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Russian strikes on dozens of grain ships threaten global food supplies

Russian strikes on dozens of grain ships threaten global food supplies

Marc Santora reports: As families strolled along a promenade in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa recently, a lone cargo ship sailed in the distance. Suddenly, a drone dropped out of the clear blue sky and slammed into the vessel, sending smoke billowing across the horizon. The attack, which I witnessed in late July, was part of a Russian campaign targeting cargo vessels that has halted nearly all shipping in and out of Odesa, Ukraine’s most crucial link to the…

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‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman sees an Achilles’ heel in the AI boom

‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman sees an Achilles’ heel in the AI boom

CNBC reports: Steve Eisman is warning that the artificial intelligence boom has become increasingly dependent on the fortunes of just two companies: OpenAI and Anthropic. The investor, best known for his bet against the housing market ahead of the global financial crisis, said the two AI startups account for roughly 70% of AI-related revenue at Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet’s Google and Oracle — and as much as 25% to 35% of their cloud revenue. “The futures of these massive companies, in…

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DHS extensively spied on anti-ICE protesters and leftwing groups, records reveal

DHS extensively spied on anti-ICE protesters and leftwing groups, records reveal

The Guardian reports: Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year. Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning nonprofit groups. Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were…

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Lawmakers demand answers on conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, at sea for 250 days

Lawmakers demand answers on conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, at sea for 250 days

The Hill reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday claimed that conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier have been “completely misrepresented” following reports that sailors, struggling with low morale during a grueling deployment, have attempted to jump overboard. Speaking with Newsmax, Hegseth did not directly address reports of supply shortages, water contamination and deteriorating mental health on the Abraham Lincoln, nor did he say when the vessel would return stateside after leaving San Diego in November. [Continue reading…]…

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U.S. Ambassador Huckabee calls settler siege of Palestinian homes a ‘horrific act of terror’

U.S. Ambassador Huckabee calls settler siege of Palestinian homes a ‘horrific act of terror’

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. Ambassador to Israel condemned the actions of Jewish settlers who are besieging the home of an American Palestinian family in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee called the siege a “horrific act of terror.” Since Sunday, according to local officials and family members, settlers have gathered near the home in the village of Qusra and harassed those inside, defying efforts by the Israeli military to defuse the situation. A group that has…

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Physicists are closing in on the origin of matter

Physicists are closing in on the origin of matter

Scientific American reports: Why is there something rather than nothing? Philosopher Martin Heidegger called this “the first of all questions,” and it has vexed scholars and theologians alike throughout history. Science has yet to find an answer, either—but researchers have narrowed it down. What’s clear is that the big bang churned out infinitesimally more baryonic matter—the protons and neutrons that glom together as atomic nuclei—than it did antimatter. This is strange because matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they…

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Time to panic about AI

Time to panic about AI

Matteo Wong writes: The crisis began quietly, on September 12, 2024. That was the day OpenAI announced a new sort of bot, known as a “reasoning model,” that was trained to complete challenging tasks that took long periods of time—the very sorts of science, math, and coding problems the AI industry had long prized. Google, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and the like raced to launch their own reasoning models. This new class of models was very capable, and has been almost entirely…

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Joseph Cox: Flock employees are quitting in disgust

Joseph Cox: Flock employees are quitting in disgust

  “People don’t want Tech coming into their neighbourhood without permission, or arrogantly.” 404 Media’s Joseph Cox joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the controversies surrounding automatic license plate recognition cameras as the backlash against Flock grows.

The U.S. forgot the lessons of Iraq. Now it’s desperate for ideas on Iran

The U.S. forgot the lessons of Iraq. Now it’s desperate for ideas on Iran

Nahal Toosi writes: No one seems to have a solid strategy to win the war in Iran. The situation is reminiscent of the darkest days of the Iraq war, in the mid-2000s, when the U.S. seemed unable to pull that country back from insurgency and civil war. But while the death rate in the Iran conflict has so far been lower, the stakes are much higher, current and former U.S. officials tell me. The Iran fight is having a more…

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Deported to a country he’d never heard of. He may never go free

Deported to a country he’d never heard of. He may never go free

Nicholas Casey reports: As he stepped out of the American military cargo plane, Roberto Mosquera still couldn’t tell where he was or why he had been taken there. When federal immigration agents forced him onto a secret flight 30 hours earlier, it was a hot July afternoon in Texas. Now, after traveling thousands of miles, he felt a cold winter’s morning in the air. He was in the kingdom of Eswatini, a tiny, landlocked country in southern Africa that until…

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Money laundering gets easier: Treasury scales back scrutiny of U.S. shell companies

Money laundering gets easier: Treasury scales back scrutiny of U.S. shell companies

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to scale back scrutiny of the shadowy shell companies that criminals use to launder money and traffic drugs. The initiative follows a yearslong campaign by lobbying groups, which contended that new financial reporting requirements were too onerous for businesses. The Treasury Department said late on Tuesday that it was permanently halting the collection of data about the ownership of private American companies that was required as…

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Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining Supreme Court, analysis shows

Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining Supreme Court, analysis shows

The Guardian reports: The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows. The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005. The findings…

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One of the largest-ever maps of the universe charts 4 billion objects

One of the largest-ever maps of the universe charts 4 billion objects

Live Science reports: The largest 2D map of the universe just dropped, and it’s a stunner. Compiled from more than a decade of observations, the new map charts 4 billion stars, galaxies, black holes, asteroids and other objects of interest throughout the cosmos. The map reveals about three-quarters of the night sky in high resolution, spanning both visible and near-infrared light wavelengths and charting the areas of the universe not blocked by dust or gas. The map is so big,…

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How AI will accelerate climate change by boosting fossil fuel production

How AI will accelerate climate change by boosting fossil fuel production

The Guardian reports: AI-driven productivity gains enable more planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels than they avoid from renewables, a study has found. Researchers modelled the technical potential for AI to boost clean power generation along with projections for how it can help produce coal, oil and gas. Across 64 scenarios, they found net yearly carbon pollution rose by 0.47-1.8 gigatonnes, or about 1-5% of the energy sector’s annual emissions. The study is the first to quantify the climate impact of…

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