Can the energy giants be held responsible for extreme weather?

Can the energy giants be held responsible for extreme weather?

Ross Andersen writes: In late June 2021, the ghost of summertime future visited the Pacific Northwest. For three days, a heat dome hovered over Multnomah County, Oregon, broiling Portland’s drizzly landscape of evergreens and ferns with temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit—much hotter than any resident, even the centenarians, had ever experienced there. Along the rocky ocean shore, sea stars and clams cooked alive in the tide pools. The heat buckled highway lanes and melted the cables that route power to…

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MIRI endorses Bernie Sanders’ Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026

MIRI endorses Bernie Sanders’ Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026

Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) states: MIRI has been warning about the extinction threat from superintelligent AI for over two decades. Only recently has this danger become known in the policy world, and the proposed policies for dealing with the threat have to date been piecemeal and insufficient. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026 is the first piece of legislation we’ve seen that stands a chance at stopping this threat. The Act is excellent but not perfect, and we…

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Russia‑Ukraine war is accelerating the dangerous race toward fully autonomous drones

Russia‑Ukraine war is accelerating the dangerous race toward fully autonomous drones

By Amy McAuliffe, University of Notre Dame A battlefield dominated by fully autonomous drones capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot. And while that scenario has not yet arrived, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has moved modern warfare a notch down that road. In recent years, both nations have deployed semi-autonomous drones in combat and are rapidly racing toward fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. Given these developments and the pace of…

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How Stephen Miller turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation

How Stephen Miller turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo and Gabon, whose president greeted him inside an opulent seaside palace. The American, a career State Department official named Christian Ehrhardt, was an unlikely diplomatic VIP. For nearly two decades, he served as an officer in the agency’s security branch, focusing on embassy protection,…

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‘NAZA’: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza

‘NAZA’: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor write: Over the past three years, we conducted night-time interviews on the rooftops of Tel Aviv with 24 Israeli soldiers who played an active role in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Most of them were intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians. Their testimonies form the basis of “NAZA,” a new documentary we directed — produced by The Guardian and James Wilson and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer —…

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Crypto industry weighs the risks of alienating Democratic lawmakers

Crypto industry weighs the risks of alienating Democratic lawmakers

Politico reports: The cryptocurrency industry is at a political crossroads. Reeling from the demise of its longtime top legislative priority, crypto companies must now decide how scorched-earth to go against Senate Democrats, who last week voted unanimously against the so-called Clarity Act, a sweeping bill that would create a bespoke new regulatory framework for digital assets. A crypto-backed PAC network’s move this week provides a hint of what may be to come. The group, known as Fairshake, announced it would…

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Fox News, NYT, AP and other media outlets jointly condemn Trump’s media ban

Fox News, NYT, AP and other media outlets jointly condemn Trump’s media ban

Politico reports: More than 50 media organizations signed an amicus brief backing POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW in their lawsuit against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, an unusual display of solidarity across the industry in calling for the immediate reversal of his media ban. The brief was signed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the White House Correspondents’ Association and 49 other media organizations. That list runs the ideological gamut, from Fox News to Vox Media, and…

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The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

By William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg This story was originally published by ProPublica In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling…

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A shooting in Austin exposes the terror of ICE’s ‘shadow surge’

A shooting in Austin exposes the terror of ICE’s ‘shadow surge’

Texas Monthly reports: The Crestview-Wooten neighborhood, where on Sunday an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, wears its identity proudly. There’s a Mexican market on one block, a supermercado on the next, and paleterias, a panaderia, and Latino-owned salons and body shops nearby. It sits just south of Rundberg and the trend-resistant “Taco Mile,” named for its concentration of authentic taco joints. North Austin neighborhoods have been seeing increased ICE activity for months. Locals have…

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‘We’re on track to hand control of the most powerful weapon the world has ever built to the weapon itself’

‘We’re on track to hand control of the most powerful weapon the world has ever built to the weapon itself’

"We're on track to hand control of the most powerful weapon the world has ever built to the weapon itself." Former UK Defence Secretary and ControlAI advisor Lord Browne of Ladyton, closing our London event the night before @alexsobel introduced our bill to ban superintelligent… pic.twitter.com/dPzvsFOqQB — ControlAI (@ControlAI) September 22, 2026 ControlAI is a non-profit organisation that works to prevent the extinction risk posed by superintelligence and to secure a great future for humanity. Ezra Klein writes: There’s a…

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AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

The Financial Times reports: Staff at world-leading AI companies and institutions are increasingly suffering from the mental strain of working on systems they fear could cause serious harm to society. Multiple staff at the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute, the global leader in the independent testing of frontier AI models, have been signed off work with stress and are undergoing counselling, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The tight schedules for testing unreleased AI models and alarm over…

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An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political content

An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political content

The New York Times reports: Judging from his TikTok feed, Drew was struggling to get by as a young man living near Dallas. Grocery bills were skyrocketing, he said, and he was looking for thrift stores to help keep costs down. In reality, according to his LinkedIn profile, Drew was a man from Utah named Alex Forrester, who said he was now in Florida. “All of it was paid for,” he said in a video posted in late June, which…

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‘Literally state-run TV’: Trump launches YouTube channel amid boycott by networks

‘Literally state-run TV’: Trump launches YouTube channel amid boycott by networks

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s previous television career centred on his role on The Apprentice, but the US president’s latest media venture is a rather lower-budget affair: the launch of Trump TV in the wake of his ban on several outlets from covering the White House. With major US networks agreeing to not cover the president while the dispute continues, on Monday the White House announced the new 24/7 YouTube live stream, which it promised would feature “top past moments,…

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How virus-like ‘jumping genes’ became our partners in evolution

How virus-like ‘jumping genes’ became our partners in evolution

Jake Buehler writes: You might imagine that the DNA in your cells has a simple history. Even though it’s been recombined in every generation through sex and gained the occasional mutation, on the whole the genome has been stable and has been passed down reliably from your ancestors. But that’s not the entire story. Nearly half of your genome is a wild drama: mobile, repetitive, disruptive, even viral. This half is the result of genetic material that can clip itself…

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