Facing an electoral wipeout, Trump goes after the democratic system

Facing an electoral wipeout, Trump goes after the democratic system

Politico reports: President Donald Trump is escalating his crusade to exert control of America’s elections as his party barrels towards a potentially bruising midterm. The Justice Department has already filed lawsuits in nearly every state to try and gain access to voter files. Trump revisited his longstanding bid to restrict mail voting, sparking a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court. He sought to make anti-terrorism funds for state and local governments contingent on how they administer elections. He has…

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White House weighs granting mass pardons for junior staff

White House weighs granting mass pardons for junior staff

The Washington Sun reports: White House attorneys are evaluating whether to issue mass pardons to junior staffers, as Trump allies press the administration to protect lower-ranked officials from prosecution and other legal challenges, according to two sources familiar with the conversations. While President Donald Trump has publicly discussed issuing pardons for top aides and issued pardons for billionaires and major donors, questions have mounted about the potential legal jeopardy facing thousands of employees who have implemented the White House’s agenda….

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U.S. executives resign from $25 billion Alaska gas project over alleged secret Russian control

U.S. executives resign from $25 billion Alaska gas project over alleged secret Russian control

Sri Lanka Guardian reports: Senior executives have resigned from a $25 billion US liquefied natural gas venture after its former chief executive alleged that Russian energy group Novatek was secretly financing the project and controlling its strategic direction without the necessary US authorisation, according to a report by the Financial Times (FT). Polar Train LNG is developing a gas export terminal on Alaska’s North Slope as part of efforts to expand US energy exports to Asia. The project has also…

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Iran has ramped up efforts to target U.S. personnel, intelligence memo warns

Iran has ramped up efforts to target U.S. personnel, intelligence memo warns

Reuters reports: Iran has ramped up efforts to target US personnel, and lethal plots by Tehran against American citizens have reached “advanced ​stages”, a senior intelligence official in the Trump administration warned in a memo seen ‌by Reuters. The alert from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton came after Washington scaled back staffing at its mission in Saudi Arabia earlier this week in response to intensified attacks by Iran-allied Houthi forces. Those attacks on one ​front of the nearly eight-month-old…

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The data center next door: On the frontline of tech’s latest David v Goliath battle

The data center next door: On the frontline of tech’s latest David v Goliath battle

The Guardian reports: Dale Johnston opens the gate to his neat suburban garden on the western fringes of Newport in South Wales. There’s a trampoline and a slide on the lawn for his grandchildren, and chairs for him and his wife. He should be enjoying the light draining from the perfect autumnal sky – but almost his entire view is blotted out by a vast expanse of prefabricated panels. The 23 metre-high grey hulk looming over him and his neighbours…

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Bird flu is raging on a mink farm. It could spark a human pandemic, experts say, but officials won’t act

Bird flu is raging on a mink farm. It could spark a human pandemic, experts say, but officials won’t act

ProPublica reports: The strain of bird flu that’s ripped through American barns for the last four years has killed two people who caught it from sick animals. But as far as anyone can tell, humans can’t spread it. The virus has remained a true “bird” flu, tailored to attach to avian cells, not invade human throats and noses, where coughing and sneezing reliably spew droplets. Under the right conditions, however, that could change. A single mutation could give the bird…

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Why did humans’ brains surpass chimps’? An ancient virus might help explain it

Why did humans’ brains surpass chimps’? An ancient virus might help explain it

Science News reports: Viruses may be minuscule, but one could have influenced major differences between human and chimpanzee brains. Millions of years ago, a virus left DNA behind in an African ape’s genome, and the genetic material stuck around in modern day chimps. Those ghosts of infections past appear to influence genes involved in neuron development, which may help explain how human and chimp brains ended up so different, researchers report October 23 in Science Advances. Compared with the brains…

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Thanks to AI-enabled hacking, the internet is entering a ‘valley of pain’

Thanks to AI-enabled hacking, the internet is entering a ‘valley of pain’

Matteo Wong writes: This week could go down as the worst in the history of cybersecurity. On Wednesday, news emerged about two major vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used by 70 percent of websites, which prompted governments, hospitals, and companies around the world to take digital services offline as a precaution. There have already been millions of attempts to exploit these weaknesses. But the PHP vulnerabilities were just the most attention-grabbing in a series of alarming revelations. Security flaws…

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The DOJ, in its assault on the election system, has mostly been shooting blanks

The DOJ, in its assault on the election system, has mostly been shooting blanks

Richard L. Hasen writes: From Alaska to California and who knows where else, DOJ has been filing cases to interfere with how states count and certify votes. The agency’s latest moves—as factually unsupported as they are legally vacuous—demonstrate that for all the fear about DOJ coming in with guns blazing to try to overturn the results of the elections, it is most likely to be shooting blanks. The main reason that DOJ has been losing election-related lawsuits is that the…

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Most voters in key states want to block U.S. weapons transfers to Israel

Most voters in key states want to block U.S. weapons transfers to Israel

Jim Lobe reports: A majority of likely voters in each of six key swing states — Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — say they approve of measures to block the transfer of bombs to Israel, according to a new poll released Wednesday by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and conducted by the YouGov data analytics firm. The poll also found that majorities or strong pluralities of 3,200 respondents in the six states favor “cutting $3.3…

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The CIA director in the middle of Trump’s deeply conflicted Ukraine policy

The CIA director in the middle of Trump’s deeply conflicted Ukraine policy

Shane Harris writes: Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky have never enjoyed a warm relationship, or even a stable one. But last week, it hit a new low. Trump called on the Ukrainian people to elect a new president, describing Zelensky as “more difficult to deal with” than Vladimir Putin. He accused Zelensky of prolonging Ukraine’s war with Russia. “He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t,” Trump told Newsmax, without mentioning that it was Putin who started the war…

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‘Pure arrogance’: Anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for data center

‘Pure arrogance’: Anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for data center

The Guardian reports: Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone. After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of…

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Three reasons why AI is not conscious and perhaps never will be

Three reasons why AI is not conscious and perhaps never will be

Anil K. Seth, Ned Block, and Giulio Tononi, write: Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness — the capacity for subjective experience. However, we think that existing AI systems are not conscious, and that, along current trajectories of development, they are not likely to become conscious. Greater clarity about whether AI could become…

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Why a world without friction is a world without progress

Why a world without friction is a world without progress

Jennifer R Vail writes: In conversations, few words catch my attention faster than ‘friction’ – and especially talk of making things frictionless. From the workplace to grocery shopping, our societies seem to be striving to remove friction from everything. The motivation appears to be that decreasing resistance makes life easier and smoother. Having spent a career as a tribologist, studying friction, wear and lubrication scientifically, I have some opinions on this. I’ll confess that, in most of my career, I…

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