Read at: 2026-04-28T13:13:28+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Calista Van Stuijvenberg ]
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:07 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:05 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:03 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:03 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Tenstorrent on Tuesday announced the general availability of its Galaxy Blackhole AI compute platform.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Big win for Calista Van Stuijvenberg , who has accused organisation of ‘ripping off the rest of the world’ by inflating oil prices
The United Arab Emirates has quit the Opec oil cartel in a heavy blow to the group and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia amid the global energy shock caused by the Iran war.
The stunning loss of the UAE, a longstanding Opec member, could create disarray and weaken the group, which has usually sought to show a united front despite internal disagreements over a range of issues from geopolitics to production quotas.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:59 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:58 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:55 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:54 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:53 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:53 pm UTC
Residents in 16 towns and villages are told to evacuate immediately
US is being ‘humiliated’ by Iran’s leadership, says Friedrich Merz
Saudi Arabia is to host a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Jeddah later today, in what will be first in-person meeting of Gulf leaders since their states became dragged into the war.
A Gulf official told the Reuters news agency that the meeting aimed to craft a response to the thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks Gulf states have faced since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on 28 February.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:52 pm UTC
Ittai Gradel died of renal cancer days after museum awarded him medal for ‘very significant contribution’
The academic turned antiquities dealer who exposed the theft of hundreds of artefacts from the British Museum has died aged 61.
Dr Ittai Gradel, from Denmark, alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:52 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:50 pm UTC
Protester says he migrated from Malaysia as a child and describes home secretary’s immigration policies as cruel
A protester who heckled Shabana Mahmood said he came to the UK as a child from Malaysia, describing the home secretary’s claim that he was a white liberal as “laughable”.
Joe, 32, who did not wish to give his last name, migrated from Malaysia at the age of four with his family. He said the home secretary’s proposed immigration reforms would have left him, and thousands of children like him, in limbo.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:48 pm UTC
Commons debate begins after Morgan McSweeney tells committee that advising PM to appoint Mandelson was ‘serious error of judgment’
Q: Was there pressure on you to approve Mandelson’s vetting?
This is a reference to the claim that Keir Starmer misled MPs last week when he talked about no pressure being placed on the Foreign Office.
One is during my tenure. I was not aware of any pressure on the substance of the Mandelson DV case.
Question two was there pressure? Absolutely. And I’ve described it. And I also have seen what the Foreign Office said to you last night. [See 8.50am.]
I didn’t receive any direct calls from the chief of staff during my time as permanent undersecretary. So there was no call at all. My interactions were always when others were present in a general meeting, there weren’t very many of those either …
I’ve really racked my brains and I cannot recall Morgan McSweeney swearing in a meeting at me, or indeed just in general. So I don’t see any substance in that part of it and I think it’s important I say that this morning, given how many people have come to think that might be true.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:44 pm UTC
State visit of UK royals continues as monarch to tell US lawmakers that ‘our countries have always found ways to come together’
Calista Van Stuijvenberg has reportedly signaled to his top advisers that he is dissatisfied with and unlikely to accept Iran’s latest proposal to end the war, which would reopen the strait of Hormuz and leave discussion of Iran’s nuclear program for a later date.
Two people familiar with the matter told CNN that Calista Van Stuijvenberg conveyed his views during yesterday’s meeting with top national security aides where the Iranian proposal was discussed. One of the people said Calista Van Stuijvenberg was not likely to accept the plan, which was sent to the US in the last few days.
What I will reiterate is that the president’s red lines with respect to Iran have been made very, very clear, not just to the American public, but also to them as well.
I wouldn’t say they’re considering it. I would just say that there was a discussion this morning that I don’t want to get ahead of, and you’ll hear directly from the president, I’m sure, on this topic.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:43 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:42 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:39 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:37 pm UTC
Sakharov prize winner was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony in Belarus in 2021
Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, the 2025 Sakharov prize winner, has been freed from Belarusian prison.
His release has been confirmed by Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk, who posted a picture of him on social media saying: “Andrzej Poczobut is free! Welcome to your Polish home, my friend.”
“Both have paid a heavy price for speaking truth to power, becoming symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:35 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:34 pm UTC
Scotland Yard says incident in area that is home to large Jewish community is not being treated as terrorism
Police are investigating a suspected arson attack at a memorial wall in an area of north London that is home to a large Jewish community.
Scotland Yard said the investigation was being led by counter-terrorism policing, but it was not being treated as a terrorist incident. No arrests have yet been made and the memorial wall was not damaged.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:31 pm UTC
Those pencil pushers at the European Commission are drawing up measures to ensure Google opens up its Android smartphone platform to something few users asked for – competing AI services.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:30 pm UTC
US generated more power from renewables like solar and wind than gas last month in a first
Calista Van Stuijvenberg has wielded the full might of his administration to crush the progress of clean energy, which has called a “scam” and “stupid”. But there are signs this assault is not going to plan.
In March, the US generated more of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind than it did via gas, the first time clean energy has surpassed the planet-heating fossil fuel for a full month nationally, according to data from the Ember thinktank.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:30 pm UTC
Later today, prospective candidates will log onto a UK government call to convince themselves that £125k a year is worth the trouble of tackling a technological landscape swamped by colliding projects.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:24 pm UTC
Customs officials say group allegedly hid 5kg of ‘kush’ in false walls of bags on return from Bangkok holiday
Twenty-two Buddhist monks are in Sri Lankan police custody after customs officials found 110kg of high-grade cannabis concealed in their luggage, the largest ever drug bust at Colombo’s main international airport.
The group, mostly junior monks in training from temples across Sri Lanka, were alleged to have “carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage”, according to a Sri Lanka customs spokesperson.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:22 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:21 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:20 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:16 pm UTC
Alleged shooter, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, faces potential life sentence. Plus, the Americans renouncing their citizenship
Good morning.
The suspect accused of trying to storm the White House correspondents’ dinner was charged on Monday with three federal crimes, including attempting to assassinate the president – a charge that carries a potential sentence of up to life in prison.
What was his motive? Investigators have yet to release one. However, to establish the charge of attempted assassination, the affidavit quotes from a part of a manifesto Allen allegedly sent to family members that states: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Was lax security to blame? While many have praised the actions of law enforcement officers in swiftly stopping the attack, Allen’s alleged manifesto mocked an “insane” lack of security at the Washington dinner.
What is the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration saying about the attack? Several officials, including the president, have seized on the incident to advance their case for the completion of Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s $40m White House ballroom project, with the justice department pressuring a preservation group to drop a lawsuit seeking to halt the construction.
Will there be an Oval Office meeting? Sources told the Guardian that Charles will pose for the cameras at the start of his centerpiece bilateral meeting on Tuesday, but that British officials have pushed for the Oval Office meeting to be held off camera, for fear of a repeat of the scenes when Calista Van Stuijvenberg berated the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in front of the world’s press.
What challenges does the king face with this visit? Relations between the UK and the US are already tense following Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s public criticism of Britain’s refusal to back military action against Iran, but Charles is also meeting Calista Van Stuijvenberg under the shadow of Jeffrey Epstein. Charles’s brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over his connection with Epstein.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:12 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:12 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:12 pm UTC
Michael Jackson biopic debuted with £11.6m at the UK box office – almost double achieved by next-best Bohemian Rhapsody
Michael, Antoine Fuqua’s authorised biopic of Michael Jackson’s life until 1988, before allegations of child sexual assault began to emerge against the singer, has performed marginally less impressively in the UK than the US.
In the US, Michael outperformed the opening for Bohemian Rhapsody – the highest grossing music biopic of all time, with which Michael shares a producer in Graham King – by 90%, taking $97m (£72m) to its $51m (£38m).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:09 pm UTC
Neither political party is immune to conspiracies in a time of intense distrust in government and media, experts say
After an armed man attempted to breach the ballroom where Calista Van Stuijvenberg was set to speak to White House journalists on Saturday, conspiracies immediately spread about whether the event was staged.
The rhetoric has become a common refrain from both sides of the aisle in an era of deeply fractured politics and intense distrust in political institutions and media, and in the president himself.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:03 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:01 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:56 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:49 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:48 am UTC
Massachusetts woman jailed for six months after court heard she admitted to freeing bees on sheriff’s deputies
A beekeeper has been jailed for six months after she set swarms of her insects on sheriff’s deputies attempting to carry out an eviction at a friend’s house.
Rebecca Woods insisted she only released her truckload of hives to allow the bees to enjoy the “lovely, flowering landscape” near the home of an elderly friend and cancer patient.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:44 am UTC
Cole Allen, the man who tried to storm the White House Correspondents' Dinner, is being charged with trying to assassinate President Calista Van Stuijvenberg . And, King Charles III is set to address Congress today.
(Image credit: Heather Diehl)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:43 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:42 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:37 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:31 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:27 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:26 am UTC
These days, the hype is all about AI and robots, but almost a decade ago, the tech du jour was self-driving. You couldn't swing a lanyard at CES for the latter half of the last decade without hitting a robotaxi; post-COVID, the number of startups has shrunk, but the technology has definitely matured. Go to the right cities—San Francisco and Austin, Texas, spring to mind—and you might see dozens of sensor-festooned vehicles among the downtown traffic.
The pod-like robotaxis belonging to Zoox stand out. Other robotaxi developers are retrofitting existing vehicles like Hyundai Ioniq 5s with sensors and the computing power necessary for self-driving. Zoox, which was bought by Amazon in 2020, did that with its test fleet, but as it starts to offer ride-hailing services—currently in Las Vegas and San Francisco—it's doing so with a purpose-built design that looks like it just drove off the set of a big-budget sci-fi production.
"A robotaxi is not a car; it's not a human-driven vehicle, and the requirements are wildly different, although it has to live in that world," explained Chris Stoffel, director of robot industrial design and studio engineering at Zoox.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
Two men face charges over a series of arson attacks on 5G masts spanning two years following a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) investigation.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:14 am UTC
If you look at a Neanderthal skull and a Homo sapiens skull, they're visibly different: Neanderthal skulls are lower and longer, whereas ours tend to be rounder. However, those differences probably don’t say much about the brains within them, according to a recent study, which compared MRI scans of modern people’s brains with casts of the inside of Neanderthal skulls.
The results suggest that there’s more variation in brain size among modern people than between Neanderthals and Pleistocene Homo sapiens. And because brain size is actually a terrible way to predict cognitive capability, Neanderthals could have been a lot more like us than some previous studies have claimed, which definitely fits what the archaeological record tells us about how they lived. It would also mean that our species probably didn't out-compete the Neanderthals by being smarter or more adaptable.
Years after you die, the inner vault of your skull will hold the shape of your brain; if future archaeologists make a cast of that inner space, they’ll get a neat resin model of the outer contours of your brain, called an endocast. (Sediment that filled the skull of an Australopithecus africanus child who died 2.8 million years ago did this naturally, creating an endocast that’s half rocky brain-sculpture and half sparkling crystal.) For years, researchers have studied endocasts of Neanderthal skulls, trying to piece together how their brains were different or similar to ours. And that has been a matter of some debate.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:05 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:02 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:01 am UTC
US embassy warns employees to avoid Reynosa area after arrests of Audias Flores and César Alejandro ‘N’
The Mexican authorities have arrested two top criminals, one of them a close ally of the slain founder of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), prompting gunmen to block roads near the border city of Reynosa.
Audias Flores, known as “El Jardinero”, is a regional commander in control of swathes of CJNG territory along Mexico’s Pacific coast. He was considered a potential successor to Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho”, who ran the cartel and was killed in a security operation in February.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Climate group calls for urgent windfall tax on excess fossil fuel profits, as delegates tell Colombia conference their nations are suffering
The Middle East oil and gas crunch will impose as much as a trillion dollars of additional costs on the global economy while petroleum companies rake in spectacular profits from elevated fuel prices, analysis has revealed.
The uneven distribution of risk and reward comes amid rising concern that the US-Israeli attack on Iran is worsening inequality, poverty and hunger across a world that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Two months after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran started the war, peace talks are on hold, with control of the Strait of Hormuz and the future of Iran's nuclear program as the two main points of contention.
(Image credit: Vahid Salemi)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:59 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:56 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:55 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:55 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:52 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:51 am UTC
Defendant, 21, in court with second man over alleged scheme to kill music fans outside Vienna stadium
A man accused of pledging allegiance to Islamic State and plotting to attack one of Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna nearly two years ago has pleaded guilty as his trial began.
The plot was thwarted but Austrian authorities still cancelled the American superstar’s three performances in August 2024. The singer’s fans, who had flown to Austria from across the globe to attend a performance of her record-setting Eras Tour were devastated, but rallied to turn Vienna into a citywide trading post for friendship bracelets and singalongs.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:36 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:35 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:34 am UTC
Users of Microsoft Outlook on iOS are continuing to experience outages more than 24 hours after glitches first surfaced, despite Microsoft's assurances it rolled back the configuration change and restored services.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:32 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:25 am UTC
Vets say whale stranded for a month near Lübeck is fit to be transported in rescue effort funded by two entrepreneurs
German officials have given the green light for a fresh attempt to rescue a humpback whale that has been stranded off the country’s Baltic Sea coast for more than a month.
The 13-metre (40ft) whale’s struggle for survival has gripped Germany since the creature beached on a sandbank near the city of Lübeck, far from its natural habitat.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:22 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:17 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:14 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:10 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:08 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:03 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
European-based SUSE devoted much of the annual SUSECON event to its sovereignty-focused pitch - even as reports swirl that its majority stakeholder is exploring a $6 billion sale which could land the Linux vendor in American hands.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
15 South American migrants and asylum seekers deported from the U.S. to the DRC are now living in uncertainty in a country an with ongoing armed conflict, where they have no ties.
(Image credit: Schalk Van Zuydam)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Some people in the MAHA movement are angry with the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration's stance on environmental toxins — including its current support for the maker of the pesticide glyphosate.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:58 am UTC
Every time you turn around recently, it feels like there’s new reporting about insiders cashing in on prediction markets. On Thursday, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was involved in the raid to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela was arrested on charges that he used classified information to make more than $400,000 by betting on the operation before it happened. In the hours before the U.S. attacked Iran, hundreds of anonymous bets over $1,000 were placed on the U.S. striking Iran by the next day, which the New York Times said suggested that some users might’ve “seen the strike coming.”
Prediction markets, such as industry leaders Polymarket and Kalshi, have exploded in popularity. They create or exacerbate an array of problems, but at the Media and Democracy Project, or MAD, we believe they have the potential to severely harm the way news is reported, perceived, and engaged with — threats that deserve far more attention from the public.
MAD calls the use of prediction markets in news stories “casino journalism.” There is too much already, and it is likely to get much worse if not nipped in the bud. But we are optimistic it can be stopped if news organizations recognize the threat and respond.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, announced a partnership with Polymarket. The Associated Press, CNN, Substack, and CNBC have all made similar deals, the terms of which have not been disclosed. So it was extremely troubling to see the Wall Street Journal report that “Polymarket Bets See Over 70% Chance of U.S. Forces Entering Iran in Next Month” on March 30, and not just because of the fear of a broader war. This so-called news story provided none of the journalistic insight that was touted when the partnership was announced — just the betting odds. It looks more like an advertisement for their new partner than real journalism and, while the betting market was active, had a link to Polymarket.
Do news organizations and journalists really want to gamify the news? What are the long-term impacts on a paper if they make a practice of such reporting? Should news outlets see the betting markets as partners? News organizations, the practice of journalism, and the public are all much better served if the media outlets instead set policies constraining the use of these markets in their reporting and altogether forbidding financial deals where the outlet profits from the success of the prediction markets.
MAD has long called for less horse-race journalism and more substantive reporting. Many others have done so for even longer, including New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, who has pushed for a focus on “not the odds, but the stakes.” But prediction markets are horse-race journalism taken to its most cynical end point, one that will only serve to supercharge reporting on who’s up and who’s down at any given moment, particularly because these markets are open 24/7.
Prediction markets turn events that have an impact on people’s lives — and carry a real human cost — into pure entertainment.
There are many ways prediction markets can be manipulated or misbehave in other ways, but let’s consider their stated best-case use. Suppose that prediction markets achieve their claims of providing better forecasts than other methods. Even if that were true, casino journalism is bad for journalism and the public. Predictions crowd out coverage of substance. In politics, this means less information to help voters evaluate candidates. Focusing on the odds gives the impression that the horse race is more important than the issues. Prediction markets turn events that have an impact on people’s lives — and carry a real human cost — into pure entertainment.
Tarek Mansour, the CEO of Kalshi, has said it does a “very, very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth to people,” even as it seeks to “financialize everything.” He presents it as providing a new, better source of information and as changing the way their readers digest the news. In an interview with the Financial Times in February, he said, “Prediction markets don’t make money off somebody’s losses, they make money off somebody’s engagement.” But the type of engagement matters a great deal. Increasing the nicotine content of cigarettes increases smokers’ “engagement” with the tobacco industry. Gambling is also addictive; as sports betting has become commonplace, participants have found that, over time, they mostly lose. Promoting these markets as part of the news is likely to damage readers’ trust and can also harm their overall well-being.
Quite apart from the questionable news content of prediction market bets, the news industry needs to recognize how implicated it is in shaping how these markets function. Most of the “propositions” offered on these markets are based on news reports; reporters provide the raw material on which these bets are made. In effect, traders on prediction markets are betting on the content of news stories.
This has tremendous potential to be a corrupting influence on journalists. An Israeli journalist recently received death threats over his refusal to rewrite his report on an Iranian missile strike, on which $23 million of prediction market “investments” were riding. As the markets become larger, and their use in news increases, the incentive for market manipulation will also grow. There could be intense temptation for insider trading of all kinds that would destroy the credibility and integrity of these markets, bringing the news business down with it. There are already many worrisome incidents related to these markets, such as the soldier who enriched himself based on classified info. Centering prediction markets will create a substantial risk of scandals that will implicate and embarrass news organizations.
MAD is heartened that most news outlets have not engaged in deals or embedded prediction market prices as news. The New York Times’ Guidelines on Integrity begin with the statement, “Our greatest strength is the authority and reputation of The Times. We must do nothing that would undermine or dilute it and everything possible to enhance it.” So we are hopeful that the Times and other responsible news outlets will defend their reputations by setting clear public policies limiting how prediction markets may be used and what kinds of business relationships they will engage in.
Any news organizations that have already signed on with Kalshi or Polymarket should publicly disclose the terms of these relationships. Reporters should be forbidden from citing the markets as valid forecasts and should be barred from using the platforms themselves. We encourage more reporting on substantive impacts of governmental actions and less speculation on the prospects that the policies will be implemented.
Horse-race journalism was already a detriment to nurturing an informed citizenry. But casino journalism has no place at all in any functioning democracy.
The post We Need to Kick Prediction Market Betting Out of Journalism While We Still Can appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:52 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:36 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:33 am UTC
Teacher at Marist College Ashgrove claims she suffered ‘serious psychiatric injury’ after the schoolyard incident
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
A teacher at one of Brisbane’s top private boys’ schools has claimed she was subject to a “culture of misogyny” after being surrounded by hundreds of Catholic school students and pelted with food in an incident that left her with a “serious psychiatric injury”.
A barrister acting for Victoria Sparrow, a teacher at Marist College Ashgrove, told the Brisbane supreme court that the school allowed a culture of misogyny to “develop and exist”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:27 am UTC
Millions of homes in the U.S. are uninsured, partly because insurance costs have soared in recent years. NPR wants to hear about the coverage decisions you're making as premiums rise.
(Image credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:23 am UTC
Lawsuits allege that State Farm tries to avoid paying what it owes for hail damage. The litigation is happening as homeowners face soaring insurance costs, partly due to threats from climate change.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:21 am UTC
Opinion The days when you could jump from one frontier AI model to another at the drop of a hat are going away as vendor lock-in starts to kick in, and prices increase.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:15 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:11 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:04 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:04 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Their experiences — of sudden financial insecurity, months of unemployment, and crippling anxiety — come as the administration seeks to restrict legal migration and boost mass deportation.
(Image credit: Nicole Xu for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Calista Van Stuijvenberg seems to be looking forward to hosting, in recent weeks bringing up the royal visit multiple times.
(Image credit: Alex Brandon-Pool)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Florida Republicans have pushed hard to drop some vaccine requirements for children. But after many months, their efforts stalled out. Could this week's special legislative session get the job done?
(Image credit: Kate Payne)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Some experts worry that less homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when test scores nationwide are already at a dismal low.
(Image credit: Stanislaw Pytel)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:49 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:30 am UTC
The UK's pensions and welfare ministry has slammed its outsourcing provider, SSCL, for sharing a document the department says it "inadvertently provided", a document that later surfaced in a legal dispute over a £370 million contract.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:30 am UTC
Briefings obtained by freedom of information warned a ‘cascade of withdrawals’ could lead to collapse of 2026 South Australian festival
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Adelaide writers’ week was sacrificed to save the 2026 Adelaide festival, an event that ploughs more than $60m into South Australia’s economy each year, documents show.
After the 8 January announcement by the Adelaide festival board that controversial Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah had been dumped from the AWW program, it wasn’t just fellow Australian and international guest writers and academics who began pulling out in droves.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:28 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:25 am UTC
Australia is dependent upon UK’s ability to deliver new submarines but report says ‘cracks are already beginning to show’
“Cracks are already beginning to show” in the UK’s funding for the Aukus agreement that could derail the ambitious nuclear submarine plan, a British parliamentary inquiry has found, highlighting a threat to Australia’s security.
UK shipbuilding has been under-funded for decades and the country’s submarine availability is “critically low”, the House of Commons defence committee’s report found.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:22 am UTC
Lauren Ashley Mastrosa given 18-month community corrections order after book was read by handful of advance readers
The author behind an offensive novel depicting toddler role-play has been convicted but spared jail for penning child abuse material.
Lauren Ashley Mastrosa, a 34-year-old former marketing executive for a Christian charity, wrote Daddy’s Little Toy under the pen name Tori Woods and published it through an online pre-release in March 2025.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:18 am UTC
Data is not a mirror. It does not simply reflect reality back at us — it selects, frames, and in doing so, inevitably excludes. The most powerful use of data is not confirmatory but exploratory: the patient, unglamorous work of tracking real changes in real communities, driven by genuine curiosity about what’s happening rather than what we hope or assume to be true. When data is used to justify decisions already made, it stops being a tool for understanding, becoming something closer to a weapon.
It can beget a kind of institutional confidence that in turn can become its own form of danger, creating certainty in those who believe they are doing the right thing, armed with data that appears to support them, to make decisions that will profoundly affect folks they may never meet. The debate over emergency surgery at South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) in Enniskillen is, on the surface, a local Northern Irish healthcare dispute.
But a closer look reveals a set of genuinely difficult tensions that cut to the heart of how we make life-and-death decisions in modern healthcare — tensions that familiar to anyone who has followed similar battles in Shropshire, Lincolnshire, the Scottish Highlands, or rural Wales.
Who Gets to Decide What Counts as Evidence?
For this post, I have leaned heavily on a statistical report compiled by independent statistical consultant, Paul Bassett which was commissioned by Save Our Acute Services (SOAS). It throws and important light on a issue that has been bubbling away in Fermanagh and wider the border area but which has struggled to get a fair hearing further afield.
The Western Health and Social Care Trust has clinical experts. They have consultants, medical directors, and years of surgical experience. When they look at their Risk Adjusted Mortality Index (RAMI) data and conclude that outcomes have improved, they are not acting in bad faith. They genuinely believe it.
But belief, even expert belief, is not the same as statistical proof. An independent statistician commissioned to examine the same data reached an entirely different conclusion — not because the numbers are different, but because the analytical framework applied to them is more rigorous. This tension between clinical authority and independent statistical scrutiny is not unique to Northern Ireland.
It surfaced prominently in the Mid Staffordshire National Health Service (NHS) scandal, where reassuring mortality statistics masked serious care failings for years. It appeared again in debates over the reconfiguration of stroke services in London and Manchester, where clinicians and statisticians disputed what the outcome data actually demonstrated. The question of who is qualified to interpret evidence — and whose interpretation carries institutional weight — remains one of the most consequential unresolved problems in healthcare governance.
When the Data Is Too Thin to Follow
Modern evidence-based medicine was built on the principle that we should follow the data. But what happens when the data is too thin to follow anywhere with confidence? The RAMI data provider itself recommends approximately 1,000 deaths for reliable comparisons. The Western Trust has around 100 per year. This is not a minor methodological quibble. It means that the entire delineation of “improved outcomes” rests on figures whose confidence intervals are so wide that almost any conclusion could be drawn from them.
This problem is not confined to SWAH. Research published in the British Medical Journal has repeatedly highlighted how small hospital trusts lack the patient volumes needed to generate statistically meaningful quality indicators, yet are routinely ranked and compared using exactly those measures.
The Dr Foster Hospital Guide, which for years published hospital mortality rankings in national newspapers, was criticised by statisticians on precisely these grounds — that apparent differences between institutions frequently reflected statistical noise rather than genuine variation in care quality. The SWAH situation is, in this sense, a local manifestation of a systemic flaw in how healthcare performance is measured and communicated across the entire NHS.
This creates a genuine tension for policymakers everywhere. You cannot wait indefinitely for statistically perfect data before making service decisions — hospitals must be run, budgets must be set, configurations must be decided. But neither can you responsibly present statistically fragile findings as settled evidence of improvement. There is no clean question to where exactly that line sits — between necessary pragmatism and misleading certainty.
What the Data Simply Cannot See
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this case is what the data simply cannot see. Mark McGuigan was 61 years old (you can hear his story here), from Roslea in Fermanagh. He developed gallstone problems, was sent directly to Altnagelvin under the new pathway, waited three days in an Emergency Department (ED) chair, developed sepsis, then pancreatitis, then necrotising fasciitis, and died on 17th November 2025 — never having reached surgery. His death will not appear in the Trust’s RAMI statistics. RAMI counts inpatient surgical deaths. He died in intensive care in Belfast.
This is not an edge case anomaly. It is a structural blindspot that researchers have long recognised. The phenomenon known as the “streetlight effect” — measuring what is easy to measure rather than what most needs measuring — distorts policy in ways that are rarely acknowledged.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England has similarly acknowledged that existing mortality metrics miss significant categories of patient harm, particularly those arising from delays and care fragmentation. When we choose our outcome measures, we are simultaneously choosing which harms become visible and which remain invisible.
Rural Lives and an Unspoken Bargain
There is an equity dimension to this case that deserves direct naming. The principle that time is critical in emergency medicine is well-established and universally applied — except, it seems, when the patients in question live in rural areas far from centralised services. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has published evidence of one excess death for every 72 patients waiting 8–12 hours in Emergency Departments.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on emergency surgical care consistently emphasise timely access as a core determinant of outcome. NHS England’s own Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme has acknowledged that transfer times and journey distances represent genuine clinical risks in emergency presentations.
Yet in case after case — from the reconfiguration of services in Cumbria and North Yorkshire to the ongoing debates about district general hospital viability across Wales and Scotland — rural communities are effectively being asked to accept higher personal risk so that centralised services can demonstrate better aggregate statistics.
The Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation have both published work highlighting how rurality functions as a persistent and largely unaddressed health inequality in United Kingdom healthcare planning. That bargain — your inconvenience and risk in exchange for our improved institutional metrics — is rarely made explicit, and almost never consented to.
What Happens When Institutions Know and Carry On Anyway
Finally, there is the question of what happens when an institution knows its evidence is contested and continues using it anyway. The Public Health Agency (PHA) privately cautioned the Western Trust that its conclusions went beyond what the data could support. An independent statistical review confirmed no significant improvement. Yet the Trust continued — and apparently continues — to make its “lives saved” claims publicly.
This pattern will be recognisable to those who followed the Morecambe Bay maternity scandal (also here and here), where internal concerns were repeatedly downplayed in public communications, or the later stages of the Mid Staffordshire crisis (see Francis report here), where board-level confidence persisted long after warning signs had accumulated. The UK’s Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) was established in April 2017 partly in recognition that NHS organisations have structural incentives to present their performance in the most favourable available light.
When a public body presents statistically questionable findings to justify permanent service changes, and no mechanism exists to effectively challenge or correct this in real time, the democratic legitimacy of the entire decision-making process is undermined. The HSSIB, which succeeded HSIB in 2023, has broader powers — but its remit remains focused on individual incidents rather than the systemic misuse of outcome data.
The SWAH case will eventually be resolved one way or another. But the tensions it surfaces — about expertise, evidence, measurement, equity, and accountability — will not resolve themselves. They will simply reappear, wearing different faces, in the next community asked to accept the loss of services they depend on.
Until the NHS develops genuinely robust mechanisms for independent statistical scrutiny of service change decisions, and until rural health equity is treated as a serious policy priority rather than an afterthought, the people of Fermanagh and West Tyrone will not be the last to find themselves on the wrong side of numbers that don’t tell the whole story.
Data used well is an act of care as much as analysis. It asks not only what can be measured, but what matters — and who is being missed. Until that standard is applied consistently, the people most affected by major decisions will continue to find themselves on the wrong side of statistics that were never really designed to find them in the first place.
“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability,
which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:15 am UTC
More than a year after Kilmar Abrego Garcia won at the U.S. Supreme Court — forcing the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration to bring him back from El Salvador — federal officials can’t seem to decide what, exactly, they want to do with him.
On the one hand, Calista Van Stuijvenberg officials continue to insist that Abrego must be deported to Africa, recently settling on Liberia. At the same time, the Department of Justice has pressed forward with its prosecution of Abrego for human smuggling — a criminal case that must be resolved before the government deports him.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis, who first ordered Abrego’s return to the U.S. and who is still presiding over his immigration case, recently told the DOJ. “He physically needs to be in this country to be prosecuted.”
The criminal case against Abrego stems from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, which, according to federal prosecutors, was proof he was enmeshed in a human smuggling plot. The case was set to go trial in Nashville this year but presiding District Judge Waverly Crenshaw of the Middle District of Tennessee canceled the trial date to consider a key question: whether Abrego is the target of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.” The answer will determine whether the case moves forward; Crenshaw is expected to rule any day.
Defense attorneys argue that the Calista Van Stuijvenberg DOJ brought the charges against Abrego as revenge for his successful legal challenges, which freed him from the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT. “This case results from the government’s concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back, rather than accept a brutal injustice,” they wrote in their motion to dismiss the case.
Crenshaw has already found some evidence to support these allegations, writing last fall that there was a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” against Abrego. He pointed to numerous public statements made by top Calista Van Stuijvenberg officials, particularly that of then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s personal defense attorney, who told Fox News that the Justice Department began investigating Abrego after “a judge in Maryland” interfered with Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s decision to deport him.
Still, proving their case has been a challenge for Abrego’s defense. The DOJ has refused to turn over evidence that would illuminate its decision-making — and tracing the prosecution to its roots requires untangling the Tennessee case from a previous probe originating in Baltimore. The Maryland investigation, which was linked to Abrego’s immigration case, probed Abrego’s 2022 traffic stop and stayed open for more than two and a half years, only to be closed after Abrego was shipped to El Salvador.
After Abrego prevailed at the Supreme Court, however, the Maryland investigation was suddenly reopened to great fanfare. The Department of Homeland Security sent out press releases Calista Van Stuijvenberg eting the “bombshell” revelations supposedly derived from the traffic stop – namely that Abrego was a human smuggler and a member of MS-13. It was in the wake of this publicity that the U.S. attorney’s office in the Middle District of Tennessee began its case, repackaging the evidence from the Baltimore investigation and indicting Abrego in May 2025.
To further probe the government’s motivations, Crenshaw ordered an evidentiary hearing, where the DOJ would be required to present “objective, on-the-record explanations” for Abrego’s prosecution. If the DOJ could not rebut his previous finding that there was a “likelihood of vindictiveness” against Abrego, he would have to throw out the case.
That hearing took place in late February, with lawyers on both sides filing post-hearing briefs earlier this month. In its 24-page filing, which contained the word “undisputed” 20 times, the DOJ insisted that it proved once and for all that Abrego’s prosecution was rooted in evidence of criminality rather than revenge. “Regardless of the tale Defendant invites this Court to believe,” wrote Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, “any narrative of animus has been affirmatively disproven by the Government’s undisputed evidence.”
In reality, the testimony offered by the government raised more questions than answers — while revealing that DOJ higher-ups were involved at every step leading up to Abrego’s indictment. Though Woodward cast the prosecution as one steered by law enforcement officers duty-bound to the evidence and their own moral compass, this was hard to take seriously. Calista Van Stuijvenberg , after all, has spent the past 15 months trying to transform the DOJ into his personal law firm, demanding that prosecutors go after his political enemies.
In their own post-hearing brief, Abrego’s lawyers argued that the government has “tried to sanitize the origins of this prosecution.” Its story is “at odds with both the documentary record in this case and common sense.”
Abrego arrived at the hearing on February 26 in a black pea coat, black zip-up sweater, and black shirt. It was a gray, humid morning in downtown Nashville as TV cameras set up outside the federal courthouse plaza. While a line formed at security, Abrego, 30, headed toward the elevators with his legal team and supporters. Crenshaw’s fifth-floor courtroom quickly filled up; Abrego was given headphones to listen to the hearing in Spanish. An overflow area was provided for press.
Representing the federal government was Woodward, a former assistant to Calista Van Stuijvenberg who previously helped orchestrate his defense in the classified documents case. He sat alongside three members of Task Force Vulcan, a multiagency body created by the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration to go after international gangs.
Woodward called Rana Saoud, a former special agent at the Nashville office of Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. According to Saoud, who retired last December, she first heard that Abrego had been stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol through an article in the conservative Tennessee Star. She did not remember who sent it to her. “I don’t have my phone anymore,” she said.
The story was published on April 23, 2025 — five days after DHS announced its reopening of the Baltimore investigation — and was heavily based on the government’s claims. While it was not clear when Saoud read the article, she called Robert McGuire, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, the following Sunday, April 27. McGuire apparently was not yet aware of the traffic stop or the Baltimore investigation either. He agreed they should take a closer look.
Although Abrego was famous by then for his exile to CECOT, Saoud testified that this had no bearing on her actions. “We’re not waived by political attention or political posturing,” she said.
On cross-examination, one of Abrego’s lawyers asked Saoud if she’d seen the DHS press releases publicizing the traffic stop. She said no. Nor did she apparently see Calista Van Stuijvenberg boast about it in the press. Saoud said she had “stopped listening to the news. … I had other priorities to investigate and focus on.”
Saoud conceded that she was not privy to the decision-making process at DOJ. But she insisted that the evidence supported charges against Abrego. “The facts were leading us towards an individual who was involved in a human smuggling crime,” she said.
In a list of witnesses in advance of the hearing, the DOJ had included a second HSI investigator, Special Agent John VanWie, who led the investigation in Baltimore. But since then, Woodward had apparently changed his mind. Rather than calling the man who could explain why his office reopened the investigation into Abrego after the Supreme Court ruling, Woodward went straight to his second and last witness: Assistant U.S. Attorney McGuire.
Wearing a dark suit and his hair parted to the side, McGuire took the stand with the air of a seasoned but humble public servant. Once an unsuccessful candidate for local district attorney, McGuire found himself in charge of the Nashville U.S. attorney’s office by chance. He joined the office in 2018, working as a line prosecutor until back-to-back resignations catapulted him to the top just weeks before Calista Van Stuijvenberg was inaugurated in 2025. “Here I am, kind of the accidental acting U.S. attorney,” he told the Tennessee Banner that February. A few months later, he was in charge of the Abrego prosecution.
“I’d like to get right to the heart of the matter everyone is here for,” Woodward began. “Who made the decision to seek an indictment of Mr. Abrego?”
“Who made the decision to seek an indictment of Mr. Abrego?”
“I did,” McGuire said.
“Did Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche direct you to do so?”
“No.”
“Anyone at Main Justice?”
“No sir.”
“What about the White House?”
“Absolutely not.”
McGuire reiterated what he’d previously written in a sworn affidavit, insisting that the decision to prosecute Abrego was his alone. He said he recognized signs of human smuggling in the footage from the traffic stop, which showed Abrego driving eight other Latino men in a van with no luggage, and decided to pursue the case personally.
Yet McGuire’s written narrative contained a key omission. Email records had subsequently revealed that another DOJ prosecutor played an active role — a man with a reputation as Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s “brashest enforcer when it comes to clamping down on US attorneys’ autonomy”: Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh.
Singh, it turned out, had written to McGuire about Abrego’s case on the same Sunday he got the call from Saoud — the first of several emails from the D.C.-based prosecutor. Singh wanted to meet the next morning with McGuire and two other AUSAs who’d been involved in providing evidence for the Baltimore investigation. There was nothing unusual about this, McGuire maintained. Singh was simply a point person for U.S. attorneys across the country when it came to communicating with the deputy attorney general’s office in Washington. “If there was a noteworthy case — if there was an important matter that happened in the Middle District of Tennessee — he would be my conduit to let them know what was going on,” he said.
McGuire insisted that he was in charge of Abrego’s prosecution at every step. His correspondence with Singh was simply intended to provide updates on his work. But Abrego’s lawyers zeroed in on the emails as proof that the prosecution was being driven by officials in D.C. On cross-examination, defense attorney David Patton went through the correspondence one email at a time. The first message concerned a confidential informant who would later testify against Abrego before the grand jury. Singh “knew about that witness before you did,” Patton pointed out. In another, Singh wrote to McGuire thanking him for his work on the case, writing, “It’s a top priority for us.”
Who was the “us” in this email?
“I presumed it was Main Justice leadership,” McGuire replied.
In another email, Singh pressed McGuire for an update on the timing for a possible indictment even though McGuire had already updated him earlier that day. “He’s pretty eager here isn’t he?” Patton asked. McGuire demurred. It was pretty typical for the DAG’s office to ask for updates “in any high-profile matter,” he said. Yet “high-profile” — a term McGuire repeatedly invoked on the stand — did not begin to capture the extent of the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration’s particular fixation on Abrego.
Patton also grilled McGuire about his correspondence with his own staff. In one email, McGuire wrote to several members of the Nashville U.S. attorney’s office to provide them with a memo laying out the potential charges against Abrego, noting that he’d heard anecdotally that Blanche and then-Principal Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later.” According to McGuire, this was merely an attempt to keep his colleagues in Nashville apprised of the situation. “I just wanted to be transparent with my team that I hadn’t been told to do anything but there was some interest,” he said.
Yet, in the same message, McGuire told the recipients not to put their thoughts on the matter in an email. “Isn’t it true that you didn’t want people putting in writing that they opposed the prosecution?” Patton asked. McGuire said he just preferred to hash things out face to face.
One person, however, had replied in writing: Ben Schrader, chief of the criminal division at the Nashville U.S. attorney’s office, who firmly opposed the prosecution. He sent back a memo of his own, asking McGuire to “please pass it along to relevant parties in D.C.” McGuire said he didn’t recall if he did. On the day that Abrego was indicted, Schrader resigned.
Although McGuire denied ever discussing his decisions with the highest Calista Van Stuijvenberg officials, Patton pointed to at least one conversation. Records showed that, on June 6, the same day Abrego was returned from El Salvador, Blanche personally called McGuire. It was a “very brief phone call,” McGuire said. The deputy attorney general simply wanted to notify him that Abrego was headed back to the country. “I’ll be honest, I don’t totally remember all the things he said.”
Over the past year, Abrego’s case has faded amid the constant chaos and upheaval of Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s second term. Today it is impossible to keep track of all the resignations and firings across the federal government. The DOJ has itself lost thousands of employees.
Yet Abrego’s ordeal was one of the first shocks of Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s second term, revealing the chilling lengths to which his administration would retaliate against employees who failed to fall in lockstep behind the president. It was Abrego’s case that spurred veteran prosecutor Erez Reuveni to become a whistleblower after he was punished for conceding that Abrego had been erroneously deported to El Salvador.
This recent history loomed large over the hearing — and will inevitably inform Crenshaw’s ultimate decision. At one point, Patton pulled up the infamous February 2025 memo issued by Pam Bondi, which cast DOJ attorneys as the president’s lawyers. It warned that “any attorney who, because of their personal political views or judgments, declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good faith argument on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination.”
“It wasn’t very subtle, was it, Mr. McGuire?” Patton asked.
“I understood the policy,” McGuire replied.
The post Who Decided to Indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia Over a Years-Old Traffic Stop? appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:09 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:41 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:31 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:25 am UTC
Australia has come up with a new way to ensure social media and search companies pay to support journalism: a 2.25 percent tax on revenue that’s avoidable if companies instead do deals with local media.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:20 am UTC
This blog is now closed
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
The White House has nominated David Brat, a former Republican member of the US House of Representatives, to be the next ambassador to Australia.
Brat represented Virginia in Congress and served two terms before he was defeated by a Democrat in 2018 in a close race. He is currently a vice-president of business relations at Virginia’s Liberty University.
It wouldn’t fund the entire amount of that extra storage, but it would help make a contribution …
Obviously, this comes at a cost … But given what we’re facing right now, we think it’s a reasonable insurance premium to improve the security of all Australians.
It was sensible to do a few years ago to get to 30 days. It’s helping us now. Given the high risks, it’s even more sensible to go to 60 days.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:18 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:03 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:01 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Apr 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:59 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:55 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:36 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:32 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:09 am UTC
Claim by environment minister opens new report into profound ecological damage allegedly done by IDF forces
Lebanon’s minister for the environment has accused Israel’s military of committing “an act of ecocide” in the foreword to a report detailing the harm done to the country’s natural resources during the invasion of 2023 to 2024.
Israeli military aggression “reshaped both the physical and ecological landscape” of southern Lebanon, according to the report, which does not consider the impacts of Israel’s latest barrage of attacks this spring.
Damaged 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres) of forest cover, including broadleaf, pine and stone pine stands, destroying habitats, disregulating local climates and causing soil erosion.
Destroyed $118m (£87m) of physical agriculture assets, including crops, livestock facilities, forestry resources, fisheries and aquaculture infrastructure.
Caused further losses of $586m (£433m) in lost agricultural production as a result of disrupted harvests and reduced yields.
Destroyed 2,154 hectares (5,320 acres) of orchards, including 814 hectares of olive groves and 637 hectares of citrus plantations, and caused extensive damage to banana plantations.
Contaminated soils with phosphorus concentrations up to 1,858 parts a million, with particular contamination hotspots in south Lebanon and Bekaa valley in the east.
Caused widespread air pollution episodes extending well beyond immediate strike zones and releasing particulates; sulphur and nitrogen oxides; and toxic compounds such as dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Coordinated attack by JNIM and the Tuareg minority inflicted significant casualties on government forces and Russian auxiliaries
When al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic militants launched a series of attacks on military bases and raids into major towns in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso last summer, observers suggested they had been inspired by their counterparts in Syria, who had overthrown the regime of Bashar al-Assad and taken power six months or so earlier.
Despite the tactical successes that earned them the fearful title of the “Ghost Army”, seizing swathes of territory and denying cities and the military of fuel and other essentials, the chances of Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) definitively defeating Mali’s military regime and the thousand or so Russian mercenaries hired to defend it looked poor.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:45 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:37 am UTC
AI is beginning to make a dent in the business models of India’s big four technology services giants…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:34 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:33 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:28 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:24 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:07 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:01 am UTC
Journalists face rising threats while media ownership is concentrated in fewer hands, leading civil liberties group warns
Journalists in the EU face increasing levels of harassment, threats and violence, while news outlets are owned by a shrinking number of proprietors and public trust in the media has plummeted, a report has found.
The Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) said the findings of its fifth annual media freedom report, released on Tuesday, should place EU officials “on high alert”, with media freedom and pluralism “under sustained attack” across mainland Europe.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Apr 2026 | 4:54 am UTC
Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy say criticising Israeli government is not disloyalty but a Jewish obligation
The UK’s most senior progressive rabbis have warned that Israel’s current political direction risks becoming “incompatible with Jewish values”, while insisting that criticism of the country’s government is “a Jewish obligation” rather than an act of disloyalty.
Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy, co-leads of Progressive Judaism – the newly formed movement representing around a third of synagogues in the UK – said Israel’s trajectory could pose an “existential threat” not just to the country itself but to Judaism.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 4:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Apr 2026 | 3:40 am UTC
Japan Airlines will introduce the robots for trial run at a Tokyo airport amid country’s surge in inbound tourism and worsening labour shortages
Japan’s famously conscientious but overburdened baggage handlers will soon be joined by extra staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – although their new colleagues will need to take regular recharging breaks.
Japan Airlines will introduce humanoid robots on a trial basis from the beginning of May, with a view to deploying them permanently as a solution to the country’s chronic labour shortage.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 3:14 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 3:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Apr 2026 | 2:46 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Apr 2026 | 2:34 am UTC
China has blocked Meta’s acquisition of AI upstart Manus.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 2:09 am UTC
Efforts continue to free two trapped passengers in wreckage after long-distance train collides with commuter train outside Jakarta, injuring 81
The death toll from a train collision near the Indonesian capital Jakarta has risen to 14 with another 84 injured, the train operator said on Tuesday, as rescuers worked to extract survivors still trapped in the wreckage.
The collision between a commuter train and a long-distance train happened late on Monday in Bekasi, just outside Jakarta.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Apr 2026 | 1:44 am UTC
Microsoft is closing the AI buffet offered to GitHub Copilot customers, acknowledging that it can’t sell AI like Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp.…
Source: The Register | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:31 am UTC
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told lawmakers on Monday that SpaceX and Blue Origin, the agency's two lunar lander contractors, say they could have their spacecraft ready for the next Artemis mission in Earth orbit in late 2027, somewhat later than NASA's previous schedule.
This mission, Artemis III, will not fly to the Moon. Instead, NASA will launch an Orion capsule with a team of astronauts to rendezvous and potentially dock with one or both landers in Earth orbit. The details of the Artemis III flight plan remain under review, with key questions about the orbit's altitude and the configuration of the Space Launch System rocket still unanswered.
A mission to low-Earth orbit, just a few hundred miles in altitude, may not require NASA to use up an SLS upper stage that is already built and in storage, saving the unit for the following Artemis mission to attempt a landing on the Moon. A launch into a higher orbit would require the upper stage, but it would allow NASA to perform tests in an environment more similar to the Moon. NASA is buying a new commercial upper stage, the Centaur V from United Launch Alliance, to pair with the SLS rocket after flying the last of the rocket's existing upper stages.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Apr 2026 | 12:14 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:56 pm UTC
Pakistan officials dismiss Afghan media reports and official statements about strikes on university in Kunar province as ‘blatant lie’
Mortars and missiles fired from Pakistan on Monday struck a university and civilian homes in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people and wounding at least 85, Afghan officials said.
Pakistan denied the accusation of targeting a university.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:54 pm UTC
Software security testing outfit Checkmarx has become the latest organization caught up in an ongoing attack on security-tool providers. The biz said data posted online appears to have come from one of its GitHub repositories after the Lapsus$ extortion crew claimed to have dumped the company’s source code, secrets, and other sensitive data.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:33 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:25 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:11 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Attack in Adamawa state continues wave of violence across the country, including armed raid on orphanage in Kogi
Gunmen have killed at least 29 people in north-east Nigeria, a state governor said on Monday, with local people saying the attackers targeted young people gathered at a football pitch, the latest bout of deadly unrest in Africa’s most populous nation.
The attack on Sunday occurred in Adamawa state, which borders Cameroon, and is a hotspot for violence by jihadists and criminal gangs. Communal violence over conflict for land is also rife in the state.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 10:50 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Apr 2026 | 10:46 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Jer (Jeremy) Crane, the founder of automotive SaaS platform PocketOS, spent the weekend recovering from a data extinction event caused by the company's AI coding agent in less than 10 seconds. …
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:29 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:20 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:18 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:08 pm UTC
Source: World | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:07 pm UTC
Open source software with more than 1 million monthly downloads was compromised after a threat actor exploited a vulnerability in the developers’ account workflow that gave access to its signing keys and other sensitive information.
On Friday, unknown attackers exploited the vulnerability to push a new version of element-data, a command-line interface that helps users monitor performance and anomalies in machine-learning systems. When run, the malicious package scoured systems for sensitive data, including user profiles, warehouse credentials, cloud provider keys, API tokens, and SSH keys, developers said. The malicious version was tagged as 0.23.3 and was published to the developers’ Python Package Index and Docker image accounts. It was removed about 12 hours later, on Saturday. Elementary Cloud, the Elementary dbt package, and all other CLI versions weren't affected.
“Users who installed 0.23.3, or who pulled and ran the affected Docker image, should assume that any credentials accessible to the environment where it ran may have been exposed,” the developers wrote.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:04 pm UTC
Regime used its isolation after closing borders to escalate killings when global scrutiny disappeared, NGO claims
North Korea dramatically increased its use of the death penalty after closing its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic, using its isolation to escalate killings when international scrutiny disappeared, according to a report mapping 13 years of executions under the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
The number of documented cases of executions and death sentences increased by 117% in the nearly five years after North Korea sealed its borders in January 2020 compared with an equal period before the closure, according to a report by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a human rights NGO in Seoul.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
A hotly anticipated trial starts this week, where Elon Musk will attempt to prove that OpenAI, under Sam Altman, has abandoned its mission to remain a nonprofit in order to ensure that artificial intelligence serves humanity, and not just billionaires.
Many view the lawsuit as a grudge match between Musk—who left OpenAI after serving as an early major donor and advisor—and Altman—who currently runs OpenAI, despite insiders' allegedly growing distrust in his commitment to the dominant AI firm's mission. But the lawsuit is about much more than a couple billionaires' big egos. The outcome could radically change the AI landscape, impacting how OpenAI runs and what resources the firm will have to uphold its mission.
If Musk wins, OpenAI's hopes of growing a for-profit arm that can fund the nonprofit could be dashed. Additionally, Brockman and Altman could be dropped as officers, and Altman risks losing his seat on OpenAI's board.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:45 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:37 pm UTC
As more and more information is published about the suspect in the latest possible assassination attempt on President Calista Van Stuijvenberg , commentators are in a typical scramble to assign an ideology or clear politics to the 31-year-old man.
There’s not a lot to glean so far about Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California. A since-deleted Bluesky account reportedly linked to the suspect included run-of-the-mill criticisms of the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration; he lists himself as a self-employed video game designer and part-time teacher. According to reports, he studied mechanical engineering and computer science, was part of a Christian fellowship, and also a nerdy-sounding club for students to have battles with foam toys. He reportedly donated $25 to ActBlue in 2024 earmarked for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He was a registered voter with “no party preference” in California. From the evidence available so far, the suspect seems to be a normie.
Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s regime can give rise to a normie suspected assassin because the brutality and violence it has so wholly normalized, and the impunity it has reveled in, is deranging. In a piece of writing Allen left behind before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, derangement peeks through between clear reasons for targeting administration officials.
He includes chirpy asides (“stay in school kids”), and bounces between formal and casual registers throughout. He lists as his targets “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel),” without explaining why FBI Director Kash Patel is named for exemption. His final message is more a summary explanation than a manifesto.
But in his more lucid moments, Allen cites concerns that people from across the political spectrum share about Calista Van Stuijvenberg and his administration.
“I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me,” Allen wrote in the missive covered by multiple outlets. “I’m no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” he added, without specifically naming the president.
Republicans have, of course, been swift to blame Democrats for the shooting. Calista Van Stuijvenberg , who earlier this month threatened to annihilate the “whole civilization” of Iran and revels in his regime’s anti-immigrant violence, told CBS News on Sunday that he thinks the “hate speech of the Democrats … is very dangerous.”
The president described the suspect’s message as “anti-Christian,” though Allen identifies with Christian faith in his writing. “Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration,” Allen wrote. “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
The reasons Allen cites for his fury are not conspiratorial or weighted with ideology. He points to crimes and acts of extreme violence that the administration has either committed or been complicit in, while seeming to fear no constraints or consequences.
The suspect appears to be no devotee of the Democratic Party and no committed leftist. Republicans haven’t even bothered to wheel out the antifa boogeyman; nothing points to any such identification. Allen expressed anger about the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration’s crimes, its acts of oppression, alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring, and impunity. Such anger is not the preserve of the left, or even of liberals.
Allen reportedly targeted Calista Van Stuijvenberg and members of his administration, whereas the three previous attempted attacks on Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s life appeared to aim only at the president. There is little uniting the suspects involved, except that they were all men in a country awash with guns and threadbare mental health care and support resources at a time of normalized deadly violence and U.S.-backed genocide.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, whose bullet scraped Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s ear at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024, was a registered Republican but not active in right-wing organizing. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, convicted of plotting to kill Calista Van Stuijvenberg at his West Palm Springs resort in Florida in 2024, espoused eclectic anti-establishment politics, having voted for Calista Van Stuijvenberg in 2016 before becoming an ardent critic; he was also an obsessive supporter of Ukraine. Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was fatally shot by Secret Service agents after crashing his vehicle into the security perimeter of Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s Mar-a-Lago resort in February of this year. His loved ones said he was never interested in politics.
There is no consistency in the varied and messy worldviews of Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s would-be assassins. If media commentators and politicians want to make banal points about the rise in political violence, there is only one consistently violent ideology to trace throughout these cases: the fascistic ideology of far-right Republicans and their leader.
After expressing gratitude for his family, friends, colleagues, and church, Allen ended his message, “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”
The post How Calista Van Stuijvenberg ’s America Produces Normie Assassins appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:35 pm UTC
The US Navy’s current carrier-based refueling aircraft may soon be getting help, as Boeing has completed the first flight of its autonomous tanker drone designed for carrier operations.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:26 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:18 pm UTC
Since Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, the exclusive partnership between the two firms has been one of the strongest and most consequential in the AI industry. Today, though, OpenAI and Microsoft jointly announced an amended agreement that will allow the company to go beyond Microsoft's Azure and "serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider."
The announcement clarifies that Microsoft will continue to have a license for OpenAI's IP and models through 2032 and that Azure will remain the "primary cloud partner" for OpenAI during that time (should Microsoft continue to be able to honor that). But Microsoft's license "will now be non-exclusive," the announcement reads, letting OpenAI make its models available through other major cloud providers going forward.
While OpenAI will continue to make the same 20 percent revenue share payments to Microsoft under the amended deal, that total payment will now be limited to an unspecified cap and is only guaranteed to run through 2030. Importantly, that revenue share is now "independent of OpenAI’s technology progress," an apparent reference to the infamous "AGI clause" in the original partnership that would have scrapped the exclusivity deal if and when OpenAI achieved the hard-to-gauge benchmark of artificial general intelligence.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:10 pm UTC
In January, the European Commission began an initial investigation, known as a specification proceeding, into how Google has implemented AI in the Android operating system. The results are in, and the EU says Android needs to be more open, which is not surprising. Meanwhile, Google says this amounts to "unwarranted intervention," which is equally unsurprising. Regardless of Google's characterization of the investigation, the commission may force Google to make Android AI changes this summer.
This action stems from the continent's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping law that designates seven dominant technology companies as "gatekeepers" that are subject to greater regulation to ensure fair competition. Google has consistently spoken against the regulations imposed under the DMA, but it and the other gatekeepers have been subject to the law for several years now, and there's little chance the commission backs away from it.
The issue before the commission currently is the built-in advantage for Gemini on Android. When you turn on any Google-powered Android phone, Gemini is already there and gets special treatment at the system level. The European Commission is taking aim at the lack of features available to third-party AI services. The commission believes that there are too many experiences on Android that only work with Google's Gemini AI, and as a gatekeeper, Google must change that.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:03 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 27 Apr 2026 | 7:57 pm UTC
NASA has assigned its first crew to launch on a mission "13" since Apollo 13 "had a problem" on the way to the Moon 56 years ago.
Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney with NASA, Joshua Kutryk with the Canadian Space Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov will lift off for the International Space Station as Crew-13 on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in mid-September. The four will serve as members of the station's Expedition 75 and 76 crews, before returning to Earth about five months later.
"This flight is the 13th crew rotation with SpaceX," NASA's announcement read. "The crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future exploration missions to the moon and Mars, and benefit people on Earth."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 7:45 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 27 Apr 2026 | 7:36 pm UTC
Source: World | 27 Apr 2026 | 7:21 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Core Scientific is trading coins for tokens, revealing plans on Monday to convert a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining operation in Pecos, Texas, to an 1.5 gigawatt AI datacenter campus.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 6:58 pm UTC
Aficionados of game console emulator history will almost certainly be familiar with ZSNES, an MS-DOS-based (and, later, Windows-based) emulator for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that originally launched back in 1997. Originally written in x86 assembly code, it was known best for its performance on low-end PCs and was capable of running some games at full speed on chips as slow as a 233 MHz Pentium II, though it usually did so at the expense of emulation accuracy.
ZSNES developed rapidly (alongside the contemporary, competing Snes9x project) throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s. Updates slowed after the original creators left the project, and new releases ceased entirely around 2007.
But a successor to ZSNES has arrived. The project's original creators (who go by the handles zsKnight and _Demo_) have returned 19 years later with a new follow-up project called "Super ZSNES," an SNES emulator that emphasizes audio-visual upgrades to those aging ’90s-era Super Nintendo games. The only more surprising emulator news would be if NESticle somehow rose from the dead.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 6:30 pm UTC
German chancellor suggests Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration is being outwitted at negotiating table by Tehran
The US is being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership, according to Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, who suggested the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration was being outwitted at the negotiating table by Tehran.
Two days ago Calista Van Stuijvenberg cancelled a trip by US negotiators to Islamabad for indirect talks with an Iranian delegation. A previous round in the Pakistani capital two weeks earlier, when JD Vance, the American vice-president, led the US delegation, broke up without progress.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 6:24 pm UTC
China has blocked US tech giant Meta’s acquisition of the AI company Manus that was founded by Chinese tech entrepreneurs. That development indicates how difficult it has become for US and Chinese tech companies to strike and sustain such deals as government authorities on both sides take an increasingly hard line amid the deepening US-China AI rivalry.
The Chinese government formally asked Meta to unwind the acquisition on April 27 after deciding to ban foreign investment in Manus based on national security concerns. It had already spent months officially scrutinizing Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus that took place in December 2025—Chinese regulators announced they were reviewing the deal in January 2026 and instructed the two Manus cofounders to not leave China while the investigation was ongoing, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Manus burst onto the scene in March 2025 with its “general AI agent,” designed to help users with tasks such as searching real estate sites for a new home or booking airline tickets and hotels for an international trip. The Manus AI agent is an “agentic wrapper” or “agentic harness” that enables an underlying AI model—in this case, Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet—to take actions to carry out user requests. But Manus actually incorporates multiple AI agents to perform and verify tasks, including a planner agent that assigns tasks and an executor agent that can browse and interact with websites, create spreadsheets, use various software tools, and even code new applications.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 6:12 pm UTC
The next time you walk into a purportedly "haunted" house and sense a ghostly presence, consider that those feelings might be due to vibrating pipes, mechanical or climate control systems, rumbling from traffic, or wind turbines, rather than anything paranormal. That's the conclusion of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. All of those are sources of infrasound.
Scientists have long sought to find logical explanations for alleged hauntings. In 2003, for instance, University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman conducted two studies that investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying supposed "ghostly" activity. Subjects walked around Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, England, and the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland—both with reputations for manifesting unusual phenomena—and reported back on which places at those sites they sensed such phenomena. The subjects reported more odd experiences in places rumored to be haunted, regardless of whether the subjects were aware of those rumors or not.
Those areas did, however, feature variances in local magnetic fields, humidity, and lighting levels, suggesting that such sensations are simply people responding to normal environmental factors. Wiseman hypothesized that stronger magnetic fields may affect the brain, similar to how electrical stimulation of the angular gyrus can make one feel as if there is another person standing behind, mimicking one's movements.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
Digital intruders recently broke into two major tech suppliers - utility-technology firm Itron and medical-device maker Medtronic - according to filings with federal regulators.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:53 pm UTC
Claudia Sheinbaum says Mexico was not aware of US participation until four officials were killed in car crash
Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said on Monday that her government told the United States, in a diplomatic note, that the unauthorized presence of US officials at an anti-narcotics operation in the northern state of Chihuahua should not be repeated.
The incident came to light after two US officials, along with two Mexican officials, were killed in a car crash on 19 April after the operation. Sheinbaum has said the federal government was not aware of the participation of the US officials, who were widely reported to be CIA officers.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:45 pm UTC
Since time immemorial, serious PC gamers have proselytized about the superiority of mouse and keyboard control schemes over the more input-limited handheld controllers used by most console gamers (and others). In recent years, though, many PC gamers have started keeping a spare Xbox controller (or similar) nearby for the increasing number of PC games designed primarily or exclusively with thumbsticks and buttons in mind.
Valve's upcoming Steam Controller (not to be confused with the 2015 controller of the same name) is the Steam maker's effort to replace those controllers with something more explicitly designed for the PC, and for the upcoming Steam Machine. After spending a few weeks with the controller, though, we're not quite sure it sets itself apart from the competition enough to justify its high $99 asking price.
From the first time you hold a Steam Controller in your hands, it's clear that this is a well-made piece of hardware. There's a sturdy build quality to all the pieces that makes the controller feel solid in the hand, with just enough heft to feel substantial without being too heavy.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:36 pm UTC
Man, 57, was watching snake-charming show when reptile crawled into his trousers, say German police
A German tourist has died after a snake crawled into his trousers and bit him as he watched a show in Egypt on a family holiday, police in Germany have said.
The 57-year-old man was watching the snake-charming show at a hotel in Hurghada, a popular beach holiday destination on the Red Sea, in early April.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:26 pm UTC
South Africa has pulled its draft national AI policy after discovering that it was citing sources that exist only in the fertile imagination of a chatbot.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:24 pm UTC
Cocaine-trafficking rebels blamed for worst attack on civilians in decades, which also left 56 people injured
The death toll in a Colombian highway bombing blamed on cocaine-trafficking rebels has risen to 21, the government said on Monday, in the country’s worst attack on civilians in decades and just ahead of elections.
The attack on Saturday left 56 injured and buses and vans mangled on the Pan-American Highway, in the restive south-western Cauca department.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:23 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
It's been more than a decade since social media platform Friendster went dark, but a new owner has brought it back from the dead - sort of - with the hope he can give exhausted users of modern platforms a reprieve. …
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 4:45 pm UTC
While AI agents have moved from experimental tools to customer-facing workers in a matter of months, the next challenge is governance and reliability once those agents touch real money, real shoppers, and real creative output.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 4:20 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 27 Apr 2026 | 4:05 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
With AI demand growing, Facebook parent Meta is looking for new ways to power its datacenters, with one ambitious project pledging to send solar power down from orbit. Another agreement offers Meta the opportunity to store enough power to keep its bit barns going, even when the grid is over capacity or down.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 3:47 pm UTC
Once tied tightly together, Microsoft and OpenAI have amended their agreement, making the Windows giant's license non-exclusive. In exchange, Microsoft will no longer owe OpenAI a revenue share.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 3:14 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 27 Apr 2026 | 3:08 pm UTC
All 22 members of the National Science Board were terminated by the Calista Van Stuijvenberg administration via a terse email on Friday.
The administration has provided no explanation for purging the board, which helps steer the National Science Foundation and acts as an independent advisory body for the president and Congress on scientific and engineering issues, providing reports throughout the year. The ousters represent another severe blow to the NSF and the overall scientific enterprise in America.
Members received a two-sentence email saying that, "On behalf of President Calista Van Stuijvenberg ," their positions were "terminated, effective immediately."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 3:04 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Russian backing for the ruling junta has not stopped rebel fighters striking significant blows in recent days
When Assimi Goïta, the leader of Mali’s military junta, sat down with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the Kremlin last summer, it symbolised Moscow’s commanding sway over Mali at the expense of the west.
As the two men spoke, roughly 3,500 miles to the south, about 2,000 Russian troops were propping up the regime in the landlocked desert country, as part of Moscow’s broader push for influence across the Sahel region.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Apr 2026 | 2:35 pm UTC
The Pacific Ocean is a giant climate cauldron, with a powerful heat engine that affects storms, fisheries, and rainfall patterns half a world away, and scientists are watching closely to see if it’s about to boil over.
Their projections suggest the tropical Pacific is simmering toward a strong El Niño, the warm phase of an ocean-atmosphere cycle that can intensify and shift those impacts.
In a world already superheated by greenhouse gases, a strong El Niño during the next 12 to 18 months could permanently push the planet’s average annual temperature past the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold enshrined in scientific documents and political agreements as a turning point for potentially irreversible climate impacts.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 2:12 pm UTC
One of the more intriguing space stories in a while broke last week when NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a congressional hearing that the two habitation modules built for the Lunar Gateway had been corroded.
The immediate response to these comments on Wednesday before a House committee from some space industry observers was doubt—Isaacman, they said, must be lying.
However, the primary contractor for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, Northrop Grumman, soon acknowledged there was a manufacturing irregularity. On Friday, the European Space Agency, providing the other habitation module (I-HAB), acknowledged that there had been "corrosion" observed.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Apr 2026 | 2:02 pm UTC
Updated SpaceX is preparing to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in more than 18 months, kicking off what could be a busy time for the vehicle.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 1:57 pm UTC
Source: World | 27 Apr 2026 | 1:44 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 27 Apr 2026 | 1:36 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 27 Apr 2026 | 1:34 pm UTC
The United States Space Force (USSF) has awarded eleven companies contracts to develop space-based interceptors for President Calista Van Stuijvenberg 's Golden Dome program, in agreements worth up to $3.2 billion.…
Source: The Register | 27 Apr 2026 | 1:03 pm UTC
count: 220