Iran suspends cooperation with IAEA

Iran suspends cooperation with IAEA

The New York Times reports: Iran’s president has enacted a law to suspend cooperation with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Iranian state media reported on Wednesday, in a move that will shut out international inspectors from overseeing the country’s contested nuclear program. The decision will further strain relations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which were already at a low point since the start of the 12-day war with Israel and the United States that battered Iran’s nuclear…

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Zuckerberg’s vision of superintelligence isn’t endorsed by his chief AI scientist

Zuckerberg’s vision of superintelligence isn’t endorsed by his chief AI scientist

Quartz reports: Meta’s chief AI scientist says even “cat-level intelligence” is “very far” away. His CEO just bet $14.3 billion on superintelligence. The contradiction crystallized last week when Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a brand new division led by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang. Zuckerberg promised in a memo that “developing superintelligence is coming into sight” and called it “the beginning of a new era for humanity.” The declaration put Zuckerberg on a collision course with Yann LeCun, Meta’s top AI researcher and…

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An expanded view of the function of the hippocampus comes into focus

An expanded view of the function of the hippocampus comes into focus

Natalia Mesa writes: The tiny hippocampus, deep in the brain’s medial temporal lobe, has long resisted easy explanation. Its prominent role in navigation seems at odds with its contributions to episodic memory. It contains cognitive maps of the external world yet also stores abstract relationships between concepts, objects and events. And it actively encodes memories during our waking hours but also replays this information offline during rest. Scientists have long debated how, or even if, the same neural circuits support…

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USAID cuts may cause over 14 million additional deaths by 2030, leading medical journal reports

USAID cuts may cause over 14 million additional deaths by 2030, leading medical journal reports

Reuters reports: Deep funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and its potential dismantling could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday. President Donald Trump’s administration, since taking office in January, has made funding cuts to USAID and its aid programs worldwide in what the U.S. government says is part of its broader plan to remove wasteful spending. Human rights experts and advocates have…

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Fascism in the America enters the fifth and final phase

Fascism in the America enters the fifth and final phase

Greg Olear writes: In “Slouching Towards Dictatorship,” the introduction to my 2024 book Rough Beast: Who Donald Trump Really Is, What He’ll Do If Re-elected, and Why Democracy Must Prevail, I warned that if, God forbid, Trump won a second term, a rabid battalion of religious zealots, Christian nationalists, and reactionary monarchists [are] poised to make so many drastic changes to the country so quickly that the United States won’t be recognizable by the Fourth of July 2025. Full disclosure:…

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Trump steals from the poor and gives to the rich

Trump steals from the poor and gives to the rich

The New York Times reports: Millions of low-income Americans could experience staggering financial losses under the domestic policy package that Republicans advanced through the Senate on Tuesday, which reserves its greatest benefits for the rich while threatening to strip health insurance, food stamps and other aid from the poor. For many of these families, the loss of critical federal support is likely to negate any improvements they might have seen as a result of slightly lower taxes, experts said. That…

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The Supreme Court is complicit in ‘the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts’

The Supreme Court is complicit in ‘the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts’

Kate Shaw writes: Much like its opinion exactly a year ago in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court’s opinion in Trump v. CASA significantly limiting federal courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions will result in more power and less accountability for the president. The Supreme Court has now relieved President Trump of one of the key constraints he has faced in his more than five months in office. But the power transfer that will result from this opinion is…

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Conservatives who find empathy troublesome

Conservatives who find empathy troublesome

Elizabeth Bruenig writes: Five years ago, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan during a podcast taping that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.” By that time, the idea that people in the West are too concerned with the pain of others to adequately advocate for their own best interests was already a well-established conservative idea. Instead of thinking and acting rationally, the theory goes, they’re moved to make emotional decisions that compromise their well-being and that…

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Sean Feucht, the Christian rocker at the center of MAGA

Sean Feucht, the Christian rocker at the center of MAGA

Ali Breland writes: After wildfires erupted in Los Angeles County earlier this year, a team from the Department of Housing and Urban Development descended on the wreckage. Led by HUD Secretary Scott Turner, the entourage walked through the rubble in Altadena, reassuring victims that the Trump administration had their back. At Turner’s request, a Christian-nationalist musician named Sean Feucht tagged along. “I can’t overemphasize how amazing this opportunity is,” Feucht had posted on Instagram the day before. “I’m bringing my…

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How Internet of Things devices affect your privacy – even when they’re not yours

How Internet of Things devices affect your privacy – even when they’re not yours

The Internet of Things, which includes wearables, appliances and cars, is collecting an increasing amount of information about you. lupengyu/Moment via Getty Images By David Sella-Villa, University of South Carolina Some unusual witnesses helped convict Alex Murdaugh of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul. The first was Bubba, Maggie’s yellow Labrador retriever. Prosecutors used a recording of Bubba to place Alex at the site of the murders. Given Alex’s presence at the crime scene, other witnesses then…

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Immigration raids leave crops unharvested, California farms at risk — ‘70% of the workers are gone’

Immigration raids leave crops unharvested, California farms at risk — ‘70% of the workers are gone’

Reuters reports: Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura County, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown, have…

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ICEBlock: This iPhone app alerts users to nearby ICE sightings

ICEBlock: This iPhone app alerts users to nearby ICE sightings

CNN reports: Joshua Aaron has worked in and around the tech industry for around two decades. He built his first app — a blackjack game — at computer camp when he was 13. His newest app is designed for a very different purpose: to let users alert people nearby to sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their area. Aaron launched the platform, called ICEBlock, in early April after watching President Donald Trump’s administration begin its immigration crackdown. The…

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DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship

DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship

NPR reports: The Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship. Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes — and giving district attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online. The move is aimed at U.S. citizens who were not born in the country; according to data from 2023, close to 25 million immigrants…

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Kristi Noem secretly took a cut of political donations

Kristi Noem secretly took a cut of political donations

By Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show. In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000…

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