced the three-minute breaks for the World Cup amid fears that players could struggle in the heat of North America this summer. The breaks take place once each half in every match, regardless of temperature.

The U.S. men's national soccer team kicks off its 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium on Friday.

A fire at a medical equipment warehouse in northern California prompted evacuations from nearby facilities. Fire crews fought to get the blaze under control while thick black smoke poured into the sky. The company said everyone at the site at the time of the fire had been accounted for, while authorities said they were still unclear as to what caused the blaze

When President Donald Trump traveled to Suffern, New York, for a rally, he introduced the crowd to Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the expected Republican nominee for governor. Trump praised Blakeman for blazing a new trail for Republican politicians in Nassau County, a populous, largely suburban district on Long Island, when he won the county executive race in 2021.

"Nassau County, it's all Democrat," Trump said at the May 22 rally. Referring to Blakeman, Trump said, "You know, when he ran years ago, he ran in Nassau. They said, you got to be kidding. It doesn't happen. No Republican wins in Nassau. And he ran and won."

It’s possible that’s the reaction Blakeman received. But it’s not the Republicans’ reality — they’ve performed well in Nassau. Seven Republicans have won the county executive position, compared with three Democrats.

Lawrence Levy — who covered Long Island politics for the local newspaper, Newsday, then became executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Long Island’s Hofstra University — dismissed Trump’s assertion as "almost laughable."

It would "certainly puzzle Nassau county Democrats who, aside from the occasional spurt of success in county and town races, have been spanked red far more often than not," Levy told PolitiFact New York.

When we reached out to the White House, a spokesperson directed us to Trump’s comments. We also reached out to Blakeman’s team but did not receive a response.

The political patterns in Nassau County throughout history

The strongest argument for Nassau County’s Democratic bona fides is its record in presidential elections. Trump won the county in 2024, but in doing so, he became the first Republican to accomplish that since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Downballot is a different story: Democrats and Republicans have both been successful for congressional and federal offices.

Portions of Nassau County have often been represented by Republicans in the House. Republican Peter King held a House seat that included portions of the county for two decades, from 1993 to 2013. Republican George Santos held King’s seat briefly before being expelled for lying extensively about his background.

Republican Andrew Garbarino has held a different district that includes Nassau County since 2021, and Republican Anthony D’Esposito held a different, more Democratic-leaning district from 2023 to 2025.

Who has won the Nassau County executive post?

Blakeman’s county executive post has been held more consistently by Republicans.

Blakeman ousted Laura Curran, a Democrat, in 2021. In the big picture, Curran was an exception: Democrats have occupied the Nassau County executive post for about 20 years out of the past 88. Here’s the list:

• J. Russell Sprague, Republican, 1938-52

• A. Holly Patterson, Republican, 1953-62

• Eugene Nickerson, Democrat, 1962-70

• Ralph G. Caso, Republican, 1970-78

• Francis T. Purcell, Republican, 1978-87

• Thomas Gulotta, Republican, 1987-2001 

• Tom Suozzi, Democrat, 2002-09

• Ed Mangano, Republican, 2010-17

• Laura Curran, Democrat, 2018-21

• Bruce Blakeman, Republican, 2022-present

Blakeman had previously served as presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature. On the election day in which he won the executive office, Nassau County Republicans also flipped control of the county’s district attorney and comptroller offices, which Newsday characterized as "a complete sweep."

Our ruling

Trump said that when Blakeman ran for Nassau County executive, the general sentiment was that "no Republican wins in Nassau."

On the presidential level, Nassau County voted Democratic between 1992 and 2020. But for other offices, it has been competitive between the parties, and the position of county executive has generally been dominated by Republicans. Of Nassau County’s 10 county executives, seven of them have been Republican.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores information that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.

No injuries reported as fire in Tracy destroys medical equipment warehouse and authorities investigate cause

A fire at a 1m sq ft warehouse complex was burning out of control in California early Friday as authorities fought to tamp the large blaze and began investigating the cause.

The raging inferno was pumping thick black smoke up in billowing clouds as flame and a red hot glow were visible beneath from aerial images. The fire has destroyed the medical equipment warehouse in Tracy, in northern California, and prompted evacuations of other nearby facilities, with no injuries reported.

Flag bans, travel headaches and a religious regime video among bumps in road, as team prepares to be first to play in country with which it is at war

Iran will present a major challenge to Fifa’s “football unites the world” slogan on Monday by becoming the first country in World Cup history to compete on the soil of a host nation with which it is at war.

The national team’s opening match against New Zealand in Los Angeles will kick off amid continuing hostilities between Iran and the US that have intensified in recent days, as a fragile ceasefire has failed to hold and attempts at reaching a negotiated settlement have sputtered.

Guardian reporters Fabiola Cineas and Adria Walker held a Reddit Q&A about Louisiana v Callais – here’s a rundown

In April, the supreme court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais struck a massive blow to the Voting Rights Act, eliminating a key provision that gave minority voters representation in Congress.

Within days of the decision, Republican-led states in the south moved to redraw congressional maps to erase majority-Black districts. Some of those maps have already gone into effect ahead of the midterms.

President Donald Trump waded into the contentious “right to repair” your own auto debate, but he recounted a wildly inaccurate anecdote to bolster his support for consumers.

According to Trump, in remarks on June 4, “They gave a man seven years in jail, actually, because he fixed his own car.”

The following day, at a roundtable on agriculture in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, the president again referenced the case.

“I mean, they actually have, the Democrats, a restriction that if you get caught fixing your tractor, they bring you to jail,” Trump said. “You know that? Do you know that I pardoned a man last week who was sentenced to seven years in jail because he got caught fixing his car or his truck? I said — I like to always say, ‘What did he do?’ ‘Sir, he was fixing his truck.’ I said, ‘How long is he getting?’ ‘Seven years.’ I said, ‘Say it again.’ It’s the first time I’ve ever heard — like two weeks ago. I gave him a pardon because he had to go to jail because he was fixing his tractor or his truck. Can you believe it?”

The White House did not respond to our request for backup, but Trump appears to be referring to his Nov. 7 pardon of Troy Lake, a Wyoming diesel mechanic who served seven months of a one-year sentence — not seven years — after pleading guilty to violating the Clean Air Act by disabling emissions monitoring systems on hundreds of heavy-duty commercial trucks. (No other pardon in Trump’s second term fits the description.)

According to a Dec. 9, 2024, news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, Lake and his company, Elite Diesel Service Inc., instructed company employees “to disable the computerized on-board diagnostic (OBD) systems on at least 344 heavy-duty commercial trucks. OBDs are required under the Clean Air Act to monitor emissions control hardware on vehicles to ensure that they are functioning properly.”

There were also eight co-conspirators, the release stated, who “hired Elite and Lake to manipulate the OBDs so that the OBDs would not detect the malfunctions.” Those co-conspirators, who cooperated with the investigators, were fined more than $500,000 in total.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Lake violated the Clean Air Act’s prohibition against tampering with monitoring devices.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, emissions control devices “are critical to maintaining air quality, and when these controls are disabled, the increase in excess tailpipe pollution is significant. A study of the effects of tampering with these 344 trucks showed that the conspirators in this case collectively caused an illegal increase in pollutants of at least 1,300 tons of excess nitrogen oxides, 30 tons of excess non-methane hydrocarbons, 600 tons of excess carbon monoxide, and 30 tons of excess particulate matter.”

“For years, the defendants led a large-scale conspiracy designed to violate the Clean Air Act by defeating emissions control equipment on hundreds of heavy-duty commercial trucks,” Special Agent in Charge Lance Ehrig of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division in Colorado said at the time. “The actions by the defendants and their co-conspirators directly resulted in a significant increase in excess pollution, which diminished air quality and further placed vulnerable populations at risk of developing adverse health conditions.”

Lake maintained he was merely trying to spare small businesses from expensive and unnecessary repair bills.

“I didn’t want to be Robin Hood. I just felt that it was wrong for what the government was doing to American people that wanted to work,” Lake told Fox News on Oct. 27.

“All of us true Americans aren’t opposed against clean air. We want clean air,” Lake told Wyoming’s Oil City News in November. “But my problem with the deal was I just started seeing more and more — especially owner-operators or small companies — going out of business or struggling to keep this stuff running. It cost them $20,000 to fix it and I was charging them $2,500 or $2,800 to delete it and never have that problem again.”

Lake’s case caught the attention of Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who petitioned the president in October for a pardon, casting Lake’s conviction as an example of the Biden administration’s “overreach into the daily lives of hardworking Americans in communities across the west.”

That same month, Lummis introduced the Diesel Truck Liberation Act, which would prohibit the federal government from “requiring manufacturers to install or maintain emissions control devices or onboard diagnostic systems” and remove “EPA authority to enforce Clean Air Act requirements related to vehicle emissions controls.” It would also bar the civil or criminal prosecution of those who violate “federal law for tampering or improving emissions equipment.” The bill has not made it out of committee.

On Jan. 21, the Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resource Division announced via X that it would no longer criminally prosecute cases such as Lake’s.

“Today, [the Justice Department] is exercising its enforcement discretion to no longer pursue criminal charges under the Clean Air Act based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices in motor vehicles,” the post said. “DOJ is committed to sound enforcement principles, efficient use of government resources, and avoiding overcriminalization of federal environmental law.”

The post noted, however, that DOJ would “still pursue civil enforcement for these violations when appropriate.”

The same day as that DOJ announcement, the government dropped its case against Tracy Coiteux, a Washington woman who had appealed a 2024 conviction for tampering with diesel trucks’ emissions monitoring systems.

On Feb. 12 — two weeks before Lake was Lummis’ guest at the State of the Union Address — Trump also pardoned Lake’s company, Elite Diesel Services Inc., which was sentenced to five years of probation at the same time Lake was sentenced. Trump’s pardon forgives $50,000 worth of fines levied against the company.

No matter what one thinks about Lake’s case, he was not sentenced to “seven years in jail … because he fixed his own car,” as Trump framed it.

Right to Repair

Moreover, the case is only tangentially related to the so-called “right to repair” debate to which Trump tied it.

“We had the auto industry in yesterday,” Trump said in remarks on June 4 about a meeting he had that included the heads of Ford, General Motors and Penske Corporation. “They don’t want people to fix their car. I said, that’s strange, I’ve never heard of that. They have a thing to — nobody’s allowed to fix their car. They gave a man seven years in jail, actually, because he fixed his own car.

“Can you believe it?” Trump asked. “They want a bill that prohibits people from fixing. So if you’re mechanically inclined — you know, I grew up. I went to school with some guys; they were, in some cases, horrible students, but they could fix an engine blindfolded. … But they were great. And so there’s a move on to stop people from fixing their car. I didn’t understand it.”

The following day in Wisconsin, Trump asked local farmers at a roundtable, “Do you like it, the right to repair?

“It was a little strange,” Trump said. “I mean, some of you are better mechanics than the people at John Deere. … Let’s say you have a tractor, it’s broken and you know exactly how to fix it. You wouldn’t be too happy about being mandated to bring the tractor back to John Deere or wherever you got it, right? You’d like to fix it.

“I mean, they actually have, the Democrats, a restriction that if you get caught fixing your tractor, they bring you to jail. You know that? Do you know that I pardoned a man last week who was sentenced to seven years in jail because he got caught fixing his car or his truck?”

Again, Lake was not prosecuted for simply “fixing his car or his truck.”

The issue of “right to repair” is contentious and also more complicated than Trump’s description suggests.

As the National Conference of State Legislatures explains, “Right to repair legislation is directed at the ability of consumers to repair their own products instead of going back to the original manufacturer for service.”

“In the context of the aftermarket, it refers to consumers’ ability to select who repairs and/or maintains their motor vehicles,” the Congressional Research Service said in a 2024 report on the subject.

While, broadly, car buyers have the right to fix their own autos, or to take them to a repair shop of their choice (rather than to the dealer), a political debate has arisen over the “telematics” inside cars, “the wireless transmission of data to and from vehicles and data centers hosted by the vehicle manufacturers,” the CRS report said.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing most of the major auto manufacturers, argued in 2023 that public access to telematics would “create privacy and cybersecurity risks.”

As Todd Spangler, Washington correspondent for the Detroit Free Press, wrote on June 8, “The conflict comes down to who has the proprietary right to all that know-how, intellectual property and access: the manufacturer, whose business model may rely on it, or the owner, who buys it.”

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 Trump’s Inaccurate Anecdote on ‘Right to Repair’ Cars appeared first on FactCheck.org.

As he finished a seven-day visit to Spain, the pope articulated a fuller position on migration, including the “right” of nations to protect their borders.

Purple Carrot is known as THE 100% vegan meal kit service, but it's not my favorite. Another company takes the lead.

"An unseen covert war of espionage is currently unfolding" in the waters off China, the country's minister of state security has alleged.

China says U.S. national U Min Zin, founder of a think tank focused on Myanmar, was detained on suspicion of "espionage and endangering China's national security."

Nearly 40 women detained at Delaney Hall join striking men and outline demands ‘rooted in basic human rights’

Dozens of women detained inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in New Jersey announced their participation in a hunger and labor strike, advocates announced on Thursday.

The women, detained in unit 1 of the contentious privately run facility, also released a new list of demands. They are calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release women under 21, women with medical conditions and mothers. They are also demanding improved conditions inside the facility and for their immigration cases to proceed more quickly.

This compact, stylish projector performs reasonably well but has an eye-watering price tag.

The N3 Ultimate lives up to its name with impressive performance across the board.

An Iran​-linked hacker group claims to have breached FBI drones and has threatened to target the World Cup, a monitoring group says. The monitor disputes some of the other group's claims.

Jibril Rajoub attended opening match in Mexico but becomes latest football official hit by US visa issues, he says

The head of the Palestinian Football Association has said he is unable to travel to the United States with other federation heads attending the 2026 Fifa World Cup because he has not been issued a visa.

Jibril Rajoub went to the opening match between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City on Thursday. But he is among several people accredited to attend the World Cup who have been denied visas or have yet to receive them from the United States.

Severe storms that swept through the Midwest late Thursday knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers, damaged buildings and canceled flights.

Trump claims strikes called off as deal is close, but Tehran denies agreement near, while legal experts question if US targets may be a war crime. Plus 20 years of Taylor Swift’s incredible influence on pop culture

• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up here

Good morning. Yesterday, Donald Trump spent the day promising he was going to hit Iran harder than ever before, then announced – again – that the US and Iran were close to signing a deal. Iran’s foreign ministry dismissed the claim, and Tasnim, the semi-official Iranian news agency, wrote that “until a potential understanding is announced by Iran, any news from Trump on this matter should be dismissed”.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said large parts of the text under negotiation had been finalised but Iran would not compromise on its red lines. Two days of escalating attacks between the warring nations had threatened to collapse the fragile ceasefire.

What is the issue around the US choice of targets in Iran? Military strikes on 10 June that damaged two water storage facilities in southern Iran may constitute a war crime, legal and military experts say. The attack on the Bemani district destroyed a key reservoir serving about 20,000 people, raising critical legal questions over whether the strike hit a valid military objective or unlawfully targeted a civilian object.

Why is there a legal challenge to the method? The method has raised concerns for its apparent brutality. Eugene Smith, the first person to die by nitrogen hypoxia, thrashed and writhed on the gurney, according to witnesses. The last nitrogen execution, of Anthony Boyd, appeared to take more than 30 minutes as Boyd shuddered and gasped.

High street bank to buy UK business from US fintech company Acorns as it targets young people

• Business live – latest updates

Barclays is to buy an app designed to help children understand and manage their money, as it targets young people in affluent families.

The high street bank has agreed to buy the UK business of GoHenry, which provides children with personalised debit cards carrying their name, from the US fintech company Acorns, which will retain GoHenry’s US branch.

Brent crude falls as optimism rises strait of Hormuz could reopen over the weekend

• Business live – latest updates

Global oil prices fell on Friday to lows not seen since the first week of the Iran crisis after Donald Trump claimed he was close to reaching a peace deal with Tehran.

The price of Brent crude began to tumble from about $93 a barrel in overnight trade after the US president called off further military strikes against Iran scheduled for the evening.

Plus, Brexit at 10, dinner as protest, 100 best novels and not watching the World Cup (yet)

We’re approaching the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum. Documentaries are being aired and newspaper features are being written. But one thing seems to be missing. Why aren’t all those big names who campaigned for Brexit back in 2016 now shouting from the rooftops about what a great success it has been?

A hands-on preview at Summer Game Fest revealed wry humor alongside blood-slick combat.

Desperate US parents pay up to $20,000 a session for a procedure scientists say could be bogus

Autistic children as young as 18 months old are being injected with human stem cells derived from umbilical cords in unapproved, unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” that scientists warn are proliferating across the US under the active encouragement of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Clinics in Florida, Texas and other states are selling what they bill as “regenerative medicine” to families with autistic children who have intensive care needs. Parents who have taken their children through the process talked to the Guardian about their hopes and fears for a therapy that appears to be gaining ground in the US.

Pokemon Go players' optional location scans reportedly helped train Niantic Spatial's visual positioning system, which uses camera imagery and 3D maps to navigate when GPS is unavailable or jammed. According to DroneXL, that technology is now being paired with Vantor's drone navigation software for military and intelligence use, raising questions about whether gamers understood that footage collected for in-game rewards could eventually support defense systems. From the report: The pipeline runs from a mobile game to the battlefield in three steps. Players scanned the physical world. Niantic Spatial turned those scans into a 3D map that lets a machine locate itself by sight when satellite signals fail. And in December 2025, Niantic Spatial announced a partnership with Vantor, the defense and intelligence firm formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, to fuse that ground-level system with Vantor's aerial navigation software for use in GPS-denied operations. I have spent years covering how drones lose their way the moment an electronic warfare unit switches on a jammer, a problem that has spread from the battlefield into civilian airspace, from Ukrainian workshops cycling through navigation generations to American programs scrambling for alternatives. The unsettling part of this story is not the technology. It is where the training data came from, and whether the people who supplied it would have agreed had anyone explained the destination. "Now as part of Scopely (the Saudi-owned company that acquired Niantic last year for $3.5 billion), Pokemon GO data is not shared with Niantic Spatial," a company spokesperson said in a statement to Kotaku. "AR Scans collected through Pokemon GO were submitted voluntarily by players who opted into the feature and were subject to the applicable Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at the time. The discontinuation of AR scanning and the end of data sharing with Niantic Spatial were part of the transition planning associated with Pokemon GO's move to Scopely."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hockney was a globally celebrated painter who helped lead the Pop art movement in the 1960s, spent time in California, and defiantly refused to give up smoking.

Why has Albania’s Kushner controversy attracted such international attention? Expert comment jon.wallace 12 June 2026

Protests about plans for a luxury resort expose issues confronting all developing countries - over natural resources and sovereignty in an age of a triple planetary crisis. 

Last week, the streets of Tirana were filled with protesters brandishing inflatable flamingos. They had gathered in opposition to plans by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to develop a luxury resort on Albania’s largely unspoiled Sazan Island and the Zvërnec coastline near Vlora. The area is home to flamingos, more than 200 migratory bird species, Mediterranean monk seals and nesting sea turtles. The demonstrations lasted several days and spread internationally, with rallies reported in London and other European capitals.

It may seem unusual that plans for a resort in a relatively remote part of Albania generated such protest and international attention. To some extent, the involvement of Kushner is to blame – as Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama claimed when defending the project.

But the protests, held under the slogan ‘Albania is not for sale’, speak to a broader question: how much of a country’s environment and natural heritage should be sacrificed in the name of economic growth? 

This question acquires new urgency in an era defined by the accelerating triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Decisions about coastlines, forests and freshwater systems are no longer merely matters of domestic planning. They are increasingly tests of how governments reconcile development imperatives with ecological limits that are becoming harder to ignore.

Thus, what might once have been treated as a routine foreign investment project has become a flashpoint for debates about sovereignty, environmental protection and geopolitical alignment.

The government’s dilemma

For Rama’s government, the attraction of such a project, which is also backed by Qatari as well as local investors, is evident. Albania has spent decades attempting to attract the kind of foreign direct investment that wealthier European states often take for granted. 

Controversial amendments to Albania’s law on protected areas in 2024 opened the door to tourism development, enabling further expansion of a sector that has already more than tripled in size over the past decade. Large-scale tourism developments promise employment, infrastructure upgrades, fiscal revenue and international visibility. In a competitive global environment, they also signal that a country is ‘open for business’. 

In this sense, the proposed development represents precisely the kind of transformative investment that many governments in the Global South and parts of Europe’s periphery compete to secure.

Similar projects include large-scale coastal tourism projects in Egypt’s Red Sea region and major resort and infrastructure developments along Montenegro’s Adriatic coast. Both have been promoted as bringing jobs, foreign exchange and regional growth. In the case of Montenegro, EU accession is also a key aim.

Yet the very characteristics that make Albania attractive to investors are the same ones that underpin domestic and international opposition. 

The country’s relatively undeveloped coastline, rich biodiversity and ecological heterogeneity are not simply aesthetic assets. They are functional ecosystems that support fisheries, protect against coastal erosion, store carbon, and underpin climate resilience in a region already experiencing rising temperatures, water stress and extreme weather events.

In other words, what is at stake is not simply land use, but the integrity of critical ecological systems.

Development, conservation and the triple planetary crisis

Across the Mediterranean and beyond, ecosystems are under mounting pressure from habitat fragmentation, marine degradation, pollution and climate-induced stress. Rising sea temperatures are altering marine biodiversity. Coastal erosion is accelerating due to both natural and human pressures. At the same time, demand for land, water and infrastructure continues to grow, driven by tourism, urbanization and global capital flows.

The underlying question is no longer whether nature has economic value, but whether it can be converted into short-term financial gain without undermining the long-term ecological foundations on which that value depends.

The geopolitical layer

Yet Albania’s dilemma cannot be understood through economics or environmental policy alone.

The country occupies a strategically complex position. As a NATO member and a candidate for EU accession, it is embedded in Western security structures but outside the EU’s economic and regulatory framework. It is seeking deeper integration with Europe, while trying to maintain strong ties with the United States.

This dual orientation embeds environmental governance within geopolitical dynamics, as access to investment, trade relationships and international credibility is increasingly shaped by how states manage – or not – climate risks, protect biodiversity and regulate the use of natural resources.

At the same time, it complicates domestic debates about environmental governance and sovereignty over natural assets. The ‘flamingo revolution’ is a clear illustration; protesters have questioned the environmental implications of the development. But they are also unhappy about the transparency of the decision-making process, and the extent to which foreign investors influence Albania’s natural heritage. 

The dispute over a stretch of Albania’s coastline is therefore ultimately not about a single development project. It is about the evolution of the country’s development model under conditions of ecological constraint and geopolitical competition. It is also about who gets to decide how strategic natural assets are used, and in whose interest development is pursued.

Economic growth, environmental protection and strategic alignment are all legitimate national objectives. The difficulty arises when pursuing one appears to undermine the others. This is the governing dilemma of the triple planetary crisis: environmental degradation is not a side effect of development, but a constraint on its long-term viability. 

The protesters are asking whether some places should remain beyond the reach of developers. The government is asking how a country can prosper if it turns away potentially transformative investment. Neither question is unreasonable. 

The challenge for Albania – and for many countries in similar positions – is that the answers now lie at the intersection of economics, ecology and geopolitics, where trade-offs are unavoidable and increasingly irreversible.

Luis Angel Lopez Valdez was killed in Veracruz just days after armed assailants abducted journalist Roxana Guzman from her home.

A wealth of device settings available in the Shelly Plug Gen4 smart plug give users maximum flexibility, but all that choice can be overwhelming. These are the three features I liked best -- and a few things I didn't.

Taylor Swift became the youngest woman ever inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame Thursday night, at the age of 36.

Tired of the digital drag? Done with everything being a subscription? Want to go back to wires, physical photos and all things analog? Here's how.

Arrest of Min Zin, who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy, comes just month after Trump visit to Beijing

China has arrested a US scholar who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy on suspicion of spying.

Min Zin was suspected of “engaging in espionage activities that endanger China’s national security,” China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, Lin Jian, said on Friday.

In our test, AI was hard to find in a sizable Spotify playlist library.

The Neo gave me very few reasons to complain during my week with it.

What I’m Discussing Today:

• Knicks Beat Spurs 107-106, Take 3-1 Series Lead: The Knicks pulled off the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history.

• Kareem’s Daily Quote: When injustice makes its demands, do you speak up or wait for a safer moment that never arrives?

• Democrats Make a Huge Bet on Platner in Maine: Dems gamble Senate control on a deeply flawed, first-time candidate.

• Trump storms out of interview with NBC’s Meet the Press: Trump’s live-TV tantrum was the familiar cowardice of a bully who cannot bear real scrutiny.

• Alexander Zverev’s French Open title receives a muted reception in France: Zverev won the trophy, but questions surrounding how sports handles violence against women did not disappear with the confetti.

• What I’m Watching: In The Polygamist, the women around a crumbling patriarch look like they might be more interesting than the man himself.

• Jukebox Playlist: Aretha Franklin turned “Respect” into a declaration so plain and powerful that no man can pretend not to understand.

Knicks Beat Spurs 107-106 in the Greatest Comeback in NBA Finals History, Take 3-1 Series Lead

It’s not every day you see a team blow a 29-point lead in the NBA finals. I played in the league for 20 years and I never saw it happen. In fact, in more than 400 games over 80 seasons, it had never happened prior to Wednesday night’s game at Madison Square Garden.

I said at the start of this series that I was rooting for the Spurs and their transcendent young superstar, Victor Wembanyama. I still am. But as a basketball fan, I have to applaud everything the Knicks have done in this series, with Wednesday night’s comeback at the top of that list. Jalen Brunson finished the game with 36 points. OG Anunoby scored 33. At the end of the game, with 4.3 seconds left, Brunson launched his desperation three from well beyond the arc and it bounced high off the front rim. He missed it. For a frozen moment, it looked like the game was over and the Spurs had won. Then Anunoby came flying through the lane, extended his right arm as high as it would go, and tipped the ball through the hoop. It was as beautiful an encapsulation of the majesty of sports as anything you’re ever likely to see. The seemingly impossible happened. We all got to witness it.

If we’re honest, we also have to concede that the Spurs made some serious mistakes down the stretch. But, to my mind, the biggest one didn’t happen in the fourth quarter, when their 20-point lead evaporated. It happened in the third quarter, when they were leading by 29, and they seemingly forgot that Victor Wembanyama is human. They forgot to give him some rest. With that large a lead, it was an inexcusable mistake. In the second half, Wemby played 23 of 24 minutes, which left him exhausted by the end of the fourth quarter. That’s on coach Mitch Johnson, not Wemby, and you can bet Mitch knows it. After the game, Wemby and the Spurs said all the right things. No, they’re not giving up. Wemby said the goal was “getting stronger through this, getting more together. I know this is what we’re gonna do.” Spurs fans certainly hope so. So do I.

Kareem’s Daily Quote

“I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak.” Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), novelist and abolitionist

Harriet Beecher Stowe is remembered today for one thing and one thing only: she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold two million copies worldwide in its first five years of publication, ultimately becoming the second-best-selling book of the 19^th century, trailing only the Bible. Even before writing her novel, Stowe was an ardent critic of slavery and supporter of the Underground Railroad who hid escaped slaves at her home in Brunswick, Maine. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an act of abolitionist advocacy, humanizing Blacks for her predominantly white readers.

Today we’re somewhat dismissive of Stowe’s literary accomplishment, and for good reason by current standards: her attitudes toward Blacks are paternalistic, and Tom himself is a prototype of the “Magical Negro” trope. He’s passive, subservient, a self-sacrificing martyr whose saintliness leaves no room for an inner life. It’s no real surprise that “Uncle Tom” became a lasting insult for Blacks who sought to get ahead by ingratiating themselves to whites. Still, writing the novel was a radical act in its day and can honestly be said to have helped speed the way to abolition.

Stowe’s quote above is from a letter she wrote in March 1850 to Gamaliel Bailey, the editor of the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era. At that time, the Fugitive Slave Act (which mandated the capture and return of fugitive slaves in free states, and made it a crime for northern abolitionists to help their escape) was barreling through Congress. In 1850, women and children were, by law and custom, not people whose words were thought to carry much weight. That didn’t matter. If everyone shared the obligation to speak out, Stowe was saying, their cumulative weight could overpower even the most hardened injustice. Everyone, she wrote, was “bound” to speak. Not by law, the way enslaved people were bound to their masters. But by a moral calling even stronger than law, an ingrained knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, and the faith that one’s humanity has nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.

Stowe was also a feminist who pushed for the education of girls and the property rights of women, if not for outright suffrage—women’s right to vote was, after all, still 70 years away, and she might rightly have seen that goal as a bridge too far to distract from the very immediate issue at hand. But stripped of its abolitionist context, the above quote can still impart a powerful message to contemporary audiences: if you see something, say something. Because silence carries a cost too. It just feels free because nobody is handing you a bill right now—and by the time they do, it will probably be too late to say the price of a comfortable life of silence was too high.

There are sophisticated internal arguments to be made for staying quiet, which you can dress up very respectably. “Someone more qualified should say this” passes as humility. “Now is not the right time” disguises itself as strategy. These are methods for outsourcing the obligation indefinitely, and what makes them so effective is that they never require you to say you won’t speak. You’re merely waiting for conditions that, conveniently, never quite arrive. Stowe recognized the obligation and knew the time to speak out had arrived for everyone—even a woman or a child.

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On Tuesday night, oyster farmer and combat veteran Graham Platner overwhelmingly sailed to victory in the Democratic Senate primary in Maine. His opponent, Gov. Janet Mills unofficially dropped out in late April, leaving Platner effectively unopposed. But a series of scandals rocked his candidacy, leaving his viability against Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November in question.

The veteran has repeatedly emphasized the way his combat trauma made him a worse version of himself, and how in later years he has been able to heal and evolve. In Maine, Democrats so far appear to have accepted that message of redemption, and his promise to provide a progressive economic agenda for Maine.

“It’s a very working-class state that has been very badly impacted by job loss and then, in recent years, by a pretty extreme wave of gentrification,” Intercept reporter Noah Hurowitz says. “The progressive policy agenda of Graham Platner combined with the perceived authenticity of his ‘I am a fighter, I will actually do this,’ whereas Janet Mills who has been in power and overseen a lot of this and has not been perceived to bring a lot of the changes that Mainers seek” is resonating with voters.  

We also check in on California, where Intercept contributor Jordan Uhl breaks down the latest conspiracy theories about voter suppression, which conservatives have hinged on the defeat of former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, and the early results in the governor’s race. Uhl also breaks down how betting platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are adding to the confusion, and what that could mean come November. 

“If they don’t like the outcome, it’s rigged. If they like the outcome, it’s fine,” says Uhl. “At the gubernatorial level, you can see how Megyn Kelly pointing to prediction market data is symptomatic of a larger problem here. People weren’t looking to actual polling data. They were looking to the behavior of gamblers to inform their analysis.”

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. 

Noah Hurowitz: I’m Noah Hurowitz, I cover federal law enforcement, immigration, and elections at The Intercept. 

JW: Noah, it’s great to have you on again. This week we wanted to check in with you about the Democratic Senate primary in Maine where Graham Platner, the combat veteran and oyster farmer, faced a series of scandals.  

But before we do all of that, let’s get into the results from Tuesday night. So Maine Gov. Janet Mills had already suspended her primary race against Platner in late April, so he was effectively running unopposed in the primary. But Noah, what were the results from Tuesday night, and what do they tell us about Mainers and what they want?

NH: The results were an overwhelming win for Platner. He came in at over 70 percent of the vote. The AP called it on Tuesday night with 8 percent showing. It was just very clear that he had carried the day, and I think a big part of that was because Governor Mills had unofficially suspended campaigning earlier in the cycle in April.

But in light of some of the news that came out the week before the primary, Janet Mills had slyly reminded people that she was still on the ballot. So there was a question going into Tuesday night of what is her showing going to be and what will that tell us about general support for Platner.

She did carry about 19 percent of the vote last time I checked which does show that one in five Democratic primary voters in Maine at least had some issue with casting a ballot for Platner in the primary. I don’t know if it tells us much about what his support is going to be in the general, because that is going to be a much more pitched battle.

It’s going to be much more Democrat versus Republican, rather than a vote where people felt like they could cast, let’s say, a protest vote against a candidate that they were not sure about.

JW: Yeah, and I really want to get more into the general election, because I think that’s going to be pretty interesting.

But we obviously can’t talk about Graham Platner without talking about the scandals that have emerged in the last few months. I’m just going to read through some of them. So until October of last year, he had a tattoo of Nazi iconography. He had previously made rape apology posts on Reddit. He was accused and admitted to sending inappropriate messages while married.

And I would argue most damning, an ex-girlfriend, who we should note is currently a Republican operative, accused him of physically restraining her and locking her in a room overnight. She also claimed that he was well aware of the meaning of the Nazi tattoo. Now, Platner has denied both allegations from his ex-girlfriend, but he has admitted to having the tattoo, which he covered up last year, and making the posts.

Do you think that these scandals hurt his campaign, or do you think that people perceive these stories as political attacks from the establishment? And by the establishment, I mean both in Maine and then also, I would argue, in the form of mainstream media like The New York Times and Politico. And I’m wondering, did those attacks maybe actually increase his support? I tend to think the latter.

NH: Yeah, the stuff about the tattoos and the Reddit posts came out pretty early into the campaign last fall. To be honest, I thought that they were going to sink him. I don’t know how you survive, having a Nazi tattoo. But he steamrolled right through that.

A big part of his message about himself has been a story of redemption. He was a combat veteran. It took him a long time to overcome a lot of the effects of that. He’s talked openly about his struggles with alcohol, about his post-traumatic stress disorder, and about how he was a very angry young man and found some level of peace after he came back to Maine, where he grew up.

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The new stuff in the week before the primary, first there was an article about him having sexted with women after he was married, quite recently. And then, of course, as you mentioned, the The New York Times story, where there were allegations of physical abuse, allegations of him physically restraining his ex-girlfriend.

That, I think, did prompt a much more serious reckoning. A lot of his supporters were, A, yes, outright dismissive of what they saw as an establishment attack on an insurgent populous candidate. But I think it also, whether this is canny politics on his part or whether you choose to believe him, it was possible for him to say that, “Look, that’s just not who I am anymore. I regret deeply a lot of my actions when I was struggling in that way, and, here I am, a changed man fighting for you.” And that was a big part of his speech on Tuesday night when he accepted the nomination. He spoke a lot about redemption and about grace.

This was something that came up in my conversations with people in Maine in the run-up to the election was that, look, Maine is a state with high levels of substance use disorder. Maine is a state where there’s a lot of poverty, and there’s a lot of people who are veterans. And I think that the message of, “I was having a rough time, and I got my act together,” really does resonate. So I think there’s a combination of seeing this as an establishment attack, but also in accepting his story of getting his act together.

JW: It’s understandable, and I think at the same time, there is something to the narrative of an angry young man who really took it out allegedly on the women in his life, and then also making some of these posts that are obviously really offensive. I think particularly for female voters, I have to imagine there are a lot of women who are thinking, “I knew an angry young man, and I’m still living with the consequences of that angry young man. And it’s great for him to find redemption, but I’m still in this.” Those stories can be both triggering, but, and I imagine hopeful for some of those men who still find themselves in that place. But I think it’s a complicated space to walk.

NH: Yeah, no you’re absolutely right. And I think when it comes to someone running for office on a message of fighting for the common man or whatever. I think that a lot of the people who support his candidacy have this attitude of, yes, he had a messy personal life. Yes, some of these things that are described are inexcusable. But should that consign us to another Susan Collins term? Should that consign us to a more watered-down Democratic candidate who is not going to bring the same fire? And I think for a lot of people the answer is no. A lot of the people who I spoke to were wrestling with those questions. That’s something that’s going to continue to be in the discourse for sure.

JW: In your conversations, did you feel like people were more so focused on his progressive economic agenda, or did they feel more anger at the establishment? Is this about sticking it to Janet Mills, sticking it to Susan Collins, or is this about— He’s really putting forward a very progressive economic agenda for Maine. What do you feel resonated with people you spoke to?

NH: I think they go hand-in-hand. One of the biggest issues for Mainers is affordability. The state has been in a prolonged job crisis basically for decades.

Everybody knows someone who has been laid off from the paper mill. Because the paper mill closed, they lost their logging trucking route. People know lobstermen who have been forced off the water. It’s a very working class state that has been very badly impacted by job loss, and then in recent years by a pretty extreme wave of gentrification.

I  went to school in Maine in Portland, and I don’t think I know anyone who still lives in Portland. Everyone has had to move to other cities like Lewiston and Auburn, which then in the chain reaction of gentrification and displacement then sees higher prices. But the jobs haven’t really come. 

I think that the progressive policy agenda of Graham Platner combined with the perceived authenticity of his, “I am a fighter, I will actually do this,” whereas Janet Mills has been in power and overseen a lot of this and has not been perceived to bring a lot of the changes that Mainers seek. 

JW: We have seen a knee-jerk reaction from some people on the left to dismiss outright the concerns around some of Platner’s actions, and accuse those who raise the issue of being a centrist or a corporate shill.

But at the same time, it’s clear that he is not the establishment pick, and his campaign has been heavily reported on and scrutinized in the media. Noah, you’ve done a lot of really great nuanced reporting on this race, which by the way everyone should check out, but what do you make of the reaction to Platner from both sides of this political divide?

NH: There’s two things. There’s what is being talked about in Maine and what is being talked about in national media. This was something that I didn’t quite get to when we were talking about the scandals, but another thing that came up in multiple conversations with political knowers of things in Maine, is that it’s not just the establishment that people see behind these attacks, but also national media — the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post. People in Maine are generally suspicious of what they call folks from away. 

Maine is a very unique political landscape. I hesitate to even call it purple because it is this mishmash of some right-leaning tendencies. People tend to be very pro-gun. But on the other hand, there’s a lot of more socially liberal or libertarian tendencies among Mainers. There’s people on the hard right who hate Platner because they think he’s a stooge, because they think he’s pro-immigrant, because they are in the tank for, if not Susan Collins for the power of the Trump administration, which would be badly affected by losing a Republican senator.

On the left in Maine the support is just generally there for Platner. He’s done very well there. More toward the center in, let’s say, national politics, I think that there has definitely been a lot of wariness around Graham Platner whether that’s because they think he’s going to be another Fetterman, which by the way, I don’t think he’s going to be another Fetterman. That’s best exemplified by John Fetterman going off nonstop against Graham Platner. 

There’s a worry that they don’t know what direction he’s going to go in, that they can’t control him or that they just worry about his electability. But knowing Maine and having reported on this now for a while, I think that if anything he’s going to be more electable than a Janet Mills. Susan Collins has fended off pretty formidable challenges in the past. In 2020, she faced a challenge from Sara Gideon, who was a very well-known Democratic politician in Maine, fairly progressive. But she didn’t have that sort of insurgent credibility that Platner brings to the race.

And despite polling well, Sara Gideon lost badly. She lost by eight points. So I think that if anything, Maine specifically demands an outside-the-box challenge to someone as entrenched as Susan Collins.

JW: What is your expectation of how these scandals will follow Platner into the general election against Susan Collins?

Obviously she’s going to use them. I also would imagine, thinking about how things have come out so far, that there could be more things coming out. How do you imagine this is going to affect him in the general?

NH: I think that people are going to be digging. I think that national reporters and local reporters are going to be looking for anything that they can find. Just based on the kind of behavior that was described in these stories, one could assume that a messy life yields a lot of opposition research. I do think that some of the main points have already been arrived at in The New York Times reporting, and the tattoo and the Reddit post.

Susan Collins will definitely use these stories against Platner in the general but frankly, I think that it might hit a little bit less than it would coming in a primary from a Democrat, because another thing that people brought up multiple times in my reporting over the last week was that there’s this double standard.

It’s not just that, oh, Trump’s behavior has lowered the bar. It’s that Susan Collins has supported Donald Trump every step of the way, despite the Access Hollywood tape. She voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh despite the allegations against him. She enabled the elimination of Roe v. Wade. One issue that I think matters a lot to people in Maine and has a distinct intersection here with issues of women’s rights and women’s health is that affordability is not just, “Oh, I can’t pay my rent.” Hospitals are closing in Maine, specifically OBGYN units.

So a lot of people in Maine are having to go either to Portland or to Boston for procedures that they might otherwise have been able to get at units that closed in the mid-coast area or farther north. This was something actually that Platner brought up in his speech. 

So I think if you’re saying that he is bad to women based on the reporting so far, I think you can definitely make that argument, and I don’t think that Graham Platner would disagree. Ultimately I think that the Platner campaign strategy is going to be, “This is not about necessarily like personal taste. It’s about what I will deliver for the people of Maine.” And what Susan Collins has delivered for the people of Maine is Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s consistent hatred of and demeaning attitude towards women, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and this affordability crisis where hospitals are closing in the state and forcing women to go for procedures to Portland or to Boston,

JW: So it sounds like we’re going to have a lot to watch in this race come November. Noah, we’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us.

NH: Thanks so much for having me.

JW: Next, we head to LA, where the mayoral primary has become the latest victim of right-wing panic and false claims of election fraud with Intercept contributor and my co-host, Jordan Uhl. But first, a quick break.

[Break]

JW: Hey, Jordan. Great to have you here.

Jordan Uhl: Hey, it is great to be here on the other side of the conversation.

JW: Jordan, you’ve been following the primaries for California governor and LA mayor quite closely. And because vote counting can take weeks in Los Angeles and the state generally for various reasons, including there being huge population centers and a lot of vote-by-mail ballots, it has become the latest target of claims by Republicans that there is election fraud.

President Donald Trump posted on social media, “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the LA runoffs after the big lead he had.” By the way, Pratt is the Republican candidate in the LA primary. In an interview with NBC “Meet the Press,” Trump stormed off after being pressed for evidence of his claims that the California governor’s race and the 2020 presidential elections were rigged.

[Clip plays]

Kristen Welker: …presented in a court of law-

Donald Trump:  The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.

Kristen Welker: Mr. President. 

Donald Trump: And it’s happening again right now in California. 

Kristen Welker: You’ve never presented evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.

Donald Trump: It’s happening right now in California. Right now, it’s, look at what’s happening in California.

Kristen Welker: Where’s the evidence to that?

[Clip ends]

JW: As Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and Pratt’s leads dwindled, conservative commentator Megyn Kelly parroted really similar talking points on her show.

Megyn Kelly: No one is going to trust this outcome if those two are eliminated from the general election given the leads that we’ve seen. … If you look at the betting markets, and they don’t know anything more than we do, generally they don’t, they’re all now voting against Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton even making it.

JW: We’re going to end the clip there. Kelly goes on to complain about the mail-in ballots coming in as if that’s nefarious, when it’s just a continuation of legitimate vote counting.

It’s worth noting a few days later, as more votes have come in, Hilton is now set to face Democrat Xavier Becerra in the state’s general election come November. But that hasn’t stopped loud MAGA voices from claiming the LA election was stolen from Pratt. 

Now, it seems to me that if you can believe an election was rigged in Los Angeles because a conservative former reality TV star with no experience and a reputation for wasteful spending and explosive outbursts didn’t win, you can believe anything.

But Jordan, how has the right tried to spin his defeat? What does it tell us as we head into November? Are there trends you’re seeing in the LA mayor’s race that mirror national trends in elections across the country? 

JU: I mean, that is just patently ridiculous. The trends that we’re seeing are just continuations of trends or behavior patterns that Republicans have already exhibited in elections previously.

If they don’t like the outcome, it’s rigged. If they like the outcome, it’s fine. More of the same here. At the gubernatorial level, you can see how Megyn Kelly pointing to prediction market data is symptomatic of a larger problem here. People weren’t looking to actual polling data; they were looking to the behavior of gamblers to inform their analysis.

So Hilton, now we know, is making the runoff. She was certain — based on gambling behavior — that he wouldn’t. So in her mind, the only conclusion was fraud. 

There were many people who waited until later to decide who to vote for, that may not inform who they vote for in the general. But conservatives didn’t have a menu of options.

The field was largely consolidated behind Pratt in LA, and for the most part, you had the Trump endorsement of Steve Hilton for governor. While Chad Bianco, the sheriff from Riverside, did pull some votes, for the most part, they were lining up behind [Hilton]. So it was much more clear who they would vote for, so it allowed them to cast their vote early.

JW: Thinking just about Pratt, we’ve seen him on television as this kind of outrageous figure. I want to just play a couple clips just to give an idea of what millennials have going on in their mind when they hear the name Spencer Pratt.

[Clip montage plays]

Spencer Pratt: Wah, wah, wah, wah. What are you crying about, Stephanie? What the f— are you crying about? …

That’s why you’re not in my life, you crazy bitch. …

Your mom is just the vagina that made Heidi come onto Earth. Your mom is not Jesus or God!

Brody Jenner: Dude, relax, bro. What the hell is wrong with you?

Spencer Pratt: I hate that bitch. Excuse my French. 

[Clips end]

JW: OK, so now that everyone’s gotten a taste of Pratt — if I’m being honest, I did that mostly for fun. But to talk about something a little bit more serious, as you’ve pointed out, betting markets are playing a role in this election. So Kalshi, Polymarket, can you explain briefly what Kalshi and Polymarket are, and how they’re factoring into this election and more elections around the country?

JU: These are, you could say, loopholes to current gambling laws. Well, you’re not actively betting in a sportsbook, you’re making a prediction about an outcome, and somehow — I’m not a lawyer — somehow that is legal. In California, sportsbooks are illegal. So in states like California, these platforms thrive. But they operate nationally for the most part.

They have been pumping a ton of money into advertisements, but also through influencers in paid promotional posts. Now, what that looks like is influencers or creators will point to prediction market data. The example that we saw with Megyn Kelly: Oh, well, the prediction markets are saying one thing, but then a different outcome occurred.

That’s not actual polling data. And this blurring of the lines is deliberate by Polymarket and Kalshi — not because they want people to have a clear picture, but because they want people to use their platforms. They want to bring in new customers. Ideally, they want those customers to lose money so they make increased profits.

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Now, the argument that I’ve heard against this from people who have been approached by these companies is, “I don’t want anything to do with it,” because in a sense it could be seen as a form of voter suppression.

Let’s take the New York mayoral election as an example. If betting market data said that Andrew Cuomo had a 90 percent chance of winning the election, and you are a supporter of Zohran, you might see those odds and think, “It’s not worth it. He’s going to win.” But as we saw in that election, Zohran Mamdani brought the vote out and won. He is now mayor of New York. So polling showed a much closer race.

Polling in the LA mayoral primary showed in the last reputable poll before the election that Councilmember Nithya Raman was in second place. Spencer Pratt was in third. And now as these results are counted, it matches the polling data. It did not match the behavior of gamblers. 

I think the biggest issue here, Jessica, is that Republicans only make up around 15 percent of the population in Los Angeles. If you look at the 2024 presidential election data, Spencer Pratt got, as it stands right now, within 1 percent of the vote share that Donald Trump got in the election. So the idea that he would somehow outperform Trump, just pull all of these votes from two Democrats in the city to somehow either make the runoff or, as he claimed in the eve of the election, win outright in the primary, which would be more than half of the vote — it was never rooted in reality or past elections.

JW: Yeah, it really concerns me. The idea that we would be replacing polls, which are, admittedly imperfect, but at least they’re scientific and evidence-based, not just vibes and guesses.

And not to air out the business of my co-host, but you’ve been approached by one of these companies. Can you tell us about that? What are they offering people to partner with them, and what are the expectations?

JU: They did. Kalshi has reached out to me twice with offers of “partnerships.” And what that looks like isn’t explicit pitching, “Hey, use this platform. I use this platform,” like you would in a traditional product placement.

It’s much more covert. They want you to integrate that betting market data into your content. It’s kind of a backdoor way of advertising. I had said no, just cut them off from the beginning in both offers; I’m not interested in that. But I have friends with representation who heard them out just to get a sense of what they were offering. I have heard from multiple people: They’re throwing around six-figure offers and, in many cases, multiple six-figure offers. We’re talking mid-six figures. 

The people that I’ve talked to all said, no, they didn’t feel good about it, for the concerns that we’ve laid out. In their opinion, these companies are predatory, and it could have a suppressive effect on the vote. And there just aren’t really guardrails on these platforms which allows them to prey on people.

JW: Wired reported that both Kalshi and Polymarket had to ask influencers they were partnering with to take down paid partnership tags after they falsely claimed the LA primary results were dubious. Semafor reported that Kalshi asked one of its MAGA influencers — who wrote, “Is California cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?” and “They’re stealing it, aren’t they?” to their 1.7 million X followers — to take down the post. Jordan, what do you make of that?

JU: This is a problem of their own making. I’d say a less charitable interpretation of their marketing strategy on social media would be to pay people who would likely be ideologically aligned with candidates who have no hope of winning to boost the prediction market data that shows that they are either outperforming or, in Pratt’s case, making the runoff or winning outright.

Those outcomes were not rooted in polling data. But to a client base or a customer base who would believe those things are possible based on data from bettors — that’s just free money for Kalshi. All of those people would lose their bets, and that’s a windfall of cash.

So it seems like they were trying to walk things back when they had already paid these people to promote somebody who had no real prospects.

JW: I have to say, there is something interesting to me that this is the same year I found out what a “parlay” was, and it’s also the same year that the betting markets are trying to take over the election. But just coincidence, I guess. 

So Vanity Fair just put out an article, “Spencer Pratt’s Mayoral Campaign Proves It Takes More Than Mastering the Algorithm to Get Elected.” He really did pop off with these AI videos that didn’t do it for me personally, but seemed to really be catching attention.

He had all this celebrity endorsement, but it didn’t go anywhere for him electorally. He, I think, did worse than just any kind of standard Republican probably would have done. Jordan, what do you make of the ways in which we’re maybe noticing the attention economy isn’t the exact same thing as electoral success?

JU: Spencer Pratt learned a lesson that many lefty progressive candidates over the past several years have learned the hard way, that simply running an online or Twitter-focused campaign does not lead to votes. Spencer Pratt had a lot of buzz, but that buzz was national. So of course, that’s not going to lead to votes in the city of Los Angeles.

The AI ads, some of them weren’t even made by his campaign, while they did use AI-generated images for posters and campaign art. To me, that kind of illustrates the hollowness of that campaign. It was much more sensational. It was more of a spectacle than substance. And to my knowledge, I don’t know what kind of ground game Spencer Pratt had. You need to get out and knock on doors. That it is campaigning 101. 

He threw some parties. He cut a couple videos. He had some really slick ads. But are you talking about issues that matter to all of Los Angeles? The way he talked about the unhoused population in Los Angeles was seen by many as cruel and insensitive.

When talking about the fires, the fires of last year, which were a centerpiece of his campaign, it always seemed to come back to him. He lost his home. I know multiple people who lost their homes, and they didn’t resort to demonizing homeless people. 

Even the frustration with the city’s response or the state’s response, no objective observer can look at those fires and the conditions that worsened them — the Santa Ana winds — that came in and made it difficult, and in many cases impossible, for helicopters to get into the hills to fight those fires, which is how they do combat wildfires in the hilly parts of the city. 

The speed of those winds were 70, 80 miles an hour. You can’t get a helicopter up there. No rational person is going to see that and say, “Yes, this is clearly the mayor’s fault.” This is just a tragic disaster. 

So for him to insinuate that this is all Mayor Bass and Nithya Raman’s fault is insulting to voters’ intelligence. They can recognize maybe the way it was responded to wasn’t great, but they’re not the reason the fires started in the first place.

JW: I did want to get into one positive takeaway from the LA mayoral primary that Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones editor-in-chief and my former boss, pointed out on Blue Sky, that now that the race will be between incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Council Member Nithya Raman, we might actually get a real conversation around affordable housing and housing policy in general. Jordan, can you tell us a bit more about Raman and the issues on the table heading into November?

JU: This is going to be a very fascinating race to watch, and it has already started with Karen Bass blaming problems of homelessness on Nithya Raman. I think what she’s going to need to navigate is, Bass, the current mayor, will need to navigate is helping her potential voters understand that the city council does have a lot of power, more power in LA than city councils around the country.

Now, you can’t blame all of LA’s problems on one single council member, but I’m going to be very interested to see how this plays out. Yes, I think on the policy front, that’s great. We actually can have, ideally a substantial policy debate in a general election. This is typically not something that we see.

That’s why a lot of people, I think, were hopeful that Tom Steyer could make the runoff, because that potentially could force the favorite, Xavier Becerra, into tacking to the left on some of his positions, like oil, housing, and the billionaire tax. Unfortunately, he has nothing to hold him accountable. There’s no leverage to force him to shift positions now that he’s going to be facing Steve Hilton. 

There is a shifting landscape in the LA mayoral race, which is going to be very fascinating. Nithya Raman, certainly not without critics, but she is widely seen as to the left of Karen Bass, and potentially we could see Karen Bass make promises that if she does defeat Raman in the general, will then be used to hold her accountable.

JW: Yeah, it is hard to imagine any kind of substantive debates happening in the alternate reality where we had a Spencer Pratt, Mayor Karen Bass race. Jordan, we’re going to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.

JU: Thank you so much for having me.

JW: That does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. 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. 

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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. What issues are you following in the midterms, send us an email or leave us a voice mail at 530-POD-CAST that’s 530-763-2278

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post The Right’s “Election Fraud” Cry for Midterms Previewed in Primaries appeared first on The Intercept.

Health reporter Nick Stonesifer joined “Beyond the Headlines” to talk about a historic moment in Delaware healthcare – the announcement of who will be running the state’s first medical school.

Nick discusses how he goes beyond the press releases and the press conferences to detail the contours of a major policy announcement, and he gets into the big unanswered questions behind the medical school project. He also details how he builds relationships – online and in-person – with industry leaders and “the person on the street” to develop thorough perspectives in his health care coverage.

The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Nick, you have been living down in the Lewes area for almost a year now. You also have a dog. So I want to start the podcast like this: Let’s say you are hanging out at your favorite oceanside dog park and you strike up a conversation with another dog owner who is complaining about downstate healthcare, and he hasn’t heard all about the medical school saga. How would you catch that person up on what is going on? 

I would probably say that things are bad. Things are not going to get better for a little while, but people are trying to fix it. 

In regard to the medical school, they are trying to attract more people who will come and learn how to do medicine in Delaware, but time will tell how effective that is. 

You would also tell that guy that Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University has been selected to run Delaware’s medical school. 

I might say that. Sure.

You actually broke the news that Jefferson had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the State of Delaware even before the request for a proposal had been made public to run this school.

Given all that, how would you rank your surprise meter that Jefferson ended up winning the proposal process? 

Not high at all. It was pretty obvious, especially when I got there I recognized people from the Jefferson team and didn’t really see anybody from the main other bidders like PCOM [the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine].

And when you say “you got there,” you’re talking about the press conference where they announced…

Who was winning. Yes, when they announced who the medical school was on Tuesday – I guess it’ll be last Tuesday by the time this comes out – it was pretty obvious. You could see it coming if you were paying attention to the faces in the crowd. So I was not really that surprised. 

And frankly, the [non-binding] agreement, while the state says it has no impact or bearing on the bidding process, you’ve got to go through a lot of work to put together an agreement like that. There was a lot of talk and questions about how this was going to be done, and they already had something in place.

So you were not necessarily surprised that Thomas Jefferson University was selected to run the medical school. What about your surprise that ChristianaCare was not going to be initially involved in this process? 

Yeah, that was definitely the big news nugget of the day.

Outside of the fact that there’s a new medical school coming to Delaware, one of Delaware’s principal power players in healthcare was going to be sitting on the sidelines – at least in the intermediary – is a big deal because they had attached their name to a separate bid, through the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. 

They had put all their eggs into that basket, and it didn’t really go their way. I was surprised to see that they didn’t – I don’t know, maybe 20/20 is hindsight – but [they] didn’t really read the writing on the wall. 

A lot is unclear about how Jefferson had structured its agreements with the healthcare systems and if, frankly, ChristianaCare wasn’t pleased with those agreements and tried its luck with PCOM.

One thing that was clear from the announcements is that Jefferson University will not really be running this as a stand-alone operation. The word that everybody kept using – and it showed up in your reporting – to describe this medical school is a “consortium” with over a dozen education and healthcare institutions collaborating on bringing this school to life.

Is a medical school by consortium a typical approach in the field? 

I’m no expert on this, but I can tell you what I’ve seen in my own day-to-day life. 

A big state school like University of Delaware, if it were a bigger school and was a bigger program like a Penn State, for example – Penn State has its own hospital systems, it has its own healthcare systems, and has its own built-in medical infrastructure to sustain what is needed to run a medical school. Delaware doesn’t really have that.

We have privately-owned hospitals up and down the state. You don’t have anything with Del State [University], you don’t have anything with University of Delaware. So when an outside entity like Thomas Jefferson comes in and it’s saying, “Hey, we’re going to build a branch campus here,” financially within the bounds of this federal grant that we’re using to fund the medical school, it makes more sense to essentially take advantage of the already existing infrastructure to get it done because they can’t build a new hospital.

That would just not be the play. 

So the consortium approach is perhaps a more logical approach for Delaware since there isn’t an educational institute that already had a hospital set up with it. 

The funds that came from this Rural Health Transformation program from the federal government – you actually couldn’t build a new stand-alone institution through that grant, correct? 

There’s some wiggle room for renovations and some capital expenses that can be done through the grant, but they’re pretty muted.

So unless a huge outside philanthropic grant came in with hundreds of millions of dollars and said, “Hey, build a hospital,” that was never going to happen. 

The University of Delaware is where this school will be based, but this is not a University of Delaware medical school. 

No, they’re trying very hard to make sure that it is not perceived as such.

Jefferson’s going to be running the programs. [UD] essentially, my read of it right now, is going to be a landlord for Jefferson to host these classes. But once [the students are] done with those classes, they’re going to scatter across the state into hospitals like Bayhealth, Beebe, Trinity, a lot of these primary care clinics.

Whether or not the school moves downstate, if at one point they build a campus and move their campus downstate, is unclear right now. I don’t know if it would move to Del State at any point in the future or anything like that. 

Because in theory, these are “rural” health transformation dollars, so they shouldn’t necessarily be based in Delaware’s urban, populous county. 

Yes. That’s one way to look at it.

When a major announcement like this happens, I have to imagine that an easy temptation is just to report out the top talking points given at a press conference. In your reporting, how do you try to pierce through the hubbub of the announcement and get something to your audience that is multilayered and nuanced?

Yeah, you definitely are really working to cut through every word they’re saying. You can listen to them on the microphone and hear what they have to say and just let your recorder run and turn your mind off. But usually it’s our job to really dig in deep to what they’re saying in the moment, which takes a lot of mental energy but is beneficial to our coverage in the long term.

You’re looking at power structures to really figure out who’s in, who’s out, and what that really means for whatever initiative. So it’s a lot. And just talking to people and asking questions outside of whatever official statements are being given.

Doing your homework before you get there definitely helps,

This was outside this press conference, correct? 

Yes. 

So you weren’t necessarily working the room, but you were still working the crowd? 

When you go to these events and when you’re a beat reporter, you see a lot of the same faces. Frankly, it’s just in your best interest to go up, say hello to people, ask some questions on or off the record about what’s going on.

You know, you’re “running for mayor” all the time. It works to your benefit to talk to people. 

You talk about one of the things you’re assessing when you’re at an event like that is the power structure, the power dynamic. A good example of that is you said earlier that your biggest surprise about all this was that ChristianaCare was not involved in this winning application.

I’m guessing that was not part of the official press conference comments. I’m guessing no one said, “You may notice that ChristianaCare is not involved in this, and let us tell you why.” 

No, I mean to the trained ear they had listed out everyone who was going to be in this consortium. And one glaring absence was ChristianaCare.

So I asked about that and things got a little odd. The answer seemed a little prepared that they were welcome at any time to join. They wouldn’t really answer whether or not they had been invited or declined, but we later found out that they had put all their money into the PCOM bid, and it really didn’t go their way.

So you were the lovely reporter who brought that to everyone’s attention at the press conference? 

Um, yes. At least that’s the way I remember it, so yes. 

I’m sure all the people up at the dais were like, “That Stonesifer, why did he have to bring this up?”

I hope not. I’m not such a bad guy. 

I’m guessing there weren’t any representatives from ChristianaCare at this press conference, but you got comments for your article. Was it easy to get ChristianaCare willing to talk about this or not? 

They had come out with PCOM, jointly, in defiance of the state’s decision to pick Jefferson. They did the fair sport thing – we respect the state’s decision, but we respectfully disagree as well. We thought we were the better bid. 

You know, sometimes when people are frustrated, they’re more likely to come out and discuss what they’re feeling in that moment because they weren’t really there at the time to experience this big coming together. 

If you’re chronically online, like me, that meme of Squidward looking out the window at SpongeBob and Patrick running outside – for all the Gen Zs listening – that’s probably how ChristianaCare and PCOM were feeling at that moment.

Being chronically online takes me to the next question I want to ask you about. As we record this, you’re actually finishing up an article that is basically an unanswered questions piece about the medical school. It should be published by the time people listen to this podcast. 

One of your sourcing steps for that article was to open up a thread on Reddit – which if anybody doesn’t know is a community message board on the web – and in that message board post you basically said, “Hey, if you have any questions or comments about the medical school, drop them here and I’ll do what I can to report back.”

Why take that step? I’m sure you already had unanswered questions yourself about the medical school. Why reach out to the public in this way? 

I think it’s a good journalism exercise when you’re deeply involved in stuff for so long. Some of the very simple questions about where is this going to be, why is it here, what’s this about free education I’m hearing? You know, that gets lost in the weeds for us when we’re really looking at these high-level policy questions. 

It’s really about service at the end of the day. This information is supposed to be useful to someone. And that’s what you’re trying to get at. 

And frankly, the questions were good questions. Like, I don’t think at any point I’m above the audience that we’re trying to serve. They had great questions that were worth digging deeper into. And you learn something new from other people, too.

There are long back-and-forths in that thread, if you read it. It was definitely helpful to just parse through that, even if some of it is argumentative. A lot of it might be other people helping each other out. We’re trying to facilitate that conversation about the medical school.

I enjoyed looking back over the thread because it’s not like you just put out the question and then people responded. You were engaging. You went back and forth. You were providing information. What do you enjoy about that back and forth, and how is it useful to you as you’re prepping an article?

I mean, I’m not afraid to say I don’t know everything. I’m not a supercomputer, you know? So that is helpful for me when I see questions I don’t know the answer to. I tell somebody, “Hey, I don’t know this. Here’s what I do know that might help you.” And they might have a retort that’s like, “Here’s where to start.”

It’s just conversational in that way. So, it’s definitely good for people who may have had questions about this. If you’re a news consumer and you see a bunch of stories about the medical school – not a lot of people have access to reporters. Reporters are frankly very busy and don’t have too much time to make themselves accessible. So whenever and wherever we can be of service, that’s really the goal. 

I thought it was cool because I’m the director of community engagement. Part of my job is to get the reporters out in the community and engaging with the public. We do that in a lot of in-person ways with listening sessions in libraries or pop-up newsrooms in coffee shops.

But I thought this was a cool place where you just took the initiative yourself and basically set up your own digital pop-up newsroom there and allowed the public to engage, to get information from you, but also open up your own blind spots and go, “Oh, that is a question that I don’t know the answer to.”

It’s mutually beneficial. Everybody benefits, and that’s the goal.

So of those unanswered questions that you were being grilled about on Reddit and that made it into your article, which are the ones that you are most interested in getting to the bottom of in your next reporting steps?

I really just want to see signed agreements. I want to see budgets. I want to see commitments made by healthcare and education institutions. But those aren’t really publicly available right now, so that requires some digging on my end. 

A good question that, frankly, I hadn’t really thought of until Reddit was what happens to the already existing medical program known as DIMER (Delaware Institute of Medical Education and Research), which places Delawareans into Jefferson or PCOM classes once a year, or annually they hold reserve seats for Delawareans. 

People are wondering if it would become obsolete, now that we have a huge funnel of medical students coming into Delaware. What’s 30 seats meant to do? 

We are parsing through the differences [between] the two programs. One is really meant to give Delawareans specifically a chance to go to medical school, and the other one the goal is to bring people here. That’s what state officials are saying, at least. 

On the opposite side of the spectrum from that Reddit chain, which was engaging with a more normal public, you also played a major part in organizing Spotlight Delaware’s recent Health Care Summit that happened in late April before Jefferson University was announced as running this medical school.

The future of the medical school was really a through line in many of the conversations at that summit. The audience for that summit was very much industry leaders rather than these everyday folk that you were engaging with on Reddit. How does organizing something like the Health Care Summit aid your reporting on the medical school?

These are the people making decisions about what’s going to happen with the medical school. These are physicians who are on the front line of the specialty shortage. So there’s definitely a lot to learn and a lot of high-level stuff that we are going to try and distill down and really make it palatable, really show the impacts of these shortages in Delaware.

So it definitely helps out. It’s definitely good to be in a room with a bunch of people that know what’s going on and make connections. 

Reporting is hard work. You put in the time at the press conferences, the time editing your articles, the time making contacts. But there’s got to be some pleasure there for reporters as well. What’s been enjoyable to you about reporting on the medical school?

I think it’s a very historic time. This is the first medical school and really getting to be on the front lines of that reporting has been pretty exciting. This house is going to be built at the foundation, so to speak, and whatever we learn about at the start of these agreements… 

You know, when people are asking 30 years down the line, “Why is this this way? What the heck happened?” We want to get to that before 30 years down the line if we find there are these huge glaring problems with what this medical school was supposed to do. If there were these huge structural problems at the start, we can shed light on those. 

At Spotlight Delaware, we try to make really clear what the impact of public policy decisions is on the lives of Delawareans. So let’s end on this and just ask you, how would a medical school tangibly impact the life of a Delawarean? 

Yeah. I think in the short term, it’s not going to.

It’s definitely not right away going to make a huge impact. But either way, you know, there’s going to be this first class of 40 students. That’s going to be 40 students that are spread across the state learning medicine in doctors’ offices, doing their clinical rotations and stuff like that – really just adding bodies to what is going on. 

And then there’s the other camp that is like, this is a long way out. We’re training a few specific types of doctors, and as Delaware gets older, its healthcare needs get more specific. Specialty care is really where we’re seeing some of the largest gaps and this medical school, at least right now, won’t address those immediately.

It will benefit, but, you know, 20 years down the line. If there are people who trained here, they did their residency here and they stayed here, that’s a lot of physicians that are here. There might be a lot of specialty people who maybe went to do their medical degree here, but then went and did their training somewhere else and came back.

So who knows? I think in an ideal world, the state is hoping that people will see how lovely Delaware is and stay here forever. But that’s really to be seen. That’s to be determined.

The grand vision for the normal populace is because of this medical school, there’ll be more medical professionals in Delaware to serve you.

That’s their goal. Time will tell. 

So 30 years from now when Spotlight Delaware is still kicking and hires a new reporter from Penn State, they can move to Lewes and have good quality healthcare. 

Well, if that’s the case, the timeline is all out of whack, so…

Thank you, Nick, so much for your work helping Delawareans understand just what the medical school means for them. There’s more to come. 

Thanks for having me.

The post ‘Beyond the Headlines’ Podcast: Understanding Delaware’s Medical School  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

The U.S. Postal Service praised the “unique arrangement” that allowed the town of Bucyrus to keep delivering the mail there.

 Why Should Delaware Care?
The Christina School District, one of Delaware’s largest, has endured years of tensions among its top officials. In March, a judge dismissed a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by the district’s former superintendent, Dan Shelton, against the school board. On Tuesday, Shelton appealed that decision. 

Three months after the chief judge of Delaware’s federal court called a lawsuit “painfully redundant,” former Christina School District Superintendent Dan Shelton brought his wrongful termination claim to a federal appeals court in Philadelphia. 

Filed Wednesday, Shelton’s appeal claims that Delaware District Court Judge Colm Connolly violated the legal standards for reviewing a case by erring in his interpretation of the facts. 

“The only factual support the lower court could draw for its erroneous conclusion was solely from outside the factual record,” the appeal stated.

The appeal marks the latest chapter in years of acrimony impacting the highest levels of leadership at the Christina School District, which covers the greater Newark area and a part of Wilmington.

In his memorandum opinion filed in March, Connolly dismissed Shelton’s wrongful termination lawsuit by stating, in part, that the former superintendent was never actually fired — rather he was placed on leave. He said Shelton’s complaint did not “ever identify an obligation” within his employment contract that defendants might have breached.

Connolly also called Shelton’s claim a “hyperbolic, painfully redundant, and irrelevancy-filled complaint.” 

Despite the scathing comments, Shelton’s attorney, Thomas S. Neuberger, doubled down in the appeal, claiming again that Shelton was wrongfully terminated and that his contract with the district was breached when the Christina school board placed him on indefinite leave in 2024. 

He also noted that the decision to place him on leave coincided with the resignation of the district’s longtime attorney James McMackin III.

Following the resignation, The Newark Post reported that internal school board emails showed that McMackin chose to end his relationship with the board due to what he described as “wholesale disregard of the law,” under then-Board President Donald Patton.

Shelton’s appeal argued that while some facts relating to Shelton’s termination are messy, it stated that is likely to be “inevitable in a situation where a 40-year attorney-client relationship implodes.”

In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Patton, who is a named defendant in the case, said he can’t comment on specific details of the lawsuit, but that he looks forward to “providing factual details about my decision/votes that the public has a right to know.” 

In a separate statement, Christina Board President Monica Moriak said the lawsuit is important, but remains an “adult issue,” and that the school board is focusing on student outcomes.

What led to the appeal? 

Shelton began his career as a teacher at the Christina School District before becoming superintendent of Dover’s Capital School District in 2015. 

He later returned to Christina as its superintendent in 2020. Two years later, he was named Delaware’s Superintendent of the Year. 

By December 2023, the Christina school board extended Shelton’s contract through June, 2026.

But just months later, the board narrowly voted to suspend him without pay for three days and to rescind the one-year contract extension. The votes then highlighted the clear tensions that had emerged between Shelton and several of the elected members of the school board, particularly Patton.

Left unclear were the exact reasons for the tensions.

Still, Shelton’s lawsuit would later hint at the depth of hostility between the sides. In it, he claimed that Patton’s history as an educator “was not distinguished.” He also said that certain incidents which occurred provide various motives for him (Patton) to dislike and retaliate against” Shelton. 

Two months after the school board’s majority bloc voted to rescind Shelton’s contract extension, the three other members of the board sponsored a vote to remove Patton as school board president. They also asked the board to censure Patton for what they called “abusive behavior and retaliatory actions.”

The votes ultimately failed. Afterward Patton said in an interview on DETV that he suspected Shelton had been involved and accused him of racism.

A litany of controversies ensued the following month, when the Delaware Department of Justice found the school board violated the Freedom of Information Act by holding an unannounced executive session for an improper purpose. It further found the board failed to provide adequate notice in meeting agendas for votes regarding a contract rescission for Shelton, as well as for a vote of no-confidence in him.

By July 2024, the board held a nearly eight-hour-long meeting, where the majority bloc voted to remove Shelton and place him on administrative leave.

That same month, McMackin told the board he was stepping down from the role as soon as the board found new counsel. 

Tensions remained high during the school board meeting that came a month after Shelton’s removal.

Items for the meeting agenda included a series of possible referrals to the Delaware commission that oversees ethics among government employees. Among those was one that sought an opinion about whether a school board member “engaged in self-dealing with the district through alternative entities.”

Ultimately, none of those referrals were discussed during the meeting. 

Instead, Patton apologized to the public for “a number of things,” stating that the board should be functioning differently. Also during the meeting, members of the public called the board “an embarrassment.”

By September, Neuberger filed a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the Christina school board stop actions he claimed were defaming Shelton and violating his rights. The letter also said the board owes Shelton for lost wages, harm to his reputation, and emotional and physical distress.

Neuberger then filed the wrongful termination lawsuit on behalf of Shelton in December of 2024, seeking $2.7 million in damages.

At the time, Neuberger told Spotlight Delaware that warnings from the school board’s own attorney make the case a “slam dunk.”

The post ‘Erroneous conclusion’: Former Christina superintendent appeals $2.7M lawsuit  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
With the upcoming closure of Wilmington’s only sanctioned homeless encampment, advocates are asking where unhoused people will live after its shutdown. City officials are currently considering sponsoring a pallet village initiative to be built by Springboard Delaware, but the plan is already facing pushback from communities. 

Wilmington’s proposal to build a village of tiny homes for the homeless is facing growing opposition from neighbors, just as city officials race to secure a site before a deadline passes that would cause the project to forfeit $1.6 million in federal funding.

The challenge was clear during a community meeting in Wilmington’s Eastside neighborhood on Tuesday when residents quickly rejected the proposal to build the village near them.

They said it didn’t make sense to put the project in a community that is underserved.

“Put them in your neighborhood!” one resident shouted at presenters during the meeting. 

Homelessness has been at the center of Wilmington politics and community concern over the past year, especially after last fall when Mayor John Carney designated Christina Park in the Eastside as the city’s only sanctioned encampment.

With Carney set to close the encampment on Monday, city officials are weighing their next steps to support the unhoused population. One option is to partner with the nonprofit, Springboard Delaware, to build and operate a tiny-home village. The group currently runs a similar community in Georgetown known as the “Pallet Village.”

But time is limited as the City Council has been directed to pick a location before July 1, to prevent Springboard from losing $1.6 million in COVID-era federal dollars that will no longer be available after this year. 

The three locations suggested by the mayor’s office for the village are in the Eastside and Southbridge. Neighbors in both communities have expressed their disapproval of the plans.

Now, the City Council and the mayor are at odds over how to move forward. Some council members insist the decision about where to place the village is not theirs to make. Others have said the timeline to make a decision is too short.

Councilwoman Michelle Harlee, who represents Southbridge and part of the Eastside, called the Carney administration’s recent assertion that the City Council was responsible for selecting the location “misleading.”

“I have not been in a meeting with anyone that shared that information — that it is in City Council’s purview to decide on the location,” she said.

Councilwoman Shané Darby, who recently passed a resolution opposing the closure of Christina Park, said the council was being “rushed” through the process.

Daniel Walker, Carney’s deputy chief of staff, said City Council members were briefed in April about the project and its three proposed locations.

“This is not new, this is not news,” Walker said. “It’s in their court.”  

He also said that a letter sent to state officials last month about the Springboard initiative was intended to be jointly signed by council members and the Carney administration. But, he said, the council’s representatives countered that the letter should come from the administration alone.  

“Despite this, we are excited to see Council is now supporting this initiative,” Walker said.

Councilman Coby Owens, who sat on Carney’s homelessness task force last year, said he was not aware that the decision would fall on the council. 

But he said the next step is to schedule a city council meeting to discuss the matter, “just to make sure that we have the proper timing.”

Where to build a tiny-home village?

Caroline Klinger, Carney’s spokeswoman, previously told Spotlight Delaware that the mayor’s office has been in talks with Springboard Delaware for more than a year. 

Those discussions picked up after the organization’s plans to build a pallet village in Dover fell through, she said. 

Since then, the Carney administration identified three potential sites. Those include 211 North Church St., which sits right across the street from Christina Park; 900 S. Claymont St., a small street lined by industrial land in Southbridge; and a parcel that faces the Christina River along the south side of the 7th Street peninsula. 

Walker said the 7th Street site would carry an additional site-readiness cost of about $1.6 million.

The council could select another location, Walker said, but the identified sites were chosen because they meet three criteria. They are controlled by the city, a community partner or a private owner supportive of the Springboard project; they are large enough for the buildings Springboard says are needed; and they can be prepared quickly.

Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver, who represents the Eastside, said she is against putting the project in her district. An area, such as Riverfront East, would be more suitable for the tiny homes, she said.

Klinger said Oliver had suggested that location to the mayor’s office, but never followed back up about it. 

“She has not followed up with a proposal or path forward for that location, but she is welcome to do so at any time,” Klinger said in an email.

Last month, Springboard Delaware Executive Director Judson Malone presented the idea of building tiny homes to the Southbridge Civic Association, but residents there argued their community is lacking too many public resources.

They also expressed a fear that a pallet village could cause loitering, panhandling, and safety risks to spill into the neighborhood. 

Similar concerns were raised on Tuesday when Malone presented to residents of the Eastside.

“It almost feels as if … the city is dumping all its problems on us,” said Miketia Edmond, who recounted a recent experience in which she said her delivered groceries were stolen by an unhoused resident.

What would the village look like?

If the city ultimately approves a site, Springboard Delaware plans to use the $1.6 million in federal COVID relief dollars for the construction. But only if they can get it done before the funding expires at the end of this year.

The nonprofit also plans to request an additional $1 million from the state government for operational costs for year one, Malone said.

The site would operate as a fenced housing village for roughly 40 to 60 people on about half an acre of land. The average stay would range between four and five months, but Malone noted that some people could stay longer depending on their needs. 

Rather than using individual tiny homes, as it does at the Georgetown location, Springboard proposes using trailers divided into four small sleeping units. Each resident would have a lockable room of about 85 square feet.

Among the amenities, Springboard would offer bathrooms, showers. meals or a place to warm food, a tele-health room, and a welcome center where residents would be screened before moving in.

Residents could be admitted even if they are actively using drugs, but drug use or sales would not be allowed on site.

Malone says safety is a major part of the model, with twice-daily wellness checks and some residents helping monitor the village overnight.

“It can be something that you embrace, because now you’ve got new people in your community who are having hope and want to make something themselves,” Malone said during the Tuesday meeting.

The post Wilmington tiny-home proposal sparks more resident pushback as a federal deadline approaches appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Amazon's new Sleep Studio feature for Echo smart speakers can read bedtime stories, play soothing sounds and guide kids through meditations.

Relatives of those killed on flight AI171 are still struggling to obtain answers about what happened

When Sagar Patel’s mother boarded Air India flight AI171 on 12 June last year, she called her son as she always did before takeoff. The flight was due to leave Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel airport in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, and was destined for Gatwick.

“We always had a little traditional thing,” said Patel, a business manager from London. “Once she got on the flight, she would sit down and call me. She’d tell me: ‘Yep, I’m on the flight. See you later.’”

They’re about to get more AI rammed down their throats, stuck into their pension plans and investment portfolios

Americans are growing worried about what artificial intelligence portends for their futures. Eight in 10 Americans report concern over AI, compared with a third who report being excited, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. More than half think it will do more harm than good in their daily lives. Seven out of 10 think it will reduce the number of available jobs.

Skeptical though they may be, they are about to get more AI rammed down their throats and stuck into their pension plans and their investment portfolios, whether they want it or not – binding their futures ever more tightly to the frenzied, risky, multibillion-dollar dash by technology moguls to develop machines capable of mimicking human thought processes to take over cognitive tasks.

For more than a decade, Dr. Joseph Mercola cautioned parents against a potentially lifesaving shot of vitamin K for their newborn babies: “Vitamin K shots are completely unnecessary for your newborn.”

But now, in a break from his past warnings, Mercola is saying he no longer believes that. 

ProPublica contacted Mercola recently as it was preparing an article about babies who died as a result of their parents turning down the vitamin K shot. Mercola’s new point of view is just as unequivocal as his old one: “The data is clear: vitamin K saves lives,” he wrote in an April article on his website two days after ProPublica contacted him. He added: “Based on the totality of the published evidence, I support vitamin K prophylaxis for all newborns.” 

He also directed parents to speak to their children’s pediatricians. 

“Vitamin K deficiency bleeding is rare, but when it occurs, the consequences can be devastating and irreversible,” Mercola wrote. “A single injection at birth can prevent it. Please talk to your doctor.”

Mercola is a leading vaccine skeptic and an ardent supporter of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is a popular figure online, with a Facebook page that has some 1.7 million followers. He sends out a daily newsletter and sells alternative treatments for a variety of ailments. 

His reversal comes at a critical moment. Hospitals and research studies have documented an alarming jump in babies not receiving the vitamin K shot, which has been recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics since 1961 to help newborns’ blood to clot. Without it, research shows, babies are 81 times more at risk for late vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which can be fatal. 

Just as has happened with measles and other vaccines, vitamin K shots have become the target of a deluge of false information online. That has caused some parents to view it as an unnecessary pharmaceutical intervention amid a lingering mistrust of the medical system following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Some point to a 2010 post from Mercola, entitled “The Dark Side of the Routine Newborn Vitamin K Shot.” A doctor in Tennessee recalled reluctant families citing the article, as did doctors in Oregon. 

In the years that followed, Mercola stood by his opposition. He reiterated his position in 2014, after four babies in Nashville, Tennessee, suffered vitamin K deficiency bleeding. And he did so again in 2019, after hospital staff contacted child protective services in Illinois and took temporary custody of a newborn whose parents refused the shot for their baby.  

In place of the shot, Mercola had recommended vitamin K drops, which are taken orally and have been touted online as a popular alternative. The drops, however, are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and research shows they are not as effective as the shot, though they are used in some European countries. 

In his April article, he addressed the rampant false information online regarding the vitamin K shot and acknowledged the role his writing may have played in spreading it. “The internet contains a significant amount of misinformation about vitamin K,” Mercola wrote. “Some of it may reference my own 2010 article. That article reflected the state of a scientific debate that has since been resolved. The science moved forward, and so have I.”

In fact, the science around the vitamin K shot has been settled for decades. The discovery of vitamin K and its role in clotting blood won the Nobel Prize in 1943. Newer studies have confirmed and furthered many of the findings that were available in 2010, but they do not represent a scientific shift from previous research. Some recent studies that Mercola cited in the April article document the rise in babies not receiving the shot and the catastrophic bleeding in the brain that can follow, but again both reinforce the same science that has encouraged giving the shot for more than 60 years. 

In Mercola’s earlier posts, he wrote about what he deemed to be risks from the shot, beginning with “inappropriate” and “unnecessary” pain to the baby. He incorrectly claimed that the amount of vitamin K injected into newborns was far more than the needed dose. In addition, he wrote that the shot may contain preservatives that can be “toxic” to a baby’s immune system. 

Benzyl alcohol is often used as a preservative in vitamin K shots, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other organizations have stressed that it’s safe. In the 1980s, doctors realized that some extremely premature babies suffered benzyl alcohol toxicity, but, according to the CDC, that was because they were on so many medications containing it. In addition, many hospitals now offer preservative-free options.

Some families have also expressed fear about a “black box warning,” which appears on a drug’s label to alert providers of serious risks. The shot does contain a boxed warning, as do more than 400 other medications, but that is primarily related to adults and vitamin K that is given through an IV, not as a shot in the thigh muscle, which is how doctors typically administer vitamin K to babies. None of the dozens of doctors interviewed by ProPublica said they have ever seen an adverse reaction in an infant who received a vitamin K shot.

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Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth

But even back in 2010, Mercola dispelled one popular misconception that vitamin K injections increased the risk of cancer. That belief stemmed from a pair of older refuted studies. In 2010, he wrote, “that conclusion was in error.” In April, he reinforced that message.

Alternative treatments promoted by Mercola have attracted federal scrutiny. He and his companies have had to pay millions of dollars to settle allegations that he had made false claims about the safety of products. 

During the pandemic, for instance, the FDA sent Mercola a warning letter after he offered unapproved and misbranded products, including vitamin C, on his website as ways to prevent or treat COVID-19. 

In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission announced it was mailing $2.59 million to people who bought Mercola indoor tanning systems. The agency charged that Mercola and his companies claimed the tanning systems were safe and that research showed that indoor tanning doesn’t raise the risk of melanoma, a type of skin cancer. 

Mercola did not admit wrongdoing. His online posts include a disclaimer that they are intended as a way of sharing knowledge and information, not medical advice. He also has said his 2010 vitamin K article was based on an interview with a Dutch researcher who studied vitamin K.

Mercola, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, declined to be interviewed for this story but said his current stance is accurately reflected in the April article. “While I do not agree with all of the characterizations and conclusions in your summary,” he wrote in response to questions from ProPublica, “I have nothing further to add at this time.” 

Even though Mercola has now reversed his position on vitamin K, many on social media still cling to debunked and distorted claims. On Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, unsubstantiated claims often go unchecked.

One theme that has emerged on social media is the notion that God created babies perfectly, and there must be a reason they are born without sufficient vitamin K. In one video on TikTok, a woman who identifies herself as a nurse asked, “Did God really get it wrong?” 

Responding to another, someone wrote, “Just know our creator didn’t make a mistake. Every baby is born like this for a reason.” 

Others lump the vitamin K shot, which is not a vaccine, in with vaccines. A comment on a video about the vitamin K shot declared, “My baby isn’t getting any vaccines.” It received more than 600 likes.

Mercola also is not the only doctor being cited by vitamin K shot opponents. Commenters on Instagram, TikTok and Reddit have directed people to Dr. Suzanne Humphries, who has spoken out about vaccines and the vitamin K shot for many years. 

“My opinion is that the more I read about vitamin K,” she said in a video posted in 2014, “the more I can’t believe that it’s injected into newborn infants.”

Last month, she appeared in a lengthy interview on the website of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by Kennedy. She cited the pair of studies from more than 30 years ago that found an association between the shot and cancer, though they were both called into question shortly after they were published. As even Mercola noted in 2010, several additional studies found no increased risk of cancer following the shot. 

“Those of us that believe in a divine creator,” she said, “believe that maybe it is by design, or that actually it is by design, and that there’s a reason for it.” 

Humphries did not respond to requests for comment.

During Kennedy’s time at Children’s Health Defense, the group published a post in 2020 that claimed aluminum adjuvants — added components that boost the body’s immune response — in vaccines are “significant sources of early exposure” to aluminum. Some vitamin K shots contain a small amount of aluminum, but studies have not found any evidence of serious or long-lasting harm. Adjuvants, according to the CDC, have been used “safely in vaccines for decades.” 

Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense, said the aluminum concern remains, as does the cancer fear, despite multiple studies that found no basis for them. He said he would like to see more research on the vitamin K shot, as well as other newborn interventions like the hepatitis B vaccine. 

“I do want to look at the individual components of these shots in conjunction with everything else that the infant is getting,” he said, “and to me that body of literature is really incomplete.”

Hooker said he worked with Kennedy for many years and, while they are no longer in direct contact, he has full confidence in the country’s leading federal health official. But Kennedy’s silence has served to deepen skepticism among experts. 

“Now we’re starting to see something that I never saw, which was brain bleeds and gut bleeds in infants,” said Rep. Kim Schrier, a Washington Democrat who worked as a pediatrician for more than 15 years before running for Congress. “And that’s so scary and heartbreaking.”

At an April House subcommittee hearing, Schrier confronted Kennedy about vitamin K, saying that he made parents distrust doctors and shots, and as a result some parents are refusing the vitamin K shot and other standard care. 

“Right now, Secretary Kennedy, given what I just told you about vitamin K, will you just tell pregnant women out there for the record, ‘Yes, you should get your babies the vitamin K shot’?” Schrier asked Kennedy.

Kennedy did not oblige her. He said he has never said anything about the vitamin K shot. 

An HHS spokesperson did not answer ProPublica’s questions but said the CDC recommends that parents give newborns the vitamin K shot within 6 hours of their birth to prevent vitamin K deficiency bleeding. She acknowledged that uptake of the shot has declined during recent years “as public trust in health care institutions has fallen, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic amid heavy-handed mandates and inconsistent messaging during the Biden administration.”

“Rebuilding that trust,” the spokesperson wrote in an email, “requires honesty, informed consent, and respect for individual choice.” 

Schrier said she empathizes with parents who are inundated with so many conflicting messages. She said she recently stepped out of the Capitol building and overheard a woman say — inaccurately — that every childhood vaccine contains glyphosate, which was an ingredient in some forms of the weed killer Roundup. 

“I can just see how this is going to spiral right now. It gets out there, then it’s on social media,” Schrier said. “Every parent just doesn’t want to do the wrong thing.” 

The post A Popular Doctor Had Long Warned That Vitamin K Shots Are Risky for Newborns. Now He’s Changed His Tune. appeared first on ProPublica.

In the United Arab Emirates, there is a growing sense that the U.S.-Israeli war has taught Tehran how to menace its adversaries even without developing a nuclear bomb.

2027 has notably high odds of becoming the warmest year on record, with the latest projections showing nearly an 80 percent chance.

Of all the bases Scotland fans could have found for their World Cup journey, it had to be the city renowned for chasing the English out of town

Sam Adams is the beer of Boston, named after a founding father of the United States who was the fourth governor of Massachusetts. Downtown, there’s a tap room where you can drink it all day. On Thursday lunchtime the bar was packed, full of Scotland fans, and hanging over the first-floor balcony was a big yellow flag. It bore the legend “Remember Bannockburn 1314”.

Of all the bases the Tartan Army could have found for their World Cup journey, it had to be the city renowned for chasing the English out of town. Supporters dressed like William Wallace have been bonding with tour guides dressed as Paul Revere.

Kenyan McDuffie stood in a dark suit and gingham tie in front of an infamous Chipotle in southeast Washington, D.C. The day before, a video of teenagers fighting inside the fast-casual restaurant had gone viral — and presented the former city councilmember a political opportunity in his mayoral campaign.

His opponent, City Council and Democratic Socialists of America member Janeese Lewis George, was “sitting on her hands and playing politics” by opposing a police-enforced curfew for minors, McDuffie said.

So-called “teen takeovers,” or large, coordinated meetups of teenagers in public spaces, have become a key political cause in D.C., where McDuffie argues the city needs to crack down to stave off the worst excesses of the federal government. His critics say he’s falling into a rhetorical trap laid by the Trump administration.

“When teen takeovers threaten the safety of residents and the young people themselves,” McDuffie wrote in a letter to the City Council, “the Council cannot afford to leave law enforcement and communities without every appropriate tool at their disposal.” 

Last summer, before the federal takeover of D.C., McDuffie and Lewis George both voted in favor of broad emergency curfew powers that allowed Mayor Muriel Bowser to create targeted zones that youth could not enter after certain hours, enforced by local police. D.C. has long had limited curfew laws on the books, and an update to the city’s permanent curfew law with new restrictions on enforcement is set to go into effect mid-July.

The candidates, who will face off in a Democratic primary to replace Bowser on Tuesday, have since split. Lewis George voted against both extending the emergency and implementing the new permanent law. McDuffie, though no longer on the council, said he supported both. 

To some, the scene at the Chipotle represented lawlessness and amplified their fears around the city’s youth. To others, the incident, which police told local media caused no injuries or damage, failed to warrant curfew policies which would increase arrests and police harassment of teenagers, primarily Black teens. 

The neighborhood around the Chipotle is beautiful, said Alex Dodds, “designed as a space where people should come and gather.”

“When Black children do that, they are seen as criminals,” said Dodds, campaign director for Free DC, an organization advocating for the city’s sovereignty that has endorsed Lewis George. “I don’t even understand what we want children to do.” 

A few miles away from McDuffie’s Chipotle press conference, Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, struck an eerily similar chord to McDuffie. 

“Teen takeovers … have terrorized our neighborhoods,” said the former Fox News host. “They have shut down businesses, and they have wasted hard-earned tax dollars of law-abiding residents who just want to live and work in peace.” 

Federal law enforcement officials would soon begin a “summer surge” targeting teenagers, Pirro warned. She added that her office would begin “aggressively prosecuting parents” whose children violated curfew laws, threatening them with up to six months in prison.    

McDuffie has weaponized the teen gatherings in campaign advertisements and public comments to argue that strict curfew zones — and the tough-on-crime mayoral candidate pushing them — will help forestall more aggressive actions by the Trump administration.

But advocates for D.C. sovereignty and youth in the criminal justice system warned that his rhetoric would only legitimize the administration’s efforts to incarcerate D.C. youth on a large scale, and that there is no evidence teen curfews reduce violent crime. Instead, they say, such curfews would increase the rates of arrest and harassment, particularly of Black teens, at a time when the city is swarming with federal agents. 

“Kenyan McDuffie is much more buying into the Trump administration’s playbook of lock-them-up and using fear to gain support,” said Dodds. “It’s so frustrating for our elected leaders … to obey in advance and go out of their way to press for a youth curfew.”

Trump personally weighed in on the race on Thursday, threatening to “take back Washington, run it on the federal basis,” if Lewis George were elected.

The theory in favor of juvenile curfews is that if you deter teens from gathering, they’ll have fewer opportunities to commit crime. But that relies on a misconception, said Riya Saha Shah, chief executive officer of the Juvenile Law Center.

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“Social science research has shown us that [curfews] are actually not effective at reducing crime or victimization,” said Shah. “It could result in increased crime or displaced crime in different places or at different hours of the day.” 

In 2015, research on juvenile curfews in D.C. found that they actually increased rates of gun violence among youth. Researchers theorized that the emptier streets that resulted from curfew policies could make “remaining offenders more comfortable opening fire.” 

While juvenile curfews do not reduce crime, Shah said, they do increase run-ins with police, particularly for Black and brown children. A 2011 study found that African American youths were 269 percent more likely to be arrested for violating curfew laws than white ones. The laws can also end up criminalizing teenagers for being unhoused, and an estimated 10,000 children in D.C.  experience housing insecurity or homelessness every year. 

“They may be brought into a system by virtue simply that they don’t have the ability to go home,” Shah said.

In D.C., where nearly 20 federal agencies have been deployed, these types of curfews pose immense risks for teens. “There are so many different kinds of law enforcement all over the city now,” said Shah. “It really increases the likelihood that children will be arrested.”   

In his letter to the City Council urging extended youth curfews, McDuffie argued the curfews were necessary to protect “Home Rule,” the 1970s law that gave Washington, D.C., relative independence from the federal government. 

“President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard on D.C. streets and floated proposals to try 14-year-olds as adults. Every week that this Council allows curfew authority to lapse, it hands the White House and its allies fresh evidence for that narrative and justification for federal intervention,” he wrote. 

Lewis George, by contrast, has emphasized that her primary objection to the curfew extension is the intense presence of federal law enforcement in the city.

Despite the lack of evidence to support the idea that teen curfews lower violent crime rates, the policy is overwhelmingly popular with D.C. voters. A Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 71 percent of voters supported imposing curfews in certain parts of the city at night.

Though her current position is unpopular, Lewis George has continued to surge in the polls, leading McDuffie by 11 points in the same poll. Internal numbers shared with The Intercept have her up further. 

But Lewis George has not done as well as her opponent with Black voters, a key constituency in the capital sometimes known as Chocolate City. In the Washington Post-Schar School poll, she trailed McDuffie by 5 points with Black voters. A spokesperson for her campaign said that Lewis George was proud of the multiracial coalition she had built, and argued that she does best in the most racially diverse areas of the city. 

The relationship between race and power is complicated in Washington D.C. Rapid gentrification has pushed out much of the city’s Black population, displacing an estimated 20,000 between 2000 and 2013. Between 2000 and 2020 Black residents went from being 59 percent of the population to 41 percent. And yet, the city’s political leadership has largely remained Black — it’s had a Black mayor since Home Rule was established. 

Kurtis Hagans, chair of Metro DC DSA, which endorsed Lewis George, said it is understandable that people with long-standing ties to the city would be skeptical of someone promising change at the scale Lewis George is calling for. She has pledged to build 72,000 new homes in five years to deal with the city’s housing affordability crisis — double the goals set by McDuffie and Bowser; called for stronger labor protections; promised to vigorously enforce wage theft laws; and vowed to establish a Federal Workforce Transition Center to retrain the thousands of federal workers who were laid off by the Trump administration.

Lewis George strongly outperforms with voters 18-39, and she does the worst with voters 65 and older. 

“There’s an element of disappointment with the Democrats in the city, folks who have before promised big change and transformative change, and then have let them down,” said Hagans, referencing previous mayors Vincent Gray and Adrian Fenty. “I can imagine that’s like, OK, well, at least we know Bowser.” 

Mayor Bowser has not officially endorsed a candidate, but she has clearly made known her preference for McDuffie, who has benefited from her coalition of more centrist Democrats and the city’s business community. 

In Dodds’s view, Bowser has spent much of her final term in office attempting to appease Trump with little to show for it. 

“If appeasement was working,” she said, “we wouldn’t be getting attacked, and they wouldn’t be sending in troops, and they wouldn’t be escalating law enforcement, and they wouldn’t be overturning our laws, and they wouldn’t be attempting to destabilize our budget. But they are still attempting to do all of that, so what good has appeasement gotten us?” 

She noted that crime rates had been declining for two years and that the Trump administration still deployed the National Guard and federalized the police force in August 2025. A month later, Trump pushed a House bill to charge children as young as 14 as adults. 

Alignment between local leaders and the White House on pushing carceral policies predates Home Rule. 

In “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” scholar James Forman explains how many Black leaders in Washington and elsewhere were complicit in pushing the carceral policies of the 1970s, including teen curfews, that eventually led to the mass incarceration of Black Americans. 

As Forman and scholars like Elizabeth Hinton have noted, those leaders were asking for support services alongside these carceral policies, as McDuffie is doing now. But those large-scale investments failed to materialize. Instead, their communities were ravaged by policing and mass incarceration policies that tore families apart. 

Lewis George, who initially ran for her council seat on a platform of divesting from the police, is no stranger to attacks calling her soft on crime. But for some it’s disappointing to see those same attacks coming from McDuffie, who previously was largely aligned with Lewis George on issues of criminal justice. 

McDuffie had previously expressed skepticism over the emergency teen curfews, though he and Lewis George both voted in favor.

“The research has shown that curfews do not prevent violence,” McDuffie said at a City Council meeting last year. 

McDuffie has taken progressive actions on policing in the past. In 2020, amid heightened political energy around police brutality and broader calls to defund the police, McDuffie voted to pull $15 million from the Metropolitan Police Department’s budget. And in 2021, he said that “we need to redirect funding away from the police department.”

Dodds said it concerned her that McDuffie’s campaign appeared to be capitalizing on D.C. residents’ fears. She argued that’s what the Trump administration wants.

“They very much want us to feel afraid of young people and of Black children in ways that are inherently racist,” said Dodds, “because when we feel afraid, we fight each other instead of fighting for one another.” 

The post How Policing Teen Hangouts Became a Key Issue in D.C. Mayor’s Race appeared first on The Intercept.

With matches in 16 cities across the US, Mexico and Canada, players and fans face an array of weather-related challenges

With the 2026 World Cup now under way, all 48 teams face a common opposition: summer weather across North America. Matches will be played in 16 cities, from southern Mexico to Canada, with a range of weather risks possible at each venue.

Thunderstorms disrupted play before the tournament had even begun. England’s warm-up against Costa Rica in Orlando was delayed by about an hour after storms brought lightning and heavy rain that waterlogged the pitch. Safety regulations at US venues mean play is suspended when lightning is recorded within roughly 8 miles of a stadium, not resuming until 30 minutes after the last strike.

President Donald Trump withdrew threats to take Iran’s most critical oil terminal “in the not too distant future,” after fresh attacks on U.S. bases in the region.

Ministry says animals fitted with sensors by foreign agencies collect sensitive sea data, in ‘invisible secret war’

China’s ministry of state security has claimed that foreign espionage and intelligence agencies are using innovative new methods to monitor the country’s waters, including deploying “spy” animals fitted with sensors.

In a post on the Chinese platform WeChat on Friday, the ministry warned that an “invisible secret war” was quietly playing out in the seas around China as foreign agencies were collecting sensitive data “through a variety of new spying devices” to produce underwater maps that pose a “serious threat to our national security”.

Location scans from the globally popular augmented reality game have helped train AI to recognise and interpret physical spaces

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An AI model trained on data collected from users of Pokémon Go will potentially help military drones find their location in war zones.

Pokémon Go, a 2016 augmented reality mobile game, allowed players to find and catch Pokémon in the real world using the cameras on their mobile phones, and exploded in popularity. In 2018, the company reported having more than 800m downloads worldwide.

Trump says hundreds of tankers have escaped Iran’s blockade. Data suggests shipments are increasing but many questions remain

Donald Trump has claimed that the US has been conducting a “secret mission” in the strait of Hormuz to help Gulf petrostates bypass Iran’s chokehold on oil flows – which has roiled global energy markets for months.

In televised comments from the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president claimed Iran was unaware that dozens of tankers had been escorted out of the blockaded channel at night with their transmitters off.

Riverside County has launched an 8-mile "smart freeway" pilot on northbound I-15 near Temecula, using roadway sensors and an algorithm to coordinate ramp meters and suggest speeds rather than widening the freeway. Officials say the $33 million project could reduce stop-and-go traffic and travel times. According to SFGATE, similar systems in Australia and Denver reportedly cutting delays by 20% to 65%. From the report: Unlike typical on-ramp stoplights that run on a timer lasting a few seconds, Interstate 15 drivers could find themselves waiting up to four minutes or even longer while the system determines the necessary speed for traffic entering the freeway. By spacing out the cars, transportation officials hope to improve traffic flow, reduce stop-and-go traffic and decrease the amount of time that travelers have to spend on the freeway. The transportation commission spent $33 million to build the project, which will run for two years. Riverside County Transportation Commission spokesperson David Knudsen told SFGATE that if the program is successful, the agency will work with Caltrans to deploy it elsewhere in the county and then potentially to other traffic choke points in California. "This system is a lot less expensive than trying to build new lanes, and so the idea here is let's make the system that we have work better," he said. Knudsen said the program is not managed by artificial intelligence but instead uses advanced sensors in the roadway to monitor real-time traffic conditions and make adjustments. The stretch of freeway that connects Temecula at the Riverside/San Diego County line to the Interstate 215 interchange in Murrieta can be notoriously clogged. What can be less than a 10-minute drive with no traffic can take between 25 and 45 minutes during the afternoon peak period, according to the transportation commission. "The intent is to create a consistent flow of traffic on the freeway system, and the coordinated ramp metering among the three on-ramps ... will help do that," Knudsen said. "If we can manage that, then we can help prevent that stop-and-go traffic frustration that so many people feel ... on the freeway."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former street seller celebrates newfound rights after debacle in claiming €500,000 scratchcard prize while undocumented

A Nigerian man who won €500,000 in an Italian lottery – but was barred from collecting his windfall because he was undocumented – said the hardship of his more than decade-long immigration journey had been eased after he was finally granted a residency permit.

“I’ve been praying for this moment ever since I arrived in Italy,” said Imagbe Ehizomwengie, 36. “It’s a huge relief. You might think it’s incredible, but receiving the permit means more to me than winning the money. I want to work and contribute to society.”

Thailand's Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol, a lawyer and the eldest of the king's seven children, has died at 47 after three years in a hospital, royal officials said. She was an advocate for women's rights.

With beloved stars’ personal items increasingly up for grabs after they die, a new generation of fans are bidding on everything from bowler hats to dog bowls

From Diane Keaton’s bowler hats and polka dot scarfs, to Gene Hackman’s used paint brushes, to Terence Stamp’s love letters from Jean Shrimpton and even Matthew Perry’s black leather wallet (his credit cards and AAA membership card still inside), fans are being offered – at a price – increasingly personal items from the estates of dead celebrities.

The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity.

Green surge in local elections and recent polling of Labour members may cause government to toughen stance on Israel

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Pro-Palestine activists believe there could be a “sea change” in the Labour party’s approach to the crisis in the Middle East which could result in the government taking a tougher stance on Israel.

Campaigners have pointed to the threat posed to Labour by the Green surge in the local elections, the likely departure of Keir Starmer from No 10, and new polling which shows an appetite among Labour members for a ban on all arms shipments to Israel.

This blog is now closed – see our latest full report on the Middle East crisis

Three Indian seafarers were killed in a US attack on an oil tanker earlier this week, India’s shipping minister, ‌Sarbananda Sonowal, said.

“It is deeply unfortunate to learn of the tragic incident aboard the Palau-flagged MT Settebello. Sadly, three Indian seafarers initially reported missing are now confirmed dead after bodies have been located and identified,” he wrote in a post on X.

The Middle East is being pulled deeper into crisis & the consequences reach far beyond the region.”

Ayoub Junaid, seven, given new pair but needs surgery as Gaza’s children remain unable to access treatment

A video of a seven-year-old Palestinian boy in Gaza who suffers from a severe visual impairment crying over his shattered glasses has drawn widespread attention across social and international media.

The footage of Ayoub Junaid has shone a light on the plight of the many visually impaired children in Gaza who, because of Israel’s blockade and the devastation caused by the war, have been unable to access eye examinations, corrective lenses or specialist ophthalmic surgery.

A luxury resort backed by the US president’s family may be built on a wildlife-rich nature reserve in one of Europe’s poorest nations

If the real estate dreams of a billionaire political family come true, an island in one of Europe’s poorest countries will become a luxury hotel complex, sweeping up stretches of the wildlife-rich nature reserve that sits across the water.

No public consultation has taken place, but there are signs the idea is on the way to becoming reality. Albania has been rocked by nearly two weeks of fierce protests after fences and heavy machinery came to a sensitive wetland and preparatory work began on the tourism vision of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

Figures suggest common travel area being used in both directions, but particularly UK to Ireland

Up to 90% of asylum seekers in Ireland may have entered the country via the Northern Ireland land border in the last three years, figures suggest.

Irish government data shows the common travel area (CTA) is being exploited in both directions but suggests it may be more popular for those seeking asylum in Ireland than in the UK.

And the coming crisis in strategic stability.

Why Beijing can’t stop wasteful spending.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: While traditional hotspots in the region such as Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia focus on services such as cosmetic surgery, IVF or physicals, China is trying to differentiate itself by providing some of the world's most advanced procedures. "There are two reasons why a patient travels for medical treatments: availability of advanced treatments and price," said Victor Cao, operations director of Joyful Medical, an agency in Shanghai that connects international patients to advanced cancer therapies in China. "Chinese people used to travel overseas for treatments that were not available at home, but now tables have turned." As expanding visa-free policies eased travel in the past year or so, videos are proliferating on social media of foreigners recounting their positive experiences of treatment in China, usually for consumer procedures like acupuncture and tooth scaling. But one treatment that's more quietly gaining traction is CAR-T, among the most promising breakthroughs in oncology but unavailable in most countries, or extremely costly. The process sees doctors collect T cells from the patient's blood then modify them in a lab to produce a special receptor, CAR, that can bind to a specific protein on cancer cells. These engineered cells are then multiplied into large numbers and infused back into the patient. The CAR-T cells seek out cancer cells carrying the target antigen and kill them. In the US, one single infusion can cost between $300,000 to $475,000, according to the American Cancer Society. In China, the equivalent costs about $150,000 to $180,000, and it could get even cheaper -- its drug regulator recently accepted a marketing application for a therapy aimed to be priced below 300,000 yuan ($44,000). China's medical tourism market remains in its infancy. Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Hainan, which was designated as the country's only special medical zone in 2013, treated just a few thousand foreign medical tourists last year, compared to hundreds of thousands of domestic patients who visited. There, patients can access advanced drugs, devices, and therapies approved in other countries but not elsewhere in mainland China. But China is pushing to upgrade its economy and reshape its global image from just a manufacturing hub into a provider of high-value services, and demand for medical tourism is surging. Globally, the market is estimated at around $34 billion and expected to reach $126 billion by 2035, according to San Francisco-based Grand View Research. Meanwhile, China's sector is projected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2025 to $3.4 billion by 2035, according to New York-based firm Market Research Future. "The patients chose China for something they can't get at home," said Shi Haoying, the group's founder and chief executive officer. "I think the growing attention to medical tourism to China is the inevitable result of long-term accumulation and development in many areas, such as growing medical technologies, quality of service and cost-effectiveness." Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, added: "Many new treatments, including in very advanced areas, are made in China but too advanced for the state of its healthcare system and the ability of its patients to pay for these things. It's in China's interest to integrate into the international system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Carolina beat Vegas 4-2 to take 3-2 series lead

• Svechnikov scores twice as top line clicks

• Game 6 set for Sunday night in Las Vegas

Jordan Staal scored his sixth goal of the Stanley Cup final, sparking the Carolina Hurricanes to a 4-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 5 on Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Hurricanes own a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series and will try to clinch the second Stanley Cup title in team history in Game 6 on Sunday in Las Vegas.

The Supreme Court declined a request from Alabama to move forward with a scheduled execution using nitrogen hypoxia, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.

The board move marks a shift from a June 4 memo to staff saying email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts" or "Kennedy Center."

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 12.

This live blog is now closed.

• US House blocks extension of powerful surveillance law

• Jay Clayton: Trump pick has long legal résumé but few intelligence credentials

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email

The US supreme court has published its opinions, but none of the cases we’ve been watching for were part of the decisions today.

In comments reported by NBC News, House speaker Mike Johnson has said it is “stunning” to him that “House Democrat leadership has put out a statement saying that they’re willing to allow the number one national security tool to go dark over some political disagreement over a very short-term temporary appointment”.

• Report cites alleged contact with employee

• Club says independent probe led to action

• Mickelson spokesperson: matter resolved

Phil Mickelson has reportedly had his membership cancelled at a San Diego golf club following alleged “inappropriate contact” with a female employee.

Golf Digest first reported that Mickelson has had his membership terminated at The Farms following an alleged incident before he played there in the spring. The report, citing multiple sources, said the employee accused the 55-year-old of “nonconsensual and inappropriate physical contact” towards her before a game of golf. Mickelson is said to have been challenged on the incident mid-round and duly left the property.

Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol’s health had worsened since she was hospitalised in December 2022 with heart problems that left her gravely ill

The eldest child of Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn has died aged 47, the palace has said, after nearly four years in a coma.

Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol, known in Thailand as Princess Bha, had been in hospital since December 2022 when she became gravely ill after having heart problems while out training her dogs.

President claims US and Iran are on the verge yet again, but we’ve heard that before – key US politics stories from Thursday 11 June

Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that the US and Iran are on the verge of signing a peace agreement and announced that he will cancel fresh missile strikes.

His comments came in a new bout of public diplomacy by social media, which was not immediately confirmed by the Iranian leadership.

Board seeks to stay judge’s ruling that found Trump’s name was illegally added to Washington performing arts venue

Donald Trump’s hand-picked board at the Kennedy Center is mounting a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the performing arts facility before a court-ordered deadline to remove it by Friday.

The board voted on Thursday to seek a stay of US district judge Christopher Cooper’s 29 May ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

Iranian leadership has not confirmed claim, after the US president announced that planned strikes on Iran had been cancelled

Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that Washington and Tehran were on the verge of signing a peace agreement, and announced that he was cancelling fresh missile strikes, after two days of escalating attacks on Iran that threatened to collapse the fragile ceasefire.

His comments followed a new bout of public diplomacy by social media, but were dismissed by Iran’s foreign ministry, which said a final decision on an agreement had not been reached.

Tom Mueller, Elon Musk's first hire at SpaceX, expects the company's IPO to help power a new era in space exploration.

Mother and brother were rescued after wave engulfed trio in Laguna Beach, as mayor calls news ‘heartbreaking’

California officials have recovered the body of a five-year-old girl who earlier this week was swept into the ocean by turbulent waters.

On Tuesday evening, the girl, her mother and brother were walking along the shore of Treasure Island Beach in Orange county, when a wave reportedly engulfed them.

Residents packed a public hearing in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday, looking to stop a nearly 70,000-square-foot data center from being built near the Nashville Zoo.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for June 12, No. 1,819.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for June 12, No. 1,097.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for June 12, No. 831.

A mother has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the chatbot's design led to her daughter's suicide.

President Trump said earlier Thursday he called off new military strikes on Iran, hours after threatening to escalate the war.

PARIS, June 11, 2026 — Pasqal, one of the global leaders in neutral-atom quantum computing, today announced the inauguration of Europe’s third Pasqal quantum computer hosted at CINECA, Italy’s largest public supercomputing operator and a member of the Italian Research Center on High Performance Computing (ICSC), Big Data, and Quantum Computing, in Bologna, Italy. The system was unveiled at the DAMA Technopole in Emilia-Romagna during a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the launch of new high-performance computing (HPC) and quantum computing systems procured by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) and co-financed together with the Italy’s Ministry of University and Research through ICSC, including the system delivered by Pasqal. This milestone marks a major step forward in the deployment of Europe’s hybrid HPC and quantum computing infrastructure.

The system is Italy’s first neutral-atom quantum computer. Named SOL, it is a Pasqal Orion quantum processing unity (QPU) featuring 140 qubits. It has been engineered for tight integration with the Leonardo pre-exascale EuroHPC supercomputer — one of the world’s most powerful HPC platforms, ranked 10th on the Top500 list— representing an important step forward in quantum accelerated high-performance computing.

At CINECA, Pasqal deploys its HPC–quantum integration stack exposing the QPU as a native resource within the supercomputing environment, enabling hybrid workflows that combine quantum and classical computing resources through standard HPC scheduling and operational mechanisms. The deployment builds on the open-source Quantum Resource Management Interface (QRMI) and supports integration with leading hybrid quantum-classical software ecosystems including NVIDIA CUDA-Q and Qiskit, the open-source software stack for quantum computing and algorithm research developed by IBM.

The inauguration builds on Pasqal’s growing footprint across Europe, following the successful deployment of quantum processors in France (CEA-TGCC) and Germany (FZJ-JSC) under the EuroHPC JU’s pilot project HPCQS. Together, these systems form the backbone for Europe’s federated hybrid HPC–quantum infrastructure, enabling researchers and enterprises to tackle complex problems in areas such as materials science, optimization, and machine learning.

“The inauguration of this quantum computer marks a major milestone for CINECA and ICSC and for Italy’s role in Europe’s advanced computing ecosystem,” said Sara Marzella, Responsible for Quantum Computing at CINECA. “By integrating Pasqal’s neutral-atom technology with the Leonardo supercomputer, we are enabling a new class of hybrid applications that will empower researchers and industry leaders to address some of the most complex scientific and industrial challenges.”

“This inauguration is further proof of Pasqal’s ability to execute at scale and deliver quantum systems where they matter most,” said Wasiq Bokhari, CEO of Pasqal. “Across Europe and beyond, we are turning quantum computing from a research promise into deployed, operational infrastructure that addresses real-world scientific and industrial challenges.”

“Today’s inauguration shows how Europe continues to turn ambition into capability. With SOL, the new EuroHPC quantum computer and LISA, the AI-upgrade to the world-class Leonardo supercomputer, we are further strengthening our sovereign supercomputing ecosystem and giving European users new tools to innovate across AI, HPC and quantum technologies. This milestone expands opportunities for research, industry and the public sector, while reinforcing Europe’s technological leadership in strategic supercomputing domains.” said Anders Jensen, Executive Director, EuroHPC JU.

The quantum computer was co-funded by the EuroHPC JU and the Italian Ministry of University and Research through the ICSC. It will be operated by CINECA and integrated into a hybrid architecture that allows users to seamlessly offload specialized workloads to the QPU, while relying on Leonardo for classical processing and large-scale data handling.

The inauguration underscores Europe’s shift towards quantum industrialization at scale as envisioned in the 2025 European Quantum Strategy. It also highlights and reinforces Pasqal’s role as a leading provider in rolling out scalable, replicable, and energy-efficient neutral-atom quantum systems. SOL is Pasqal’s third EuroHPC-linked neutral-atom system in Europe after Jade and Ruby in Germany and France, which were also integrated to the European HPC-Quantum Computing hybrid infrastructure deployed under Euro-HPC JU’s leadership.

More from HPCwire

• EuroHPC Inaugurates SOL Quantum Computer and LISA AI Partition in Italy
• IQM’s NOX Quantum Computer Integrated with Leonardo Supercomputer

About Pasqal

Pasqal is a global leader in delivering practical quantum computing at scale utilizing neutral atom technology and dedicated software for industry, science, and governments. Since its founding in 2019, Pasqal has leveraged Nobel Prize winning research to build high-performance quantum systems and cloud-ready software designed to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence.

Source: Pasqal

The post Pasqal Inaugurates Italy’s 1st Neutral-Atom Quantum Computer, 3rd Pasqal System in Europe appeared first on HPCwire.

Former SEC chair, who has reportedly socialized and played golf with president, has questioned integrity of US elections

Days before he was nominated as director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton discussed the potential of fraud in California’s elections, falsely saying the state’s laws left open the “opportunity for fraud”.

Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District and the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a lengthy legal résumé in the private and public sector and a track record of unequivocal support for Donald Trump and his agenda.

This article was amended on 11 June 2026 to clarify that Jay Clayton became US attorney for the southern district of New York in 2025. An earlier version misstated the timeline.

Echo's central wall display is getting new ways to add controls and new graphics.

RENO, Nev., June 11, 2026 — CIQ, the enterprise software company behind Rocky Linux and the Fuzzball AI and HPC orchestration platform, today announced the release of Fuzzball 4.0. The latest version is built to meet the production requirements of national laboratories and HPC centers.

For decades, organizations treated infrastructure complexity as the price of advanced computing. National laboratories and HPC centers built specialized expertise around storage systems, registries, cloud integrations and operational tooling before researchers could run a single workload. Fuzzball 4.0 removes the infrastructure expertise historically required to run advanced computing, allowing organizations to consume HPC and AI as a capability rather than operate it as an engineering project.

“Every transformative platform in computing history introduced an abstraction layer that made something previously out of reach, consumable,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO and founder, CIQ. “Beowulf democratized access to compute by replacing specialized hardware with commodity systems. Fuzzball democratizes access to outcomes by replacing specialized operational expertise with intelligent infrastructure abstraction. For the first time, organizations can treat HPC, AI training, AI inference, cloud resources and on-premises infrastructure as a single consumable capability. What we have built is the supersuit for scientific computing: the most powerful HPC and AI platform in the world, finally as easy to deploy, operate and scale as the science demands.”

Deploy on Existing Infrastructure and File Systems

Research organizations have long treated storage migration as an unavoidable prerequisite to adopting new HPC platforms. Fuzzball now eliminates that prerequisite by connecting directly to existing parallel file systems, including the multi-petabyte Lustre, GPFS and BeeGFS environments common in national laboratories and HPC centers, with no requirement for data migration, duplication or changes to established storage architecture.

Volumes are externally managed and dynamically imported. Organizations run workloads against data where it already lives. A generic hostpath storage driver extends compatibility to arbitrary file system backends, giving operators the flexibility to use Fuzzball with whatever storage infrastructure their environment runs.

Operate on a Complete Platform with Native Object Cache

The latest version also adds a native object cache that retains ingressed data for reuse across workloads, eliminating redundant data movement and reducing time-to-compute for iterative and recurring jobs. Researchers can now spend less time waiting for data and more time running experiments. The cache provides a direct staging path for workflow inputs and outputs, accessible through both the CLI and web interface.

An integrated container registry decouples workload execution from external registry availability, removing a common point of failure for production HPC deployments. Organizations push container images directly into Fuzzball without a separate registry, lowering prerequisites for new deployments and improving operational resilience for established ones.

Together, these capabilities collapse a multi-service deployment into a single platform. Organizations no longer need to stand up, maintain or integrate separate infrastructure before research teams can work.

Run Workloads Anywhere, from AWS to Google Cloud and Beyond

Researchers no longer need separate workflows for on-premises and cloud environments. With the addition of Azure, Fuzzball 4.0 now supports deployment across AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, CoreWeave and Azure. The same workflow runs on an on-premises cluster or any supported cloud without modification, enabling organizations to place workloads wherever capacity exists, data governance requirements allow or cost models dictate.

A unified command-line deployment interface delivers a consistent installation and management experience regardless of target environment. A redesigned CLI and rebuilt web interface consolidate administrator and user workflows in a single experience, surfacing status, dependencies and service endpoint visibility in real time.

Availability

Fuzzball 4.0 deploys to AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, CoreWeave and Azure, as well as on-premises clusters built with Warewulf, VMware or bare metal. To get started, contact CIQ at ciq.com/products/fuzzball.

CIQ will host two live sessions for organizations evaluating modern HPC and AI infrastructure.

On June 18, “How to modernize your on-prem HPC without rebuilding it” brings together CIQ’s HPC engineering team for a hands-on walkthrough of Fuzzball running on existing clusters, covering storage integration with parallel file systems, native data caching, container image builds without an external registry, and running the same workflow across on-premises and cloud environments without modification. Built for HPC administrators, infrastructure architects and research computing leads. Join at 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 8:00 PM CEST. Register here.

On June 25, “Cut through the AI hype: get real infrastructure that delivers” brings Addison Snell of Intersect360 Research and CIQ founder and CEO Gregory Kurtzer together to address where enterprise AI adoption actually stands, where organizations consistently get stuck, and how intelligent infrastructure abstraction changes what is possible. Join at 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 8:00 PM CEST. Register here.

About CIQ

CIQ is the founding support and services partner for Rocky Linux and a leading provider of enterprise Linux infrastructure. CIQ delivers commercially supported Linux offerings, high-performance computing solutions and AI infrastructure to enterprises, government agencies, research institutions and supercomputing centers worldwide. CIQ’s products include the Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC Pro) family of operating systems, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Fuzzball job-based container orchestration, Warewulf cluster provisioning and Apptainer, the leading container system for high-performance computing. For more information, visit ciq.com.

Source: CIQ

The post CIQ Unveils Fuzzball 4.0 with Native Storage Integration and Multi-Cloud Support appeared first on HPCwire.

British journalist to become one of most prominent appointments made by embattled editor-in-chief Bari Weiss

CBS News is planning to hire the prominent British broadcaster Trevor Phillips, currently a Sunday morning presenter on Sky News, as a global affairs correspondent for the network, a significant hire for embattled top editor Bari Weiss.

The network has not yet announced the appointment, which was first reported by Breaker, and a spokesperson declined comment when asked about it. Phillips did not respond to a Thursday morning message from the Guardian seeking comment.

One-off programme to begin in July after recent MenB outbreaks in Kent, Dorset and Berkshire killed three people

Teenagers in their final school year and young people starting university will be offered two doses of a vaccine to protect them against meningitis B, the government has announced.

The one-off vaccination programme, which will begin in late July, comes after an unprecedented outbreak of meningitis B in Kent earlier this year along with clusters of cases in Dorset and Berkshire that, together, led to the deaths of three young people.

Doctors say therapy that genetically modifies person’s T-cells could offer cure for chronic autoimmune disease

Five lupus patients in England are in remission after being treated with a revolutionary therapy that genetically modifies their own cells, in a medical breakthrough that could offer people a cure, doctors have said.

CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy involves removing a type of white blood cell also called T lymphocytes, which are crucial for hunting out infected or damaged cells, and engineering them to spot and destroy disease. The T-cells are then fed back into the patient via an infusion to reset their immune system.

Report says confidence among 16- to 21-year-olds has fallen sharply as they doubt hard work will be rewarded

Young people in England are increasingly “losing faith in their futures” according to a report, as record numbers fear long-term unemployment.

Analysing survey data, including from the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said 16- to 21-year-olds were less confident about being successful than a decade ago.

Two recent studies argue that smartphones may have contributed to falling birthrates by reducing in-person social interaction, sexual frequency, and other conditions tied to unintended pregnancies. "One of the studies published in May is called 'The Collapse of Teen Fertility in the Digital Era' and the other, published just Monday, is titled 'Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 Carrier Monopoly,'" reports KTLA. "Both were chronicled in a New York Times piece by political writer Sabrina Tavernise on Monday." Slashdot reader sabbede submitted the story. From the report: The one from May, authored by two University of Cincinnati professors, posits that teen fertility "collapsed globally" starting around 2007 -- the same year the first iPhone was released. "Smart phones changed how teens spend time with each other ... this change in turn drove the collapse in teen fertility," the study's abstract reads. "Once enough teens are on the phone, being on the phone is where the peer network is; in-person time falls sharply, and with it the unstructured contact in which most unintended teen conceptions occur." The study claimed that countries "across the income and policy spectrum" were affected by the teen fertility drop, and that researchers used data from multiple countries, including the U.S., England and Wales, to rule out "country-specific contraceptive access and welfare reform stories." "This model predicts that the shift towards the phone-mediated equilibrium affects multiple aspects of teen behavior," the abstract continues, concluding that "the same instrument that produces a collapse in teen fertility produces a surge in teen suicides." The study published on Monday looks more closely at the United States, explaining that nationwide general fertility rates have fallen 22% since 2007. "[This is] a sustained decline not readily explained by economic conditions, contraceptive use, housing or childcare costs, or other commonly cited factors," the National Bureau of Economic Researchers study states. "We assess the potential role of a different shock: the diffusion of the smartphone." As mentioned before, the first iPhone was rolled out in 2007, and this study makes use of that timeframe as "a natural experiment" by using data from 2007 through 2011, when iPhones were only sold on AT&T. "From June 2007 through February 2011, the device was sold only on AT&T, allowing us to identify its effect from variation in AT&T's mobile broadband coverage," the study says. "Entropy-balanced Poisson and synthetic difference-in-differences event studies imply that access to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5-8.0% at ages 15-19 and 3.2-6.6% at ages 20-24, with statistically significant but smaller declines among older cohorts. Placebo analyses applied to Verizon and Sprint's pre-2011 coverage footprint are null. Taken together, these cohort effects imply that the diffusion of the iPhone deepened the decline in births among women under 30 while suppressing the rise in births among older women." "Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33-52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15-44," researchers continued. "National-survey evidence on time use and sexual behavior is consistent with the iPhone reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use and reducing sexual frequency."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony festivities got underway a little over an hour before the first kickoff in Mexico City's Estadio Azteca.

June 11, 2026 — In a new study published in Nature, Dr. Toni Gabaldón and his team used the MareNostrum supercomputer to reconstruct the genetic origin of the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes — the cellular lineage to which animals, plants, fungi and protists belong.

The authors of the paper in front of MareNostrum 5. From left to right: Toni Gabaldón, Comparative Genomics group leader, and researchers Moisès Bernabeu (back), Saioa Morales-Manzano (front) and Marina Marcet-Houben.

The study challenges the idea that cellular complexity emerged from a single evolutionary encounter, pointing instead to a gradual process of interactions among different microorganisms that lasted for millions of years.

The findings, which culminate more than five years of computational work, identify contributions from several bacteria in addition to the one that gave rise to mitochondria, and suggest that giant viruses may have acted as vehicles for gene transfer.

All cells in animals, plants, fungi, and protists share a fundamental characteristic: they are eukaryotic cells—complex cells with specialized internal compartments. The cells that make up our bodies are no exception.

How this type of cell emerged is one of the great questions in biology. For decades, the dominant explanation has placed the acquisition of the mitochondrion as the ultimate turning point: an archaeon was thought to have established a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium, which eventually became the mitochondrion, and this alliance opened the door to cellular complexity.

Now, a study led by Dr. Toni Gabaldón—an ICREA researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and IRB Barcelona—published in Nature, rethinks this view. The work does not deny the central role of the mitochondrion, but suggests that the origin of complex cells was a longer, more gradual, and more collaborative process than previously thought. According to the results, other bacterial groups—in addition to the ancestor of the mitochondrion—left a significant imprint on the common ancestor of all eukaryotes.

“For a long time, we have explained the origin of complex cells as a story with two main protagonists: an archaeon and the bacterium that gave rise to the mitochondrion. Our study suggests that this narrative is incomplete and that there were more actors on stage, including other bacterial groups and giant viruses that may have facilitated gene exchange,” explains Dr. Gabaldón.

Fossils Written in Genes

Unlike what happens with dinosaurs, the origin of eukaryotes cannot be reconstructed from visible bones or fossils. It occurred about 2 billion years ago in microscopic organisms, of which barely any direct traces remain. However, their footprints are still present in today’s genomes.

To trace them, the team approached the problem as a form of computational molecular archaeology, using the computing power of the MareNostrum series of supercomputers to analyse public genomic data spanning biodiversity as a whole.

First, they reconstructed the repertoire of gene and protein families of the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes, known as LECA (Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor). They then analyzed its evolutionary origin by comparing these families against databases containing tens of thousands of bacterial, archaeal, and viral genomes.

Thus, after more than five years of work using complex mathematical models and processing large volumes of genomic sequences, the team was able to detect signals that would otherwise have remained invisible.

“We are trying to reconstruct a story that took place billions of years ago and for which we have no direct fossils. That is why we have been very conservative: we only kept the most robust evolutionary signals—those with a strength comparable to the signals already accepted for the ancestral archaeon and for the bacterium that gave rise to the mitochondrion,” explain Moisès Bernabeu, Saioa Manzano-Morales, and Marina Marcet-Houben, authors of the study and researchers in the Comparative Genomics group led by Dr. Gabaldón at IRB Barcelona and the BSC.

More Actors Than Just the Mitochondrion

Beyond the mitochondrion, the study identifies two particularly relevant bacterial signals: Myxococcota and Planctomycetota. The former are related to metabolic functions, including processes linked to lipids and membranes. The latter are bacteria known for their structural complexity, featuring internal compartments that are unusual for bacterial organisms.

The analyses suggest that these contributions did not happen all at once. Planctomycetota appear as an older signal, whereas Myxococcota and the bacterium that gave rise to the mitochondrion show signals that are closer in time.

This vision fits with the idea that the ancestors of eukaryotic cells lived in environments rich in microbial communities, such as microbial mats, where different microorganisms coexist in layers under varying chemical conditions. In this context, genetic exchanges would have allowed them to acquire new biological capabilities over time.

Giant Viruses as Vehicles for Genetic Exchange

One of the most unexpected findings of the study is the involvement of giant viruses, specifically Nucleocytoviricota. These viruses have genomes that are much larger than those of most known viruses, and they infect single-celled eukaryotic organisms.

The study shows that some genes integrated during the early evolution of eukaryotes appear to come from giant viruses. The authors propose that these viruses could have acted as vehicles for genetic transfer between microorganisms coexisting in the same ecosystem, facilitating exchanges that helped shape the ancestral genome of eukaryotic cells.

A Fundamental Question About the History of Life

The study addresses one of the major questions in biology: how the complexity of the cells that form our bodies came to be. By reconstructing the genetic traces of that process, the work provides a new perspective on a key episode in the history of life: the origin of the cellular lineage to which animals, plants, fungi, and protists belong.

The paper expands on a line of research initiated by Dr. Gabaldón himself in 2016, when he published a study in Nature that already suggested the mitochondrion might have been acquired relatively late in the process of eukaryotic origins. Now, with much more genomic data available and more powerful computational tools, the team has been able to analyze in greater detail which other organisms left their mark on that common ancestor.

“All genomes preserve traces of their history. In the case of eukaryotes, those traces tell us of ancient alliances between microorganisms. Understanding them helps us answer a very profound question: what we are and where we come from,” concludes Dr. Gabaldón.

The project was funded mainly by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, utilized computational resources from the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES) provided by the BSC on MareNostrum 5, and received support from the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Reference article:

Bernabeu, M., Manzano-Morales, S., Marcet-Houben, M., Gabaldón, T. Gene ancestries reveal diverse microbial associations during eukaryogenesis. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10639-9

Source: BSC

The post BSC: MareNostrum 5 Helps Uncover New Clues to the Origins of Complex Cells appeared first on HPCwire.

The signing of the memorandum or letter of intent would kick off 60 days of talks to negotiate details of an enduring U.S.-Iran agreement.

• Prosecutors cite ChatGPT messages as key evidence

• Gabriella Perpetuo died of blunt force injuries

Former NFL linebacker Darron Lee has been indicted on a murder charge in the death of his partner.

A grand jury in Hamilton County returned an indictment on Tuesday. Prosecutors dismissed a tampering with evidence charge to focus solely on the more serious allegation, Hamilton County district attorney Coty Wamp said.

Suspect detained under Mental Health Act, as police confirm counter-terrorism unit is leading investigation

A 14-year-old girl has been charged in connection with three stabbings at a school in north Manchester, police said.

The girl was charged with three charges of attempted murder and two charges of possessing a bladed article on school premises over the incident on Tuesday.

Investigators in Washington County, Minnesota, say they've identified the human remains found in two Twin Cities lakes more than three decades ago.

Polish lawmakers have voted to criminalize "trash streaming," with up to five years in prison for online broadcasts of serious crimes such as rape or murder, animal cruelty, humiliating violence, gambling promotion, or even simulated depictions of those acts. Reuters reports: The move is part of a broader push by Poland to tighten regulation of online content. Recent measures include banning the use of mobile phones by children under 16 in schools and introducing stricter age verification rules to access pornography. Under the new provisions, broadcasting crimes punishable by more than five years in prison, including murder or rape, will itself be classed as a separate offence punishable by up to five years behind bars. The law also covers content showing cruelty to animals, violence aimed at humiliating others, and the promotion of gambling. The same penalties will apply to individuals who simulate or falsely portray the commission of such crimes while streaming, lawmakers said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the wonderful aspects of the AI boom is the creativity that it’s unleashing, particularly in the scientific realm. Some of that creativity was on display at the TPC26 conference last week in Baltimore, Maryland, where dozens of attendees participated in an open AI for science hackathon.

The TPC26 hackathon was spread across four days during the conference. Four teams composed of individuals from national labs, universities, companies, and other organizations worked to solve their respective agentic AI challenges.

Here’s a summary of the key accomplishments of the four teams:

HPC API for LLM-Based Agents

Users and agents today face a tangled web of processes when they attempt to access HPC resources. That’s because each HPC center maintains its own agent API. That’s a good thing in one sense, as it gives the center ownership and control. However, it also requires each user or agent to confirm to that API. That becomes problematic when a user or an agent is accessing multiple HPC centers.

Source: TPC26 Hackathon Team: “HPC API for LLM-Based Agent”

The goal of this team was to find a way to build a standard interface for LLM-based AI agents to access HPC resources. By normalizing the surface they expose, the agent behavior can stay consistent across multiple HPC centers, which bolsters reproducible science and collaboration.

According to the results of the hackathon provided by Manjot Singh, the Open Hackathons program manager at Nvidia, the project succeed in boiling down the scope to two items: observing the cluster (reading it state, etc.) and acting upon it (such as submitting jobs). Patterns and semantics are the unit of agreement, rather than the signature.

Source: TPC26 hackathon team “Exploring the limits of biosecurity on bio-foundation models and agentic systems”

Biosecurity Sleuths

While AI is a powerful tool for biology, there’s a potential for misuse, including the capability to engineer novel pathogens.  The challenge is that current tools struggle to identify AI-generated sequences that are the product of a rogue lab.  The goal of this particular hackathon team was to bolster the security of biology by identifying ways that abuse of AI-assisted protein design could be detected.

According to Singh, this hackathon team shipped a fully functioning end-to-end platform that effectively mitigates data-tampering risks by combining tier-gated LLM tool permissions with unsupervised machine learning to detect when a researcher’s behavior anomalies deviate from their declared science domain.

Open Battery Agents

A study has shown that the failure curve of extreme-fast-charging (XFC) batteries (the type that can be charged in 10 minutes or less) can be inferred by analyzing charging data from the first 100 cycles.  This hackathon team initially set out to replay the study from MATLAB to Python. But the team shifted gears and instead attempted to develop an AI-based benchmark to predict battery failure based on real world data from the study.

TPC26 Hackathon team: “Open Battery Agents”

According to Singh, the team “engineered a real-data benchmarking prototype that utilizes a sandboxed, hidden-label evaluator to test if AI agents can autonomously discover early-cycle battery lifetime predictors.” The team’s best-performing model ultimately did not meet the capability of the model developed by the author of the original study.

The team came away one important lesson: “Sstrict locked validation is absolutely required to keep automated agents from overfitting surrogate objectives.”

PhyVal Team:

Partial differential equations, such as those used in computational fluid dynamics, are some of the most difficult equations to solve in physics, as they involve multiple independent variables and one or more of their partial derivatives. PDEs are some of the toughest equations that supercomputers are asked to solve, thanks to their non-linearity, high dimensionality, and strains on communication.

Researchers would love to have an AI model that can emulate numerical PDE solvers and therefore remove some of the burden on traditional HPC techniques and get results faster. But the tendency for transformer models to hallucinate means that it’s critical to give the model strict boundaries.

According to Singh, the PhyVal group pushed the ball further using Small PDE U-Net Solver (SPUS), a lightweight convolutional neural network developed to counter the heavy resource footprint of transformers, along with an URSA agentic framework.

The PhyVal team “successfully integrated AI fluid dynamics foundation models with an agentic reasoning system, executing them against a newly developed three-tiered checklist of physics-based constraints—such as mass, momentum, and energy conservation—to keep AI predictions mathematically grounded.”

TPC26 Hackathon team: PhyVal

All told, the TPC26 hackathon was big success. In addition to working together, the teams notched several specific scientific achievements, such as transitioning large-scale scientific data workflows, such as 38 GB battery processing pipelines to complex 2D fluid dynamics simulations, directly into distributed agent architectures running on high-performance DGX cluster systems and Slurm orchestration, Singh notes.

“The event demonstrated a major shift from passive scientific models to active research assistants by successfully pairing specialized domain models (like Walrus, SPUS, or Claude) with active, sandboxed coding loops and automatic tool registries,” he said. “Across all tracks, participants effectively utilized interactive AI generation tools to rapidly build complex multi-agent frameworks, database layers, and front-end management UIs within a heavily compressed, collaborative weekend timeline.”

The teams reported “immense value” in pairing powerful HPC systems with modern GenAI coding tools to build fully integrated systems capable of handling their demands. They also benefited from the cross-disciplinary teamwork of working with peers with different specialties.

“Participants found the intense, collaborative layout highly effective for forming specialized sub-teams, building lifelong professional ties with international peers who share niche interests in agentic workflows and scientific foundation frameworks,” Singh said.

The post Hackathon Participants Push Science for AI Forward at TPC26 appeared first on HPCwire.

Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez scored for Mexico against South Africa, who had Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane sent off; the hosts had César Montes dismissed

“That ITV studio is spectacular,” reckons Kev the Poet. “Almost as spectacular as the nark-off between Roy Keane and anyone else. The BBC is going to have The Ghost Of Barry Davies coming out of the Manchester Ship Canal to compete.”

It is – it’s outdoors on the East River, with a sensational view of Manhattan. But I’d take Barry Davies coming out of anywhere.

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

With matches being played in 11 cities across the U.S., Mexico and Canada​, fans are getting three World Cup opening ceremonies.

US president had faced widespread criticism of his decision to install a controversial ally, Bill Pulte

Donald Trump has nominated Jay Clayton, former head of the top US markets watchdog, to be the country’s leading intelligence official.

The US president faced widespread criticism of his decision to install a controversial ally, Bill Pulte, as acting director of national intelligence while searching for a permanent candidate.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for June 12, No. 627.

Kristie Carrier says her daughter, Alice, began using ChatGPT in 2023 for practical questions before opening up to the chatbot about suicidal ideation in 2024.

Donald Trump told reporters on 11 June that the US and Iran had plans to sign a peace deal to end the conflict. Trump said it was his understanding that the Iranian supreme leader had also approved of the deal. According to the president, the proposed deal would open the strait of Hormuz while also denying Iran a nuclear program

A photographer from the Reuters news outlet saw the apparent "86 47" markings from atop the Washington Monument.

Coinbase has launched Coinbase for Agents, a tool that lets AI agents like ChatGPT or Claude execute crypto trades and manage payments on a user's behalf. "For example, customers can prompt their agent to rebalance portfolios, identify trading opportunities, execute strategies and manage positions over time," reports CNBC. "It will eventually expand these capabilities to stocks and predictions." From the report: [U]sing Coinbase's machine-to-machine payments protocol, called x402, agents can pay directly for digital services like paywalled research, data APIs and on-demand compute without a human in the loop -- and execute trades based on those insights. The company sees this stage of agentic payments, which lets customers bypass the need to manage traditional logins or subscriptions, as a precursor to agentic shopping, where agents browse, find the best deals, select and make purchases on users' behalf. [...] The whole idea is to give agents access to money and, through that financial independence, improve their set of capabilities to pretty much anything on the internet," Lincoln Murr, Coinbase's AI product lead, told CNBC. "In the 2010s, every internet company dealt with the transition from desktop and web into a mobile environment. And now in the late 2020s, we're seeing the exact same thing happen where agents are going to be the new primary economic actors on the internet." The x402 protocol was created in May 2025 and has seen more than 100 million transactions since its debut, Murr said. There are about 157,000 agents acting as buyers using the protocol in the past 30 days, according to x402scan.com. "We saw immediate demand and interest in the ability for agents to pay for things autonomously and that was a huge waking up moment for us [on] the ability of agents to become these new primary financial actors across the internet," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Timothy Hudson, 16, is accused of sexually assaulting and killing Anna Kepner, his 18-year-old stepsister, while the family was on a cruise.

Experts say climate pattern could supercharge extreme weather events and push temperatures to record highs

EL Niño has officially arrived, US officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Thursday, and scientists predict it could be the strongest of the century.

Forecasters had previously anticipated that a phenomenon known as a super “El Niño” would emerge this summer – supercharging extreme weather events and pushing global temperatures to record heights.

Strikes on Bemani damaged key water reservoir for 20,000 people living in area amid a historic drought in the country

Military strikes that damaged two water storage facilities in southern Iran may constitute a war crime, military and legal experts say, after reviewing media reports and visual evidence of a 10 June strike on Bemani, a small district about 2 miles from the strait of Hormuz.

It’s unclear if the strikes deliberately targeted the district’s water tanks, or if they unintentionally destroyed a key reservoir for about 20,000 people living nearby. But if the tanks were the target, then the legal question becomes critical, Brian Finucane, a former state department lawyer, said. “It’s either a military objective or it’s a civilian object: attacking one is lawful, attacking the other is a war crime,” Finucane said.

The EU-funded HORIZON-ZEN+ project is developing AI tools to improve the increasingly popular EU Open Research Repository

June 11, 2026 — Sharing research data openly is transforming science, but it comes with challenges. Since 2021, EU-funded projects have been required to make their data FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. The EU Open Research Repository (EOR Repository) was created through the HORIZON-ZEN project with this in mind and provides a dedicated space on Zenodo for data from EU-funded projects. This makes it easier for researchers to both disseminate their data and find project results in an efficient way. To date, over 2700 EU-funded projects have joined the repository, with over 150 000 records uploaded.

The EOR Repository, hosted on the CERN-made Zenodo platform, acts as a home for EU project data and is increasingly popular. Credit: CERN.

But the repository is a victim of its own success, requiring more human capital to describe and prepare data for upload and keep records findable as it grows. To help manage this, the two-year HORIZON-ZEN+ project was launched in October 2025, building on its predecessor with the aim of drawing on artificial intelligence (AI) to improve data curation tools, automate workflows and improve interfaces for depositing and finding information.

“Researchers carry a wide range of responsibilities, from running studies to writing papers, sharing results and securing funding. Few have the time or expertise to do all of them well, and their work often suffers as a result – shared poorly or in ways that fall short of FAIR principles,” said Alex Ioannidis, CERN’s Zenodo Service Manager. “The role of Zenodo, with its EOR Repository, is to provide the easiest way for researchers to preserve their data FAIRly, without burden,” he added.

The HORIZON-ZEN+ project will build more automated processes to assist the Zenodo team in curating entries. Uploading scientific data correctly – so that it can be easily retrieved – can be time‑consuming, and without a proper framework, researchers often mislabel work. To address this, the new project will harness AI to simplify the process for researchers and make the repository’s search functionality smarter.

The EOR Repository, and the wider Zenodo platform, are part of the way in which CERN is supporting the EU’s ongoing efforts to improve open science tools.

From autumn this year, the Open Research Europe (ORE) open access publishing platform will be hosted at CERN. ORE and the EOR Repository are complementary. Researchers can use the EOR Repository to share all their project results, datasets, posters, etc., and then submit final papers to ORE to be peer-reviewed.

These two initiatives also support the EU’s European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), which is the broader framework that makes scientific data FAIR across Europe. Essentially, EOSC ensures that more specific repositories, such as the EOR Repository, are well linked.

For more information, consult the project website and the news on the CERN EU Projects Office website.

Source: Thomas Brent, CERN

The post CERN Leads Project to Make EU Scientific Data More Accessible appeared first on HPCwire.

Jay Clayton is currently the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: If digital sovereignty is important to you, and it certainly is in the European Union (EU), then you'll be pleased to know that EuroOffice, a new open-source browser-based office suite alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, has officially reached its first stable release. A coalition of EU-based companies, including Nextcloud, Ionos, and other Euro-Stack participants, is positioning Euro-Office as a cornerstone of European digital sovereignty. However, The Document Foundation (TDF), LibreOffice's steward, accuses the project of reinforcing Microsoft's document lock-in, which TDF argues isn't friendly to open standards. Setting aside the open-source politics for the moment, here's what Euro-Office brings you. The release went live on June 9. It is, however, not a stand-alone office suite. As the software's backers explain in a FAQ, "Euro-Office is more of an integration component. It merely handles document editing itself. Storage, as well as navigation, permissions, and sharing logic, have to be offered by a platform it is integrated in, like Proton Docs, Nextcloud Hub, or OpenProject." So, while you can install Euro-Office on your own Linux server, you'll need to integrate it yourself. If you're not a Linux expert, however, don't give up hope. Some companies have already released packaged, ready-to-install Euro-Office stacks, including Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring, Ionos' Nextcloud Workspace, and Office.eu. These initial deployments are web-based rather than standalone desktop suites. The goal, organizers say, is to give European organizations a way to host their office suite on EU infrastructure under EU law, while maintaining an experience familiar to Microsoft Office users. Specifically, Euro-Office is meant to be "a solution for editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, developed as a true sovereign community collaboration of over a dozen different organizations." TDF's main objection is that Euro-Office's decision to default to Microsoft's OOXML format undercuts its claims of European digital sovereignty, since OOXML remains closely tied to Microsoft Office behavior and control. "Compatibility is not sovereignty," TDF warned, saying a European-branded suite that saves files in OOXML by default "is de facto an ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Plan comes after major New York Times report alleges files became source of crisis within Trump administration

Democrats on the House oversight committee, led by Representative Robert Garcia, plan to call on JD Vance to testify on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files following a major report on Wednesday from the New York Times, which described how the Epstein files became the source of an internal crisis within Trump’s administration.

Garcia will call on the committee chair, James Comer, to summon the vice-president to speak, according to a post from Max Cohen, a reporter with Punchbowl News. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Vance would agree to appear.

Carns follows John Healey in resigning, leaving Keir Starmer’s government on the brink

Ryan Henderson, assistant chief constable for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, is about to hold a press conference about last night’s rioting.

Andy Burnham is facing criticism after saying that he thinks the Waspi women should be entitled to “some” compensation.

I’ll stick by the Waspi women because they deserve some recompense for the unfairness.

One government figure decried Burnham’s intervention as “pathetic”, adding: “He can’t say no to anyone.”

An ally of Sir Keir Starmer likened Burnham’s economic agenda to that of hard-left former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and argued that the mayor’s intervention would harm his chances of manoeuvring the prime minister out of Downing Street.

Andy Burnham’s continued support for Waspi women is both welcome and hugely refreshing. While some politicians have broken their promises, it takes real courage to speak out and say what millions of people across the country and hundreds of MPs from all parties already know - that 1950s-born women deserve justice.

Andy has always recognised the unfair way in which state pension equalisation was introduced.

As mayor of Greater Manchester, he supported Waspi women in the city-region with early access to concessionary travel, providing some recompense to them within affordability limits.

When the House of Representatives voted on a long-term extension of a controversial surveillance law in April, House Democratic leaders were content to let their members vote as they wished, dealing a blow to privacy advocates seeking reforms to a provision that allows domestic spying without a warrant.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., had said he personally supported reforms, for instance, but declined to whip votes against the law.

President Donald Trump’s appointment of housing czar Bill Pulte to be the nation’s spy chief, however, appeared shore up Democratic leaders’ spines — for now.

Citing Pulte’s lack of experience and fealty to Trump, Jeffries on Thursday corralled his members into opposing a short-term extension of the law, leading to a 218–198 defeat of the measure. Democratic leaders did not issue a formal whip notice, but they did release a forceful statement against it hours before the vote was set to take place.

The different approach from leadership between the two votes was “night and day,” one Democratic staffer told The Intercept.

Dozens of the 42 Democrats who had voted for the “clean” renewal last time reversed their positions, dooming an attempt by Speaker Mike Johnson. R-La., to pass the short-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before it expires Friday.

Related

Momentum Builds to Rein In Domestic Spying Law — Whether or Not Bill Pulte Survives as Intel Chief

The hardened line was welcomed by advocates, but in a letter penned by dozens of civil society groups they told Democrats not to flip back without changes — whether Pulte is slated to take the helm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or not.

Hours after the failed vote, Trump said he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to serve as national intelligence director. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had resigned, saying her husband had been recently diagnosed with bone cancer, and is expected to depart on June 19.

There are bedrock policy problems with the surveillance law that go much deeper than the personnel Trump installs atop spy agencies, the groups said in the letter. They asked Democrats to block a long-term renewal of Section 702 unless it includes major reforms.

“Voting for a clean reauthorization of Section 702 is co-signing the Trump administration’s mass surveillance agenda,” the groups said in the letter. “Key administration officials — including Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel, and outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard — have made it clear that this reauthorization fight is a White House priority, and that reform is an unacceptable impediment to the administration’s agenda.”

The letter targeted 42 Democrats — including House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes, D-Conn. — who voted in April for a “clean” three-year renewal of Section 702 with only minor tweaks.

Himes was among those who, citing Trump’s appointment of Pulte to replace Gabbard, changed positions and voted against the extension Thursday.

Only Seven Holdouts

The fight over FISA has roiled Congress for months. Following the “clean” renewal’s failure and lawmakers’ inability to agree on a compromise for a longer extensions, more than 90 Democrats voted for the shorter-term postponement of Section 702’s expiration.

Since then, advocacy groups have kept up their pressure on Democrats. Thursday’s vote suggests they are making progress. Only seven Democrats voted for the short-term renewal of the law on Thursday, compared to 199 opposed. The split was reversed in the Republican caucus, with 190 votes in favor and 19 against.

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Meet the Four Democrats Who’ll Decide If Trump Gets His Domestic Spying Law

The Democrats voting in favor of the short-term extension were Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas; Donald Davis of North Carolina; Jared Golden of Maine; Vicente Gonzalez of Texas; Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey; Susie Lee of Nevada; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

While the privacy advocates said reforms shouldn’t hinge on any spy official’s fate, they did say their preexisting concerns about the spying law were heightened by Trump’s appointment of Pulte and the administration’s recent release of a counterterrorism strategy calling for a crackdown on “left-wing extremists.”

“It is alarming that, under these conditions in particular, any Democratic members of Congress would vote to extend a warrantless surveillance authority for this administration to wield with no meaningful oversight,” the groups said. “The case for reforming Section 702 has never been more urgent. It is critical that you protect your constituents from the Trump administration’s mass surveillance agenda.”

The groups signing the letter Thursday — including the American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause, and many local chapters of the organizing group Indivisible — support requiring intelligence officials to obtain judicial approval for searches of American communications.

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Federal Agents Are Intimidating Legal Observers at Their Homes: “They Know Where You Live”

Debates over the law, which was first passed in 2008, have occasionally flared thanks to events such as the disclosures of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Trump’s complaints about a “deep state” intelligence conspiracy against him — though GOP opposition to the spy law dwindled with Trump taking power.

The privacy advocates, however, said they have never seen left-leaning organizers as fired up as the current round of debate over the spying law — organizing that helped precipitate the turnaround by some Democrats.

Some Democrats who were previously staunch supporters of the domestic surveillance law, such as Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and now facing serious primary challenges voted against clean reauthorization in April, though Goldman missed Thursday’s vote.

Trump’s appointment of Pulte to serve as intelligence chief has put the law’s most fervent Democratic supporters in a bind, however, given his lack of qualifications for the job and accusations that he has wielded sensitive government databases against Trump’s opponents.

Himes, for instance, led the House Intelligence Committee’s Democrats in writing a letter to Trump calling on him to rescind his appointment of Pulte on Wednesday.

The Connecticut representative sounded exasperated in comments to Politico earlier this week. In previous fights over renewal of the surveillance law, reformers have suggested that the deadlines were artificial because of certifications from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing spy agencies to continue collecting overseas communications for another year.

“It’s a total mess,” Himes told the outlet. “Very sadly, I think we’re going to test this untested question about whether the program can run on a judicial certification alone.”

The post Hakeem Jeffries Finally Finds a Spine: Dem Leaders Rallied Against Extending Domestic Spy Law appeared first on The Intercept.

The shooting rampage last year, which left two dead and two critically injured, roiled the state and stoked concern about rising rates of politically motivated violence in the United States.

Government urged to reconsider proposal for 1,100 Afghans, currently stranded in Qatar, who worked with US forces

Dozens of US lawmakers urged the Trump administration on Thursday to roll back any plans to ship to unsafe third countries Afghan nationals who worked with US forces during the war in their homeland.

In a letter seen by Reuters, more than 80 House of Representatives members, including at least three Republicans as well as Democrats, appealed to secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to reconsider plans for 1,100 Afghans who have been stranded in Qatar awaiting relocation.

• Video shows egg tossed toward star as he entered hotel

• Players had condemned apparent attacks on Spurs fans

A brutal night for Victor Wembanyama continued even after he returned to his New York hotel on Wednesday, as he was pelted with boos from jeering Knicks fans and nearly struck by a flying egg.

A video shared online showed at least one egg tossed in the direction of the San Antonio Spurs superstar as he entered his hotel, flanked by security, after the team’s Game 4 loss to the Knicks.

Don't deposit $40,000 into either CD account term before knowing the interest earnings each offers right now.

Live webcam footage from atop the Washington Monument shows a highly visible ‘8’, while the others appears fainter

US federal authorities are investigating what appears to be a massive etching of “8647” into the grass of the National Mall.

Live webcam footage from atop the Washington Monument as of Thursday afternoon shows the markings, with a highly visible “8,” along with less visible “6”, “4” and “7”.

John Healey’s complaint is that Starmer sat on this problem for months before making a derisory offer

John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary on Thursday was a long time brewing, though in the end the denouement was swift. It leaves an already weak Keir Starmer without a defence strategy less than a month before a Nato summit and an unresolved row about spending as Donald Trump threatens to restart the bombing of Iran.

On Monday, No 10 finally told Healey how much more money it was prepared to give the Ministry of Defence to fund major projects as part of the defence investment plan (Dip).

Suit filed in US alleges chatbot told Alice Carrier, 24, ‘maybe this is just the end’ as she struggled with suicidal thoughts

A Canadian mother sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in US court on Thursday, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her daughter to kill herself. The lawsuit is the latest in a slew accusing the company of failing to address dangerous conversations between users and the company’s chatbot.

Kristie Carrier said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco state court that her daughter, Alice, told ChatGPT about her suicidal ideations more than a dozen times leading up to her death but that OpenAI’s safety systems never flagged the conversations for human review or terminated them.

fjo3 shares a report from Reason: Police arrested a man in Florida for attempted child abduction in a town he had never visited, and the only evidence linking him to the crime was an AI facial recognition hit. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), he is now suing the officers and agencies who put him through it. [...] According to a police report, facial recognition software concluded with 93 percent confidence that the suspect was Robert Dillon. [...] The ACLU is now suing the city of Jacksonville Beach, as well as the individual police officers and officials involved in the case. According to the lawsuit (PDF), the responding officer viewed security camera footage of the suspect but didn't take a copy; instead, he took pictures of the screen with his cell phone. "In the photos, the suspect image is low resolution, and the suspect's face is partially shadowed and off-axis," the lawsuit claims. When an investigator queried the facial recognition system, it was with the officer's grainy secondhand cell phone photos. [...] But as the ACLU notes, facial recognition's accuracy "depends significantly on the quality of the probe image. Lower-quality images contain less interpretable facial data, degrading the system's ability to produce a reliable template." At the very least, it requires a much better source image. Besides, no such investigative tool should form the sole basis for an arrest warrant. "If you came to me with a facial recognition hit and that was your probable cause, I would probably kick you out of my office because that's not how it works," Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told local news. (Waters is among those being sued in the ACLU lawsuit, because it was an investigator from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office who ran the grainy photo through facial recognition and advised O'Connell it was a "93% match" to Dillon.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former defence secretary accuses PM of putting UK’s security at risk at a time of growing international threats

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer’s premiership has been pushed to the brink of collapse as the shock resignation of John Healey as defence secretary undermined his security credentials and risked shredding his remaining political authority.

In a blistering resignation letter, Healey accused Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, of putting the country’s security at risk, saying the long-awaited defence investment plan (Dip) fell well short of what was required.

US president urges congressional Republicans to use budget reconciliation procedure to enact his priorities

Donald Trump has demanded that congressional Republicans get to work on a party-line measure that would ensure defense spending reaches its highest level in decades and also make a likely fruitless attempt to impose a host of new restrictions on voters nationwide.

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, the president said he was “calling on Republicans in Congress to IMMEDIATELY advance and pass the forthcoming $350 Billion Reconciliation Bill”, which would also include the Save America Act, a rightwing makeover of elections that his allies in Congress have sought to pass for months, without success.

President steered no-bid contract for project that he said would cost $1.8m to company that worked on his golf resort

The final drops of water have been added, and the nanobubbler switched on. Donald Trump’s “beautiful” makeover of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, one of Washington DC’s most historically symbolic attractions, is officially complete, and the public is getting its first glimpse of how the project’s $14.2m was spent.

Contrary to the president’s predictable assertion that it was receiving “rave reviews”, however, early impressions are decidedly mixed. Some of the first visitors declared themselves underwhelmed by the 2,000ft pool’s somewhat dull color – American flag blue, according to the specifications.

The learning-focused AI tool could become an even more powerful tool for students.

Don't miss out on big discounts and record-low prices on tech, smart home gear, kitchen gadgets and more with this week's best deals.

June 11, 2026 — Monash University’s AI supercomputer MAVERIC is officially launched, with researchers already using its advanced capabilities to accelerate work in cancer, infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance and new medicine discovery.

Monash University Chancellor Dr Megan Clark AC and Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Sharon Pickering.

The technology will exponentially fast-track efforts to better understand and address some of the world’s most complex health and environmental challenges.

Projects currently underway encompass the discovery of new biomarkers in precision medicine for multiple sclerosis, creating better AI models for mental health support, enhancing skin cancer detection, simulating the formation of stars and planets, and analysing thousands of images of Antarctica, spanning decades, to deepen our understanding of protecting this precious environment.

MAVERIC is aligned with Monash’s commitment to delivering AI responsibly and sustainably. Located within CDC Data Centres’ Brooklyn (Melbourne) campus, MAVERIC is underpinned by CDC’s advanced infrastructure, including a closed-loop liquid cooling system that enhances water efficiency and enables sustainable, high-impact research at scale.

Monash University Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Sharon Pickering, said the launch of MAVERIC marks a significant milestone for Australian research capability while setting a new standard for secure and sustainable AI infrastructure.

“MAVERIC gives Australia world-leading sovereign capability and Monash researchers access to the computing power needed to tackle the most complex scientific and societal challenges facing the world today,” Professor Pickering said.

“MAVERIC will directly improve the lives of Australians and their families by transforming data into real-world solutions that improve health outcomes, enhance quality of life and help secure a healthier, more sustainable future for generations to come.

“Sovereign capability is urgent and critical, which is why MAVERIC has also been designed not simply as a supercomputer, but as a Trusted Research Environment (TRE), providing the security, regulatory assurance and sovereign control needed for authorised researchers to analyse sensitive data under strict, enforceable controls.”

With an initial pipeline of projects already underway, MAVERIC is meeting growing demand for AI-enabled research and helping ensure Australian researchers remain at the forefront of global discovery and innovation, not watching from the sidelines.

Learn more about MAVERIC here.

More from HPCwire: Monash University to Build Australian-first Supercomputer MAVERIC with Global Tech Partners

Source: Monash University

The post Monash’s MAVERIC AI Supercomputer Powers New Era of Australian Research appeared first on HPCwire.

Washington claims vessel was violating its blockade of Iranian ports and failed to comply with instructions

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The Indian government has voiced a “strong protest” after three Indian seafarers were killed in US military strikes against oil tankers travelling through the strait of Hormuz.

US Central Command confirmed that its aircraft had fired two Hellfire missiles at the engine room of the MT Settebello as it sailed through the Gulf of Oman on Wednesday.

Although the five-week soccer tournament starting on Thursday is the largest sporting event ever, the U.S. economic gains are likely to be muted.

Multiple floors of the Pentagon were locked down for several hours Thursday morning and hazmat crews were deployed for what authorities had described as a "hazardous materials incident."

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At the very start of his war with Iran, President Donald Trump declared victory. “We won,” ‌Trump announced on March 11, 11 days after launching the joint attack with Israel. “In the first hour it ⁠was over.” But more than 2,200 hours later, the conflict is obviously still raging.

This week, U.S. forces bombarded Iran after the downing of an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded with strikes on targets across the Middle East and threats to “turn the entire region into hell.” Trump told Fox News’s Trey Yingst on Wednesday night that the U.S. fired 49 Tomahawk missiles at targets inside Iran, in addition to bombing raids by fighter jets. Yingst reported that Trump also said, “We’ll bomb the S out of them tomorrow night'” if Iran did not sign a peace agreement. Trump followed this on Thursday by declaring the U.S. would be “hitting Iran … VERY HARD TONIGHT.”

The burgeoning forever war contradicts months of reassurances by Trump that a peace deal with Iran is imminent.

An Intercept analysis of Trump’s claims about the Iran war, stated objectives, and supposed achievements finds the U.S. has fallen short or flamed out on all counts. The public record shows an administration that has consistently scaled back its goals and downgraded its claimed successes, without nearing anything resembling the victory Trump has touted. 

A Promise of World Peace

On the first day of the conflict, Trump laid out, with complete clarity, his most ambitious objectives. Claiming Iran was already “very much destroyed and, even, obliterated,” Trump said his war would bring peace to the region and, somehow, the globe. “The heavy and pinpoint bombing … will continue, uninterrupted … as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on February 28.

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When Anti-War Candidates Become War-Monger Presidents

The bombing campaign was, indeed, “heavy.” The “pinpoint” attacks included a strike on an elementary school that killed between 150 and 175 civilians, most of them children. And thousands more civilians died in other strikes. Almost 149,000 civilian infrastructures, including homes, hospitals, and schools, have been damaged in the U.S.–Israel war, according to an April report from the Iranian Red Crescent Society. An estimated 400,000 people have been affected by damage to houses and apartments. But Iran was not “very much destroyed,” much less “obliterated.”

Peace in the Middle East, it goes without saying, never came to pass. The U.S.–Israeli strikes actually kicked off a regional war that grew to include more than a dozen countries, including Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Beyond this, the inability of the self-proclaimed “peace president,” head of the world’s newly created Board of Peace, and recipient of the first FIFA Peace Prize to achieve “peace throughout … the world” may stand as Trump’s grandest failure.

Just two days after setting out his topline goals, Trump began publicly vacillating and dramatically scaling back U.S. aims. “Our objectives are clear. First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities,” he said during a March 2 White House ceremony. “Second, we’re annihilating their navy. … Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon. … And finally, we’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

Months later, these objectives remain unmet.

Eliminating Missiles

While the United States claims to have struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran, leaked U.S. intelligence assessments found evidence that Iran restored 30 of the 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz to operational status, and retained 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile and 70 percent of its mobile launchers. Reports emerged that in April and May, Iran began efforts to repair its Yazd Missile Base. In just one day last week, Kuwait says it was targeted by an Iranian barrage of “13 hostile ballistic missiles.” On Sunday, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel. And on Thursday, Iran attacked multiple countries in the region, including Jordan which said it shot down 20 Iranian missiles.

During an aborted interview with NBC News that aired on Sunday, even Trump admitted he had failed. “They have some missiles left,” he said. “I would say, percentage-wise, maybe 21, 22 percent of their missiles. It’s a lot of missiles.” 

Annihilating the Navy

While the U.S. sunk many Iranian ships, the Iranian Navy has not been annihilated. In fact, U.S. Central Command, which is overseeing the war effort, has repeatedly referred to actions by Iran’s Navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy in the months since Trump laid out his aims, demonstrating that both still exist, upending Trump’s frequent boasts to the contrary.

Just last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “there is no Iranian Navy,” and in the next breath admitted there was, referencing Iran’s “Boston Whalers with machine guns on them.”

Ending the Nuclear Program

Iran also still maintains its stockpile of enriched uranium. And there is no evidence that nuclear sites that were not attacked during Trump’s 2025 Iran war, such as Pickaxe Mountain, were ever damaged. Last week, in fact, Rubio confirmed that Iran’s “nuclear program” still exists. And during his recent NBC interview, Trump acknowledged that Iran still possessed its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and “they can get it, I guess, with years of work.”

Last week, Rubio even suggested Iran might be allowed to continue enrichment at some later date, noting it would need to accept “severe and long-term limitations, and/or cancellation, of enrichment.”

Halting Funding of Militias

The Trump administration has also failed to ensure “that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.” Days after Trump declared this war aim, House Republicans introduced legislation stating that “Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism and provides substantial financial and military support to groups including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.” In the months since, even the Trump administration says the president’s goals haven’t been achieved.

In mid-April, the State Department said that Iran still “funnels the wealth of the Iranian people to Hizballah and other terrorists in the Middle East.” That same month, the Treasury Department took action against a “constellation of Iran-backed terrorist militias,” specifically “seven Iraqi militia commanders responsible for planning, directing, and executing attacks against U.S. personnel, facilities, and interests in Iraq,” including leaders of Kata’ib Hizballah, Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, Harakat Al-Nujaba, and Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haqq. In May, the Treasury Department again targeted “Iran and its proxy militias in Iraq,” sanctioning “leaders of Iran-aligned terrorist militias Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada and Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq” and referencing still “other Iran-aligned terrorist militias in Iraq.”

Unconditional Surrender

This assemblage of failures has been compounded by other unmet war aims. On March 6, Trump set the terms for an agreement with Iran. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he wrote on Truth Social. In the months since, that hard-line stance has turned to mush.

Related

How the War Strengthened Iran’s Hand Against the U.S. and Israel

“There is the prospect before us — which could happen today,” Rubio said last week of a potential peace deal, in a weak-kneed explanation to lawmakers. “We’re hopeful that something like that could happen in which the straits would reopen, we would enter into a period of negotiations on very specific topics — delineated negotiations in the hope of reaching an outcome that’s acceptable to us, and something they would be able to do as well.”

Reopening the Strait

The “straits” in question have become another sticking point and catastrophe. After failing to achieve all his initial war aims, Trump added another that was nothing more than a return to the status quo antebellum in the Strait of Hormuz: opening the waterway to traffic after Iran imposed a wartime blockade.

Before the war, the average number of vessels crossing the strait — a critical artery for the world’s oil, fertilizer, helium, critical materials for microchips, and numerous other goods — was more than 120 per day. It has never been close to that level again.

“I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out,” Trump declared on April 4. When the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on April 7, Trump wrote on social media that he would “suspend the bombing and attack of Iran” on the condition that Tehran agree to the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.”

The next day, the White House declared: “Iran has now agreed to a ceasefire and reopening the Strait of Hormuz as the Trump Administration negotiates a broader peace agreement — once more proving Peace Through Strength victorious.” But that same day, Iran closed the strait, following continued Israeli attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. 

Related

Putting Fuel on a Ceasefire: Israel Tries to Kill U.S.–Iran Talks

In response to Iran’s blockade, the U.S. imposed its own blockade of the strait on April 13, barring commercial vessels from entering or leaving Iranian ports. Then on April 15, Trump posted: “I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz.” Two days later, Trump claimed, “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.” On April 19, Trump said Iran had launched attacks in the strait and noted Iran had announced a blockade. On April 23, Trump ordered the Navy to attack Iranian ships laying mines in the strait. On May 6, Trump teased that the war might be “at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran.” A day later, Trump said U.S. warships came under Iranian fire in the strait. The situation was still dragging on when Trump wrote, on May 29: “The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions.” On Monday, a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship patrolling the strait was downed by Iran. 

The Strait of Hormuz remains functionally closed, except for a tiny trickle of traffic. “Last month, I directed our Great U.S. Military to execute a secret mission to support Oil Tankers and other Commercial Ships through the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump posted on Wednesday. “More than 200 Commercial Ships have safely traveled through the Strait.” (About 3,000 ships normally traverse it every month.) On Thursday, Iran announced that it, again, closed the strait to oil tankers and commercial ships.

Oil industry analysts say that global oil reserves are dwindling and that if the war doesn’t wrap up in the near term, petroleum prices could skyrocket to $150 a barrel. “The oil will go down,” Trump said on NBC, but acknowledged the war had driven up prices. “We’re going to have higher gasoline. We’re going to have a little higher fertilizer,” he admitted, before equivocating further when asked if gasoline prices had peaked. “Well, it depends. I mean, it depends where the war goes. It could be,” he waffled. “If we sign an agreement, it’ll go down now. Otherwise, it’ll go down after we’re finished.”

Oil prices rose to about $95 a barrel on Thursday as the U.S. and Iran continued to launch attacks. Trump said on Wednesday that the price of oil would have been at $250 a barrel had the U.S. government not been siphoning off “millions of barrels” of Iran’s oil over the course of the war. On Thursday, Trump posted that the U.S. would also soon seize Iran’s “oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.” Despite the rampant oil theft and threats of more to come, U.S. inflation accelerated for a third straight month in May, driven by energy prices which rose 3.9 percent over the month.

A Peace Deal

The “agreement” in question is still another failed aim. On March 23, Trump told reporters about supposed peace talks and cited “major points of agreement, I would ​say — almost all points of agreement.” Iran denied negotiations had taken place. Two days later, Trump claimed Iran wanted to “make a deal so badly.” On March 26, he said Iran was “begging to make a deal.” On April 15, he said the war was “very close to over.” On April 17, Trump claimed that Iran had “agreed to everything” and that “we will get a deal in the next day or two.” 

“An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization,” Trump announced on May 23. On June 2, Trump wrote: “as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal.’” Then Trump told NBC late last week: “We’re very close to having a deal.” But on Monday, Trump said a “Final Deal” has yet to be “reached.”

What such a “deal” will end shines a bright light on another flip-flop failure by the president. Trump went from claiming, in early March, that the U.S. won the war with Iran, to attempting to convince Americans that he never even went to war in the first place. “We don’t call it a war,” he said before the end of that month. “We call it a military operation.” By early May, Trump was calling it a “mini war” or “a little detour.”

Just Give Him Two Weeks

The deadline for when this “mini-war” will finally end may be the most telling of Trump’s failed aims and achievements. It’s well known that Trump’s lying and laziness coalesce around one simple phrase: two weeks. “We’ll have something in two weeks,” Trump said in January of an agreement with Europe to extend U.S. control over Greenland, to take one example.

Trump has long used this two-week delaying tactic when faced with vexing questions about anyone and everything, from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war on ISIS to international trade and the Covid-19 pandemic. Two weeks really means later. Except when it means never.

Related

Stop Calling It a Ceasefire

The ceasefire with Iran, announced on April 7, was initially supposed to last “two weeks” while the two countries inked a deal to end the war, according to Trump. He claimed at the time that they were already “very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”

On Monday evening, Trump held a tele-rally for South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham where he addressed his failed war with Iran. “We’re negotiating now, and they want to make a very good deal. They’re willing to give us everything,” Trump claimed, noting, “It’ll happen very soon.” The president then added in his favorite faux time frame: “I think we are winning that battle, but you’re really going to win it over the next two weeks when we declare total victory.”

The post A Point-by-Point Breakdown of Trump’s Failed Iran War Objectives appeared first on The Intercept.

Long-abandoned formats such as cassettes and VHS tapes are finding new life as consumers seek a digital detox

Ten years after the last video recorder manufacturer ceased production, the first straight-to-video movie for two decades – This Is How the World Ends – was released this month. The resurgence of vinyl began long ago; sales are at their highest level for over 30 years. But record buyers enthuse about the warmth of their sound and the generous visual expanse of album covers. In contrast, the new movie is shot in HD; the director acknowledges that those watching it on video will see a cropped, fuzzier image. The point of the exercise – beyond creating a buzz – lies not in the inherent qualities of VHS, but the effect of its rarity on the viewer.

When everything is available in high definition with one swipe of your screen, cumbersome physical formats that must be hunted down appear both nostalgically inviting and strikingly fresh. Last year, Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl was released in multiple physical formats, including cassette and CD – technically digital, but also enjoying a revival thanks to its retro feel. The title track of her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, mocked a lover’s attachment to his typewriter, notoriously favoured by hipsters.

OpenAI is reportedly considering sharp price cuts for paid access to its AI models as competition with Anthropic intensifies and both companies race for users ahead of potential IPOs. "The company is weighing significant cuts to what it charges for tokens, the unit of measurement artificial-intelligence firms use to bill for their products," the Wall Street Journal said, adding that it was "in anticipation of similar cuts the company expects at Anthropic." CNBC reports: The ChatGPT producer, which did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment, currently charges consumers in tiered subscriptions of $8, $20 and $100 and above each month for access to its flagship GPT-5.5 models. Anthropic conversely charges users $17 each month with an annual subscription to Claude Pro, and $100 and above monthly for a subscription to Claude Max. OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO on Monday, just a week after Anthropic made its own filing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

June 11, 2026 — A new Fraunhofer Society center focused on AI, data analytics and high-performance computing is to be built on the Poppelsdorf Campus at the University of Bonn. The architectural competition for the Fraunhofer Center for Next Generation High Performance Data Analytics and Computing (NG-HPDAC) has now concluded, with first prize awarded to Munich-based Henn Architekten.

Credit: Henn GmbH, München

The new building will be a joint research facility for the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific ­Computing (SCAI) and Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS). Located a stone’s throw from the University of Bonn’s Institute of Computer Science, it is intended to absorb SCAI’s Bonn Branch Lab. The center will also provide space for new research activities from both institutes, focusing on machine-learning algorithms, AI models, quantum computing and energy-efficient high performance computing. The project will further strengthen Bonn’s position in applied AI research and computationally intensive science.

Construction and initial fit-out of the building are expected to cost €56 million. The facility will provide 2,424 square meters of usable space and accommodate around 180 employees. The space plan includes flexible offices, hybrid coworking areas and an approximately 800-square-meter high-performance computing data center. The building is designed to achieve a Silver rating under Germany’s Sustainable Building Assessment System and meet Energy Efficiency Class 40 standards.

At the heart of the winning design is a clear separation of functions, with the data center and office space housed in two distinct sections of the building. The smaller section, facing Reinhard-Selten-Straße, will contain the data center, while a long office wing will extend behind it. This arrangement creates a forecourt that opens the entrance toward the street and better integrates the building into the surrounding campus.

The jury met in Bonn on May 22 to make its decision. Composed of experts in architecture, planning and construction and chaired by Munich architect Professor Ludwig Wappner, it voted unanimously, 11–0, to select the Henn design as the winner.  Second prize went to BE Baumschlager Eberle of Berlin, while Leipzig-based Schulz & Schulz took third place. Special mentions were awarded to two other Berlin firms, gmp and BHVT. A total of 20 firms participated in the closed, single-stage design competition, with 16 proposals ultimately submitted.

Preliminary planning and conceptual design work are scheduled to begin in August 2026. The NG-HPDAC aims to strengthen the connection between research and practical applications in AI, data analytics and high performance computing, supporting companies and organizations seeking to adopt data-driven processes, AI systems and energy-efficient computing methods.

Source: University of Bonn

The post University of Bonn to Add Fraunhofer Center for AI, Data Analytics and HPC Research appeared first on HPCwire.

Led by researchers from the University of Notre Dame, the first APEX project will leverage Aurora and the ALCF Inference Service to develop an AI framework for automating the analysis of large-scale fluid dynamics simulations.

June 11, 2026 — Researchers from the University of Notre Dame will use AI to accelerate the analysis of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations as part of the first project awarded through the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility’s (ALCF) AI Program for EXploration (APEX).

Credit: ALCF

“High-fidelity CFD simulations are instrumental in understanding how air, water, and other fluids move through complex systems that are difficult to fully probe experimentally, ranging from aircraft to energy systems,” said Shivam Barwey, an assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University Notre Dame, who is leading the project. “As these simulation tools continue to scale up in fidelity, the volume and complexity of the datasets produced grow at unprecedented rates. The problem is that only a small fraction of this data can be feasibly interpreted by computational scientists with existing methods.”

o address this challenge, Barwey’s team will work closely with the ALCF through APEX, a new program that pairs research teams with the facility’s staff experts and high-performance computing (HPC) resources to explore and advance novel AI methods across different science domains. Unlike many HPC allocation programs focused primarily on system access, APEX also provides dedicated support through an ALCF-funded postdoctoral researcher. Located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the ALCF is a DOE Office of Science user facility that provides supercomputing and AI resources to researchers across the world.

“We launched APEX to provide a vehicle to support teams pursuing innovative and creative uses of AI for science,” said ALCF Director Michael Papka. “The program brings together domain scientists and ALCF staff to investigate how powerful resources like Aurora, the ALCF AI Testbed, and the ALCF AI Inference Service can help open new directions for AI in scientific research.”

The inaugural APEX project led by Barwey targets one of the key bottlenecks in computational fluid dynamics and large-scale simulations across other domains: the time and effort required to interpret results. The team is developing a coupled CFD-AI workflow that helps organize simulation data and automatically identify key flow features. Their approach will use a knowledge graph to structure simulation outputs, combined with a specialized large language model–based agent to automate analysis of fluid dynamics data across a number of complex turbulent and reacting flow regimes.

“When considering large-scale computations, time-to-science is increasingly limited not by how quickly we can generate data, but by the manual effort required to interpret it,” Barwey said. “Through APEX, we are working towards developing an AI framework that can reliably automate this analysis step for extreme-scale data, so we can accelerate the process of turning massive CFD simulations into a set of verifiable scientific insights — directly in natural language.”

Credit: Shivam Barwey, University of Notre Dame

Although the team is initially focusing on unsteady fluid dynamics (using CFD solvers geared for turbulent flows and combustion), their workflow can be extended to other areas of computational science that involve extreme-scale data analysis.

The project will use ALCF resources, including the Aurora exascale supercomputer, to run high-fidelity CFD simulations that populate the knowledge graph. The team will also use the ALCF AI Inference Service to test and deploy agents across multiple open-source language model backends in parallel with CFD simulation runs. Through emphasis on open-source software, the team intends to make the AI framework available to the broader computational fluid dynamics community once it is developed.

APEX builds on earlier pre-exascale ALCF efforts in data-intensive and AI-driven science, including the ALCF Data Science Program (ADSP), which expanded the facility’s support for research at the intersection of simulation, data science, and AI.

“Similar to ADSP, APEX is designed to help both the facility and the research community explore the next generation of AI-enabled scientific workflows,” Papka said. “The program creates an environment where researchers can experiment with emerging AI approaches through close collaboration with ALCF staff and access to our world-class computing resources.”

Source: ALCF

The post ALCF Launches APEX Program with Project Using AI to Advance Fluid Dynamics Research appeared first on HPCwire.

Pregnant woman in Scotland ‘stressed’ and unsure what will happen as result of UK government’s visa clampdown

A heavily pregnant mother legally living and working in the UK fears the Home Office could try to separate her from her unborn baby after her husband and first child were sent “go home” letters.

Sachintha Warnakulasuriya lives in Scotland with her husband, Indika Kumara, and their six-year-old daughter, Heily. Warnakulasuriya, 36, has a visa permitting her to work in the UK as a care worker and is sponsored by her employer. Her husband, also 36, and daughter are legally entitled to live in the UK as her dependents.

Analysts are scrutinizing recent Chinese maritime operations near Scarborough Shoal, an uninhabited but strategically located atoll near the Philippine island of Luzon, U.S. officials said.

PSNI receive reinforcements from Great Britain amid further condemnation of violence

Police have fired plastic bullets and received reinforcements from Great Britain in an effort to contain race riots in Northern Ireland.

The force has fired 17 of the projectiles since disturbances erupted on Tuesday, pitting officers against crowds that have thrown rocks, petrol bombs and other missiles.

With inflation surging, savers should move their money into an account that can outpace it. Here are two to know now.

Video game consoles have a long history with web browsers. From the advent of the World Wide Web, consoles have been trying to get online. Browsers on video game consoles were initially very much an attempt to provide a cheap gateway to the web for a casual audience lacking technical expertise, though as time progressed they’ve become a greater and more integrated part of systems.

This article takes a look at browsers on video game consoles in detail, though only covers official web browsers. Many consoles have browsers installable via custom firmware and homebrew, but they’re beyond the scope of this post, as are non-web systems such as Satellaview and online services that didn’t provide a browser, such as XBAND, Sega Meganet, and Sega Channel.

↫ Declan Chidlow

The article starts off with the Philips CD-I, which has always been a fascinating product for technology fans in The Netherlands because that’s where Philips is from. Memory that far back is untrustworthy, but I can definitely remember being inundated with commercials, advertising, magazine articles, and newspaper reports about the CD-I, all throughout its rather troubled life. Yet, I don’t remember anything about it being capable of browsing a rudimentary web.

Of course, we’re talking 1995 here, a time when I didn’t even have internet at home yet, although I did use the web at a friend’s place at that time. We didn’t get internet at home until I think 1997 or 1998, followed by the move to broadband cable internet just a year later, since our small rural town happened to be one of the first places to get broadband. Good times.

Did anyone ever actually use browsers on consoles, though? I mean, using them always felt incredibly clunky, and by the time they were capable enough to really do anything we all had laptops and later smartphones anyway. I certainly don’t remember anyone using them for anything but a gimmick, but perhaps my sample size was far too small and not diverse enough.

As Musk prepares for the largest IPO in history, SpaceX's plan to park a million data centers in Earth’s orbit has left scientists worried about a "WALL-E" style orbital graveyard.

As Musk prepares for the largest IPO in history, SpaceX's plan to park a million data centers in Earth’s orbit has left scientists worried about a Wall-E-style orbital graveyard.

Largest comeback in NBA finals history galvanizes city and inspires morning-after chants of ‘Knicks in five!’

New Yorkers woke up on Thursday morning – those who had even slept in the city that never sleeps – still jubilant after the Knicks men’s basketball team had made history the night before.

The team staged the largest comeback in NBA finals history to overcome the San Antonio Spurs in the dying seconds of the fourth game of the finals – and put themselves 3-1 up and within one game of a rare championship win.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool began filling with water on June 4 following maintenance work that President Donald Trump called a “big project.” In late May, Trump claimed that “the Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work, and they failed,” adding that his administration was spending “$10 million, maybe, $12 million.”

But that exaggerates the amount spent by previous administrations. We could find no record of any major work done during former President Joe Biden’s term, and the total spent for an overhaul of the pool during former President Barack Obama’s term was about $35 million.

According to the publicly available federal contract, the Trump administration has spent about $14 million to repaint and seal the bottom of the pool, which has a history of leaks.

The pool was completely refilled with water by June 9, as shown in a PBS News timelapse of the progress.

Trump made his comments about prior work on the Reflecting Pool in a May 27 Cabinet meeting. “It’s embarrassing,” he said of the condition of the pool. “It was filthy, dirty. It was Biden. And they spent, between the two of them, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix this thing. Now, when Biden — when Obama did it, he spent way over $100 million.” 

The work done by the current administration, Trump said, included sandblasting the surface and painting it blue. “We made the surface as good as it can be and we’re now covering it with the most beautiful blue, very thick,” he said. “You think of it as a very sophisticated form of rubber, no leaks, no problems. And it’s beautiful. It’s called American Flag blue. That was the color we chose.”

We asked the National Park Service for details about the scope of the recent work, but we didn’t get a response. Trump has mentioned repeatedly that the pool was being repainted, which is reflected in the publicly available information about the contract. Based on government documents it obtained, the New York Times reported that the scope of work also involves repairs to some of the leaking crevices between the concrete slabs at the bottom of the pool.

Extensive work to rebuild the pool started in 2010 and concluded in 2012 during the Obama administration. That project used funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — stimulus legislation enacted in response to the Great Recession — to essentially replace the original pool that was first built in the early 1920s.

“The old reflecting pool was built with an asphalt and tile bottom on poorly supported soil consisting primarily of marshes,” one of the companies that worked on that project had written at the time, explaining that the pool had sunk a foot into the ground over time.

That project also switched the source of the water from the city’s municipal system to the nearby Tidal Basin fed by the Potomac River, with an ozone water filtration system, according to the National Park Service. There was an unexpected amount of algae when the new pool first opened, according to a Washington Post report at the time, which said that the ozone levels in the filtration system needed adjustment.

Some maintenance issues over the years — such as a broken water line in 2019, according to the National Park Service — led to water quality issues in the pool that required repair.

During the May Cabinet meeting, Trump referred to the change in the water source during the 2012 project, saying, “the water from the Potomac was not suitable for this, to put it mildly. It was disgusting what happened.” But we couldn’t find any information indicating that the source of the water for the pool has changed under Trump. We asked the White House, the Interior Department and the NPS about the water source, but we didn’t get a response.

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 Trump Exaggerates Previous Spending on Reflecting Pool appeared first on FactCheck.org.

DUBLIN and SINGAPORE, June 11, 2026 — Horizon Quantum Holdings Ltd., a pioneer of software infrastructure for quantum applications, today announced that it expects to locate its second quantum computer in Dublin, Ireland.

By placing this IonQ 256-qubit system at its European headquarters, Horizon Quantum aims to benefit from Ireland’s growing quantum ecosystem, strong university network, and robust talent pool for deep-tech development, both within the country and across the EU.

This photo depicts a current trapped ion system from IonQ. The system to be delivered to Horizon will be IonQ’s next-generation 256-qubit technology.

Horizon Quantum believes the installation of this frontier system will be a significant technology milestone for the nation, positioning Ireland to play an increasingly prominent role in frontier quantum computing.

Minister Peter Burke, Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, said: “I welcome Horizon Quantum’s decision to locate its second quantum computer testbed in Dublin. This significant investment reinforces Ireland’s position at the forefront of advanced technologies and reflects the strength of our growing quantum ecosystem, world-class research base, and highly skilled workforce. The establishment of one of the most advanced commercial quantum systems here is an important milestone that will support innovation, collaboration, and economic growth, while further enhancing Ireland’s ambition to be a global hub for cutting-edge technologies. This also aligns with our strategic focus in Silicon Island—Ireland’s National Semiconductor Strategy —on harnessing opportunities in rapidly evolving fields, including quantum technologies.”

IonQ’s sixth-generation, chip-based 256-qubit trapped-ion system is anticipated to be among the most sophisticated quantum computers globally. With its expected qubit count and high gate fidelities, the system could be capable of solving some challenging computational problems. By integrating this system with its software infrastructure, Horizon Quantum plans to expand support for trapped-ion systems in its integrated development environment, Triple Alpha, and to enhance the real-time runtime capabilities of its execution stack—furthering the company’s mission to unlock broad quantum advantage with its software infrastructure.

To oversee the establishment and management of its second quantum system, Horizon Quantum anticipates expanding its Irish-based science and engineering teams and deepening its engagement with Ireland’s quantum ecosystem. By anchoring this system and its accompanying high-value operations in Dublin, Horizon Quantum expects to further catalyze this ecosystem through increased involvement with industry, academia, and the local supply chain.

“Expanding our hardware testbed to Ireland with the addition of a frontier system is a significant step forward for both our company in our mission to unlock broad quantum advantage and for the country in strengthening its quantum ecosystem,” said Horizon Quantum CEO & Founder Dr. Joe Fitzsimons. “We are excited to extend our testbed capabilities to include a trapped-ion system by deploying this state-of-the-art quantum computer in Dublin.”

In December 2025, Horizon Quantum announced that it had assembled and integrated the first quantum system in its hardware testbed—a multi-vendor superconducting system—at its Singapore headquarters. The expansion of the company’s testbed facilities to its European headquarters with a second, technologically distinct system will help further its goal of delivering the most capable hardware-agnostic tools for quantum software development.

Michael Lohan, CEO of IDA Ireland, said: “I warmly congratulate Horizon Quantum on this significant investment in Ireland and on selecting Dublin as the location for its second quantum computer testbed. Quantum development is an important strategic priority for IDA Ireland, and this announcement is a strong endorsement of Ireland’s growing technology ecosystem, our research capabilities, and the talent available here. Horizon Quantum’s decision to invest in Ireland further strengthens our position in frontier technologies and will help support continued innovation and collaboration across the quantum sector. I wish the team every success with this exciting next phase of growth in Ireland.”

About Horizon Quantum

Horizon Quantum [Nasdaq: HQ] is on a mission to unlock broad quantum advantage by building software infrastructure that empowers developers to use quantum computing to solve the world’s toughest computational problems. Founded in 2018 by Dr. Fitzsimons, a leading researcher and former professor with more than two decades of experience in quantum computing, Horizon Quantum seeks to bridge the gap between today’s quantum hardware and tomorrow’s applications through the creation of advanced software development tools. Its integrated development environment, Triple Alpha, enables developers to write sophisticated, hardware-agnostic quantum programs at multiple levels of abstraction. Learn more at www.horizonquantum.com.

Source: Horizon Quantum

The post Horizon Quantum Selects Dublin for 2nd Quantum Computing Testbed appeared first on HPCwire.

Former DUP leader also rejects suggestion wife knew about or witnessed abuse, saying ‘there was nothing to know’

Jeffrey Donaldson is “crystal clear” that an allegation he raped a girl several years ago is “simply not true”, the former Democratic Unionist party leader has told a court.

Giving evidence in the third week of his trial on sexual abuse charges, the ex-MP said an allegation that he had touched the same girl’s breasts was “just unbelievable”.

June 11, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission is building a new era of AI-driven scientific discovery — and it requires far more than powerful supercomputers to succeed. To support this national effort, Fermilab’s Fermi Data Platform is providing secure, large-scale data infrastructure needed to make advanced AI research possible across the American Science Cloud.

Scarlet Norberg and Steven Timm stand in front of disk drive storage in the computing center at Fermilab. Credit: Ryan Postel, Fermilab

When the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Genesis Mission to supercharge artificial intelligence-driven scientific discovery and innovation, it needed more than supercomputers. It required secure, best-in-class infrastructure to store data so researchers across the country could efficiently access the information.

Enter the Fermi Data Platform, or FDP — a system built on thousands of hard drives that make up Fermilab’s scientific storage infrastructure backbone. Selected as a key partner for the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud, Fermilab is providing petabytes of storage, robust data-access tools and deep institutional expertise to ensure the data can be used to its fullest potential for AI-enhanced scientific research.

Fermilab is America’s particle physics laboratory, and decades of working with immense datasets have given its researchers longstanding expertise in scientific data management. Today, the platform supports datasets for multiple experiments and technologies, including measured and simulated data for the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; data from Fermilab’s Short Baseline Neutrino program; and data used in quantum research, microelectronics development and advanced theory work. Fermilab is also preparing for the data needs of the upcoming flagship Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

“At Fermilab, we orchestrate thousands of disks to provide petabytes of storage space, and we make sure researchers can access their data quickly and securely,” said Oliver Gutsche, lead of the Fermi Data Platform project.

With data storage and access tools like the Fermi Data Platform, the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud brings together scientific expertise from DOE national laboratories, academic institutions and industry partners. By combining this expertise with advanced AI techniques and the development of new AI models, the American Science Cloud aims to accelerate discovery across disciplines — from high-energy physics to materials science to fusion-energy research.

The Fermilab Data Platform is a key partner for the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud. It forms the backbone of the lab’s scientific storage infrastructure and will provide storage, robust data-access tools and deep institutional expertise for AI for scientific research. Credit: Fermilab

The American Science Cloud will be an integrated infrastructure with advanced AI services: a system where a researcher can describe what they need and have AI-driven tools tap into national laboratory resources, including supercomputers, scientific datasets and simulation capabilities.

The Genesis Mission’s goal is to reduce the time between asking a scientific question and getting a meaningful answer by automating many of the steps in between — searching relevant scientific publications, running preliminary simulations, filtering results and presenting researchers with a refined picture of where to focus next.

“Give me the 10 most promising materials for batteries — the system does a literature search, runs some simulations to verify, narrows down that list, and presents it as an answer for further research,” said Gutsche. “That is the kind of workflow the Genesis Mission is designed to enable.”

The goal is not to replace researchers or the scientific process — humans still ask the questions and evaluate the answers. Instead, the aim is to enable scientists to work faster and focus on the insights that matter most.

To do any of this at scale, AI systems need data that is accessible, well-organized and what experts call “AI-ready.” Raw scientific data from instruments and detectors often lacks the structure and metadata — the supporting, behind-the-scenes information — that machine learning models require. Part of Fermi Data Platform’s role is to help bridge that gap, storing datasets from Genesis Mission projects and presenting them for model training and inference.

“Data is the common denominator behind major scientific endeavors, and AI is fundamentally data-driven,” said Chin Guok, partner integration level 1 lead for the American Science Cloud. “To train and run AI models, you need large volumes of data. Fermi Data Platform can support AI training and inference on large scientific datasets.”

When the Fermi Data Platform was established as an American Science Cloud infrastructure partner, Fermilab researchers were able to move quickly — offering data storage and data access tools engineered for the kind of active, repeated access that AI-supported research demands. This partnership now allows researchers to leverage DOE resources more seamlessly, laying a powerful foundation for accelerated scientific discovery for the benefit of all.

About Fermilab

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is America’s national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. Fermi Forward Discovery Group manages Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov.

Source: Maxwell Bernstein, Fermilab

The post Fermilab Storage Infrastructure Enables AI-Driven Scientific Research for DOE’s Genesis Mission appeared first on HPCwire.

Karmelo Anthony's mother Kala Hayes told CBS News that her son "didn't mean to hurt anyone" and "was defending himself" when he stabbed another student, Austin Metcalf.

Four police officers were injured, including one who was taken to the hospital, authorities said.

Thursday’s latest news before the World Cup opener between Mexico and South Africa

BTL chat is thus far dominated by Gianni Infantino’s ritual pre-tournament torching of his own dignity. SonOfThe Desert offers this:

“Infantino is just absolutely wretched, isn’t he? An absolute nothing of a man, sucking up to tyrants because he thinks it makes him look strong.

”But you know what’s really annoying me? All those heads of national associations who could have unified around a candidate - anyone - to oppose Infantino and try and rescue Fifa from humiliation. Couldn’t be bothered though, could they? Might’ve had to do some actual work that way.

New York has honored two footballing greats by temporarily renaming streets after Thierry Henry and Pelé ahead of the World Cup kickoff …

Crowds gathered at West 50th Street and 6th Avenue in downtown Manhattan to mark the unveiling of “Thierry Henry Way” by city officials, according to FOX Sports.

Opendoor is shutting down its India operations less than two years after opening offices there. Slashdot reader alternative_right shares a post from Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian: "I shared this note earlier today with the entire team at Opendoor. Today we began to say goodbye to our colleagues in India as we wind down our India operations. Our customers are in America, and that's where our operational work belongs." TechCrunch reports: In announcing the decision on Wednesday, CEO Kaz Nejatian cited a push to bring operational work back to the U.S., where Opendoor's customers are, and a shift toward smaller AI-native teams. The company did not respond to requests for comment on how many employees were affected or how much of the decision was driven by AI efficiency. But the announcement quickly gained traction across Silicon Valley, where founders, investors, and outsourcing experts see it as an early example of how AI is reshaping the economics that made India a global hub for back-office operations. [...] Some investors viewed the decision as a sign of what AI could mean for India's vast outsourcing workforce. "As manual work gets replaced by AI, a lot of jobs will be lost in India," wrote Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures. Others viewed Opendoor as evidence of a larger shift in how companies are organized. Keshav Lohia, a venture capitalist at Emergent Ventures, described the decision as a "watershed moment" for AI-driven operations, arguing that advances in AI are beginning to challenge the cost-arbitrage model that made India a popular offshoring destination. Phil Fersht, chief executive of HFS Research, an advisory firm that tracks the global outsourcing and business services industry, told TechCrunch that the development should not be viewed simply as jobs moving from India to the U.S. The more important shift, he said, is that AI is reducing the amount of operational labor companies require in the first place, allowing firms to run leaner organizations regardless of location. "This is not an isolated restructuring," Fersht said. "It is part of a much broader pattern we are starting to see as companies redesign operations around AI, automation, and much leaner workflows." Fersht argued that the winners would be companies that combine AI, software and human expertise to deliver outcomes without continually adding headcount, a model he described as "Services-as-Software." While Opendoor may be one of the first high-profile examples, he said it is unlikely to be the last. Some investors are already extrapolating beyond individual companies. Varun Rekhi, a venture capitalist at Speedinvest, argued that if AI reduces demand for labor-intensive services, it could eventually pressure one of India's most important export industries, which is built around supplying talent and expertise to global corporations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Responding to an incident in which she was verbally abused, the actor said that ‘evil forces are rising everywhere’, as well as expressing support for MobLand co-star Tom Hardy

Helen Mirren has commented on being called an “evil Zionist bitch” while being harassed in the street in London, saying she was “attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable”.

Footage circulated last month of an incident, believed to have taken place last year, while Mirren was walking with her husband, film-maker Taylor Hackford. They were approached and filmed by an unidentified person, who commented on Mirren’s support of Israel and then launched a volley of abuse at her.

You could be tapping, pinching and swiping on a MacBook's display by the end of the year.

A fisher caught a great white shark on the south shore of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, on 7 June, before releasing it back into the ocean. Bryner Oliveira, who captured footage, said he had been 'at the beach enjoying the weekend' when the fisher reeled in the shark on his line. He said he unhooked and released the protected shark in about 15 seconds

• Video shows angler freeing great white shark after surprise catch at Nantucket

A federal judge reprimanded four lawyers, two on each side, in a Mississippi case about fees for a solar development project.

As the Knicks edge closer to winning the NBA finals for the first time in decades, a viral chant – posted by Kalshi – has become New York City’s anthem

The New York Knicks are 3-1 up in the NBA finals, one game away from winning the championship for the first time since the 1970s. The mood in New York is electric, the city is strewn with blue and orange, crowds roar outside Madison Square Garden, and – at least last week – a viral chant has become a new unofficial New York City anthem:

My mayor Muslim

My bagel’s Jewish

My mayor still Muslim

My bagel’s still Jewish

Judge says ex-city comptroller was not willingly obstructive while sitting in front of lift at Manhattan federal building

New York City Democrat Brad Lander on Thursday was found not guilty of blocking an elevator during his attempt to inspect rooms holding detained immigrants, with a Manhattan federal court judge saying the politician looked low-energy when he sat in front of a lift – not willingly obstructive.

“He seemed tired and he seemed a bit resigned to the situation,” the magistrate judge Henry Ricardo said moments before he formally acquitted Lander, the former New York City comptroller, who is competing for incumbent Democrat Dan Goldman’s congressional seat.

Vance Boelter changes plea in murders of Melissa and Mark Hortman as prosecutors agree not to pursue death penalty

The man charged in the political assassinations of the top Democrat in the Minnesota house and her husband, as well as the non-fatal shootings of a state senator and his wife, pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday after prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

Vance Boelter was charged with murdering Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota house speaker, and her husband, Mark Hortman, and with shooting state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Boelter came to their doors in the early hours of 14 June 2025, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.

The Justice Department announced it has charged three people in Ohio for conspiring to smuggle unaccompanied minors across the U.S. border.

Vance Boelter pleaded guilty to the shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses on Thursday as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.

Unlike most other countries, the US are playing the 2026 World Cup not just for themselves, but for the future of their voice in the sport

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Mauricio Pochettino paused. The microphone signal flickered. He tried, for a second time, to say a few things to the 5,500 fans who had gathered in the sun Monday at Championship Soccer Stadium in Irvine, California – the United States’ World Cup home base – for an open training session. Nothing. Then something. More choppy audio. By the time things came back online, he had developed a quip.

“We are in the greatest country in the world,” he said in his Rioplatense-accented English. “But the technology does not work.”

The results of Round 1 of CNET's Big Guessing Game are here, and only one person got the second question right.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty told staff that Xbox's current economics "cannot continue," citing more than $20 billion in spending over five years, declining revenue outside Activision Blizzard King, console supply constraints tied to RAMaggedon, and an overextended studio portfolio. The memo stops short of announcing layoffs, but a Bloomberg report says substantial Xbox cuts are expected after Microsoft's fiscal year ends on June 30. Engadget reports: The takeaways are pretty grim. For starters, the simple math of Xbox's revenue isn't adding up to success. "Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time," the execs state. "Going forward, this cannot continue." They also acknowledge the impact of RAMaggedon: "We are currently unable to make as many consoles as players want to buy, and we need a new business model and partnerships for hardware as we remain committed to Helix." (Helix, in this case, is Project Helix, the codename for Xbox's new console.) Then there's the kicker, a renewed admission that Xbox still can't support the many studios it acquired in the late 2010s in an effort to grow its first-party game ambitions. "We have found ourselves over extended as we executed on changing strategies in a landscape of more readily available content," the pair said, noting elsewhere that with so many good games, not to mention the plethora of other forms of entertainment available, "Going forward, our competition is attention."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Knicks completed the largest comeback in NBA finals history to beat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4 of the championship series on 10 June. Fans took to the streets of New York City to celebrate the win, and the police made several arrests and used riot gear to disperse crowds

Former xAI engineer Devin Kim alleges he was illegally fired for trying to implement safety mechanisms for the chatbot

A former engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI who now heads a thinktank focused on AI safety filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired from the SpaceX subsidiary for raising concerns about the risks artificial intelligence poses to humanity.

Devin Kim claims in the lawsuit filed in California state court on Tuesday that his efforts to place guardrails on the development of the chatbot Grok made him a target for company leadership.

Exclusive: PSNI repeatedly warned by monitoring group for eight months after a so-called hitlist of addresses began circulating in far-right networks

A monitoring group repeatedly warned the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) over the past eight months that anti-immigration activists were circulating the addresses of properties that were targeted in this week’s Belfast riots.

The Accountability Project Northern Ireland, a volunteer group formed last summer to monitor anti-immigration activity online, sent dozens of reports to police between November 2025 and June 2026.

Do you owe money to debt collectors but use an online bank? Here's what to know before the problems escalate.

Regulator approval means patients who meet criteria such as having obesity will be able to purchase pills with private prescription

Patients will soon be able to buy the Wegovy weight-loss pill, the medicines regulator announced today.

It is the first GLP-1 receptor agonist tablet for weight-loss to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), making the UK the third country to authorise the pills, behind the US and the United Arab Emirates.

Analysts say IPO that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire has a ‘major disconnect’ on price

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to launch the biggest stock market float in history amid warnings that it may be overvalued.

The space exploration, satellite broadband and AI company will join the US stock market on Friday at a valuation of $1.78tn, after offering at least $75bn of shares to investors through an initial public offering.

Suspect, 19, still at large after officer dies in hospital having been shot while searching an apartment

A Toronto police officer has been shot dead as police raided an apartment allegedly linked to the March attack on the US consulate, the city’s police chief, Myron Demkiw, said.

Demkiw said 43-year-old constable Marc Pinizzotto was shot while conducting an early-morning search warrant in the north-west of the city and later died at a hospital.

John Healey’s resignation highlights profound strategic failure in the UK government’s approach to defence Expert comment jon.wallace 11 June 2026

General Sir Richard Barrons – a co-author of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review – says a lack of government competence is making the UK less safe and undermining its reputation with allies.

UK Defence Secretary John Healey resigned on 11 June. In his resignation letter, addressing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he said: ‘you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats’, stating that the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan ‘falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time’. These events highlight two clear failures in UK defence.

The first is a failure of competent government.

The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published in June last year, set out three essential conclusions. First, that the UK now lives in a much more dangerous world. Second, that both the Armed Forces and wider civil society are in poor shape to deal with that reality. Third, that urgent action is therefore imperative.

The SDR was clear that preparing for war in the 21st century is not simply about filling long-standing gaps in equipment, personnel or capability. It is about transformation: changing the way the UK thinks about, funds, organizes and delivers defence.

Yet, a year after the SDR was agreed, the government has decided not to fully fund its own review. In doing so, it is not merely failing to move forward; it is actively going backwards.

The second failure is that this decision makes the country less safe.

It diminishes the UK’s standing within NATO, weakens our credibility with allies, and increases our vulnerability to the realities of 21st-century conflict. Allies and adversaries alike will be paying attention.

The government has, in effect, decided not to fund the defence review it commissioned and endorsed, because it prefers to spend money elsewhere. That is a political choice.

The SDR charted a ten-year programme to put the UK in a stronger position. But the reality is that the country needs to be in a much better place within the next three to five years. The level of funding currently being put on the table means UK defence will not be fixed. In fact, it will continue to deteriorate. The transformation that the SDR says is imperative will simply not be affordable.

This is not ultimately a question of affordability. It is a question of choice. The government is choosing not to spend the money on defence that is necessary.

No one wants to spend more on defence for its own sake. But we are living in the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be. We do not get to choose whether war matters. War can choose us, whether we prefer to ignore it or not.

Related work

Will the UK’s Defence Investment Plan finally be honest about Britain’s defence? 

That is the experience of Ukraine. It is also reflected in the turmoil across the Middle East. The UK must play its part alongside its allies, and that requires spending more money on defence sooner. If we choose not to do that, we will have to live with the consequences. Those consequences could be catastrophic.

At a time of political turmoil, the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is the vehicle intended to deliver the Strategic Defence Review. Since the SDR was only agreed a year ago, it must be possible for government to think again, and to think more imaginatively.

The UK public sector spends around £1.3 trillion a year. Finding additional funding for defence is therefore a matter of priority, not impossibility. If government struggles to move money quickly within the public sector, it should also look beyond traditional funding routes.

Fatima Jabbe-Bio kept tenancy in Southwark despite living for much of year at presidential lodge in Freetown

A social housing flat rented by Sierra Leone’s first lady has been seized by a London council.

Southwark council confirmed it had repossessed the two-bedroom home in Walworth previously occupied by Fatima Jabbe-Bio, whose tenancy was reported by the Times last year.

Officials found three passengers in the cabin and their suspect hiding in the lavatory, Bali immigration authorities said.

The House on Thursday defeated a last-ditch effort to extend a key spy authority until early July.

Measure failed in 198-218 vote after Democrats said they would block renewal of Fisa over naming of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence

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The US House of Representatives on Thursday failed to pass a short-term extension of a powerful surveillance law amid controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s decision to install an inexperienced loyalist as the country’s top intelligence official.

The measure failed in a 198-218 vote, after Democrats announced they would block the move to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) in protest of Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte, a major Republican donor, as acting director of national intelligence.

Australia, the US and Paraguay will have their work cut out to match the Crescent Stars’ young midfield but a shaky defence is a genuine concern

Turkey coach Vincenzo Montella has been building one of the nation’s strongest teams in living memory. A youth-driven squad with two genuine stars – Arda Guler and Kenan Yildiz – several players were not even born when the Crescent Stars last qualified for a World Cup and finished third in 2002.

In past tournaments, Turkey were often labelled as “dark horses” – which turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. This time, Montella has constructed a squad that sits among those on the rung below heavyweights Spain, France and Argentina.

The Interior Department is planning an aggressive work schedule to complete President Trump's arch near Arlington National Cemetery.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: China was likely behind an online influence operation to sway U.S. perceptions of artificial intelligence technology and reshape the debate in Washington around the infrastructure needed to support it, according to research from OpenAI published Wednesday. OpenAI said it caught the influence campaign because China-backed operatives were using ChatGPT to create content for the social media campaign. [...] OpenAI's researchers identified two clusters of ChatGPT users "likely originating from China" who used the AI chatbot to generate social media content "in support of apparent covert influence operations" promoting certain narratives about AI. This includes claims that data center build-outs are raising electricity costs for the average American family and that President Donald Trump has weaponized tariffs to keep the U.S. ahead in the global tech race. These accounts have since been banned, the report said. One cluster of users asked ChatGPT to generate images and comments pushing these narratives. These comments were then posted on social media by "batches of accounts" posing as Americans, [said Ben Nimmo, principal investigator of intelligence and investigations at OpenAI]. Another cluster identified by researchers used AI to generate social media content criticizing the Trump administration's tariffs as an attempt to "dominate technological competition." Prompts used for this campaign were submitted in Simplified Chinese and asked that AI-generated content not include Chinese President Xi Jinping and focus solely on Trump -- a possible tell that China was behind the operation, according to the report. Nimmo said that the influence campaign amplified existing public backlash in the U.S. against the creation of new AI data centers, which has resulted in dozens of proposed moratoriums at the local, state and national level. "Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement," Nimmo said. "They're important for what they reveal about the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they're testing and seeking to amplify, but not for the impact."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Quaint and often overlooked, payphones continue to provide an essential public service, with millions of free calls being placed each year

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A man I’ve never met stands at a payphone in Sydney’s central business district.

“A serene small park directly to the right of the payphone,” he says poetically into the receiver. “There’s a man with an interesting cap sitting down there, and an ibis. I guess they’ll be immortalised in this phone voicemail forever.”

Despite his managerial veneer and quiet approach, the outgoing defence secretary is a highly political operator

• UK politics live – latest updates

If there was one thing Downing Street could rely on with John Healey, it was avoiding unnecessary drama. Whether in parliament or on the morning broadcast round, his sober suits and general demeanour of a benign but firm headteacher spelled reassurance.

But then, just before 12.10pm on Wednesday, the drama arrived. In a letter posted to social media, Healey resigned as defence secretary, a job he had held – whether in government or its shadow equivalent – from the moment Keir Starmer became Labour leader.

A surge in the Producer Price Index signals that businesses are paying more for goods and services, which could push up consumer costs.

A wave of US strikes represents the gravest test yet of the fragile truce. Here’s what happened, what officials are saying and whether the deal can survive

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The US launched strikes across southern Iran for a second consecutive day on Thursday. Although there have been several breaches of the ceasefire agreed between the two sides in April, the attacks this week – launched after the downing of a US helicopter over the strait of Hormuz – represent the most serious and extensive breakdown of the truce to date.

The US president, Donald Trump, raised the prospect of further attacks, while his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, told reporters that if strikes “have to happen … they will be strong and they will be clear”.

If there's one name on the bill, could two paychecks really be at risk? Here's what creditors can actually do.

With the announcement of an upcoming new macOS release also come the usual changes in which Macs will still be supported. MacOS 27 Golden Gate is an important release in this regard, as it will be the first release of Apple’s desktop operating system that will be entirely ARM-only, dropping support for all Intel Macs. It’s important to note that Apple will provide three more years of security updates for the final Intel release of macOS, so Intel users won’t be dropped like a brick immediately.

Still, the Intel Mac Pro was still being sold all the way up until mid-2023, and I’d be royally pissed off if my expensive 2023 Intel Mac went out of support a mere six years after purchase. They weren’t cheap machines, and while you can argue everybody knew the writing was on the wall for the Intel Mac Pro in 2023, it still feels way too short of a supported lifespan for such an expensive, high-end piece of equipment. It didn’t sell many units, I’m sure, but still.

In addition, MacOS 27 will be the last release to include the Rosetta 2 translation layer that allows Intel binaries to run on ARM macOS. I have no idea how many important applications are still Intel-only, but I have a feeling that number is going to be relatively small, and will become even smaller as the first macOS release without Rosetta 2 support nears release. On top op of that, I’m sure enterprising users will find a way to transplant Rosetta 2 onto unsupported macOS releases, and if all else fails, there’s always virtual machines.

PARIS, June 11, 2026 — Alice & Bob, a leader in fault-tolerant quantum computing, today unveiled the Helium Quantum System, marking the company’s expansion from developing cat-qubit chips to delivering a complete quantum computing system for on-premise deployment.

The Helium Quantum System has been engineered to encode Alice & Bob’s first logical qubit with as few as 18 cat-qubits. From the processor architecture to the cabling, control electronics and software stack, the entire system is optimized for quantum error correction. Designed as an upgradeable platform, the quantum system will also support the next 48 cat-qubit chip on Alice & Bob’s roadmap – expected to feature multiple logical qubits.

Alice & Bob is inviting research partners to conduct experiments on the Helium Quantum System and collaborate with the company on advancing fault tolerant quantum computing research. The system enables researchers to integrate quantum and classical computing resources within a single computing infrastructure, such as those found at high-performance computing (HPC) centers.

By providing direct access to cat-qubit architecture, Alice & Bob offers a platform for research into quantum error correction, logical qubits and the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing.

“Alice & Bob has focused on fault tolerance from the outset. Our cat-qubit architecture is designed to dramatically reduce the error-correction overhead – one of the industry’s largest technical and economic barriers. We believe the defining race in quantum computing is building better qubits that can reach fault tolerance with the fewest resources. The Helium Quantum System is an important milestone on that journey, giving researchers direct access to the architecture underpinning our roadmap to universal, fault-tolerant quantum computing,” said Théau Peronnin, CEO and co-founder of Alice & Bob.

The Helium Quantum System is designed with operational efficiency in mind, requiring approximately 40 kW of power to run, helping lower the cost of deploying advanced quantum systems, one of the key bottlenecks in quantum computing today.

As part of launch, Alice & Bob is releasing Starboard a custom monitoring interface that gives administrators visibility over the 18-cat qubit system. Through a single dashboard, administrators can visualize system behavior, monitor individual qubit performance, schedule workloads, and track live hardware metrics. Starboard features highly automated software designed by Alice & Bob. Starboard brings together the tools needed to monitor, run, and optimize the Helium quantum system.

The Helium Quantum System features compatibility with the most common HPC schedulers (including Slurm) through the open-source QRMI library, and other third-party solutions. Users can connect to the Helium Quantum System with Alice & Bob’s dedicated Felis software framework, providing custom instructions tailored to the Helium chip while maintaining compatibility with major quantum programming frameworks.

About Alice & Bob

Alice & Bob is a quantum computing company based in Paris and Boston whose goal is to create the first universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer. Advised by Nobel Prize winning researchers, Alice & Bob specializes in cat qubits, a technology developed by the company’s founders. Demonstrating the power of its cat architecture, Alice & Bob recently showed that it could reduce the hardware requirements for building a useful large-scale quantum computer up to 200 times compared with competing approaches.

Source: Alice & Bob

The post Alice & Bob Introduces Helium Platform for Quantum Error Correction and Logical Qubit Research appeared first on HPCwire.

Employees at artificial intelligence companies are coming into gargantuan sums of money amid boom in IPOs

Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area’s already expensive market are skyrocketing as employees at leading artificial intelligence companies come into gargantuan sums of money thanks to a boom in initial public offerings.

With San Francisco’s OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as SpaceX, which operates a major facility in the Los Angeles area, eyeing debuts on the stock market, the hot housing market may not abate soon. If their initial public offering (IPO) is well-received, the companies’ multibillion-dollar valuations are poised to produce massive wealth for employees and executives holding shares, which experts say could trigger an uptick in demand for the Bay Area’s limited housing stock.

Kharg Island is a heavily fortified, strategically vital island off Iran's north coast that President Trump says the U.S. may seize control of militarily.

Meteorologists forecast it will rival – or exceed – record El Niño from 1997 and further heat globe

El Niño, Nature’s chaotic climate agent, has formed in a warmed-up Pacific Ocean and is expected to grow to historic strength, meteorologists announced on Thursday.

Experts said the El Niño, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will probably turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival – or exceed – a record El Niño that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heatwaves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.

South Asia’s Gen Z revolutions now face difficult realities Expert comment thilton.drupal 11 June 2026

New governments in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka have popular mandates for change. But governance is proving challenging.

Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka find themselves at a turning point. Their relatively new governments, brought to power in the wake of youth-led protest movements, retain popular mandates. But they must now grapple with governance challenges exacerbated by the Iran war and complicated relations with India.

Similarities and differences

In 2022, the government of Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was overthrown in a mass protest movement known as the Aragalaya (‘Struggle’). Bangladesh’s ‘Monsoon Revolution’ followed in 2024, with long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina removed from power, before the so-called ‘Gen Z revolution’ in Nepal toppled Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s government in 2025.

These movements were all fuelled by a combination of economic distress (all three countries are undergoing IMF bailouts), demographic pressures and political dysfunction, with growing resentment against ruling elites due to a culture of corruption, nepotism and increasingly autocratic tendencies. Social media also played an important role and allowed anti-establishment narratives to flourish.

There are undoubtedly some country-specific differences. In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya was triggered by a sovereign debt crisis, hyperinflation and commodity shortages. In Bangladesh, the issue of public sector job quotas for families of war veterans became a lightning rod for anti-government unrest. In Nepal, the catalyst was a social media ban.

The elections that followed also took different trajectories. While Nepal chose radical change – electing a former rapper, Balendra Shah, as its new prime minister in March – Bangladesh opted for a degree of continuity in electing Tarique Rehman, the son of a former prime minister and president, from the established Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). And while Nepal rejected established left-leaning political parties, Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake heads a coalition led by a Marxist-Leninist party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

After the revolutions

During a recent visit to the region, it was clear that despite optimism, all three countries now face similar internal and external challenges.

A climate of hope and belief in a fresh start persists. The new governments all came to power with large electoral mandates, creating a sense of opportunity. Even in Bangladesh, where there has been a degree of continuity, the proposed political reforms of the July National Charter have fuelled a sense of democratic renewal.

However, initial euphoria is also giving way to a feeling that governments are squandering their goodwill through their inability or unwillingness to implement necessary reforms. These doubts are not helped by missteps stemming from the new governments’ inexperience.

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Bangladesh election reveals a transformed political landscape

In Nepal, despite Shah campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, two ministers in the new government departed within its first month after facing scandals. In Sri Lanka, growing frustration over austerity measures was exacerbated by the government response to Cyclone Ditwah last year, which some consider inadequate. Earlier in the year, the ruling party’s vote share dropped in local elections.

In Bangladesh, violent crime is a growing concern as the army returns to the barracks after the February election. There are also concerns that the BNP government may only implement parts of the proposed July Charter political reforms to avoid changes that could erode its power. The party will face its first test when Bangladesh holds local government elections later this year.

Stability not guaranteed

Strong mandates therefore do not guarantee stability. This is particularly true if broader societal challenges are not addressed.

All three countries have a history of prolonged periods of violence and instability. Nepal, which was plagued by a decade-long Maoist insurgency, has various social divides, including along caste, generational, regional and ideological lines. A constitution passed in 2015 sought to address these cleavages. However, there are fears that social cohesion could be undermined by the new government’s focus on appeasing its younger urban voter base, which could risk overlooking other constituencies.

In Sri Lanka, the government has sought to separate itself from ethnic-based politics. But following the decades-long civil war, ethnic Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism remains entrenched in Sri Lankan society. This holds implications for lasting reconciliation with the country’s minority Hindu and Muslim Tamil community.

Meanwhile, in Bangladesh the main divide is between the country’s two long-established dynastic political parties – the BNP and Awami League – with efforts to forge a credible youth-led ‘third front’ failing to bear fruit in the election. For now, this rivalry has been deferred by the ban on the Awami League. However, this situation is unsustainable; it will eventually be necessary to rehabilitate the party in some form to break the cycle of revenge politics that has historically plagued the country.

The Iran war and India relations

These pressures are exacerbated by the ongoing war in Iran. All three countries have been severely impacted by the war with inflationary pressures, fuel rationing and limited fiscal space to withstand the economic shocks of the conflict. They are also all heavily dependent on foreign remittances from Gulf states. These economic strains have cut short any post-election honeymoon period.

Relations with India present another challenge. Governments in all three countries are seeking a reset in relations with New Delhi, which had been strained under their predecessors.

India is a crucial source of humanitarian aid, development assistance and infrastructure investment to all three countries. The Iran war has also created space for greater alignment, given that New Delhi has stepped up energy exports to its neighbours as they face shortages.

However, India’s prominence in the region also breeds mistrust from its neighbours, who face challenges in managing relations with their larger neighbour.

The recent victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state election in West Bengal – which borders Bangladesh – is a mixed blessing for India-Bangladesh relations. On the one hand, it is expected to improve coordination between New Delhi and West Bengal, which could be crucial for the renewal of the India-Bangladesh Ganga water sharing treaty that is due to expire in December.

However, with the BJP or its partners now ruling in four of five states bordering Bangladesh, there is also an increased risk of the party’s sometimes divisive identity-based politics souring relations with Bangladesh; border tensions recently flared after the BJP ordered a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

Related work

India wants to reset relations after Bangladesh elections. It will be easier said than done

In Nepal, Prime Minister Shah’s unpredictable leadership style has introduced a degree of uncertainty to relations, as seen in his refusal to meet India’s foreign secretary and the recent flare up of a territorial dispute. The BJP recently hosted Nepal’s ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and has sought to emphasize shared cultural ties, although this also risks fuelling fissures within Nepal. 

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Iran and the new Persian Gulf equilibrium Expert comment jon.wallace 11 June 2026

The Axis of Resistance failed to deter Israel and the US. Whatever deal ends the war, Tehran will seek to rebuild its deterrence around the threat it poses to the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf states.

The fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States, in place for two months, has been punctuated by several episodes of violence. That includes the latest exchange of strikes following the shooting down of a US helicopter, and President Donald Trump’s threats on 11 June to seize Iran’s Kharg Island. However, both Washington and Tehran have generally expressed a reluctance to return to open warfare. And according to media reports the US has signaled to Iran, through Qatar, that recent attacks were not meant as a resumption of all-out war.

At the same time, negotiations to prolong the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz have failed to make progress. A deal on the Strait will eventually emerge, but whatever the details, dynamics in the Persian Gulf have changed – and will not return to the pre-28 February 2026 status quo.

A new deterrence strategy

Since the ceasefire in early April, Iran and the US have floated in a volatile state of no war and no peace. The two sides are far from reaching an agreement that would set bilateral relations on a more stable and predictable footing, let alone resolve the deep divergences that have divided them for 47 years. Each perceives that it has the upper hand, and expects the other to make compromises. In this fragile context, limited escalations are virtually guaranteed to happen again. But the events of early June reinforce the view that Iran and the US will continue to try to avoid uncontrolled escalation.

The World Today

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How Iran’s ‘forward defence’ became a strategic boomerang

However the war ends, a new equilibrium is steadily emerging in the Persian Gulf based on an equation that features both new and pre-existing but modified variables.

First, the Axis of Resistance – the network of non-state armed groups supported by Iran – has failed. Israel has not been able, as much as it has tried since October 2023, to decisively defeat Hamas and Hezbollah. But the two Iran-backed groups have undoubtedly been weakened. More importantly, they could not deliver what was one of the original rationales behind Iran’s support for the Axis: deterrence.

When Tehran developed its forward defence strategy, one of its goals was to signal to the US and Israel that an attack on Iran would be met with a costly retaliation from Axis members. In this sense, the Axis did not fulfil its mandate: the threat of reprisals failed to deter multiple American and Israeli attacks on the Iranian homeland.

As a result, Iran’s focus is shifting to the Gulf. Analysts, in and out of government, have long known that in the event of a war that threatened its survival, the Islamic Republic would likely try to close the Strait of Hormuz. Countless wargames and simulations demonstrated exactly that. What was known in theory has now been demonstrated in practice, and there will be no turning back.

This profoundly and sustainably transforms the geopolitics of the Gulf region. There is little doubt that the Strait of Hormuz will eventually re-open to maritime traffic. It will probably not be a sudden re-opening. Instead, it will be gradual, for both security reasons and because it will take time for supply chains to re-organize themselves.

But the Islamic Republic will not forget the tremendous leverage it gained by closing it. Neither will it agree to permanently forego the option of resorting to this tactic again. Rather, it will integrate it into its strategy. And it will not hesitate to consider closing the Strait again if it perceives it to be necessary. The war, in other words, has broken a psychological barrier that will not be rebuilt.

Iran will, as such, restock and reconstitute its damaged military infrastructure with Hormuz in mind. Rebuilding its missile and drone production facilities, heavily damaged by American and Israeli strikes, will be its top priority, as will be the consolidation and diversification of its global supply networks. 

This will take precedence, for example, over rebuilding its shattered nuclear infrastructure and conventional navy. This will ensure that the threat of the closure of the Strait remains a black cloud permanently hanging over maritime shipping in the Gulf and, therefore, the global economy.

The Houthis

The fear of that scenario will be compounded by the possibility that the Houthis, the  group that controls the northwestern quadrant of Yemen, could join the fray and close the Bab al-Mandab at the southern tip of the Red Sea – another crucial maritime chokepoint. This week, the Houthis explicitly threatened to close the route to Israeli shipping.

The Houthis are not Iranian puppets and do not merely execute orders from Tehran. That said, they caused severe disruption to Red Sea shipping throughout 2023-25, motivated, they said, by solidarity with Palestinians. In a hypothetical future conflict in which the Islamic Republic is seriously threatened, it is conceivable that they would renew their attacks. In combination with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the impact on the global economy would be significant.

The other feature of the new equilibrium is the threat of Iranian attacks on the Gulf Arab states. As with Hormuz, analysts have long understood that if pushed into a corner, the Islamic Republic would likely target the six petro-monarchies that form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. 

And, as in the case of Hormuz, the war has created a precedent that provides Iran with important leverage moving forward. For GCC states, whose brand is partly premised on their reputation as havens of stability, this is another permanent threat that will further damage their security and prosperity.

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BOLOGNA, Italy, June 11, 2026 — The Italian Research Centre on High Performance Computing, Big Data, and Quantum Computing (ICSC) today inaugurated the IQM Radiance 54 quantum computer at CINECA, one of Europe’s leading supercomputing centers, enabling advanced applications in optimization, simulation, and machine learning.

The moment Italy’s second IQM quantum computer went live at CINECA in Bologna.

The installation, located at the CINECA headquarters in the DAMA Tecnopolo in Bologna, represents not just technological progress but a strategic Italian asset providing concrete tools for the scientific community and businesses to foster innovation, accelerate research, and transform knowledge into high-impact applications.

IQM Radiance, named NOX, is being integrated into Leonardo, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers to support hybrid high-performance computing and quantum workflows. The objective is to provide researchers with a production-ready environment for experimentation with integrated classical–quantum computing paradigms.

“This installation is what Production Quantum means to us. Quantum computers you own, operate, and build value on. Real infrastructure inside real environments, doing real work,” said Sylwia de Weydenthal, Chief Commercial Officer of IQM Quantum Computers. “The delivery of IQM Radiance to CINECA is a milestone for Italy and for European quantum computing. It reinforces our role as a strategic partner in delivering Europe’s HPC–quantum infrastructure on the ground.”

The system is the first on-premises superconducting quantum computer at CINECA and the second IQM quantum computer in Italy, further strengthening the country’s position in quantum computing.

This deployment contributes directly to IQM’s ambition to drive the global adoption of hybrid computing systems and enable customers to build quantum capability.

IQM has on-premises systems operating at four of the world’s top ten supercomputing centers and has sold 23 quantum computers globally, more than any other manufacturer.

“In line with the European strategy, we have invested in building a modern and competitive national infrastructure, capable of providing universities and research institutions with advanced computing tools essential for tackling major scientific, technological, and economic challenges. However, this milestone does not mark the end of our commitment. Several measures have already been launched to ensure continuity of PNRR results and activities, further strengthening the infrastructure and more effectively supporting the transfer of advanced applications and solutions to industry and public administration,” said Anna Maria Bernini, Italian Minister of University and Research.

“This significantly strengthens digital sovereignty and supports national competitiveness. Especially in today’s geopolitical and energy instability, this resource is crucial to avoid falling further behind in the global race for data control and to build a viable and sustainable Italian and European alternative to U.S. technological offerings,” said Antonio Zoccoli, President of the ICSC and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN).

“With the addition of SOL and LISA, we are delivering an integrated ecosystem built around Leonardo, designed to support a broad spectrum of workloads—from advanced AI applications to traditional HPC and emerging quantum computing. This milestone is the result of a strong national commitment by Italy—through the Ministry of University and Research, CINECA and ICSC—together with EuroHPC, aligning investments and capabilities to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty and enable a new generation of cutting-edge assets for research and innovation,” said Francesco Ubertini, Vice-President of the ICSC and President of CINECA.

More from HPCwire: EuroHPC Inaugurates SOL Quantum Computer and LISA AI Partition in Italy

About IQM Quantum Computers

IQM Quantum Computers is a global leader in superconducting quantum computers, delivering full-stack quantum computers and cloud platform access to research institutions, universities, high-performance computing centers, national laboratories, and enterprises worldwide. IQM’s on-premises deployment model gives customers direct ownership and control of their quantum infrastructure. Founded in 2018, headquartered in Finland with major operations in Munich, it has over 400 employees. IQM operates across Europe, Asia, and North America. IQM has previously announced its ongoing business combination with Real Asset Acquisition Corp (Nasdaq: RAAQ), which will result in IQM becoming a public company in mid-2026.

Source: IQM Quantum Computers

The post IQM’s NOX Quantum Computer Integrated with Leonardo Supercomputer appeared first on HPCwire.

Defence Investment Paralysis: Why the UK’s defence minister quit, and what it means Audio sseth.drupal@c… 11 June 2026

In this week’s episode of Independent Thinking, our experts discuss the UK’s defence funding crisis and Europe’s struggle to coordinate its rearmament effort.

A tumultuous week for Britain’s faltering rearmament plans sees defence secretary John Healey resign from Keir Starmer’s cabinet, saying the prime minister and the Treasury lack the will to properly fund the defence of the nation.

Al Carns, the armed forces minister, also resigned saying the government’s long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was ‘not built for the threat we face’.

The departures raise further questions over whether the DIP can address the costs and trade-offs involved in strengthening UK defence.

Meanwhile, European leaders struggle to coordinate their own rearmament amid concerns that America will withdraw from the defence of the continent.

Bronwen Maddox looks at the defence predicament in the UK and Europe, with UK in the World Programme director Olivia O’Sullivan, and International Security Programme director Dr Marion Messmer.

Produced by Podmasters for Chatham House, with thanks to Stephen Farrell and Sara Seth.

About Independent Thinking

Independent Thinking is a weekly international affairs podcast hosted by our director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.

More ways to listen: Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Explore our other Chatham House podcasts.

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June 11, 2026 — The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) today inaugurated SOL, the 6th EuroHPC quantum computer and LISA, the Leonardo Improved Supercomputing Architecture partition, in Bologna, Italy.

The two systems, co-funded by Italy’s Ministry of University and Research through ICSC, the Italian Research Centre on HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing Computing and the European Union though EuroHPC JU, were unveiled at the DAMA Technopole in Emilia-Romagna, Italy during a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by CINECA and ICSC.

The two systems were unveiled at the DAMA Technopole during a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by CINECA and ICSC.

The event was attended by Anna Maria Bernini, the Italian Minister of University and Research, Roberto Viola, Director-General of the Directorate-General Communication Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) at the European Commission and Daniel Opalka, Head of Unit, Research and Innovation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.

These two new systems connected to Leonardo, one of the world-class EuroHPC pre-exascale supercomputers, represent significant milestones that further strengthen Europe’s supercomputing, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing infrastructure, and mark an important step in building a world-class, sovereign supercomputing ecosystem in Europe.

Anders Jensen, EuroHPC JU Executive Director stated: “Today’s inauguration shows how Europe continues to turn ambition into capability. With SOL, the new EuroHPC quantum computer and LISA, the AI-upgrade to the world-class Leonardo supercomputer, we are further strengthening our sovereign supercomputing ecosystem and giving European users new tools to innovate across AI, HPC and quantum technologies. This milestone expands opportunities for research, industry and the public sector, while reinforcing Europe’s technological leadership in strategic supercomputing domains.”

Francesco Ubertini, President of CINECA added: “With the addition of SOL and LISA, we are delivering an integrated ecosystem built around Leonardo, designed to support a broad spectrum of workloads—from advanced AI applications to traditional HPC and emerging quantum computing. This milestone is the result of a strong national commitment by Italy—through the Ministry of University and Research, CINECA and ICSC—together with EuroHPC, aligning investments and capabilities to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty and enable a new generation of cutting-edge assets for research and innovation.”

Antonio Zoccoli, ICSC President said: “The inauguration of LISA and the SOL quantum computer is a major step forward for Italy and Europe in advanced computing. Thanks to the strategic vision and strong commitment of the Ministry of University and Research, led by Minister Anna Maria Bernini, and in synergy with the European strategy, we are delivering a cutting-edge hybrid infrastructure integrating HPC and quantum technologies. This ecosystem will be able to strengthen technological sovereignty and the competitiveness of Italian and European research and industrial sectors. With the integration of the Pasqal quantum system into Leonardo, Italy is also positioning itself at the forefront of global innovation, providing powerful tools for scientific excellence and sustainable growth.”

SOL, the Quantum Acceleration for Leonardo Supercomputer

Hosted and operated by CINECA in Bologna and supplied by Pasqal, the new quantum computer is based on neutral atoms, and named SOL, reflecting both Italy’s cultural heritage and the laser-based technology at the core of the system. Inspired by the Roman Sun god and the precision associated with Sol Invictus and Apollo, it highlights the central role of light and accuracy for this system.

The system’s first-generation processor will provide at least 140 qubits operating in analogue mode. The planned upgrade in 2027, which will transition the system towards a hybrid analogue/digital paradigm, will create additional value for European end-users.

Utilizing arrays of optically trapped atoms and programmable laser interactions, SOL will enable the exploration of quantum many-body physics, optimization problems, and machine learning applications.

Integrated into Leonardo, SOL will also enhance hybrid quantum-classical HPC workflows and make next-generation computing resources available to a wide range of European users, spanning from the scientific community to industry and the public sector.

The system is currently undergoing calibration and is expected to provide compute resources to European end-users by autumn.

LISA, Upscaling IT4LIA AI Factory Capabilities

The LISA upgrade incorporates an AI-optimized partition into Leonardo, hosted and operated by CINECA in Bologna and will allow for more AI applications to be processed. It will better support the development of Large Language Models and multi-modal generative AI, as well as considerably extend the overall AI capacity of system.

LISA is the first EuroHPC computing partition designed from the ground up specifically for AI workloads. It is specifically engineered to address the demanding computational, memory, and networking requirements of next-generation AI models. The upgrade, provided by Bull, integrates a compute partition featuring 166 advanced 8-way GPU servers (1,328 GPUs in total) fully interconnected and significantly boosting the supercomputer’s performance for AI-intensive tasks.

The LISA upgrade will complement the operations of IT4LIA, the EuroHPC AI Factory currently centered around Leonardo, strengthening Europe’s capacity for AI research, innovation, and industrial applications. Under the IT4LIA initiative, a new AI optimized supercomputing system is currently being deployed, following the recent contract signing with E4 Computer Engineering and Dell Technologies, the selected vendors. This new system will be co-funded by Italy’s Ministry of University and Research (Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca – MUR) and the Italian National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN),

The LISA upgrade is expected to become available to users during the summer of 2026.

Background

The procurement contract for SOL was signed in March 2025 with Pasqal, following a call for tender launched in August 2024. SOL is co-funded with a total acquisition cost of EUR 13 million. The EuroHPC JU will fund 50% of the costs, while the other 50% will be funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) through ICSC, the Italian Research Centre on HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing, established in the framework of Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR/RRF funds). The EuroQCS-Italy consortium is led by CINECA and includes the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES) and the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) in Germany.

To date, the EuroHPC JU has procured six quantum computers, located across Europe. The five first systems have already been inaugurated since last year:

• PIAST-Q in Poznań, Poland in June 2025,
• VLQ in Ostrava, Czechia in October 2025,
• Euro-Q-Exa in Munich, Germany in February 2026,
• Lucy near Paris, France in April 2026.
• EuroQCS-Spain in Barcelona, Spain in May 2026.

The EuroHPC JU signed the procurement contract for LISA with Bull in May 2025, following a call for tender launched in September 2024. The deployment of LISA was conceived as the upgrade of the Leonardo supercomputer and as a core building block of the IT4LIA AI Factory.

The deployment of LISA represents an investment of EUR 50 million, covering both the acquisition and installation of the infrastructure as well as the resources required for its operation and support. This investment is co-founded by the EuroHPC JU together with Italy through Italy’s Ministry of University and Research (MUR) and ICSC.

More from HPCwire: IQM’s NOX Quantum Computer Integrated with Leonardo Supercomputer

Source: EuroHPC JU

The post EuroHPC Inaugurates SOL Quantum Computer and LISA AI Partition in Italy appeared first on HPCwire.

Ted Lasso will deliver a message of hope before the USA’s first game, in an America that is not a fit or desirable host right now

Shortly before 6pm local time on Friday night at the Los Angeles Stadium, the actor who plays Ted Lasso – the fictional manager of a fake team in a falsely heartwarming version of football – will tell hundreds of millions of TV viewers tuning in to watch the start of the American leg of the Fifa World Cup that football unites the world.

In an interesting twist, the actor Jason Sudeikis will do this at a time when the World Cup host is simultaneously bombing the second-ranked country in Group G, having recently murdered its head of state. The message of unity is one likely to be heard by the US president, Donald Trump, who has initiated six military conflicts in his second term, and whose brutally divisive immigration policies have now led to the barring of Omar Artan, the reigning African referee of the year.

Forensic tests helped identify a man whose remains were found inside a sleeping bag in Washington state in 2000.

European Central Bank increases main deposit rate to 2.25%, with two further rises expected by next spring

• Business live – latest updates

The European Central Bank has raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 in response to higher inflation caused by the war in Iran.

The ECB raised its main deposit rate from 2% to 2.25% in a move that financial markets expect to be the first of three rises by next spring.

• 20-year-old finished in blistering time of 12.75sec

• First world record at NCAA championships since 1976

American Ja’Kobe Tharp broke the 110m hurdles world record with a blistering time of 12.75sec at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday.

Tharp’s effort in the heats of the 110m hurdles improved upon the previous world record mark of 12.80sec, set by Olympic champion and fellow American Aries Merritt in Brussels in 2012.

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PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Vertigo Games
This clever update captures the 1990s magic of the original… including some of the technical issues

The 90s were a gold rush for adventure games. LucasArts kicked off the decade with its legendarily irreverent Monkey Island games. Then, Cyan Worlds materialised to deliver a series of atmospheric and boundary-pushing odysseys with Myst and Riven. Nestled between these primary genre texts is The 7th Guest, a lesser-known but still notorious adventure that earned plaudits for its unique FMV visual style, blending live-action filmed footage with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. It was remade originally for VR, and now has been reconfigured into something playable on PC and consoles, its digital cobwebs cleared and tricky puzzles tinkered with for a fresh (or nostalgic) audience.

We are dropped into the ectoplasmic shoes of an amnesiac apparition, arriving at the gloomy haunted home of a toy-maker. Armed with a time-bending lantern and a Ouija board-shaped map, your job is to solve a historical whodunnit by literally illuminating events from the past. It’s a melodramatic, surprisingly campy adventure that effectively evokes the overzealous CD-Rom horror of its original era.

With some matches being held in nearby Miami, a Cuban response to US military action could mar the tournament

As Cuba crumbles under a nearly five-month-long US oil blockade, many on the island hope that the World Cup might save the island from US attack – or at least offer a respite until the competition ends on 19 July.

“The beginning of the World Cup will make it more difficult for the United States to carry out a military action in Cuba,” said Carlos Alzugaray, Cuba’s former ambassador to the EU. “Cuba is very close to the US, and can hit many targets inside the US, especially in south Florida, with drones or other weapons.”

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• Williams’ focus now shifts to Berlin wildcard spot

Serena Williams’s first tournament since coming out of retirement has ended prematurely after her partner Victoria Mboko was forced to withdraw from the Queen’s Club tournament after injuring her knee when slipping on the grass in her singles match on Wednesday.

Williams made a sensational return to competition at 44 after a four-year absence on Tuesday alongside Mboko as the pair defeated the third seeds Nicole Melichar Martinez and Erin Routliffe 7-6(2), 6-2. The pair were scheduled to face Leylah Fernandez and Laura Siegemund on Thursday afternoon.

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Twenty people were killed and 120 injured in the attack at the Erawan Shrine, a popular tourist destination

A Thai court has handed out death sentences to two Uyghur men from the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang for a 2015 bombing in the centre of Bangkok that killed 20 people.

The explosion occurred at the Erawan Shrine in the centre of Bangkok, an area popular with foreign tourists. As well as the 20 people killed, another 120 were injured. Five of the dead were from mainland China and two from Hong Kong.

Broadcaster reveals its revenues from expanded tournament are running about 30% higher than Euro 2024

The World Cup will be the most lucrative sports event ITV has ever aired, the broadcaster has said, with bosses calling the tournament a “six-week summer Super Bowl moment” for TV advertising.

The channel is airing 51 of the 104 matches across the men’s tournament, co-hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada, which is the biggest yet after an expansion from 32 to 48 teams.

New York’s 29-point comeback in Game 4 was the largest in NBA finals history. For a team forged by disappointment, it felt strangely inevitable

What does a team of destiny look like? You know it when you see it. The evidence has been mounting for weeks – months, even – that this year, despite decades of precedent to the contrary, that team is the New York Knicks.

On Wednesday night, the proof overflowed in the hallowed halls of the Mecca. One of the most improbable comebacks in NBA history – and the largest ever in an NBA finals game – saw New York erase a 29-point deficit to beat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4, leaving Taylor Swift and members of Haim leaping for joy courtside and the 58-year-old building shaking like a bounce house.

Sometimes the nation’s highest court can make a statement when it stays silent.

On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a petition in C. S. v. Craig McCrumb, a case that asked the justices to rule on the limits of First Amendment rights inside of public schools. Specifically, the case addressed a school decision on what counted as an appropriate clothing choice for a Michigan elementary school student inside of the classroom.

In her petition, the student was contesting a ban placed on a hat she wore at school. The plaintiffs sought a ruling related to one of the Court’s landmark decisions, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), which involved the use of protest-related armbands in public schools.

An attempt to redefine the Tinker precedent

In McCrumb, the student’s petition for a writ of certiorari was offered by her father, Adam Stroub. The petition argued that the school’s response to the student’s hat was part of a pattern of cases where schools were forcing their own viewpoints on students, using a wrongly applied version of the Tinker precedent.

“Tinker is being circumvented by school officials silencing views with which they disagree while hiding behind the notion of avoiding hurt feelings,” the petitioners claimed. “This Court should restore for the Nation’s schoolchildren the promise of First Amendment protections Tinker guaranteed their grandparents’ generation more than half-century ago.”

In December 1965, at the height of the Vietnam War, three students, including Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old student at Warren Harding Junior High School in Des Moines, Iowa, wore black armbands to school to protest the war. They were all suspended.

In his 7-2 majority opinion in Tinker, Justice Abe Fortas said, “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

However, Fortas noted that students’ free speech rights didn’t extend to conduct that “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.” But he also held that silent protests—such as wearing armbands—were constitutionally permitted. “Our problem involves direct, primary First Amendment rights akin to ‘pure speech.’ The school officials banned and sought to punish petitioners for a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on the part of petitioners,” Fortas concluded.

Since 1969, the Tinker precedent has been repeatedly cited by the Supreme Court when defining the boundaries of student expression.

A dispute escalates over a hat

In the McCrumb case, Kerr Elementary’s weeklong “Great Kindness Challenge” in February 2022 included “Hat Day,” when the school asked students to wear hats of their choice. For C.S., her hat choice was a black baseball cap with a white star, a white image of an AR-style rifle, and the phrase “come and take it” printed on the cap. As later revealed in court, C.S. chose that hat as a tribute to her father and to show her support for “the right of people to have guns.”

A school officer saw C.S with the hat and called her parents, who declined to send a substitute hat to the school. Officials then asked C.S. to remove her hat and place it in her locker and she complied. Through her father, C.S. sued the school district, alleging violations of the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause and the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. A district court ruled in favor of the school and the case was sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

A three-judge panel affirmed the lower court's decision in May 2025 where several facts came into play. On Nov. 30, 2021, in Oakland County, Michigan, a student opened fire on his classmates at Oxford High School, killing four other students. The educators at Robert Kerr Elementary School felt the hat was inappropriate in the context of the event held on February 17, 2022, just 10 weeks after the Oxford High shooting. Oxford High was a one-hour drive away, and the incident was highly publicized. The school also felt the hat could cause a disruption among students who had recently transferred to Robert Kerr from the Oxford School District as a result of the shooting.

The attorneys for C.S. argued the school lacked evidence that the hat would cause a “substantial disruption” under Tinker and the school’s actions also censured the free speech rights of C.S. under the Tinker standard. They also stated school officials disagreed with the speech “COME AND TAKE IT” on the hat, which represented the support of C.S. for the Second Amendment.

The unanimous appeals court held that “special characteristics” and circumstances, such as the presence of former Oxford School District students in the district, the young age of plaintiff and her classmates, and the hat’s message, combined to give school officials good cause to expect substantial disruption to the school’s educational environment under Tinker.

The entire Sixth Circuit declined to hear the case, but several circuit judges published opinions concurring with the ruling. One of the judges questioned the timing of the school’s statements linking its decision to the Oxford School District shooting well after the incident happened on Hat Day.

The Supreme Court declines the case

In their petition to the Supreme Court, the attorneys for C.S. made the argument that a rule created by the schools’ leaders “allowed them to hide behind a post hoc excuse they invented (with the aid of counsel) months after the fact, and which is unsupported by the record.”

“The Sixth Circuit opinions blow a gaping hole in Tinker. School officials, with the luxury of 10 months’ time and counsel’s advice, will usually be able to contrive some justification for squelching student speech akin to the panel’s notion of protecting ‘children reeling from an irrefutably tragic and traumatic event,’” they said.

Her attorneys also claimed the case merited Supreme Court consideration because the Sixth Circuit had created a new “potential emotional harm” exception to the First Amendment, as a fourth category of regulatable student speech regulated by the Court.

The justices considered the McCrumb case twice in private conference before refusing to grant the petition. There were no comments from any of the justices.

Absent from the denial of certiorari were any opinions from the justices on the case’s merits, and only four of the nine justices are needed to accept a case. In the end, the Tinker disruption standard remains in place.

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

Lawyers ask prosecutors to upgrade charges from manslaughter in light of text messages discussing fire risk

Lawyers for victims of the deadly New Year’s Eve fire in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana have formally asked prosecutors to upgrade the charges against the bar’s owners after text messages emerged discussing the danger.

Forty-one people were killed and 115 injured in the blaze at Le Constellation bar, which investigators believe started in the basement when sparklers attached to champagne bottles were held too close to sound-insulating foam on the ceiling.

Meal kits can simplify week night dinners, just ensure you have these tools to get you started.

To put it plainly, nitrogen hypoxia kills by starving someone of the oxygen needed to sustain life

The eighth amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment is among the most noble and valuable constitutional protections. It is the only provision of the constitution that recognizes the dignity and humanity of everyone, even those who commit the vilest crimes.

But in the last several years, this great legal and moral achievement has taken a beating at the hands of conservative judges and justices. They have done much to empty it of its meaning by tethering it to the views of the people who wrote it more than two centuries ago.

Many have watched recently released UFO videos, but most still think the government knows more than it is saying.

What impact will the latest inflation surge have on gold prices? Here's what some experts are predicting now.

Longtime Slashdot reader MattSparkes shares a report from NewScientist, captioned: "For years we've had unconfirmed reports, rumors, hints... now we know." From the report: Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defense industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare. The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled "Terminator" drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed. "We tried it," says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. "It's a test. We never implemented it [more widely]." The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage "Terminator mode," in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets. "We just launch it and we know everything will be dead -- everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead," says Kokhanovskyy. "There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing... Everything it sees will be killed." With no way to tell what the automated drones had seen or targeted, human-piloted drones were sent into the area after the test to manually check results. Victims included "a couple of soldiers, one truck," says Kokhanovskyy. While there is no recording of the automated drones attacking these targets, it was concluded that the drones had killed them. Kokhanovskyy says that he was not at the test personally but that it was carried out by an unnamed military unit near the cities of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar as part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive push. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions about the test or the current legal position on the use of fully autonomous weapons.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guardian review finds group tied to Cleta Mitchell and Heather Honey funded misleading ads in swing states

As the 2024 election approached, advertisements began popping up in key swing states suggesting local officials had discretion not to certify elections.

The advertisements, reported at the time by ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch, were misleading. Certification is not optional, and officials are required to certify the vote once the proper process for any election challenges are complete and an official challenge is complete. The warnings, nonetheless, arrived at a moment when Donald Trump and allies seemed to be gearing up to contest the election results if he lost.

Iran says US attacks make ceasefire ‘practically meaningless’. Plus, Trump says ‘I love the inflation’ when asked about jump to 4.2%

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Good morning.

Has the ceasefire collapsed yet?

What is the status of negotiations? Talks to turn the ceasefire into a durable peace deal have stalled for weeks, with periodic flare-ups as both sides continued to launch limited strikes and trade blame for violating the truce.

What do the two sides want? Iran seeks the lifting of international sanctions, the unfreezing of billions of dollars in assets, and control over the strait of Hormuz. Trump has said any future peace deal must prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, which Tehran denies it is seeking to do.

This is a developing story. Follow our live coverage here.

What did Gates say? “I support the release of all the Epstein files and sincerely hope that, through your efforts and those of others advocating on their behalf, the survivors of Epstein’s crimes can get the justice that they deserve.”

Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira faces fraud charges after allegedly persuading family to take her into their home

A 38-year-old woman has been arrested in Brazil accused of pretending to be a 12-year-old girl to deceive a couple who took her into their home for more than a year.

Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira was charged in the southern state of Santa Catarina with fraud and false identity offences.

Nor is the dreamy promise that this tech will unlock boundless potential and productivity

Everything we hear about artificial intelligence is conflicting, and hearing about it feels inescapable. AI is terrible. AI is wonderful. It will break the world. It will transform the future. It’s essential to embrace it. It’s a moral imperative to abstain from using it.

Already, AI is projected to generate nearly unfathomable amounts of revenue. In the last quarter of 2025, it represented nearly 60% of the growth in the US economy. Already, pundits and economists wring their hands about what calamity will befall us if and when the AI bubble bursts.

Five Mexican police officers were killed and five others wounded on the eve of the World Cup opener in Mexico City, authorities said.

London, the east of England and the West Midlands have highest number of cases, as UKHSA urges families to get children vaccinated

Two children in England have died from measles, health officials say, as data shows more than 100 new reported cases in the last fortnight.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Thursday that two children had died this year, one from “acute measles” and the other from the “late effects of measles”.

The Knicks set the record for the biggest NBA Finals comeback Wednesday night as they rallied from 29 points down to beat the Spurs 107-106.

There’s a downside to too much convenience: it harms our bodies

There is a seductive fantasy being floated by AI executives that all the efficiency their products will bring us will lead to humans finally returning to their essential, best selves. Picture it: when this day arrives, we’ll spring from our chairs, push aside our keyboards and, supposedly, do all things we’ve been meaning to do: hike, cook and finally take a pilates class.

It’s true – AI has already taken some workday drudgery, such as reading and writing contracts, presentations and quarterly reports, off some people’s plates. Within a few years, we’re told, a team of invisible digital assistants will take over mundane domestic chores too: making medical appointments, renewing our car insurance and planning. The vision is enticing: finally, the moment when we can stop switching-switching-switching between screens and devices, put our health first and flourish. Unfortunately, if the history of innovation teaches us anything, it’s that labor-saving technology has rarely, if ever, triggered healthier habits.

Drive-throughs and microwaves did not lead to more time spent walking in nature. When escalators replaced stairs, email took over from walking over to talk to a colleague, and wandering through the video store was swapped out for streaming from the couch, few of us considered how these tiny conveniences would chip away at our physical health, year after more efficient year. A task that took almost no effort used to be described with the saying: “You hardly need to lift a finger.” Now, we literally lift a finger and – tap – the chore is done.

Most fathers would shield their children from death. Mine, a psychologist, did the opposite

My dad and I kept a running list of ways we didn’t want to die. Being buried alive was always No 1. Whenever we learned about unusual deaths – accidents involving farm machinery, medieval torture, mobsters encasing victims’ feet in cement before throwing them in the ocean – we added them to our shared catalogue.

Most fathers would shield their children from such morbid fascinations. Mine, a psychologist, did the opposite. He saw death as life’s most honest teacher and ensured I wouldn’t meet it as a stranger.

Amanda Sloat is professor of practice in international relations at IE University in Madrid, Spain

Former intelligence officers sound alarm over ‘devastating’ impact of president’s bid to overhaul US security agency

For generations they have borne the mantle of strength and authority inherited from J Edgar Hoover’s Depression-era G-men, a label supposedly affixed after the arrest of Machine Gun Kelly in 1933.

Now hardened veterans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are projecting a different face as they seek to fight back against what many say is the systematic undermining of the bureau’s values under a drive by Donald Trump to turn it into an instrument of retribution.

These alternate search engines are free and could help you break up with Google.

Games are likely to be tied at the end of regulation at the 2026 World Cup, especially in the late stages of the tournament with a highly competitive field.

The battle over “60 Minutes” can teach us a lot about how someone like CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss can wreak havoc on our media ecosystem. What has gotten a lot less attention, however, is the way the fight shows us how ill-equipped our media institutions already were when it comes to covering the Trump administration and MAGA-era politics.

The strife at the famous magazine television news program reached a fever pitch last week, when, during a staff meeting, longtime correspondent Scott Pelley unloaded on Nick Bilton, Weiss’s pick to run the show. Pelley was fired and took to the media to defend himself.

In a long interview with the New York Times over the weekend, Pelley talked about how Weiss had injected herself into the show’s editorial process.

The most revealing part of the discussion centered on Pelley’s own “60 Minutes” coverage of President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement officers into Minneapolis, the uprising against the invasion, and the subsequent crackdown that led to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.

Weiss’s role in the story was clearly toxic, but Pelley’s description of his own editorial process before Weiss got involved should also raise eyebrows.

“I felt it was very important to identify that the protesters themselves were being very aggressive and that they were half of these confrontations, and so I instructed my producers to find images in which we see the protesters acting aggressively,” Pelley said. “I thought we’d done a really good job with this.”

Pelley said they found evidence of protesters chest-bumping officers and hitting them with snowballs. The Minnesotans screamed at federal agents, Pelley said, and Pretti himself could be seen in one picture kicking out a police car taillight.

Striving for “Balance”

It’s a striking passage because it shows a revered journalist searching for a balanced narrative where there simply wasn’t one. If, after scouring hours and hours video to find evidence of “aggressive” protesters, all you can find is a chest bump and a thrown snowball, perhaps that’s a sign that your narrative that both sides were aggressive isn’t all that accurate.

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The truth is that the Minneapolis protesters were remarkably restrained in the face of egregious state violence and brutality. Yes, they were angry, loud, persistent, and rude. Demonstrators yelled insults at officers, blew whistles, and recorded with their cellphones. Yet that is all First Amendment-protected activity, no matter how many times Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem try to call it “terrorism.”

There’s a reason why the criminal charges against protesters have rarely held up in court: There was never any merit to them. Over and over, when it came time to present actual evidence, the government backed down, was reprimanded by a judge, or was rejected by a grand jury.

Likewise, Pretti’s confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement days before he was killed has nothing to do with whether immigration officers were justified in killing him. Videos of the killing show that Pretti did nothing to justify being confronted, beaten, and shot 10 times.

Pelley’s remarks, by themselves, offer a lesson in the pitfalls of striving for “balance” under an administration that lies by default, lies when it doesn’t need to, and lies as a demonstration of its power.

Enter Weiss

Weiss, her billionaire Paramount bosses David and Larry Ellison, and the other tech billionaires who fund her publication the Free Press are all of the belief that the legacy media is overwhelmingly left of center.

They’re correct in a very broad sense. Generally, journalists who work for legacy outlets have personal politics that skew liberal, but it’s more complicated than that. Legacy media journalists also tend to be institutionalists and deferential to authority. That can make them defensive of power and often skeptical of those who challenge it.

As Pelley’s Minneapolis story shows, these journalists also want to be seen as fair, which can drive them to seek balance even when there is no credible “other side.” Contrary to Weiss and the MAGA world’s claims that legacy media is hopelessly blinkered, the more urgent problem right now is that even the most revered journalistic institutions aren’t equipped to sort through the firehose of lies and propaganda pouring out of Trump’s far-right movement.

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Bari Weiss Is Doing Exactly What She Was Installed at CBS to Do

Weiss’s role at both the Free Press and now at CBS News has been to make that task even more even more difficult. Her editorial feedback for Pelley, for instance, only served to muddy the waters.

“About four hours after our deadline,” Pelley told the New York Times, “Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include — can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing: Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”

Weiss’s editorial advice to Pelley wasn’t about clearer or fairer or more contextual journalism. She was asking for propaganda.

If Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot Good, reasonably feared for his life, he was legally justified in killing Good. And if Good was driving toward him, that bolsters his claim to have reasonably feared for his life.

The problem is that there’s no evidence that she was. In fact, CBS News did its own analysis of the video footage, which clearly demonstrated that Good’s wheels were pointed away from Ross — as did several other outlets. As television producer Tim Carvell pointed out, however, CBS’s analysis never aired on the network; it was relegated to YouTube.

Weiss’s alleged directive also glosses over how Ross and his fellow agents also created the very volatility they claimed justified his use of lethal force. And it ignores how the agents violated multiple Department of Homeland Security policies during the encounter — for example, by putting themselves in front of Good’s car, and by rushing toward her door.

At the time of Good’s death, the administration and its supporters had also been pushing a much more destructive and conspiratorial narrative: that a cabal of far-left donors had been training protesters and ICE watchers to weaponize their cars against immigration officers. Not only was there zero evidence for this, it provided cover for what the agents themselves were doing. Video and witness accounts repeatedly showed agents ramming and boxing people in with their vehicles, then falsely claiming they were the victims who had been rammed. Slandering Good just reinforced the narrative.

If Weiss had really wanted to provide relevant context for Good’s death, there were plenty of places to look. Perhaps Good feared for her safety because immigration officers surging into liberal cities were pulling people out of their cars and beating them. Or maybe it was relevant that Border Patrol officers have a long history of improperly placing themselves in front of moving vehicles, then using that as justification to fire at those vehicles.

Weiss didn’t demand any of that. For her, balance and nuance meant telling Pelley to make his story more palatable to MAGA.

Crisis of Disinformation

We now live in an era in which one of the two major parties has given itself over to wild conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and the whims and biases of a disturbed billionaire.

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The mere fact that Trump leads that party means the airwaves are already polluted with nonsense like whether windmills cause cancer, whether immigrants are eating neighborhood pets, and whether developing countries are “emptying their insane asylums” into the U.S.

The fact that half the Congress, about 40 percent of the public, and the entire executive branch now subscribe to anti-vaccine bullshit, election denialism, and “great replacement theory” doesn’t make any of those claims legitimate. So long as a good portion of the country is in the throes of MAGA, however, there will be ongoing pressure to platform even the looniest claims out of a sense of fairness and representation. Weiss isn’t the cause of all of this, but she is an accelerant.

Pelley told the New York Times that he refused to make Weiss’s changes, and that his piece aired without them. That may be encouraging, except that not everyone has the institutional stature of Scott Pelley to insulate themselves from reprisals — not even Scott Pelley, it turns out.

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Kash Patel Is Using MAGA’s Favorite Tool to Muzzle the Free Press

The request itself, however, testifies to a disinformation crisis that’s only going to get worse, particularly as Weiss starts replacing departed staff with her own people and Trump keeps leaning on media outlets.

Another way it could get worse is if media honchos like those who own CBS keep gaining clout. Weiss’s own bosses, for example, have now set their sights on CNN — with Weiss reportedly expected to lead editorial at both news operations.

The post Scott Pelley Shows How Legacy Media Got It Wrong — Before Bari Weiss Made It Worse appeared first on The Intercept.

Solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity in May even as Trump boosts coal over clean energy

Even as Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the US and remains the leading source of new power.

Data released on Wednesday by the global energy thinktank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (Seia) and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said. Coal supplied 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever.

Why Should Delaware care?
The practice of handing taxpayer money to private business has grown more controversial in Delaware in recent years. Last year, outsider Gov. Matt Meyer said he would shift how the state handles the practice. A recent state grant to a student loan startup follows the shift.

Delaware recently awarded nearly $800,000 to a student loan company through a grant that one economic development official noted was “a little bit unusual,” because of the company’s startup status. 

Founded last year by a former Sallie Mae executive, Delaware-based Gradbridge currently employs 12 people, according to company officials. They expect to have 49 employees in the coming years at a new headquarters at Newark’s Iron Hill Corporate Center.

The company markets student loans with high-interest rates to college students who had been denied by traditional lenders. Its fixed-rate loans range from about 18% to 23% interest, depending on qualifying factors. By comparison, student lending giant Sallie Mae offers undergrad fixed-rate loans ranging from under 3% to just over 17%.

Gradbridge also joins an existing ecosystem of online lenders based in Delaware that offer nontraditional loans. 

While still in its infancy, the company raised $20 million last fall from the private equity firm Acorn Investment Partners. At the time, company officials said the cash infusion would support GradBridge’s launch of a “first-of-its-kind private student loan product exclusively designed for students who have exhausted federal and private options.”

Last week, Delaware’s Council on Development Finance committed additional dollars to the new venture. 

The state council’s board — made up of members from government and private businesses — approved GradBridge’s request for a $780,000 grant tied to defined employment goals, and a $7,500 capital expenditure grant.

The terms of the grant contracts were negotiated by the public-private economic development organization Delaware Prosperity Partnership – a separate entity from the Council on Development Finance that receives dollars from the state but is not subject to open records rules.

Noah Olson, director of innovation at the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, noted the award is a “little bit unusual,” because it veers away from the state’s past practice of granting money to more established companies. 

But he said the Delaware Prosperity Partnership wants to “see more of these types of companies,” which he described as a venture-backed startup. 

“We think that it’s an exciting milestone for us to be supporting growth-stage companies,” Olson said.

Olson also emphasized that the grant is performance-based, meaning Gradbridge needs to hire and retain the promised workers before any dollars are disbursed. 

Last year, Gov. Matt Meyer announced plans to focus the state’s economic development efforts on small businesses growth and on workforce development programs instead of dedicating huge sums of taxpayer money to large projects by established companies.

“In my administration, you’re going to see the use of this cash assistance de-emphasized,” Meyer said during the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce’s annual dinner last year.

The governor’s office declined to answer questions asking whether the Gradbridge grants are in line with the governor’s new vision for economic development, and about the company’s practice of marketing high-interest loans to college students.  

Meyer’s spokesman instead referred questions to the Delaware Division of Small Business. 

When asked whether the state has awarded money to startups in the past, Division of Small Business spokeswoman Andrea Wojcik said in an email that the majority of applications to the Council on Development Finance are from existing companies. 

But she said the state does not track grant awards by existing companies versus startups and there is nothing to prohibit a startup from applying.

In a press release announcing Gradbridge’s award, the Delaware Prosperity Partnership said the grant is a “strategic fit” for the governor’s innovation economy agenda. Meyer also was quoted in the press release.

“Delaware is proving once again that it is the best place for high-growth companies to launch, scale and succeed,” Meyer said.

Gradbridge focuses on unserved

Gradbridge markets its loans to college juniors, seniors, and graduate students — a model that CEO Jen O’Donald said allows her company to “pick up really where the other lenders leave off.”

In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, O’Donald said the inspiration for her to launch the company partly came from threats made last year by the federal government to shutter the U.S. Department of Education. 

If carried out, it would be a “massive disruption to the student loan industry, to schools, and to students themselves,” she said. 

She said her company lends to upperclassmen and graduate students because they might only need one or two loans to “cross the finish line” to graduation. She also said Gradbridge requires a cosigner for its undergraduate loans.

After originating loans, Gradbridge then sells them as assets to other companies. 

The startup’s technology centers on what O’Donald calls its custom credit score machine learning model, which it developed in partnership with the consumer credit reporting company, Experian Analytics.

To determine credit worthiness, the model considers FICO scores, past loan delinquencies, and bankruptcy, among other factors, O’Donald said. 

Growing Delaware’s existing fintech industry

Gradbridge joins an already rich online lending and fintech industry in Delaware. 

Wilmington is home to fintech student loan company College Ave, fintech lender Best Egg, and digital credit card company FairSquare.

Student lender Sallie Mae is headquartered in Newark. And the San Francisco-based online lending giant, SoFi, has locations in Greenville and Claymont. 

Other financial institutions headquartered or located in Delaware include BlackRock, Bank of America, Capital One, and JPMorganChase – all of which are increasingly expanding into the fintech field. 

Additionally, the University of Delaware houses a Fintech Innovation Hub on its STAR campus.

The post Delaware awards ‘unusual’ grant to student loan company after state’s economic development shift appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
Laurel, a small town in western Sussex County, retains a disproportionately high violent crime rate compared to its small population. After the shooting of a local high schooler, a community group formed to make a change. More than three years later, with more donations and support, the group is still working to build a safer town.

Groups working to combat gun violence in the small, western Sussex County town of Laurel gathered last week with local leaders to unveil new beautification projects they hope will build community pride and push their work forward.

Organizers from Operation West Laurel gathered inside the Laurel Police Department headquarters on June 5. The group commemorated National Gun Violence Awareness Day by debuting the portraits of two Laurel high schoolers who were fatally shot in 2023 along with new community gardens.

The portraits memorialize Corey Mumford and Kylee Robinson – two 18-year-olds who were killed in the same year. Mumford’s death inspired Laurel High School teacher Amy Handy to start Operation West Laurel, an organization using prayer, trash pick up and after-school programs to combat violence. 

Mumford and Robinson’s portraits will be displayed at Laurel High School, along with a memorial bench.

Following the portrait reveal, Handy cut the ribbon for two new community gardens: a flower bed outside city police headquarters and a nearby vegetable garden across the street from Mount Zion Church. 

The portraits and community gardens represent Operation West Laurel’s ongoing community beautification work, one its many initiatives undertaken to mitigate violence in the town.

Those initiatives were bolstered last summer when it received a separate $93,000 grant from Healthy Communities Delaware. That grant was given in conjunction with Wilmington-based nonprofit End Community Violence Now, which has partnered with Operation West Laurel to extend its gun violence prevention work into southern Delaware.

The group also received a $50,000 grant from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to fund community beautification projects.

Rising from the classroom

Along with community beautification, Operation West Laurel hosts youth programming in the hopes of deterring teens in the community from turning toward violence.

Two days out of the week, Handy and her team hold after-school sessions for high-risk high school boys called Project RISE.

Handy defines “at-risk,” as kids who struggle with grades and attendance. Through working with the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the group has further identified students who are at-risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of gun violence.     

Last summer’s group included boys who were there when Mumford and Robinson were killed. 

At these after-school sessions, students are met with music and offered a snack. They then participate in “restorative circles,” and rate their days on a scale of 1-10. Afterward, they review their grades and do schoolwork. 

One of the students in the program, Woodley Dormevil, just graduated. Dormevil has known Handy since he was in seventh grade. Since leaving RISE, he has transitioned to helping out with some of the group’s community projects, like trash pick-ups. 

Dormevil said more people have come out to help Operation West Laurel since he started. He hopes Handy’s after-school program continues to grow and get more kids involved in the community.

This year, Operation West Laurel started offering workforce training once a week, including resume building and interview skills to the students at the after-school program. 

Handy said that she has seen a decline in community violence since starting her work. The Laurel Police Department did not respond to requests for the town’s most recent shooting data. 

According to news reports, there have been at least three shootings in Laurel in the last 12 months, none of which have resulted in a death. One incident in April involved a 16-year-old who fired a 3D-printed “ghost gun.”

Beyond the data, though, Handy said at-risk students have gained self-confidence and support from the after-school program. 

“They feel like people are listening to them,” Handy said. 

Pivoting toward in-state support

Since partnering with Operation West Laurel, the executive director of End Community Violence Now said the Sussex County town has gained more attention from philanthropic partners, the news, and elected officials. House Minority Leader Rep. Tim Dukes (R-Laurel) and Sen. Bryant Richardson (R-Seaford) both spoke at the gun violence press conference last week. 

“It’s really showed that it’s a bipartisan issue,” said Lauren Footman, the executive director.

Footman is using this traction to urge lawmakers to fund Gov. Matt Meyer’s proposed Office of Gun Violence and Community Safety. First introduced last May as an executive order, House Bill 369 would codify and secure funding for the office. The bill has passed the House and is currently awaiting consideration by the Senate. 

Due to the changing landscape of federal funding, Footman said that she is thinking strategically about how to leverage state support for gun violence prevention.

In April 2025, the Trump administration terminated hundreds of millions of dollars in existing violence prevention grants, an initiative launched by the Biden administration. 

Then in September, the administration changed the grant’s requirements, preventing community-based organizations like End Community Violence Now from receiving funding.

“We are exhausting all options of working with the federal delegation,” Footman said.  

Growing together 

The joint grant that Operation West Laurel and End Community Violence Now received last summer has helped the groups to work toward curbing crime through environmental design, mainly through community gardens and clean-up initiatives.

“I think it is really starting to show in the community – things are starting to look better,” Dormevil said.

Footman said the gardens serve many purposes. In addition to feeding families in need, they also serve as an opportunity to engage at-risk youth who tend to the gardens. 

She described the gardens as an “intergenerational opportunity,” bringing young and old residents together to co-create something for the community.  

Footman said she also is thinking about gun violence prevention on the infrastructural level, including improving street lighting. 

As for work on the streets, Operation West Laurel continues to do its prayer walks – one of the first group events Handy started shortly following Mumford’s death – every Thursday. 

Sabrina Isler, an Operation West Laurel volunteer, said the following has grown. More kids and families expect to see the team and join in on the walks. 

“We can’t control what people do, but at least they know someone is watching,” Isler said.

The post Laurel groups rally against gun violence, vow to continue community work appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
The Dover City Council’s decision to fire City Manager Dave Hugg earlier this spring has had costly and messy implications for the city government, including an age-based discrimination complaint and now a lawsuit alleging open meeting law violations. 

Former Dover City Manager Dave Hugg filed a lawsuit this week in Delaware’s Court of Chancery against the city of Dover, alleging officials violated open meeting laws in the process of firing him.

The lawsuit marks the latest development in the months-long turmoil over the city’s decision to oust its top administrative official. 

Hugg claims in the lawsuit that the public hearing during which the Dover City Council voted to fire him from his position was not conducted in compliance with Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 

According to Hugg’s complaint, the city violated FOIA by improperly labeling what would take place during the April 13 meeting where he was fired – the public notice did not explicitly say a vote to fire Hugg would be taken during the meeting. The complaint also alleges that holding the hearing at the end of an already long city council meeting prevented members of the public from attending.  

Hugg’s lawsuit represents another step in what is becoming a costly and litigious battle between the fired city manager and Delaware’s capital city. Hugg also filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) age-based employment discrimination complaint against the city last month, which will turn into a separate legal conflict once the investigation wraps up and he receives a “right to sue” letter. 

Dover is simultaneously dealing with a number of other controversies and financial roadblocks, including a $7 million budget shortfall, unrest between the Dover Police Department and city leaders, and an ongoing debate about a potentially unconstitutional panhandling ordinance. 

Hugg and the law firm representing him in the case, Offit Kurman, did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment on Wednesday. 

Dover City Attorney Dan Griffith confirmed the city is aware of the lawsuit, but said the city has not yet been served any court documents. 

The city has also not yet determined whether Griffith or an outside attorney will represent them, a spokesperson for the city told Spotlight Delaware. Keri Morris-Johnston, an attorney with the firm Marshall Dennehey, is representing the city against Hugg’s EEOC claim. 

The arguments

The thrust of Hugg’s case against the city focuses on the public hearing directly before he was fired. His attorneys say that meeting intentionally “lacked transparency” and “deprived the public” of the opportunity to defend Hugg’s performance as city manager. 

The saga began earlier this spring, when Hugg was quietly placed on administrative leave by city council. Hugg said that leave placement came after he was told by city leaders that he could either retire, resign, or be fired.

The Dover city charter requires a city manager to be given a public hearing and a “written statement of the reasons alleged for their removal” before the city council can take a final vote on removing them. 

And this, Hugg’s lawyers argue, is where the open meeting law issues arise. 

Hugg’s public hearing was listed on the April 13 council meeting agenda as “City Managers’ Request for Hearing Pursuant to City of Dover Charter, Article III, Sec. 33.” 

His lawyers say the city misrepresented the nature of the hearing in the pre-meeting notice, suggesting the agenda item was city council merely considering Hugg’s request for a public hearing, rather than actually conducting the hearing and voting on his employment status that same night. 

In addition, the lawyers argue the city’s decision to situate the hearing as the meeting’s 20th agenda item – so it did not begin until roughly two hours after the council meeting started – was another effort by the city to defy open meeting laws. 

“Because the Council was substantially delayed in beginning the termination hearing, at least one individual could not stay for several hours and was forced to leave before the hearing commenced,” the complaint says.

Hugg’s attorneys also say he submitted a FOIA request for a number of documents cited by the city council in its written statement of reasons for his removal, and the city denied the FOIA request. This prevented Hugg from being able to review the relevant records to prepare for the hearing, his lawyers argue. 

The lawsuit also makes mention of Hugg’s separate claim of age-based discrimination, which is currently playing out through an ongoing EEOC complaint and investigation. 

The lawsuit alleges the city council wanted to remove Hugg so that they could “replace him” with assistant city manager Sharon Duca, who is “over twenty years younger” than him. 

Duca was appointed the acting city manager in early March when Hugg was first placed on administrative leave. Then, at the June 8 city council meeting, she was named the full-time city manager. 

Griffith, the city attorney, and the city spokesperson declined to comment on the arguments laid out by Hugg’s team. 

Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen told Spotlight Delaware he is concerned about the lawsuit’s implications on the city’s financial situation and “the credibility of the city.” 

Other FOIA violations

While it remains to be seen how the court proceedings will unfold, there have been other questions raised in recent months about the city of Dover’s compliance with open meeting laws. 

Since last fall, city officials have been criticized for cutting the public comment section of city council meetings short and not including those public comments in the virtual livestream of the meeting, nor in the meeting recording posted online afterward.  

Then, in December, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings ruled the city had violated FOIA by denying a Spotlight Delaware public records request.

The city had used an overly broad interpretation of what documents are exempted from FOIA due to ongoing or potential litigation, the Attorney General’s office wrote in its December ruling. Hugg’s attorneys wrote in the Chancery Court complaint that the city also denied Hugg’s FOIA request based on the same public records exemption – pending or potential litigation. 

Most recently, the Department of Justice ruled in favor of a citizen’s complaint that the city government did not follow FOIA rules by “failing to properly notice its rescheduled meeting.” 

This has forced the city council to reconsider its controversial panhandling ordinance, which the Attorney General’s office said was not properly advertised as being on the agenda for a final vote at the Feb. 25 council meeting. 

Once the city is formally served Hugg’s recent Chancery Court complaint, it will have 20 days to respond, according to Chancery Court rules. 

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 Fired Dover city manager sues city, claims open meeting law violations appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

The ‘fraud’ he sees is in the very concept of democracy, in the idea that people who don’t agree with or fawn over him might have a say, too

By now, it is an event as regular and predictable as the tides: a Democrat wins an election, and Donald Trump says that that election was rigged. There does not need to be any evidence for this; indeed, there never is. Trump will say it anyway.

He rallies the rightwing media ecosystem to spread the lie; he convinces his followers to believe it. That this, by now, is a repetitive spectacle, devoid of suspense, does not mean that it is not dangerous.

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A federal lawmaker is pushing for a provision that would bar the Federal Bureau of Prisons from offering taxpayer-funded VIP perks to pardoned drug lords and child traffickers. 

Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat, introduced the measure last month as an amendment to a House appropriations bill, telling her colleagues that there “should never be preferential treatment for narco leaders.”

The move comes in response to ProPublica reporting on the special treatment extended to one high-profile pardon recipient — former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was released from a federal penitentiary late last year. Less than 18 months earlier, Hernández had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for taking bribes and allowing drug traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S. while he was in office.

But after President Donald Trump pardoned him in December, the Central American strongman — who has long maintained his innocence — got what Torres and others have described as the “red carpet” treatment. On the day of his release, ProPublica found, Hernández had in place what’s known as an immigration detainer, a formal request for law enforcement agencies to hold noncitizens for pickup by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet instead of holding him, the Federal Bureau of Prisons scrambled to get the detainer removed so he could walk free. Then, instead of giving him a bus ticket or airfare to get home on his own, prison officials paid a four-man tactical team overtime to drive him six hours from a West Virginia high-security facility to the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, New York, according to records and three people familiar with the situation. 

Read More

Amid Mass ICE Arrests, Trump Pardon Recipient Juan Orlando Hernández Given Special Treatment

Torres sought to stop that sort of treatment with a narrowly tailored amendment barring the bureau and several other agencies from using taxpayer dollars to give convicted drug traffickers and child traffickers — even those who have been pardoned or received a sentence commutation — special accommodations or transportation, as well as from lifting “any detainers not provided to other inmates.” 

Last month, the amendment hit an early stumbling block when the House Appropriations Committee voted along party lines against including it in its proposed 2027 spending bill. 

“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to give convicted criminals special accommodations, lifted legal holds, or government-funded transportation,” Torres said in a press release afterward. “We should be enforcing the law, not handing out favors. I’m shocked that my Republican colleagues didn’t agree with that common sense idea.” 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean the proposal is dead. Last week in a statement to ProPublica, Torres — a Guatemalan immigrant who last year criticized the decision to pardon Hernández — said she planned to raise the issue before the Rules Committee, which can decide whether previously rejected amendments still get a vote on the House floor.

“I am not giving up,” she said, adding: “The American people deserve a government that enforces the law fairly and holds powerful criminals accountable, regardless of who pardons them.”

A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment on the measure out of respect for members of Congress. Previously, a spokesperson said that the bureau does not discuss conditions of confinement or security procedures and that employee standards of conduct prohibit staff from giving any prisoners preferential treatment. ICE had previously referred questions to the White House, which this week did not respond to a request for comment.

Long before his arrest and controversial release, Hernández had been a polarizing figure, plagued by allegations of corruption in his country. Still, he was seen as a key U.S. ally under the Obama and first Trump administrations, in part because of his apparent interest in tackling drug trafficking and migration issues.

But in 2018, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration arrested his younger brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernández, for weapons and drug trafficking charges. The following year, a jury found Tony Hernández guilty in a Manhattan federal trial.

And weeks after the elder Hernández left office in 2022, he was arrested in Honduras and extradited to the U.S. to face drug trafficking and weapons charges. Prosecutors said Juan Orlando Hernández funded his political career with money he got from “violent drug-trafficking organizations” in exchange for allowing them to “move mountains of cocaine” out of the country. At one point, they said during trial, he bragged that he would “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”

After a federal jury voted to convict him in early 2024, Hernández was sent to a notorious high-security penitentiary in West Virginia to serve his time. Last year, he appealed to Trump’s sympathies, penning a four-page letter framing his case as a “political persecution” by the Biden administration. 

In November — two days before the Honduran presidential election that swept Hernández’s right-wing National Party back into power — Trump announced his intent to pardon his former Central American counterpart. Experts said the timing sent an obvious message on the eve of a tight race; as one former high-ranking U.S. diplomat previously told ProPublica, the pardon was a show of support that served as a “clear green light for the National Party to manipulate the vote.”

(The narrow victory for Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who had been trailing in multiple polls, came amid reports of voter intimidation and fraud allegations. After the election, Asfura promised to “work tirelessly for Honduras.”)

On Dec. 1, Trump formally granted Hernández the full pardon, and by the end of the day he was on his way to the swank, five-star hotel in New York City, ProPublica reported. Days later, Renato Stabile, Hernández’s court-appointed lawyer, filed a motion to vacate the judgment and dismiss the indictment in light of the presidential pardon. When prosecutors didn’t file a response opposing it, a federal court agreed to Stabile’s request.

Previously, Stabile told ProPublica his client’s treatment during the release process was appropriate, as Hernández could have been arrested or killed had he been deported to his home country. He also declined to comment on where Hernández stayed but said the government did not pay the bill. Hernández had declined to comment through his attorney.

At the time, Joe Rojas, a retired prison worker and former union leader, said that BOP staff were “disgusted” after the agency “rolled out the red carpet” for Hernández. 

Last month, when the amendment came up for debate in front of the 63-member House Appropriations Committee, Torres held up a printed copy of ProPublica’s investigation as she told her colleagues about the special treatment Hernández received and about how the prisons agency had used “our hard-earned taxpayer dollars” to pay for his transport to New York. 

“These actions can never be allowed to happen ever again,” she said.

Two other lawmakers spoke in support of the measure. One, Rep. Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, opposed it, calling the amendment “performative and unnecessary.” He did not explain his reasoning to the committee, and his office did not respond to an emailed request for comment. 

Ultimately, 31 Republicans opposed the amendment and 27 Democrats supported it. None of the Republican members who voted against the amendment responded to requests for comment from ProPublica.

Though Torres plans to raise the issue again this summer in front of the Rules Committee, the 9-4 Republican majority there makes it unlikely the measure will garner enough support to move forward right now.

But if the House fails to agree on spending bills before the end of this Congress, the November elections could change the balance of power and give the Democrats more say in what amendments make it to the floor next year.

The post Lawmaker Pushes for Ban on Special Treatment for Convicted Drug Traffickers After ProPublica Report appeared first on ProPublica.

Spending on religious construction rose 17 percent last year as congregations grapple with the changing role of faith institutions.

The Dreame X50 Ultra vacuums, mops and navigates every corner and right now you can get one for less than $900.

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For nearly 47 minutes, the San Antonio Spurs looked poised to leave Madison Square Garden with the NBA finals level at two games apiece.

They’d led by 81-52 in the third quarter, brought a frenzied Madison Square Garden crowd to heel and put themselves on the verge of reclaiming home-court advantage after having dropped the first two games at home. Even after the Knicks mounted a furious second-half fightback and wiped out the entirety of San Antonio’s 29-point cushion, the Spurs still appeared to have one final lifeline.

The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire again on Thursday after President Trump pledged Tehran would "pay the price" for not accepting a deal.

fjo3 shares a report from The Guardian: Tests reveal that when people are ambling about, they have a natural tendency to turn to the left and walk in an anticlockwise direction. "If you simply ask someone to start walking, whether they are wandering around a museum, a supermarket, or even an empty room, it is surprisingly likely that they will drift counterclockwise," said Dr Inaki Echeverria Huarte at University of Navarra in Spain. As with many critical discoveries in science, the revelation owes a debt to serendipity. During the pandemic, the researchers ran experiments to see how many people could share a space while keeping a safe distance. On reviewing the video, they noticed that crowds overwhelmingly walked in an anticlockwise direction. The surprise set in motion an entire research project. The scientists conducted a series of experiments in which individual pedestrians or small crowds roamed around enclosed spaces. Time and again, the researchers observed the tendency to walk in an anticlockwise direction. Suspecting that cultural norms might play a role, the team joined forces with Dr Claudio Feliciani at the University of Tokyo. He found the same results in Japan. The finding held when the researchers accounted for people being right-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant, and was seen in both male and female walkers. The only difference they spotted was a more pronounced bias in children. "Each of us carries a small personal bias to turn slightly to one side, and when many people share a space, those tiny biases add up into a net counterclockwise rotation," said Echeverria Huarte. Researchers think the tendency may be tied to biomechanics: people are not perfectly symmetrical, and the way the brain processes sensory information and coordinates muscles may gently tip walkers toward one side. Right-side dominance may also play a role, especially in running, where anticlockwise movement puts more internal force on the right side of the body and may feel more natural to right-leg-dominant athletes. "We have tested several ideas and the bias stubbornly keeps showing up, so the exact mechanism is still an open question," said Echeverria Huarte. The findings have been published in Nature Communications.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Budget airline describes inquiry as ‘bogus’ as watchdog says it is only large carrier flying from UK to impose charge

• Business live – latest updates

Europe’s biggest low-cost airline, Ryanair, is facing an investigation over the mandatory fee it charges a parent to sit with their child.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the Irish carrier’s terms and conditions require at least one parent to sit with their children, including those with disabilities, and bills them about £8 a flight to do so.

Singer and actor has denied all charges after more than 20 women made allegations against him dating back to 1990s

The French singer Patrick Bruel has been charged with rape and sexual assault in one of the biggest #MeToo cases in the French music industry.

The 67-year-old, a major figure in French pop culture, was placed under formal investigation over four cases that included alleged rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.

Explosions reported across Iran after Donald Trump vowed to ‘hit them hard again’, with Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan targeted by Tehran

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The US launched a new round of airstrikes on Iran into Thursday morning after Donald Trump warned Tehran would “pay the price” for stalled negotiations, prompting Iran to respond with strikes targeting Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

The new US assault across a range of Iranian cities came as efforts to negotiate an end to the war again appeared stuck, with Iran insisting it would maintain its chokehold on the strait of Hormuz. The American attack appeared more intense and wider than the day before, but Iran released no information about what was hit.

The first-ever Creator Cup will put YouTube creators, athletes and celebrities on the pitch for a special exhibition match in New York ahead of the World Cup final.

Sharon and Jack Osbourne defend their plan to create a "digital imprint" that would let fans talk with rock's Prince of Darkness.

Under US rules, even a distant strike can suspend a game – and some will take place in Florida, the thunderstorm state

Hot weather will be a major concern at the World Cup, but lightning may also prove a particular problem. Under US safety regulations, a strike within 10 miles (16km) of a stadium triggers a 30-minute suspension of the game, during which players must leave the pitch.

The size of the safety zone was dictated by research on the distance that lightning can strike from a storm even with no clouds overhead. This is more than a theoretical risk. During a game in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998, an entire team was killed by a single bolt of lightning. There have been many other deadly incidents.

Former Labor foreign affairs minister says belief US would defend Australia in event of an existential attack is a ‘ludicrous delusion’

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Aukus will prove to be one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions ever made by an Australian government and is only being permitted by Donald Trump in order to destroy Chinese nuclear threats to the US mainland, former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans has said.

In evidence to an independent public inquiry into the $368bn nuclear agreement with the US and UK on Thursday, Evans, a cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, warned the transfer and construction of submarines to Australia from the early 2030s was effectively only an extension of the American military fleet.

This blog has now closed – our coverage of this crisis in the Middle East continues here

If the US genuinely wants a deal it will have to engage with Iranian demands on sanctions relief, says Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence.

Today’s exchange of strikes shows how easily both Iran and the US can slide towards another round of escalation, says Citrinowicz, who is now a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

If Washington is unwilling to accept that reality, it should recognize the likely alternative: continued confrontations with Iran that could eventually spiral beyond anyone’s control and lead to military conflict under less favorable conditions.

Even a limited military campaign designed to weaken Iran would not fundamentally alter Tehran’s negotiating position. It has not happened in the past, and there is little reason to believe it would happen now. Iran emerges from the latest exchange of blows convinced that it can absorb pressure and respond to attacks.”

Legal and moral responsibility of all countries in the region (especially those located along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf) to prevent the US military and Israel from using their territory or facilities to plan, organise, execute, or support hostile actions against Iran.

Why the AI build-out was doomed from the start.

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California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom spearheaded a redistricting initiative that was intended to make up to five more districts more friendly to Democrats. Voters may have different ideas.

A veteran North Korea analyst says Xi Jinping's visit to North Korea was about keeping tabs on an emboldened Kim Jong Un who wants "to confront the U.S."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Solar generated more U.S. electricity than coal for the first month on record in May 2026, according to new analysis from global energy think tank Ember. Solar supplied 12.8% of U.S. electricity during the month, while coal dropped to 12.2%. That's a dramatic shift in the U.S. power mix. Just five years ago, coal generated 19.7% of U.S. electricity in May, while solar accounted for only 5.4%. U.S. solar generation hit a record 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in May 2026, up 17% from May 2025 and higher than the previous record set last July. Ember says another record could be broken again this summer. Solar output usually peaks in June or July, but its share of the electricity mix is often highest in spring, when strong sunshine lines up with milder temperatures before summer cooling demand ramps up. May was also the first time solar became the third-largest individual source of electricity in the U.S., behind only natural gas and nuclear. (If solar is included with all other renewables, then they're the second-largest source of electricity as an overall category of electricity.) Meanwhile, coal keeps sliding (and will continue to slide). Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low of 39.3 TWh in April 2026. Output rose slightly in May to 43.4 TWh, but it was still 11% lower than May 2025 levels. Even with that small rebound, coal couldn't keep pace with solar's rapid growth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Police have used water cannons on protesters in Northern Ireland after violence erupted for a second night over a stabbing in Belfast.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 11.

Man accused of sedating and filming abuse of partner had contact with Pelicot, who was jailed for drugging wife and inviting men to rape her

A bodyguard from Lyon is to go on trial for allegedly sedating and raping his partner after he was in contact online with Dominique Pelicot, who was convicted of drugging and raping his own wife, Gisèle Pelicot.

Pelicot, one of the worst sex offenders in modern French history, is serving 20 years in prison after he was found guilty of drugging his then wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her in their home in the south of France over almost a decade. He and 50 other men were found guilty after the biggest rape trial in French history in 2024.

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Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is largely targeting people from the countries most vulnerable to displacement from climate-driven disasters, a Guardian analysis shows.

As the Trump administration pushes policies to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, millions of people are being forced to flee their homelands due to storms, floods and droughts worsened by the climate crisis.

Jake Lang, a far-right influencer who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, was arrested in Dallas on a state charge of making terroristic threats.

Two days of strikes followed downing of US Apache helicopter over the strait of Hormuz, which Trump has blamed on Iran – key US politics stories from Wednesday 10 June at a glance

The US has launched new strikes against targets in Iran for the second consecutive day, following through on Donald Trump’s promise to “hit them hard again” as a two-month-old ceasefire appears close to collapse.

US Central Command announced in a statement that forces began “launching additional self-defence strikes today at 5:15 p.m. ET [10.15pm UK time on Wednesday] against multiple targets in Iran at the Commander in Chief’s direction”.

Pick out a frightening feature to watch this week.

Defense says no evidence occasional Uber driver Jonathan Rinderknecht ignited deadly blaze on New Year’s Day 2025

The trial of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht, the man accused of starting last year’s deadly Palisades fire, kicked off on Wednesday with opening arguments. Prosecutors cast him as a vengeful arsonist who sought to hide his role from authorities, while his defense attorneys argued that the fire was caused by fireworks.

On New Year’s Day in 2025, firefighters extinguished a small blaze in the Pacific Palisades, a coastal Los Angeles enclave. But the flames continued to smolder underground, before reigniting as they were picked up by strong winds. The Palisades fire, the most destructive wildfires in city history, tore through roughly 23,000 acres, incinerating thousands of buildings and killing 12 people.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 626 for Thursday, June 11.

According to a recent survey, 71% of U.S. public school teachers said they work at least one second job.

Commentary: My favorite anti-tech tech product has barely changed since the 2000s -- thank goodness.

Easily split bills and create digital passes from physical cards with the latest Wallet updates.

Amid FIFA World Cup ticket troubles, the short-term rental company is offering fans free tickets with select bookings priced, on average, at $385 a night.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for June 11, No. 1,818.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for June 11, No. 1,096.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for June 11, No. 830.

The U.S. military launched an additional round of strikes on targets within Iran early Thursday morning local time, hours after President Trump vowed to hit Iran "hard."

A judge denied a request to block the DOJ's "anti-weaponization fund," noting Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had already vowed not to move forward. But the judge warned: "Don't play possum with this court."

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Trivia quiz …

How many teams have faced a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals and gone on to win?

This blog is now closed. Read our main report here: Police use water cannon against rioters in Northern Ireland

Hadi Alodid refused legal representation and made no reply to charges which were put put to him through an Arabic interpreter as he appeared in court charged with attempted murder following the Belfast knife attack, the Press Association reports.

The 30-year-old, with an address at Duncairn Avenue in Belfast, appeared before the city’s magistrates’ court on Wednesday morning.

He is charged with the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie on Monday, with threatening to kill an NHS radiographer on the same day and with the possession of a knife.

Force disperses crowd of 300 people who burned truck and reportedly planned to target hotel hosting migrants

Police have used water cannon against rioters in Northern Ireland during a second night of anti-immigration protests.

It dispersed a crowd of about 300 people who burned a truck and threw bricks and petrol bombs close to the Sandyknowes roundabout near Newtownabbey, eight miles north of Belfast.

Hundreds of free World Cup tickets will be given to working families with kids, first responders and military families in the New York City area.

The wrongful arrest is just one of over a dozen in recent years linked to facial recognition technology.

For now, new users still have the option to just buy the hardware upfront.

U.S. Central Command said it went after “multiple targets” after the president said Tehran would “pay the price” for not making a deal.

Apple recently announced its next crack at integrating “AI” into its operating systems, this time opting to simply whitelabel Google’s Gemini “AI” tools instead of developing its own LLM technology. Called “Siri AI”, Apple also stated it’s not coming to the EU, and the company stated that’s because the EU’s basic consumer protection legislation would give other “AI” tools “unprecedented access” to user data on users’ devices. The company made a big stink about this in the press.

As anyone with basic pattern recognition skills already knew, this was a blatant, baldfaced lie. What really happened is that Apple asked the EU for an 18-month long exemption from the EU’s consumer protection and privacy legislation during which it would not have to comply with any legal privacy and interoperability requirements – just so it could roll out Siri “AI” before anyone else could offer a competing product for Apple users.

Obviously, the EU wasn’t going to grant such an exemption.

“The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple’s and Apple’s only,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels, saying there was nothing in the Digital Markets Act to stop the company from introducing new products in the EU.

“Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU ​privacy and security standards,” Regnier said.

“Instead ​of trying to find ⁠a suitable compliance solution, Apple simply made a request to the European Commission to be exempted from their interoperability obligations under the DMA – and this for at least 18 months. ​That’s not an option,” Regnier said.

↫ Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee at Reuters

So what’s really going on here is that Apple wants to offer a set of whitelabeled Google Gemini tools on iOS and macOS in the EU, but because Apple is classified as a gatekeeper, it is legally obligated to offer interoperability options for competing “AI” tools. These options in turn need to adhere to the EU’s strict privacy regulations, so that competing “AI” tools can offer the same level of privacy that Apple’s own whitelabeled Google Gemini tools claim to offer.

Apple didn’t want to offer these privacy-respecting interoperability options as required by law, so instead of following the law in the countries it wants to operate in, Apple asked to be placed above the law for at least 18 months, basically giving Siri “AI” a massive head-start over possible competitors so that it could entrench itself in the userbase. The EU saw right through Apple’s nonsense, and now called them out on their bullshit. Perhaps Apple has gotten so used to openly bribing Trump that they forgot other parts of the world don’t work that way.

Whenever Apple and its PR attack dogs say anything about the EU, you can be assured they are lying. They have proven time and time again to basically never speak a single word of truth when it comes to its dealings in the EU. It’s almost pathological at this point, and what makes it doubly interesting is that Apple will not launch Siri “AI” in China either, for the very same regulatory reasons – yet all China got was a single footnote in a press release.

I wonder why.

Eufy's FamiLock line is now larger, with more affordable models that limit AI processing to help protect your privacy. Here's how that works.

State supreme court ruling aids nationwide redistricting effort aimed at helping party retain slim House majority

The Florida supreme court on Wednesday allowed new US House districts drawn by Republicans to be used in the midterm elections, marking another victory for the GOP in a nationwide redistricting effort aimed at helping the party retain its slim House majority.

Attorneys for voters who sued had argued that the new congressional districts violate a state constitutional prohibition on partisan gerrymandering, and that the court should order the state to continue using the same districts as in the previous election. The supreme court, in a 6-1 decision, denied their request for a temporary injunction without ruling on the merits of the case. The judges said they lacked jurisdiction to intervene while the lawsuit gradually plays out in the lower courts.

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was the only passenger to survive the incident in June 2025, which killed 260 people

The only survivor of the Air India plane crash that killed 260 people in June 2025 has called for “honesty, transparency and answers” a year on from the disaster, and spoken about his “significant psychological scars” and financial hardship.

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British national, has previously described his fate as a “miracle” after being the only person to survive the incident, in which a Boeing 787 Dreamliner struck a medical college shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad airport.

New name, Bristol Dockyards, and museum revamp aimed at becoming more rooted in community, says chief executive

One of the UK’s maritime landmarks is being renamed as part of a drive to make it “cooler” and more inclusive.

For a decade, the dockland site in Bristol that houses the ocean liner SS Great Britain, which was designed by the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, has been promoted as Brunel’s SS Great Britain.

A researcher using the name Nightmare Eclipse has released a new Microsoft Defender zero-day exploit called "RoguePlanet," which reportedly works on fully patched Windows 10 and 11 systems and can spawn a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges through a Defender race condition. The release came just hours after Microsoft fixed two previously disclosed flaws during its latest monthly Patch Tuesday drop -- its largest Patch Tuesday release ever. BleepingComputer reports: The researcher shared a proof-of-concept exploit on Tuesday afternoon in a self-hosted Git repository after saying that GitHub and GitLab repositories hosting their exploits had previously been removed by Microsoft. "The exploit is a race condition, so it's a hit or miss. I have managed to get a 100% success rate on some machines while it struggled to work on others," Nightmare Eclipse wrote in the repository. [...] Cybersecurity firm ThreatLocker told BleepingComputer that they successfully reproduced the flaw in their testing and confirmed the exploit worked against fully patched Windows 11 systems with KB5094126 installed, and shared a video demonstrating it. "Our initial analysis confirms that the RoguePlanet exploit is viable and performs as described. Organizations using application allowlisting can prevent the exploit from executing, providing an effective layer of protection against this attack," Danny Jenkins, CEO of ThreatLocker, told BleepingComputer. According to Nightmare Eclipse, RoguePlanet was originally developed as a remote code execution vulnerability that exploited Microsoft Defender's handling of files hosted on remote SMB shares. "In initial development, it was confirmed that this vulnerability was a remote code execution," the researcher explained in a blog post. "It required an attacker to coerce a victim to open a .vhd(x) in a remote SMB server, succesful exploitation resulted in defender overwriting its own files and obviously the end outcome was an RCE." The researcher says another attack scenario could lead to remote code execution simply by coercing a victim into opening an SMB share if symlink evaluation settings were enabled. However, the researcher claims Microsoft silently hardened Defender in mid-May by patching "mpengine!SysIO*" API, which blocked junction attacks. "Rewriting RoguePlanet to make it functional again drained my soul and I couldn't complete the other scenarios and for now it remains unclear if RoguePlanet is limited to LPE or there is some sort of way to turn it into an RCE," the researcher wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With its detachable display, the Insta360 Luna Ultra is exciting for YouTubers. Here's how it compares to the Osmo Pocket 4.

For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.

↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin

You shouldn’t be using Chrome anyway.

Two months after the rousing success of the Artemis II mission, NASA introduced four new astronauts -- all men.

Thanks to the success of its GPUs in powering the first stage of the AI boom, Nvidia became not only the world’s most successful chip company, but the world’s most valuable company. But as we enter phase two of the AI boom, we’re seeing a new class of chip based on static random access memory (SRAM) come to the forefront. That’s good news for Nvidia, which bought its own SRAM chipmaker, as well as upstarts like d-Matrix, Cerebras, and an SRAM cloud company called Gimlet Labs.

While GPUs excel at chewing through massive gobs of data, keeping the previously computed AI model values in memory is the main bottleneck with AI inference workloads today. The so-called GPU memory wall is the primary barrier, as it imposes a hard limit on the number of previously computed keys and values an AI inference system can cache in memory for quick recall during an AI session. A smaller KV cache translates into a substandard experience for users, either through limited context windows, longer response times, or fewer number of concurrent users.

d-Matrix builds in-memory compute in a chiplet form-factor

The brute force answer to the KV cache problems is to cram as much fast memory into the system as physically (or fiscally) possible. While the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in Nvidia and AMD GPUs offers relatively big caches for GPUs to stash data as they processes data, HBM resides off the chip, which limits the total memory bandwidth. The fastest memory available is SRAM, which resides directly on the chip and offers memory bandwidths on the order of 100 TB per second to 150 TBps, compared to the 1.2 TBps (HBM3) to 2 TBps (HBM4) per stack.

SRAM is superfast but it’s relatively expensive, which has traditionally limited its use to the chip registers and internal L1, L2, and L3 caches. Dynamic RAM (DRAM), by contrast, is slower but less expensive than SRAM, and traditionally has been the choice for use as main working memory.

But as AI pushes the limits of computing, that has started to change, and chipmakers are starting to build designs that feature SRAM as main memory. Groq is one of those chipmakers. Acquired by Nvidia in December for $20 billion, Groq built its Language Processing Unit (LPU) by building vector and matrix computing units directly onto the chips containing loads of SRAM. Nvidia quickly turned its acquisition around, and launched its Groq 3 LPX racks at GTC in March.

But Groq LPUs aren’t the only SRAM game in town. d-Matrix also based its chip architecture on a digital in-memory compute (DCIM) architecture that utilizes large amounts of SRAM. The Santa Clara, California company recently has been developing its Corsair accelerator, which incorporates 256 MB of SRAM in a 3D-stacked chiplet form factor. Each Corsair card delivers 150 TBps of memory bandwidth directly from a PCIe Gen 5 card.

Cerebras WSE-3 features 44GB of on-chip SRAM

Yesterday, d-Matrix announced that Corsair is in full production, with product shipping in volume to priority customers. Each Corsair accelerator offers up to 2,400 teraflops of 8 bit dense compute within a 600 watt TDP, and can be installed in standard air-cooled server racks. It’s being manufactured by d-Matrix partners TSMC and Alchip Technologies on TSMC’s N6 process node.

“We built Corsair specifically for this moment, the Age of AI Inference,” stated Sid Sheth, founder and CEO of d-Matrix. “The applications that matter most today–agentic AI, interactive coding, real-time voice agents–live or die on latency. Corsair takes off from where the GPU leaves off, and this summer our customers will be able to experience the turbocharge d-Matrix brings at full rack scale.”

Another chipmaker building around SRAM is Cerebras Systems. Where the d-Matrix Corsair takes a svelte, chiplet-based approach that can scale from very small to big, Cerebras is swinging for the fences with its massive chip, the Wafer Scale Engine.

The WSE-3, which Cerebras announced in March 2024, is a monster of a chip, containing 4 trillion transistors and packing 44GB of on-chip SRAM along with nearly 1 million AI compute cores onto a silicon wafer the size of a dinner plate. With up to 1 PB of external memory, it can train the biggest AI models in the world, spanning 24 trillion parameters or more.

Cerebras Systems went public three weeks ago. Trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CBRS, Cerebras raised $5.55 billion with its shares price at $185 per, making it the biggest IPO of the year (so far). The company is currently valued at $56 billion, which makes it the poster child for the emerging SRAM chip market.

Source: Gimlet Labs

An SRAM company to keep an eye on is Gimlet Labs, an applied AI research startup out of Stanford University. The company is developing what it calls a “multi-silicon inference cloud” that eliminates hardware considerations for AI customers by building an abstraction layer in between the workload and the hardware.

Zain Asgar, the Stanford adjunct professor who co-founded Gimlet and is its CEO, is a fan of traditional GPUs as well as newer SRAM accelerators.