Russians pull billions from banks, amid fears the Kremlin will seize deposits for war in Ukraine

Russians pull billions from banks, amid fears the Kremlin will seize deposits for war in Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: Russians are pulling billions from the country’s banking system ― a record cash outflow amid intensifying Ukrainian drone attacks and rising fear that the Kremlin could start seizing deposits to finance its war. Nearly $3.4 billion (286.4 billion rubles) was withdrawn in the first two weeks of August, on top of the $7.3 billion withdrawn in July and more than $4.5 billion in June, according to Russian Central Bank data. Total withdrawals this year could nearly…

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In a major shift, Gov. Josh Shapiro restricts data center development in Pennsylvania

In a major shift, Gov. Josh Shapiro restricts data center development in Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a sweeping executive order on Tuesday dramatically restricting data center development in Pennsylvania, marking a major shift from his initial embrace of the increasingly unpopular projects. Shapiro, a first-term Democrat running for reelection and a rumored 2028 presidential contender, had been an early champion of data center development in the state, including a $20 billion commitment from Amazon to build at least two data centers in Bucks and Luzerne Counties. Now he…

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How Israel is trying to shape what AI tells users about Gaza

How Israel is trying to shape what AI tells users about Gaza

Politico Influence reports: Israel has launched a new campaign to influence how large-language models like ChatGPT are answering questions about Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces amid declining public support for the country across the U.S. political spectrum. — French PR firm Havas Media, which runs the lion’s share of Israel’s Foreign Agents Registration Act-registered foreign influence work in the U.S., appears to have stood up an “institute” aimed at feeding LLMs positive information about Israel via one of its subcontractors, boutique ad agency Piro, Inc. — In a…

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Politics drove antisemitism probes against Ivy League schools, DOJ whistleblower says

Politics drove antisemitism probes against Ivy League schools, DOJ whistleblower says

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration task force charged with investigating antisemitism on Ivy League campuses pressured universities into punitive settlements despite turning up little to no evidence of systemic abuse, according to a whistleblower complaint made public Tuesday. The complaint — filed by Haley Van Erem, a former career attorney in the Justice Department’s civil rights division who said she was involuntarily detailed to work on the probes last year — alleged that the outcomes of investigations into…

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Trump admin has deleted or altered nearly 400 datasets, endangering public health, education and more

Trump admin has deleted or altered nearly 400 datasets, endangering public health, education and more

The Guardian reports: A database of federal law enforcement officer misconduct records. A survey measuring physical, sexual and emotional violence against children and youth. Real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from US embassies around the world. These are among the hundreds of federal datasets that the Trump administration has taken down or altered as part of its aggressive campaign to wipe all mentions of data findings that do not align with the administration’s priorities. Over the past year…

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Trump’s plan to paint the Eisenhower building: Abject stupidity, or, territorial marking?

Trump’s plan to paint the Eisenhower building: Abject stupidity, or, territorial marking?

The New York Times reports: A judge ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration could inch forward on a plan to paint the gray granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Building white. In an order from the bench in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich said that initial tests to evaluate how the paint would affect the building’s walls and other preparations would not directly harm preservationist groups who sued to stop the effort. But she warned…

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Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

Ian Towle, CC BY By Ian Towle, Monash University Humanity’s family tree is long and tangled. Scientists sort our ancient relatives into three familiar groups: Homo, Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Each of these is a “genus”, the rank just above a species. (In Homo sapiens, Homo is the genus and sapiens is the species.) These names dominate how we talk about human origins. But new fossils, advances in genetic analysis, and more rigorous methods for figuring out who’s related to whom…

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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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