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Hegseth meets with Netanyahu in Israel ahead of elections and possible escalation of Iran war

Hegseth meets with Netanyahu in Israel ahead of elections and possible escalation of Iran war

CBS News reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly visited Israel on Monday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a senior U.S. military official who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A second source involved in the matter in Israel confirmed Tuesday morning that Netanyahu met Hegseth. The unannounced visit came just over a week before Netanyahu’s party faces elections. It also comes after President Trump floated resuming…

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Palestinian citizens face a painful choice in Israel’s election: To vote or not

Palestinian citizens face a painful choice in Israel’s election: To vote or not

Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court of Israel to protest attempts to disqualify Palestinian citizen candidates from running in the upcoming elections. Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images By Tamir Sorek, Penn State Elections are typically framed as a choice for voters. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, however, the country’s national ballots pose more of a dilemma. Constituting about one-sixth of eligible voters in Israel, Palestinian citizens could hold the difference in a race expected to be close. But voting involves…

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EU’s top diplomat accuses the U.S. of pushing Ukraine to ‘surrender on Putin’s terms’

EU’s top diplomat accuses the U.S. of pushing Ukraine to ‘surrender on Putin’s terms’

Euronews reports: High Representative Kaja Kallas has sharply accused the United States of pressuring Ukraine to capitulate on terms exclusively favourable to Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as a new round of peace talks unfolded in Oslo, Norway. “American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for already almost two years, one and a half years now,” she told the European Parliament on Tuesday. “Why Ukraine hasn’t surrendered on Putin’s terms is because Europe has been supporting Ukraine.”…

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How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

By Molly Redden, Avi Asher-Schapiro, William Turton and Kirsten Berg This story was originally published by ProPublica On March 3, 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked into a private dining room at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C. Graham’s time was expensive. He was meeting with two executives and a lobbyist from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. And he had required them to commit to $40,000 in campaign contributions for a 45-minute meeting. Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was confident…

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Start-up claims to use AI-created phage viruses to treat a patient

Start-up claims to use AI-created phage viruses to treat a patient

The New York Times reports: For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient. Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly bacterial infection. Phages attack bacteria, and the hope is that this one will kill the microbes causing the infection. Radical Numerics, the start-up that created the viruses, posted a technical report about them on its…

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Plants can speak using electricity. This startup built an AI model to decipher their language

Plants can speak using electricity. This startup built an AI model to decipher their language

TechCrunch reports: Justin Mast’s life was changed by a cyborg plant. A few years ago, Mast was reading through some scientific literature when he stumbled upon research about a houseplant wired to a motorized stand. When the plant wanted more light, electrical signals flowed through the living tissues. A control board sensed the current and wheeled the plant closer to the light source. “I’m like, what the heck?” Mast told TechCrunch. “That was the entry to the rabbit hole for…

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How did life arise?

How did life arise?

The New York Times reports: Life on planet Earth is a riot of diversity: ants and elephants, frogs and blue whales, tulips and redwoods, even a branch of the great apes known as humans. Uniting it all is biochemistry, in particular the shared biochemistry of genetic inheritance — DNA and RNA, the universal instruction kits of life. Tracing these biochemical threads back through time has convinced many scientists that all life descends from a so-called Last Universal Common Ancestor, or…

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Trump is learning he can’t steal this election

Trump is learning he can’t steal this election

HuffPost reports: President Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere with the 2026 elections have almost universally failed. Courts have halted his most egregious actions, Congress has rejected his anti-voting legislation and civil groups have stepped up to support election officials. The list of Trump’s failures is long. Courts blocked both of his executive orders aimed at limiting access to voting, including an effort to direct the Postal Service not to deliver certain mail ballots. His administration has lost all 26 cases…

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Trump’s approval falls to record low of 31% as midterms near, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

Trump’s approval falls to record low of 31% as midterms near, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

Reuters reports: President Donald ‌Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ​performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ​either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed. Asked which party they would vote…

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This cybersecurity agency is supposed to protect U.S. elections. Officials fear it’s been compromised by Trump

This cybersecurity agency is supposed to protect U.S. elections. Officials fear it’s been compromised by Trump

By Andy Mannix and Doug Bock Clark This story was originally published by ProPublica A few months into President Donald Trump’s second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security made an unusual request of its agency focused on cybersecurity: Secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it. The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to…

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The dangerous fatalism of AGI in Silicon Valley

The dangerous fatalism of AGI in Silicon Valley

Aki Ito writes: Last week, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar mentioned something bizarre in an interview on CBS News. “So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” he said. Their thinking, he said, goes like this: “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in.” I laughed as I read the quote. It read like a…

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The fossil fuel comeback is here

The fossil fuel comeback is here

The Verge reports: The US is building more fossil fuel infrastructure than it has in a decade while renewable energy growth slows down, a new report shows. Electricity demand is also climbing faster than it has in more than a decade with more data centers, factories, and electric vehicles plugging into the grid. Despite those growing demands, the Trump administration has sought to hobble the wind and solar industries in favor of fossil fuels. America’s energy landscape is already shifting…

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French government cracks down on mass protests over cost of living, education cuts

French government cracks down on mass protests over cost of living, education cuts

  Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in over 140 cities across France on Saturday, demanding relief from the high cost of living, more funding for public services and improvements to deteriorating schools, among other grievances. The demonstrations were the latest — and largest — in a series of protests that began in September with high schooler-led demonstrations against overcrowded classrooms and crumbling school infrastructure. Some cities saw property destruction, arson and theft on Saturday, with city halls and other…

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The Wayback Machine is one of journalism’s most important investigative instruments

The Wayback Machine is one of journalism’s most important investigative instruments

Brewster Kahle writes: In 1996, during the early years of the web, I could see that those of us who were participating online were creating an extraordinary new record of human activity—and allowing it to disappear almost as quickly as we made it. The web was becoming the place where government officials made promises, journalists published information in the public interest, and ordinary people shared ideas and documented their lives. Yet it was fragile—equal parts consequential and ephemeral. Many people…

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