Iran plots to deal Trump a blow in midterms by keeping him entangled in war

Iran plots to deal Trump a blow in midterms by keeping him entangled in war

Patrick Wintour writes: Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis. For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where…

Read More Read More

Trump is now boxed in by his idle threats and munitions shortages

Trump is now boxed in by his idle threats and munitions shortages

Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan Lemire write: The United States is running out of missiles. After five months of war with Iran, stockpiles of long-range weapons are so low, current and former U.S. defense officials told us, that they don’t believe the U.S. has enough to combat a threat in Asia. The remaining supplies, depending on the munition, are as low as 20 percent of what the Pentagon would like to have in hand. And stores of sophisticated interceptor missiles,…

Read More Read More

Trump’s top general is ‘looking for an off-ramp’ from Iran war as U.S. military options remain limited, sources say

Trump’s top general is ‘looking for an off-ramp’ from Iran war as U.S. military options remain limited, sources say

CNN reports: Over the last few weeks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine has privately made clear to other top Trump advisers that the US needs to find an off-ramp from the war with Iran — because the military options on the table to escalate the conflict could backfire and airpower alone is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives, according to three sources familiar with the matter. “Caine is looking for an off ramp,” one of…

Read More Read More

Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

  Fortune reports: A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next…

Read More Read More

The Leipzig drone bomb marks a dangerous escalation for Europe

The Leipzig drone bomb marks a dangerous escalation for Europe

Dan Sabbagh writes: The armed drone found at Leipzig airport on Wednesday may not have exploded, but the fact that it got inside the perimeter, close to Ukrainian cargo planes, raises obvious concerns for the security of international aviation. Though the identity of the culprits is unknown, the initial evidence points firmly towards a Russian-orchestrated plot. It is the first time that a drone with explosives has been found in Europe far from the Ukrainian border. Photographs published by German…

Read More Read More

ICE will release body camera video only when it serves the agency’s PR interests

ICE will release body camera video only when it serves the agency’s PR interests

The Associated Press reports: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to equip officers with body cameras in the next two months but the agency’s policy gives it broad control over what footage will be made public by specifying any releases must be in its “best interests.” After years of delays, ICE said its field officers nationwide will have body-worn cameras by the end of September. The rollout comes after recent fatal shootings by officers enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown…

Read More Read More

OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say

OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say

Scientific American reports: OpenAI’s newest chatbot may be a whiz at math, but it seems to be lagging far behind humans in its academic rigor. Last week the company announced 10 more artificial-intelligence-generated math advances that were found during internal development and testing of its next major large language model. This batch of results came from that LLM, Astra, and each one resolves or progresses a different “long-standing open problem” of “substantial interest” to the mathematical community. The company said…

Read More Read More

The real meaning of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan

The real meaning of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan

Robert Reich writes: With the victory of progressive Abdul El-Sayed over representative Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary, prepare yourself to hear enormous quantities of bullshit about the Democratic party now being “taken over” by the “left” or by “democratic socialists”. Or as the reliably establishment New York Times put it: “Can an insurgent candidate, with unabashedly liberal positions, win a general election in a moderate state?” Oh, p-l-e-a-s-e. Michigan Democrats didn’t choose El-Sayed because he’s “unabashedly liberal”. Or because…

Read More Read More

In its desperate fight to stop Abdul El-Sayed, could AIPAC spend itself out of existence?

In its desperate fight to stop Abdul El-Sayed, could AIPAC spend itself out of existence?

The New York Times reports: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has told allies that it is considering a major financial campaign to support the Republican Senate nominee in the Michigan general election this fall, after it failed its biggest test of the primary season on Tuesday. AIPAC’s super PAC spent $32 million in an unsuccessful effort to boost Representative Haley Stevens over Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a relentless critic of Israel, during the state’s Democratic primary. After Dr. El-Sayed’s victory,…

Read More Read More

AI just created viable viruses that don’t exist in nature

AI just created viable viruses that don’t exist in nature

Carl Zimmer reports: For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens. Synthesizing viruses from scratch is hardly new. Researchers long ago learned how to manufacture viral genomes; they are used to investigate antiviral drugs and vaccines, as well as to learn how viruses work. But the new study, published Thursday in…

Read More Read More

AI sends global crime syndicates into fraud nirvana

AI sends global crime syndicates into fraud nirvana

Dark Reading reports: In bad news for financial institutions, online retailers, cryptocurrency exchanges, and people in the dating pool who rely on identity verification to make sure they’re not getting taken for a ride, global fraud gangs are aggressively industrializing their scam efforts. That’s according to Eric Huber, senior manager for adversary intelligence and disruption at TD Bank, who said that major centers for organized crime specializing in financial fraud (notably in Southeast Asia and West Africa) are bypassing “know…

Read More Read More

Trump, Hegseth clashed at Camp David over extreme munitions shortages

Trump, Hegseth clashed at Camp David over extreme munitions shortages

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post. The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that…

Read More Read More

IRS workers group joins Jan. 6 ‘slush fund’ suit, seeking to block Trump audit carve-out

IRS workers group joins Jan. 6 ‘slush fund’ suit, seeking to block Trump audit carve-out

NBC News reports: An organization representing career Internal Revenue Service employees has joined a lawsuit over the contentious settlement reached in connection with President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, challenging a carve-out that would give him and members of his family immunity from certain tax audits. A Jan. 6 prosecutor fired by the Trump administration and others previously sued to block a fund that could have gone to Trump allies who said they were victims of weaponization, potentially including…

Read More Read More

New study points to two origins of life on Earth

New study points to two origins of life on Earth

Smithsonian magazine reports: Among biologists, few questions have been debated as fiercely as the origin of life. How did self-sustaining organisms, capable of transforming molecules to capture energy, arise on the primitive Earth? Before any cells existed, scientists suspect chemical reactions occurred around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where heat and high pressures led to spontaneous chemistry that was sped up, or catalyzed, by metals in Earth’s crust. One possibility for the origin of life is that, over time, these relatively simple…

Read More Read More