Samsung is reportedly set to pay chip-division workers an average bonus of about $340,000 after reaching a tentative deal with its union, according to Bloomberg (paywalled). The deal ended a standoff that "could have cost the economy as much as 1 trillion won ($658 million) daily, with losses potentially multiplying to 100 trillion won ($68 billion) if in-progress semiconductor wafers were rendered unusable," reports Quartz. From the report: The agreement, subject to a union ratification vote running May 22 through May 27, calls for Samsung to direct 10.5% of operating profit into stock bonuses along with a separate 1.5% cash component, according to Bloomberg. The program runs for 10 years, contingent on the company meeting profit thresholds. One-third of the stock award can be liquidated right away, with the rest parceled out in installments across the next two years, Bloomberg reported. The first payout is expected in early 2027. Not all workers will fare equally. As an illustration, Reuters cited a union source estimating that someone in the memory chip unit earning an 80-million-won base salary could take home roughly 626 million won in total bonuses this year. By comparison, workers at SK Hynix stand to collect upward of 700 million won should their employer post annual profit of 250 trillion won, Reuters calculated. Unlike at Samsung, SK Hynix employees are not limited to stock payouts and may instead opt for cash, Reuters reported.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iran has threatened to impose tolls on shipping, while US demands that Iran hand over its highly enriched uranium may be deferred. Is there an end in sight?

Qatar has rushed a team of mediators to Tehran in a sign that talks to open the strait of Hormuz, in return for US sanctions and asset freezes being lifted, are reaching a climax.

The aim would be to sign a memorandum of understanding on the strait that would lead to 30 days of talks on Iran’s nuclear programme – so deferring discussion of the US demand that Iran hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

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

President to host White House ceremony that ends tenure of Jerome Powell, who face repeated attacks from Trump

• Most Americans think Trump is not focused enough on economy – poll

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“There’s broad recognition there are going to be eventually less US troops in Europe than historically,” Rubio says

Rubio said he didn’t set the timeline for reducing the number of US troops in Europe, but “it has been an ongoing process that started from the first day of this administration.”

Videos in this batch show unidentified aerial phenomena but offer few clues to existence of alien life

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

The Pentagon on Friday released a second tranche of videos and documents of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – or UFOs – answering few questions about the existence of alien life but fueling what has quickly become a ratings winner for the White House.

The first reveal earlier this month of 162 files of previously secret or rarely seen accounts of UAP sightings received more than a billion hits on the government website set up to house them, according to a press release from the war department, the Trump administration’s preferred term for the Department of Defense.

The US secretary of state said the US is monitoring Russian allegations against the Baltics

Rubio begins with thanks to Sweden for hosting the ministerial meeting.

But that’s where the niceties end as says the upcoming Ankara summit will be “one of the more important leaders’ summit in the history of Nato,” as the leaders will have to respond to Trump’s “disappointment” with the alliance’s “response to our operations in the Middle East.”

“That will have to be addressed, that won’t be solved or addressed today. That’s something for the leaders level to discuss.”

Situation described as ‘deeply worrisome’ by officials as aid cuts and community distrust impede responders

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo poses a “very high” risk to the country, the World Health Organization said on Friday, revising its threat assessment upwards.

The outbreak is spreading rapidly, WHO leaders said, with almost 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, up from 246 cases and 65 deaths when it was first reported a week earlier.

Everlane CEO confirms sale in letter to employees and says it will stay true to ‘sustainability’ commitments

Everlane, the retailer that bucked the fast-fashion industry by promising affordable ethically sourced and sustainable clothing, is being acquired by the king of fast-fashion, China’s Shein.

A letter to Everlane employees from CEO Alfred Chang confirming the deal was obtained by the Associated Press on Friday.

Family says host of more than 500 episodes of travel show leaves behind ‘giant suitcase of the happiest memories’

The TV presenter Judith Chalmers, who spent almost three decades persuading British people to go on holiday as the host of Wish You Were Here … ?, has died at the age of 90 after living with Alzheimer’s in her final years.

Her family said she died peacefully at home on Thursday, surrounded by “the family she loved so much”, after becoming ill in recent weeks. They added that she would be greatly missed but left behind “a giant suitcase of the happiest memories”.

Israeli prison service denies claims of abuse during detention of 430 people trying to take aid to Palestinians

Activists released from Israeli custody after being detained on a flotilla trying to take aid to Gaza were subjected to abuse, organisers have alleged, with several hospitalised with injuries and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.

Israel’s prison service denied the allegations, and Reuters was not able to verify them independently.

Memorial Day weekend is a great time to shop for those big-ticket items you've been putting off buying. From TVs to grills, we've got you covered.

A bank levy can freeze your money without much warning, and the timeline for what follows could surprise you.

A United Airlines flight from Newark Liberty Airport was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger allegedly tried to open a door.

Andy Burnham talks up his local credentials and says: ‘This is not business as usual, this is not more of the same’

On transport, Burnham says “I like my buses” (they were taken back under public control in Greater Manchester in 2023) but he was woeful about the cost of rail journeys.

£364 is the cost of an anytime return from Wigan North Western to London Euston. So how can people here connect with the capital and all of the opportunities it’s got, if they cannot afford those train fares? We need to use rail re-nationalisation to reduce those train fares and make them affordable to people again.

Change to the economy, change to education, change to housing, change to transport, change to care, and yes, to make it all possible. Change to politics.

Sue Jacquot was taking part in fundraiser when police swarmed her home after someone falsely reported a crime

An Arizona grandmother has said someone subjected her to a so-called police swatting call while she was taking part in a Minecraft fundraiser to raise financial support for her grandson’s cancer treatment medical bills.

The bizarre turn of events is the latest high-profile instance in the US of an act of criminal harassment which involves prank-calling emergency operators to get a heavily armed police response sent to a target’s home.

To mark National Pet Month, we're celebrating the bond between dogs and the people who love them. (Sponsored by The Farmer's Dog.)

The Pentagon on Friday released a new batch of 64 files related to UFOs, unveiling a second tranche of records under an executive order by President Trump.

A ruthless Thomas Tuchel has left several big names at home for his England squad at this summer’s World Cup.

There was no space for Harry Maguire, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Cole Palmer or Phil Foden – previous stalwarts in former manager Gareth Southgate’s squads.

The announcement comes as the club season nears its end, with a historic week for Arsenal winning its first Premier League title in 22 years, sparking an incredible and diverse celebration from fans.

Lucy Hough speaks to sportswriter and columnist Jonathan Liew – watch on YouTube

PARIS and HELSINKI, May 22, 2026 – Bull, a leader in advanced computing, today announced the delivery and inauguration of Roihu, Finland’s new national supercomputer hosted by CSC – IT Center for Science. The system represents a significant investment in Finland’s national research infrastructure and will serve researchers across a wide range of disciplines with high-performance computing, AI and data-intensive capabilities.

Credit: Pekka Agarth, CSC

By replacing Finland’s previous national supercomputers, Roihu triples the country’s available supercomputing capacity. Based on the BullSequana liquid-cooled supercomputing architecture, the system delivers a major increase in GPU performance, more than ten times the capacity of the previous platform, combined with high-performance storage. This enables applications ranging from artificial intelligence and machine learning to data-intensive research such as fluid dynamics or climate modelling.

Operated by CSC at its Kajaani data center, Roihu complements the EuroHPC LUMI supercomputer by addressing national-scale workloads and ensuring broad access for Finnish universities and research institutes. The platform also supports the secure processing of sensitive and confidential research data.

”Finland is a forerunner in high-performance computing and the use of data. Roihu is a significant national investment that provides researchers with state-of-the-art computational capabilities. Looking ahead, strengthening interdisciplinary research and combining data across disciplines will be increasingly essential for generating new knowledge and deeper insights into the world around us. Supercomputers play a vital role in this effort, and Finland has made long-term investments in them. The investment in Roihu also supports our national objective of increasing R&D funding to four per cent of GDP,” said the Minister of Science and Culture Mari-Leena Talvitie.

“It is excellent that Finland has chosen to invest in high-performance computing, which helps advance the data economy, digitalization, the development of new technologies, and the creation of new expertise. The societal impact of high-performance computing is substantial. According to the study of Taloustutkimus, every euro invested in CSC’s high-performance computing services has returned 25–37 euros to society. Roihu raises the tools available to Finnish research to a new level, and it is accessible to all universities and research institutes,” said Kimmo Koski, the Managing Director of CSC.

“A key part of CSC’s services is tailored user support and training in the use of computing systems within researchers’ specific disciplines. As high-performance computing expands into new fields, it enables the development of new capabilities and promotes interdisciplinary research that combines data from different domains. This also supports RDI projects between research organizations and companies. Ownership and governance of Roihu remain in Finnish hands, which strengthens national resilience and security of supply, ensuring that the Finnish research system can continue to operate under all circumstances,” said Pekka Lehtovuori, the Director of Scientific Computing Infrastructures at CSC.

“Roihu reflects a long-standing collaboration with the Nordics region where we have delivered numerous computing projects, and in particular with CSC, built on a shared commitment to reliable and sustainable computing for the research community. By supporting national supercomputing initiatives as well as AI and Giga factories across Europe, we aim to contribute to scientific excellence, advanced AI development and strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty,” said Bruno Lecointe, the Head of HPC, AI and Quantum Computing at Bull.

More from HPCwire

• CSC: Pilot Users Selected for the Roihu Supercomputer
• CSC: Installation of the Roihu Supercomputer Begins
• Eviden to Deliver Finland’s Next National AI Supercomputer Tripling Its Computing Power

About Bull

Leveraging nearly a century of innovations, Bull is a global leader for High-Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies with c.720m€ in revenue and 3,000 professionals operating in 32 countries. Built on an open, end-to-end and trusted approach, Bull designs, deploys and operates hardware, software and strategic services that unlock enterprise value, accelerate scientific research and advance society. Driven by world-class R&D, backed by 1,600 patents, manufacturing excellence and data sciences expertise, Bull enables nations and industries to fully control their AI and data and to drive progress for the benefit of the planet.

Source: Bull

The post Bull Delivers Roihu, Finland’s New National Supercomputer appeared first on HPCwire.

Here are some highly rated titles to check out, plus a look at what's new in May.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: US lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment Thursday at a House committee markup hearing that would prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling -- a sweeping restriction that, if adopted, would bring an immediate end to state and local ALPR programs across the United States. The amendment, obtained first by WIRED, is sponsored by Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and Freedom Caucus member, and Representative Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, an Illinois progressive whose state has become a flash point in the national fight over ALPR misuse. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill -- a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs -- at 10 am ET on Thursday. The amendment runs a single sentence: "A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling." The amendment is brief, but its reach would be vast. Title 23 funds roughly a quarter of all public road mileage in the US, including most state and county arteries and many city streets where ALPR cameras are becoming ubiquitous. Conditioning that funding on a ban of the technology would, in practical effect, force any state, county, or municipality that takes federal highway money (essentially all of them) to either remove the cameras or restructure their use around tolling alone. The amendment's cosponsors, Perry and Garcia, represent opposite ends of the House's ideological spectrum but converge on a surveillance concern that has gathered momentum in legislatures and city halls across the US as ALPR networks have quietly become a pervasive layer of American road infrastructure. ALPR cameras -- mounted on poles, overpasses, traffic signals, and police cruisers -- photograph every passing license plate, log times and locations, and feed data into searchable databases shared across agencies and jurisdictions. [...] Privacy advocates have long warned that the aggregation of license plate data amounts to a de facto warrantless tracking system. New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice has documented the integration of ALPR feeds into police data-fusion systems that combine plate data with surveillance and social media monitoring. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, has documented a range of police misuse, including the past targeting of mosques and the disproportionate deployment of the technology in low-income neighborhoods. Earlier this week, 404 Media reviewed FBI procurement records that reveal the agency is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to ALPR data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is how significantly mortgage interest rates have changed so far in 2026 (and what could happen next).

A wage garnishment can push a strained budget to the breaking point — but you may have more options than you think.

New polling shows rising frustration with Trump’s agenda days after president said ‘I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation’ amid Iran peace talks

Two-thirds of Americans believe Donald Trump is prioritizing his controversial immigration crackdown at the expense of their economic wellbeing, according to a new poll, in a stark warning for the US president about the unpopularity of his agenda.

Amid growing discontent about the economic costs of his decision to go to war with Iran, 68% of respondents said Trump’s administration is too focused on mass deportations and not enough on affordability issues.

US secretary of state’s campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ is culmination of a personal pursuit spanning decades

• Cubans outraged at US charges against Raúl Castro

Marco Rubio’s moment has finally arrived. The outcome of the Trump administration’s efforts to exert “maximum pressure” on Cuba may topple the 67-year-old communist government in Havana and direct the future of the US’s sway over the western hemisphere.

For Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who serves as both secretary of state and national security adviser, the US campaign marks his ascendancy in an administration where he has established himself as a trusted aide to Donald Trump and manoeuvred that position to advance a key goal: Washington’s right to assert its authority across Latin America.

May 22, 2026 — Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) is part of the newly established Unit NRW of ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. ELLIS is regarded as one of Europe’s leading networks for research in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The new unit brings together leading AI researchers and large-scale computing infrastructure across North Rhine-Westphalia to develop open-source foundation models and datasets and advance trustworthy AI applications for scientific and industrial use.

A central focus of the unit is the development and study of open-source generalist foundation models as core building blocks for machine learning research. It will investigate how such models can be trained to frontier level using supercomputers and open datasets, made more reliable and adapted safely to different application domains. The unit also strengthens research on trustworthy AI, particularly for situations involving uncertainty, rare events or sensitive real-world environments.

A second research track of the ELLIS NRW initiative focuses on transferring machine learning methods into application domains such as healthcare, sustainable agriculture and embodied AI systems like autonomous robots. Researchers in the unit cover fields including robotics, computer vision, natural language processing, healthcare AI and neuro-symbolic systems.

Within the FZJ, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), the Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS) and the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI) contribute to this initiative. The FZJ is a key contributor alongside Bonn and Aachen in shaping the scientific profile of the Unit NRW, particularly in the area of open foundation models and the datasets required to develop them.

In addition to enabling large-scale training of foundation models, Jülich infrastructures, including JAIF (JUPITER AI Factory), will support the development, deployment and management of large-scale datasets for future open AI systems. This work relies on advanced high-performance infrastructure, including the JUPITER supercomputer at FZJ, and specialised expertise in operating large-scale AI workloads.

Source: Forschungszentrum Jülich

The post Forschungszentrum Jülich Helps Power ELLIS NRW Push for Open AI and Foundation Models appeared first on HPCwire.

The head of the World Health Organization says Ebola has killed at least 7 people in Congo, but the U.N. agency says it knows the epidemic "is much larger."

May 22, 2026 — University of California San Diego Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing astrophysicist Mike Norman is driving a new generation of cosmology simulations that push precision structure-formation modeling to petascale levels and beyond.

Astrophysicists have developed StarNet, which combines GPU‑accelerated cosmology codes with an AI‑driven surrogate model to track how matter clumps and evolves over cosmic time, yielding predictions for current and upcoming sky surveys.The black box shows the region where the model predicts new star formation, and the surrounding boxes are refined to the same resolution.Credit: Mike Norman, SDSC, UC San Diego Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing.

In a recent study in The Astrophysical Journal, Norman and collaborators combine GPU‑accelerated cosmology codes with an AI‑driven surrogate model called StarNet to track how matter clumps and evolves over cosmic time, yielding predictions for current and upcoming sky surveys.

To make this happen, Norman and the team used U.S. National Science Foundation Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) allocations on the Expanse system at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) as well as the NSF-funded Frontera system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

The researchers built on decades of work in large‑scale structure and galaxy cluster simulations, where numerical models track the interplay of dark matter, gas dynamics, gravity, and cosmic expansion in massive, three‑dimensional volumes.

StarNet is a deep learning surrogate model for primordial star formation and feedback that was trained on over 100 terabytes of high‑resolution simulation data provided by and later validated on Frontera, which was embedded into larger cosmological runs on Expanse to represent unresolved small‑scale physics.

A 3D convolutional neural network pulses through the AI heart of StarNet. The AI component is called StarFind, designed and built using PyTorch on Expanse. StarFind is then combined with a simple machine learning regression model called FBNet to complete the StarNet.

“The main result is a fast, accurate AI/ML surrogate model for incorporating subgrid physics into hydrodynamic cosmological simulations, specifically the formation of primordial stars (Population III) and their supernova feedback effects. Our study describes the design, implementation, training, and validation of the model,” said Norman, who was the SDSC director from 2010 to 2021.

A key player on the team is former UC San Diego graduate student Azton Wells, now an associate computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. Norman said that Wells played a significant role in the development of StarNet.

“Wells and I utilized Expanse’s scalable compute units and high‑performance interconnect to run suites of simulations that combine traditional adaptive‑mesh cosmology codes with StarNet, allowing us to vary cosmological parameters and sub‑grid models while still capturing the impact of the first stars and their metal enrichment on subsequent galaxy formation,” Norman said. “This ensemble approach allows us to quantify uncertainties and generate more realistic predictions for observables such as X‑ray, Sunyaev–Zel’dovich and weak‑lensing signals from clusters across cosmic time.”

Expanse Architecture and Workflow

Expanse is one of SDSC’s NSF‑funded high-performance computing systems, designed for “computing without boundaries” and composed of hundreds of AMD EPYC CPU nodes, GPU nodes and a modular design based on SDSC Scalable Compute Units (SSCUs) interconnected to high‑performance storage. The system supports both traditional batch jobs and science gateways, enabling Norman’s group to combine large production runs with downstream analysis and AI‑assisted workflows that incorporate models like StarNet.

Recent NSF supplements have added a NAIRR‑funded partition of Dell XE9640 GPU nodes attached to Expanse, each with four NVIDIA H100 GPUs and dual 36‑core Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs, along with additional multi‑petabyte Ceph storage for data‑intensive workflows. This evolving architecture allows Norman’s team to experiment with hybrid CPU–GPU strategies for both the main simulation codes and the StarNet inference steps, test AI‑assisted analysis on simulation outputs and scale to larger parameter studies without re‑architecting their workflows.

Frontera Provides Horsepower

Norman describes the development of a surrogate model for HPC simulations as a four-step process. First, run a full resolution simulation that contains the phenomena you want to capture in the surrogate model. “In our case that was a suite of three simulations called the Phoenix simulations run on Frontera in which Population III star formation and feedback is explicitly simulated,” he said.

NSF-funded supercomputers advancing the StarNet cosmological deep learning surrogate model. (Top left) Expanse at SDSC; (top right) TACC Horizon test node; (bottom left) TACC Vista; (bottom right) TACC Frontera. Credit: SDSC, TACC.

Next, data was transferred to disk for every star forming event in the simulations, which is used as training data for the surrogate model. “Altogether, we logged over 70,000 star formation events across the three simulations. With that, we designed a 3D convolutional DNN (deep neural network) that ‘observes and classifies’ the star formation data saved to disk.”

With enough training data, the DNN learns how to connect physical inputs, such as the number and masses of the stars, to physical outputs — the supernova explosion energy and amount of heavy elements ejected into space.

Lastly, the Phoenix simulations were rerun using the DNN in lieu of the explicit star formation and feedback recipes in the original simulations, with the goal of comparing outputs to see if the DNN reproduces the amounts and locations of the star forming regions in the fully resolved simulation.

The Phoenix simulations were run on Frontera over a period of one year and generated large amounts of raw data that had to be pre-processed to be read into PyTorch.

“Moving the data from TACC to SDSC required a good Globus Online connection,” Norman said. “Training StarFind is a long iterative trial and error process to refine the network. That took the most time. Frontera provided the simulation horsepower to run the Phoenix simulations. Expanse (and before it Comet) provided the GPUs used for network design and training.”

The Role of NSF ACCESS Allocations

SDSC’s Expanse operates as a national resource within the NSF’s advanced cyberinfrastructure ecosystem, originally under XSEDE and now via the NSF ACCESS program. Through ACCESS, Norman’s group receives peer‑reviewed allocations that provide the compute hours, storage and support needed to execute multi‑million‑core‑hour campaigns that couple large cosmological simulations with machine‑learning surrogates like StarNet.

These allocations also connect the project to training and consulting services, helping students and postdocs optimize codes, improve I/O performance and adopt new scheduling and workflow tools tuned for Expanse’s architecture. The combination of hardware access and human expertise accelerates time‑to‑science, allowing the team to iterate more quickly between model development, production runs and comparison with survey data.

“Expanse continues to be the workhorse for our cosmology simulations — its mix of CPU and GPU capability, along with support from SDSC staff, lets us tackle problems that simply weren’t feasible a few years ago, especially now that we are embedding AI surrogate models like StarNet directly into our runs,” Norman said. “Equally important, the NSF ACCESS allocations program is what puts this system within reach of our research group; without that national‑scale support, we wouldn’t be running the large ensembles and high‑resolution simulations that drive our science forward.”

The Next Generation of Primordial Star Exploration

StarNet is now part of Enzo-E, the next-generation Enzo code used worldwide for astrophysics and cosmology. Norman plans to continue this work on the U.S. National Science Foundation Leadership-Class Computing Facility supercomputer, Horizon.

“The combination of Enzo-E, StarNet and Horizon will allow us to carry out the large survey simulations we are targeting. With StarNet, we can accelerate the speed at which we can simulate the early universe allowing us to simulate larger volumes and hence the formation of more galaxies for comparison with observations,” he said.

These simulations require a dual capability: high spatial resolution to resolve individual galaxy physics and large volumes to capture statistically meaningful populations.”This can be accomplished with adaptive mesh refinement cosmological hydrodynamic simulations running at full scale on LCCF. On LCCF Phase 1 (Frontera), we have developed the Enzo-E application to do just this. We are optimizing Enzo-E’s performance on TACC’s Vista supercomputer in anticipation of Horizon.”

“High end computational resources like those through the NSF LCCF are essential to decoding the discoveries being made using the new generation of telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope,” Norman said. “Simulations and observations are complimentary ways of learning about the early universe. Used together, we can learn new amazing things about our universe and how it got to be the way it is.”

Support on Expanse is provided by U.S. NSF ACCESS (allocation no. AST200019). Early Horizon allocations information can be found here.

Adapted from a press release by Kimberly Mann Bruch, San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Source: Jorge Salazar, TACC

The post SDSC and TACC Supercomputers Enable StarNet AI to Accelerate Cosmology Simulations appeared first on HPCwire.

Pop star Britney Spears said she was "totally fine" to drive and had not had a drink for about six hours when she was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best fan overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan – stock expected at end of May

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with NATO foreign ministers in Sweden, the focus is on the U.S. moving to reduce its military footprint in Europe.

Amazon opens an inquiry into Nicole Saphier’s product compliance following Guardian inquiry. White House says she will be a ‘powerful asset’ for Maha agenda

Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general sells an herbal supplement that contains an ingredient prohibited by the US military and which health experts have warned can cause liver damage.

Dr Nicole Saphier’s record of selling dietary supplements, which are only loosely regulated in the US, has raised concern among doctors and consumer advocates, some of whom allege she sells “snake oil”.

Nicolas Cage and Li Jun Li are a pleasure to watch on screen in a series that nails the shadowy tone of noir.

Kyle Busch, 41, died suddenly on Thursday after being hospitalized with an illness, according to his team.

Key sticking point to building beauty powerhouse was level compensation demanded by Charlotte Tilbury

• Business live – latest updates

The US cosmetics company Estée Lauder has ended talks with its Spanish rival Puig about a merger that would have created a fashion and beauty group worth almost $40bn (£30bn).

Estée Lauder, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of skincare, makeup and fragrances, owns brands including Clinique, Bobbi Brown and Tom Ford Beauty.

• 41-year-old died after hospitalization for severe illness

• Earnhardt, Hamlin and Gordon pay tribute

• Fans honor driver by donating to IVF foundation

Longtime teammates, former rivals and others around the sports world have joined the wave of condolences over the sudden death of Nascar driver Kyle Busch on Thursday.

Busch, a two-time Cup Series champion who was the winningest driver across the sport’s three series in history, died at 41 after being hospitalized earlier Thursday with a severe illness. No cause of death has been announced.

‘This is a change byelection,’ says Labour mayor as he launches bid for Makerfield seat and lays out policy views

• UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham has formally launched his campaign for the Makerfield byelection with a barely coded pitch for Downing Street, saying a vote for him to become the MP there was “a vote to change Labour”.

While not explicitly saying that he would seek to replace Keir Starmer, the Greater Manchester mayor used a speech to Labour MPs and activists in the constituency, followed by questions from the media , to lay out a series of national policy views, including on economy, immigration and electoral reform.

London mayor accused of ‘putting politics above public safety’ for rejecting deal to use AI in intelligence analysis

• UK politics live – latest updates

Palantir has accused Sadiq Khan of “putting politics above public safety” after the London mayor blocked its £50m contract with the Metropolitan police in a move that has also led to tensions inside Labour over its involvement with the US tech company.

Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir in the UK and Europe, accused Khan of politicising procurement after he rejected a two-year deal for Scotland Yard to use AI to process intelligence in criminal investigations, as first revealed by the Guardian. Mosley said: “What Londoners value is not being mugged, not being raped by a serving police officer.”

The appeal marked the first significant update since the former British prince was arrested in February over allegations of misconduct while in office.

Prosecutors may face sanctions over redactions to grand jury transcripts linked to four of ‘Broadview Six’ defendants

Federal prosecutors have decided to drop all remaining criminal charges against four people indicted in October after protesting outside a suburban Chicago immigration detention center in the latest such case to unravel for the Trump administration.

Andrew Boutros, a US attorney, made the announcement on Thursday after a meeting about redactions made by prosecutors to a set of grand jury transcripts.

Biologist was fired by a state agency for criticizing Charlie Kirk on social media after his shooting death

Florida officials have agreed to pay nearly half a million dollars to a biologist who was fired by a state agency for criticizing conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on social media after his shooting death.

The state’s fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC) fired biologist Brittney Brown in September after she reposted a meme on her personal Instagram account that claimed Kirk wouldn’t care about children being shot in their classrooms. She filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement, saying she struggled to find other work because the state agency is the regulatory body for her research specialization in bird conservation.

What does a surge in ocean temperatures, compounded with El Niño, bode for the summer?

An enormous marine heatwave off the US west coast is ringing alarm bells among ocean and atmospheric scientists as new data shows its ecological and environmental effects are intensifying.

The unusual area of warm water has persisted since peaking in size during September 2025 and still stretches thousands of miles from the California coastline – more than halfway across the Pacific – affecting a vast triangle-shaped region of oceanic habitats from Hawaii to British Columbia and southward to Mexico.

BOULDER, Colo., May 22, 2026 — Atom Computing has announced it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce to receive $100 million of funding to accelerate development of fault-tolerant, utility-scale quantum computing. This announcement marks a significant step in the government’s support of American efforts to advance critical quantum technologies and strengthen the United States’ leadership in next-generation computing.

As global competition for quantum leadership intensifies, the LOI from the Department of Commerce demonstrates that the U.S. Government is committed to the long-term success of foundational quantum technologies.

Atom Computing’s unique approach to quantum computing, utilizing arrays of optically-trapped neutral atoms, is widely recognized as one of the most viable paths to reaching commercial utility. The company has emerged as an industry leader by pioneering the use of this technology for quantum systems and is currently installing the world’s first commercial quantum computer with logical qubits. Atom also performed on Stage A of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) and is currently performing on Stage B, where it is demonstrating its path to utility-scale quantum computing.

“This investment will allow us to move faster than ever and strengthens the United States’ leadership in quantum computing,” said Ben Bloom, Founder and CEO of Atom Computing. “With this support, we will be accelerating key engineering advances needed to deliver full-scale quantum systems powered by our neutral-atom technology.”

With the Commerce Department’s support, Atom Computing will accelerate its technology roadmap through targeted engineering initiatives, including:

• In-house development of critical components to drive performance and integration
• Parallelized testbeds to rapidly validate and scale innovations
• Enhanced collaborations with supply chain partners to support manufacturability and growth

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

The federal government’s intended support stands alongside continued backing from Atom Computing’s early-stage and institutional investors, who have long supported the company’s focus on scalability and engineering rigor.

“DCVC has been invested in Atom Computing from the start, and we are excited to see this bold and timely bet that accelerates the company’s roadmap to a neutral atom based, fault tolerant quantum computer,” said Dr. Prineha Narang, a DCVC Operating Partner.

Robert Schwartz, Managing Partner at Third Point Ventures, added, “This milestone is a powerful validation of Atom’s commercial maturity and technical leadership. We are thrilled to see the U.S. government recognize what we’ve known since our initial investment: Atom Computing is perfectly positioned to lead the development of scaled, performant, practical quantum computers and this technology will ultimately be as important as artificial intelligence.”

The timelines for achieving economically valuable quantum computing are continuing to shrink as breakthroughs accelerate across the industry. Atom Computing is well-positioned to capitalize on this momentum and continue leading the development and commercialization of quantum technologies.

More from HPCwire: US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing

About Atom Computing

Atom Computing is developing large-scale quantum computers to enable companies and researchers to achieve unprecedented computational breakthroughs. Utilizing highly scalable arrays of optically trapped neutral atoms, the company has developed systems with over 1,000 qubits, featuring advanced capabilities towards fault-tolerant quantum computing. Atom Computing’s on-premises systems provide customers with new computational tools and logical qubit capabilities to address increasingly complex applications and to grow their quantum ecosystem.

Source: Atom Computing

The post Atom Computing Announces LOI with US Commerce Dept. for $100M to Accelerate Path to Fault-Tolerant, Utility-Scale Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

• Cleveland Cavaliers 93-109 New York Knicks

• Hart leads with playoff-best 26 points

• Knicks extend winning streak to nine games

Josh Hart scored a playoff career-high 26 points, Jalen Brunson had 19 points and 14 assists, and the New York Knicks moved halfway to their first NBA finals appearance since 1999 by beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 109-93 on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.

Mikal Bridges also scored 19 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 18 points and 13 rebounds for the Knicks, who won their ninth straight game. It is the NBA’s longest postseason winning streak since the Boston Celtics won 10 straight on their way to the 2024 championship.

Targeting of foreign activists drew global outrage from governments that have not acted on violence against Palestinian detainees

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made abuse of detained Palestinians something of a macabre calling card, celebrating cruelty publicly and often on video.

During his time in office, violence including rape, extreme hunger and humiliation have been normalised in Israeli jails. Rights groups say detention centres have become “torture camps” for Palestinians.

A comparison of channels on services including YouTube TV, Sling, Fubo and more.

US social media firms acting on orders from Middle East kingdom accused of being ‘instruments of repression’

Major US social media companies including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms have blocked the accounts of Saudi Arabian dissidents so they are no longer visible inside the kingdom, following orders by Saudi authorities.

Those affected include Abdullah Alaoudh, a US-based activist and vocal critic of Saudi human rights violations, and Omar Abdulaziz, a Canada and UK-based activist who worked closely with Jamal Khashoggi before the journalist’s murder by Saudi agents in 2018.

WASHINGTON, May 22, 2026 — Quantinuum has announced a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Research and Development Office. The letter of intent proposes that Quantinuum would receive federal funding to enable the development of large-scale, fault-tolerant trapped-ion quantum computers that are of national strategic importance.

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

Key to this initiative is overcoming specific technical bottlenecks and strengthening domestic supply chains and manufacturing capabilities, consistent with the U.S. government’s goal of growing its leadership in semiconductor technology and accelerating the commercialization of frontier industries, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

“Quantum computing has the potential to unlock new possibilities across science, industry, and national priorities for decades to come,” said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, President and CEO of Quantinuum. “This collaboration with the Department of Commerce is designed to help Quantinuum’s path to large-scale, fault-tolerant trapped-ion systems while strengthening the U.S. innovation and manufacturing ecosystem.”

The letter of intent supports Quantinuum’s plan to partner with the CHIPS R&D Office and onshore suppliers GlobalFoundries, for critical semiconductor components, and Monarch Quantum, for integrated photonics, to further optimize key engineering pathways for components within Quantinuum’s future commercial roadmap.

“GlobalFoundries is excited to partner with Quantinuum on their ion-trap quantum technology,” said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries. “We believe GF’s differentiated semiconductor platforms in cryo-CMOS, cryo-3D interconnect, and advanced packaging, combined with Quantinuum’s deep ion-trap expertise, will help Quantinuum accelerate their quantum system scale-up roadmap to utility-scale quantum computing.”

“Monarch Quantum is proud to partner with Quantinuum to advance U.S. leadership in next-generation computing infrastructure,” said Dr. Timothy Day, Chairman & CEO of Monarch Quantum. “By delivering advanced integrated photonics through a resilient domestic supply chain, we are committed to supporting the secure, scalable manufacturing required for fault-tolerant quantum systems.”

In addition to strengthening domestic semiconductor manufacturing and supply chain resilience, this initiative is expected to support development of a specialized workforce for next-generation quantum computing technologies.

More from HPCwire: US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing

About Quantinuum

Quantinuum is a leading quantum computing company offering a full-stack platform designed to make quantum computing deployable in real-world environments. The company has commercially deployed multiple generations of trapped-ion based quantum systems built on the well-established QCCD architecture, which it has implemented with novel designs and capabilities to achieve the industry’s highest accuracy levels based on average two-qubit gate fidelity. Quantinuum has active engagements with market leaders across pharmaceuticals, material science, financial services, and government and industrial markets.

Source: Quantinuum

The post Quantinuum Signs CHIPS LOI to Advance Fault-Tolerant Trapped-Ion Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

The Secretary of State tempered optimism for a deal to end the Iran war, calling Iran's bid to "create a tolling system" in the Strait of Hormuz "not acceptable."

The Food and Drug Administration in recent months has approved a small number of drugs quite quickly under a new expedited review program. But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has overstated the impact of the program by making misleading comparisons to the pace of drug approvals in the past.

“We just approved two new drugs, two new oncology drugs, in record time, one in 45 days,” Kennedy said at an April 16 congressional hearing, adding that the other was approved in 55 days. “The closest before that was 310 days.” At another hearing that same day, he called the two approvals the “fastest in history.”

The cancer drugs weren’t completely new drugs. Instead, the FDA approved an expanded use, or indication, for a https://web.archive.org/web/20260507202133/https:/www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-grants-second-approval-under-national-priority-voucher-pilot-programpreviously approved drug and a new https://web.archive.org/web/20260511151240/https:/www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-grants-third-approval-under-national-priority-voucher-programcombination of previously approved drugs, reviewing the drugs 44 and 55 days after filing, according to FDA news releases. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s 310-days figure is the average new drug application review time for 2025, according to April 1 https://x.com/DrMakaryFDA/status/2039433177752576065remarks by now-former FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.

Dr. https://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/faculty-staff/aaron-seth-kesselheimAaron Kesselheim, who studies the regulation of drugs at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told us that comparing the fast recent oncology approvals to an average for all drugs is like “comparing apples and gorillas.” The recent oncology approvals would have been easier to review to begin with since they were for new indications, he said, even without the FDA’s new expedited program.

Nor is it unprecedented for the agency to approve certain drugs more quickly, or far more quickly, than the average.

The FDA announced the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher pilot program in June 2025, the latest in a long line of efforts over decades to expedite approvals of certain drugs. The CNPV program says it aims to “dramatically reduce review times” for drugs that meet national health priorities, with target review times of one to two months. Seven drugs have so far completed review through the program.

Makary, who resigned from his position on May 12, has made similar claims. In a May 5 interview with CNBC, Makary said that the FDA “got those decisions out in 44 days and 55 days instead of a year,” for example.

It’s a “little bit soon to evaluate” the overall impact of current policies on drug approval speeds, Kesselheim said, given the “relatively small” number of drugs that have been reviewed entirely under the watch of the new administration. “There’s no evidence that there’s been any major change yet in this administration,” he said.

Kennedy was also wrong to say that the oncology drugs were approved “in record time.” Makary acknowledged an even faster approval of an HIV drug in the 1990s. (However, the FDA later, on May 8, approved a new indication for a third cancer drug even more quickly, tying the previous record Makary mentioned.)

The HHS secretary further claimed the number of new and generic drug approvals under the Trump administration in 2025 were each a “record.” But information on the FDA’s website contradicts that. The agency didn’t reply to our questions about these claims.

‘Comparing Apples and Gorillas’

As we said, Kennedy’s and Makary’s comparisons of the recent oncology drug approvals with previous review times of 10 months to a year are misleading.

The 44-day oncology review Kennedy has promoted was of zongertinib, a drug originally approved in 2025 to treat a subset of patients with advanced lung cancer. In February 2026, the agency expanded the group of patients for whom the drug was approved to include those who had not received prior treatment.

“Zongertinib was an expansion of an already-approved indication, which is completely outside of what we are talking about in terms of average review times,” Kesselheim said. This is “an already-approved drug with a known efficacy for a certain indication, a known safety profile,” he continued. “The manufacturer is submitting a little bit more evidence to support a label expansion to a very closely connected indication.” 

Studies have long shown that supplemental indications take a shorter time to review than applications submitted for drugs that have never been approved before.

After a drugmaker submits an application to the FDA, the agency has 60 days to review the application and decide whether to “file” it. Using the FDA’s website, we’re able to see the time from a drugmaker’s submission to FDA approval, as this is the information in the agency’s approval letters.

Kennedy’s and Makary’s figures, however, measure drug review times from when the FDA files the application, according to FDA press releases.  

The CNPV program aims to get more materials from drug companies during a 60-day presubmission period and to shorten the 60-day filing period, including by using artificial intelligence-based tools. The goal is to review drugs within around one to two months after the FDA files the application, with a possibility to extend the timeline.

“The required pre-submissions and extensions make these reviews feasible, but they also implicitly acknowledge that true 30 to 60–day reviews are unlikely,” Ryan Conrad, an economist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in an October commentary. “While these reviews will take longer than advertised, they are designed to be faster than existing timelines,” he added.

For zongertinib, the FDA spent 235 days — or a little under eight months — reviewing the drug’s original application, from the time it was submitted. The FDA then spent a total of 104 days reviewing the application for zongertinib’s expanded indication, which includes the 60-day filing period plus the 44 days it took the FDA to review the application after filing it.

The other oncology approval, whose 55-day review from filing Kennedy and Makary promoted, was for Tec-Dara, a combination of drugs approved to treat the blood cancer multiple myeloma. The drug was approved 90 days after submission. However, the two drugs making up the combination had previously been approved to treat the same cancer type. This sort of approval “does not require the same sort of start-from-scratch review that a new drug that had never been on the market before we would expect to be subject to,” Kesselheim said.

Kennedy compared these approvals to an average 310-day drug review time in 2025, a figure Makary had cited. We found that figure to be plausible. We calculated an average of around 366 days from the time of submission to approval for new drug applications, the type of application Makary’s presentation mentioned. This is roughly in keeping with Makary’s estimate, assuming that his number does not include the FDA filing period of up to 60 days.

The latest CNPV approval, on May 8, was again for an expanded indication for a cancer drug targeted to tumors with a particular genetic mutation. The drug, zenocutuzumab, was approved for patients with a rare bile duct cancer, expanded from a prior approval for patients with lung and pancreatic cancer with the same mutation.

As for the other drugs thus far approved under the CNPV program, many had some additional characteristics that may have sped up their approvals regardless. 

For example, the FDA in an April 1 press release promoted the approval of orforglipron, a new oral GLP-1 for weight loss, in 50 days from filing, or 71 days from submission. These drugs “have been around for 2 decades after being discovered based on publicly funded research in the 1980s and 1990s,” Kesselheim said. “So that’s another example of a drug class with a long track record for which this is a new formulation.” The agency also approved a higher dose of a previously approved GLP-1 drug.

The CNPV program’s first action in December 2025 had been to bring back an antibiotic, Augmentin XR, whose brand-name version had gone off the market. The drug is a “many decades old product that is widely available as a generic,” Kesselheim said, explaining that such applications require “far less data than new drug applications do.”

Sorting Out Claims of Record Approvals

Kennedy also claimed the administration was setting records for the number of drugs approved, but we found information that contradicts that.

“We have broken every record for drug approvals,” he said during the April 16 congressional hearing, a claim he repeated at an April 21 hearing. “We approved 67 drugs this year, new drugs,” he said, calling this a record. “We approved 91 new generic drugs, which is a record,” he continued. HHS social media accounts also shared these claims.

Kennedy’s 67 figure matches the number of medications and certain other products approved in 2025 by the FDA’s drugs and biologics divisions, when added together. However, when adding up the equivalent approvals from 2024, we found that the agency had approved 69 products. Kennedy’s claim of a record 91 generic approvals again matches the number of 2025 approvals for first-time generics. But as recently as 2022, there were 107 such approvals.

Makary, by contrast, called the 67 approvals a “near record” in his presentation to FDA staff and again during his May 5 CNBC interview. A report from the FDA on a subset of drugs and biologics approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research found the number of approvals in 2025 was “similar to the average for the last five years.”

As for the drug review speeds, Kennedy touted the reviews of the expanded oncology indications as records, while Makary said the 44- and 55-day reviews came near the record-breaking approval of an HIV drug. The 42 days it took to approve the HIV drug, Crixivan, in 1996 was from submission to approval, however, while the HHS officials counted from a later milestone for the two recent oncology approvals, as we explained.

From submission to approval, the recent oncology reviews took 104 and 90 days.

Long History of Expedited Review

In the 1980s, the FDA had low funding and average drug review times of two to three years, Kesselheim explained. In 1992, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which required companies applying for drug approval to pay a user fee, allowing the FDA to hire more staff. The law also set a standard review deadline of 12 months and eventually 10 months from filing, and it created priority review status for certain drugs, which had a review deadline of six months.

“Very quickly after that, review times fell,” Kesselheim said.

Expedited FDA review programs have accumulated over time, and there are currently four main pathways, plus the CNPV pathway and other initiatives aimed at shortening review. The programs have been criticized for expanding to include a majority of drugs, without necessarily requiring companies to show their drugs have greater therapeutic value than other options, and for approvals of drugs that later turn out to have previously unknown safety issues or to be less effective than initially thought.

Studies agree that drug review speeds in the U.S. decreased rapidly in the late 1980s and 1990s, and that reviews in the U.S. have since been among the fastest in the world.

A study by Kesselheim and his colleagues found that review times “declined from more than 3 years in 1983 to less than 1 year in 2017.” By 2018, median FDA review times for drugs in the standard review pathway had fallen to a little over 10 months, and to 7.6 months for drugs in the priority review program.

Another study found that median review time from submission fell from more than two years before the passage of PDUFA in 1992 to a little over a year over the following two decades, to under 10 months in the decade after that.

However, data from the U.K.’s Centre for Innovation in Regulatory Science showed that FDA review times from submission inched up in recent years, reaching a median of more than 11 months from 2022 through 2024.

Regardless of the average review time, there is precedent for the FDA to approve some drugs quite quickly. To name a few oncology examples, the agency in 2001 approved Gleevec, a treatment that transformed the prognosis for an often-fatal form of leukemia, 72 days after the drug’s application was submitted. It would go on to approve two other leukemia drugs in 75 and 78 days.

In the case of the CNPV program, it is not entirely clear what qualifies a drug for https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2026/03/13/hazards-ahead-for-fdas-drug-review-process/fast review or who makes the selection, according to former and current FDA staff and regulatory policy experts quoted in several news reports. The administration in February released some details on selection, but questions remain.

Vouchers have been awarded after drugmakers discussed deals with the Trump administration to lower drug prices. Last month, the FDA also added three psychedelics to the program amid a larger effort from the White House to boost the drugs, after President Donald Trump said that podcaster Joe Rogan and others had talked to him.

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 RFK Jr.’s Muddled Claims on Drug Approval Speed appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book makes me think of my backyard, and Borges.

Labour MPs and PR experts praise his refreshingly forthright approach that is a marked contrast to Keir Starmer

• UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham’s fingers must be aching. Between pitching to become the MP for Makerfield, continuing in his day job as the mayor of Greater Manchester and going for his regular runs, Keir Starmer’s would-be challenger has also found enough time to reply to dozens of posts on social media.

Since it became clear that Burnham planned to stand as a candidate in the Makerfield byelection last Thursday, allies have delighted in his snarky retorts on X, pointing to posts that combine humour with a passive-aggressive thumbs-up emoji as proof he is a natural, and refreshingly forthright, communicator.

preview3 is out now: Release Refloat 1.3.0-preview3 · lukash/refloat · GitHub

It mainly addresses a computation error in Torque Tilt Strengths, resulting in the Strengths only resulting in 37% of their intended value. Plus a few more fixes and a couple new LED features, it’s all in the changelog.

One thing I noticed is people with old tunes often have very low Torque Tilt and ATR Tiltback Speeds (e.g. 5 degs/s and 3 degs/s). If you install this, please check your speeds and if unsure, just start with resetting them to the current defaults.

In a country where their rights are being attacked from all sides, it’s time for Black college athletes to utilize their power

Six years after the nation underwent a so-called “racial reckoning”, Black America is under comprehensive assault.

The assault comes from the country’s highest elected office, where the president has, from the first day of his re-inauguration, made clear his belief that it is the white people of the world who are the true victims of racial discrimination. He has codified into policy what many non-Black Americans of all political persuasions believe quietly in public and loudly among themselves: the accomplishments and positions of Black people are the byproduct of unfair workplace diversity initiatives and not the people in question’s talent, hard work, ambition. As it limits immigration to the United States from the rest of the world, the administration earlier this week announced plans to allow entry to an additional 10,000 white South Africans as an “emergency response” to anti-white discrimination. The New York Times reported this will cost taxpayers roughly $100m.

Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.

The world’s richest man can’t stop posting about how Lupita Nyong’o was chosen to play an imaginary woman

It was the casting choice that launched a thousand meltdowns. The Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o was confirmed as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and the usual suspects immediately started squealing that the fall of western civilization was nigh.

Elon Musk, a man in possession of the world’s thinnest skin and fattest bank account, is obviously among the aggrieved. Musk started moaning about The Odyssey in January, when it was rumoured that Nyong’o had the role. Since a 12 May interview with Nolan in Time magazine made this casting official, Musk hasn’t stopped whining; he’s spent roughly a week attacking Nyong’o on X and amplifying other angry bigots. His main arguments appear to be that this is a historically inaccurate rendering of a mythological poem; Nyong’o, who was named People magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman” in 2014, is not sufficiently beautiful; and the casting of a Black woman in a movie nobody is forcing him to watch is inextricably intertwined with a leftwing plot to undermine western society.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

The Islamic Center of San Diego, rocked by tragedy, opens its doors again to support its congregants and welcome outsiders

Teacher’s assistant Iman Khatib was administering tests at the elementary school inside the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD) when she heard the bangs. She locked the classroom door, turned off the lights, silenced her phone and walkie-talkie, and crawled under a desk with her co-worker.

In the preschool classrooms nearby, three- and four-year-olds did the same – staying completely silent, hiding in corners, following the protocols they had been taught during drills. Outside, the first-grade class was at recess when the first shot rang out.

CHIPS Incentive would advance quantum computing technologies critical to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security

LOUISVILLE, Colo., May 22, 2026 — Infleqtion has announced it signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Research and Development Office for $100 million in proposed funding contingent on achievement of certain development milestones to accelerate U.S. based quantum computing technologies. The investment will accelerate Infleqtion’s development of neutral-atom quantum systems as the United States expands domestic computing capabilities critical to economic competitiveness and national security.

“Quantum computing is emerging as a foundational technology for economic competitiveness, technological leadership, and national security,” said Matt Kinsella, Chief Executive Officer of Infleqtion. “This investment reflects the transformative potential of quantum innovation, and we’re honored to work with the Department of Commerce to accelerate U.S. leadership in quantum computing.”

Even with continued advances in AI and classical computing, many critical problems in chemistry, materials science, energy and national security remain beyond the practical limits of conventional computing architectures. Quantum systems are emerging as an important new computing approach for addressing these challenges, with the potential to unlock new advances in materials discovery, energy infrastructure, chemistry and national security.

Infleqtion has been an early leader in neutral-atom quantum systems, which operate at room temperature and are already supporting deployable quantum systems in operational environments. The company is developing quantum technologies designed to support national security, energy and advanced computing applications.

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”

“NVIDIA and Infleqtion have long worked together to accelerate the capability of quantum computing through integration of quantum processors with GPU supercomputing,” said Timothy Costa, Vice President and General Manager for Quantum at NVIDIA. “This announcement is an important milestone for developing large-scale quantum computing systems in the United States, and we’re excited to continue supporting Infleqtion on this journey.”

The LOI proposes support for work focused on advancing neutral-atom quantum systems in the United States, including quantum hardware, photonics and quantum system development. The program is expected to support the continued expansion of quantum engineering, workforce, hardware, software and infrastructure capabilities across Infleqtion’s U.S. operations, strengthening domestic quantum computing capabilities critical to economic competitiveness and national security. Infleqtion operates quantum innovation centers in Boulder, Chicago and Madison supporting the development and deployment of quantum technologies in the United States.

The LOI contemplates a portion of the award being funded up front and the remainder funded on a milestone-based award structure tied to eligible project costs and technical progress. The LOI also contemplates taxpayer upside through the issuance of Infleqtion common stock to the Department on the award date with a value of $100 million at a 15% discount to market based on the closing price on the execution date of the LOI or the definitive agreement, whichever is lower. The securities are expected to be held on a passive basis. Final terms remain subject to definitive award documents and required approvals. The proposed funding is contingent on completion of diligence and definitive award documents and internal approvals of the U.S. Government.

More from HPCwire: US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing

About Infleqtion

Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global quantum technology company built on a single neutral-atom platform spanning quantum computing, sensing, and software. Infleqtion’s platform combines hardware and software to support multiple products and markets from a common quantum core. The company is already deploying quantum technologies in operational environments across government, defense, energy, and space. Infleqtion’s technologies support programs and collaborations with the U.S. Department of War, NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.K. government, and NVIDIA. With operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Infleqtion is advancing neutral-atom quantum technologies for computing, sensing, and software applications.

Source: Infleqtion

The post Infleqtion Signs LOI with the US Department of Commerce for $100M appeared first on HPCwire.

We've tested dozens of security kits to find which deliver the best safety and reliability.

Plus, John Travolta’s beret, Rachel Reeves reclaims basic civility and Judy Garland comes to east London

Much discussion in my household this week about the possibility of hantavirus or Ebola becoming Covid-like in their spread. As darkening news from central Africa throws the withdrawal of US international aid into terrible relief, so we revisit memories of those early months of 2020 when reports of a strange virus in China slowly crept from final item on the news list to blaring emergency.

Bill Winters faced backlash over remarks about some of near 8,000 staff set to lose roles to AI

The chief executive of Standard Chartered has apologised for referring to some of the almost 8,000 staff that are set to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence as “lower-value human capital”.

Bill Winters offered the apology after a backlash over comments he made earlier this week as the London-headquartered lender became one of the first major global banks to lay out plans to cut about 7,800 back-office roles, primarily in response to AI.

At least five climbers have died during this Everest season. A U.S. and a Czech climber died on Mount Makalu earlier this month.

The settlement claim period has been extended. Here's how to file before the Sept. 14 deadline.

Stephen Colbert hosted "The Late Show" for the final time Thursday night as the franchise came to an end after 33 years.

Commentary: I attended my first Google I/O conference this week in Mountain View. And I think I feel confused.

Italy’s president leads tributes to campaigner who spent four decades promoting sustainability and local cuisine

Carlo Petrini, the journalist who founded the Slow Food movement in protest against the arrival of the first McDonald’s in Italy, has died aged 76.

Petrini, who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in recent years, died in his home town of Bra in northern Italy’s Piedmont region. He had led Slow Food, which since 1986 has campaigned against fast-food culture by promoting sustainability and local cuisine, as president until 2022.

Police found the body of a man stuffed in a barrel following a shooting in a restaurant that led to the arrest of Belgrade's police chief, prosecutors said.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
Delaware second largest city is moving forward with a plan to close a budget shortfall by raising residents’ taxes and cutting departmental budgets. City council and staff say they have tried to keep tax increases at a minimum by tapping into all possible funding sources.

Following weeks of uncertainty, Dover city officials have reached a consensus about how to close a $7 million budget shortfall. They say they will raise residents’ property taxes and electricity bills.  

The budget plan, which passed nearly unanimously at a city council workshop on Wednesday evening, includes a 3 cent increase per $100 of assessed value on city residents’ property taxes, and a 1 cent increase to their current per-kilowatt-hour electric usage rate. 

The City Council still must formally approve the plan.

According to example bills presented by city staff during the workshop, the increases would cause a resident who owns a $150,000 home to pay $15 more toward taxes and energy during a mild weather month, and $25.50 more during an intense weather month.

Those increases — combined with substantial cuts, including to road improvements — will allow the city to move forward with a balanced budget this year. But questions still loom as to how Delaware’s capital city will develop more sustainable budget solutions in the years to come.

The budget will be formally introduced and subsequently voted on during upcoming city council meetings in June. 

Acting City Manager Sharon Duca said the budget still could see minor revisions between now and its first reading on June 8, but the final ordinance is likely to look similar to the plan council members approved on Wednesday. 

‘Finding the money’

In addition to the tax increases, the city cut millions of dollars across multiple departments.

The cuts include freezing hiring for all vacant positions, postponing new vehicle and equipment purchases, and pausing capital improvement projects like repaving roads and improving water quality. 

The city council reviewed and debated the budget proposal submitted by Duca’s office during a two-day budget workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Some council members pushed for the city to draw more money from other places, such as a fund earmarked for new business development, or defund the city’s police training academy, instead of raising taxes. 

Ultimately, Councilman Brian Lewis was the only vote against advancing the budget with tax increases. Councilwoman Julia Pillsbury was absent from the workshop.

Lewis told Spotlight Delaware he is too worried about the impact the increases will have on senior citizens and other residents strapped for money in his district. He still wants the city to “seek more revenue sources” to close the budget gap instead of turning to a property tax increase, he said. 

Other elected officials said they are pleased the city was able to resolve its large budget shortfall with a relatively minor tax increase – and without dipping into the city’s budget reserves, as they have done in other recent years. 

“I think we’re doing the best that we possibly can, and we will have a balanced budget with a minimal increase in the property tax rate,” Council President Fred Neil said. 

A couple of Dover residents showed up to the budget workshops to express opposition to the proposed tax rate increases, and the city’s budget shortfall situation more generally.

“Leave my taxes alone and my pocket alone and take it from your pocket,” resident Bonnie Pennington said. “We’re sitting here talking to y’all, and nothing is getting done.”

City staff also sounded an alarm during the meeting. Having such a lean budget, and delaying improvement projects is not sustainable in the long term, they said.

“The level of deferments in fiscal year 2027 is not sustainable,” Duca said. “There’s often been a saying of, ‘Find the money.’ Finding the money is not an option.”

Crunching the numbers 

The capital city originally faced a $13 million budget shortfall when it began its budgeting process earlier this year. 

Spending cuts across multiple departments decreased that shortfall to $7 million earlier this month, and the newly proposed tax increases will balance the city’s revenues and expenses at $57.6 million for the next fiscal year.

Duca described her focus while revising the initial budget as maintaining essential services while minimizing increased fees imposed on residents. 

The increased electric usage fee will provide $6 million in revenue to the city, while the raised property taxes are projected to generate an additional $1.1 million, Duca said.  

The city also plans to implement a monthly public safety fee at a staggered rate for commercial properties, depending on their size, Duca said. This will divide the funding burden for the police department between residents and businesses, and cover more of the roughly $25 million gap between the Dover Police Department’s budgeted expenses and the revenues it brings in.

The original budget proposal included a larger property tax increase and a public safety fee on residential properties, in addition to businesses, in order to raise the funds to close the shortfall.

But the General Assembly confirmed this week it would pay the city of Dover $1.6 million for fire and police services the city provides to Delaware State University, leading council members to reduce the property tax increase and strike the residential public safety fee entirely.

The Dover Police Department is by far the largest and most expensive department in the city’s budget, making up more than 48% of total expenditures under the revised budget figures.

The department, which has drawn considerable attention over the past year due to conflict between Chief Thomas Johnson and the local police union, was the only department set to receive a sizable 8% increase in funds and to hire more positions in the originally drafted budget.

In the reworked budget, however, the police department’s allocation was cut down. It no longer includes any new positions and features a smaller 5% total department budget increase – up from $25.7 million last year to $26.3 million this year. 

The department’s budget also includes about $670,000 to be spent on Flock security cameras and body-worn cameras for officers, as part of a five-year lease program that is paid out incrementally each year. 

Throughout the budgeting process, city council members  have homed in on the fact that roughly 40% of property in the city is exempt from paying property taxes —properties like the Dover Air Force Base, DSU and Legislative Hall — causing a major hit to the city’s tax revenue. 

Elected officials pointed to the public safety fee proposed as a part of this year’s budget, and the higher education public safety fund from the General Assembly, as helpful ways to offset the impacts of revenue lost from the nontaxable property in the city. 

The city also receives payment in lieu of taxes – or PILOT money – from the state for the large tax-exempt properties within its limit. 

Duca said the PILOT money allocated to Dover is included in the city’s projected $18.2 million in property tax revenue. She declined to say specifically how much the city receives in PILOT money, instead directing Spotlight Delaware to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for the information.

A debate over approach 

While city council members lauded the two days of workshops as a relatively collaborative effort, some disagreements arose over raising property taxes and how much to prioritize police department funding. 

Lewis, the lone vote against approving the budget plan, proposed that the city use the remaining $1.6 million in its Economic Development Fund — typically used to purchase properties for businesses or other infrastructure improvements to attract businesses — to offset the need for a property tax increase. 

But his suggestion was rejected as other council members described the economic development fund as a key engine for drawing future businesses to the city, and ultimately expanding its tax base. 

“I’m reminded of the story about if you give a person a fish, they eat for the day, if you teach a person to fish, they eat for a lifetime,” Neil said. “This [fund] is a fishing pole.” 

The budget workshops also included a lengthy — and at times heated — debate over the viability of the city’s police academy, which trains new officers for the Dover Police Department and other departments in the state. 

Councilman Roy Sudler called for the academy to be suspended until more data is provided about the revenues and costs of its operation. 

Sudler leveled charges against Dover police for not having “a stellar reputation… because [the officers] feel as though the leadership is not sufficient.” 

But other council members jumped to the academy and police department’s defense, saying they are vital to the success of the city, and to attracting more businesses and residents to downtown areas. 

“There is dollar value to the Dover Police Academy,” said Mayor Robin Christiansen, who spent most of his comments throughout the workshop defending the police department. “I would appreciate your support in keeping the police academy in place, so we can meet the public safety responsibilities of a growing city.”

Ultimately, the council directed city staff to conduct an assessment on the “sustainability” of the police academy and present findings during the June 8 city council meeting, where the budget proposal also will formally be introduced. 

Get Involved: The first reading of the Dover budget ordinance will take place at the next city council meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Monday, June 8, at Dover City Hall.

The post Dover agrees to balance budget with tax increases, department cuts  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Portugal, Spain, France and UK expected to exceed 30C on Friday and into next week, with new May records predicted

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A large swathe of western Europe is bracing for the first significant heat event of the summer, with temperatures forecast to rise to more than 10C above the norm and new monthly records for May expected to be set in possibly hundreds of places.

Temperatures across Portugal, Spain, France and the UK were expected to exceed 30C (86F) on Friday and into next week, reaching 32C in Paris and London and 35C in south-west France, with highs of up to 38C in the Guadiana and Guadalquivir regions of Spain.

Almost 19m drivers expected to hit roads over long weekend, with heaviest traffic likely to be on Friday and Saturday

An especially hot late May bank holiday weekend is expected to bring even more traffic to the roads than usual at the start of the half-term break taking place in parts of the UK, motoring organisations have warned.

With temperatures forecast to pass 30C in places by Monday, coastal roads are predicted to be among the busiest, with long queues expected towards seaside resorts and the Port of Dover, where delays in border checks are compounding the holiday rush.

After outcry over inconsistency last year, a taskforce sought to improve the league’s officiating. Now foul calls are up, and players and coaches are adjusting

The moment Rickea Jackson went down during the Chicago Sky’s game against the Minnesota Lynx is difficult to watch, even days later. Jackson, who had just brushed off physical contact right before she was hurt, was driving to the basket about halfway through the second quarter when she suddenly lurched backward and fell, pointing toward her left knee.

The Sky announced Tuesday that Jackson will miss the remainder of the 2026 season with a torn ACL, tough news to receive when she was only a handful of games into her first campaign with Chicago after an offseason trade.

While other commencement speeches have been met with boos for hyping up artificial intelligence, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak reminded college graduates that they already posses "AI" of their own: "actual intelligence." He framed AI as an attempt to duplicate brain-like routines, and encouraged students to "think different" as they enter a workforce being reshaped by automation. Business Insider reports: Steve Wozniak did what other college graduation commencement speakers couldn't this year: earn applause when talking about AI. The Apple cofounder took the stage during Grand Valley State University's graduation ceremony earlier this month. During his speech, Wozniak offered reassurance to new graduates who are entering the workforce at the height of the AI revolution. "It would take too long to go deeply into what I think about AI, but we've been trying to create a brain," Wozniak said. "Is there a way we can duplicate a routine a trillion times and have it work like a brain? AI is one of those attempts." [...] During his commencement address, Wozniak reflected on working at Apple and offered students some advice as they begin their careers. "You should always try to think different," he said. "Don't follow the same steps as a million other people. Think, is there something I can do a little different?" You can watch the clip on YouTube.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why Should Delaware Care?
The hemp-derived THC market has grown rapidly in Delaware and across the country, allowing retailers to sell intoxicating products outside the state’s licensed marijuana system. State officials say the lack of oversight has raised concerns about product safety and youth access, while hemp retailers warn that some proposed restrictions could push them out of business. Lawmakers are now split over whether those products should be folded into Delaware’s marijuana industry or regulated through a separate hemp market.

With just over a month left in Delaware’s legislative session, lawmakers are pushing competing legislation to regulate the hemp-derived THC products that have become widely available outside of the state’s licensed marijuana market.  

The intoxicating products, including gummies, vapes, and infused beverages, are part of a fast-growing industry that smoke shop owners and licensed marijuana retailers want to be able to sell. 

Now, four bills before lawmakers offer different paths to regulate them. One would fold many intoxicating hemp products into the state’s regulated marijuana industry, meaning they could only be sold at licensed marijuana stores. 

Another would create a separate regulatory structure for hemp retailers. And a third would support the second bill by clarifying that certain THC products should not be treated as marijuana.

The fourth would regulate THC-infused beverages through a framework that would allow them to be sold at liquor stores or recreational marijuana retailers.

THC-infused products have become increasingly popular since the passage of the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, which created a loophole allowing for the legal commercial and retail sale of hemp-derived substances.

Hemp is a non-intoxicating cannabis plant that contains 0.3% or less THC by dry weight. But entrepreneurial hemp farmers have figured out a way to chemically convert the non-intoxicating compound cannabidiol (CBD) from hemp into intoxicating substances like delta-9 and delta-8 THC. It’s technically legal as long as the hemp at time of harvest stays below legal thresholds.

Since then, hemp-derived THC products have become widely available at retailers, such as smoke shops, gas stations, and bodegas, even as marijuana has been strictly regulated. Critics have called that the hemp loophole. 

Those hemp retailers say some of the newly proposed restrictions could push them out of business. 

But licensed marijuana operators and state regulators argue that those businesses are selling similar intoxicating products without the same rules for testing, labeling, taxation, age restrictions, and in-state cultivation.

‘It’s THC, it’s not hemp. It’s marijuana.’

In late April, Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha (D-Wilmington) introduced House Bill 395, which would move hemp products into Delaware’s licensed marijuana system. 

The bill would also expand the definition of THC to include other variations of the compound and set a stricter 0.4 milligram total THC limit for finished products. That threshold mirrors federal language Congress passed last fall to close the hemp loophole, though the federal changes are not set to take effect until November.

Chukwuocha said his goal is to align Delaware with the federal standard while protecting consumers and limiting access to minors.

“At its core, this bill is about public safety,” he said during a House Health & Human Development Committee meeting last week.

To date, the Delaware Division of Tobacco and Alcohol Enforcement has sent 70 cease-and-desist letters to over 60 businesses selling THC products, according to DATE spokesman Lt. Michael Loiseau. The figure does not include letters that have been sent out by municipalities to different businesses. 

Under Chukwuocha’s bill, businesses outside Delaware’s marijuana industry could still sell non-intoxicating hemp products, such as CBD products, which are commonly marketed for relaxation, inflammation, and other wellness uses. 

But violations involving intoxicating products would generally be treated as a Class A misdemeanor and could rise to a Class G felony in certain cases, including if the business is near a school, daycare, or public park.

Delaware Marijuana Commissioner Joshua Sanderlin spoke in support of the bill during a committee meeting last week, arguing that intoxicating hemp products should be regulated like marijuana because they come from the same plant and can have the same psychoactive effect.

“It’s THC, it’s not hemp. It’s marijuana,” Sanderlin said.

He also argued that unlicensed hemp retailers are undercutting Delaware’s regulated marijuana industry by selling intoxicating products without following the same rules.

“What we’re trying to do in the state is stand up our legitimate program to ensure that these businesses who are investing time and money … are actually able to open,” Sanderlin said.

Sanderlin said Delaware has issued 90 of the 125 marijuana licenses allowed under the state’s recreational rollout. 

He said he plans to reopen the licensing process once those existing licensees are established, but noted that many current hemp retailers would likely be out of compliance with marijuana industry rules because they sit too closely to schools and other hemp stores.

Chukwuocha’s bill received pushback from some legislators during its committee hearing about its impacts on the small businesses that have already been operating as hemp retailers. 

Also during the meeting, marijuana retailers spoke in favor of the bill, while hemp retailers and smoke shop owners pushed back.

“I know these products are safe. I know they are tested, because if they weren’t, I wouldn’t carry them in my stores,” said Joseph Daniels, owner of Hidden Stash, a smoke shop in Laurel.

Lawmakers ultimately advanced it out of committee to the House floor.

Competing bill creates path for hemp retailers

Unlike Chukwuocha’s bill, a competing bill from Rep. Sean Lynn (D-Dover) and State Sen. Kyra Hoffner (D-Smyrna) would create a separate licensing system for hemp-derived THC products – excluding drinks.

HB 401 would allow existing hemp retailers to apply for licenses through the Office of the Marijuana Commissioner. They would only be able to sell items that contained no more than 10 milligrams of THC to adults 21 years old and older. 

Gas stations, grocery stores, and convenience stores would not be eligible for the licenses.

In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Lynn called hemp store owners “the pioneers for what became the marijuana market.” 

“So do we reward them for their advocacy and being kind of the first to explore this area by shutting down their businesses? I mean, it just doesn’t seem right,” he said. 

Lynn noted that his bill would also allow existing marijuana retailers to also sell hemp products, and asserted that there isn’t “necessarily an inherent competition there.” 

His measure would also require lab testing for potency and contaminants, warning labels, and packaging rules meant to keep products from appealing to children. 

The bill would also add a 6% state excise tax on retail hemp sales – less than the 15% tax imposed on marijuana sales. 

During a House committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers cited concerns about a provision in the bill that would restrict counties and municipalities from adopting strict rules about how far apart hemp stores could exist from each other. Some also noted that the measure would mean that the state would impose higher licensing costs and more onerous rules on retailers of marijuana than those selling hemp.

Many marijuana business licensees voiced their opposition to Lynn’s bill during the meeting. They asserted that hemp retailers would face an easy, low-cost path to gaining a license, while they faced stricter zoning, security, testing, tracking, and sourcing rules. 

“The reward for breaking state law is a ‘sell anything you want’ license’,” said James Brobyn, director of Delaware Cannabis Industry Association and owner of Field Supply dispensary.

State alcohol and tobacco regulators also opposed the bill, warning lawmakers that the bill does not clearly authorize the agency to inspect businesses, seize products, or enforce violations. 

They also said the bill focuses too narrowly on delta-9 THC, leaving loopholes for other intoxicating compounds that can be derived from hemp, such as delta-8 THC.

Lynn’s bill ultimately did not collect enough signatures to pass through committee on Wednesday, according to the General Assembly’s website. 

But he said the bill is still collecting signatures.

“My understanding is it’s getting out” of committee, Lynn said.  

Supporting Lynn’s bill is a separate piece of legislation sponsored by Sen. Hoffner, which would clarify when hemp-derived products should be treated as legal hemp rather than marijuana under Delaware law. 

The bill also sets standards for testing, and would prevent police from using the existence of hemp products as the sole basis for an arrest, search, seizure or criminal prosecution.

To be considered, Hoffner’s bill would first be discussed by the Senate Executive Committee. It is not immediately clear when, or if, it will receive a hearing in the committee.   

Asked over text message about hemp legislation, Hoffner told Spotlight on Thursday that “new developments” came up the night before and that she had to speak with leadership to see what actions need to be taken. 

When pressed for details about the new developments, Hoffner said, it was “More about the person that was arrested in October.” 

It is not immediately clear who she was referencing, nor why it is relevant, as she did not respond to follow-up questions sent by text message.

The post Delaware lawmakers split over future of hemp-derived THC products appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

The 192-page report does not mention Gaza or Joe Biden’s age. Plus, is the world heading for another Ebola crisis?

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Good morning.

On Thursday, the Democratic party published a postmortem – spanning 192 pages – of its 2024 election defeat, after an initial decision to withhold the document prompted an angry backlash.

What’s in the postmortem? It focuses on key demographics that Kamala Harris lost, including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states. “Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate,” the report says. “The math doesn’t work.” The autopsy says that Democrats must focus less on “abstract issues and identity politics”.

What does the move tell us? The cancellation, which avoided political embarrassment for Donald Trump, is the latest signal that congressional support for the US president’s war is diminishing.

What happens next? The vote has been postponed until lawmakers return from a recess in June, when it appears likely that the resolution could pass.

Dr. Peter Stafford was working with the missionary group Serge in Congo when he was infected with Ebola.

Resolution backed by 141 states hailed as ‘new chapter’ that could improve climate diplomacy and litigation efforts

When the UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a landmark climate crisis ruling on Wednesday, the Pacific island of Vanuatu’s prime minister hailed the result as the start of “a new chapter” in climate action.

“The task before all of us now is to translate legal clarity into meaningful action, stronger cooperation, and greater protection for present and future generations,” said Jotham Napat.

Could Britain really rejoin the EU? Independent Thinking podcast Audio sseth.drupal@c… 22 May 2026

Almost exactly ten years since Britain’s seismic vote to leave the EU, the debate reopens thanks to early skirmishes in the fight for leadership of the Labour Party and thus the prime ministership.

Could a credible bid to rejoin the EU make its way onto Britain’s political agenda? Are the drastically changed economic and defence environments making the case for re-entry unanswerable? And under what terms would European leaders consider the return of their often-troublesome former partner?

Bronwen Maddox talks over a major potential shift for the entire continent with Chatham House visiting fellow Ben Judah, director of our UK in the World programme Olivia O’Sullivan, and associate fellow and Financial Times international trade specialist Alan Beattie.

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.

Defence secretary also asks if billionaire’s company may have benefited from Iran war, which Reform leader initially supported

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The defence secretary, John Healey, has urged Nigel Farage to provide transparency about the £5m gift he received from a billionaire businessman, in particular over whether any of the sum could have been linked to Russia-connected profits.

In a letter to the Reform UK leader, Healey also asked him to address the possibility that the war against Iran might boost the revenues of AML Global, an aviation fuel company owned by Christopher Harborne, who gave Farage the £5m in 2024. Farage initially supported the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

As the outrages continue, mainstream outlets just see Trump being Trump

His social media posts are unhinged. He seems to fall asleep in meetings. He proudly proclaims he’s not thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ personal finances in talks with Iran. And he lies constantly about the supposed success of the war with Iran he started for no good reason.

That’s just the start, of course, when it comes to Donald Trump’s disastrous second presidency. There’s the ruination of the Kennedy Center, the building of a ballroom (or bunker?) to replace the White House East Wing, and the wrecking ball that the Trump-aligned supreme court has taken to the voting rights of Black Americans. There’s the endless self-dealing and the abuse of the justice department’s intended purpose.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Andry José Hernández Romero was deported from the US to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison before he was allowed to return to Venezuela

One of the Venezuelan men sent from the US to El Salvador’s most notorious prison by Donald Trump has moved to Spain to request asylum after concluding that he did not feel safe back home and did not trust US authorities sufficiently to return to fight his legal case.

Andry José Hernández Romero left Venezuela for Spain in early February and is due for his first asylum hearing in court there in a few days, hoping that the country’s liberal approach to immigration will afford him kinder treatment than the US or his own country had provided him, he revealed to the Guardian in his first interview since leaving for Europe.

A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an investigation by KQED and ProPublica that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs.

The Redwood City School District has received at least two new complaints against Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed the complaints as well as emails from the district to the parents saying it is investigating both.

Read More

He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway.

The news outlets found that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials following his 2019 firing from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials characterized as sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School submitted written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, drawing at least two warnings to stop, KQED and ProPublica’s investigation found.

Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their neck or shoulders as well as commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by the news outlets.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for educators’ licenses, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already gotten another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour away from his first school.

The discipline — along with a red flag icon — is noted in the state’s public database of credentialed educators, but no specific reason is given for the sanction. Anyone searching his name in the database would see he still held credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach.

At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he drew another complaint of unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and started teaching math at Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Redwood City, that August. That is where he was teaching when the investigation was published.

David Weekly, president of the school board in Redwood City, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford parents, in a public letter, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.

“Parents deserve to know their kids are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully vetting those who will be working closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the news outlets.

Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has enlisted a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter that the district spokesperson shared with the news outlets.

Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and ProPublica that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.

Clifford principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents in the hours after the story was published to outline the district’s hiring policies and said that while she could not discuss confidential personnel matters, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.”

Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, did not respond to requests for comment about the new complaints after he was removed from the school. Nor did he previously respond to questions sent via email and certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He has denied any sexual motivation in touching students, stating during his dismissal hearing from the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District that he touched students’ shoulders to offer them support and encouragement but that he did not massage them.

More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the morning after the story published last week to express concern about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents who were there. Just before noon that same day, Jackson and Baker emailed the Clifford School community saying that the district would “soon be welcoming a substitute teacher to support students in Mr. Agan’s classroom.”

A Redwood City school district spokesperson said a substitute was brought in to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13 but declined to comment on his employment status. The spokesperson did not answer a question about the new complaints.

Parents expressed “profound alarm and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to the Clifford principal, school board, state lawmakers, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the teacher licensing agency. More than 170 people signed the letter, according to a parent involved in organizing the petition.

“We recognize the seriousness of these matters and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over institutional reputation or liability concerns,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected, and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions entrusted with their children’s care.”

Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning about Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, out of school the day KQED and ProPublica published the story.

Hanni says Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined.

The licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.

“I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said.

Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and ProPublica that any teacher who “abuses or harasses students should never teach again.” Thurmond said that as governor, he would propose legislation to automatically revoke licenses for educators found by schools or independent panels to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive.

Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health and human services secretary, former state attorney general and a leading candidate for California governor, “believes California should have a system that acts swiftly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is being handled appropriately and transparently,” said Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesperson, in a statement.

“Student safety has to come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this reporting are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should ever feel unsafe at school.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. Neither did six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him.

State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared ProPublica and KQED’s investigation on social media and wrote: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.”

A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week.

During a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he had submitted a Title IX complaint against Agan to the district after reading the article and speaking with his seventh grade son. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools.

“What I’ve heard from my son is that this pattern hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referencing Agan’s history of misconduct claims. “When someone’s deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something brushed aside because the database says they’re technically employable.”

Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint.

Another Clifford parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his child’s identity, told the news outlets that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class.

In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and ProPublica, Agan did not disclose that he had been fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked a “Please don’t contact” box under Rodriguez High.

Kelly, the Redwood City deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts prior employers even when candidates instruct them not to. She also said that school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those whose credentials are valid are considered employable.

In his earlier application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan did acknowledge that he had been fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.

A spokesperson for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, has emphasized that state law limits what information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends educators be disciplined can it release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to prospective employers. But that information is released only if a school requests it within five years of when the discipline was recommended. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year.

Redwood City did not ask for such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that time that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and ProPublica.

Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so.

Agan is one of at least 67 educators for whom the state has not revoked professional licenses after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of misconduct of a sexual nature, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets.

The post California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints appeared first on ProPublica.

You can't remove the design from your device, but Apple gives you options to darken some elements so your iPhone's display looks more like it did prior to iOS 26.

The Department of Transportation is rolling out a new website to track progress in the sprawling effort to modernize the nation's air traffic control system​.

The production of the Congressional Record is one of the unseen cogs in the congressional machine, arriving with little fanfare like a newspaper on the Capitol's doorstep every day.

The latest fight over the Democratic Party's direction is playing out in a competitive California House primary, as progressives accuse party leaders of trying to muscle a moderate past a Latino challenger in a heavily Hispanic district.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie was decisively ousted on Tuesday night in his Kentucky primary, a win for President Donald Trump, who had launched an all-out attack on the congressman for his role in pushing for the release of the Epstein files. But in Pennsylvania, the left had a lot to celebrate. Chris Rabb won by nearly 15 points in Philadelphia in a major win for progressives. And Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter and union head, sailed to victory with the support of both the left and moderates. 

Mysterious super PACs with ties to Republican donors poured millions into influencing the election results in both states with varying degrees of success. In Kentucky, AIPAC’s super political action committee and two other groups backed by pro-Israel donors spent more than $15 million in opposition to Massie or in support of his opponent, according to Federal Election Commission reports released through Tuesday. 

In Pennsylvania, advertisements from Lead Left — a super PAC that reportedly has ties to Republican donors — dropped ads attacking two of the candidates as not progressive enough, leading to speculation that Republicans were trying to prop up a weaker candidate for the general election. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington and politics reporter Matt Sledge break down the contentious primary races, the record-level campaign spending and how obscure groups funding the midterm elections are hiding donors’ tracks.

“Groups can kind of game campaign finance deadlines and create super PACs to funnel money to other super PACs so that reporting deadlines are missed and use these ‘pop-up super PACs’ to ensure that ordinary voters never find out who is funding ads before a campaign happens,” says Sledge. “Sometimes there’s even a second layer of pop-up super PACness where those bland-sounding groups send money to other bland-sounding groups. God help you if you’re an ordinary voter trying to track all this money.”

The consequential U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United 16 years ago has allowed courts to chip away at campaign financing restrictions. “Now here we are where any industry that’s facing regulation or any donors who support an unpopular cause can really just open the spigots and try to throw primaries their way,” adds Sledge.  

Certain industries have gotten smart about how to hide where the money is coming from. “Ordinary voters don’t generally like crypto, AI or gambling. They may tolerate it at a maximum, but they’re not motivated by the idea of electing pro-crypto, pro-AI, pro-gambling people,” notes Sledge. “But all of these industries have realized, ‘OK, we can use super PACs that run ads that have nothing to do with our industry and get our friends elected to Congress, and they are going to remember that we spent a lot of money on their races.’”

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.

Matt Sledge: And I’m Matt Sledge, another politics reporter at The Intercept.

JW: Today, we’re going to dive right in because I know we’re both exhausted. We were both up late covering the Kentucky and Pennsylvania primaries. Matt, we’re speaking Wednesday morning, fresh off of that Kentucky primary election, where President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s opponent.

Massie decisively lost his race. Is this proof that despite inflation, gas prices, the war in Iran, Trump is still a kingmaker, or I guess in Massie’s case, a hangman?

MS: Certainly when it comes to the Republican Party and intraparty politics, some people thought Massie might pull this out, and instead it was a pretty humiliating defeat for a long-term incumbent in the House.

But you do have to step back a little bit and remember, this is a party-on-party fight. Trump took out a guy who votes conservative nearly all the time, and it’s a safe Republican district. So he spent a lot of political capital taking out one Republican to replace with another Republican, essentially because he was mad about the Epstein files.

JW: The Epstein files is an interesting part of all of this because Thomas Massie fought so hard to get the Epstein files released. We talked about it on the podcast with one of the attorneys for some of Epstein’s survivors, and it did seem like an issue that was breaking out politically.

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Democrats have been speaking about it. I actually heard at the Center for American Progress’s event on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries actually spoke about the Epstein files and talked about it as a top issue for Democrats. So we know this is something that they are trying to make an election issue, but it doesn’t seem like it worked for Massie. Why do you think that is?

MS: I think it’s because it cut against the president so much and, just in the larger picture, enraged the president and turned him decisively against Massie. They had their problems before. I think it was hard for Thomas Massie to argue in his district that getting the Epstein files released was a great coup but also that it didn’t harm the president, because it clearly did harm the president politically. Ultimately, the voters in his district decided that helping the president was more important than anything else.

JW: We also know that pro-Israel groups poured money into this race as well to try and defeat Thomas Massie. Is there anything that you can say about that?

MS: Yeah, it was a lot of money. It was over $15 million from two explicitly pro-Israel groups, super PAC affiliated with AIPAC and then a Republican pro-Israel group. Then also there was a kind of special purpose-created super PAC that was funded in large part by pro-Israel donors. So this was the most expensive House race in history. A huge percentage of that spending came from donors who were motivated by the issue of Israel.

Massie has always opposed foreign aid in general, but I will say he has seemed to take special delight in tweaking supporters of Israel. Obviously that is a minority position within the Republican Party, so these groups came for him, and they were successfully able to help the president oust him.

JW: We’re going to talk a little bit more about how super PACs are hiding where their money is going in this election. But before we do that, I wanted to touch a little bit more on Democratic primaries from last night. So Pennsylvania had some big primaries. Are there any top lines from that race you want to share?

MS: I wasn’t following Pennsylvania as much, but of course, everybody was watching that race in Philadelphia, where Chris Rabb was able to pull out a victory. That’s a huge win for the Democratic Socialist wing of the party. He was up against a more establishment Democrat, and it shows that there is this really energized cohort within the Democratic Party that’s really excited to elect progressives.

JW: As I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, I was up covering that race. One really interesting thing, aside from the Philadelphia primary, was in Pennsylvania 7, the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, ended up backing — really heavily backing — Bob Brooks, one of the more progressive candidates in that race. We also saw Bernie Sanders backing him and the Working Families Party. So we saw this coalition effort between more mainstream center-left and progressives which is obviously different than what we saw in Philadelphia, but it’s interesting to see how those two coalitions could work together in Congress.

And Matt, I want to talk a little bit more about how super PACs are operating in this race. You have a new piece out this week that gets into all of that. So it’s about groups that are funding the 2026 midterm races. You looked at a dizzying array of players who are throwing money into this election cycle.

Before we get into some of those players and the issues they’re pushing, can you set the stage for us? How would you describe the current campaign finance landscape?

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MS: It’s just kinda anything goes, and we’ve seen this gradual and then not so gradual evolution from the Citizens United decision in 2010, which opened the doors for allegedly independent spending on elections. The courts have just chipped away at whatever protections there are. Then the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has refused to get in the way of some pretty questionable behavior. 

Now here we are where any industry that’s facing regulation or any donors who support an unpopular cause can really just open the spigots and try to throw primaries their way. A lot of time, they’re doing it in ways that cover their tracks a little bit, and they’re running ads that have nothing to do with their chosen issues.

JW: I want to get into the history of this, how we even got there. Citizens United is, I would argue, a boogeyman, not just for the left, but anyone who cares about democracy at all. Can you remind us how that SCOTUS decision really changed the landscape for how campaigns are funded and how we’re seeing that evolve in this election cycle?

MS: It is a boogeyman on the left and elsewhere, but I would say a boogeyman for good reason. A truly significant Supreme Court decision that basically said, individual candidates running for office, we can still limit, how much they’re raising and through that, how much they’re spending on elections, but these allegedly independent spenders, groups like super PACs, can spend as much money as they want on a race because they have no connection to the candidates.

There is no danger of corruption, and that’s really what we’re interested in policing here. We don’t want to police free speech. It essentially equated political spending with free speech, which a lot of people would take issue with. 

One of the things that has been really interesting, I say interesting with some chagrin, as this system has evolved, is that we are now in this place, and I wrote about this in my recent article, where groups can kind of game campaign finance deadlines and create super PACs to funnel money to other super PACs so that reporting deadlines are missed and use these “pop-up super PACs” to ensure that ordinary voters never find out who is funding ads before a campaign happens.

Some of these newer industries that are getting in on the campaign spending game, like crypto and artificial intelligence, are also setting up entire networks of super PACs, sometimes a mama or a papa super PAC, and then a Democratic-affiliated super PAC and a Republican-affiliated super PAC so that both donors can channel their money to one party affiliate and to make it a little harder for voters to track where all the money is coming from. 

JW: I really recommend that people go check out your piece. I think it’s an amazing glossary on what’s happening in our elections and the aftermath of Citizens United 16 years later. 

This isn’t just about AI or crypto, as you’ve mentioned. There’s also AIPAC. The Intercept has reported extensively on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has been spending directly on campaigns for a little while now.

In 2024, our colleague Akela Lacy wrote, “AIPAC embraced a new strategy. It would use its vast funds to oust progressive members of Congress who criticized human rights abuses by Israel and the country’s receipt of billions of U.S. dollars in military funding.” Matt, how is AIPAC operating this election cycle?

Given that there’s growing opposition on both the left and the right to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and influence in U.S. politics, is the group changing its tactics?

MS: AIPAC’s brand is in the dumps. Israel’s brand is in the dumps with Democrats as well. You see even very pro-Israel Democratic politicians saying, “I’m not taking AIPAC money.” What the group has done is really make use of these pop-up super PACs. So it’s no longer the United Democracy Project, which is AIPAC’s primary super PAC affiliate spending money in these races. It’s groups with very bland, friendly-sounding names, and AIPAC’s super PAC affiliate sends money to them.

Sometimes there’s even a second layer of pop-up super PACness where those bland-sounding groups send money to other bland-sounding groups. God help you if you’re an ordinary voter trying to track all this money. All you see are negative ads attacking candidates on issues that have nothing to do with AIPAC or Israel.

JW: You just teased it a bit, but I know you poked around some FEC, — Federal Election Commission — reports, for a recent Chicago race and found some interesting information about how AIPAC donors were operating in the race. First, can you tell us what happened in Chicago, and what did you find in the reports?

MS: In Chicago, there was a newly created group called Elect Chicago Women, which sounds great. Who doesn’t want to elect Chicago women? They received money from the United Democracy Project, which is AIPAC’s super PAC affiliate. Then they turned around and handed a million dollars to another newly created group called the Chicago Progressive Partnership. It’s a little surprising they didn’t add “and apple pie” at the end of that. 

So basically what that did is it tweaked things so that under the FEC’s campaign finance rules, the donors for that money did not have to be disclosed until after the race. In, for instance, the 9th Congressional District primary, there was this really hotly contested race between a progressive and an even more progressive candidate, both of whom were not favored by AIPAC.

AIPAC attempted to, through these super PACs, play the spoiler and boost an entirely different super left progressive candidate to hurt Kat Abughazaleh, the influencer. You could argue it worked because she didn’t lose by that much, and they may have successfully employed this tactic. They didn’t ultimately get their chosen candidate over the line, but they did help a candidate they really disliked lose.

JW: We saw this in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night as well. There’s this group, Lead Left, and the New York Times had reported, as well as Punchbowl, on some interesting ties that they had to Republican groups while also trying to sandbag the progressive candidates in the race by arguing that they weren’t really progressive or that Ryan Croswell, who no one would really argue is a progressive, is, just hiding and is really a Republican.

So we’ve seen this in other races, but I wanted to ask, what other races you’ve seen this happen in and what might be of interest to people here?

MS: Yeah, there’s something that’s really interesting happening in Michigan right now where there’s another one of these newly created groups spending a lot of money to boost Haley Stevens, who’s AIPAC’s preferred candidate in the race.

They are using a consulting firm that AIPAC’s super PAC has used in the past to buy television ads. But AIPAC came out and said, it’s not us. We’re not spending this money. As far as I can tell, nobody has gotten to the bottom of this, of where this money is coming from. I think there are several different ways where AIPAC could say it’s not us and for it to be technically true.

But perhaps there really is some other mystery group behind all of this spending. But it’s really telling. This is a super high profile Senate race, a lot of journalists on it, a lot of eyes on it. Whoever is behind this money has so far been able to successfully conceal its origin.

I think it’s really hard to argue that it is good for voters to not know where this huge amount of money in the race is coming from.

[Break]

JW: For those who don’t know, you’re effectively our crypto, gambling, AI lobby reporter on top of everything else you do. Obviously there’s been a lot of crypto, gambling, and AI money flooding the system right now. Where are you seeing that money going this season?

MS: A lot of it so far is being spent in these primaries, and a lot of it in the Democratic primaries is being spent to elect flexible centrist candidates.

The thing with all of these industries is ordinary voters don’t generally like crypto, AI, or gambling. They may tolerate it at a maximum, but they’re not motivated by the idea of electing pro-crypto, pro-AI, pro-gambling people. More often the contrary within the Democratic Party. But all of these industries have realized, “OK, we can use super PACs that run ads that have nothing to do with our industry and get our friends elected to Congress, and they are going to remember that we spent a lot of money on their races.”

The likelihood of backlash from voters who have a million other things to keep track of is pretty small. Politicians are just going to decide, “Let’s keep our head down and not piss off crypto, AI, and gambling,” even though those are pretty unpopular industries.

JW: I have to say, when I was at the Center for American Progress event on Tuesday listening to Gavin Newsom, Hakeem Jeffries, the whole Democratic establishment try to figure out how to plot a lane in the AI fight, I kept thinking Matt would find this hilarious. 

A lot of saying a lot without saying anything.

MS: Yes, they would like to protect our children without actually doing anything.

JW: Yeah. It did, It was giving a little bit of that. 

On that note, The New York Times reported that the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is the biggest donor this midterm cycle by a long stretch.

The firm’s co-founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, have dumped more than $115 million into the cycle so far. For context, Democratic mega-donor George Soros has put in about $102 million, Elon Musk $85 million, and Wall Street financier Jeff Yass $81 million. Is this kind of spending standard for midterm elections?

What are the priorities being pushed here, in particular by these tech billionaires who are pouring a ton of money into these elections?

MS: Andreessen Horowitz is a really fascinating case study in all of this. They have major investments in crypto and AI. They created this massive crypto super PAC network in the last election cycle. They saw that it was a success, and they are just repeating the pattern for artificial intelligence this cycle, and they’ve gotten some of their friends in the AI industry to spend a bunch of money as well.

As you pointed out, it’s a lot of money even in comparison to other billionaires. I think the explanation for that is that they are in highly regulated industries, or at least industries that should be highly regulated, and we’re at a moment where the rules are being set, and they have recognized an opportunity to have their friends set the rules.

JW: Following the money a little bit further down the road, former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair has been gaining a lot of attention on social media for posting videos where she alleges — in detail — how the White House and powerful figures on the right coordinate messaging with paid influencers. 

Here’s a clip of her in a recent interview on Zeteo.

[Clip]

Ashley St. Clair: There’s multiple chats that they operate in, and these chats also have— Some are just sequestered to large MAGA influencers in which they send these paid campaigns. Others have members of the administration. Others have the Trump children. And they coordinate this messaging and react to things in real time: Here’s how we respond or don’t respond to any given issue at any given time. 

They also have the paid campaigns in which messaging is pushed out, and it is very much coordinated through both paid messaging and just wanting to be in the club and not be ostracized.

[End of clip]

JW: Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer is being accused of not properly disclosing that his campaign paid influencers $10,000 each to promote him.

What is known about how influencers and messaging are factoring in elections today? What do you make of all this, Matt?

MS: Yeah, I think we definitely have to take anything Ashley St. Clair says with a huge grain of salt, but— 

JW: Good point. 

MS: At the same time, I think she’s also probably getting at something. We all saw after the latest assassination attempt how all these influencers immediately argued that we needed to build Trump’s big, beautiful ballroom, and then a lot of people were questioning how they were able to all land on the same message so quickly.

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It’s clear when you watch any influencers online that half of them are being paid off, so it’s the most natural thing in the world in one way for politicians and campaigns to get in on it. What is really missing here, what’s really missing in this conversation is the question of regulation and disclosure.

If we had a functioning FEC, they might step in and say, “Whoa, you need to disclose when you’re paying off influencers because that should be something the public knows about.” Instead, we don’t have a functioning FEC or a functioning Congress, so nobody is stepping in to make sure that disclosures are happening.

Disclosure should be a bare minimum. Maybe this should be banned outright as well. But we, at the very least, should have clarity on when this is happening, and not just within the context of campaigns but also in the context of politics more broadly.

JW: Those are all really good points.

The lack of any kind of regulation about this is troubling. We’ve obviously been talking about money and where it’s going and how it’s going to influencers, into campaigns, into shady super PACs, but what issues do voters actually care about this election cycle? You and I have covered campaign finance. We’ve covered ICE. But what issues are actually breaking through to voters?

MS: Yeah, I think it’s going to be the economy first and foremost, and then the war on Iran as an extension of the economy, because it dovetails with these concerns about affordability so strongly.

Some of the centrist Dem messaging around affordability is super cringe. But it’s also true that it’s a very important issue for voters. I think it has been rightly identified as a major issue that is just going to dominate everything over the next few months. 

I don’t know how much ICE and the crackdowns will really play into the elections. My guess is that’ll be more of a primary issue. Democrats who voted for the Laken Riley Act, for instance, will have problems in primaries over that. But when you look at the polls in the general election, immigration is still one of Trump’s best issues. His numbers have definitely eroded there, but it’s better than everything else by about 10 points.

So I don’t know if that’ll be as much of an issue that candidates are highlighting in the general elections.

JW: On immigration, I do keep thinking that if the elections had been held earlier when everything that was happening in Minnesota that was enraging people. I think that was an issue about immigration, but it was also really an issue about democracy, about people’s right to protest, about the rights that they assumed they held as American citizens to protest against their government.

I want to pivot a little bit to talk about an issue that we’ve been discussing on the show quite frequently, which is the fallout from the SCOTUS decision. So the Supreme Court ruled in favor of essentially gutting the Voting Rights Act, which unleashed a new wave of redistricting wars that have been sparked particularly in the South to eliminate minority-majority districts.

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Meanwhile, last week, the Virginia State Supreme Court rejected a voter-approved gerrymandering effort that would have boosted Democrats’ chances of gaining four seats in the House. How are you seeing the redistricting wars take shape? Are there any places you’re keeping a particularly close eye on?

MS: Yeah, we’ve seen Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina quickly pass these new maps.

But, I think in a week or two, we might have hit a wall on the redistricting wars just for practical reasons, because primaries are coming so fast and early voting has opened in so many places. Mississippi, for instance, the governor there has said he’s not going to push redistricting this year, I think essentially just because of the timing.

So we may finally be settling in the place we’re going to be for the elections, and it looks like a net loss of a few seats for the Democrats, which could be really significant if the outcome of the House elections is that close. On major votes in the House right now, it’s only a few votes either way could shift them.

JW: Speaking at the Center for American Progress event, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had mentioned that they expect to lose about three or four seats as a result of these redistricting efforts in the South, but they have obviously expressed some confidence in being able to overcome those odds.

Are there other midterms races or themes this cycle that you wanted to talk about?

MS: I think that Michigan Senate race is going to be a huge one. It just gets at so many issues, both of style and substance, of where Democratic voters want to go. That, to me, is really high on the list. This California governor’s race is also fascinating in its own kind of train wreck way. So we’ll see how things go there. Really makes you think how important electoral rules are because we could see some crazy outcome that ordinary voters don’t particularly want.

JW: California is the mess that keeps on messing.

MS: OK. Jess, I gotta turn the tables on you. Any other races that you’re watching, no matter how obscure they are?

JW: I am a DC native, and I also live in DC, so I am following the DC mayoral race, which I know is probably not on most people’s radar who do not live in DC, but it’s fascinating. It’s become this debate really around youth crime and these efforts to restart mass incarceration, I would argue, in DC.

So that’s become a really interesting electoral issue between the two more progressive candidates, Janeese Lewis George, who has really fought against these teen curfews, and Kenyan McDuffie, who has been really pushing for these curfews even though he’s tried to paint himself as more of a progressive. So I think that race, although it’s a mayoral race and might not have much impact outside of DC, has been fascinating to watch for me personally. 

And with that little tidbit from me, I am going to leave it because I know we are both exhausted. Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the Intercept Briefing.

We’ll add a link to Matt’s story in the show notes.

MS: Thanks for having me on.

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. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy-editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join. 

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post AIPAC, AI, Crypto and Gambling Are Hiding Their Big Election Spends appeared first on The Intercept.

The bone is believed to have belonged to a member of the Hohokam people, an ancient group considered to be ancestors to modern Native Americans in Arizona.

Media company says it is ‘committed to good faith bargaining’ amid claims including contract violation

Workers at local newspapers owned by Hearst allege the company is trying to “destroy unions” amid claims of widespread anti-union tactics, including violating union contracts and bad-faith bargaining.

The Albany Newspaper Guild, which represents the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York, said it had been more than 17 years since the union had a contract and there had been little progress toward reaching a new one.

America’s refugee program has undergone a radical transformation. Now nearly all those arriving under the program are White South Africans.

US secretary of state says president would like a negotiated agreement with Havana but likelihood ‘is not high’

The US president, Donald Trump, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Thursday again raised the spectre of military intervention in Cuba, a renewed threat that takes on greater weight a day after the administration announced criminal charges against Raúl Castro, the island’s former leader.

“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something,” Trump told reporters when asked about Cuba during an event in the Oval Office. “And it looks like I’ll be the one that does it. So I would be happy to do it.”

Hung Cao’s comments are latest blow to Taipei after Donald Trump recently cast doubt over US’s enduring support

US arms sales to Taiwan have been “paused” to ensure the US military has enough munitions for its Iran operations, according to Washington’s acting navy secretary, in the latest blow to Taipei after a series of comments by Donald Trump.

When asked at a congressional hearing on Thursday about a $14bn (£10.4bn) weapons package awaiting Trump’s signoff for months, Hung Cao said: “Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury [the Iran war] – which we have plenty.”

IPO filing from Elon Musk’s company reveals closer look at finances, cosmic ambitions and tech empire’s quirks

SpaceX publicly released an investor prospectus on Wednesday as part of its plan for a $1.75tn debut on the US stock market next month, revealing unseen details about the finances and future plans of Elon Musk’s flagship company. In addition to new information on operating costs and revenue, the filing also included trademark Muskian sweeping proclamations about the universe and insights into some of the quirks of his tech empire.

Scattered throughout the 300-plus-page prospectus are several disclosures and risk warnings that show the eccentricities of Musk’s company and its cosmic ambitions. Other financial details in the document highlight how interdependent Musk’s various businesses have become and the risks that they carry.

Keith Ervin, 59, was charged with assault after he told a student ‘God – you’re hot’ at a public meeting in April

An east Tennessee school board member who told a teenage girl, “God – you’re hot,” on video at a public meeting in April has been charged with assault.

State prosecutors on 18 May charged 59-year-old Keith Ervin under a Tennessee statute that outlaws “intentionally or knowingly [causing] physical contact with another [that] a reasonable person would regard … as extremely offensive or provocative”.

The day after a shooting last month killed a teenager and injured five people at the Mall of Louisiana, Gov. Jeff Landry blasted what he referred to as “hug-a-thug” policies — reforms put in place prior to his tenure when the state was trying to shed its reputation as the nation’s incarceration capital. He also demanded harsher penalties for violent minors.

“I’m done with them. It doesn’t matter how old they are,” Landry, a Republican, said during a news conference in Baton Rouge. “We’ve got 18,000 acres at Angola — if it was up to me, I would send them all there for the rest of their lives.”’

Landry’s push for harsher punishments that would keep people in prison longer came as little surprise. Soon after his 2024 inauguration, he won a package of tough-on-crime bills that drastically changed the state’s sentencing laws. A Landry spokesperson at the time brushed off concerns from civil rights groups and incarceration experts that it would swell the prison population and plunge the state into financial disaster, insisting that “less crime means greater economic opportunity for everyone.”

Two years later, the governor wants to add hundreds more beds in Louisiana’s largest prison and spend more on medical costs as prisoners stay longer behind bars. His proposed $798 million corrections budget, which the Republican-controlled legislature is expected to pass by June 1, represents a 9% increase from the inflation-adjusted total spent in fiscal year 2024, the last budget passed before his tenure. The increased budget is the first indication that the rising inmate population resulting from Landry’s policies is costing Louisiana taxpayers.

ProPublica and Verite News have spent more than two years investigating how Landry’s policies have impacted Louisiana’s criminal justice system. The number of prisoners paroled under Landry has plummeted to its lowest point in 20 years, due in part to a law he signed that cedes much of the power of the parole board to a computerized algorithm. And the prison population as a whole is expected to become older and sicker since Landry and the legislature eliminated medical parole.

Landry also ushered in a law that lowered the age at which the justice system must treat defendants as adults from 18 to 17 years old to combat what he characterized as an epidemic of violent crime committed by minors. But an investigation by ProPublica and Verite News found that 69% of 17-year olds in three of the state’s largest parishes were arrested for offenses that Louisiana law does not consider violent crimes.

Many experts say the full impact of these changes won’t be felt for at least another decade. The Crime and Justice Institute, a Boston-based nonpartisan public-safety research organization, predicts that by 2034, Landry’s rollback of inmates’ ability to shave time off their sentences through good behavior will double the size of the state’s prison population, double the number of nonviolent offenders being held and cost an estimated $2 billion for new prisons to accommodate the population.

Here is how Landry’s policies have already begun to impact Louisiana’s prisons and budget.

Prison Population Change

In the two years after Landry took office, the number of state prisoners has increased by about 8%, and Landry’s budget indicates that number will continue to rise. The governor is asking for an additional 688 beds at the state’s largest prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, which will require the hiring of 150 correctional officers.

A corrections department spokesperson said the increased capacity is necessary because under the previous administration, “beds were significantly decreased, correctional officer positions were cut, facilities closed, and funding [was] eliminated.”

In 2017, a bipartisan coalition of Louisiana legislators had passed an ambitious package of bills designed to reduce the number of nonviolent offenders behind bars — and with it the state’s nation-leading prison population.

By 2021, the number of nonviolent offenders in state prisons and jails dropped by 55% and the overall prison population by 26%, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

But in early 2024, Landry signed a series of bills that repealed most of those reforms. The governor and his allies in the legislature eliminated parole for anyone convicted of a crime committed after Aug. 1, 2024, and required prisoners to serve at least 85% of their sentences before they can reduce their time through good behavior. The elimination of parole also got rid of medical parole and put additional restrictions on medical furlough — both of which had been offered to severely ill or injured inmates.

The rising number of prisoners has applied additional pressure on overcrowded local jails, where more than half of Louisiana’s inmates are held instead of state-run prisons. Landry is asking the legislature for an additional $17 million to increase the rate paid to local sheriffs to house state inmates by $3 per day, from $26 to $29.

Some lawmakers and prison reform advocates say there are indications that the Department of Corrections is seeing the need for a shift in strategy.

State Rep. Mandie Landry (no relation), a Democrat from New Orleans, said corrections department officials asked her to sponsor a bill that allows prisoners who earn an associate’s degree to shave 90 days off their sentences. And while that might not seem like much, she said, it’s a move in the right direction. “I think they’re realizing that what the legislature did a few years ago is going to explode into a nightmare in prison,” she said.

The legislature passed the bipartisan bill in April.

A corrections department spokesperson declined to respond to questions concerning the impact of Landry’s policies on the prison population and corrections budget, how those policies are impacting inmate medical care and if the department is seeking to gradually reverse any of Landry’s policies. Landry’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Rising Corrections Budget

Landry is asking for an additional $82 million for next year’s corrections budget — 11% more than currently allotted. Over the past decade, the amount of state tax dollars spent on correctional services has fluctuated, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, when federal aid temporarily supplemented the corrections budget. But Landry’s policies will ensure the need for additional funds, said James Austin, a national corrections policy expert.

While overall state spending during Landry’s tenure is projected to drop by 2% when adjusted for inflation, corrections spending will increase by 9% if the governor’s proposed budget passes.

“There’s no indication that the need for more beds and more staff is going to flatten out. And I don’t think this governor will talk about increasing taxes,” Austin said. “All that’s left is to cut programs in other areas.”

A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C., determined that the proposed increase in corrections spending would come at the expense of education. Landry has proposed cutting $165 million in education funding, including $40 million for state colleges and universities and $125 million for K-12 education, including teacher pay. (Landry backed a measure that would have paid for teacher raises by liquidating three education trust funds, but voters rejected the proposal in the May 16 election.)

“They have made the decision to boost the funding for prisons while deprioritizing the investments in teachers,” said Michael Mitchell, author of the report.

The state is forced to make cuts because Landry and the Republican-controlled legislature pushed through their 2024 criminal justice bills in less than two weeks without the typical debate over costs, said Sarah Omojola, director of the Louisiana office of the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform.

“These rollbacks were very partisan and not supported by research, data or even fiscally sound policy,” Omojola said. “They just approved the bills before the legislative staff even computed what the full expenses were.”

A Landry spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Debbie Villio, a Republican from Kenner who sponsored the 2024 bills that eliminated parole and significantly reduced the ability of prisoners to reduce their sentences through good behavior, did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is my position that this legislation will not ramp up prison population and costs,” Villio texted the Times-Picayune at the time the bills were passed.

An Older, Sicker Prison Population

The need for additional healthcare funds is yet another indicator of the costs associated with Landry’s changes to the state’s sentencing laws, said Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voice of the Experienced, a New Orleans nonprofit that advocates for the rights of incarcerated people. Without the benefit of parole or the ability to reduce their sentences through good behavior, inmates will spend more time behind bars. That extra time will create an older and sicker population, Reilly said.

The number of older prisoners was already on the rise prior to Landry due, in part, to lengthy sentences secured in the 1980s to 2000s by previous New Orleans district attorneys.

Landry has asked for an increase of $14.3 million to pay for medical care in prisons for the next fiscal year, which begins in July. The administration is also asking for an additional $33 million for the current fiscal year to pay for medical care, overtime and supplies.

A 2024 investigation by Verite News and ProPublica detailed allegations of unconstitutional medical care provided to inmates being held in Angola’s medical ward. Austin, the corrections expert, said that a medical system that for decades has struggled to care for its most vulnerable will “only worsen” under the strain of a rapidly expanding and aging population.

In March, a federal appeals court threw out a lower-court order to have a court-appointed team oversee medical care at Angola, calling the proposed remedy “micromanagement” that violated the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act. The case has been sent back to the lower court.

For years, as both attorney general and governor, Landry has defended Angola’s healthcare system, claiming that inmates are entitled to only “adequate” medical care — not specialized care or the best care possible.

The legislature proposed two healthcare bills this year that would reduce medical costs. One that would restore medical parole and medical furlough as exceptions to the elimination of parole recently passed. Another, which would expand the time an inmate can be released into hospice, is still being considered.

Current law allows prison officials to release terminally ill prisoners two months prior to their expected death, which is the shortest hospice-release window in the country, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform. The proposed bill would double that time to four months, which would still be the shortest by a wide margin. Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee have the next shortest window, at six months.

“These people are on their death bed. Some of these people don’t even realize they’re in prison,” said corrections secretary Gary Westcott at a March hearing on the proposed bill. And the costs associated with caring for these inmates can be extraordinarily high, Westcott said.

“We’re talking about changing diapers, feeding them. Most of them cannot do anything on their own,” he said, noting that once they are transferred to a hospital, those costs are picked up by Medicaid.

The post Louisiana’s Tough-on-Crime Policies Stand to Cost Taxpayers Millions More for Years to Come appeared first on ProPublica.

After nearly a century on the air, CBS News Radio is signing off, with the final reports airing on Friday, May 22.

Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., flashed a smile alongside her mother, Maria Marcotte, as the pair took a selfie from an international terminal of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. 

“Lisbon, here we come!” Marcotte, a retired advertising executive, captioned her Instagram post on June 16, 2024. 

Stevens and her mother then boarded a plane, seated in business class, according to a congressional ethics disclosure form. The following day, the pair checked into The Ivens, a luxury hotel where Stevens and other members of Congress spent the next four days attending a conference with panels that included a cryptocurrency industry executive, bankers and other corporate leaders. The conference was hosted by the centrist, pro-corporate think tank Center Forward, which has received donations to its nonprofit arm from major pharmaceutical companies and has a super PAC funded by big oil companies. 

Center Forward covered the full $27,779.86 trip for Stevens and her mother — a drop in the bucket compared to what the group’s political funding arm would later spend supporting her run for U.S. Senate.

Now, as Stevens is embroiled in a contested three-way race for a vacant United States Senate seat, Center Forward and its super PAC have spent $2.4 million on television advertisements in Michigan, where the only campaign the group is known to be backing is hers, The Intercept found in a review of advertising data accessed from AdImpact. The group’s first round of ad purchases supporting Stevens, totaling $855,000, was reported last week by State Affairs. Center Forward Committee has also bought at least $50,000 in online ads for Stevens over the past two weeks, according to Google’s ad transparency tracker.

One of the commercials, which ran on broadcast, cable and streaming services across Michigan starting May 12, shows Stevens “standing up to Trump” and “standing up for Michigan,” pointing toward her bills calling for accountability for ICE agent misconduct and seeking to prevent the Trump administration from deploying the U.S. military domestically. “I answer,” Stevens says in a clip from the House floor, “to the people of Michigan.”

A Stevens campaign spokesperson repeated a similar statement in response to queries from The Intercept.

“Haley fights for Michigan and only Michigan,” said her spokesperson Arik Wolk. “She’s spent her time in Congress working to bolster Michigan’s manufacturing economy, Michigan innovation and Michigan jobs — and as Michigan’s most effective Democrat in Congress, she has a track record of doing just that.”

Related

The Democrats Don’t Know Who They’ll Be in 2028. Michigan May Offer an Answer.

Stevens’ campaign has been dogged by criticism for her corporate backing. Both of her opponents – Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed – have sworn off corporate contributions. 

The Lisbon conference in 2024 sponsored by Center Forward featured panels led by executives from banks and holdings companies, such as Bison Bank and Bay Street Capital Holdings. One panel, titled “Blockchain Regulation in Portugal (EU),” included the CEO of crypto company Q Blockchain, in addition to bank executives and other boosters of the crypto industry. Prior to the panel, a business school professor gave a lecture on “what the EU’s approach to digital asset and blockchain regulation looks like” and “how the U.S. may be falling behind comparatively.”

At the time, Portugal boasted one of the most tax-friendly systems for cryptocurrency investments and the European Union installed its newly approved crypto regulatory system known as MiCA.

A supplement to the congressional disclosure form described the trip as intended to “bring a bipartisan group of pragmatic policymakers and influencers from various industries and organizations to focus on common-sense solutions” by discussing “foreign direct investment, healthcare, renewable energy, data privacy” and economic ties between the U.S. and Portugal.

The group said its overall mission is “to provide centrists” the information needed to “craft common-sense solutions and provide support in turning those ideas into results.” 

It’s common for congressional delegations to go on international trips paid for by third parties. But Stevens attending a trip sponsored by a pro-corporate group and then receiving significant campaign support from the group two years later raises concerns, said Jeffrey Hauser, a critic of corporate political influence.

“I am worried about what it says, that an institution that has been created to look after corporate interest in Washington had their staff spend a ton of time with the congresswoman, and they came away convinced that she would be loyal to their funders,” said Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project. “The travel and the campaign finance expenditure in tandem are worse together than on their own.”

Center Forward also covered additional travel expenses for Stevens’ staff, including $10,844.33 for Stevens’ legislative director to go on the Lisbon trip and $7,198 for her staffers to attend other Center Forward conferences, including one in Mexico where attendees met with executives with Meta, Walmart, Amazon, 3M and General Motors Mexico, according to further disclosure forms.  

Stevens was joined at the Lisbon conference by conservative lawmakers who have supported pro-crypto legislation, such as Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, R-Ga., a member of the Blockchain Caucus, and Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security committee, according to the congressional disclosure form. The delegation also included prominent Democrats, such as Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., and then-Rep. Eric Swalwell, also a California Democrat who has since resigned amid sexual assault allegations. 

Congressional delegation trips are designed to form relationships between advocacy groups and lawmakers with the goal of “persuading a politician of a worldview,” Hauser said. He noted that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had fine-tuned the model with its annual congressional visits to Israel, which Stevens also attended with her mother in 2019. Rapport is easier to build in an international travel setting than a visit to a member’s office, Hauser added. 

“I think this trip should be seen more as a cultivation method that Stevens agreed to undertake,” he said, “and the independent expenditure in 2026 as an indication that the 2024 travel was well executed.”

Related

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

Since 2022, Center Forward Committee has received $400,000 from Chevron, including $100,000 from the big oil giant during the current election cycle; an additional $300,000 from the oil corporation ConocoPhilips in 2023; $500,000 in 2022 from former New York City Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg; $100,000 from big tobacco company Philip Morris last July; and in March, Center Forward Committee and its related PAC, Center Forward Initiative Inc., together received $31,000 from United Health Group.

Center Forward’s nonprofit arm was also at the heart of battling Congressional efforts to lower drug prices under the Biden administration. The group received $7.8 million in donations from the pharmaceutical lobby from 2016 to 2023, according to Sludge, the bulk of which arrived during the Biden era. Center Forward spent those years also pouring money into candidates who were opponents to drug pricing reform.

Stevens, for her part, introduced a 2019 bill that attempted to lower prescription drug prices. She currently supports the expansion of Obamacare and the creation of a public option, but she does not support a Medicare for All policy, marking a contrast with her opponent El-Sayed, who has made the policy a core tenet of his platform. 

Center Forward’s ad spending in Michigan arrived as a separate dark money group, the Center for Democratic Priorities, which uses the same consulting firm as AIPAC does for other “pop-up” super PACs, bought $5 million in TV ads for Stevens this month. 

Marcotte and Center Forward did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment on the relationship between the campaign and the organization.

Stevens’ opponents, who are polling neck-and-neck with her ahead of the August primary, criticized the representative’s support from the group. 

“Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Big Insurance are spending millions to save Haley Stevens from her own record on ICE,” said Jackson Boaz, spokesperson for the McMorrow campaign. “That tells you everything about who she’ll work for in the Senate – and everything about how her campaign is going.”

El-Sayed offered a more terse indictment: “Corporate candidate takes money from corporate lobbies to take corporate trips and do corporate dirty work in Congress.”

The post Corporate Interests Paid for Haley Stevens’ Trip to Portugal — and Her Campaign Ads appeared first on The Intercept.

Who will be the next UN Secretary-General? Rafael Mariano Grossi and Rebeca Grynspan each present their vision 29 May 2026 — 11:00 TO 13:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) 22 May 2026 Chatham House and Online

Two of the candidates to be the next United Nations Secretary-General come to Chatham House to discuss how they might lead the organization, and what the role will require during a period of geopolitical turmoil.

The race to lead the United Nations is well under way. As member states weigh their options, Chatham House is inviting candidates to set out their vision for the role, and for the organization as a whole. At this event, two of the candidates will be presenting their vision, in sequence, each offering their own perspective.

The United Nations faces a moment of profound institutional pressure. Uncertain great-power support for multilateralism, a deepening financial crisis caused by member states not paying their fees, and persistent concern about the uneven application of the rules the organization exists to uphold have shaken confidence in the UN at precisely the moment that global challenges demand more of it. The incoming Secretary-General will inherit an organization mid-reform, with hard questions still unresolved about funding, authority and accountability. They will need to make their own imprint on the organization while navigating those pressures.

Part I: Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director-General, IAEA
As Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi has spent years navigating some of the most consequential and contested questions in multilateral diplomacy – from nuclear non-proliferation to the safety of conflict-threatened nuclear infrastructure. He will draw on that experience to set out his vision for the Secretary-General’s role and his priorities for the United Nations.

Time: 11:00 – 11:45 BST

Part II: Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, UNCTAD
As Secretary-General of UN Trade and Development and former Vice-President of Costa Rica, Rebeca Grynspan has strongly advocated for equitable development and the interests of the world’s most vulnerable economies. She will draw on that experience to set out her vision for the Secretary-General’s role and her priorities for the United Nations.

Time: 12:15 – 13:00 BST

Key questions:
•    What will define success for the next Secretary-General?
•    How can a Secretary-General exercise leadership when the great powers are divided and multilateral institutions face diminished support?
•    What proposals do they have for tackling the organization’s financial crisis?
•    What is each candidate’s vision for restoring trust in the UN’s rules-based framework – and for addressing perceptions of selective accountability?
•    How should existing reform processes be continued, accelerated, or reconceived?
•    What role can specialized agencies play in demonstrating the relevance and effectiveness of the multilateral system? Where are the gaps?

Refreshments will be provided for delegates in between each session.

Twelve dead as southern and central areas also suffer travel disruption, electricity outages and evacuations

Heavy, prolonged rainfall in southern and central China has resulted in weather warnings for flash flooding, landslides and waterlogging. The slow-moving band of rainfall spanned 620 miles (1,000km) and travelled eastwards across the regions on Tuesday. It was formed from the convergence of multiple bands of rain originating from the Bay of Bengal, South China Sea and Pacific Ocean.

Given the accompanying low wind speeds, high daily and hourly rainfall totals have been recorded, with as much as 75mm locally in Hunan, 85mm in Anhui in a 24-hour period, and 95mm on the island of Hainan. Twelve people have died because of the flooding and hundreds of residents have been evacuated by emergency services. There were major travel disruptions, electricity outages, as well as school and business closures. Social media posts showed submerged cars and people fishing along flooded streets.

The investment by NVentures builds on the Series B round led by Future French Champions, Atlantic Vantage Point, and Bpifrance

BOSTON and PARIS, May 22, 2026 — Alice & Bob, a leader in fault tolerant quantum computing, has announced an investment from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, that expands its €100 million Series B round. The investment supports Alice & Bob’s development of an architecture towards fault-tolerant quantum computing. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

“We’ve been working alongside NVIDIA to connect our cat-qubit architecture with its full accelerated computing ecosystem, from hardware to software, in support of the first fault-tolerant quantum computers. NVentures’ investment marks a new phase in that relationship and reinforces our common view that the future of quantum will be hybrid, combining quantum and classical computing to solve real-world problems,” said Théau Peronnin, CEO, Alice & Bob.

“NVIDIA has built the platform the quantum ecosystem needs to develop and run hybrid quantum-GPU supercomputers, connecting quantum processors to state-of-the-art accelerated computing. Alice & Bob shares NVIDIA’s vision for accelerated quantum supercomputing, and has worked closely with us to integrate their qubits with our quantum platform for advancing the scientific computing of the future,” said Timothy Costa, Vice President and General Manager of Quantum at NVIDIA.

Alice & Bob and NVIDIA have built close technical collaboration since 2024, including work with NVIDIA CUDA-Q, cuQuantum, and Dynamiqs, Alice & Bob’s open-source quantum simulation library, as well as on NVQLink, NVIDIA’s open architecture for hybrid quantum-classical computing. Alice & Bob will continue to collaborate with NVIDIA to bring quantum computers to high performance computing centers worldwide, integrating cat-qubits with their accelerated computing infrastructure and software stack, as integration projects are ongoing between the two organizations.

More from HPCwire: Alice & Bob Raises €100M to Advance Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

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 Expands €100M Series B with Investment from NVIDIA’s NVentures appeared first on HPCwire.

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 22, 2026 — PsiQuantum has announced that the company has signed a Letter of Intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for $100 million in proposed federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act to advance American quantum computing and semiconductor leadership.

With these potential incentives, combined with co-investment by the company, PsiQuantum will accelerate the domestic manufacturability and performance of critical components for utility-scale quantum computing and the American semiconductor industry, including Barium Titanate (BTO) for higher-performance optical switches, high-temperature single-photon detectors, and advanced packaging approaches.

“Strong technology supply chains are essential for American security and prosperity,” said Victor Peng, Interim Chief Executive Officer of PsiQuantum. “PsiQuantum’s world-leading capability in photonics will help write the next chapter in the history of computing. Thanks to bold action from Washington, our company will continue to invest in manufacturing these cutting-edge components right here in the United States.”

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”

Scaling PsiQuantum Innovations for the Semiconductor and Computing Industries

PsiQuantum’s new engagement with the Department of Commerce reflects the transformative potential of the company’s innovations in high-performance optical switching, photon detection, and advanced packaging for the American technology stack. The company’s approach to building fault-tolerant quantum computers leverages existing semiconductor manufacturing to rapidly scale its silicon photonics platform, resulting in new breakthroughs that will also strengthen the American semiconductor industry.

“The semiconductor industry helped make PsiQuantum’s path to fault-tolerant quantum computing possible, and now PsiQuantum’s scalable breakthroughs in silicon photonics will in turn create new possibilities for the future of computing,” said Dr. Pete Shadbolt, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of PsiQuantum. “Our new engagement with the Commerce Department builds on years of collaboration across the U.S. government, and Washington is playing an historically consequential role in helping deliver this emerging technology.”

Investing and Building in America, Partnering Closely with Washington

New potential incentives from the U.S. government would augment PsiQuantum’s major existing investments in America’s quantum and semiconductor supply chains. PsiQuantum’s supply chain is anchored in the United States, and in 2025 the company invested approximately $200 million with hundreds of American suppliers and vendors across 38 states. Leading semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries has partnered with the company on scaling PsiQuantum’s quantum photonic chipset production since 2019.

“GlobalFoundries is excited to partner with PsiQuantum to accelerate photonic quantum computing. Building on our long-standing collaboration, GF’s capabilities in silicon photonics, advanced packaging and system-level integration, combined with PsiQuantum’s proven leadership in photonic architectures, will accelerate the scalable semiconductor foundation needed to enable next-generation quantum systems,” said Tim Breen, Chief Executive Officer of GlobalFoundries.

This announcement comes as PsiQuantum partners closely with the U.S. government to validate the company’s path to utility-scale quantum computing, advance potential quantum applications across a range of critical industries, develop utility-scale quantum infrastructure, and leverage cutting-edge technology dividends. In 2025, the company advanced to the final stage of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) and broke ground on America’s largest quantum computing infrastructure project at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago. Since 2022, PsiQuantum has partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, New York, and the latest phase of their partnership will integrate the company’s high-performance BTO electro-switch material into AFRL-designed optical circuits.

More from HPCwire: US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing

About PsiQuantum

PsiQuantum was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company’s mission is to build and deploy the world’s first useful quantum computers. PsiQuantum’s photonic approach enables it to leverage high-volume semiconductor manufacturing, existing cryogenic infrastructure, and architectural flexibility to rapidly scale its systems. Learn more at www.psiquantum.com.

Source: PsiQuantum

The post PsiQuantum Signs $100M LOI with the US Department of Commerce appeared first on HPCwire.

This week, Donald Trump dropped a personal $10bn lawsuit he had against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for a so-called anti-weaponisation fund. The $1.8bn fund will be used to compensate those who think they have been unfairly investigated by the government in the past. Jonathan Freedland speaks to the legal analyst Kristy Greenberg about why critics are calling this fund ‘corruption on steroids’

A new Oxford Longevity Project report argues that individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for ill health in old age. "The report (PDF), launched at the Smart Ageing Summit in Oxford last week, argues that individuals have far greater control over their longevity than is commonly understood," reports The Guardian. "The authors call on the government to take legislative action on alcohol comparable to restrictions on smoking." From the report: Living Longer, Better -- the Oxford Longevity Project's first Age-less report -- was co-authored by an interdisciplinary panel of UK-based experts in medicine, physiology, ageing and education policy. It was sponsored by Oxford Healthspan. The report's authors, Sir Christopher Ball, Sir Muir Gray, Dr Paul Ch'en, Leslie Kenny and Prof Denis Noble, present the figure of 80% as a conservative estimate. [...] The claim, however, has been described as simplistic and said to neglect wider arguments about whether people are genuinely in control of individual choices when it comes to issues including poverty, pollution and healthcare access. [...] Ball, however, pointed to research including the Landmark Twins Study, where researchers concluded at least 75% of human lifespan is determined by environmental and modifiable lifestyle factors. He also cited large-scale analysis led by Oxford Population Health using data from nearly 500,000 UK Biobank participants which found that environmental exposures and habits carry far greater weight in premature death and biological ageing than inherited genetics. The report's recommendations include avoiding processed foods, abstaining entirely from alcohol, prioritising sleep, not eating after 6.30pm, and cultivating what it calls "a not-meat mindset." On alcohol, it takes a position more forthright than current government guidance. "Alcohol is toxic, don't drink it," said Ball. "The report bravely says so -- whereas the government is afraid to tell the public the truth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In today’s newsletter: As ​the polls tighten a​​round Benjamin Netanyahu, the coming months may redefine Israel’s political order without resolving its most entrenched conflicts

Good morning. On Wednesday, Israeli legislators took the first steps towards dissolving parliament and calling fresh nationwide elections. Leading leftwing Knesset member Yair Golan hailed it “the beginning of the end of the worst government in Israel’s history.” Benjamin Netanyahu has spent 20 of the last 30 years as Israel’s prime minister, the last four of which have seen him helm a far-right coalition.

Under the incumbent government, settlement building in the illegally occupied West Bank has accelerated, while many international humanitarian NGOs have been banned from the Palestinian territories. Following Hamas’s killing of 1,200 Israelis on 7 October 2023, Netanyahu has orchestrated a campaign of violence in Gaza, killing or injuring more than 10% of the population, and flattening the strip in what a UN commission has declared a genocide. Netanyahu remains on trial for three counts of corruption.

UK news | The parents of a girl critically injured in the Southport attack were allowed no more than 12 counselling sessions after the atrocity, while others described a “woeful” lack of support.

UK politics | Sadiq Khan has blocked a £50m Metropolitan police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir, sparking a bitter row between the London mayor and Scotland Yard.

Israel | Israel has said it has deported all the foreign activists it seized from a Gaza-bound flotilla, after a global outcry over their treatment in custody.

UK news | Single-sex toilets and changing rooms in England, Wales and Scotland must exclude transgender men and women, according to a new code of practice from the equalities watchdog.

Ukraine | Ukrainian drones hit the Syzran oil refinery more than 800km inside Russia, setting it on fire, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday.

Up to 70% of girls may be in early or forced marriages but law now makes divorce impossible if husbands disagree

Child marriage appears to have been legally recognised for the first time by the Taliban in Afghanistan, as activists say “shameful” new laws make it almost impossible for girls and young women to seek divorce against their husbands’ will.

There are no official statistics on forced and underage marriages in Afghanistan, but activists say it has risen at an alarming rate in recent years, driven by the ban on girls being in education after the age of 11.

Thursday evening marked the start of a new beginning for 86 Las Américas ASPIRA Academy students who crossed the stage to receive their diplomas in front of a packed crowd of family members and friends in the school’s gym.

The cost to attend the University of Delaware is going up once again.

Republicans are struggling to find the votes to dismiss legislation that would compel President Trump to withdraw from the war with Iran.

The Democratic National Committee released a long-awaited autopsy on the 2024 election that party chair Ken Martin has kept under wraps for months.

What Hormuz unleashed.

What Hormuz unleashed.

The acting secretary of the U.S. Navy said Thursday that arm sales to Taiwan had been put on "pause" to ensure that the American military had sufficient munitions for its Iran operations.

Some Republican senators openly expressed their concerns about the Justice Department's new "anti-weaponization fund" in a tense meeting Thursday with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: AT&T on Wednesday filed suit (PDF) against California officials seeking a court order declaring it does not have to continue offering traditional copper wire phone service to new customers as it vowed to spend $19 billion on modern telecom services. California requires the U.S. wireless carrier to spend $1 billion annually to maintain a century-old telephone network that few use, AT&T said, saying the network now serves just 3% of households in AT&T's California territory. AT&T's suit named the California Public Utilities Commission and the state attorney general. AT&T said it is committing to investing $19 billion in California as it works to connect more than 4 million additional households and businesses across California by 2030 and added IP-based networks are far more reliable and efficient. AT&T also Wednesday asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to discontinue traditional phone service in parts of California where it has faster, more reliable service available. It also filed a petition with the FCC to declare that California's rules that effectively require AT&T to power, repair and sell traditional phone service, even after the FCC has authorized the service to be phased out, are preempted by federal standards. AT&T added that transitioning from copper will save an estimated 300 million kilowatt-hours annually by 2030 or the equivalent of eliminating emissions from 17 million gallons of gasoline. The company added that California has already suffered about 2,000 outages from copper thefts this year and it struggles to find replacement parts. The federal government and virtually all states where AT&T historically offered copper-wire service "have now eliminated outdated regulatory obstacles" allowing AT&T to begin powering down its old network and increasing its investments in modern communication technologies, the company said in its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in southern California.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The T1 phone has a gold back with two Trump Mobile logos, one of which kind of resembles the American flag.

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• Democrats belatedly publish 2024 election autopsy report: ‘It won’t meet your standards’

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Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats spoke held a news conference, ahead of the vote-a-rama Thursday morning.

“The Republican agenda is one big broken promise,” said Schumer, criticizing the Republican budget bill. “We still haven’t seen the bill, because they are fighting with each other.”

Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.

Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.

Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.

President says reality star a ‘big Maga person’ but backing may prove more hindrance than help in deep-blue bastion

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s endorsement is typically a boon for candidates seeking elected office – a show of support, or disapproval, from the president has proved significant in races across the US this year.

But Trump’s recent comments on the Los Angeles mayor’s race, just weeks before the primary, are sure to benefit Democrats. The president spoke favorably of Spencer Pratt, a former Republican and reality TV star who is polling second in the contest to lead America’s second-largest city.

Senate will not pass $70bn homeland security bill that includes $1bn for security measures for controversial project – key US politics stories from Thursday, 21 May

A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.

The US Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by the US president, Republican senators told reporters on Thursday, as lawmakers leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess.

At least three people watched a livestream as gunmen filmed their deadly attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday. One viewer urged another to alert law enforcement, but it is not clear if anyone did.

Cancellation, which avoids embarrassment for Trump, is latest signal of diminishing congressional support for war

House Republicans canceled a scheduled Thursday vote on a war powers resolution aimed at ending the US war with Iran, a measure that likely would have advanced had the vote been held.

The cancellation, which avoided political embarrassment for Donald Trump, is the latest signal that congressional support for the US president’s war is diminishing.

The sister of the head of a company that is accused of having close ties to Cuban government operations has been arrested in Miami, federal authorities announced.

The new rocket features a host of upgrades intended to improve safety and performance of the world's most powerful rocket.

Kyle Busch's family earlier Thursday announced he had been hospitalized with a "severe illness."

Quantum computing is a field of computer science that utilizes quantum mechanics to process information at very high speeds and solve problems that may be practically impossible for traditional computers. While quantum computing concepts have been understood for years, we are just now seeing the introduction of practical quantum computers in the real world, which makes it a very exciting time in this emerging field.

Quantum computers have a built-in advantage compared to classical computers. While classical computers are binary and can work with two bits, 0 and 1, quantum computers have quantum bits, or qubits, that can exist in multiple states at the same time including either 0 or 1 or both 0 and 1. This makes quantum computers potentially very useful for tasks that are exposed to the challenge of combinatorial explosion, which can grind a classical computer to a halt, such as molecular modeling, optimization problems, financial risk analysis, and advanced simulation.

(Credit: NASA)

There are different types of quantum computers, or different modalities, some of which are better at solving certain types of problems. Some of these QC machines require exotic materials and temperatures near absolute zero to achieve the capability to manipulate subatomic particles, while others use regular light particles at room temperature. We are starting to see QC systems deployed into production settings, often alongside a traditional HPC system such as a supercomputer. However, serious limitations and challenges still exist.

Core Principles of QC

The core principles of quantum computing are based in quantum physics, the branch of science that studies the fundamental building blocks of the universe at the smallest scales. Subatomic particles, such as photons and electrons, behave completely differently than the macroscopic world, where Newtonian physics provides a predictable guide of how matter will behave. Quantum physics is also predictable, but sometimes in weird and unexpected ways.

QC uses the known characteristics of quantum physics to manipulate qubits, including:

• Superposition, or the capability of objects (such as qubits) to exist in two states, locations, or conditions at one time, until it is actively observed or measured, at which point the superposition state collapses (like Erwin Schrödinger’s famous cat);
• Entanglement, or the observation that two or more particles (or qubits) can deeply intertwine to the point where the physical state of one particle dictates the state of the other, regardless of physical distance, or what Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”;
• Interference, or the waves generated by a group of entangled qubits when placed into superposition, whereby the measured amplitudes of the interference wave correspond with particular outcomes;
• Decoherence, or the moment that qubits in superposition collapse into a nonquantum state, which can be intentionally triggered or happen unintentionally. Decoherence is typically to be avoided and represents a major challenge to production QC systems.

Qubits form the basic building block of a quantum computer, while quantum gates refer to the control points where the computer architect can guide the interaction to solve a specific mathematical operation. Multiple gates can be linked together to create a quantum circuit that is roughly analogous to a circuit in a classical computer

QC Modalities

There are several types of quantum computers, or modalities. Different modalities excel at solving different types of computational challenges, and have different energy and material requirement.

Superconducting qubits

These QC systems are made from superconducting materials such as aluminum (Al), Niobium (Nb), and Tantalum (Ta) laid just a few atoms thick using very precise electron-beam lithography atop a silicon, sapphire, or hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrate. Superconducting circuits operate at temperatures close to absolute zero, and are noted for their very high gate speed and precision control using microwave pulses.

Vendors using this technology: IBM, Google, Rigetti Computing, SpinQ

Atom Computing’s neutral atom based quantum computer

Trapped ion qubits

Positively charged atoms of Ytterbium (Yb), Barium (Ba), Beryllium (Be), Calcium (Ca), or Strontium (Sr) levitated in a vacuum above an electrode composed of Gold (Au) Copper (Cu), or Aluminum (Al) embedded atop sapphire or quartz substrate and manipulated and measured with a laser. Trapped ion systems have the advantage of long coherence times and high-accuracy measurements, at the cost of difficulty scaling up and slower response than superconducting qubits.

Vendors using this technology:  Quantinuum, IonQ, Alpine Quantum Technologies, Infinion

Neutral atom qubits

This approach involves using intersecting lasers to pin down an individual, uncharged atom, such as Rubidium (Ru), Cesium (Cr), or Strontium (Sr), in a vacuum chamber, causing it to fall to a temperature near absolute zero. Another laser then hits the neutral atom, exciting it into another energy level, which creates the value read by a camera. This approach benefits from error resiliency, scalability, and long coherence times, at the cost of speed, strict environmental controls, and the need for intricate laser matrices.

Vendors using this technology: QuEra, Pascal, Atom Computing, Infleqtion

Quantum dots-spin qubits

A quantum dot is a nanoscale crystal made of semiconductor materials such as dadmium selenide (CdSe) or indium phosphide (InP). Quantum dots have a unique property: When illuminated with ultraviolet light, a single electron will be excited into a higher energy state, thus changing the color of the emitted light. Quantum calculations are performed applying magnetic or microwave pulses to the dot, thereby changing the spin of the electron to either up or down, thus giving the measurement. Advantages include precision, long coherence times, and extreme potential scalability.

Vendors using this technology: Intel, imec, Diraq, Silicon Quantum Computing

Photonic qubits

Individual particles of light can be encoded with quantum data using polarization, path, or time-bin. Multiple photons can be combined using mirrors, phase shifters, or waveplates to create quantum entanglement. Detectors then measure the photon states. Photon-based quantum computers can operate at room temperatures, generally are resistant to external interference, and can scale up like a traditional classical system, but it’s still a fairly new form of quantum technology.

Vendors using this technology: Quandela, Xanadu, PsiQuantum, ORCA Computing

Quantum annealing

This is a specialized type of quantum computer that utilizes the properties of quantum annealing to solve complex optimization and probabilistic sampling problems. Quantum annealing needs specialized hardware, such as a superconducting system, but as an analog system, it doesn’t demand the error correction of other QC approaches, although it does have to deal with noise.

Vendors using this technology:  D-Wave Quantum

(vectorfusionart/Shuttersetock)

QC in the Real World

Government labs and academic supercomputing centers have been working with quantum computer makers for many years, helping the manufacturers work through the many challenges of building computers in a fundamentally new way. A handful of QC systems are now running in the private sector, but there are several big challenges standing in the way of broader adoption.

• Qubit decoherence: Some QC systems, particularly superconducting and to a lesser extent trapped-ion systems, are prone to falling out of the quantum state within just a few microseconds as a result of interference from heat, vibrations, or electromagnetic waves, leading to large error rates.
• Error correction: Because of the fragility of quantum circuits, a large amount of engineering time and effort in QC is devoted to error correction. QC makers often must create hundreds of physical qubits to produce a single logical qubit that can be used by quantum software to solve actual problems.
• Limitations in number of logical qubits: The biggest quantum systems today have more than 1,200 physical qubits, but due to error correction only expose a couple of dozen logical qubits to the software. That’s not enough to do much actual work in the real world, which experts estimate could take several thousand to several million of logical qubits.
• Difficulty moving data among qubits: Moving and managing data in QC is incredibly difficult due to one unavoidable characteristic of quantum mechanics: As soon as you measure the system, the quantum state collapses. The “no cloning” theorem in QC means you can never make a perfect complete copy of the data without destroying the original. Complicated hardware that’s very sensitive to environmental changes complicates the matter.
• Lack of Quantum Software: Quantum systems work in a fundamentally different manner than classical computers. While there are thousands of packages, libraries, and frameworks available for HPC and AI workloads on classical computers, the catalog of software for quantum computing is still extremely thin.

Despite these challenges, QC remains an extremely promising area of computer science. Thanks to the potential of QC systems to solve problems in minutes that would take a traditional supercomputer millions of years, researchers are still racing to unlock the potential of this fascinating corner of computing.

The post Quantum Computing 101: Introduction to QC appeared first on HPCwire.

I spent months testing the Brick to see whether tapping my phone against it was enough to curb my doomscrolling.

​Michael Cohen, a Trump lawyer-turned-critic, is planning to apply for money from the Justice Department's new "anti-weaponization fund," he told CBS News.

This was Florida's seventh execution so far this year, following a state record 19 executions in 2025.

Kouri Richins published a children's book to help her sons cope with the loss of their father – then she was convicted of Eric Richins' murder.

Eufy's EdgeAgent offers familiar features with enhanced privacy protection based on local AI processing and storage.

Cancer Research UK figures show number diagnosed with most serious form of skin cancer has risen above 20,000 for first time

The number of cases from the most serious form of skin cancer have reached a record high across the UK, according to analysis by a leading cancer charity.

Melanoma cases in the UK have risen above 20,000 for the first time ever, with 20,980 people being diagnosed with the form of cancer in 2022, according to analysis of the latest figures by Cancer Research UK.

Powered by its new Thus chip, Anker's flagship Liberty Pro 5 series noise-canceling earbuds deliver outstanding voice-calling performance, with very good sound quality and ANC.

Thousands of Chicago-area Zillow and Trulia listings disappeared after Midwest Real Estate Data cut off Zillow's access to its feed, "in the latest escalation of a legal battle with Lisle-based Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED)," reports the Chicago Sun-Times. "The fight is over MRED's private listing network, where homes for sale are shared among real estate professionals. And MRED followed through on a threat to cut Zillow's access to its listing data feed." From the report: There were nearly 5,000 Chicago homes listed on Zillow Tuesday, but as of Wednesday afternoon, that number plummeted to about 1,700. Meanwhile, other listing sites like Redfin and Realtor.com show about 5,000 to 8,000 listings in Chicago. MRED manages listings -- submitted by brokers -- throughout Illinois, as well as parts of Wisconsin and Indiana. The regional multiple listing service has more than 43,000 members and processed more than 264,000 listings worth $43 billion in 2025. The loss of listings on Zillow's websites have made a behind-the-scenes real estate industry fight public. And it now hinders some consumers in their search to buy a home, while also limiting the marketing opportunity for sellers. The legal fight is basically over who gets to control how home listings are marketed and displayed online. Zillow recently adopted a rule saying that if a home is marketed privately, such as behind a paywall, login, or private listing network, it should not also appear on Zillow. The policy, the real estate marketplace says, is meant to discourage "pocket listings," preserve transparency, and make sure buyers can see the full market. MRED sees it differently. It expanded its private listing network and partnered with Compass, which wants to give sellers more control over whether their homes are broadly publicized or marketed privately first. MRED argues that Zillow is violating MLS rules and licensing agreements by refusing to display certain listings, including private Compass listings. Consumers are now caught in the middle...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Political editor Pippa Crerar and features writer Simon Hattenstone top major categories and Malak A Tantesh wins for Gaza reporting

The Guardian’s political editor, a prominent features writer and a brave young Palestinian reporter are among those to have been honoured at the Press Awards in London.

The awards celebrate the best journalism across all news media publishers distributing in the UK.

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is getting ready for the 12th test flight of its Starship rocket ahead of the company's plans to go public in June.

May 21, 2026 — Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have created a new tool that can catch and correct potential mistakes in real time while 3D printing large plastic parts. The automated system could help U.S. manufacturers produce large, custom parts with fewer defects, potentially reducing waste, lowering costs, and strengthening domestic competitiveness in additive manufacturing, which includes 3D printing.

A test object is 3D-printed using a new system to monitor for errors and correct them automatically while manufacturing large items made from plastic composite. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Large-scale 3-D printing directs heated plastic composite through a robotic nozzle, arranging layers to form parts such as walls for the building industry or aircraft wings and car bumpers for the transportation sector. There are many printing variables that control whether layers are hot enough to stick together yet firm enough to hold their shape, a manufacturing balancing act that requires constant supervision.

ORNL researchers created a controller that supervises automatically, freeing workers to focus on more complex tasks. The controller system is equipped with sensors tracking the position of the robotic nozzle, the printing speed, and the temperature of the plastic being dispensed. The team augmented the sensor suite with low-cost thermal cameras mounted around the printing nozzle. These are used to monitor the temperature of the deposited plastic as it cools.

Computer Vision Enhances Real-Time Control of Large-Scale 3D Printing

Computer vision, a type of artificial intelligence allowing a machine to interpret images, enables the ORNL-developed controller to identify the location and temperature of hot material within a live-streamed thermal image. If the controller spots a deviation from the target temperature, it adjusts the speed of the 3-D printing process so each layer cools to the target temperature before the next one is added. This ensures the proper shape and binding between layers, reducing failed prints and wasted material.

Big area 3-D printers, like this one where experiments are conducted at ORNL, are so large that the print bed is also the floor. Credit: Alonda Hines/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

“It is novel that our controller can sense what is happening and react in real time,” said Kris Villez, the project’s lead researcher, who partnered with University of Tennessee graduate student Chris O’Brien. “It controls the process almost like a human would: by observing and nudging the setting until it reaches the desired outcome.”

To test this, the team first calibrated the control system and adjusted the tight crown of six thermal cameras on the robotic nozzle. The assembly resembles a column of metal tubes laced with colorful wires suspended inside a printer the size of a boxcar. Researchers prepared to monitor how reducing print speed would affect the temperature of the layers. As each layer of plastic was dispensed, the print bed—serving as the floor—lowered slightly to make room for each new layer.

The machine printed a hexagon bigger than a truck tire to demonstrate the controller’s performance on a full-scale part. The job started with a low print speed to challenge the new controller. This resulted in material that was about 30% too cool when the next layer was applied. Detecting this, the controller automatically increased the print speed to maintain the best temperature for layers to fuse correctly, demonstrating real-time correction in action.

O’Brien said the tool can detect and correct temperature differences down to just few degrees, which is critical since temperature variations are a common cause of ruined parts.

A ring of tiny thermal cameras points at the robotic nozzle depositing plastic composite during testing of the new ORNL platform for correcting 3D printing errors using automation. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

Unlike some monitoring systems, ORNL’s controller does not need retraining for every new design, saving time and computing power while increasing flexibility. Villez said the tool is designed to work with any large-area composite printer, any type of plastic, and any shape.

This model used machine learning to create a virtual replica of the physical printing process, called a digital twin, which enables risk-free experiments with new shapes and materials, Villez said.

Controller Is Next Step in ORNL Research to Improve Real-Time 3D Printing Error Correction

ORNL is a global leader in advancing the accuracy, affordability, and scalability of additive manufacturing. This project built on a previous ORNL study with Purdue University and the University of Maine that showed the benefits of combining thermal images with a statistical model to improve fault detection in large-scale 3D printing. More recently, researchers at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and ORNL proved this approach is capable of reliably catching print speeds as little as 15% different from the programmed settings.

While the earlier project automated fault recognition, the new system goes further by instantly correcting errors.

“There is a vast opportunity space to make these machines more intelligent and more responsive,” Villez said. “In the end, we’d love this to work like baking bread: You set the oven temperature, put in your dough, and return when the timer goes off to see if it’s done. You don’t have to monitor the oven temperature in real time throughout the baking.”

Automating the process could free skilled workers from constant monitoring. Villez said it would allow them to focus instead on fine-tuning the balance of speed, product shape, and strength. This renewed and expanded focus could open the door to broader use of large-scale 3D printing for products such as refrigerated shipping containers, molds for boat hulls, and walls of buildings.

Other researchers who contributed to the project include ORNL’s Katie Copenhaver and Alex Roschli, with funding from DOE’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Source: ORNL

The post ORNL Uses Computer Vision and Digital Twins to Improve Large-Scale 3D Printing appeared first on HPCwire.

ADT Blu shouldn't be confused with Blue by ADT, or ADT Self Setup. I know, it's a mess. Here's what matters.

Disney says the biometric technology, implemented late last month, is designed to streamline guest entry.

Nascar says it is ‘heartbroken’ to share news of Busch’s death after he was hospitalized with a severe illness

Two-time Nascar Cup Series champion Kyle Busch has died at 41 after being hospitalized with a severe illness, Nascar said in a Thursday statement.

“We are saddened and heartbroken to share the news of the passing of Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup champion and one of our sport’s greatest and fiercest drivers. He was 41 years old,” the racing organization wrote on social media. “We extend our deepest condolences to the Busch family, Richard Childress Racing and the entire motorsports community.”

After Google killed its search engine a few days ago, one question remained: how exactly does advertising fit into all of this? Google is obviously not going to move to chatbot search without somehow adding ads to your conversation with the pachinko machine, so everybody was wondering how that was going to work, exactly. Well, we have the answer, and it’s an obvious one.

When researching a topic, consumers want to know exactly how a product suits their unique situation. In fact, 75% of people report making faster, more confident decisions using AI Mode in Search. ¹ That’s why we’re testing two new types of ads, built with Gemini, that offer relevant product details along with helpful guidance.

To help people evaluate their choices, both of these new formats will feature an independent AI explainer as part of the ad. Our Gemini model evaluates and synthesizes information about a product or service, and displays that context alongside the advertiser’s creative. This coherent, independent response ensures transparency and builds trust. These formats will also continue to be clearly labeled as “Sponsored.”

↫ Google’s Ads & Commerce Blog

Of course they’re going to just generate the ads with “AI”, too. Google will offer two types of “AI”-generated ads in their new chatbot search tool, the first of which will simply be an “AI”-generated answer to a user’s question. If you ask the Google chatbot “how can I clean my bed sheets of unintended nightly slop discharge?”, Google will generate an ad based on the features of a slopcleaner washing machine detergent product and show that to you.

The second type comes in when a user asks something like “what is the best way to kill a search engine?” Google’s chatbot will then show a number of ways to kill a search engine, and one of the items in that list might be an ad generated by Google, alongside the customary unrelated information, wrong information, and made-up nonsense. Google claims both of these types of ads will be labeled as such, but I doubt that small label will be noticed by many, and of course, there’s no way to know any of the other answers the chatbot generates aren’t paid-for either.

Here, too, though, we must ask the question what the end game is. This new chatbot search engine is clearly trying to keep you on Google’s website, but in doing so, it’ll deprive large numbers of websites of the traffic they need to survive. If they can’t survive, they’re die. If they’re dead, they can’t produce the content Google “AI” needs to slobber up to spit back out in Google’s chatbot search. Chatbot search is also an agent of its own destruction, because you can’t generate improved slop with nothing but slop.

Because, and I can’t repeat this often enough, nobody has ever used “AI” to produce anything of value.

The price of the wristband health tracker hasn't been announced yet.

Vivaldi 8.0 is being pitched as the browser's "most significant design overhaul" yet, featuring a new unified, edge-to-edge interface, six preset layouts, and deeper customization across tabs, toolbars, panels, and themes. The company is also taking a swipe at rivals chasing questionable AI features. Neowin reports: After updating to version 8.0, Vivaldi will present you with the ability to select one of the six pre-built styles. You can select a minimal edge-to-edge theme, one with the UI fully hidden for focused work, or a power user variant with everything on the screen. The update comes with a built-in collection theme, and users are free to select one of over 7,000 community themes available on the official website. Vivaldi says that while other browsers were busy adding questionable AI features, it focused on "a foundation that no other browser can match" with flexible tab management, built-in productivity tools, and advanced customization. At the same time, Vivaldi does not force the new design onto its users, so those who prefer the previous user interface can go back to it at any moment in settings. "With 8.0, we have done something we have been working toward for a long time: we have given the browser itself a visual system worthy of everything it can do," says Vivaldi's CEO and co-founder, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner. "With this update Vivaldi feels like one considered, coherent tool." You can download Vivaldi 8.0 and view the changelog at their respective links.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Suppose your manager asks you next week to demonstrate that the AI coding tools your company signed up for are worth the subscription cost. Would you measure lines of code generated, or tickets closed? Or would you send out a survey asking whether developers feel more productive? Each of those approaches is flawed in a different way; the sections below explain why.

↫ Greg Wilson

Every single study that claims to prove “AI” has a positive effect on productivity falls into one or more of these categories.

Again, nobody has ever used “AI” to produce anything of value.

AI tools that autonomously perform tasks for users mark a major step forward from chatbots, according to tech experts.

Little St. James in the Virgin Islands has attracted seekers lured by tales of Jeffrey Epstein's private island.

The stories of “AI” bots and crawlers absolutely ravaging websites and services keep on coming, and the amount of work people have to do just to survive these “AI” bot and crawler assaults is insane.

I run Weird Gloop, which hosts some of the biggest video game wikis ever, like Minecraft, OSRS and League. Over the last 3 years, we’ve had to spend more and more of our time fighting with this bot traffic that is spiky, disproportionately expensive, and getting harder to distinguish from humans. If we weren’t constantly mitigating the bots, they would use ~10x more of our compute resources than everything else put together – even though that “everything else” includes tens of millions of (human) pageviews and tens of thousands of edits a day.

Everyone who runs wikis is dealing with the exact same problem. The Wikimedia Foundation has a post about it impacting operations, every major wiki farm has had varying degrees of service outages, and some smaller independent wikis have been knocked completely offline. Overall, I’d guess that about 95% of all server issues in the wiki ecosystem this year have been caused by bad scrapers.

↫ cookmeplox at the Weird Gloop blog

“AI” tools are a quintessential example of “shitting where you eat”. All of these tools just suck up huge amounts of content created by actual humans, only to regurgitate bits and pieces of that content upon request according statistical models. If in that process of sucking up everybody’s content, these tools are placing such amounts of undue stress and cost on the people making and hosting that content that said people stop making and hosting such content, where are these “AI” tools going to get their content from next?

With every person that throws up their hands in the air in utter frustration as they see they’re hosting bills skyrocket and their sites become unusable, “AI” tools are agents of their own destruction, since ingesting the slop they themselves create only makes these “AI” tools worse.

Nobody has ever used “AI” to produce anything of value, after all.

Exclusive: Move to establish board comes after criticism that Lammy’s plan to slash jury trials will lead to increase in racial and class bias

David Lammy and the most senior judge in England and Wales are drawing up plans to accelerate the recruitment of minority ethnic and working-class solicitors into the judiciary.

A new judicial and legal diversity board, chaired by Lammy, who is the first black lord chancellor, and Sue Carr, the lady chief justice, has met for the first time to discuss removing barriers for diverse candidates attempting to join the judiciary.

May 21, 2026 — When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Genesis Mission, major research universities across the United States, including the State University of New York at Stony Brook, had only weeks to do what they often spend months preparing for: identify faculty expertise across the institution, build interdisciplinary teams, align proposals with national priorities, secure external partners, manage internal review, adapt to shifting federal requirements and submit a coordinated response at scale.

Stony Brook University President Andrea Goldsmith addresses the SBU Genesis Mission RFA Response gathering May 15 at the Charles B. Wang Center.

Stony Brook responded with 89 proposal submissions.

That number became the focus of a May 15 gathering hosted by the Office for Research and Innovation (ORI) to recognize the principal investigators, co-principal investigators, research administrators, department staff, college and center teams, compliance staff and budget officers who contributed to the university’s Genesis Mission response. The event was both a recognition of an extraordinary effort and a reflection on what the experience revealed about Stony Brook’s research enterprise.

President Andrea Goldsmith and Mónica Bugallo, interim vice president for research and innovation, praised the campus-wide response as a defining example of Stony Brook’s capacity to move quickly, collaborate broadly and compete for opportunities tied to the nation’s most urgent scientific and technological priorities.

“I am truly in awe of the efforts of our Office for Research and Innovation and all of you,” Goldsmith said. “Eighty-nine submissions. That’s remarkable.”

The DOE describes the Genesis Mission as a national initiative to build “the world’s most powerful scientific platform,” bringing together national laboratories, industry, academia and other partners to use artificial intelligence to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, discovery science and national security. The mission is organized around national science and technology challenges and is intended to connect supercomputers, experimental facilities, AI systems and unique datasets to address critical problems at unprecedented speed. Applicants chose between applying for Phase I or Phase II applications based on their readiness and team size, with successful Phase I proposals having the opportunity to apply for Phase II in the near future.

For Stony Brook, the call arrived as both an opportunity and a test.

Stony Brook’s Genesis Mission Response

The federal funding opportunity was released on March 17. Stony Brook launched its limited competition on March 20, closed the internal competition on March 30, and submitted Phase I applications and Phase II letters of intent by May 1, following a DOE modification that added three days to the original deadline. The final response included 40 Stony Brook-led proposals and 49 proposals in which Stony Brook participated as a partner non-lead institution. All 40 Stony Brook-led applications were Phase I proposals. The non-lead submissions included 46 Phase I applications and three Phase II applications.

The breadth of the response reflected the extent of the university’s research strengths. Stony Brook-led applications spanned 16 Genesis Mission topic areas, including advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical minerals, fusion energy, quantum algorithms, quantum systems, microelectronics, data centers, autonomous laboratories, materials discovery, particle accelerators, physics, grid optimization, high-performance computing, scientific reasoning and AI for fluid flow in energy technologies.

Many of the proposals were built around new or expanded collaborations. Among Stony Brook-led applications, 28 included collaborations with Brookhaven National Laboratory, 16 involved other national laboratories and 14 included industry partners. Ten of the industry-partnered proposals also included a national laboratory partner. External partners listed in the university’s response included Ames, Argonne, Jefferson, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, Sandia, Savannah River and SLAC national laboratories, along with companies and organizations such as Amazon Web Services, Dominion Energy, Eversource Energy, GE Vernova, IBM Quantum, IBM Research and NVIDIA.

Goldsmith emphasized that the significance of the effort extends beyond the outcome of any individual proposal.

“When I think about this milestone, it isn’t just about the funding that we may or may not get from the Department of Energy,” Goldsmith said. “It’s about the conversations that this call for proposals sparked, the new collaborations with industry and national labs, and what that will mean for Stony Brook going forward in terms of being a national leader in using AI for research.”

Building New Pathways to the DOE

The Genesis Mission also opened a path for many Stony Brook researchers to engage with the DOE in a new way. According to the ORI’s presentation, 15 of Stony Brook’s lead proposals, or 38 percent, were led by first-time DOE principal investigators (PIs). Another 13 non-Stony Brook-led proposals, or 27 percent, involved first-time DOE PIs from Stony Brook.

Bugallo called that one of the most important takeaways from the process.

“As a PI, I know how difficult it is to start and to change the way that you operate and what opportunities you consider,” Bugallo said. “You saw here the opportunity that may change how you are funding your research.”

A Campus-Wide Effort

That opportunity required a significant institutional effort. ORI’s research strategy team began by mapping research strengths across the university to the DOE’s 26 Lighthouse Challenges and 99 focus areas. When the DOE’s final solicitation arrived with changes to the expected topics, the team adapted and reworked the mapping. The university then ran a campus-wide internal competition, reviewing 52 pre-proposals with support from 10 reviewers and approving 45 Stony Brook-led submissions. Ultimately, 40 Stony Brook-led proposals were submitted.

The administrative infrastructure behind the response was equally extensive. Faculty and staff relied on the central research office to provide webinars, templates, training videos, budget guidance, one-on-one Zoom support, submission assistance and ongoing coordination across departments, colleges, centers and institutes. Teams also adapted to three DOE amendments, major changes in application structure and multiple Grants.gov outages during the final 48 hours before submission.

“This took a village,” Bugallo said, noting that the 89 Genesis Mission proposals were submitted during a six-week period in which the university also processed 147 additional proposals, six more than the same period last year. In total, Stony Brook processed 236 proposals during that window.

Goldsmith echoed that message, calling staff “the unsung heroes in universities” and recognizing the extraordinary demand placed on the teams who helped faculty meet the deadline.

“Your names aren’t on the proposals,” she said. “The faculty members and the students are the ones that are in the articles, in the newsletters, in the posts about the great research that we do, but we could not do it without the staff.”

Positioning Stony Brook for AI-Driven Discovery

The Genesis Mission aligns closely with Stony Brook’s growing emphasis on AI, data-intensive discovery, quantum research, energy systems, advanced materials and large-scale interdisciplinary collaboration. It also reflects a broader shift in federal research priorities toward speed, scale, partnerships and measurable national impact.

The DOE’s solicitation focused on interdisciplinary teams using novel AI models and frameworks to accelerate scientific discovery and research and development workflows. The opportunity included disciplines such as AI, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, physics, quantum information science, semiconductors and microelectronics, discovery science and energy.

Phase I projects, according to DOE information shared by Stony Brook’s Office of Proposal Development, are intended to design and demonstrate tangible research workflows that incorporate AI, with evaluation of the potential for “AI advantage.” That may include increasing predictive power, coupling data and experiments more tightly, building new models, speeding discovery, improving experimental workflows or establishing metrics that justify further investment.

For Goldsmith, that positioning matters because AI remains in an early and consequential stage.

“AI today is very different from the AI of the past,” she said. “But we really don’t yet know how this tool is going to transform jobs, research, education and other aspects of how we live, work and play. It is still the early days.”

That uncertainty, she added, creates an opening for Stony Brook.

“We want Stony Brook to be positioned as a leader,” Goldsmith said. “Those 89 proposals submitted to the federal government show that we are a leader in how AI might be used for research.”

Goldsmith connected the response to ASPIRE 2035, the long-term vision she introduced during her inauguration. In particular, she pointed to the university’s ambition to be recognized as a global leader in areas where its expertise, partnerships and public mission converge.

The Genesis Mission response, she said, demonstrated something essential about Stony Brook’s identity as a research university.

“It really showcased what Stony Brook as a university can do,” Goldsmith said. “We can come together. We can respond quickly. We are young. We are ambitious. We are nimble.”

Sustaining the Momentum

The event also focused on what comes next. Both Goldsmith and Bugallo emphasized that the process created relationships, ideas and institutional knowledge that should continue regardless of which proposals receive DOE funding. Goldsmith said the university will look for ways to sustain the collaborations that emerged, potentially through seed funding or other support.

“I want to make sure that every thread of collaboration that was supported through this process continues,” Goldsmith said. “You have my commitment to make sure that the momentum you created will not go away, independent of what the Department of Energy decides to fund through this.”

Bugallo said the experience also offered a preview of how major federal research opportunities may increasingly operate. She noted that compressed timelines and large-scale interdisciplinary calls are likely to become more common, requiring universities to rethink how they prepare teams, support researchers and build systems for rapid response.

“We have to start getting ready,” Bugallo said. “We have to start thinking about how we are going to respond to some of these calls on a regular basis.”

For Stony Brook, the Genesis Mission effort was not only a proposal sprint for a single opportunity. It was a demonstration of institutional readiness, research ambition and collaborative capacity across the university.

It brought together faculty who had never before submitted to the DOE. It connected researchers with national laboratories and industry partners. It tested administrative systems under pressure. It produced new research concepts across 16 national priority areas. And it showed how quickly Stony Brook can move when a major scientific opportunity aligns with its strengths.

“What you have done went beyond my wildest expectations,” Goldsmith said. “This response is truly exceptional.”

For a university seeking to expand the reach and impact of its research enterprise, the Genesis Mission became more than a federal funding opportunity. It became a measure of what Stony Brook can do at scale, at speed and in partnership with the people and institutions shaping the next era of scientific discovery.

Source: Stephen Pallas, State University of New York at Stony Brook

The post Stony Brook Mobilizes Campus-Wide Research Push with 89 DOE Genesis Mission Proposals appeared first on HPCwire.

Assistant US attorney general claims services in state subject to ‘shocking’ levels of fraud, which he labels a ‘crisis’

The Trump administration broke new ground in its offensive against alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social services on Thursday as the US Department of Justice announced charges against 15 people accused of cheating a government healthcare program to the tune of $90m.

At a news conference in Minneapolis that underscored Donald Trump’s fierce focus on the state and Tim Walz, its Democratic governor, Colin McDonald, assistant US attorney general, told journalists that services had been subject to “shocking” levels of fraud, which he labelled a “crisis”.

Trump called off a planned AI executive order just hours before a signing ceremony because he said he was worried the framework could slow America's lead over China. "We're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead," Trump told reporters. The Associated Press reports: The order would have established a framework for the government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems before their public release, according to a person familiar with the White House's deliberations with the tech industry but not authorized to speak about it publicly. The directive was being characterized as a voluntary collaboration with participating U.S.-based tech companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, the person said. There are competing factions within the administration, said Serena Booth, a computer science professor at Brown University and former AI policy fellow in a Democratic-led Senate committee. "We do see this kind of public fighting," she said. "'We will release an executive order. No, we won't. We're going to sign it this afternoon. Oh, the signing is canceled.' I think this whiplash is because we're seeing these fractures.'" Some of those divides are balancing what Booth said is a "reasonable idea" to test the most capable AI models before their public release, with a concern that government scrutiny, if it takes too long, could burden AI developers. "It does come at a potential very large cost to innovation and speed of development," she said. "There is, I think, a real risk here and I do see both sides." [...] "They don't want to do it because it's politically risky in a million different ways," said Dean Ball, now at the Foundation for American Innovation. Ball said he would welcome an executive order that would get those companies working more closely with the government on cybersecurity but "ultimately, I'm fine with them taking time to get this right."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whether Zelenskyy had in fact uttered the line "I need ammunition — not a ride" was disputed by the Biden administration when I reported it. Now, the Ukrainian leader has confirmed he said it.

GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi introduced a bill to ban the use of federal money for paying out claims under the Justice Department's new "anti-weaponization" fund.

Licensing agreement will allow listeners to use AI to create content on streaming platform for first time

Spotify and Universal Music Group have agreed on a deal that will allow subscribers to generate song covers and remixes using artificial intelligence.

The licensing agreement is the first time the Swedish streaming company will allow listeners to use AI to create content through its platform.

‘I have a thing called Iran, and other things,’ says president as he considers invitation to Donald Trump Jr’s nuptials

Get Me to the Church on Time, sang Alfred Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady. But for Donald Trump, attending a wedding is not simple – even when it’s that of his son.

On Thursday, the US president admitted that he might skip Donald Trump Jr’s nuptials, reportedly taking place in the Bahamas over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

Google's annual developer conference kicked off with a keynote Tuesday. We'll be bringing you updates throughout the conference.

Two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch has been hospitalized with a severe illness and won't compete at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend, his family said.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 22, No. 1,076.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 22, No. 1,798.

BrianFagioli writes: Flipper Devices has finally revealed Flipper One, a Linux-powered cyberdeck that sounds less like a gadget and more like an attempt to rebuild portable ARM computing from the ground up. Unlike Flipper Zero, which focuses on offline protocols like RFID and Sub-1 GHz radio, Flipper One is all about networking, modular hardware, SDR experimentation, local AI, and upstream Linux kernel support. The company says it wants to build "the most open and best-documented ARM computer in the world," complete with zero vendor BSP dependency and as few binary blobs as possible. That alone is enough to get Linux folks paying attention. The hardware itself is loaded with nerd bait: dual Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, M.2 expansion for SSDs and 5G modems, GPIO add-ons, HDMI 2.1, and a dual-processor architecture pairing a Rockchip RK3576 with a Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller. Flipper Devices is even developing its own small-screen Linux UI framework because squeezing KDE onto tiny touchscreens is miserable. The company openly admits the project is financially and technically terrifying, which honestly makes this announcement feel more believable than most startup hardware pitches. Whether Flipper One succeeds or not, it is one of the most ambitious Linux hardware projects in years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 22, No. 810.

Since X11 has moved to legacy status, it’s only a matter of time before the BSDs are going to have to make the move to being Wayland-first as well. This applies particularly to FreeBSD, which has been focusing on improving its suitability for desktop and laptops lately. The good news is that Wayland has been available on FreeBSD for a while now, and setting it up with a KDE desktop is a breeze.

Dolce Far Niente has a quick and easy guide, updated today, that walks you through the steps of setting up KDE with Wayland on a fresh FreeBSD 15.x installation. I’m keeping this on my to-do list, but I’m not committing yet because we’re getting quite close to the first incentive of the OSNews fundraiser, where I have to install, run, and use vanilla Windows 11 (including Office and Outlook) for a month. No point in setting up FreeBSD when we’re about to hit that incentive.

Regardless, this is going to be the future of FreeBSD for desktop and laptop use, so you if you’re already a FreeBSD user, you might as well try and see if Wayland works for you today.

The Oscar-winning actor’s role in the mythical drama has been attacked by Elon Musk and others on the far right

Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o has responded to far-right criticism of her role in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey.

In the big-budget film, out in July, the star plays Helen of Troy alongside cast members including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and Zendaya.

As always, be aware that using free VPNs carries some risks.

Report contains damning findings concerning spending, media strategy and organizing failures that led to defeat

• US politics live – latest updates

A sweeping internal review of the Democrats’ 2024 election losses runs nearly 200 pages. The autopsy report, released on Thursday after months of speculation and delay, was meant to capture why and how the Democrats lost the White House and collapsed electorally nationwide.

Along with a slew of mistakes, it contains some damning findings that examine spending patterns, media strategy, voter contact and organizing failures across the ballot, describing a party that has lost ground at every level of government for nearly two decades.

Tony Carruthers’s lawyers say no evidence ties him to 1994 crimes he was convicted of and he is mentally incompetent

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Tennessee governor Bill Lee has granted a one-year stay of execution to 57-year old Tony Carruthers after officials struggled to locate a vein during a lethal injection attempt.

On Thursday, Lee issued the stay to Carruthers as his lawyer Maria DeLiberato was speaking to reporters, the Associated Press reported. Carruthers had been sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 murders of three people in Memphis: Marcellos Anderson, 21; his mother, Delois Anderson, 43; and Frederick Tucker, 17.

Shoppers continue to open their pocketbooks, boosting retailers like Walmart, even as inflation jumps to its highest level in three years.

Forecast came amid warning that US was unprepared for storms with staffing cuts under Trump administration

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The US will see a below-normal hurricane season in 2026, federal government scientists said on Thursday, predicting eight to 14 named storms with winds at 39mph (63km/h) or more. The milder-than-usual forecast is thanks to a developing El Niño weather pattern in the central and eastern Pacific.

The announcement came days before the start of hurricane season, which begins on 1 June and runs through 30 November.

Spotify will soon let Premium subscribers pay a little extra to remix their favorite tracks with new AI tools.

Here's how to check for the hidden file and delete it from your machine.

Approval marks key step forward for project dubbed ‘Arc de Trump’, which will be near Arlington national cemetery

The US Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday approved designs for Donald Trump’s proposed 250ft triumphal arch in Washington.

The vote by the panel, which is made up of Trump appointees, marks a key step forward for the project. Next month, the proposed design is set to be reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission, another federal panel that oversees planning for federal buildings and land.

Prime minister says he will boycott opening, as protesters hold signs saying ‘stop USA’ and shout ‘go home’

Hundreds of people protested against the opening of a new US consulate in Nuuk after comments by the US special envoy to Greenland that it was time for Washington “to put its footprint back” on the Arctic territory.

Many Greenlandic politicians, including the prime minister, said they would not attend the official opening on Thursday.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 21, 2026 — To meet the growing demand for AI infrastructure, AMD today announced more than $10 billion in investments across the Taiwan ecosystem to expand strategic partnerships and scale advanced packaging manufacturing for next-generation AI infrastructure.

Credit: Shutterstock

Working with strategic partners in Taiwan and globally, AMD is advancing leading-edge silicon, packaging and manufacturing technologies that enable higher performance, greater efficiency and faster deployment of AI systems. These efforts build on AMD’s deep ecosystem partnerships and long-standing leadership in chiplet architectures, high-bandwidth memory integration, 3D hybrid bonding and rack-scale system design for next-generation AI infrastructure.

“As AI adoption accelerates, our global customers are rapidly scaling AI infrastructure to meet growing compute demand,” said Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO, AMD. “By combining AMD leadership in high-performance computing with the Taiwan ecosystem and our strategic global partners, we are enabling integrated, rack-scale AI infrastructure that helps customers accelerate deployment of next-generation AI systems.”

Today’s investment announcement demonstrates how AMD is extending its leadership through strategic partnerships that advance silicon, packaging and manufacturing innovations required for next-generation AI infrastructure:

• EFB ecosystem development: AMD is collaborating with Taiwan-based ASE and SPIL, as well as other industry partners, to develop and qualify next-generation wafer-based 2.5D bridge interconnect technology. EFB architecture increases interconnect bandwidth and improves power efficiency, supporting “Venice” CPUs. These improvements translate into faster, more efficient systems capable of delivering greater performance-per-watt while operating within real-world power and cooling constraints.
• Panel-based innovation with PTI: AMD has achieved a major milestone with PTI by qualifying the industry’s first 2.5D panel-based EFB interconnect. The technology supports high-bandwidth interconnect at scale, allowing customers to deploy more efficient AI systems while improving overall economics.

Together, these advancements reinforce AMD’s leadership in delivering high-performance AI infrastructure at scale. By combining silicon innovation with a robust global ecosystem, AMD is enabling customers to accelerate deployment of the next generation of AI systems.

Ecosystem Accelerates AMD Helios Deployment

AMD and its ecosystem partners are applying these innovations to support deployment of the AMD Helios rack-scale platform in the second half of 2026, marking a major step toward production-ready AI infrastructure.

Leading ODM partners including Sanmina, Wiwynn, Wistron and Inventec are helping to build AMD Helios-based systems powered by AMD Instinct MI450X GPUs, 6th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, advanced networking solutions and the AMD ROCm open software stack, helping scale the platform from design to high-volume manufacturing.

The AMD Helios platform is designed to deliver breakthrough AI performance through advances in compute, interconnect bandwidth, memory capacity and system-level integration, allowing customers to run larger, more complex AI workloads faster while optimizing power and efficiency.

“Sanmina is proud to partner with AMD to deliver next-generation AI infrastructure at scale,” said Jure Sola, Chairman and CEO, Sanmina Corporation. “Our work together on AMD Helios manufacturing highlights the strength of the ecosystem and our shared commitment to delivering high-performance, reliable solutions to customers worldwide.”

“Wiwynn’s collaboration with AMD on the Helios platform reflects our commitment to delivering fully integrated, rack-scale AI infrastructure,” said William Lin, President and CEO of Wiwynn. “Together, we are empowering hyperscalers to deploy AI at scale with the performance, efficiency and reliability the market demands.”

“Inventec is pleased to collaborate with AMD on delivering high-performance AI and data center systems,” said Jack Tsai, President, Inventec. “Together, we are enabling customers to deploy powerful, energy-efficient infrastructure to support increasingly complex workloads.”

“Our collaboration with AMD on Elevated Fanout Bridge technology represents a significant step forward in scaling advanced packaging for high-volume applications,” said Steven Tsai, Senior Vice President, Sales, ASE. “By working together to industrialize EFB, we are enabling greater performance, efficiency and flexibility for next-generation data center platforms.”

“SPIL is proud to partner with AMD to bring innovative packaging solutions like EFB to market,” said John Yu, Vice President, Sales, SPIL. “These technologies are helping expand the reach of advanced packaging into new applications while supporting the rapid growth of AI infrastructure.”

“Through our work with AMD on panel-based EFB, we are delivering new levels of scalability and cost efficiency for advanced packaging,” said DK Tsai, Chairman, PTI. “This collaboration enables faster time-to-market and supports the high-volume production requirements of next-generation processors like ‘Venice.’”

“Unimicron is pleased to support AMD with advanced substrate solutions as packaging requirements become increasingly complex for high-performance computing,” said Kevin Chen, President of Substrate BU, Unimicron Technology Corp.

“AIC is proud to work closely with AMD on the Helios program, supporting the mechanical architecture that helps bring this advanced AI infrastructure platform to life,” said Michael Liang, Chairman, AIC. “Our collaboration across rack-level and compute tray design reflects the strength of our partnership with AMD and our shared commitment to delivering scalable, high-performance solutions for the next generation of AI.”

“Nan Ya PCB values its collaboration with AMD and is committed to supporting advanced packaging growth through high-quality substrate technology, manufacturing excellence and resilient supply chain execution,” said Jack Lu, President, Nan Ya PCB.

“Kinsus is proud to support AMD’s advanced packaging growth with high-quality substrate technology and trusted supply chain collaboration,” said Scott Chen, President, Kinsus.

About AMD

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing. Learn more at www.amd.com.

Source: AMD

The post AMD Announces More Than $10B in Taiwan Ecosystem Investments to Accelerate AI Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.

A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management contractor at the Savannah River Site is advancing its artificial intelligence capabilities in support of DOE’s Genesis Mission.

AIKEN, S.C., May 21, 2026 — A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) contractor at the Savannah River Site (SRS) is advancing its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in support of DOE’s Genesis Mission, an initiative focused on building the world’s most powerful scientific and computational ecosystem.

The Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Artificial Intelligence Implementation Team. From left: Len Bowers, director, IT Enterprise Solutions; Tedmond Melton, software engineering manager; Travis Jaruzel, software engineer; and Charlie McCollough and Brandy Edwards, AI Solutions analysts.

As it forges ahead with AI innovation at SRS, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) contributes to DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration goals of bolstering scientific discovery, enhancing nuclear security missions and increasing operational resilience across the complex.

“Our teams are accelerating safe, secure AI adoption to strengthen mission performance, modernize infrastructure and empower our workforce,” said Bruce Page, SRNS senior vice president and chief information officer. “From maturing responsible‑use governance to deploying practical AI demonstrators within high‑security environments, SRNS is helping DOE translate federal AI priorities into measurable impact.”

Page noted that AI tools, stronger governance frameworks and expanding machine‑learning initiatives give SRNS a foundation to continue transforming operations into the future.

“We will keep pursuing safe, secure and cost‑effective AI opportunities in a rapidly evolving technology landscape to modernize operations and strengthen mission outcomes,” he said.

Researchers at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), the sole EM-sponsored national laboratory, are integral to the Genesis Mission, employing AI and machine learning to tackle complex environmental challenges, which can significantly reduce costs and improve efficiency in the EM cleanup. Earlier this year, the federal government unveiled 26 initial research challenges under the mission, including one focused on transforming nuclear cleanup and restoration.

Key Milestones in AI Adoption

SRNS has created AI and automation capabilities designed to enhance productivity, improve access to institutional knowledge and elevate mission support.

The late Larry Price, SRNS chief AI architect, laid the foundation for Generative AI, deploying secure, mission-aligned AI tools, including ChatSRS, which provides research support, technical writing assistance, text analysis and rapid access to institutional knowledge.

The team launched several specialized “Ask” services, including AskHR and ChatIT. These tools have increased consistency in policy interpretation, streamlined high‑volume inquiries and accelerated causal analysis activities across many SRNS organizations. They also integrated AI into software engineering workflows.

“Our AI initiative started as a question and grew into a roadmap, and I’ve been fortunate to help connect the dots as the vision expands,” said Travis Jaruzel, SRNS software engineer. “It’s shown how quickly scope evolves when innovation meets real‑world challenges, ideas become solutions and solutions build momentum.”

SRNS also developed an AI governance to supplement its information technology methodology, and implemented a program to identify vulnerabilities, prevent misuse and perform other safeguards for deploying AI in a high‑security nuclear environment.

Source: Mackenzie McNabb, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The post Savannah River Site Contractor Expands AI Capabilities to Support DOE Genesis Mission appeared first on HPCwire.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., in an effort to gain access to their complete voter registration lists.

If you're considering opening a CD account in today's economy, it's critical to first know which mistakes to avoid.

A Democratic House candidate in Texas is facing widespread condemnation and accusations of antisemitism from her own party.

The House and Senate will both leave Washington for their Memorial Day recess without voting on a reconciliation package to fund federal immigration agencies.

When Tommy Fisher set out to build a section of border wall in South Texas during the first Trump administration, the project quickly became ensnared in controversy. Experts raised concerns about shoddy construction and signs of erosion.

Beyond that, Fisher’s company had received funding from a group called We Build the Wall, an influential conservative nonprofit that included President Donald Trump’s then-political strategist Steve Bannon as a board member. Some of its leaders eventually went to prison for their involvement in the venture.

Even the president denounced the project.

“I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads,” Trump wrote on X in response to reporting by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune in 2020 detailing problems with the wall project.

“It was only done to make me look bad,” the post continued.

But none of this stopped Fisher’s company from getting subsequent border wall contracts, including from the state of Texas. And now the federal government has awarded his company over $9 billion to build even more border wall — including a $1.2 billion contract in the Big Bend region of Texas, where residents have continued to press for answers about the government’s plans in and around one of the country’s largest national parks.

And, as during Trump’s first term, Fisher’s work is stirring up controversy again. A New York-based construction company has sued the Trump administration after it awarded the bulk of new Texas border wall contracts to North Dakota-headquartered Fisher Sand & Gravel and another company.

Posillico Civil Inc.’s lawsuit, filed in the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., on May 13, offers one of the first public glimpses into the procurement process along the border in Texas. The suit claims that out of the 11 prequalified vendors for the wall projects, U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded nearly $14 billion — about 73% of the value of the contracts — to just two: Fisher’s firm and Barnard Construction, based in Montana. The work also includes wall projects around El Paso, Laredo, Del Rio and the Rio Grande Valley.

The Trump administration has come under scrutiny for awarding no-bid contracts and for the lack of transparency around its accelerated border wall construction plans, moves designed to help the president achieve his key campaign promise of securing the border.

During his first term, Trump’s moves also faced criticism. A 2020 investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that the government was awarding contracts before acquiring titles to the land, leading to millions of dollars in costs related to delays. A review of federal spending data by the news organizations also revealed how the first Trump administration had made hundreds of contract modifications, increasing the cost of the border wall project by billions.

The administration has shown no signs of slowing down: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security secured $46.5 billion to build the border wall in 2025, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Having prequalified contractors is not uncommon, as the system is structured to help the government move through projects quicker, but it is not meant to remove competition, said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

DHS “is picking contractors for loyalty and from confidence that they will do its bidding, rather than, as every other administration has done, picking contractors for best value,” Tiefer said, referring to reports that then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem awarded a $220 million ad campaign contract to a firm she had connections to. In response to ProPublica’s reporting, DHS said the department “has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors” and that it doesn’t control or weigh in on who contractors hire.

“They got huge blank checks, and they want to write them as fast as possible,” Tiefer said.

The White House declined to comment for this story. A CBP spokesperson said in a written statement that the bidding process has been fair. “Contracts awarded are based on the contractor’s qualifications to perform the work in a timely manner and at prices deemed fair and reasonable,” the spokesperson wrote, saying neither CBP nor DHS have an affiliation with We Build the Wall.

An attorney for Posillico declined to comment. The company has previously built 43 miles of federal wall in South Texas and also won a contract to construct sections of Gov. Greg Abbott’s state border project. The state project experienced many of the same construction delays and cost overruns as Trump’s border wall.

Posillico alleges in the lawsuit that it incurred “substantial bid preparation and proposal costs” drawing up plans for federal solicitations that were “not genuine competitive opportunities.”

While these are just allegations, Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said border wall contracts have long been controversial and raised questions on what the government is getting for the cost, as well as the political connections of some of the contractors. Amey closely followed border wall procurement during the first Trump administration.

“There’s a cost, and ethics and contracting questions that all come up whenever you mention anything with the border wall,” Amey said.

Representatives for Fisher Sand & Gravel and Barnard did not respond to requests for comment. Barnard has filed as an intervenor in the case, meaning it isn’t a party in the suit but wants to participate.

Although the vast majority of the new funding is going to Fisher and Barnard, several other companies got smaller percentages of the contracts: Spencer Construction LLC; Granite Construction Co.; and Southwest Valley Constructors, which recently won another $1.7 billion contract for barrier construction in and around Big Bend National Park. Representatives for the other companies did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Posillico’s lawsuit claims that the contracts issued to the other companies went beyond the original scope of wall construction work the federal government told bidders it was seeking.

In CPB’s Big Bend Sector project, for example, contractors were ultimately required to install cattle fencing and cattle guards — something Posillico’s lawsuit contends was not what the government originally asked of potential contractors. Had the government been clearer on the scope, the lawsuit argues, the company may have had a better chance of winning a contract.

As part of the new scope of work, winning contractors, including Fisher Sand & Gravel, will also have to work with the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that administers treaties around the Rio Grande and the physical border with Mexico.

Fisher has previously clashed with the commission. In 2019, the commission filed a lawsuit claiming Fisher had violated a binational water treaty between the U.S. and Mexico after the company constructed fencing in South Texas. The investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that a 3-mile stretch of border wall Fisher built on the banks of the Rio Grande was at risk of collapsing if not fixed. The company also built a segment of border wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico, without following proper procedures. Both projects involved We Build the Wall, the nonprofit.

In the end, four of the nonprofit’s top leaders, including Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme. Three men, including an Air Force veteran, were convicted and sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Bannon, who was awaiting trial.

Fisher and the government reached a settlement in 2022 in which Fisher Sand & Gravel agreed to conduct quarterly inspections, maintain an existing gate and keep a $3 million bond for 15 years or until the property was transferred to the government to cover expenses in case the structure failed.

“The Rules Don’t Really Apply”

The Posillico lawsuit offers a rare peek behind the veil at the high-dollar world of border wall construction, an industry that has sprung up over the past 10 years in response to Trump’s recurring campaign promise to build a wall.

The procurement process has been especially obscure around border wall contracting, thanks to Noem waiving dozens of laws regulating financial transparency and competitiveness in government contracting for the entire southern border. That act marked the first time in American history these waivers were applied to all 1,954 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

In its lawsuit, Posillico made explicit that it did not contest the use of waivers to expedite construction of the wall.

For residents of border communities, the waivers have meant that DHS has released very little information detailing the massive infrastructure projects coming to their communities. This spring, the Center for Biological Diversity filed two lawsuits in federal court related to border wall construction in the Big Bend area, specifically over DHS’ failure to respond to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to the project and challenging the agency’s authority to waive laws without Congress’ approval. The government has not filed answers to the complaints yet, with a deadline of June 1 for the FOIA complaint and early June in the congressional authority lawsuit.

In the Posillico lawsuit, DHS moved to seal documents in the case, including any depositions or affidavits; Judge David A. Tapp signed off on the motion.

In the absence of publicly posted requests for proposals and direct communication from Washington, residents in the Big Bend region have been relying on an online map posted by CBP that says it tracks contracts as they’re awarded. Lines on the map have shifted dramatically over the past few months, raising questions about what the government actually plans to build. The agency briefly took the map down altogether, around the same time that protests about the possibility of a physical wall in Big Bend National Park reached a fever pitch. When the map was restored to the website, it appeared to show a mix of “vehicle barriers” and “patrol roads” planned instead of steel walls within park boundaries.

Fisher Sand & Gravel is currently slated to build a wall-related project in Big Bend Ranch State Park, bordering the national park to the west, though it hasn’t publicly released any plans for what alternate border barriers might look like. Landowners in communities adjacent to the park are still gearing up to face eminent domain challenges from the federal government.

Barnard is working on a project outside the parks. Documents in Posillico’s lawsuit revealed that CBP has flagged sections of wall in Hudspeth, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties for “fast-track” construction by the company. To support that work, a pecan farm near the small ranching community of Lobo has started clearing a swath of land for a 500-person camp and petitioning the local water conservation district for approval to use agricultural well water for the project.

Amey, the contracting expert, said the Trump administration seems to want to make the exception the rule, considering controversial practices like Noem’s decision to award the huge border ad contract and the fact the government has waived so many contracting rules to accelerate the wall’s construction.

“It seems as if this administration, especially this time around, has decided that the rules don’t really apply,” he said.

The post The Trump Administration Is Facing Scrutiny for How It’s Handing Out Billion-Dollar Border Wall Contracts appeared first on ProPublica.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Quantum Insider: The Trump administration is preparing a new round of industrial policy aimed at quantum computing, with roughly $2 billion in grants expected to go to nine companies developing quantum hardware and related technologies. According to Reuters, citing a Wall Street Journal report, the U.S. Department of Commerce plans to distribute the funding through deals that also give the federal government equity stakes in the companies receiving the awards. The approach would expand Washington's increasingly direct involvement in sectors viewed as strategically important to national security, advanced manufacturing and competition with China. Reuters reported that IBM is expected to receive the largest share of the package at about $1 billion. Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries is slated to receive approximately $375 million, according to the report. Other recipients are expected to include D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Quantinuum and Infleqtion, with each company potentially receiving around $100 million, Reuters reported. Australian quantum startup Diraq could receive about $38 million, according to the Wall Street Journal report cited by Reuters. Fast Company notes in its reporting that IBM will invest the funds it receives into a new IBM company called Anderon. It will also match the grant with another $1 billion in cash. "Anderon will operate as a state-of-the-art 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry," IBM stated in an announcement. "It will help the nation solidify its leadership at the center of a thriving new quantum industry that is estimated to generate up to $850 billion in economic value by 2040 and spur American economic growth while also bolstering national security." Quantum computing stocks soared after the news. As of publication, IBM is up about 9.7%, D-Wave is up about 28.1%, and Rigetti is up about 26.7%. Meanwhile, Global Foundries rose about 13.8% and Infleqtion jumped about 30.9%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The commissioners, all appointed by Trump, acted despite overwhelming public opposition to the 250-foot arch.

Researchers with Department of Energy national laboratories are working together alongside industry collaborators to support Genesis Mission goals by using the power of artificial intelligence to significantly reduce design times of custom computer chips for use in extreme temperature, high-radiation and ultra-fast environments.

May 21, 2026 — A collaborative research team comprised of U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and led by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) aims to revolutionize custom microelectronics design by using artificial intelligence to accelerate development of chips that can function in extreme environments.

Fermilab engineer Yash Saxena holds a custom circuit board designed to measure chip performance in cryogenic environments. Credit: JJ Starr, Fermilab

The Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon — or AXESS — project will boost innovation and national competitiveness, enabling breakthroughs in quantum computing, fusion energy and particle physics.

AXESS is a collaborative endeavor leveraging the strengths of the vast DOE lab complex — including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories — as well as university collaborators and leading industry partners such as Siemens.

The team is developing proofs of concept for DOE’s Genesis Mission — a national mission to accelerate science through AI.

Fermilab, America’s particle physics and accelerator laboratory, is well-suited to lead this type of work and extend the adoption of rapid chip design to other research areas.

“Particle detectors must function in some of the most extreme environments in terms of radiation, cryogenic temperatures and speed,” said Nhan Tran, head of Fermilab’s AI Program. “As a result, we’ve built our own custom detectors for many years, and Fermilab has established deep expertise in microelectronics for extreme environments. More recently, we’ve developed tools and methods used across the community to integrate AI onto chips. All of this coming together within the Genesis Mission is a great opportunity for Fermilab to team up with others and use AI to significantly accelerate chip design.”

Custom-designing specialized chips that are critical to scientific research is a highly iterative, time-intensive process that can take many months — even years — to complete.

Through this proposed Genesis Mission project, the research team is building a framework that uses AI to speed up the chip-design process, dramatically reducing the time from chip specification to fabrication from months to weeks.

“The goal of this framework is to create systems in AI that help designers make the right decisions at each step of the design process, providing feedback for the next set of designers along the pipeline,” said Giuseppe Di Guglielmo, a principal engineer at Fermilab who is co-leading the project.

This custom circuit board is designed to measure chip performance in cryogenic environments. Credit: JJ Starr, Fermilab.

Traditionally, chips are designed independently in stages, each by a different set of experts. From materials used, transistor and circuit designs, chip architecture, and finally, algorithms that run on the chips, a decision made in one stage might create issues in subsequent stages. Furthermore, the tools used are typically slow and manually operated.

In contrast, researchers on this project are using AI to integrate all stages, ensuring any decision made in one stage optimizes the entire design and opens up traditional bottlenecks. They use one type of AI — large language models — to coordinate and automate manual steps and make high-level decisions, while another type — smaller surrogate models — act as stand-ins for the more complex and time-consuming models.

These surrogate AI models rapidly make predictions, such as how fast the chip will operate, the amount of power it will consume, the performance of the transistors, and so on, through the various stages. Within minutes, they evaluate millions of design options, predict the performance of each and isolate the most promising candidates before sending them through the full design process.

The initial proof of concept is focused on chips used to control quantum sensors, devices and systems. The team has achieved an approximately 500-times speedup for the design phase of the qubit readout algorithm and its implementation as firmware for field-programmable gate arrays. In addition, they have also developed more accurate transistor modeling at 4 kelvin — about minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit — important for operation in quantum environments. Another important area they are studying is radiation-hardened chips for use in high-energy particle physics experiments.

Under the auspices of the Genesis Mission, the researchers hope to expand this effort into a multi-year project.

“Siemens is putting industrial-grade hardware design solutions behind the Genesis Mission,” said David Burnette, engineering director for Catapult High-Level Synthesis, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “By uniting Siemens’ proven technologies with the breakthrough science at Fermilab and across the DOE labs, we’re accelerating a new class of chips for quantum, fusion and high-radiation environments — at a speed and scale the nation has never had.”

“We are really excited to be able to partner with other DOE labs and industries that have strong and complementary capabilities, bringing all these experts together across microelectronics and AI to make a big push forward for national success,” said Tran.

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: Marcia Teckenbrock, Fermilab

The post Fermilab Leads Multi-Lab AI Initiative to Accelerate Design of Chips Used in Extreme Environments appeared first on HPCwire.

Tennessee called off the planned execution of Tony Carruthers on Thursday, his attorney said.

Policy adviser Jen Reed says tech-facilitated abuse has become ‘increasingly prevalent’ and calls for its inclusion in Domestic Abuse Act

The Domestic Abuse Act fails to fully recognise the danger of technology-facilitated abuse, such as location tracking or hidden stalkerware, a Lords select committee has heard.

Tech abuse has become “increasingly prevalent” and “very commonplace now within a domestic abuse context”, said Jen Reed, the head of policy at University College London’s Gender and Tech Research Lab, during an evidence session.

Boys physically overpowered and then filmed attacks on teenage victims in separate incidents in Hampshire

Three teenage boys convicted of knife-point rape and other serious sexual offences against two teenage girls in Hampshire have not been given custodial sentences because the judge said he “should avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily”.

The boys, who were aged between 13 and 14 at the time of their offences, physically overpowered and sexually assaulted the girls, who were aged 14 and 15, in separate incidents two months apart.

Updated code of practice covering England, Wales and Scotland also relates to changing rooms and follows supreme court ruling

• What is the updated EHRC code of practice about and how does it apply?

Single-sex toilets and changing rooms in England, Wales and Scotland must exclude transgender men and women, according to a new code of practice from the equalities watchdog.

But the long-awaited guidance also says that businesses and service providers have to offer practical alternatives such as gender-neutral toilets for people who do not wish to use services for their biological sex.

DNC chair Ken Martin apologizes for initial bid to block release of report on party’s disastrous election defeat

The Democratic party has belatedly published a postmortem on its disastrous 2024 election defeat, after an initial decision to withhold the document triggered an angry backlash.

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), released the report – which fails to mention Gaza or Joe Biden’s age – accompanied by an apology to party members angered by his initial decision to keep the analysis of Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump and defeat in both houses of Congress under wraps.

After years of vetoes and political fights, Gov. Gavin Newsom is now backing taxpayer-funded paid pregnancy leave for California teachers – just as he prepares to leave office and potentially launch a national campaign

A new report finds that on-time flight arrivals are at their worst level since 2014, with fuel costs and weather adding to summer travel risks.

President Trump said he doesn't want to "do anything that's going to get in the way" of leading the world on the technology.

In order to fit today’s neural networks onto hardware, some practitioners utilize some type of weight-pruning method to compress the size of the model and reduce the size and computational cost of running it. Today’s weight-pruning methods can reach up to 50× data compression without major accuracy loss This is on top of ephemeral activation sparsity, which can temporarily reduce the amount of activated data in the model by 50–90% range, corresponding to 2–10× compression.

AI workloads are dominated by tensor contractions that use multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations. When weight and activation sparsity combine, the reduction in MAC work can become large. In favorable cases, two orders of magnitude are possible.

An ideal “Holy Grail” machine would convert that algorithmic opportunity into wall-clock acceleration instead of surrendering it to unnecessary data access.

Such a machine, in concept, would use a multibus architecture (MBA) that utilizes individually controlled parallel data access and processing lanes. This MBA concept would harness new forms of spatial and temporal parallelism in sparse SIMD and software-pipelined execution to achieve up to 100× throughput gains in AI workloads, by combining sparse speedup with software pipelining.

Figure 1 shows how much of that opportunity a new approach called Sparse Computing Core Technology (SCCT) can leverage.

Simulation: Speedup Plot

In Figure 1 (see below), we summarize cycle-accurate simulations of irregular vector access in sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SpMV) across 1,520 matrices from the University of Florida’s SuiteSparse Matrix Collection. The set spans machine learning, fluid dynamics, electromagnetics, quantum applications, and more.

CSR-compressed matrix data were processed as is, without preconditioning. Sustained streaming of matrix data and preloaded vector data were assumed.

Figure 1. Holy Grail plot: SCCT results split into unstructured (red circles) and structured or stride-affected (red triangles) matrices; GPU results (blue squares); ideal linear scaling (yellow diagonal). The horizontal baseline is a “CSR dense case” in which indices point to consecutive vector locations; metadata overhead is treated as part of this baseline. (Credit: Klaus Kinzinger)

Across the full set, SCCT reached a median 94.5% efficiency in converting MAC reduction into wall-clock acceleration. Its median advantage over GPU was 9.9×.

The plot separates unstructured matrices from more regular, stride-affected ones. Both matter in HPC, but for sparse AI the unstructured case is the one to watch. The message is simple: when access patterns become irregular, MBAs can stay far closer to ideal scaling than conventional architectures.

Understanding SCCT Architecture

The SCCT design consists of processing lanes, each built around an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) that is directly wired to a private SRAM bank, so write-side bank conflicts are eliminated by design. A central control unit reads from all SRAM banks and issues transaction commands to the lanes.

With fully pipelined ALUs, SCCT natively supports element-wise SIMD operations such as add, sub, mult, div, and sqrt, as well as dense and sparse linear algebra operations at maximum throughput.

SCCT has three execution modes:

• General Purpose Processing (GPP) – stack machine mode;
• Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) – dense and sparse linear algebra;
• And Very High Throughput Computing (VHTC) – pipelined vector processing.

SIMD and VHTC are started from GPP mode and return to it.

In GPP mode, SCCT works as a stack machine, but without architected—that is, ISA-visible—registers. Functionally, SCCT replaces register files with interleaved on-chip memory that is orders of magnitude larger and offers much higher port counts and bandwidth.

SCCT is a registerless memory-memory architecture.

Figure 2. SCCT architecture diagram (Credit: Klaus Kinzinger)

Seas of (Local) Accumulators—SIMD Mode

The diagram does not show the lane-local accumulators and the reduction network connecting them. Partial sums are accumulated locally; the reduction network adds them up later. In the simulations, each lane was modeled with 32 accumulators so multiple rows could be in flight at once.

With larger accumulator sets, each lane gains a private local accumulator memory, accessed via dedicated buses—independent of the interleaved memory. This local resource can accelerate sparse-sparse tensor contractions by reducing otherwise necessary memory accesses.

Pipelined Cector Processing—VHTC Mode

Beyond spatial parallelization (SIMD), VHTC enables temporal parallelization by overlapping the execution of successive loop iterations, i.e., by software pipelining.

Architecture support for software pipelining was pioneered by Intel’s Itanium. SCCT extends that principle by storing pipeline data and state in interleaved “pipelined” memory rather than in a rotating register set, expanding the pipelining workspace from a few kilobytes to many megabytes of local SRAM capacity—a factor of more than 10,000×.

This allows SCCT’s VHTC mode to pipeline much larger and more complex workloads than rotating-register approaches, extending to entire HPC kernels and AI pipeline stages. Details are found in the author’s interleaved-processing patent.

Nonlinear AI operations such as softmax, GELU, Swish/SILU, and sigmoid are natural targets for VHTC. A simple patent example documents 56× acceleration, and a rough estimate for softmax is around 160×.

Why Both Modes Matter

At the core of transformer-based AI is the attention mechanism, which combines:

• Linear tensor contractions (target for sparse SIMD);
• And non-linear softmax computations (target for VHTC).

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Accelerating only one of these throughput-critical components would leave a major bottleneck in place. SCCT therefore aims at both categories: a target of up to 100× sparse SIMD and an estimated 160× VHTC softmax acceleration.

Beyond that, there is the issue of memory access. By removing cache controllers and register files as intermediaries, SCCT’s near-memory processing approach ties compute (ALUs) and local memory (SRAM) as close together as possible.

What remains is the memory wall. Solving it matters not only for data-center throughput (and revenue), but also for energy efficiency and operating cost.

The broader direction has already been sketched by Groq: keep as much of the working set as possible in local SRAM rather than in HBM or external DRAM. This is not directly SCCT’s domain, but data compression helps, and direct operation on sparse CSR-compressed data streams is one of SCCT’s strengths.

About the author: Klaus Kinzinger is a physicist and entrepreneur. He is the inventor of patents disclosing registerless general-purpose execution and a cybersecure hardware architecture. His interleaved-processing patent issued in the U.S. on November 18, 2025 and is pending in the EU and China; a continuation regarding control/data architectures has been filed. Klaus makes his ideas available to the research community for evaluation and further development. The patent portfolio is available for licensing; contact at kinzinger@kinzinger.de.

The post Can a Sparse-AI Hardware Architecture for Data Centers Work? appeared first on HPCwire.

ICE funding bid derailed amid Republican backlash to attempt to latch ballroom funding on to immigration bill

A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.

The US Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by the US president, Republican senators told reporters on Thursday, as lawmakers leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess.

Two popular web browser are overhauling their user interface, and the first to actually ship its new version is Vivaldi. Version 8.0 of this Chromium-based browser completely overhauls its UI, but retains its extensive customisation options, including the option to go back to the old look and feel if the new one doesn’t float your boat. I wonder if this update addresses some of my long-standing issues with Vivaldi where it just seemed impossible to integrate the browser properly with KDE or GNOME, since it opted for its own fonts and had a ton of very custom UI that made it stand out moreso than even other browser.

Before publishing this post, I did a quick install and check, and no, it seems not much has changed in that department. Not everyone will care – in fact, I think most people don’t – but I do, and I do whatever it takes to make my browser look properly native. Any Chromium-based browser is a hard sell in that area, and that applies doubly so for Vivaldi and its long list of custom UI elements.

The other popular web browser overhauling its UI is Firefox, which is bringing its new UI to testing now, with an actual release later this year. You can clearly see that both Vivaldi and Firefox seem to be following a similar trend, even if I’m not entirely sure if it has a name yet. The new Firefox design also overhauls the settings page, integrates Mozilla services like its VPN, and brings back the compact mode (which has been hidden behind an about:config flag for years now).

My biggest worry is how this will affect Librewolf and the KDE and GNOME themes I use, but it seems we’re going to have more than enough time to figure that out.

SANTA ROSA, Calif., May 21, 2026 — Keysight Technologies, Inc. today introduced an Electrical-Optical-Electrical (EOE) simulation solution in ADS 2026. Engineers can now simulate electrical-to-optical-to-electrical signal chains within a single design environment. This capability is increasingly important as AI infrastructure and high-performance computing drive demand for faster optical links. This type of analysis is essential for setting architecture and evaluating performance.

By 2029, 87% of hyperscale optical transceivers will operate at 800Gbps or higher, with 1.6Tbps and 3.2Tbps on the horizon. With optical links connecting CPUs, GPUs, and high-speed SerDes interfaces, teams need to model interactions across electrical and optical domains. Legacy simulation workflows handle these separately, requiring the results from different tools to be manually stitched together, potentially missing cross-domain effects that impact system performance.

The breakthrough EOE capability in ADS 2026 enables engineers to simulate the complete signal path, from transmitters through optical and photonic circuits to electrical receivers, in a unified workflow. The solution leverages Keysight’s High Speed Digital workflow with Keysight Photonic Designer. By simulating the mixed-domain signal chain before hardware implementation, teams can evaluate electrical and optical design tradeoffs and assess signal integrity against high-speed standards earlier in the design cycle.

Key benefits of the solution include:

• Detect signal integrity issues across electrical and optical domains before prototyping: Simulate high-speed SerDes digital channels and photonics IC behavior together, catching cross-domain issues that surface only when both domains are modeled simultaneously.
• Simulate bidirectional optical links as they behave in the real world: Full-duplex optical simulation captures forward and backward signal propagation within an EOE channel, a capability not previously available.
• Assess nonlinear effects across multiple wavelengths for multi-lane interconnects: Wavelength division multiplexing support within EOE simulation flows lets engineers evaluate how optical nonlinearities affect performance across wavelengths, a growing concern as 800G and 1.6T optical links use multiple wavelengths simultaneously on the same waveguide. These modulated wavelengths and non-linearities can be simulated together as a system.
• Obtain a realistic view of system-level signal quality: Noise modeling spans the electrical and optical domains simultaneously, enabling engineers to assess performance under realistic conditions rather than modeling each domain in isolation.
• Catch nonlinear effects before they reach hardware: Modulator bias-dependent and large-signal nonlinear effects are captured within end-to-end simulations.
• Make electrical-optical design tradeoffs in one workflow: Patented multi-domain co-simulation bridges the electrical channel and optical envelope simulators, eliminating the need to move between separate tools to evaluate tradeoffs.

Beyond system-level EOE simulation, ADS 2026 covers the full design flow from system down to component optimization. Through PDK support at the circuit level and Keysight RSoft integration at the component level, engineers get a true representation of photonic IC behavior, with no disconnect between the real chip and system-level simulation.

Niels Fache, Senior Vice President, Keysight, said: “AI infrastructure depends on 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps optical links to move data at scale. At these speeds, electrical and optical performance can no longer be modeled separately. With ADS 2026, engineering teams now have the ability to simulate those interactions before committing to silicon.”

Resources

• Application Note: EOE Simulations
• Web Page: Keysight ADS 2026 Update 2
• Web Page: Keysight Photonic Design Automation Software
• Web Page: Keysight RSoft Photonic Design Tools

About Keysight Technologies

Keysight (NYSE: KEYS) inspires and empowers innovators to bring world-changing technologies to life. As an S&P 500 company, Keysight is delivering market-leading design, emulation, and test solutions to help engineers develop and deploy faster, with less risk, throughout the entire product life cycle. Keysight is a global innovation partner enabling customers in communications, industrial automation, aerospace and defense, automotive, semiconductor, and general electronics markets to accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world.

Source: Keysight

The post Keysight Enables End-to-End Electrical-Optical-Electrical Simulation for Data Center and Ethernet Design appeared first on HPCwire.

Exclusive: Scotland Yard criticises London mayor’s decision as disappointing and warns it could hit policing

Sadiq Khan has blocked a £50m Metropolitan police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir, sparking a bitter row between the London mayor and Scotland Yard.

After the UK’s largest police force had agreed to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, Khan intervened, citing “serious concerns” about how the deal had been struck.

As collection activity rises, it's important to understand how protected your disability benefits really are.

Spotify is launching "Reserved," a new feature that will set aside concert tickets for Premium subscribers it identifies as an artist's most dedicated fans based on streams, shares, and other activity. "Getting concert tickets today can feel like a race you're set up to lose," Spotify wrote in a post on Thursday. "You show up at the right time, refresh endlessly, and still miss out. Too often, the experience is stressful, unpredictable, and disconnected from what should matter most: whether real fans actually get tickets. We think there's a better way." From the Hollywood Reporter: Spotify said that starting in the U.S. this summer, select artists will be able to use Reserved to set aside tickets for fans on the platform. The platform has partnered with Live Nation on the program as part of a multiyear agreement. The platform will use streams, shares and other types of activity to "identify an artist's most dedicated fans and hold two tour tickets for them." Fans selected through Reserved will get up to two tickets, and they'll have a day-long window to make a ticket purchase if selected. Spotify didn't give any details on what artists will work with the streaming service for the new feature, or how many tickets artists would set aside with Reserved, though the service acknowledged "there will be significantly more superfans than there are seats available on a tour, so not every fan will receive an offer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Music is banned on Wednesdays on island of Stromboli where Rolling Stones frontman was celebrating wrapping a film

Police on an Italian island stopped a party attended by Mick Jagger – because music is banned on Wednesdays.

The Rolling Stones frontman was on Stromboli, the volcanic island among Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, for the production of Three Incestuous Sisters, a film by the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher in which he stars.

A judge has dismissed all charges against a former school administrator accused of ignoring warnings about a 6-year-old with a gun.

Highest-ranking staff will get 2.5% pay rise with bonuses for top performers in plan to ‘rewire’ civil service

Senior civil servants will get bonuses for exceptional performance for the first time under a new system that Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister, said would reward the “doers, not the talkers”.

Jones, who is also chief secretary to the prime minister, said most civil servants would get a 3.5% pay rise but senior staff would have a base increase of 2.5%, with 1% held back for bonuses for the highest-performing officials.

Court throws out state’s challenge to judicial finding that inmate convicted of murder is ineligible for death penalty

The US supreme court on Thursday threw out a challenge by the state of Alabama to a judicial finding that a death row inmate convicted of a 1997 murder is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible under the US constitution for the death penalty.

In this highly unusual move, and in a single-sentence, unsigned order, the court dismissed Alabama’s petition for review in Hamm v Smith without deciding it, effectively undoing its earlier decision to take up an appeal by state officials to the method used by a lower court to determine that Joseph Clifton Smith was intellectually disabled and therefore could not be executed.

You can track your runs, rides and lifts all in one place. This is when you can expect the update.

Amid hostilities with Iran, the American military expended far more advanced interceptors to protect Israel than Israeli forces did, according to Defense Department data.

He pushed for the first congressional hearings on climate change and helped negotiate a landmark U.N. treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.

Aimee Bock ran Feeding Our Future, which claimed to help provide millions of meals to children during the pandemic

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

A federal judge has sentenced the Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock to nearly 42 years in prison for orchestrating what prosecutors called the largest pandemic fraud scheme in the country.

Thursday’s sentencing follows a $250m plot that exploited federal child nutrition programs. The plot later became a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, leading to violent demonstrations and the ICE killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

DHS issued ‘Bolo’ for Ben Palmer, whose videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants went viral

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral.

The subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, is Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube.

Africa CDC says restrictions could increase public health risks and highlight ‘deeper structural injustice’ in global health

A US travel ban for people coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in response to the Ebola outbreak could make the situation worse, critics have said.

The outbreak was declared a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday and continues to spread, with a new case reported in the DRC’s South Kivu province, an area under the control of armed rebel groups.

A $40,000 long-term CD will provide extended protection for your money and a big return once the account matures.

An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit was forced to divert to Montreal due to U.S. flight restrictions linked to the Ebola outbreak.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 21, 2026 — AMD today announced that its next-generation AMD EPYC processor, codenamed “Venice,” is ramping production in Taiwan on TSMC’s advanced 2nm process technology, with future plans to ramp production at TSMC’s Arizona fabrication facility. The milestone in the execution of the AMD data center CPU roadmap demonstrates continued progress toward delivering the leadership performance and energy efficiency required for next-generation cloud, enterprise and AI infrastructure. “Venice” is the first high-performance computing (HPC) product in the industry to enter production on TSMC’s advanced 2nm process technology.

Credit: Shutterstock

“Ramping ‘Venice’ on TSMC 2nm process technology marks an important step forward in accelerating the next generation of AI infrastructure,” said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. “As AI and agentic workloads scale rapidly, customers need platforms that can move from innovation to production faster. Our deep partnership with TSMC is helping AMD bring leadership compute technologies to market with the speed and scale required to meet this moment.”

As AI adoption expands from training and inference to increasingly complex agentic workloads, the CPU is becoming even more critical to scaling AI infrastructure, coordinating data movement, networking, storage, security and system orchestration across the data center. The ramp of “Venice” comes as AMD continues to build momentum in the server market, reflecting growing customer demand for EPYC processors to power modern cloud, enterprise, HPC and AI deployments.

The “Venice” ramp in Taiwan and plans to ramp at TSMC Arizona reflect AMD’s focus on strengthening its geographically diverse advanced manufacturing footprint. By pairing next-generation EPYC processor innovation with advanced manufacturing capacity across the globe, AMD is expanding the foundation needed to support customers as they deploy and scale AI infrastructure.

“We are pleased to see AMD continue to make strong progress with its next-generation EPYC processor on our advanced 2nm process technology,” said Dr. C.C. Wei, Chairman and CEO, TSMC. “Our close collaboration with AMD reflects the importance of pairing leadership process technology with advanced design innovation to enable the next era of high-performance and AI computing.”

AMD also plans to extend TSMC 2nm process technology across its data center CPU roadmap with “Verano,” a 6th Gen EPYC processor optimized for performance-per-dollar-per-watt leadership. Designed to support cloud and AI computing workloads, “Verano” is expected to build on the AMD EPYC platform with advanced memory innovations, including LPDDR, to deliver the CPU performance, bandwidth and efficiency required for increasingly power constrained workloads and applications.

AMD and TSMC’s partnership spans the technologies needed to scale modern data center computing, from TSMC 2nm process technology for next-generation CPUs to advanced packaging technologies, including TSMC’s SoIC-X and CoWoS-L, used across AMD’s broader AI and data center portfolio. With “Venice” ramping on TSMC 2nm, AMD is advancing the CPU foundation for AI infrastructure while continuing to leverage TSMC’s process and packaging leadership to deliver increasingly integrated compute platforms at scale.

About AMD

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing. Learn more at www.amd.com.

Source: AMD

The post AMD Announces Production Ramp of Next-Gen AMD EPYC Processor ‘Venice’ on TSMC 2nm Process Tech appeared first on HPCwire.

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2026 — The Department of Commerce today announced the signing of 9 letters of intent to provide $2.013 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act.

These funds will support a portfolio of quantum companies, including two domestic quantum foundry companies and 7 quantum computing companies to accelerate solving the most critical technology challenges in the race to develop utility scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

The Department of Commerce’s quantum incentives are designed to strengthen America’s position in this critical frontier technology. Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling, and energy systems. A strong domestic quantum ecosystem is essential for U.S. national security, technological resilience and long-term strategic leadership.

These letters of intent demonstrate the Trump Administration’s commitment to strengthening American leadership in emerging technologies by investing directly in advanced manufacturing, research, and microelectronics innovation.

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

Foundry Incentives to Accelerate Domestic Quantum Manufacturing Infrastructure

The Department of Commerce is proposing to provide incentives for two quantum foundries (GlobalFoundries and IBM) to help establish and accelerate foundational domestic manufacturing capacity for the quantum sector.

• GlobalFoundries will receive $375 million in planned funding to establish a secure, domestic quantum foundry for leading architectures and multiple modalities (superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological, and silicon spin) used in large-scale quantum computers.
• IBM will receive $1 billion in planned funding to establish a new quantum foundry subsidiary for quantum-grade superconducting wafers by building on its U.S. leadership in superconducting quantum wafer fabrication technology.

Quantum Portfolio Spans Multiple Modalities and Addresses Discrete Technology Challenges

The structure of the Department of Commerce’s proposed incentives is intended to provide capital toward an initial portfolio of 7 companies that will address the most consequential, unresolved engineering problems in multiple quantum modalities.

“The CHIPS R&D Office is taking a portfolio approach to strengthen and accelerate U.S. leadership across multiple quantum modalities at once, while focusing each award on discrete technological problems of genuine consequence,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “We will be providing incentives to build domestic quantum capacity, solve the hardest engineering challenges, enable multi-year acceleration of technology roadmaps, and drive continued U.S. quantum leadership.”

The companies listed below receiving CHIPS incentives will address multiple modalities including neutral atom, silicon-spin, superconducting, photonic, and trapped ion and accelerate R&D for the most consequential unresolved engineering problems including device reproducibility, optical complexity, error rates, cryogenic systems integration, control hardware, ultra-fast readout electronics, photonic loss, and interconnects.

• Atom Computing will receive $100 million in planned funding to address key technical and manufacturing challenges for neutral-atom quantum computing, including hardware development and systems integration needed to manipulate, control, and address tens of thousands of qubits, and validate their performance.
• Diraq will receive up to $38 million in planned funding to develop and scale quantum logic units and accelerate critical manufacturing and integration capabilities for silicon spin quantum computing technologies, including novel designs for large-scale and reliable qubit arrays.
• D-Wave will receive $100 million in planned funding for critical advancements in annealing and gate-model superconducting quantum computing systems, including qubit counts, error rates, and coherence through advanced dielectric material optimization, interface control, and high-density advanced packaging.
• Infleqtion will receive $100 million in planned funding to develop the underlying engineering systems and integration requirements for large-scale neutral-atom-based quantum computers and architectures, including high-powered optical systems, novel readout and error correction systems.
• PsiQuantum will receive $100 million in planned funding to address key photonic quantum computing technical challenges for matured and high-performance electro-optic materials, high-temperature single-photon detectors, and ultra-low-loss photonic packaging.
• Quantinuum will receive $100 million in planned funding to address critical technology and manufacturing bottlenecks for scaling of fault-tolerant trapped-ion-based quantum computers, such as low-loss integrated photonics, and reliable optical components at trapped-ion critical wavelengths.
• Rigetti will receive up to $100 million in planned funding to address key technical challenges to develop and scale next generation superconducting quantum computing technologies and architectures, such as miniaturizing and integrating novel readout electronics and next generation cryostat architectures.

The Department will receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company as a condition for receiving the funds to enhance the return for the U.S. taxpayer.

The CHIPS Research and Development Office continues to solicit proposals from eligible applicants for research, prototyping and commercial solutions that advance microelectronics technology in the U.S. Eligible applicants should apply under announcement 2025-NIST-CHIPS-CRDO-01 at www.grants.gov.

Source: NIST

The post US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

It'll be the first live professional sporting event captured completely on iPhone devices, according to Apple.

Waymo has paused service in Atlanta after one of its driverless cars entered a flooded street and got stuck. It follows a similar pause in San Antonio that prompted a recent software recall (PDF) over flood avoidance. TechCrunch reports: Waymo admitted that it hadn't finished developing a "final remedy" for avoiding flooded areas when it issued its software recall last week. Instead, the company said that it shipped an update to its fleet that placed "restrictions at times and in locations where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higher-speed roadway," according to documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But even those precautions apparently were not enough to stop the Waymo robotaxi from entering the flooded intersection in Atlanta. Waymo told TechCrunch on Thursday that the storm in Atlanta produced so much rainfall that flooding was happening before the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning, watch, or advisory. The company said its fleet those alerts are part of a larger set of signals it relies on to prepare the vehicles for poor weather.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Staying on Samsung Messages past July means losing access to your texts. Here's how to migrate before that happens.

More Boltgun is always good fun, but the sequel's biggest creative swings don't do enough to mix up the formula.

Lawsuit says university and private investigators conspired to intimidate, terrorize and retaliate against Josiah Walker

A University of Michigan (U-M) student has sued the school, accusing it of violating his constitutional rights when it waged a vast undercover surveillance operation against him in response to his protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal court by Cair-MI and University of Michigan student Josiah Walker, claims the university and individual private investigators conspired to intimidate, terrorize and retaliate against Walker in 2024 and 2025.

An in-depth analysis of the 2024 presidential campaign commissioned by the Democratic National Committee fails to mention the party’s position on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, prompting harsh criticism from Arab American members of the party.

The 192-page report, authored by a Democratic strategist and first published by CNN on Thursday morning, goes in-depth on several factors found to be detrimental to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign in its ultimate loss to Donald Trump. Despite the contention within the party over then-President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, however, the war doesn’t get a single mention.

Also missing from the document are the words “Israel,” “Palestine,” “Arab American,” and “Muslim.”

A spokesperson for the DNC declined to comment on the omission of anything having to do with Gaza, instead pointing The Intercept to a Substack written by party chair Ken Martin in which he acknowledged what the committee found to be several shortcomings by the report’s author, Democratic strategist Paul Rivera.

One policymaker who spoke with Rivera in July 2025 for the qualitative, fact-finding portion of the autopsy research told The Intercept that he was surprised when the report emerged with no mention of Gaza or the resulting conflicts within the Democratic coalition. He said that his group had discussed the impact of Gaza policy with Rivera at length. 

“Paul was very clear with us in our conversation that they had done the quantitative review,” said the politico, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, “and that the data clearly showed that Gaza had hurt Biden and Harris.”

In recent weeks, pressure mounted to release the report in full — a move Martin said he was reluctant to take due to major flaws in the report, which he dubbed “not ready for primetime.”

“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin wrote Thursday in a post on the DNC’s Substack. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.”

Martin also fails to mention Gaza, Israel, or any other terms related to the genocide in his post.

The policymaker said he had found Rivera to be thorough and professional, and he believes Martin is shifting the blame.

“My strong suspicion is that Paul was being thrown under the bus,” he said. “It’s very convenient to a lot of people that a lot seems to be missing, and it would be very convenient if the reason it’s missing is ‘oh, Paul’s really bad at his job.’”

Others defended Martin’s conduct. James Zogby, a founder of the Arab American Institute and a candidate for vice-chair of the DNC in 2024, praised Martin’s leadership but called his pledge to release the report an “unforced error” that was being seized upon by a consultant class hostile to his on focus rebuilding state party infrastructure.

“We know what the mistakes were,” Zogby said. “The question now is how do we not make them again, and we didn’t need to make a fuss over a report that wasn’t going to tell us anything we didn’t know.”

The Intercept attempted to reach Rivera via The Capacity Shop, a firm that lists him as an advisor, but the group did not respond to a request for comment.

“Nothing about this surprises me,” said Linda Sarsour, an organizer from Brooklyn who was active in organizing a campaign to pressure Harris to take a stance against the war. “If they don’t change course quickly to center Palestine, foreign policy and recognize the influence of Arab/Palestinian/Muslim/young/progressive American voters, they will likely have to write another autopsy report post 2028 presidential elections.”

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza became a key point of contention between the Democratic establishment, on one side, and progressive Democrats, including Arab Americans, on the other. The progressives argued that the failure to take a stance against unflinching support for the genocide was tamping down excitement among the party’s base, especially young voters.

Related

Kamala Harris Refused to Meet With Uncommitted About Gaza — and Uncommitted Refused to Endorse Her

A group of delegates that dubbed themselves the “Uncommitted Movement” fought to get push the party left on Gaza. The activists put forward a slate of suggested speakers at the party convention in Chicago, including Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American state representative in Georgia, but none of the speakers were accepted.

Romman, who is currently running for Georgia’s state Senate, said she was deeply disappointed to see the lack of mention of Gaza in the report.

While the Gaza war was a key issue for many Arab American and Muslim voters, particularly in a swing state like Michigan, Romman acknowledged that most voters nationwide and in her home state of Georgia were not listing Gaza as their top concern. Still, she said, the issue emerged as something of a smell test for the integrity of Democratic politicians hoping to sell their message to an electorate beset by financial insecurity and healthcare woes.

“For most voters, if you look at what was their top issue, it’s the economy — of course,” Romman said. “But if you want politicians that are going to put you first and implement the kind of economic issues that you need to have a better life, those are going to be the politicians that are not beholden to special interests. And so Gaza became a way to look for that.”

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, has sought to thoroughly distance itself from the report, going so far as to release an annotated version highlighting missing data and unsubstantiated claims.

The document contains a disclaimer at the top of every page: “This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”

Update: May 21, 2026 2:35 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with comments from a policymaker who spoke with Paul Rivera for the DNC autopsy report.

The post DNC Autopsy of 2024 Loss Doesn’t Mention Gaza or Israel at all appeared first on The Intercept.

• Crystal Palace center-back will miss season finale

• 26-year-old uncertain for Conference League final

• Richards has been vital to Pochettino’s US plans

US national team center-back Chris Richards has “two torn ligaments in his ankle”, Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner said on Thursday, casting uncertainty on the stalwart defender’s status for this summer’s World Cup.

The club had said Richards “was in discomfort” late in last weekend’s match against Brentford, which he entered in the 61st minute.

After the Supreme Court struck down many of President Donald Trump’s tariffs in February, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., cosponsored legislation seeking to directly compensate Americans for the tariffs’ costs. Refunds are currently being given to the U.S. businesses that paid them, not to consumers directly.

Gillibrand was one of eight co-sponsors of the Tariff Refunds for Working Families Act (S.4093), which would provide tax rebates using funds collected from tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Individual recipients would receive rebates of $600; joint filers would receive $1,200. The measure would provide an extra $600 per child. (The bill has eight Democratic cosponsors but has not advanced.)

In a March 19 press release, Gillibrand said, "President Trump’s tariffs are costing New York households an estimated $4,200 annually." Gillibrand credited the figure to a November report from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.

How well supported is that $4,200 figure? Analyses show it’s outdated.

Gillibrand’s office didn’t respond to inquiries from PolitiFact New York. 

The $4,200 figure comes from outdated governor’s office report

Gillibrand’s press release referenced a governor’s office report; that report traced the $4,200 figure to another report from Hochul’s office. It referred to calculations from the New York State Division of the Budget that put the "new effective tariff rate" at 21% on imported goods, or $4,200 more per New York household.

That figure appeared in an Aug. 7 press release by Hochul’s office that said the July 30 tariffs would cost consumers nearly $33 billion in additional import taxes to continue buying the same amount of foreign goods. "This is nearly $4,200 in additional federal taxes per household in New York," it said.

Hochul’s office told PolitiFact New York the budget department’s analysis focused only on New York state. New York’s median income ranks 16th among states, so back-of-the-envelope calculations put the per-household burden in New York somewhat higher than these national averages.

A bigger issue, though, is timing. In a statement, Hochul’s office said the data had not been updated since August. That’s a big omission in Gillibrand’s statement, experts said.

Other estimates of the tariffs’ cost per household 

In May 2025, we rated Mostly True Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.’s statement that the tariffs meant American families would pay about $4,000 more a year. This is what we found:

• Yale Budget Lab. Yale University’s nonpartisan Budget Lab’s estimate in 2025 showed an average loss per household of $4,900. The lab also offered a more limited calculation that accounted for changes in consumer behavior because of tariffs without factoring those in as losses; that worked out to an estimated $2,600 cost per family.

• Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress, a liberal group, estimated an average loss of $4,600 annually.  

• American Action Forum. The American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, estimated a roughly $3,900 loss per household.

• Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that the average household loss would be $3,100.

• Tax Foundation. The center-right Tax Foundation put the average loss lower than the other four: $1,243.

But subsequent analyses have shown more modest financial impacts, partly because Trump has lowered tariffs on China. So Gillibrand’s $4,200 estimate is no longer within that range.

In February, about a month before Gillibrand’s statement, we found lower estimates::

• Tax Foundation. The group estimated that, in 2025, Trump tariffs contributed to an average tax increase of $1,000 per household, with a projected $700 hit for 2026.

• Yale Budget Lab. The group estimated in November and January an average income loss of about $1,700, based on consumer prices. Using another measure based on spending relative to a household’s income, the group estimated the median cost at $1,400 per household.

• National Taxpayers Union. This center-right advocacy organization estimated in August 2025 that Trump’s tariffs could cost households an average of $2,048 each year.

Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in trade policy, said Gillibrand’s $4,200 was too high, especially given the most recent data.

"There’s no way I can make calculations that get to $4,200 per family," he told PolitiFact New York.

Scissors said tariff impacts varied throughout 2025 as policies shifted and some tariffs were reduced. He said household costs might reach around $2,500 during peak tariff periods but warned against assuming these effects are permanent.

"You can cherry pick the time period to get to $2,500, but that can’t be confidently projected forward because it’s a peak tariff result, and tariffs are lower, for now," he said. 

Our ruling

Gillibrand said, "President Trump’s tariffs are costing New York households an estimated $4,200 annually."

That was at the higher end of estimates in the months immediately after Trump imposed the tariffs in mid-2025. More recent estimates for 2025 are significantly lower, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 because of tariff changes.. 

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

Nato chief delivers speech in Sweden as he hints at further changes to US military commitments to Europe

Just as Pavel was speaking in Prague, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was pursuing escalation of the conflict between the two countries.

It’s quite a claim given (checks notes) Russia’s continued and relentless invasion of Ukraine for years.

“Ukraine has demonstrated not only determination and heroism, but also unbelievable capacity to adjust, to innovate, to change.

It is something that we in Europe have lost through many regulatory measures that are necessary in peacetime, but of course in conflict you have to be … flexible and achieve the results in shortest possible time. …

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season is quickly approaching, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is releasing its forecast for what to expect.

Aubry won the record $2 million prize for earning 8-of-11 votes in Wednesday night's finale of "Survivor 50."

Company says work on Paul Erdős planar unit distance problem shows advance in AI reasoning

OpenAI has claimed a further advance in AI reasoning after its technology successfully tackled an 80-year-old maths problem.

The company behind ChatGPT said it had made a breakthrough with a challenge first posed by Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946: the planar unit distance problem.

Colorado law enforcement officials warned their counterparts across the country that social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security recruiting for ICE contained so many white supremacist themes that they could endanger the public, according to internal records obtained by The Intercept.

The Colorado Information Analysis Center cautioned in a March bulletin that “violent extremists” might perceive “White Supremacy Ideology in ICE Recruitment Materials, Leading to a Potentially Increased Threat Environment.”

The bulletin from an agency tasked with preventing terrorism advised law enforcement offices throughout the United States that these posts could create a “permissive environment to engage in vigilante action and/or violence against individuals perceived to be immigrants.”

These DHS posts, the analysts warned, could convince “white supremacist violent extremists to attempt to join or infiltrate ICE and engage in bias motivated violence, endangering the public, other ICE personnel, and local law enforcement.”

The bulletin circulated following months of inflammatory social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security intended to drive ICE recruitment and promote the Trump administration’s agenda of violent mass deportation.

Colorado officials singled out tweets mimicking memes popular in right-wing online subcultures, referencing the rhetoric, lyrics and tropes commonly used by violent white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Third Reich. The social media campaign drew widespread criticism, with groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center alleging that DHS “is using white nationalist imagery and language to recruit new employees and arrest immigrants.” DHS has defended its online tactics as “bold and effective.”

The bulletin originated from a Colorado fusion center, part of a network of information clearinghouses for local, state and federal police that spread across the U.S. following 9/11. Originally conceived as a counter-terror measure, fusion centers have evolved into a sprawling surveillance apparatus tracking everything from drugs and shoplifting to student protests despite little evidence of their efficacy as a terror-fighting tool.

Reports from fusion centers are widely circulated among law enforcement agencies nationwide. The bulletin from the Colorado fusion center is notable in that it is the first indication that state officials in the U.S. counter-terrorism establishment are concerned about the messaging of DHS under Trump.

“The fact that you have the fusion center putting out a warning for law enforcement offices based on DHS messaging is surprising, even if it seems appropriate,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who spent eight years as an ICE official both under Obama and Biden and during Trump’s first administration.

She described the evidence presented in the bulletin as “rather damning.”

ICE and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

Do you have information about fusion centers? Contact the authors on Signal at sledge.41 and sambiddle.99.

The posts highlighted in the report were crafted under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired in March and replaced by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. Noem was preceded in her departure by combative DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who oversaw the agency’s social media push.

The bulletin delved deep into DHS and social media posts, which the report noted have been eagerly reposted by White supremacists from Austria to the U.S.

A January 9 DHS post on X, for instance, included an image of a lone man on horseback with the caption, “We’ll have our home again.” It might look like a piece of romanticized frontier nostalgia to many, but some would recognize the phrase “is a lyric from a song popular within and adopted by white nationalist organizations,” the memo reads. “The lyrics feature lines about reclaiming ‘our home’ by ‘blood or sweat,’ language often used in white supremacist rhetoric.” The memo noted that “Members of the white nationalist group, Patriot Front, have been recorded chanting ‘By God, we’ll have our home,’ the song’s refrain,” and that “Lyrics from the song opened the manifesto of a white supremacist who killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida in 2023.”

After The Intercept reported on DHS’ use of the song “We’ll Have Our Home Again” by Pine Tree Riots, lawmakers urged Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to stop running the ad.

Related

DHS Used Neo-Nazi Anthem for Recruitment After Fatal Minneapolis ICE Shooting

DHS’ quotation of a song known to be popular among neo-Nazis is part of a pattern, the report says, of “repeated use of visual or rhetorical elements that overlap with symbols historically referenced within extremist subcultures.” The memo highlights the frequent use of the term “remigration” by the Department of Homeland Security, a term the Colorado law enforcement analysts explained “dates back to 1930s Germany,” where it was used to advocate for forced expulsion of Jews.

It points out Homeland Security’s use of the “Moon Man” meme, a character from a 1980s McDonald’s advertising campaign that has become popular among online racists for its resemblance to a Ku Klux Klansman. The bulletin highlighted one social media user who replied to a DHS post using the “Moon Man” character, stating “it’s TND time” — an abbreviation for the phrase “total n***** death,” which has spread among white supremacists. This user attached his own version of the meme showing the character posing before a swastika flag with a rifle.

“I appreciate them putting it together and so clearly laying out the dangers of using this white nationalist imagery,” Trickler-McNulty said.

The report includes a disclaimer noting that it doesn’t intend “to imply ideological alignment between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and white supremacist ideology.” But the analysts show how the social posts were quickly gaining traction among white supremacists, who were encouraging each other to sign up as immigration agents.

“During the timeframe that these posts from DHS have circulated online,” the intelligence bulletin warns, “white supremacist violent extremist groups have been simultaneously advocating for their followers to join ICE and/or musing about the potential for ICE to turn into a white supremacist militia.”

In a “neo-Nazi accelerationist social media channel,” for instance, internet users talked about infiltrating ICE and using its authority to form a “breakaway militia,” auguring a nationwide race war. Users on a neo-Nazi message board, the bulletin says, “discussed the advantages of joining ICE, viewing it as an opportunity for ‘accelerating conflict in the US’ and ‘beating up race traitors.’ One user claimed that someone in the network had already been a captain at an ICE-contracted detention facility.”

A spokesperson for the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which oversees the fusion center, did not answer when asked whether the agency had received a response from DHS about its bulletin. The fusion center spreads information to “private sector, local, tribal, and federal organizations,” spokesperson Micki Trost said in an email statement. “Bulletins help us share information with this network to meet our mission.”

The bulletin also argues that DHS’ posts could provoke violence against law enforcement from those who oppose white supremacists. Antifascist activists might “misinterpret DHS messaging and perceive all ICE personnel, and by extension law enforcement and government officials, as supportive of or complicit in white supremacy, therefore creating perceived justification for violence targeting those individuals,” the report says.

Spencer Reynolds, a former DHS official who advised the department on intelligence collection, domestic terrorism and other national security issues, rejected this warning that law enforcement might find itself at risk. “The intelligence report’s conclusion that DHS’s rhetoric may push both ‘anti-fascists’ and white supremacists to violence presents a false equivalency that ignores historical and present-day facts,” Reynolds, now senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told The Intercept.

“From this country’s founding to today’s crisis, Black people and other people of color have always been victims of white supremacist violence. It is deeply flawed of the bulletin to suggest that ‘both sides’ are likely to resort to violence due to the administration’s inflammatory rhetoric,” he said. “In reality, white supremacy, not the people who adamantly oppose it, has fomented mass violence and oppression throughout our country’s existence.”

The post ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence appeared first on The Intercept.

It’s a nerve-racking time for Havana neighbours of top Cuban officials as fears of US attack mount

A new question in being asked in Havana as people digest the news that the US has brought criminal charges against Cuba’s 94-year-old former president, Raúl Castro: who’s your neighbour?

If you happen to live near a senior figure in Cuba’s government or armed forces, others suck their teeth in an expression of concerned sympathy. For the first time, US military strikes on the island are being considered a serious possibility.

Surging demand, low reserves and reduced Middle East exports predicted to cause global crunch by August

Oil markets will enter the “red zone” by July and August as stocks dwindle before the summer travel season amid a shortage of fresh oil exports from the Middle East, the executive director of the International Energy Agency warned on Thursday.

Fatih Birol added that the most important solution to the Iran war energy shock was a full and unconditional reopening of the strait of Hormuz.

Move comes amid condemnation of Itamar Ben-Gvir after video posted showing detained protesters being taunted

Israel has said it has deported all the foreign activists it seized from a Gaza-bound flotilla, after a global outcry over their treatment in custody that led the UK to join other countries in summoning Israeli diplomats for a formal dressing down.

More than 430 activists from countries around the world had been placed in detention in Israel after they were intercepted at sea on Monday while making the latest in a string of attempts to break the blockade of the Palestinian territory.

Aimee Bock, the convicted ringleader of the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme in Minnesota, was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison on Thursday.

Microsoft has hired games analyst and investor Matthew Ball as Xbox's new chief strategy officer. With a long track record of analyzing the video game market and industry's biggest shifts, Ball's background could help Xbox rethink its hardware and console strategy at a moment when competition is tougher than ever. Engadget reports: Ball is a venture capitalist and tech industry consultant with a well-documented history of analyzing emerging digital economies and the video game market. He was most recently the CEO and founder of Epyllion, an advisory firm and digital production house that also runs a large-scale metaverse investment fund, and he publishes regular breakdowns of the industry's biggest players and trends, including an annual State of Gaming report. Ball is the author of The Metaverse, a book beloved by Tim Sweeney, Mark Zuckerberg, Karlie Kloss and, not awkwardly at all, former Xbox head Phil Spencer.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The young league will enter next season with four new US expansion teams, shifting the balance of franchises and reflecting a swell of interest in the sport

For the first time in the short history of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), the Walter Cup is leaving the United States. The Montreal Victoire beat the Ottawa Charge in an all-Canadian final that wrapped up Wednesday night in four games. While Canada can claim the champion, it’s the US that continues to win in the growth of women’s hockey.

The day before Montreal won the Walter Cup, the PWHL announced the league is expanding to San Jose for next season. It was the fourth such expansion announcement in the three weeks. With Detroit, Las Vegas and Hamilton, Ontario, receiving the other three expansion franchises, the young league will head into the 2026/27 season with an imbalance in franchises between Canada and the US for the first time.

From active noise cancellation to battery life, one popular headphone brand is reader's top choice. Hint: It's not Apple.

A TV ad attacking incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn for supporting “Muslim mass immigration” misleadingly cites a 2021 quote from Cornyn about certain Afghan refugees and claims that “Cornyn has a special place in his heart for radical Islam.”

The ad, which started airing on May 12 according to data from AdImpact, came from the campaign of Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who is challenging Cornyn for his seat in the Senate. Neither one garnered more than 50% of the vote in the March 3 Republican primary, sending them to a runoff election on May 26. Paxton got President Donald Trump’s endorsement on May 19.

The ad claims, “Cornyn even believes we have a moral obligation to support Muslim mass immigration.” Shown on screen is a quote from Cornyn saying, “I do think we have a moral obligation to help them.”   

But that quote is out of context. According to a TV news report from the Fox affiliate in Dallas, Cornyn said it while meeting with Afghan immigrants and organizations helping evacuees shortly after the U.S. pulled troops out of Afghanistan in 2021. He spoke to two Afghan men who had worked as interpreters for the U.S. military and came to the U.S. on special immigrant visas, or SIVs, which Congress created in 2006 for those in Iraq and Afghanistan who worked with the U.S. government.

At the time, it wasn’t clear how many Afghans eligible for SIVs were left in Afghanistan. “The State Department is still negotiating for the evacuation of some of these individuals, including people who have permanent legal status in the United States,” Cornyn said in the meeting.

“I do think we have a moral obligation to help them, protect them and their families,” Cornyn said.

Between October 2018 and September 2022, more than 5,000 SIV holders were resettled in Texas, according to a 2023 report from the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General.

When we asked Paxton’s campaign for evidence to support the claim that Cornyn has advocated “Muslim mass immigration” beyond that quote, we didn’t get a response.

The ad also says, “Even as Muslim extremists force Sharia law on Texans, Cornyn sides with his friends at groups tied to radical Islamic terror.” The first part of that statement is likely a reference to unfounded claims in recent years that Sharia — the moral code and rules for followers of Islam — is encroaching on Texas.

For example, earlier this year, Paxton referred to plans for a residential development for Muslims outside of Dallas as a “Sharia city.” The Dubai-based developer of the project called that description “inaccurate” in a statement to a local news outlet, saying, “We would also like to clarify that recent characterizations of the project are inaccurate and do not reflect the nature, intent, or structure of The Sustainable City model, which is inclusive by design and aligned with the regulatory and cultural frameworks of the markets in which it operates.” The proposed “sustainable city” development was halted after backlash and an investigation by Paxton’s office.

Cornyn has opposed Sharia in the U.S., introducing a bill May 14 that would ban immigrants who practice Sharia from entering or remaining in the country. He also co-sponsored a bill in October that would prohibit the practice of Sharia in the U.S. if it violated constitutional rights. 

The second part of the ad’s claim appears to be a reference to Cornyn’s previous praise for Islamic Relief USA, a Virginia-based nonprofit that does charity work across the country. The ad features a clip of Cornyn from 2021 in which he recognized Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and thanked the organization for help it provided during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ad, though, describes Islamic Relief USA as being tied to “radical Islamic terror.” The image of a news report in the ad indicates that’s a reference to accusations against Islamic Relief Worldwide, a U.K.-based charity from which the U.S. organization agreed to operate independently in 2019. Islamic Relief Worldwide has denied having ties to terrorism or the Muslim Brotherhood.

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 Ad in Texas GOP Runoff Attacks Cornyn on Immigration, Islam appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Prime minister tells reporters reporters he would campaign personally in the contest

The Home Office has also published asylum figures this morning. These show that the number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in hotels stood at 20,885 at the end of March 2026, down 35% year-on-year from 32,326. The Press Association says:

It is the lowest figure since data was first reported in 2022, Home Office figures show.

The total had climbed as high as 56,018 at the end of September 2023.

Brits are leaving on a massive scale and non-EU immigration remains far too high. Mass immigration undermines our society and low wage immigration is bad for the economy. British families feel it in lower wages, longer waiting lists for public services and housing shortages.

Labour must go further and reform indefinite leave to remain before their hard-left flank forces them to abandon it altogether.

Paying users will get two tickets reserved for them as well as a host of other upgrades.

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has triggered global outrage after sharing footage of himself taunting bound activists who had been detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid. The video has been widely condemned by world leaders, including the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and by Israeli politicians, among them the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison – watch on YouTube

Step up your setup with a great standing desk for your office.

A bank levy can quickly put your money at risk, but there are also limits to what this tool can be used for.

Documents released by government also show late queen was ‘very keen’ for her son to have prominent role

• UK politics live – latest updates

Formal security vetting and due diligence appear not to have been carried out before the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy, the government has said, as it emerged that the late queen was “very keen” for her son to take a prominent role in promoting Britain’s interests.

The first batch of documents relating to the appointment of the then prince as trade envoy by Tony Blair in 2001 includes a memo dated 25 February 2000 and addressed to Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, in which the then chief executive of British Trade International (BTI), David Wright, said Queen Elizabeth II’s “wish” had been for Mountbatten-Windsor to take on the role.

French president’s use of term comes as demand grows for formal discussion on addressing legacies of enslavement

Emmanuel Macron has said reparations for France’s role in hundreds of years of enslavement of African people is an issue that should be addressed, but he stopped short of making clear proposals.

“How to repair … is a question that must not be refused,” the French president said in a speech on the legacies of slavery at the Élysée Palace. “It’s also a question on which we must not make false promises.”

Prosecutors opt not to pursue hate-crime charges over February incident despite anti-gay slurs captured on video

New Orleans state prosecutors on Thursday filed formal misdemeanor battery charges against Shia LaBeouf, four months after police officers there arrested him on allegations that he struck three men at a bar.

That move from the office of local district attorney Jason Williams means prosecutors opted to not pursue hate-crime charges against LaBeouf, the star of the Transformers film franchise, despite claims evidently supported by video that LaBeouf aimed anti-gay slurs at the alleged victims.

Make a huge upgrade to your office and work life with the best desk you can get in 2026.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI claims its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdos in 1946. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because this isn't the first time OpenAI has made such a bold claim. Seven months ago, the AI giant's former VP Kevin Weil posted on X: "GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erds problems and made progress on 11 others." It turns out, GPT-5 didn't actually solve those problems; it just found solutions that already existed in the literature. Taunts from rivals like Yann LeCun and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis followed, and Weil promptly took down his premature post. Today, at least, it seems OpenAI didn't make the same mistake twice. Alongside the announcement, the company published companion remarks (PDF) in support of the disproof from mathematicians like Noga Alon, Melanie Wood, and Thomas Bloom, who maintains the Erdos Problems website, and previously called Weil's post "a dramatic misrepresentation." [...] The proof, per OpenAI, came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, not a system specifically designed to solve math problems or even this problem in particular. OpenAI says this is significant because it means AI systems are now more capable of holding together long, difficult chains of reasoning and connecting ideas across fields in ways researchers may not have previously explored. That has implications for biology, physics, engineering, and medicine.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ASX-listed company announced in February it would lay off almost 30% of its 7,000-strong workforce across 40 countries

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WiseTech has begun informing staff that they will lose their jobs as part of redundancies the company has said are due to artificial intelligence advancements – although an email to staff in China omitted the word “AI” after a court case against another company in the country.

Staff at WiseTech have been waiting almost three months to be told if they are among the 2,000 people the logistics software company is to cut due to advances in AI. The Australian Stock Exchange-listed company announced in late February it would lay off almost 30% of its 7,000-strong workforce across 40 countries.

Over the past few months, tomatoes have seen some of the steepest price increases, rising 15% in March alone.

Péter Magyar’s draft amendment would prevent his predecessor from returning to the role

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Hungary’s new government, led by Péter Magyar, has put forward a constitutional amendment that would limit prime ministers to a maximum of eight years in office, in effect barring Viktor Orbán from returning to the role.

The draft amendment was submitted on Wednesday, just over a week after the new government took office. It marked Magyar and his Tisza party’s first step in dismantling a constitution that was unilaterally rewritten and amended more than a dozen times as Orbán and his Fidesz party worked to turn Hungary into what they called a “petri dish for illiberalism”.

A 2026 ‘super El Niño’ could expose gaps in UK preparedness Expert comment LToremark 21 May 2026

An El Niño event could disrupt UK weather, laying bare the vulnerabilities flagged by the Climate Change Committee’s new report.

Global average temperatures have risen to 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels. This year, warming ocean temperatures in the Pacific are signalling a ‘super El Niño’ in mid- to late 2026, which could raise temperatures by a further 0.2°C. 

El Niño events are a natural part of the climate system, marked by periodic warming of the sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, temporarily raising global temperatures and disrupting weather patterns. However, in a world already altered by climate change, cyclical climate patterns such as El Niño are no longer temporary fluctuations but forces that intensify the variability of weather patterns and compound the cascading impacts of climate change.

Risks for the UK

Previous El Niño events have coincided with some of the warmest years on record, intensifying heatwaves, flooding events and storms. For example, Storm Babet – which caused significant flooding across the UK – coincided with the 2023 El Niño. While the impacts of El Niño on the UK and Europe are often indirect and lagged, when its effects interact with higher baseline temperatures and variability, it can have consequences for global trade and regional stability. 

And the risks are only increasing. The May 2026 Well Adapted UK report by the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) advises the UK government to prepare for 2°C global warming by 2050 under current policies, with a realistic probability of up to 4°C warming by 2100. Inadequate and delayed adaptation will increase the costs of inaction, as heatwaves and wildfires become more frequent and flood risks increase. The CCC identifies the three biggest climate risks that pose a threat to the UK: heat, flooding and drought. As climate damages could rise to the equivalent of 1-5 per cent of UK GDP by 2050, the CCC calls on the government to invest around £11 billion annually on climate resilience, including adaptation actions in these three priority areas: protection from heat, managing flood risk and avoiding water shortages. 

How these risks materialize, and how decision-makers respond today, will have direct consequences for our future food, energy, economic and social systems. Key parts of social and physical infrastructure – including education, health care, transport systems, power grids and telecommunications – are at risk of irreversible damage, and their stability is critical as climate change intensifies. To protect the function and integrity of these systems, the UK needs to implement a robust adaptation strategy – and to make climate adaptation legally enforceable.

Making adaptation legally enforceable

While the UK is legally required to adapt to climate change under the 2008 Climate Change Act (CCA), delivery is siloed and unevenly implemented. For example, the CCA’s Adaptation Reporting Power (ARP) enables the UK government to request reports from infrastructure providers, regulators and companies with public functions critical to national resilience on how climate change impacts their operations, their adaptation proposal and implementation progress. However, potential chokepoints, such as food supply, are not adequately captured due to uneven application and enforcement across sectors. So, while reporting obligations exist, implementation standards are not legally binding.

There are international examples of how to address this gap. In the Netherlands, the Delta Act requires long-term protection and freshwater planning and safety standards for flood defences to be legally defined and regularly updated. The UK can mirror similar binding adaptation standards that go beyond risk management and advisory targets to also prioritize freshwater availability and spatial planning. France, meanwhile, has made climate risk integration mandatory. Legislation such as Article 29 of the Energy and Climate Law and Article 173 of the Energy Transition Law require publicly listed companies, institutional investors and asset managers to report their biodiversity and climate-related risks. Under its existing CCA obligations, the UK has an opportunity to build comprehensive, enforceable and integrated resilience standards that can also help incentivise private investment to scale up adaptation measures. 

Investing in social and physical infrastructure

Related work

Heatwaves, extreme heat and climate change

A key part of building the UK’s resilience to climate impacts is coordinated investment in physical and social infrastructure that protects its ability to deliver on core functions like food supply, energy security, transport and public health. In emergencies, there is a disproportionate burden on the government to absorb the cost of damages caused by climate shocks – a liability that will increase as climate change worsens. Many sectors in the UK have some form of climate risk assessment, adaptation programmes and resilience frameworks, including the Climate Adaptation Strategy for Transport and the UK Government Resilience Framework, but such plans are fragmented. Early coordination and investment into climate-resilient infrastructure across sectors can support long-term stability. 

As a priority, the UK should improve the implementation of existing plans and strategies, rather than create new ones. For example, the UK’s 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy is a significant opportunity to invest in adaptation planning. The strategy sets out measures to address issues like flood risk management, water security, drought resilience, infrastructure maintenance and renewal, as well as nature recovery and environmental resilience. The strategy can also make measures adaptive to evolving and intensifying climate risks, as well as changing technologies, economic conditions and political needs. This flexibility is important to avoid lock-in. Long-term planning that considers the multi-decade impacts of climate change is also crucial. Lastly, keeping infrastructure plans responsive to the needs of people by engaging stakeholders, including residents, local government and businesses, builds trust and supports the durability of policy.

Delivering local funding and capacity

Local authorities are critical for delivering essential services and preparing communities for the effects of climate change. However, they are currently ill-prepared to address these challenges. UK councils operate under significant financial stress and face a £27 billion funding gap, leaving them struggling to deliver on climate action plans. Rather than filling these gaps through fragmented and short-term support, the new CCC report stresses the need for adaptation funding to cover planning, implementation and evaluation. 

The body of 22-year-old Roberta Walls was found in a field in Virginia Beach on the morning of May 15, 1986.

China and Russia’s strategic duo endures – but its limits are clear Expert comment jon.wallace 21 May 2026

This week’s summit shows the relationship is resilient, rooted in shared interests. But China remains wary of commitments on various fronts.

In the past six months, Beijing has emerged as a diplomatic crossroads for all permanent members of the UN Security Council. The latest arrival was a familiar figure to his Chinese host: Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom President Xi Jinping has met more than 40 times since 2012. 

Like the Xi–Trump summit last week, international media focused on the apparent personal chemistry between the leaders, dissecting every detail of the diplomatic theatre surrounding the meetings. 

In reality, however, geopolitics is rarely driven by personal warmth or political ‘bromance’. It is shaped by strategic interests, calculations of power, and national priorities.

This latest meeting between Xi and Putin was designed to send a message to the world: Beijing and Moscow remain strategically aligned in their effort to reshape the international order. A joint summit declaration, advocating a ‘multipolar world’ and a ‘new type of international relations’, underscored the durability of the China–Russia partnership at a moment of mounting global fragmentation.

Yet beneath the appearance of unity lies a more complicated reality. China and Russia remain bound together by geography, by shared opposition to Western dominance, and by a partially overlapping strategic agenda. But the partnership is not limitless. Beijing is concerned over excessive dependence on Russian energy. And its broader global ambitions continue to place boundaries around how far the relationship can evolve.

The Xi–Putin summit therefore revealed two truths simultaneously: China and Russia continue to operate as a consistent strategic duo on the world stage. But their partnership remains one of pragmatic alignment rather than full alliance.

Ties that bind

Geography is the first and most enduring factor binding China and Russia together. The two countries share one of the world’s longest land borders (at 4300 kms it is around the width of the European continent) and they inhabit the same Eurasian strategic space. Neither can afford sustained hostility with the other.

For Beijing, stable relations with Moscow secure its northern frontier and reduce the risk of encirclement by hostile powers from the south. Indeed, part of the purpose of Putin’s visit this week is to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ‘Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation’ agreed by Putin and Xi’s predecessor, President Jiang Zemin.

For Russia, partnership with China offers economic resilience and geopolitical relevance at a time when Moscow’s relations with the West remain deeply damaged.

This geographic logic has become even more pertinent as the international system grows more polarized. Beijing and Moscow both see value in coordinating against what they describe as Western ‘hegemony’ and unilateralism. Their new communiqué on multipolarity reflects this shared worldview. The language of a ‘more just and equitable’ international order is not simply rhetorical flourish; it reflects a long-standing Chinese and Russian effort to weaken the dominance of US-led institutions and create greater room for alternative centres of power.

Related work

The Trump-Xi summit: What does the US want from China and will Trump get it? Independent Thinking podcast

That multipolarity serves different but complementary purposes. Russia views it as a pathway out of isolation and as recognition that it remains a major power, despite Western sanctions and diplomatic pressure. China sees multipolarity as a transition toward a world less centred on American strategic primacy and more accommodating to Beijing’s growing economic and political influence.

This convergence has produced a durable strategic partnership. China has provided Russia with crucial economic lifelines since the war in Ukraine began. It has expanded bilateral trade, increased purchases of Russian oil and gas, and sustained technology and industrial exchanges – straining its ties with Europe in the process.

Russia, in turn, has offered China discounted energy supplies, military cooperation, and diplomatic backing on issues ranging from Taiwan to critiques of NATO’s intentions in Asia.

Alignment, not trust

But strategic alignment does not erase asymmetry or mistrust. And it will not override Beijing’s core pursuit of economic self-reliance.

Beijing continues to hesitate over deeper energy dependence on Russia. Although energy cooperation remains a pillar of bilateral ties, China has avoided placing itself in a position where Russian supplies become indispensable.

This explains why long-discussed projects such as the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline continue to move slowly despite repeated rhetorical endorsements. For Moscow, the project is economically urgent: Europe’s reduction of Russian energy imports has made China the Kremlin’s most important prospective long-term energy customer. 

But Beijing has approached negotiations cautiously, leveraging Russia’s weakened bargaining position to demand favourable pricing and supply terms. That hesitation is strategic rather than commercial alone. Beijing understands that overreliance on any single supplier creates vulnerabilities. 

Chinese policymakers have spent years diversifying energy sources across the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and global LNG markets precisely to avoid geopolitical dependence. Becoming excessively tied to Russian energy would reduce China’s flexibility and expose Beijing to unnecessary strategic risk.

Moreover, China does not share all of Russia’s geopolitical priorities. While both oppose American dominance, Beijing remains more deeply integrated into the global economy than Moscow and has far more to lose from sustained instability. China seeks systemic influence through controlled interdependence with its trade partners and rivals; Russia often seeks leverage through the disruption of global flashpoints.

This distinction matters. Beijing supports Moscow politically to a point but has also been careful not to fully embrace Russia’s confrontation with the West. Chinese leaders continue to preserve economic ties with Europe. They have maintained access to global markets. And they have avoided triggering secondary sanctions severe enough to jeopardize China’s already weakened domestic growth.

The latest Xi–Putin summit therefore showcased a relationship defined less by ideology than by calibrated strategic utility. Both sides benefit from appearing united. Russia gains the appearance of having a powerful partner despite Western efforts at isolation. China maintains a reliable geopolitical counterweight to the US and an important partner in promoting alternative visions of global governance.

EPA is loosening Biden-era rule that requires US businesses to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment

The Trump administration is set to loosen a federal rule that requires grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment, in what officials say is a push to lower grocery costs.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, said the Biden-era rule imposes costly restrictions that limit the type of refrigerants US businesses and families can use.

Russia says "nuclear munitions" sent to Belarus for joint drills in the country that Moscow used as a launchpad for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Built on years of cryogenic innovation and deep partnerships with the world’s leading quantum innovators, anchored by industry demand

MALTA, N.Y., May 21, 2026 — GlobalFoundries today launched Quantum Technology Solutions, a new quantum business to scale the manufacturing capabilities the quantum industry needs to achieve utility-scale quantum computing. The new business launches with customer engagements, and a pipeline of quantum innovators positioned to scale on its platform.

With more than a decade of partnership with the U.S. Government and customers across critical semiconductor technologies, and sustained investment in cryogenic CMOS, advanced packaging and materials science, GF has built the industrial layer that quantum companies, the U.S. Government and allied innovators can build on. These capabilities mark GF’s entry into the next generation of high-performance computing (HPC). While the past decade of HPC has been defined by advanced-node CPUs, GPUs and AI ASICs, the next generation will be focused on enabling real-world quantum computing, and GF will manufacture the complete quantum hardware solution from quantum processor units (QPUs) to the cryogenic read-out and control ICs that operate them and the advanced packaging and superconducting interconnects that bind them into systems.

The effort is anchored by quantum companies already engaged with GF’s manufacturing and by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a longstanding partner of GF across critical semiconductor technologies. The U.S. Department of Commerce and GF have entered into a letter of intent to award GF $375M to accelerate the build-out of Quantum Technology Solutions, reflecting the national-security importance of a domestic quantum manufacturing base.

In a separate agreement, the U.S. Department of Commerce will receive a strategic equity investment in GF, representing approximately one percent ownership as of today’s date, enabling the American public to share in GF’s growth.

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

“GF’s role as a semiconductor manufacturing engine is accelerating America’s technology leadership. Deepening our partnership with the United States Government will support a coordinated national push to expand domestic manufacturing, build supply-chain resilience and ensure that revolutionary technologies such as next-generation quantum systems are developed and manufactured in the U.S.,” said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries.

A Manufacturing-Led Approach to Quantum Scale-Up

Quantum Technology Solutions will be able to leverage GF’s trusted U.S. manufacturing capabilities, with flexibility across its U.S. footprint, to support the foundational capabilities the quantum industry needs to scale.

GF’s proven FDX platform delivers the cryogenic CMOS that provides the sensing, control and readout functions required for quantum systems. Building on that base, GF is developing the manufacturing platforms to build QPUs across multiple qubit modalities — including superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological and spin — along with the cryogenic and superconducting heterogeneous interconnect platform that integrates these components into utility-scale quantum systems.

“Quantum is at its inflection point. The hardware is moving from lab-scale to industrial scale, and that transition can only happen inside an advanced semiconductor manufacturing environment,” said Gregg Bartlett, chief technology officer of GF. “The cryogenic CMOS, advanced packaging and 3D heterogeneous interconnect needed for utility-scale quantum computing are exactly what we make every day. Just as CPUs and GPUs underpin classical compute, GF is building the QPU, bringing these capabilities to the leaders across leading qubit modalities and positioning GF as the partner of choice for utility-scale quantum computing.”

Chris Miller, professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, underscores that U.S. leadership in quantum computing will ultimately hinge on the ability to manufacture and scale quantum hardware domestically.

“Quantum computing will be a defining technology of the next decade, and the countries that can manufacture quantum hardware at scale — not just design it — will hold a decisive advantage,” Miller said. “Establishing a dedicated U.S. quantum foundry is exactly the kind of investment we need to translate American research leadership into durable industrial capability, giving the broader quantum ecosystem a secure domestic base to build on.”

More from HPCwire: US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing

About GF

GlobalFoundries (GF) is a leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors, enabling AI at scale from the cloud to the physical world. Through deep partnerships with customers, GF delivers differentiated, power-efficient and high-performance solutions for automotive, aerospace and defense, data center, smart mobile devices, internet of things and other high-growth markets. With global manufacturing operations across the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF is a trusted and holistic technology partner for customers around the world. GF’s talented, global team remains focused every day on security, longevity and sustainability.

Source: GlobalFoundries

The post GlobalFoundries Launches Quantum Technology Solutions to Scale US Quantum Manufacturing appeared first on HPCwire.

The monarch may have thought the role would keep her ‘favourite’ second son out of trouble. How wrong she was

• No evidence of formal security vetting when Andrew became UK trade envoy, minister says

That Queen Elizabeth II was “very keen” for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to take on a “prominent role in the promotion of national interests” as a trade envoy in 2001 demonstrates the fierce support the late monarch always gave her second son.

Knowing he was “the spare”, and undoubtedly acutely aware of the pitfalls of that position – her sister, Princess Margaret, had struggled to find her own role – a mother’s instinct would be to protect, so far as she could.

How might an African credit rating agency improve the continent's financing conditions? 16 June 2026 — 16:00 TO 17:30 BST Anonymous (not verified) 21 May 2026 Chatham House and Online

This panel discussion, held in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, assesses the potential impact of the African Credit Rating Agency on reducing borrowing costs and lowering barriers to financing for African countries.

The African Union has launched an initiative for the new African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) to be headquartered in Mauritius and with operations slated to begin in mid-2026. While seeking to broaden market access, given that only 32 of 54 African sovereigns currently have public ratings, the AfCRA is driven primarily by longstanding accusations of systemic bias in existing ratings by the ‘big three’ credit rating agencies - seen as inflating African default risk and borrowing costs relative to peer countries elsewhere.

Though AfCRA has been framed as an opportunity to reset this perceived Africa risk premium through a more grounded presence on the continent, critics have raised doubts over its independence, the appetite of investors for new ratings and the empirical grounds for alleged bias. Any impact of a new agency on financing conditions must also be considered in relation to wider factors, such as increased fiscal transparency and sustainable growth.

This panel discussion, held in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, will assess the potential impact of an African credit rating agency on reducing borrowing costs and lowering barriers to financing for African countries.

Satirical project is viral sensation and outlet for protest on social media as it taps into young people’s frustration

It began as a satirical online project after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young people to cockroaches. Now millions of young Indians are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration.

A parody political party with the insect as its symbol has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humour into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach – an insect known for its ability to survive harsh conditions – as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance.

Nottingham university hospitals trust says 11 members of staff dismissed and 14 others given written warnings

An NHS trust has sacked 11 staff members who illegally accessed the medical records of the victims of the Nottingham stabbing attacks.

Valdo Calocane killed two 19-year-old students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and Ian Coates, a 65-year-old caretaker, and attempted to kill three other people in the city in June 2023.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is moving ahead with plans to go public in what some expect will be the biggest IPO ever.

UK should not invest in new North Sea oil as it is ‘a price taker, not a price maker’ – Dr Fatih Birol, IEA chief  News release jon.wallace 21 May 2026

Speaking at Chatham House, Dr Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, said Strait of Hormuz closures and rising summer demand could push oil markets into a ‘red zone’.

Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, visited Chatham House on 21 May to discuss the continuing Strait of Hormuz crisis, US energy policy, the global impact of renewable energy and artificial intelligence, and the UK’s own energy security debate.

Dr Birol said the current crisis was having a greater impact than the three biggest previous major energy shocks combined – the 1973 Mideast war and oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

‘This crisis is bigger, I would say much bigger, than all three crises in history put together,’ he said.

Asked his position on the UK’s energy policy, Dr Birol said ‘the future of the UK energy system is electrification’, which might be powered by renewables, nuclear energy and natural gas. ‘If the UK wants to be a strong, sovereign industrial country I see electrification as the future,’ he said.

Addressing the debate about renewed drilling in the North Sea, Dr Birol said it would be expensive, adding: 

‘I don’t still understand how in the UK this becomes a discussion’. He pointed out that even in the US, the largest energy exporter in the world, consumers are still affected by the international oil price, so new North Sea exploration would not affect global oil prices – or reduce prices for UK consumers.

‘I don’t know how the UK can think you can have an impact upon the international oil prices, you cannot. The UK – whatever the field you produce, develop – the UK is a price taker, not a price maker, and it will stay like this.’

He also warned that opportunists may seek to exploit high global oil prices caused by international factors for domestic political reasons:

‘What I’m afraid [of] is the following: the international energy prices, as a result of this, they are going to increase. And they are increasing. And this will affect the domestic prices in the petrol stations, in heating, and so on.

‘In fact, the governments in, let’s say, Europe or UK, or whatever, they don’t have much to do with this, it’s international tension.

‘However there may be some extreme groups – political groups – who can abuse this as a failure of the existing political system in their countries,’ he said.

Summer ‘red zone’

Addressing the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, Dr Birol said trust in supply from the region had been damaged – ‘the vase is broken’ – and that huge efforts would be needed to restore it. 

The world could hit a ‘red zone’ in July or August if the Strait remains closed, he warned.

Laying out the context of the present crisis, Dr Birol said that the global economy was ‘fortunate’ that before the war started there was a surplus of oil in the markets, what he called ‘lots of buffer’.

This was compounded by the IEA’s decision to release a ‘huge amount’ of oil stock onto the market on 11 March, and by the fact that some countries, companies and the industry itself had their own stocks.

But, he said, they were now ‘coming to the end’ of those reserves, just as the travel season is due to begin in late June and early July, pushing push oil demand and consumption up.

‘This may be difficult, and we may be entering the red zone in July or August if we don’t see that there are some improvements in the situation. This is how I see it,’ he said.

As well as the outlook for energy, Dr Birol also outlined the threat of inflation and a food supply shock caused by rising prices, especially upon emerging economies. He cited in particular three crops seen as the ‘backbone’ of the agricultural sector: wheat, rice and maize, with 60% of their production costs coming from fertilizer and diesel.

Higher food prices

‘As we are approaching the travelling season, we are also approaching in many countries the planting season, farming season. And many farmers will have difficulties in this context to go ahead as they were doing in a normal year, and this may feed into higher food prices. And higher food prices, together with the higher oil prices may push up the inflation,’ he said.

‘And we are already seeing the first signals of the inflation numbers going up here and there, and it is just the beginning. My very hope is that, of course, the Strait is open, fully and unconditionally.’

During the event Dr Birol also discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on energy security and the growth of affordable electric cars in China and southeast Asia.

Electric cars

‘Five or six years ago only 5% of all the cars sold was electric, and this year we expect about 30%. And – I have to put a disclaimer here – I expect many countries will react to this crisis, many countries around the world. They have done in the 1970s. They may give a push to the electric cars’ penetration, given subsidies and so on.  Already there are two or three countries doing this,’ he said.

‘We say that this year – even without considering these additional policies that may be coming – this year from 5% five years ago, it will reach about 30%. This is very important. And if people think it is only China, it is wrong. 

‘It is happening in China. In China today almost 60% of all the cars sold is electric. But now when we look at the numbers, especially in southeast Asia, which is a very important centre for energy demand – with electric cars, penetration is very, very high. And this will have implications for the car manufacturing industry, but also for the energy industry as well.’

Telecoms company CEO says tech firms are buying up memory chips to power datacentres relied on by AI

BT has said the cost of smartphones could rise as technology companies buy up semiconductor chips because of the boom in artificial intelligence, putting pressure on supply chains.

The telecoms company’s chief executive, Allison Kirkby, said she was anticipating shortages as tech firms bought large quantities of memory chips to power the datacentres relied on by AI.

When pupils could no longer play outside, St John’s school in Barnet decided to act, enlisting Trees for Cities to help rethink its outside space

The play area at St John’s Church of England primary in Barnet, north London, used to flood so severely it was often unusable. “It would get so bad that the children couldn’t be dismissed from the playground,” says Macci Dobie, the school’s headteacher. “We had to dismiss them from different parts of the school or, literally, parents were stepping into puddles to lift their children out of the classroom.”

Because the school sits in a basin with clay foundations, rain would pool on the grey tarmac and just sit there, often denying the children a proper break for play outside.

Experts say hate-motivated extremists being radicalized online and adopting ideologies of shooters before them

The killing of three men at a San Diego mosque on Monday is the latest example of a disturbing trend in recent decades: hate-motivated shooters learning from – and copying – each other in acts of violence meant to push the nation toward a race war and, ultimately, societal collapse.

The two San Diego shooters, who were 17 and 18, killed 51-year-old Amin Abdullah, a security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego, 78-year-old Mansour Kaziha, a mosque elder and founding member of the center, and Nadir Awad, 57, who lived across the street and whose wife worked as a teacher at the center’s school.

A coordinated cyberattack by Russia's GRU targeted home and small office routers across 23 states. Here's how to check yours and lock it down.

HHS advisory says high screen time among youths can be linked to poor sleep and weakened in-person relationships

Health officials in the Trump administration have issued an advisory about children and adolescents’ excessive screen time, warning that negative impacts on sleep and mental functioning have “become a public health concern”.

The advisory from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes that the amount of screen time reaches an average of four or more hours per day by the time a child becomes a teenager and can be linked to poor sleep, decreased functioning in school, less physical activity and weakened in-person relationships.

Air France flight en route to Detroit, Michigan, landed in Montreal after virus-related travel restrictions

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An Air France flight headed to Detroit, Michigan, was redirected to Canada on Wednesday after it was determined that a passenger from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had boarded “in error” amid new Ebola-related travel restrictions, officials with the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said.

“Due to entry restrictions put in place to reduce the risk of the Ebola virus, the passenger should not have boarded the plane,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement.

Armenia's pivotal election: What is at stake? 3 June 2026 — 14:00 TO 15:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) 21 May 2026 Online

Experts examine the tensions facing Armenian democracy, the election’s importance for the peace process with Azerbaijan, and the role of external actors, including Russia and the West.

On 7 June, Armenia will hold one of the most important elections of its independence era, in which more than political incumbency over the next five years is at stake. Following intensive negotiations of an agreement with Azerbaijan to settle nearly four decades of violent conflict, Armenia’s June election is widely seen as a national referendum on the peace terms negotiated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which many in Armenia see as laden with risk. These elections will also be the most geopoliticised in Armenia’s history, with external actors making their preferences plain in ways that dangerously distract from the democratic process. Under multiple pressures, the democratic transition ushered in by 2018’s ‘Velvet Revolution’ remains fragile and uncertain.

This webinar will discuss the domestic politics of the electoral campaign, the stakes for Armenia’s citizens, the roles played by external actors and the implications for Armenia’s ongoing peace process with Azerbaijan.

WASHINGTON and ARMONK, N.Y., May 21, 2026 — Today, IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) announced a Letter of Intent (LOI) to build an American quantum chip foundry, securing the nation’s global quantum leadership and fueling the country’s growing quantum ecosystem. The CHIPS incentive from the DoC will support the research and development efforts of a new IBM company: Anderon, which will be America’s first pure-play quantum foundry. This initiative represents one of the most significant commitments by the U.S. Government to date in quantum R&D to position the United States to manufacture most of the world’s quantum wafers.

A 300-millimeter quantum wafer. Credit: IBM.

In addition to the $1 billion in CHIPS incentives provided by the DoC, IBM will contribute $1 billion of cash into Anderon, along with IBM investing significant intellectual property, assets, and a skilled workforce, with additional investors expected as Anderon grows. Headquartered in Albany, New York as a standalone company, Anderon will operate as a state-of-the-art 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry. It will help the nation solidify its leadership at the center of a thriving new quantum industry that is estimated to generate up to $850 billion in economic value by 2040 and spur American economic growth while also bolstering national security.

IBM’s mission to bring market-leading quantum computing to the world remains unchanged. The LOI with the DoC reflects IBM’s global leadership in quantum computing and world-class wafer fabrication expertise. IBM has already developed and tested scalable quantum wafer technology, offering a clear pathway to commercialization. As a pure-play quantum foundry, Anderon plans to tap IBM’s strength in building and deploying quantum computers to offer wafer fabrication for multiple quantum technology vendors across the world.

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”

“IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. Our work in silicon wafer fabrication has been a key to IBM’s success and will be critical to enable a broader quantum technology landscape that will reshape global innovation and economic competitiveness,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. “With the support of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Anderon will be well-positioned to fuel America’s fast-growing quantum technology industry.”

IBM plans to use its expertise in fabrication tools and specialized talent to help Anderon build a secure, U.S. based supply of quantum wafers for multiple hardware vendors. Anderon will first support wafer fabrication for superconducting qubit and supporting electronics wafers, with the goal to expand into other quantum modalities.

From the start, Anderon will be prepared to serve as the anchor for a national ecosystem for quantum wafer manufacturing, ensuring IBM and other quantum companies have the ability to catalyze the production of scalable quantum technologies within the United States.

Anderon’s forthcoming leading-edge 300mm wafer processes expect to offer the most advanced quantum wafer technologies, including superconducting wiring, through-silicon vias and bumps, and is backed by established production capabilities such as dedicated process design kits, in-line wafer testing and characterization, and established baseline routes that enable rapid iteration and reliable scalability.

Betting Big on America’s Quantum Future

Quantum computing is a completely new paradigm of computing, poised to solve complex problems far beyond the reach of today’s classical supercomputers and enable breakthroughs in materials science, chemistry, optimization, and cybersecurity, among others.

Fueled by IBM, the United States leads the development of this technology. It remains critical to accelerate this momentum and set the pace for quantum hardware development in order to meet the needs of a thriving ecosystem and to maintain global economic competitiveness and national security for decades to come.

To date, IBM has deployed over 90 quantum systems, including more quantum computers than reported by all other industry players across the globe combined. The company has built a global client and partner ecosystem spanning more than 325 Fortune 500 companies, startups, universities, and government agencies already using IBM’s global fleet of quantum computers to tackle scientific challenges across chemistry, biology, materials science, and more.

IBM has collaborated for decades with federal agencies, including NIST, DARPA, and U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, positioning the company at the center of operationalizing a secure U.S. quantum manufacturing capability and to lead the push to deliver the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029 for commercial clients.

The launch of Anderon is subject to the negotiation and execution of definitive documents by IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce in accordance with the letter of intent agreed among the parties as of the date hereof.

For more information, visit www.anderon.com.

More from HPCwire: US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Source: IBM

The post IBM and US Department of Commerce Announce Purpose-Built Quantum Foundry, Supported by Proposed $1B CHIPS Award appeared first on HPCwire.

Nine Candidates Advance to the Third Round of the Additional Digital Signatures for the PQC Standardization Process

May 21, 2026 — After 18 months of evaluation, NIST has selected nine candidates for the third round of the Additional Digital Signatures for the Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Standardization Process.

Credit: J. Wang/NIST and Shutterstock

The advancing digital signature algorithms are:

• FAEST
• HAWK
• MAYO
• MQOM
• QR-UOV
• SDitH
• SNOVA
• SQIsign
• UOV

NIST Internal Report (IR) 8610 describes the evaluation criteria and selection process. These third-round candidates will have the opportunity to submit updated specifications and implementations (i.e., “tweaks”). NIST will provide more details to the submission teams in a separate message. This third phase of evaluation and review is expected to last approximately two years.

NIST is also planning to hold the 7th NIST PQC Standardization Conference in the late spring/early summer of 2027. The conference will most likely be held in (or near) Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Questions may be directed to pqc-comments@nist.gov. NIST thanks all of the candidate submission teams for their efforts in this standardization process as well as the cryptographic community at large, which helped analyze the signature schemes.

More from HPCwire

• NIST Issues Draft Post Quantum Cryptography Transition Strategy and Timeline
• NIST Issues Post Quantum Cryptography Standards and Calls for their Adoption
• NIST Moves 14 Algorithms to 2nd Round of Additional Digital Signatures for PQC Standardization Process

About NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was founded in 1901 and is now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST is one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories. Congress established the agency to remove a major challenge to U.S. industrial competitiveness at the time — a second-rate measurement infrastructure that lagged behind the capabilities of the United Kingdom, Germany and other economic rivals. From the smart electric power grid and electronic health records to atomic clocks, advanced nanomaterials and computer chips, innumerable products and services rely in some way on technology, measurement and standards provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Today, NIST measurements support the smallest of technologies to the largest and most complex of human-made creations — from nanoscale devices so tiny that tens of thousands can fit on the end of a single human hair up to earthquake-resistant skyscrapers and global communication networks.

Source: NIST

The post NIST Advances 9 Digital Signature Candidates in Post-Quantum Standards Process appeared first on HPCwire.

The additions come after the ouster of dozens of immigration judges across the country by the Trump administration over the past year.

System named “Zurada” after UofL professor and neural networks pioneer

May 21, 2026 — University of Louisville mechanical engineering researcher Badri Narayanan is investigating the chemical properties of new materials combinations for improved energy storage and conversion. His discoveries have the potential to play a pivotal role in advancing energy storage and conversion technology and lead to cheap, sustainable and efficient batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid.

UofL faculty researchers Jacek M. Zurada, Adam E. Gaweda and Badri Narayanan with the Zurada high-performance computing system. Credit: UofL.

Narayanan’s research to decode how atoms move and interact within these materials requires hundreds of computer simulations, but the work can now progress much faster thanks to a new high-performance computing (HPC) system at UofL. The system allows Narayanan’s team to develop machine learning tools that will perform these simulations much more rapidly.

The “Zurada” HPC system, launched in late 2025, enables Narayanan and researchers across the university to conduct more advanced research in materials development, personalized medicine, AI and many other fields. The blazing fast and versatile system yields rapid solutions to a wide variety of complex computational problems and once programmed, can even perform and analyze a sequence of computer models autonomously. The researchers then assess the final results to move forward with physical experiments.

The system represents a $3.7-million computing investment that significantly enhances the university’s capabilities and will help UofL achieve its strategic research goals.

“This new HPC system represents a monumental leap forward for UofL’s research and development initiatives,” said Jon Klein, executive vice president for research and innovation. “Its processing power, combined with dedicated AI acceleration and ultra-fast networking, will empower our students, faculty and researchers to achieve breakthroughs faster and explore new frontiers previously beyond our reach.”

The materials Narayanan is testing have the potential to significantly improve the next generation of storage batteries over current lithium-ion technology. Narayanan, associate professor of mechanical engineering in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, is modeling batteries that use iron and aluminum – inexpensive and abundant elements – and sustainable electrolytes, containing simple salts and water.

With Zurada HPC, Narayanan can run the models much more rapidly than with previous systems. He also believes the system has excellent potential to accelerate research in autonomous experimentation.

“We can develop AI models that decide what experiments to run, how to run them and how to analyze the results of those experiments,” Narayanan said. “Most of the heavy lifting is done by AI, and human scientists can come in once every so often to supervise. This platform can get results much faster.”

Using existing approaches, Narayanan said it would take 10 to 15 years to bring a commercial battery product such as the ones he is working on to market. He estimated that autonomous experiments and testing capability with Zurada HPC could shorten that time to 3 to 4 years.

Narayanan also uses the HPC system in his research on metal-insulator transitions in complex oxides, which can be used for preparing the building blocks – called memristors – for brain-like computing platforms.

“We are trying to understand the atomic processes that dictate how the same material can switch from being an insulator to a metal when a voltage is applied.” Narayanan said. “Interestingly, when the direction of voltage is flipped, they turn back to insulators again. These materials hold a lot of potential in mimicking the neurons of the human brain.”

The Zurada HPC system also empowers UofL researchers to advance cutting-edge artificial intelligence research inspired by its namesake, Jacek M. Zurada. A professor of electrical and computer engineering at UofL, Zurada is known for his pioneering research in neural networks – a core technology of today’s AI – since the 1990s and has since become one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in computer engineering, according to data compiled by the global academic publishing and information analytics company Elsevier.

Adam E. Gaweda, associate professor in the School of Medicine and a former PhD student of Professor Zurada, is using Zurada HPC for AI research in personalized medicine.

“A lot of my work involves time consuming and computationally heavy AI model training, fine-tuning and simulation,” Gaweda said. “With the Zurada HPC, I will be able to run multiple such jobs in parallel, thereby accelerating the generation of new results.”

For one project, Gaweda is collaborating with Cheri Levinson in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences to develop tools for individualized treatment of eating disorders. He also relies on Zurada HPC in his project on AI-powered discovery of treatments and interventions to slow progression of chronic kidney disease.

Technical Specifications

The various servers that comprise the Zurada HPC system have different “personalities,” each suited for specific kinds of computation and projects, according to Ritu Arora, associate vice provost of research computing. The system consists of 119 servers and features a powerful blend of blazing fast CPUs, 43 NVIDIA GPUs, very large memory servers, ultra-fast 200 gigabits-per-second networking and 5 petabytes of high-performance storage.

The system is capable of more than 1.6 petaflops of double-precision performance. In other words, Zurada HPC can perform more than 1.6 quadrillion calculations every second.

To understand the magnitude of this capability, imagine if each of the approximately eight billion people on Earth performed one calculation every second. It would take them more than 55 hours to do what this machine can do in one second. This kind of speed is necessary to solve complex problems with billions of interacting variables, such as research in drug discovery, cybersecurity, AI and high-performance materials development.

Researchers can learn more about using the system here.

Source: Betty Coffman, University of Louisville

The post University of Louisville’s New HPC System Accelerates Research with AI appeared first on HPCwire.

The $1,100 midtier Razr is best suited for a narrow slice of buyers.

Strict restrictions on Americans with exposure to Ebola and hantavirus highlight officials’ previous rhetoric on public health measures

The US is imposing strict restrictions on American travelers who have been exposed in dual Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks in ways that experts say could run counter to their legal rights and affect who will volunteer in future public health crises globally.

The latest restrictions highlight officials’ previous rhetoric on public health measures and their attempts to contain outbreaks now, including reported opposition from the White House to Americans returning home.

Charges filed against Raúl Castro for allegedly shooting down planes in 1996. Plus, US employers spend more than $1.5bn a year to fight labor unions

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Good morning.

On Wednesday, the US issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, and five others, in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s communist regime.

What are the details? Castro, 94, was charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft related to an incident in 1996 – in which four men were killed by the Cuban military, when two small planes were shot down during a humanitarian mission in the Florida straits.

How has Cuba reacted? Miguel Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president, condemned the indictment as a political stunt that sought only to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba”.

What does the video show? Images of dozens of men and women kneeling in rows, with their foreheads to the ground and their hands zip-tied behind their back. Ben-Gvir posted it on his social media account. He appears waving an Israeli flag, mocking and taunting the detainees.

What are global leaders saying? The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, one of the country’s staunchest allies, described Ben-Gvir’s behaviour as “despicable” and said the minister had “betrayed the dignity of his nation”. Others criticizing the video were Italy, Spain, the European Council, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and others. The Spanish foreign minister called the treatment “monstrous, disgraceful and inhumane”.

Check out some great, newly arrived films, including Nope, Black Phone 2 and Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, on Netflix now.

The company says it's also planning to add ASL options in the near future.

Motorola's standard Razr foldable, like other new phones in 2026, got a $100 price hike. It's still a reliable folding phone.

Smart security cameras don't have to come with fees: These models give a lot while saving your budget.

• San Antonio Spurs 113-122 Oklahoma City Thunder

• League MVP scores 30 after quiet start to West finals

• Already down Fox, San Antonio lose Harper to injury

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bounced back from a subpar series opener to score 30 points, Alex Caruso added 17 off the bench and the host Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 122-113 on Wednesday night in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.

Chet Holmgren scored 13 points and reserves Jared McCain and Cason Wallace each had 12 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder finished with a 57-25 edge in bench scoring, plus a 27-10 advantage in points off turnovers.

Firms given maximum fine of €225,000 each and are expected to appeal after lower court had cleared them

A Paris appeals court has found Airbus and Air France guilty of corporate manslaughter over the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash that killed 228 passengers and crew.

The verdict is the latest milestone in a legal marathon involving two of France’s most emblematic companies and families of the mainly French, Brazilian and German victims of France’s worst air disaster.

Parliamentary rule that only English is allowed has reignited debate about language, legitimacy and postcolonial identity

When the Jamaican MP Nekeisha Burchell stood up to give her maiden speech, she was keenly aware of how much her country’s parliament mirrored the Westminster version thousands of miles away in London.

As in the UK, the session on 12 May had started with the arrival of the ceremonial mace – a 1.7-metre ornamented silver staff representing the British monarch’s authority over parliament – which now rested on a table between the government and the opposition. Despite the heat outside, debate was presided over by the speaker dressed in a ceremonial robe.

BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 21, 2026 — Quantinuum, a leading quantum computing company, today announced the launch of a new quantum project in collaboration with bp aimed at modernizing how the energy sector maps the Earth’s subsurface to locate oil and gas resources.

Few tasks in today’s oil and gas sector demand as much raw computational power as seismic imaging. Building on a successful pilot that demonstrated feasibility, bp and Quantinuum are now scaling their approach to simulate more complex subsurface properties.

“This has the potential to be a very important industrial use case for quantum computing,” said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, President and CEO of Quantinuum. “By enabling higher-fidelity data at a lower computational cost than classical computing, we can potentially provide a more efficient path for energy exploration.”

On classical computers, computational requirements, such as memory, scale with spatial resolution, so doubling the resolution of a seismic image can require up to double the computational resources. By contrast, in an ideal scenario, a quantum computer could theoretically achieve the same resolution gains with the addition of a single qubit, potentially compressing simulation timelines while also reducing energy consumption.

Hybrid quantum-classical approaches have the potential to further optimize performance, with quantum processors tackling the most demanding calculations while classical systems manage data logic, allowing results to remain grounded in real-world physics.

If successful, this project could demonstrate that quantum computing can help solve real-world bottlenecks in global infrastructure and resource management.

About Quantinuum

Quantinuum is a leading quantum computing company offering a full-stack platform designed to make quantum computing deployable in real-world environments. The company has commercially deployed multiple generations of quantum systems built on the well-established QCCD architecture, which it has implemented with novel designs and capabilities to achieve the industry’s highest accuracy levels based on average two-qubit gate fidelity. Quantinuum has active engagements with market leaders across pharmaceuticals, material science, financial services, and government and industrial markets.

The company has a global workforce of approximately 700 employees, including top scientists and researchers. Over 70% of its technology team hold PhDs and Master’s degrees. Quantinuum’s headquarters is in Broomfield, Colorado, with additional facilities across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Qatar, and Singapore.

Source: Quantinuum

The post Quantinuum and bp Collaborate Towards Solving Fundamental Wave Physics Challenges with Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

The proposed award through the CHIPS program would accelerate development of U.S. infrastructure and production capabilities to manufacture and deploy silicon-based quantum processors, leveraging Diraq’s proven technologies.

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 21, 2026 — Diraq today announced it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $38 million in proposed federal funding from the CHIPS Research and Development Office. This award would support production and scaling of fault-tolerant silicon quantum computing processors via the U.S. semiconductor industry.

“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”

“The U.S. Government has played an important role for over 25 years in funding silicon quantum research through entities such as the U.S. Army Research Office and more recently DARPA. The foundational advancements that came from this work underpin Diraq’s technology today,” said Andrew Dzurak, Diraq Founder and CEO. “Silicon-based processors are the most economical and scalable approach to utility-scale quantum computing. By scaling our CMOS qubit technology in the United States, we are defining the industrial standard for the next era of supercomputing and cementing the nation’s role as a global architect of fault-tolerant quantum systems.”

Diraq is pioneering the use of silicon-based quantum processors, which have the ability to contain millions of qubits on a single chip, and are fabricated with existing semiconductor manufacturing processes. No other approach offers a more economical or scalable path to quantum infrastructure at industrial scale. This investment will accelerate Diraq’s roadmap to enable an end-to-end quantum supply chain – including cryostats, chips, and packaging – with fully American production.

“This LOI is a powerful signal that the U.S. government recognizes silicon-based quantum processors as a viable architecture to securing domestic computing leadership,” said Dr. William Jeffrey, Chairman of the Board for Diraq and former Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “Quantum technology is a matter of national competitiveness. Diraq’s approach, built on decades of foundational research, is uniquely positioned to deliver scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems.”

Diraq’s quantum computers are engineered to achieve utility-scale unit economics by utilizing existing CMOS manufacturing. Shortlisted for Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), Diraq’s system architecture is designed to meet the following industrial specifications:

• Scalable Cost: Sub-dollar pricing at less than $1 per physical qubit.
• Infrastructure Ready: Compact, rack-deployable units compatible with existing data center environments.

“As quantum computing enters its industrial phase, the challenge shifts from scientific discovery to engineering and scale, making reliable access to advanced semiconductor infrastructure essential,” said Gregg Bartlett, Chief Technology Officer at GlobalFoundries. “We’re proud to partner with Diraq to advance silicon-based quantum processors, leveraging our cryo-CMOS quantum capabilities and broad technology portfolio under one roof to enable quantum systems at scale within a trusted domestic ecosystem.”

Founded in Sydney, Australia, Diraq has U.S. offices and labs in Palo Alto and Chicago, and will soon open a significant new operation in Los Angeles. The company is growing its team and business in the United States and is actively working with domestic partners to further accelerate the U.S. quantum ecosystem.

About Diraq

Diraq is commercializing quantum computing with a silicon-based approach that uses existing CMOS processes. By utilizing the same manufacturing methods that produce today’s semiconductor components, Diraq is pioneering a faster, more economical road to commercial-scale quantum computing. The company’s proprietary ‘quantum dot’ technology is based on 20 years of research by founder Andrew Dzurak, designed to enable millions of qubits on a single chip, for powerful and scalable deployments. Diraq’s mission is to revolutionize quantum computing by unlocking the scale needed for useful commercial applications. Founded in Sydney, Diraq has more than 100 team members globally, with operations in Melbourne, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Source: Diraq

The post Diraq Targets US Silicon Quantum Scale-Up with Proposed $38M CHIPS Award appeared first on HPCwire.

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 21, 2026 — D-Wave Quantum Inc. today announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) for $100 million of proposed funding under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In connection with executing final award documents, D-Wave would issue $100 million in shares of its common stock to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The LOI marks a significant endorsement by the U.S. government of D-Wave’s annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies and their potential impact on the U.S. economy.

The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act is aimed at strengthening domestic technology supply chains and advancing national and economic security. Advanced manufacturing and packaging technology is required to scale quantum computing systems and is critical for reinforcing the United States’ position at the forefront of next-generation quantum computing. This funding would accelerate development and scaling of D-Wave’s annealing and gate-model quantum systems, including at its forthcoming research and development (R&D) facility in Boca Raton, Florida as well as its R&D centers in New Haven, Connecticut and Burnaby, BC, Canada.

“We believe that the U.S. government’s strategic investment in D-Wave would advance the country’s global leadership position in quantum computing,” said Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “The award would accelerate D-Wave’s ability to scale quantum innovation domestically, expedite key fabrication processes, and deliver real-world quantum applications to our global customers today. We see this as a transformative moment for not just D-Wave, but also for quantum computing and the United States.”

“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”

The funded initiatives would help D-Wave expedite the delivery of advanced superconducting quantum computers, including a 100,000-qubit annealing system and a 10,000-qubit gate-model system. While D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers are commercial today, its gate-model system is expected to reach commercial viability with 10,000 physical qubits, which enable 100 logical qubits. With the larger-scale and higher coherence annealing quantum computing systems, D-Wave expects even greater performance gains for solving computational problems in optimization, materials simulation, blockchain, and artificial intelligence applications. The larger-scale dual-rail gate-model quantum computer will enable dozens of logical qubits, providing a powerful application development platform for a wide range of quantum chemistry and quantum artificial intelligence use cases.

These efforts are expected to contribute to the development of a resilient, end-to-end quantum computing ecosystem, aligned with broader CHIPS and Science Act objectives to build domestic capacity in critical technologies and establish a robust and reliable pipeline for the components required to bring state-of-the-art quantum computing systems into the market.

The Award is subject to the execution by the parties of definitive Award documents.

About D-Wave Quantum Inc.

D-Wave is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services. It is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, and the first and only to offer dual-platform quantum computing products and services, spanning both annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies. D-Wave’s mission is to help customers realize the value of quantum today through enterprise-grade systems available on-premises and via its Leap quantum cloud service, which offers 99.9% availability and uptime. More than 100 organizations across commercial, government and research sectors trust D-Wave to address complex computational challenges using quantum computing. Learn more about realizing the value of quantum computing today and how D-Wave is shaping the quantum-driven industrial and societal advancements of tomorrow: www.dwavequantum.com.

Source: D-Wave

The post D-Wave Signs LOI for $100M CHIPS Act Funding to Advance Quantum Systems appeared first on HPCwire.

The sweeping aid cuts have left the Democratic Republic of Congo struggling to contain an Ebola outbreak despite its extensive experience with the disease.

Weirs, culverts and sluices among 602 barriers demolished in year in attempt to restore 15,500 miles of rivers by 2030

A few miles downstream from a lava field in western Iceland, the gargle of free-flowing water is unbroken for the first time in decades after hydraulic peckers chipped away at a dilapidated dam that once powered a farm. The structure on the River Melsá had continued to block fish migration long after falling into disrepair.

“It wasn’t providing any electricity; the old power house had sheep living in it,” said Hamish Moir, a river engineer from CBEC, a Scottish firm that provided technical support for the demolition in December. To see the river restored to its natural state was “really rewarding”, he said.

The unofficial arrival of summer brings some outstanding sales on our favorite warm-weather gadgets, beauty products and running gear

• 14 of the very best deals from REI’s 2026 anniversary sale, vetted by an outdoor enthusiast

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

Memorial Day is many things: above all, a holiday to honor US military personnel fallen in the line of duty, but unofficially also the start of summer, and for savvy shoppers, a sales bonanza. That is why, while the three-day weekend is best spent poolside or by the grill at a backyard barbecue, it’s also one of the prime opportunities to get a generous discount on some of the summer upgrades you’ve been holding off on.

From beach-ready Bluetooth speakers to a slushie drink maker to delight your guests, we’ve pinned down the very best Memorial Day deals on items Filter staff have personally tested and recommend.

"The Late Show" host Stephen Colbert is marking the end of an iconic late-night franchise on CBS.

New fraud charges were unsealed Wednesday against a Minnesota daycare owner who federal prosecutors allege tried to flee the country just two days after shutting the center down.

The new fund to provide payouts to those who say the legal system was "weaponized" against them raised immediate questions about its legality, implementation and enforcement.

Iran says it's considering the latest U.S. peace offer, as President Trump says he's willing to wait "a couple of days" for a response.

In an inter-peninsula match-up between women's teams that showed the limits of sports diplomacy, players from North Korea remained stone-faced — until they won.

The cleverly designed P1i projector performs surprisingly well given its budget price.

The ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is an extraordinary example of bald self-dealing

Donald Trump is stealing almost $2bn in taxpayer money and handing it out to his friends. That’s the upshot of the president’s recent agreement following a $10bn lawsuit he brought in his personal capacity against the IRS, an agency that he oversees. Trump brought the suit over leaks of some documents from his tax returns to the press. To resolve the suit, the justice department will create a fund of nearly $1.8bn – a wildly outsized figure compared with Trump’s somewhat flimsily alleged injuries – that can be doled out to Trump allies. The Guardian describes the fund as “loosely controlled and secretive”, but members of the Trump administration have not ruled out January 6 insurrectionists as possible awardees.

The so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will be administered by four commissioners appointed by Trump’s attorney general and one appointed “in consultation” with congressional leadership – Trump, who can fire the commissioners, will have ultimate control. It will have the authority to issue formal apologies for alleged mistreatment of conservative political actors by previous administrations – ie, those few who were prosecuted or sued during the Biden era. When Trump leaves office, any remaining money will not be available for his successor to use similarly, but will instead be distributed back to the federal government. But I doubt that there will be any remaining money. We may never know either way: there is no requirement that the fund’s work be made public, and required reports to the attorney general on its conduct are to be confidential. In addition to the creation of this massive slush fund, the agreement also requires that the IRS drop all audits of Trump and his family.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Stop guessing at the grill. These our our picks for the best meat thermometers.

It's one of the best camera phones around, but I still think there's one that beats it.

Manchester mayor and Labour’s Makerfield byelection candidate wants to make politics ‘less point-scoring, more problem-solving’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham has said he will back sweeping changes to the electoral system to make politics “less point-scoring, more problem-solving” if he becomes prime minister.

The Greater Manchester mayor has previously called for the introduction of proportional representations for UK general elections, handing more power to minority parties like the Greens.

Firms hit by ‘perfect storm’ of uncertainty about Labour leadership and impact of Iran war

• Business live – latest updates

Companies in the UK’s dominant services sector have reported one of the sharpest declines in business activity in a decade, according to a closely watched index.

Businesses are grappling with a “perfect storm” of domestic political uncertainty around Keir Starmer’s leadership as prime minister and the growing impact of the Iran war, leading to soaring costs, supply shortages and job cuts, the report said.

US Preventive Services Task Force had already been largely sidelined before health secretary fired its two chairs

• US politics live – latest updates

The Trump administration has fired the two leaders of an influential health group that determines when insurance must provide free preventive care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, for millions of Americans.

In letters dated 11 May, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, notified the two doctors who chaired the US Preventive Services Task Force that he was terminating their appointments immediately, before the end of their multiyear terms.

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A record 274 climbers scaled the Nepal side of Mount Everest in a single day, officials said. They took advantage of clear weather.

Climbers take advantage of clear weather after threat of ice fall on normal route delayed start of spring season

A record 274 climbers have reached the summit of Mount Everest from the Nepalese side in a single day after a spring season that started late because of the threat of ice fall on the normal tourist route.

The climbers took advantage of the clear weather on Wednesday, said Rishi Ram Bhandari, of the Expedition Operators Association Nepal.

The new plan is attractively priced, if you can bear the limited features.

Exclusive: Body-cam footage shared with the Guardian shows agents forced workers out of a van in what a judge has called ‘unlawful’ arrest

Newly released body-camera footage shows US immigration officers stopping a van of farm workers in Oregon, smashing their windows and using facial recognition software to try to identify one of them.

Videos from a 30 October 2025 operation were disclosed in court as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest tactics and racial profiling by agents. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian.

We've tested the top video doorbells in our homes to find which give you the best eyes on your front door.

SpaceX has revealed its financials for the first time as it prepares for a potentially massive IPO. The New York Times reports: SpaceX's revenue soared to $18.7 billion in 2025, up 33 percent from a year earlier, the company disclosed in a filing required of firms that are seeking to go public. In the first three months of this year, revenue rose to $4.7 billion from $4.1 billion in the same period a year ago. But the company lost more than $4.9 billion last year, compared with a $791 million profit in 2024, as capital expenditures nearly doubled to $20.7 billion from heavy spending on artificial intelligence development. In the first three months of this year, SpaceX lost almost as much money as all of 2025, recording a $4.3 billion loss.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Airline, which took £25m hit on jet fuel in March, says passengers are waiting later to book trips

• Business live – latest updates

The airline easyJet has said its summer holiday bookings are lagging behind last year’s, as the Middle East conflict weighs on consumer confidence and passengers appear to be waiting later to book trips.

The budget carrier said it had to spend an unexpected extra £25m on jet fuel in March after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Colombia is a global leader in climate activism. Could US influence drag country to a future of mining and fracking?

Several hours after dark in a quiet Caribbean neighbourhood, a cluster of environmental activists gather on plastic chairs between a mango tree and a courtyard wall emblazoned with the words “Colombia, respira!” (Breathe, Colombia).

So many people have turned up that some have to stand. That is because tonight’s speaker is Susana Muhamad, one of the most admired socio-environmental campaigners in the world, and this is a moment of profound historical significance.

Authorities in Galicia declare two days of mourning after toddler dies during exceptionally high May temperatures

• Europe live – latest updates

A two-year-old girl has died of heatstroke in north-west Spain after being accidentally left in her father’s car during an unseasonably hot spell that could push temperatures in some areas to 38C (100F).

The child, who has not been named, went into cardiac arrest on Wednesday afternoon after spending several hours inside the vehicle in the Galician town of Brión after her father forgot to take her to nursery.

The Rolling Stone will play a lighthouse keeper in Three Incestuous Sisters, joining a cast including Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley and Saoirse Ronan

Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger is playing a lighthouse keeper in the new film from Happy as Lazzaro director Alice Rohrwacher, which is currently filming on the Italian island of Stromboli.

According to reports in the Italian media, Jagger was photographed on arrival in Stromboli after flying in by helicopter to take a role in Three Incestuous Sisters, Rohrwacher’s adaptation of the 2005 “visual novel” by The Time Traveler’s Wife author Audrey Niffenegger.

Lee Mendelson Film Productions alleges the U.S. Department of the Interior illegally used the jazzy tunes in social media posts and a video game.

Will Lawrence, an outspoken opponent of AI datacenters, is running in swing district where three mega complexes loom

A prominent environmental organizer calling for a nationwide moratorium on datacenters as he runs for the Democratic nomination in a swing Michigan congressional district has secured an endorsement from Bernie Sanders.

Will Lawrence, co-founder of the youth-led Sunrise Movement climate justice group, was a key figure behind the campaign for a Green New Deal to battle economic and racial injustice while also fighting climate change.

Hundreds of cases reported in the DRC after USAID has been dismantled and key scientific research canceled

A previously undetected outbreak of Ebola is coursing through parts of central Africa, and the US appears to be doing little to help stop it, after massive cuts to global and domestic public health efforts.

There is no cure and no vaccine for the rare Bundibugyo variant of Ebola, which has caused two outbreaks in recent decades. Health leaders and scientists are now racing to understand where the virus is spreading and attempting to stop it – but the US is notably absent in these efforts.

Your iPhone's not angry, it's just disappointed.

Americans are expected to wager more than $3 billion amid the expansion of legalized sports betting in the U.S.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
Last year, the state conducted its first property reassessment in decades. As a result, school districts were able to implement an up to 10% school tax increase without voter approval, sparking outrage throughout the state. But lawmakers say a new bill could provide flexibility to districts while eliminating the sticker shock of large tax hikes.

A new proposal could see taxpayers statewide shouldering smaller school tax increases each year without having to go to referendum.

It is the third bill attempting to address Delawareans’ concerns about school district tax increases following last year’s first-in-a-generation property reassessment.

Sponsored by Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola (D-Newark), Senate Bill 322 was spurred by school districts across the state choosing last summer to increase their property tax revenues by 10% following Delaware’s first statewide property reassessment in nearly 40 years. 

But those tax increases, allowed under a little-discussed state law, only worsened the resident outcry that had been building following reassessment. Sokola’s bill follows two failed attempts by Republican lawmakers earlier this year to scale back districts’ ability to take those automatic tax increases in the future.

While SB 322 would rescind school districts’ current ability to automatically implement a 10% tax increase after property reassessments, it also would allow them to seek additional funding without holding a referendum vote.

Instead of taking an automatic 10% hike, districts – should they meet certain criteria – would be able to implement an up to 2% tax increase each year without seeking approval from voters. That approach mirrors the process in many other states.

If signed into law, SB 322 would not take effect until 2031, after the next property reassessment. 

In his remarks during Wednesday’s committee meeting, Sokola said the bill provides flexibility for school districts while also protecting taxpayers from the “sticker shock” of seeing a 10% tax increase after a reassessment. 

“Our schools and communities deserve a holistic and carefully measured approach that balances financial interests for our taxpayers with the overwhelming need to maintain and improve academic performance for all students,” he added. 

Committee debates bill details

During a hearing Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee, some Republicans questioned the merits of Sokola’s bill, especially as it compared to similar legislation filed earlier this year by Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford).

Last month, Shupe opted to table his bill, House Bill 246, which also would have removed school districts’ ability to automatically implement a 10% tax revenue increase following reassessment, and instead allow districts to take a smaller percentage, if needed. 

State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-South Dover), who was the co-prime sponsor of HB 246, said Sokola’s bill did not have the same “hurdles” in place as Shupe’s to prevent a district from unnecessarily taking a 2% tax increase. Under HB 246, districts would have had to demonstrate that they would have lost revenue following a reassessment in order to implement an automatic tax rate increase.

But Sokola’s bill does include language that would prohibit certain districts from automatically raising taxes, albeit different language than Shupe’s.

According to SB 322, a school district would not be able to implement a tax increase if its reserve fund balance – essentially the amount of money in its savings – is more than 10% of the district’s annual revenue.

If a district wanted to implement a tax increase greater than 2%, it would still need voter approval. 

While many states require school districts to get approval from voters to fund capital projects, Delaware is one of the few states left that require referendums for operational increases.

During the committee hearing, Red Clay Consolidated School District Superintendent Dorell Green, who also is the president of Delaware’s Chief School Officers Association, spoke in favor of the bill. Green said the legislation is not a “complete solution,” but he noted it is beneficial to both districts and taxpayers. 

He said the legislation would grant districts and school boards the ability to “address local funding” while also delaying implementation until after the next reassessment to protect taxpayers.

One professor who studies education funding in Delaware, however, said SB 322 would not address the state’s underlying educational funding inequities.

Kenneth Shores, a professor at the University of Delaware who specializes in education policy, said that districts with higher property wealth, such as Cape Henlopen, will be able to bring in more money with a 2% annual increase than a district in western Sussex County, which may have lower property values. 

Shores said the bill would not provide “any kind of state obligation to compensate districts for their property wealth.” 

He also pointed toward states like Minnesota, where districts with lower tax-bases can receive state aid to help districts pay for the same level of services as wealthier school districts. 

What led to this?

Last summer, multiple school districts, including the Appoquinimink, Christina, Capital, and Indian River school districts, chose to implement the full 10% tax increase during July board of education meetings. At the time, some leaders said taking advantage of the increase would prevent their district from needing to hold, and pass, a referendum. 

Others, like the Brandywine School District, announced in July 2025 that it would implement a 1.7% tax rate increase, citing concerns over the future of federal education dollars. The following month, the Brandywine school board changed course, opting to reduce rates for residential properties and increase them for business properties.

Still, post-assessment property tax bills prompted outrage from many New Castle residents over the sticker shock of the increases in their bill. For some residents, tax bills doubled after the reassessment. 

Those increases are largely driven by school taxes, rather than county taxes.

By August 2025, state lawmakers held a one-day special legislative session in response to residents’ outrage. They allowed the public school districts in New Castle County to split their property tax rates to provide additional relief to homeowners. 

The school boards for the Appoquinimink, Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, and Red Clay Consolidated school districts then approved new rates that lowered tax burdens for homeowners and raised them for commercial property owners.

Christina, Appoquinimink, and Colonial also chose to retain the extra revenue they raised through the automatic tax increases.

By December, four school district leaders testified before the General Assembly’s committee investigating the impacts of the reassessment. 

Three months later, two Republican bills seeking to limit Delaware school districts’ ability to implement automatic tax increases following property reassessments were both tabled in committee, or not advanced to a full House vote, after nearly two hours of debate. 

After being approved by the Senate Education Committee, SB 322 awaits consideration by the full Senate. If passed, it would then be considered in the House of Representatives.

The post New bill would give Delaware schools right to small annual tax hikes without referendum appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Sussex County farmers field enticing offers to sell their land to housing developers as demand for new homes in the area remains high. But some Sussex residents want the county to discourage those developments, saying new residential areas should be built adjacent to existing ones, not on far off farm fields.

Sussex County farmers are pushing back against proposed development reforms that they say could endanger the future of their farms. 

The Sussex County Council on Tuesday held hearings on two ordinances that could discourage a long-criticized practice of building large housing developments on land that is located far from established cities and towns and is targeted for preservation.

Specifically, the proposals would ban subdivisions with more than two homes per acre on farm fields and require more open space within those developments. Advocates say the rules will encourage developers to instead build new homes where infrastructure already exists.  

But a group of farmers who spoke during a public comment period at the meeting said the ordinances would also devalue their land, which they often rely on as collateral for loans needed to operate their farms. 

Rather than discouraging new homes on farmland, Georgetown farmer Jay Baxter said the devaluation could actually force more farmers to sell to developers. 

“You’re hamstringing that next generation by taking the equity away from my farm,” Baxter said.

The comments mark the latest in Sussex County’s yearslong debate over how to balance farmland preservation with the development of new homes amid explosive growth.

The two proposals in front of the council came from recommendations made by the Sussex County Land Use Reform Working Group.

The County Council formed the working group after three newcomers won seats on the elected body by beating incumbents in the November 2024 elections. The victories largely were fueled by resident anger over how the five-person council had previously handled development. 

The working group’s stated mission was to come up with ways to ease the impact that ongoing growth has had on affordability, road conditions, public services and the environment.  

Last fall, the group recommended a slate of measures that would incentivize housing developers to build dense, walkable communities in areas where there is already infrastructure to support it, and discourage development in the rest of the county.  

Though he was a member of the working group, Baxter publicly criticized its recommendations before they were finalized. 

But other members, including Center for Inland Bays Director Christophe Tulou, said the county must act to discourage building new homes on farmland because it causes sprawl and traffic congestion outside of growth areas. 

Tulou also said during a working group meeting last year that the recommended measures need to be passed as a package, because they collectively represent concessions made by all stakeholders.

If not, he said, the public could “start picking and choosing. And they’re going to find the parts they like. They’re going to fight the ones they don’t like.”

It is not immediately clear whether the two proposals discussed during Tuesday’s meeting has enough support on the County Council.

Based on remarks made during the meeting, Councilman Matt Lloyd appeared to be against the measures. Council Vice President John Rieley expressed his strong opposition to the them.

Meanwhile, Councilwoman Jane Gruenbaum appeared to be mostly in support, and Councilman Steve McCarron seemed neutral, stating “there are no good answers.”

Council President Doug Hudson did not comment on or ask questions about the ordinances during the meeting. 

At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, the County Council did not close the record on the proposals, meaning they will likely discuss them again, though it is not certain when that could be.  

Separately during the meeting, the council also deferred action on another housing proposal — this one to reform Sussex County’s affordable housing program.

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

The post Sussex County farmers oppose plan to discourage housing on agricultural lands appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

The bipartisan legislation, which comes after a Washington Post investigation, would also limit the federal government’s ability to obtain phone records without a judge’s order.

While Canada may be clinging to fossil fuels, much of the world is moving on

Casual international observers would be forgiven for assuming Canada is in the comforting hands of a climate champ. After all, while climate policy rollbacks reign supreme in Donald Trump’s America, Canada is now led by a man who, while serving as governor of the Bank of England, delivered a celebrated 2015 speech, “Breaking the tragedy of the horizon”, warning the global investment community of the financial risks of climate change; who went on to serve as UN special envoy for climate action and finance; and whose 2022 book Value(s) had much to say about the “existential threat” of climate change. A man who recently dazzled the world with his Davos speech on how middle powers can stand up to global bullies.

Look, we get it. Next to the US president, Carney seems so debonair, thoughtful and calm – a lifeline of stability in a volatile new world.

Seth Klein is a Canadian climate writer and activist, author of the book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, and former team lead of the Climate Emergency Unit. His newsletter can be found here.

Why Should Delaware Care?
With the lowest average elevation in the country, Delaware is in line to be among the most impacted states by sea-level rise. Coastal communities are at the forefront of those flood risks, and homeowners there will be faced with increasing questions of how much flood resiliency is needed.

A Sussex County condominium board has settled a lawsuit against a former resident who had publicly sought out ways to protect her low-lying community from floods.

The dispute, which highlighted the growing tensions in Delaware’s coastal communities grappling with sea-level rise, began after Simone Reba created a website and spoke at public meetings about what she said were the flood risks facing her Mallard Lakes community. 

The condominium board filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery last fall, asking a judge for an injunction that would gag Reba from asking public officials for money or other support for flood repairs or resiliency measures for the coastal development.

The board argued that Reba had no right to act as a formal representative of the community or of the board, which is responsible for the community’s shared resources. 

But Reba’s attorney, Daniel McAllister, claimed the lawsuit was an attempt to limit her “participation in the political process and stifle her First Amendment rights.”

The lawsuit could have served as an early test of a new state law designed to protect people from lawsuits they claim are meant to silence public speech. But, earlier this month, the parties reached a confidential settlement that dismissed the case. 

The settlement followed Reba and her husband’s sale of their Mallard Lakes condo in April. They purchased a new vacation home in another community nearby.

When reached for comment, Reba said in an email that she continues “to believe in the importance of homeowners being able to communicate with their government officials on public matters and to participate in discussions involving issues that affect their communities.”

Board Vice President Chris Reutershan did not respond to requests for comment.

Reba’s former vacation home is one of 11 in one building on the 61-acre complex that is Mallard Lakes. The community nestled to the west of Fenwick Island, along the northside of Route 54, includes multiple buildings, some of which are slightly elevated to allow water to pass beneath them. The community includes 47 buildings with 477 condominium units sitting mostly within a floodplain surrounded by natural and manmade waterways.

The association’s claims against Reba focused heavily on comments she made during one Sussex County Council meeting in July 2025, as well as other communications with state and elected officials, and a non-association-affiliated website she uses to publish the information she’s collected about the community’s flood vulnerabilities in a changing climate.

The board claimed “misinformation” on the website could impact property values, while Reba’s attempts to seek funding or other resources for the community amounted to “fraud” and misrepresentation. According to the community’s bylaws, no individual homeowner is permitted to act on behalf of the community as a whole or make alterations to shared resources such as the buildings’ exteriors.

Reba said she never misrepresented herself, and her attorney defended her right to free speech and public participation by filing a counterclaim based on the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act passed by state lawmakers last year to further protect free speech in the First State.

She said her independent website will remain up as a resource for community members, even though she and her husband no longer own a condo in Mallard Lakes.

Regardless of this legal battle’s resolution, the case highlights key challenges that rising tides present to Delaware’s coastal communities and homeowners: What is their future vulnerability and preparedness, and who is ultimately responsible for addressing — and paying for — those problems or solutions when floodwaters do arrive?

The condo association says no major damage has occurred in the community since Superstorm Sandy.

Still, Delaware is the lowest-lying state in the United States, and sea levels are expected to continue to rise. 

According to State Climatologist Kevin Brinson, sea level as measured nearby in Lewes has risen about 7.25 inches since the community was built in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Based on current trends, which show that sea level rise is accelerating, the area is expected to see that same amount of sea level rise in a shorter timeframe, he told Spotlight Delaware earlier this year.

“In other words, another 7.25 inches by 2040,” Brinson said.

The post Sussex HOA, resident settle lawsuit over flooding and speech appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Wherever you’re planning to watch the matches – we’d like to hear from you

The men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is nearly upon us, kicking off on 11 June.

Amid the excitement around the tournament, there has been controversy over Fifa’s ticketing process, the cost of travel, and security concerns for fans travelling to the US.

Eight nations have won the World Cup. An expanded field and a grueling schedule means a new champion could emerge from the pack this summer

When Fifa expanded the field for the 2026 World Cup to 48 teams, the sales pitch included giving more nations a chance at glory. In reality, the favorites are nearly always former champions.

To date, only eight nations have won the men’s World Cup. And yet, few of the former champions arrive at this summer’s tournament in their finest form. Spain are a justifiably popular pick as the reigning European champions have plenty of world-class talent. Argentina will hope to defend their title from 2022 after following it up with the Copa América in 2024. France, who top our power rankings, have reached the last two finals, and Kylian Mbappé claims this squad is the best he has been a part of.

More than $7,000 in cable TV subscriptions.

An $11,000 golf cart.

$1.5 million in renovations to office space in a swanky Phoenix high-rise.

And another $1.7 million for Tasers.

Those were among more than $200 million in expenses that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office billed to a class-action settlement aimed at rooting out racial profiling in the department.

A federal judge in 2013 found the department under then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio had violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers, and the court has required sweeping reforms. These include documenting all traffic stops to detect patterns of racial bias, employing additional investigators to probe reports of deputy misconduct and appointing a monitor to oversee the settlement.

Since Sheriff Jerry Sheridan took office last year, he and Republicans on the county’s Board of Supervisors have cited the cost of complying with these orders to call for an end to the settlement of the case known as Melendres v. Arpaio — even as reviews of the department’s traffic stops continue to show racial disparities affecting Latino residents. The lingering disparities amplified Latino leaders and community members’ concerns as the second Trump administration has boosted local law enforcement’s involvement in its mass deportation campaign.

Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona’s population, has approved $353 million in spending related to the settlement since 2013. But an audit of the sheriff’s office spending ordered by the court and a review of the public ledger by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica show millions of dollars went to expenses that had little or nothing to do with the settlement. (The audit focused on $226 million that the sheriff’s office charged to the settlement over a 10-year period; it didn’t examine legal and monitoring costs or the two most recent department budgets.)

The auditors, who were hired by the monitor, found that nearly 72% of the sheriff’s office spending was misattributed or misappropriated. For example, the full cost of some services and salaries was assigned to the settlement when those jobs were completely unrelated or only partially related to court orders. Only $63 million was appropriately charged to the settlement, they said.

Upon releasing its findings late last year, the two-member auditing team, led by an individual with decades of experience in public finance, noted that overstating the cost of the reforms undermines the court’s credibility. “This mischaracterization misleads the public on the cost of reform efforts and calls into question MCSO’s credibility, transparency, and truthfulness of its reporting,” they stated.

The financial ledgers detail many of these expenses, including more than $310,000 for travel and professional development. Among them are $1,261 for travel in 2020 to research buying a boat and swift-water rescue training — for deputies who work in the desert, $4,070 to train and test whether to buy a horse for the mounted unit in 2021 and $5,077 to attend National Police Week in Washington, D.C., in 2023.

The audit concluded that the county Board of Supervisors, which approves the sheriff’s annual budgets, provided no “meaningful” oversight of its spending and had no process to verify if funds were being used appropriately to comply with court orders.

Indeed, as costs ballooned, the Board of Supervisors rarely questioned the expenses, Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica found based on a review of nearly a decade of public budget hearings.

The supervisors responded to the audit by telling U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow that the reforms, and in particular the audit’s scrutiny of county spending, had far exceeded the original racial profiling complaints. 

“Hispanic residents of Maricopa County concerned with racial profiling are unaffected by how the County and MCSO allocate costs,” the filing read. “Nor does any member of the Class experience a constitutional violation because MCSO purchased a golf cart.”

Snow’s 2013 ruling found deputies had relied on race to pull over Latino drivers during immigration actions, violating their rights to equal protection and against unreasonable seizures.

Attorneys for the county have filed a motion to end court oversight. That motion is pending.

“Digging into county finances and trying to minimize the cost of Melendres compliance is not just an insult to taxpayers, it’s beyond the federal court’s jurisdiction,” Republican supervisors Thomas Galvin and Kate Brophy McGee said in a November statement. “Nothing about our budgeting or accounting practices violates federal or state law. This is why we decline to participate in further arguments over compliance costs.”

Sheridan, whose tenure was not covered by the audit period, dismissed the findings and defended his department’s spending practices. The sheriff’s attorneys joined the motion to end court oversight.

The past two years, the Board of Supervisors have approved Sheridan’s budget request, billing an additional $72 million to the settlement.

The auditors, William Ansbrow and Eric Melancon, are barred by Snow from speaking publicly about their work.

Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the five-member Board of Supervisors, has opposed ending court oversight of the sheriff’s office. He said the focus should remain on eliminating biased policing.

The sheriff’s office is above 90% compliance with the two major court orders, but Snow has yet to clear the department in two key areas: racial disparities in traffic stops and a backlog of uninvestigated misconduct claims against deputies.

“We should be having benchmarks in terms of, how do we get in full compliance,” Gallardo told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica in April. “Others are going to say, ‘Well, they keep moving the goalpost.’ Well, let’s continue to move forward. I mean, that should be our overall goals: How do we get in full compliance with the Melendres case?”

The sheriff’s office did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica’s questions about the spending.

While the audit and county ledger showed spending that appeared unrelated to the court’s orders, they also showed spending spiraling on things the court had ordered.

In 2013, Snow required the sheriff’s office to purchase body cameras for patrol deputies and sergeants who conduct traffic stops. The audit found that the number of employees required to wear the cameras ranged from 434 in fiscal year 2023 to 513 in fiscal year 2021. Yet the department had purchased 950 cameras from Axon, a Scottsdale company, at a cost of $8.6 million. About $2.9 million of the spending “exceeded the Court’s requirements,” the audit found.

The sheriff’s office also purchased Tasers from Axon, bundled with the body cameras, and charged them to the settlement. The court had not required deputies to carry Tasers.

The sheriff’s office contended that buying the cameras separately would have been more costly. Even so, the audit found, the cost for Tasers — roughly $1.7 million — should have been charged to the department’s general fund instead of the settlement.

To operate body camera docking stations, the department purchased high-speed internet. But monthly invoices revealed that from fiscal years 2020 to 2024, the charges included cable television subscriptions, which were unrelated to the settlement, totaling $7,670.

Since 2016, Snow has required the sheriff’s office to house the Professional Standards Bureau, its internal disciplinary body, separately from its downtown Phoenix headquarters. The order was intended to encourage residents to report deputy misconduct after Snow found department leadership had routinely interfered in discipline of deputies. (Sheridan was Arpaio’s chief deputy at the time.)

To shuttle employees between headquarters and the standards bureau, the sheriff’s office purchased in June 2019 a golf cart valued at $11,800. At the same time, the department was also paying an average of $34,000 a year for additional parking at the bureau building to accommodate visitors and employees, according to the audit and county ledgers.

The sheriff’s office added to these costs in July 2024 by moving the bureau for a second time in less than a decade, the audit shows. The bureau now occupies two floors inside a premium midtown Phoenix high-rise, the court’s auditing team found, citing public real estate listings.

The department spent $1.5 million refurbishing the new offices, which auditors found was inappropriately charged to the settlement. The bureau had already been housed separately from department leadership, they noted. During a visit to the offices last year, a member of the audit team found that some of the space was empty and noted that the bureau could have been housed in “various unused publicly owned properties.”

Sheridan says the bulk of spending on the settlement goes toward staffing. Snow called for the creation of two divisions that enforce the court’s orders: the Court Implementation Division and the Bureau of Internal Oversight. The sheriff’s office also hired additional investigators for the Professional Standards Bureau, as it works to clear a backlog of 433 pending investigations.

“We went from having an internal investigation division with maybe 15 people to well over 50,” Sheridan told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. “You can see those costs right away.”

During a February town hall meeting, Sheridan criticized the audit and said the court had required the sheriff’s office to hire 25 sergeants. His chief financial officer said those positions cost about $3 million a year.

But the audit determined the sheriff’s office misused funds by charging unrelated or partially related staffing expenses to the settlement. It found that starting in fiscal year 2016, the department shifted the cost of the sergeant positions from general county funds to the settlement.

The audit determined that of the 209 positions charged to the settlement at the start of the 2025 fiscal year, only 55 could be reasonably attributed to Snow’s orders. Another 84 were “inappropriately attributed to Melendres,” while an additional 70 were partially related and should have been prorated to reflect the share of the work related to the settlement versus other duties.

Expenses related to these employees further exaggerated the cost of the settlement. The sheriff’s office charged $1.3 million to purchase 42 patrol vehicles for positions that the audit found were inappropriately attributed to court orders, including six vehicles for employees whose jobs had no connection to the case.

In May 2022, the sheriff’s office began to charge car washes to the Melendres fund for vehicles it purchased for new patrol supervisors. Deputies expensed $3,259 in car washes that were not justified under the court’s orders, according to the audit.

In all, the sheriff’s office misattributed to the settlement or inappropriately expensed about $144 million in personnel costs from 2014 to 2024, the audit determined.

The auditors concluded that the department continues to misattribute funds, citing accounting practices that remain in place. As a result, they warned, taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars more that have nothing to do with rooting out racial profiling.

Galvin and Brophy McGee, two of the Republican supervisors, defended the county’s handling of its finances. “We stand by our budgeting practices and the 209 positions we created as a direct result of the Melendres Orders,” they said in November. “It would be a complete waste of taxpayer money to engage the federal courts in a back-and-forth over what is clearly an issue of local jurisdiction.”

Before the audit was released in October, Republican supervisors were calling for an end to judicial oversight to protect the rights of Latino residents, claiming it had become too costly.

“It’s a huge expense to the Maricopa County taxpayers,” Supervisor Debbie Lesko told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica in July. “It seems like it’s never-ending because the judge just changes; they put out a new order. They move the goalposts, and so we need to resolve this.”

Their attorneys argued in court that the Melendres lawsuit has been a success and the settlement was no longer needed.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which joined the lawsuit in 2008, opposes ending oversight until the sheriff’s office is in full compliance with Snow’s orders. But it signaled a willingness to reduce monitoring of a few requirements that the department has complied with for at least three years.

At a January hearing, Snow said he was reluctant to allow the county to “use cost orders both as a sword and a shield and make statements to the public which may, in fact, be completely inaccurate.” He doesn’t intend to police supervisors’ speech, Snow said, but he could require the county to justify the costs.

Attorneys for the county and the sheriff’s office asked the judge for an opportunity to challenge the findings, which Snow approved. But they soon dropped it, citing the “unnecessary” cost of examining department spending.

Public finance experts said county boards have an obligation to taxpayers to ensure they can account for how each dollar is spent.

Zach Mohr, an associate professor at the University of Kansas who teaches public budgeting, accounting and financial management, reviewed the audit for Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. He said that if the board disagrees with the findings, “the way to solve that would be to get another audit.”

Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica attempted to contact all current and former Maricopa County supervisors who had approved sheriff’s office spending during the case. Only Gallardo and one former supervisor agreed to comment.

The news organizations’ review of past budget hearings showed supervisors had been more likely to probe spending during the early years of the settlement, as the county created infrastructure to implement reforms. In 2016, for example, Sheridan — then the department’s second-in-command — responded to a question about the court’s requirement to purchase body cameras for deputies, saying it was the sheriff’s office’s idea. “They’re more cutting-edge, and they’re more flexible. They travel with the deputies everywhere. And so it was our desire to do the body cameras,” he said at the time.

In later years, however, supervisors rarely questioned publicly how the sheriff’s office spent the money.

This year was different. Galvin asked the sheriff’s chief financial officer if their Melendres budget request for $36.5 million had been vetted. The officer said yes, adding that requests for the past 13 years were also vetted by the county budget office and state auditor.

Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who served on the board from 1993 to 2014, was the lone Latina and Democrat during most of her tenure. She told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica she objected to Arpaio’s spending and focus on immigration enforcement — which led to racial profiling, lawsuits and the settlement that continues today.

“The others really didn’t, and they found Melendres was way over the top. But they knew they had to comply.”

She recalled previous allegations of misspending by the sheriff’s office. In 2011, a county audit found the department used $100 million from jail funds to pay patrol deputies. At the time, Sheridan chalked it up to a bookkeeping error, referring to it as a “systems issue.”

The board approved an oversight resolution, adopting rules to prevent the problem from happening again. “Hopefully, this is a chapter in Maricopa County’s history that we close and we never see such an abuse of funds again,” Wilcox told The Arizona Republic in 2011.

The post This Sheriff’s Office Says Racial Profiling Reforms Are Too Costly. Auditors Found It Misused $163 Million. appeared first on ProPublica.

Retirees say inflation, health care costs and market volatility are threatening their financial security.

Amid the unpredictability of President Trump's Middle East policies, Turkey is calling for “regional ownership” and pursuing new security pacts.

A first-person video that an official said is legitimate offers a brutal glimpse into the latest deadly assault on an American house of worship.

Surprise rise in jobless rate will give Reserve Bank more reason to delay another interest rate hike at June meeting

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Australia’s unemployment rate has jumped to 4.5% in April to reach the highest in about four and half years, amid fears rising interest rates and the global oil crisis will smash economic growth.

The surprise rise in unemployment will provide the Reserve Bank with more reason to hold off on a fourth rate hike at its next meeting in June, as financial markets slashed the chance of more interest rate rises this year.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says he expects China to fly taikonauts around the moon in 2027, "ratcheting up perceptions of a space race between China and the United States," reports SpaceNews. He is using that prospect to argue for a revamped Artemis strategy and an accelerated path toward a U.S. lunar return. From the report: "The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will likely be sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment," he said. While Isaacman has frequently discussed a race with China to be the next to land humans on the moon, this was one of the first times he predicted a 2027 Chinese crewed circumlunar mission. He repeated the comments later in the day at an industry reception. China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA's Artemis 2 mission in April. There have been rumors of a mission along those lines, though, and an expectation of a roadmap of missions leading to a Chinese crewed landing by the end of the decade. So far, all the crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the moon have been flown by NASA: nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2. All the astronauts on those missions have been Americans except for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis 2. Isaacman has used the threat that China could land astronauts on the moon before NASA returns there as a rationale for revamping the Artemis lunar exploration program. In February, he announced that Artemis 3, which was to be a lunar landing attempt in 2028, will instead be a test flight in low Earth orbit in 2027, followed by a landing on Artemis 4 in 2028. In March, he changed other elements of Artemis at the agency's Ignition event, including effectively canceling the lunar Gateway to focus resources instead on a lunar base, while calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gerry ‘the monk’ Hutch has won fans in north Dublin byelection campaign with anti-immigrant rhetoric

Elaine Roe, 61, a cafe worker, has no doubt what is the most important issue in this week’s byelection for Dublin’s north inner city. “The government is wrecking our country, they’re bringing in rapists and murderers and kidnappers. It’s a shame. I might vote Hutch, he seems a normal person.”

That would be Gerry “the monk” Hutch, a prominent gangland figure who is running as an independent in an election that is far from normal. The 63-year-old – who was jailed for robbery convictions in his youth – is a celebrity candidate in a contest for a parliamentary seat that has been dominated by xenophobia and immigration.

From her office in Townsend Hall, Lauren Kope, director of the University of Delaware Botanic Gardens, sees a common sight in the spring and summer: people eating ice cream as they peruse the gardens.

Newark officials are proposing a crackdown on vacant properties in the city, using a program that would impose escalating fees the longer a house or commercial building sits unused.

The newest member of the Christina school board is getting a head start after being sworn in two months early due to the resignation of her predecessor.

The central committee of the Colorado Democratic Party on Wednesday voted 89.8% in favor of a measure to censure Gov. Jared Polis.

Jack Clark describes ‘vertiginous sense of progress’ and ‘profound changes’ to society alongside risks of technology

An AI system will work with humans to make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within 12 months and tradespeople will be helped by bipedal robots in two years, according to the co-founder of Anthropic.

Jack Clark described a “vertiginous sense of progress” in the technology and made a series of predictions, including that companies run solely by AIs would be generating millions of dollars in revenue within 18 months, and that by the end of 2028, AI systems would be able to design their own successors.

War, empire, and the forgotten power of the United Nations.

Colossal Biosciences says it has grown chickens inside 3D-printed artificial eggshells. "The company says the egg technology could help conserve at-risk bird species," reports MIT Technology. "It could also play a role in a project to re-create the extinct giant moa, a flightless 12-foot-tall bird that once lived in New Zealand and laid four-liter eggs, larger than those of any living bird." From the report: The biotech company today claimed it has developed a "fully artificial egg" as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian species, including birds like the dodo and the giant moa. But "artificial eggshell" would probably be a better description for the invention. It's an oval-shaped printed lattice, coated inside with a special silicone-based membrane that lets in oxygen, just as a real eggshell does. To generate birds, Colossal took recently laid chicken eggs and carefully poured their contents into the artificial shells, where they continued growing. A window on top lets researchers peek inside. "To see them all moving around in their artificial eggs was absolutely mind blowing," says Andrew Pask, the company's chief biology officer. "You really feel you can grow life outside of the womb." [...] The work on the artificial eggshell was carried out in Dallas by Colossal's exogenous development team, or Exo Dev. That group is also trying to develop artificial wombs for mammals, starting with marsupials. "We're looking at every single facet of what's happening during a mammalian pregnancy to unpack exactly how we then go about recapitulating that," says Pask. For that team, an artificial eggshell is a relatively quick and easy technical win. That's because chickens are already an example of ex utero development. After an egg is laid, a small embryo sitting on top of the yolk starts growing, drawing nutrients from the yolk, the white, and even the shell, which provides calcium. (Colossal says it has to add ground-up calcium to the artificial eggs.) In order to create a moa, Colossal will have to genetically alter another type of bird, changing potentially thousands of DNA letters. But so far, chickens are the only bird species that can be genetically engineered. And that's via a tricky process of editing stem cells that produce egg and sperm. Scientists have to add or delete DNA letters from these cells and then inject them back into an egg. The resulting bird will carry the genetic changes in its gonads -- and then be able to pass them on. Pask says Colossal's idea is that it could modify avian stem cells enough to produce moa-like sperm or eggs. But then you might have the odd situation of a chicken laying an egg with a moa embryo inside it. "You would have chickens making moa egg and moa sperm. But it's still a chicken egg," he says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 21.

Carmen Mercedes Lineberger accused of hiding files related to Trump documents investigation as bundt cake recipe

A former Department of Justice prosecutor is facing felony charges after emailing herself a sealed Biden-era investigative report concerning Donald Trump and attempting to hide the documents as cake recipes, federal authorities said on Wednesday.

Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, who worked as a managing assistant US attorney in Florida, is facing two counts of theft of government money or property in addition to charges related to her alleged alteration of the documents, according to the indictment.

Former CIA Director John Brennan is the subject of two criminal probes being led by the Miami-area U.S. Attorney's Office.

A new study finds that AI hallucinations produced nearly 150,000 fake citations appearing in research papers.

Former president, 94, faces multiple US felony charges, including four counts of murder – key US politics stories from Wednesday 20 May

The United States issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, and five others on Wednesday in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.

The 94-year-old political figurehead was charged in Miami, Florida, with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.

Initial testing found evidence of metals in water samples, months after province’s residents began reporting unusual numbers of dead fish washing ashore

Papua New Guinea’s government has warned communities not to fish from parts of the New Ireland coastline as preliminary tests show evidence of metals in some water samples, after months of residents reporting dead marine life in the area.

On 7 May the fisheries minister, Jelta Wong, said initial testing conducted by an independent company detected various metals in water samples taken from affected areas around Kafkaf village and Larairu lagoon in New Ireland, an island in eastern PNG.

The Department of Homeland Security is set to implement new entry restrictions beginning Thursday for foreign travelers coming to the U.S. from countries at the center of the latest Ebola outbreak.

Millions of Android owners could receive a payment of up to $100.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 21, No. 1,797.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 21, No. 1,075.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 605 for Thursday, May 21.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 21 No. 809.

Harvard University faculty members voted to cap the number of A's awarded to students in an effort to make the grades more meaningful.

A former federal prosecutor was charged this week with emailing herself a report on the Justice Department's investigation into President Trump that a judge had kept under lock and key, under the file name "Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf."

Plus, a reality TV icon tells us what she's putting in hers.

Vanessa Trump, 48, was married to Donald Trump Jr. for 12 years. They share five children together.

These kinds of intelligence forecasts attempt not only to show the immediate consequences of an American action, but the chain of reactions that may follow.

An investigation finds that some of the biggest companies are making it difficult for customers to keep their data private.

Cuba’s government has also accused US of hypocrisy after acting US attorney general announced indictment of former Cuban president over downed planes

• US indicts former Cuban president Raúl Castro as it seeks to oust regime

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In response to a question on Wednesday morning about how long Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, will hold on before re-starting strikes on Iran, Trump said: “He’s fine. He’ll do whatever I want him to do.”

Trump also cited a poll that gave him 99% approval in Israel. Guardian US has not yet verified this poll.

For its portability and daily productivity, it's a winner. Potential Windows-on-Arm issues and modest graphics chops, however, keep it from being a true all-arounder.

Far-right figure Itamar Ben-Gvir shares footage of himself taunting bound international detainees

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists who were detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid.

Three activists were taken to hospital as result of Israeli violence, lawyers representing the group said. They were subsequently discharged. Dozens of others have suspected broken ribs, resulting in breathing problems.

Family and friends from abroad coming to visit? These short-term prepaid mobile plans can keep them connected.

I was a long-time Bitwarden user, until a year or so ago when I started migrating my passwords first to Firefox/LibreWolf, and recently from there to a KeePass database I can transfer and use with whatever password manager application is compatible with KeePass’ file format. It seems I was accidentally on time, as it’s come out over the last few days that Bitwarden is probably going down the drain soon. In February, the company got a new CEO, and in March, it doubled its Premium price, announcing the hike deep in a feature announcement.

The new CEO seems to be a bellwether for what’s to come for Bitwarden. He’s a merger and acquisitions guy, with a history of gutting companies and selling them for parts, and changes to Bitwarden’s website also indicate where it’s headed.

The phrase “Always free” disappeared from the personal password manager page in mid-April. It used to sit prominently under the plan selector. The free plan still exists — for now — but the commitment language is gone.

And then there’s the values rewrite.

Bitwarden used to define its culture with the acronym GRIT: Gratitude, Responsibility, Inclusion, and Transparency. After May 4th, that changed. GRIT now stands for Gratitude, Responsibility, Innovation, and Trust.

Inclusion and Transparency are out. Innovation and Trust are in.

↫ Patrick Boyd

The “Always free” motto quietly reappeared on the site after its removal was uncovered and went viral on Fedi.

The change in CEO, the changes in values, and the removal (and reappearance) of Bitwarden’s well-known and oft-repeated commitment to its free plan have all been quiet. No announcements, no blog posts, no posts on social media – but they did change a four-year old blog post by Bitwarden’s former CEO to change that GRIT acronym. You don’t need to be an honors student to figure out where this is going, and what the new CEO’s plans are for Bitwarden.

Do as I did, and get your passwords out of BitWarden. I strongly suggest using an open format that can be used by any compatible password manager, with KeePass’ formats being the obvious choice. This way your passwords are truly yours, and not dependent on someone’s continued commitment to free plans or proprietary services that can unexpectedly change hands. Bitwarden is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, but with all of the above, one has to wonder how long that’s going to remain a thing.

In his application letter, attorney Mike Howell proposed organizing a national gathering of "thousands of victims of weaponization," including those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The rocket company may record the largest public offering ever, with a valuation approaching $2 trillion.

Study, published as latest migration figures are released, shows incorrect perceptions driving immigration debate

People mistakenly believe net migration is rising in Britain despite figures dropping to their lowest level in years, a leading thinktank has found.

New research from British Future, published ahead of latest government figures on migration, has revealed a chasm between reality and public perception of net migration, with a substantial portion of the public believing it has increased, despite figures showing a sharp fall.