Trump bows to pressure from Kim Jong Un, scales back military exercises with South Korea

Trump bows to pressure from Kim Jong Un, scales back military exercises with South Korea

The Associated Press reports: North Korea on Friday threatened unspecified stern steps against the United States and South Korea ahead of their upcoming military drills, which Pyongyang called a war rehearsal that would be more provocative than last year. The warning is typical of the harsh rhetoric that North Korea often deploys ahead of major U.S.-South Korean military exercises and suggests the country could conduct more missile tests in coming days. Experts say North Korea has often used its rivals’…

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Trump’s Oman bombing threats have a golf course problem

Trump’s Oman bombing threats have a golf course problem

Russ Choma reports: On Monday morning, President Donald Trump issued a blunt warning to America’s erstwhile ally: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” It was another one of his un-diplomatic jabs at a longtime friend—this time for the possibility that Oman might prove helpful to Iran in ending the war. But if Trump’s aggressive, crude attitude towards an ally isn’t confusing enough, it’s also another example of how Trump’s sprawling efforts at personal…

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Israel’s security minister Ben-Gvir advocates killing ‘30 to 40’ people in Gaza nightly

Israel’s security minister Ben-Gvir advocates killing ‘30 to 40’ people in Gaza nightly

The Associated Press reports: An extremist Israeli lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition publicly advocated for killing “30 to 40” people in Gaza each night, comments that surfaced Sunday and were quickly shared by Palestinian media. Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir made the statement while speaking to a former Gaza-held hostage, Rom Braslavski, on Braslavski’s podcast. The two were discussing Israel’s recovery from the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, when Ben-Gvir criticized Israel’s recent drawdown of strikes…

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Trump’s billionaire boy’s club

Trump’s billionaire boy’s club

Public Citizen: A new investigation by Public Citizen reveals that 57 individuals within the Trump administration, excluding President Trump, are individually worth as much as $100 million, eight of whom are billionaires. The analysis underscores the growing economic divide between the average American worker, who earns $65,000 a year, and the politically-connected individuals who hold the power to address the economic strain facing the general populace. Of the 57 ultra-wealthy individuals identified, 31 have personal assets exceeding $100 million, while the…

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Amazon is destroying rare books to train AI

Amazon is destroying rare books to train AI

Ars Technica reports: For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon. On Monday, 404 Media revealed…

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China wants to shape what the world’s AI knows

China wants to shape what the world’s AI knows

The New York Times reports: When ChatGPT was still a new technology, researchers in Beijing tested how well it handled Chinese-language questions. Their response to its results was telling. The chatbot described the former N.B.A. star Yao Ming as the first Chinese woman to play professional basketball in the United States. It confused two classic works of Chinese literature, “Journey to the West” and “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which were written two centuries apart. The researchers at the Beijing…

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Neuroscience separates logic and language

Neuroscience separates logic and language

MIT News reports: Some people find it useful to talk through their problems — but language isn’t necessary for logical reasoning, cognitive neuroscientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research say. In research published last month in the journal PNAS, researchers led by MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences Evelina Fedorenko have shown that people can perform well on tasks that require logical reasoning even if their language abilities are severely impaired. What’s more, brain imaging shows that…

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‘Godfather of AI,’ Geoffrey Hinton, predicts mass unemployment is on its way

‘Godfather of AI,’ Geoffrey Hinton, predicts mass unemployment is on its way

Fortune reports: The long-term impact of AI is one of the most hotly debated topics in Silicon Valley. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts every job will be transformed—and likely lead to a four-day workweek. Other tech titans go even further: Bill Gates says humans may soon not be needed “for most things,” and Elon Musk believes most humans won’t have to work at all in “less than 20 years.” While those predictions might sound extreme, they’re not just plausible, they’re…

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Ukraine disables 7 of 10 of Russia’s largest logistics centers for Wildberries online retailer

Ukraine disables 7 of 10 of Russia’s largest logistics centers for Wildberries online retailer

🔥 The largest Wildberries logistics hub in all of Russia has been finally destroyed.Koledino, Moscow. Wildberries appears to have made a conscious choice not to empty this warehouse despite knowing Ukraine will destroy it like all others.Expect $1.5+ billion in damages. pic.twitter.com/SISsou9uU2 — Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) August 16, 2026 Kyiv Post reports: The Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced on Sunday, Aug. 16, that recent operations have disabled seven of the ten largest logistics centers belonging to the Russian e-commerce company Wildberries….

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Sailors’ families denounce Trump and Hegseth for ‘dismissing their experiences and calling them liars’

Sailors’ families denounce Trump and Hegseth for ‘dismissing their experiences and calling them liars’

The Guardian reports: Naval families with loved ones deployed for months on US warships amid the Iran war have reacted with fury to Donald Trump and the defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismissal of their concerns about the extreme pressures and dire conditions they are enduring. The Guardian has talked to three naval families who have been following the physical and mental stresses bearing down on their relatives with mounting alarm. The families, with loved ones on board the USS Abraham…

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Liberals push a slew of plans for overhauling the Supreme Court

Liberals push a slew of plans for overhauling the Supreme Court

The Washington Post reports: One bill proposes increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13. Another would cut their lifetime terms to 18 years. Others would create an enforceable ethics code and place standards on how the court rules from its relatively opaque “shadow docket.” The latest wave of proposals to overhaul the Supreme Court have reached something of a fever pitch over the past few months, as Democrats grow increasingly frustrated with the court’s rightward turn….

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How a false nuclear claim about Iran ricocheted from India to Washington, bolstering Netanyahu

How a false nuclear claim about Iran ricocheted from India to Washington, bolstering Netanyahu

The New York Times reports: On the morning of Aug. 5, an anonymous account on X in India posted seemingly sensational news. The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had vowed that his country would never give up its nuclear weapon ambitions as long as Israel and the United States possessed those weapons, the account said. It was not true, and there’s no evidence that the commander made the remark or that Iran has developed nuclear weapons. The claim…

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Biden brought down drug prices, then Trump tried to take the credit

Biden brought down drug prices, then Trump tried to take the credit

The Guardian reports: The White House flooded social media on Saturday with an image of Donald Trump showing off the recent Washington Post headline “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”, but failed to mention that experts cited in the article actually attributed the price drop to Joe Biden, not Trump. On its official accounts, the White House triumphantly captioned the photograph of Trump: “POV: you bring the receipts.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary,…

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Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises

Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises

Science Daily reports: Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may already be influencing human biology. New research has identified long-term changes in blood chemistry that appear to track rising atmospheric CO2, raising concerns that an important blood marker could approach the upper end of its healthy range within the next several decades. The findings may be particularly important for children and teenagers. Because their bodies are still developing, younger generations are expected to experience the greatest lifetime exposure…

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