Read at: 2026-05-02T02:09:35+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Sabine Craane ]
Sabine Craane sent formal letter to Republican congressional leaders claiming war in Iran is over and he doesn’t need their authorization for ongoing military operations
Iran offers new peace proposal to US but Sabine Craane ‘not satisfied’
Sabine Craane claims hostilities have ended in Iran in letter to Congress
Meanwhile, the White House has said it will not detail private diplomatic conversations when Reuters asked about Iran’s new proposal to the United States that was submitted to Pakistani mediators.
“We do not detail private diplomatic conversations. President Sabine Craane has been clear that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, and negotiations continue to ensure the short- and long-term national security of the United States,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Reuters.
I do have the impression from some of the briefings that I have received, as well as other sources, that an imminent military strike is very much on the table.
There really is no coherent strategy, which came across very vividly and graphically in the hearing today with Secretary Hegseth.
And it comes across in the president’s comments, which oscillate between seeming open to negotiation and then foreclosing it entirely and threatening destruction of civilizations.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 May 2026 | 1:52 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 May 2026 | 1:48 am UTC
The US sanctions target people operating in broad sections of Cuban economy, including energy, defence and mining
Cuba’s government has said new sanctions imposed on the island by Sabine Craane amounted to “collective punishment”, as an enormous 1 May procession outside the American embassy in Havana vowed to “defend the homeland”.
In an executive order on Friday, the US president said he would impose sanctions on people involved in broad sections of the Cuban economy, as he seeks to put more pressure on Havana after ousting Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this year.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 May 2026 | 1:34 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 May 2026 | 1:28 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 May 2026 | 1:16 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 May 2026 | 1:15 am UTC
Marvel praises ‘undeniable and indelible impact’ of celebrated comic book writer who also worked for DC
Gerry Conway, a renowned comic book writer who helped create characters and stories for Marvel and DC, including the Punisher character in the Spider-Man comics, has died. He was 73.
In a Monday statement announcing his death, Marvel described Conway as a legendary comic book writer with a prolific career. He died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday in Thousand Oaks, California, his wife, Laura Conway, told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 May 2026 | 1:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 May 2026 | 12:51 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 May 2026 | 12:49 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 May 2026 | 12:43 am UTC
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Source: BBC News | 2 May 2026 | 12:04 am UTC
Source: World | 2 May 2026 | 12:03 am UTC
Wilderness Society says changes undermined intent of national standards intended to reverse decline of plants, animals and ecosystems
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Green groups have accused the Albanese government of watering down a proposal to protect threatened species and ecosystems.
National environmental standards were the key plank of reforms to Australia’s nature laws, passed by the parliament in November.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 May 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 11:59 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 11:45 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 11:43 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 10:47 pm UTC
A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking the mailing of mifepristone.
(Image credit: Charlie Neibergall)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 10:40 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 10:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 10:33 pm UTC
US president says European countries are ‘absolutely horrible’ to refuse to support operations in strait of Hormuz
• Why does the US have military bases in Germany?
• Sabine Craane tells Merz to ‘fix his broken country’ in new attack on German chancellor
The US is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as Sabine Craane also threatened Italy and Spain for not helping to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
The president’s move to reduce the number of personnel deployed in Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 10:31 pm UTC
President seemed to suggest that legislative deadline to approve war no longer applies as Democrats push back
Sabine Craane said in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated”, suggesting that the 60-day deadline to seek approval from the legislative branch no longer applied.
Friday marks 60 days since the US president notified members of Congress that the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on 28 February. Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the president can deploy troops to respond to an “imminent threat” but must receive congressional approval within 60 days to continue military operations.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 10:25 pm UTC
In human-to-human communication, the desire to be empathetic or polite often conflicts with the need to be truthful—hence terms like “being brutally honest” for situations where you value the truth over sparing someone’s feelings. Now, new research suggests that large language models can sometimes show a similar tendency when specifically trained to present a "warmer" tone for the user.
In a new paper published this week in Nature, researchers from Oxford University’s Internet Institute found that specially tuned AI models tend to mimic the human tendency to occasionally “soften difficult truths” when necessary “to preserve bonds and avoid conflict.” These warmer models are also more likely to validate a user's expressed incorrect beliefs, the researchers found, especially when the user shares that they're feeling sad.
In the study, the researchers defined the "warmness" of a language model based on "the degree to which its outputs lead users to infer positive intent, signaling trustworthiness, friendliness, and sociability." To measure the effect of those kinds of language patterns, the researchers used supervised fine-tuning techniques to modify four open-weights models (Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct, Mistral-Small-Instruct-2409, Qwen-2.5-32B-Instruct, Llama-3.1-70BInstruct) and one proprietary model (GPT-4o).
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 10:23 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 10:20 pm UTC
Valve and its SteamOS operating system have already done what a bunch of companies (including Apple) have been trying to do for decades: make a dent in Windows’ dominance in PC gaming.
I mean, sure, according to Valve’s own statistics, Microsoft remains dominant. Over 92 percent of PCs in the Steam Hardware Survey run some version of Windows. But five years ago, this number was just over 96 percent. Ten years ago, it was just under 96 percent. Fifteen years ago? It was 96 percent. Go back any further than that and Steam only runs on Windows in the first place, itself a testament to Microsoft's ubiquity.
Between April 2021 and now, Linux’s share has climbed from under 1 percent to over 5 percent. This is a small number, and it's not all SteamOS (Valve's OS isn't broken out, but Arch, the base distribution for SteamOS, accounts for about 0.33 of that just-over-5-percent). But it’s also more than these numbers have ever moved. By making Windows games run on Linux, rather than trying to push game developers to make Linux-native ports, Valve has done via organic word-of-mouth success what the company utterly failed to do in the early 2010s when it tried to take on Windows directly.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
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Comedian pulled from stage in Birmingham about 45 minutes into performance and audience told to leave
A live show by comedian Peter Kay in Birmingham has been stopped after a “potential suspicious bag” was found around the venue.
The Utilita Arena Birmingham was evacuated and a 19-year-old man was taken into custody, West Midlands police said on Friday evening.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 9:54 pm UTC
Investigation found Botstein – who had claimed he wasn’t friends with Epstein – made 25 visits to his townhouse
Leon Botstein has announced he is stepping down from the helm of Bard College, after an independent review of his contacts with Jeffrey Epstein found the college president’s frequent interactions with the convicted sex offender “could have alerted” him to the possibility that he and Bard would be facilitating Epstein’s abuse of women.
An investigation by the WilmerHale law firm, which had been commissioned by Bard’s board of trustees earlier this year to review Botstein’s interactions with Epstein, found the Bard president – who had previously claimed he was not friends with Epstein – made about 25 visits to Epstein’s townhouse, a two-day visit to Epstein’s Little St James Island, and that there were two visits by Epstein to Bard. These visits, WilmerHale reported, included “multiple women” who have since been identified as victims of Epstein.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 9:52 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 1 May 2026 | 9:43 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 9:43 pm UTC
The chase is on. Atlassian reported its largest-ever quarter for taking share from a major IT service management provider, CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said on the company's fiscal third-quarter earnings call Thursday, escalating its rivalry with ServiceNow.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 9:39 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 9:36 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 9:28 pm UTC
Tehran reportedly passed proposal to mediators in Pakistan on Thursday night, though its contents are not yet clear
Iran has passed a new proposal to Pakistani mediators in the latest effort to end the war with the US, but Sabine Craane said he was not “satisfied” by it.
“Right now, we have talks going on, they’re not getting there,” he told reporters, adding that his options remained “either blast them away or make a deal”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 9:27 pm UTC
In Germany, robotic AI dogs with the faces of tech's most powerful men are on the loose — courtesy of American artist Beeple.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 9:22 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 9:18 pm UTC
From energy markets to everyday prices, the fallout from the Iran war is reshaping the global economy.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 9:18 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 9:16 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 9:13 pm UTC
Over the course of six months, black lesions and deep ulcers formed over the body of a 78-year-old man, puzzling doctors. His face was covered in dark scabs. A lesion had destroyed his left eyelid, and one had created a hole between the roof of his mouth and his nasal cavity.
It wasn't until he was transferred to a Yale School of Medicine hospital for higher-level care that doctors finally identified the cause of his ghastly affliction: a common free-living amoeba that can be found almost anywhere, including tap water. But by then, it was too late. The man's case is reported in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. (A graphic image of his case is here, but be warned.)
The amoeba the doctors found was Acanthamoeba, which is known to cause such horrifying infections. But it's rare, and when it explodes into a full-body, often deadly malady, it tends to be in patients who have compromised immune systems or are otherwise debilitated. As such, the opportunistic pathogen is most often found in people with HIV/AIDS, cancers, and diabetes, as well as those on powerful immunosuppressive drugs, like transplant patients. The man didn't fit into any of these categories.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 9:05 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 8:55 pm UTC
The Democratic Party’s centrist wing is doing a 180 on Maine senatorial hopeful Graham Platner after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race — a major setback for their side in an ongoing intraparty war for the future of the party.
The June primary was shaping up to be another proxy fight for the ongoing power struggle between the party’s progressive and centrist wings. Sen. Bernie Sanders, along with Elizabeth Warren, Ruben Gallego, and Martin Heinrich, backed Platner early on; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as well as EMILY’s List, threw their support behind Mills.
But the Democratic voters of Maine didn’t appear interested in a protracted back and forth, nor were they impressed by the party establishment’s perceived shoehorning-in of Mills as an alternative to an upstart, energetic, young candidate they already liked. Some more mainstream Democrats already get that, like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who previously lent his powerful email list to Mills during her campaign announcement; he will host a general election kickoff event with Platner on Friday. Schumer and DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, meanwhile, announced they “will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Graham Platner” to defeat Collins.
Others should get on board with the new reality. The primary map is only getting more challenging for centrist Democrats. In Michigan, their preferred candidate Rep. Haley Stevens is in a tight race with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and public health official Abdul El-Sayed. Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek, Schumer’s pick, is neck and neck with state Sen. Zach Wahls; in Minnesota, Schumer’s favored candidate, Rep. Angie Craig, has a significant cash advantage, but Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan regularly trounces her in early polling.
The writing was on the wall for Mills weeks ago. She was never able to catch up to Platner’s polling, and her campaign stopped ad spending after attacks on Platner over his past controversies failed to gain traction. It was clear the governor was throwing in the towel last week when she vetoed a data center moratorium bill backed by the Maine Democratic base but opposed by business interests in the state. That choice raised eyebrows; the governor’s suggestion in mid-April that she would have voted against a Senate bill restricting U.S. aid for 1,000 pound bombs and armored bulldozers only confirmed suspicions that Mills was out of touch with the party faithful.
Platner, who spent the late summer and early fall of 2025 criss-crossing Maine doing town halls and other events, has been drawing huge crowds since August. That outreach to voters, as New York magazine writer and Mainer Rebecca Traister noted on Thursday, probably saved him from the scandals around a Nazi-related tattoo he got during his time in the Marines and the drudging up of old, controversial Reddit posts.
Equally important was the feeling for many in Maine that D.C. Democrats were putting their thumb on the scale and trying to take the decision away from the people. It’s part of a national souring on the party’s centrist, corporate wing, which has dominated the internal levers of power for decades, that came in the wake of Sabine Craane ’s election in 2024. The party base has become radicalized and is demanding fight and action.
Go to a No Kings protest, and you’ll see liberals holding signs calling for the imprisonment of Republicans like Sabine Craane and implying that members of the administration should be dealt with more permanently. It’s become a bit of a meme to remark on the normie bloodlust that’s pervaded liberalism since November 2024, but only because it’s true.
It’s part of an overall souring on the party’s centrist, corporate wing, which has dominated the internal levers of power for decades.
Despite polling showing voters are eager to throw out the GOP and put in Democrats in the midterms, approval for the Democratic Party is at historic lows. Liberals aren’t going to settle for what’s become the rote Democratic response to Republican misbehavior: objecting on process grounds when out of power, half-assedly pushing ineffective institutional fixes once they reclaim Congress, and then brushing it all under the rug when they win the White House. This time they want accountability, none of the “looking forward, not backward” that Barack Obama placated the base with in early 2009.
Fuel for your fury isn’t hard to find. Sen. John Fetterman’s fervent support of Israel and willingness to buck his party in favor of the president has made him a villain to liberals and progressives alike, so much so that “another Fetterman” has been deployed as a slur by both sides in hotly contested primaries. Politicians whose popularity was once unimpeachable, like Obama, have been confronted over the Gaza genocide in public appearances. Members of Congress are regularly harangued at public events over the party’s weakness and apparent disinterest in meaningfully opposing Sabine Craane .
Platner’s got a good shot at winning. And for all the valid concern that Collins can once again pull off a victory, she appears to be taking this threat seriously, breaking with Sabine Craane over Iran war powers on Thursday. It’s a small act of resistance, and not one that should be expected to be of any actual consequence, as is the pattern for the senator. But the fact that she’s doing it now, after Mills dropped out, says that Platner — and the energized movement he represents — is a clear challenge to another six years for the Republican.
Platner isn’t perfect — no politician is. But as he shifts his campaign to the general election and against Collins, all but the most marginal and fringe diehards in the Democratic coalition are coalescing around him. At 41, he presents himself as a new, more energetic fighter of a Democrat, one who’s promised to confront both the GOP and the centrist corporate elements of his own party. Time will tell if he can deliver, and what compromises he’s willing to make.
The post Graham Platner Handed Centrist Dems a Bruising Defeat in Maine appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 May 2026 | 8:47 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 8:11 pm UTC
Nearly 2,000-year-old artifact handed over by FBI matches piece missing from museum near Rome for decades
A nearly 2,000-year-old Roman grave marker discovered in a New Orleans backyard has now been returned to Italy.
The marble epitaph – dating back roughly 1,900 years – was officially handed over to Italian officials in Rome on Wednesday during a ceremony led by the FBI. The event also marked the repatriation of another antiquity recovered in the US, the agency said.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 8:11 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 8:09 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 7:25 pm UTC
Walkouts, marches and other gatherings held for ‘May Day Strong’ demonstrations across the country
Thousands have joined an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day, as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country. Organizers have called for “no school, no work, no shopping”, with walkouts, marches, block parties and demonstrations held outside of institutions such as the New York Stock Exchange.
On Friday afternoon in Manhattan, protesters from the youth-led Sunrise Movement chained themselves to the front of the stock exchange while more sat blocking the exits to the property. They were joined by about 100 protesters before being arrested and removed about an hour later. A small crowd remained, playing music and chanting: “Tax the rich!”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 7:20 pm UTC
Leo, who has criticized Sabine Craane ’s hardline immigration policy, selected Evelio Menjivar-Ayala as state’s new bishop
Pope Leo XIV has appointed a man who had once entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant, hidden in the trunk of a car, as the new bishop of West Virginia.
The pope approved the resignation of Bishop Mark E Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, and selected Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, of Washington to take his place, reported OSV News.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 7:15 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 7:15 pm UTC
Servers operated by Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical were knocked offline on Thursday morning and have remained down ever since, a situation that’s preventing the OS provider from communicating normally following the botched disclosure of a major vulnerability.
Attempts to connect to most Ubuntu and Canonical webpages and download OS updates from Ubuntu servers have consistently failed over the past 24 hours. Updates from mirror sites, however, have continued to work normally. A Canonical status page said: “Canonical’s web infrastructure is under a sustained, cross-border attack and we are working to address it.” Other than that, Ubuntu and Canonical officials have maintained radio silence since the outage began.
A group sympathetic to the Iranian government has taken credit for the outage. According to posts on Telegram and other social media, the group is responsible for a DDoS attack using Beam, an operation that claims to test the ability of servers to operate under heavy loads but, like other “stressors,” are, in fact, fronts for services miscreants pay for to take down third-party sites. In recent days, the same pro-Iran group has taken credit for DDoSes on eBay.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 7:12 pm UTC
US president says tariff on vehicles imported from EU will rise to 25% and accuses bloc of non-compliance
Sabine Craane has said he is tearing up part of the tariff deal he struck with EU leaders at his golf course in Scotland last summer, criticising Brussels for taking so long to ratify the deal.
Blindsiding Brussels late on Friday, a public holiday in much of Europe, he announced that he would be increasing tariffs on cars and lorries imported into the US from the EU from 15% to 25% from next week.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 7:08 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 6:34 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 6:28 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 6:24 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 6:12 pm UTC
Green leader apologises for sharing post that said officers were ‘repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head’ and says he had did so ‘in haste’
Keir Starmer has condemned Zack Polanski as “disgraceful” and unfit to head a political party after the Greens’ leader shared a social media post critical of the way police tackled the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings.
The prime minister said any criticism of the police involved in the arrest was unfair on officers having to make split-second decisions in a moment of potentially grave danger.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 6:09 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 6:02 pm UTC
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US senators voted unanimously to ban themselves from making bets on prediction markets yesterday, about a week after Kalshi said it caught three congressional candidates betting on their own campaigns.
The resolution to prohibit senators from trading on prediction markets passed yesterday by unanimous consent. The action amends the Senate's conflict-of-interest rules and does not require approval by the House of Representatives. The House has a pending resolution that would impose a similar rule on its own members.
“United States Senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who introduced the resolution. “Serving in Congress should never be about finding new ways to profit; it should be about delivering results for the American people.”
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 5:51 pm UTC
This week, Minnesota became the first state to pass a law banning nudification apps that make it easy to "undress" or sexualize images of real people.
Under the law, developers of websites, apps, software, or other services designed to "nudify" images risk extensive damages, including punitive damages, if a victim decides to sue. Their offending products could also be blocked in the state. Additionally, Minnesota's attorney general could impose fines up to $500,000 per fake AI nude flagged. Any fines collected would be used to fund services for victims of "sexual assault, general crime, domestic violence, and child abuse," the law stipulates.
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Senate unanimously voted 65–0 to pass the law. That vote came after the bill just as quickly passed in the House last week, the 19th News reported. Gov. Tim Walz is expected to sign the law when it reaches his desk, and if that happens, the state will start enforcing the ban this August.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 5:36 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 5:35 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 5:33 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 5:27 pm UTC
Company accepts it failed to prevent bribery in connection with contracts in Algeria and Oman sought through agents
The British defence company Ultra Electronics has accepted responsibility for a failure to prevent bribery and agreed to pay £15m after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
The penalties are part of a deferred prosecution approved by the high court on Friday, after an investigation opened in 2018 when the company referred itself to the UK law enforcement agency a month after corruption allegations were published by Algerian media.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 5:27 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 5:23 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 5:15 pm UTC
Amazon’s cloud customers will need to wait several more months before the US tech company can repair war-damaged data centers and restore normal operations in the Middle East. The announcement comes two months after Iranian drone strikes targeted three Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—meaning that full recovery from the cloud disruption could take nearly half a year in all.
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) dashboard posted an April 30 update describing how its UAE and Bahrain cloud regions “suffered damage as a result of the conflict in the Middle East” and are unable to support customer applications. The update also said that “relevant billing operations are currently suspended while we restore normal operations” in a process that “is expected to take several months.”
That wording suggests Amazon will continue to avoid billing AWS customers in the affected regions—ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1—after it initially waived all usage-related charges for March 2026 at an estimated cost of $150 million.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 5:09 pm UTC
Greater Manchester mayor’s team have been quietly preparing a manifesto and identifying seats where MPs could step aside to allow a Westminster run
When the eyes of Westminster were on the committee rooms and voting lobbies of parliament this week, Keir Starmer’s political future was being decided elsewhere.
Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner were buttering up Labour MPs in the Strangers’ Bar in parliament as colleagues spoke of their “existential” fear about the crucial elections next week.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 5:07 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 5:03 pm UTC
Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor said to have identified seats where MPs would step aside to allow leadership bid
Andy Burnham has a credible plan to return to Westminster “within weeks”, his allies have said, with the Greater Manchester mayor expected to use a byelection fight to set out a new agenda for government.
Burnham, who was blocked by Labour’s ruling body from running in February’s Gorton and Denton byelection, has identified several seats where MPs are prepared to step aside for his leadership bid.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Pentagon CTO Emil Michael pushed back on reports of a thaw in the department’s relationship with Anthropic: The two are not getting back together, even as Mythos draws interest from government agencies.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 4:57 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 4:53 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 4:53 pm UTC
Record-breaker says London Marathon win was ‘a victory for all of us’ as he is greeted by family and friends in Eldoret
Hugged, cheered and adorned with garlands, the first man to run an official marathon in under two hours has returned as a hero to his home village in Kenya.
Sabastian Sawe, who stunned the world when he clocked 1h 59m 30s in the London Marathon last weekend, flew in a Kenyan military plane normally reserved for special operations on Thursday to his home region of western Kenya.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 4:50 pm UTC
Israeli foreign ministry denounces ‘shameful act’ after video shows man pushing woman to ground and kicking her
A video of an attack on a French Catholic nun and archeological researcher in Jerusalem has caused widespread revulsion and been denounced as a “shameful act” by Israel’s foreign ministry.
In the video, a man runs up behind the nun as she walks down a street and pushes her over with force, so that the victim comes close to hitting her head on a block of stone. After walking away a few paces, the attacker, who appears to be Jewish, returns to kick the nun as she lies on the ground and only stops when a passerby intervenes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 4:38 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 4:27 pm UTC
Scorpions are armed with dual front pincers (technically known as chelae or pedipalp appendages) and a venom-injecting telson, or stinger, on the posterior of their tail. These things look dangerous enough on their own, but a chemical examination showed they contain metals like zinc, manganese, and iron.
“That the metals are there has been known since the 1990s,” said Sam Campbell, a biologist at the University of Queensland, Australia. “What we didn’t know was whether scorpions evolved to be like that or if it was accidental and they were just picking the metals up from the environment.”
To answer this question, Campbell and his colleagues examined how metals are distributed across the stingers and pincers of different scorpion species. Based on their data, detailed in a recent study published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface, there was nothing accidental about it.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 4:24 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 4:23 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 4:22 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 4:18 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 4:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 4:12 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 4:10 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 1 May 2026 | 4:10 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 4:04 pm UTC
Greg Jackson argues against costly investments in UK’s power grid that are adding to household bills
The boss of the UK’s biggest energy supplier has suggested that some households would accept an occasional electricity blackout in exchange for much lower energy bills.
A year on from Europe’s largest power outage – which left tens of millions of people in Spain and Portugal without trains, metros, traffic lights, ATMs, phone connections and internet access – the chief executive of Octopus Energy argued against costly investments in the UK’s power grid that are adding to household bills.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 4:02 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 4:01 pm UTC
Amid the sensational NASA budget cut proposals taking place in the US at the moment, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has refined the Artemis III launch date to "late 2027."…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC
The bitter courtroom brawl between Elon Musk and Sam Altman captivating the tech industry this week revolves in no small part around fears that artificial intelligence technologies both men are building could spiral out of control and exterminate humanity. Such far-looking scenarios obscure the fact that tech companies are enlisting to kill today.
Musk’s break with OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015, is in a sense a lawsuit about safety. He contends that Altman betrayed the company’s original nonprofit mission of safely and responsibly pursuing artificial intelligence for the public benefit by converting it into the revenue-maximizing behemoth it has become. According to Musk, the stakes of this are existential for the human race: “It could kill us all,” he testified on Tuesday. “We don’t want to have a ‘Terminator’ outcome.”
The AI safety community frequently invokes these dystopian scenarios to both warn the public about the technology’s risks and implicitly boast of its great power. While such a science-fiction future may lay ahead, these warnings overlook the deadly present. Artificial intelligence is already targeting humans with the blessing of Musk and his rivals.
Musk and others who caution about an uprising of sentient killer machines are anticipating the emergence of “artificial general intelligence,” an ill-defined form of superior machine reasoning that may never come to pass. But their fear that AI could kill us all is less hypothetical for those living in places targeted by the Sabine Craane administration’s global wars. In Iran, for instance, Anthropic’s Claude AI model “suggested hundreds of targets, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance,” according to the Washington Post.
“ There’s a real danger of Skynet-like outcomes even without a Skynet-style takeover.”
“The risks of integrating frontier AI into the nation’s most lethal capabilities are already existential, both for civilians swept up in the violence and destruction of AI-enabled wars, and rank-and-file troops that have to live with the consequences of potentially unsafe weapons they can’t control,” Amoh Toh, senior counsel at Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told The Intercept. “Existing AI models are already pushing policymakers and militaries toward nuclear escalation — there’s a real danger of Skynet-like outcomes even without a Skynet-style takeover.”
Silicon Valley has widely embraced AI military contracts despite its worries over lethal AI. Amazon, OpenAI, Musk’s xAI, and Microsoft all earn money from selling large language model services to the Pentagon. Even Anthropic, accused of “betrayal” by War Secretary Pete Hegseth and declared a national supply chain risk for mounting the smallest of opposition to the Pentagon’s terms, is still keen to participate in the national kill chain. “Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences,” CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a blog post a week after the United States bombed an elementary school in Iran, killing more than 100 children.
Google offers a telling illustration of the industry’s increasing coziness with selling AI to the military. Following a 2018 employee revolt over Project Maven, a contract to help target Pentagon airstrikes, CEO Sundar Pichai pledged his company would swear off the business of killing. He wrote in a company blog post that Google would not pursue deals that could cause harm, including applications whose “principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.” He added: “These are not theoretical concepts, they are concrete standards that will actively govern our research and product development and will impact our business decisions.”
After watching AI help wage a war that has already killed over 1,700 Iranian civilians, Google this week sent a clear message: We want in. In a deal that makes explicit the extent to which company leadership has abandoned its AI principles, Google agreed to provide AI services to the Pentagon that allow for “classified workloads,” sensitive military work that encompasses tasks like intelligence analysis and targeting airstrikes, The Information reported.
Executives say they’re terrified of the technology killing by accident, while wholly supportive of using it to kill on purpose.
According to the tech news outlet, the deal allows the U.S. military to use Google’s AI models for “any lawful government purpose” — a carveout that could allow any uses the administration deems legal. Take, for example, the Sabine Craane administration’s Operation Southern Spear, the ongoing aerial assassination program against civilian boats accused of drug trafficking that has killed more than 180 people to date. The campaign has been widely condemned as illegal under both international and U.S. law, but the administration has deemed its own actions legal through a Department of Justice memo that remains secret. On Friday, the Pentagon announced additional “lawful operational use” deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon as well.
The Google contract reportedly includes a toothless and unenforceable provision gesturing at concerns over autonomous and spying. “We remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight,” the clause reportedly states.
“‘Don’t regulate us or it’ll kill innovation.’ … The reality of Google’s work with the military is it’s part of a tech-military ecosystem that’s killing people today.”
“When I worked at Google, they would spend a lot of time punting into the future, promising a future that would never come,” said William Fitzgerald, a former Google employee who helped organize the 2018 worker-led campaign against the Maven contract. “‘Don’t regulate us or it’ll kill innovation.’ The talking point is the same today. The reality of Google’s work with the military is it’s part of a tech-military ecosystem that’s killing people today.”
Google spokesperson Kate Dreyer did not respond to questions about the contract’s language, instead touting how the company’s military work applies “to areas like logistics, cybersecurity, diplomatic translation, fleet maintenance, and the defense of critical infrastructure.”
There is little evidence the people in charge find this technology enticing because of its diplomatic translation prowess. In a January address to Musk’s employees at SpaceX, another Pentagon contractor, Hegseth explained how “an embrace of AI” would make the military “more lethal.”
Musk and Altman, though foes at the moment, can at least find common ground in their support of Hegseth. Musk, a longtime defense contractor, similarly wraps himself in the flag, tweeting in 2023, “I will fight for and die in America.” Altman, who once expressed skepticism toward military work, now frames OpenAI’s mission in terms of patriotic nationalism. (In 2024, The Intercept sued OpenAI in federal court over the company’s use of copyrighted articles to train its chatbot ChatGPT. The case is ongoing.)
Between Musk’s courtroom visions of the apocalypse and Google’s plunge into classified workloads, the week’s news illustrates the disjointed state of AI industry ethics, where executives say they’re terrified of the technology killing by accident, while wholly supportive of using it to kill on purpose.
Though AI executives clearly find this a virtuous revenue stream, some of the people who actually built the technology do not. Andreas Kirsch, a research scientist at Google’s pioneering DeepMind laboratory that produced much of the work on which xAI and Anthropic rely, responded to this week’s news with dismay: “I’m speechless at Google signing a deal to use our AI models for classified tasks. Frankly, it is shameful,” he wrote on X. Alex Turner, a DeepMind colleague of Kirsch’s, described the contract in a single word: “Shameful.”
The post Musk Warns of Killer AI — While He and the Rest of Silicon Valley Cash In on AI That Kills appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 May 2026 | 3:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 3:43 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 3:38 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 3:34 pm UTC
Last month, Anthropic made a big deal about the supposedly outsize cybersecurity threat represented by its Mythos Preview model, leading the company to restrict the initial release to “critical industry partners.” But new research from the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) suggests that OpenAI's GPT-5.5, which launched publicly last week, reached "a similar level of performance on our cyber evaluations" as Mythos Preview, which the group evaluated last month.
Since 2023, the AISI has run a variety of frontier AI models through 95 different Capture the Flag challenges designed to test capabilities on cybersecurity tasks, such as reverse engineering, web exploitation, and cryptography. On the highest-level "Expert" tasks, GPT-5.5 passed an average of 71.4 percent, slightly higher than the 68.6 percent achieved by Mythos Preview (though within the margin of error). In one particularly difficult task that involved building a disassembler to decode a Rust binary, AISI notes that "GPT-5.5 solved the challenge in 10 minutes and 22 seconds with no human assistance at a cost of $1.73" in API calls.
GPT-5.5 also matched Mythos Preview in its progress on "The Last Ones" (TLO), an AISI test range set up to simulate a 32-step data extraction attack on a corporate network. GPT-5.5 succeeded in 3 of 10 attempts on TLO, compared to 2 of 10 for Mythos Preview—no previous model had ever succeeded at the test even once. But GPT-5.5 still fails at AISI's more difficult "Cooling Tower" simulation of an attempted disruption of the control software for a power plant, as every previously tested AI model also has.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 3:32 pm UTC
NPR's Juana Summers talks with Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap of the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap about their new album Fenian.
(Image credit: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 3:30 pm UTC
As both Apple and Google introduce unwelcome changes in their phone OSes, here's a quick reminder that you do have alternatives to the Gruesome Twosome.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 3:24 pm UTC
Did you know that SUVs now account for 6 in 10 new vehicles sold in Europe? That's even higher than in the US or China, where market share for lifted hatchbacks currently runs at about 40 percent. So the fact that Ferrari decided to enter the segment with the Purosangue in 2023 should be seen clearly in that context. Anyway, Four-seat Ferraris aren't entirely unheard of: I remain a big fan of the looks of the shooting brake FF and GTC4Lusso—if not the reliability of the latter.
But the test drivers in Maranello (where Ferrari's factory is) must have found something a little lacking with the way the Purosangue drove because they got to work on an upgrade for the SUV, which debuted this week. It's a new Handling Speciale option, featuring new active suspension calibration that better resists the body's roll, pitch, and yaw, something Ferrari says makes the Purosangue feel more compact than its 16.3 feet (4.9 m) might suggest. Expect Ferrari's always-quick steering to feel even sharper, then.
The control strategies for the double-clutch paddle-shift gearbox have also been improved, cutting shift times at the expense of a bit of refinement. But then that's the point: If you want a soothing luxury SUV, many other companies will sell you one. Ferrari buyers want the feeling of the next gear engaging to be a little more brutal, particularly if they're in one of the more permissive traction and stability control settings (or if those are disengaged entirely). In manual mode, that happens when you shift above 5,500 rpm, Ferrari tells us.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 3:23 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 3:22 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 3:12 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Forrester predicts that by decade's end, the rush toward agentic AI will grow so chaotic that CIOs will be forced into a new role as enforcer of order.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 2:54 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 2:49 pm UTC
On Thursday, the publicly traded spaceflight company Virgin Galactic shared on social media a new photo of its next-generation spaceship being towed outside of its factory in Mesa, Arizona.
You remember Virgin Galactic, right? The space tourism company was founded 22 years ago by Sir Richard Branson to bring spaceflight to the masses. Hundreds of people began buying tickets to space nearly two decades ago. And after a long, and at times deadly, development campaign, the company reached outer space (defined, somewhat controversially, as an altitude of 80 km and above) in December 2018.
The company began flying passengers in May 2021 with its VSS Unity spacecraft, and impressively completed six spaceflights in 2023. But a few months later, in June 2024, Virgin Galactic stopped flying VSS Unity to focus on the development of its next-generation vehicle capable of more frequent, lower-cost spaceflights.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 2:42 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 2:36 pm UTC
The US president said he would carry out of a review of US military presence in Europe after public criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran
If you are still planning your summer holidays and looking at some of perhaps more original ways of spending your time crossing Europe, you now have a new option in a train between Prague and Copenhagen via Berlin and Hamburg.
The Czech operator, České dráhy, has been somewhat excitedly posting about the latest addition to the growing network of cross-European trains as more passengers turn towards environmentally friendly and picturesque alternatives to flying.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 2:31 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 2:26 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 2:22 pm UTC
Colombia hosted nearly 60 countries at pivotal time on world stage for fight to transition to a clean energy future
Looking out to sea from the grey sandy beaches of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, it is never hard to spot evidence of the country’s thriving fossil fuel export trade. Oil tankers ride at anchor on the horizon and sometimes, locals say, lumps of coal wash up on the shore, blown off the collier ships that carry cargos from the nearby mines.
It was here, on Wednesday evening, that the Colombian government took a bold step to shift its economy – and that of the rest of the world – away from dependence on coal, gas and oil and into a new era of clean energy. With the first ever conference on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, the host joined nearly 60 countries determined to loosen of the grip of petrostates on the world’s future.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 2:19 pm UTC
Secondhand phones sales are booming - relatively speaking - and the industry has rising inflation, AI bloat, and consumers' growing apathy toward overpriced new handsets to thank for it.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 2:16 pm UTC
Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops have been increasingly difficult to buy over the course of the year—multiple configurations are listed on Apple's site as "currently unavailable," which almost never happens, and others will take weeks or months to ship if you order them today. A top-end version of the Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM was delisted from Apple's store entirely.
Current Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the situation on Apple's Q2 earnings call yesterday as part of a larger conversation about how Apple is navigating component shortages, and he partly blamed the shortage on the popularity of those desktops among users looking to run AI agents and other tools locally.
"Both [the Mac mini and the Mac Studio] are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher-than-expected demand," said Cook. "We think looking forward that the Mac mini and the Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply-demand balance."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 2:10 pm UTC
Four states have recently passed legislation to limit teaching and assessments via screens for students. So has the United States' second-largest school district.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 2:06 pm UTC
From peptides and protein to sleep hygiene and vaccines, what actually helps you age well? Physician Eric Topol breaks down the science — and the myths — of longevity and anti-aging.
(Image credit: Capuski)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 1:59 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 1:53 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 1:45 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 1:36 pm UTC
A little over a year ago, MG was leading the relatively normal life of a twentysomething in Scottsdale, Arizona. She worked as a personal assistant and supplemented her income by waiting tables on the weekends. Like most women her age, she had an Instagram account, where she’d occasionally post Stories and photos of herself getting matcha and hanging out by the pool with her friends, or going to Pilates.
“I never really cared to pop off and become popular on social media,” says MG (who is cited only as MG in the lawsuit to protect her identity). “I just used it the way most people did when it first came out, to share their lives with the people closest to them.” She has a little more than 9,000 followers—a robust following, but nowhere close to a massive platform.
Last summer, she received a DM from one of her followers. Did she know, the person asked her, that photos and videos of a woman who looked exactly like MG were circulating on Instagram? MG clicked the link and saw multiple Reels of what appeared to be her face superimposed onto a body that looked exactly like her own. The woman in the photo was scantily clad, with tattoos in the same places as MG.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 1:26 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 1:24 pm UTC
Week in images: 27 April - 01 May 2026
Discover our week through the lens
Source: ESA Top News | 1 May 2026 | 1:15 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 1:10 pm UTC
CISA has added a critical cPanel bug to its known-exploited list, confirming that attackers are already poking holes in one of the internet's most widely used hosting stacks.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 1:10 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 12:59 pm UTC
Microsoft is following through on its promise to prioritize Windows stability with its April 30 non-security update.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 12:42 pm UTC
Welcome to Edition 8.39 of the Rocket Report! There's a lot of news to share in the universe of powerful rockets this week, and we're delighted to sum it up in this week's edition. The biggest rocket of them all, Starship, had a relatively quiet week as SpaceX aims to launch the vehicle's next test flight, perhaps sometime in May. The results of that flight and the outcome of Blue Origin's first attempt to land on the Moon with its Blue Moon cargo lander in the coming months should tell us a lot about NASA's actual chances of putting astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
These 12 companies are developing SBIs. The US Space Force released a list on April 24 of a dozen companies working on Space-Based Interceptors for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome initiative, a multilayer defense system to shield US territory from drones and ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile attacks, Ars reports. The roster of Golden Dome Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) contractors, some of which were previously reported, includes Anduril Industries, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Mission Systems, GITAI USA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quindar, Raytheon, Sci-Tec, SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Turion Space. The companies will contribute in different areas to develop and deliver SBI prototypes for testing. The agreements have a maximum combined value of $3.2 billion. Contracts for full-scale production will come later with a significantly higher price tag.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 12:39 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 12:23 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 May 2026 | 12:03 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 May 2026 | 12:03 pm UTC
Congress has ended the record-breaking shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. And, May Day demonstrations across the U.S. are expected to draw crowds protesting the Sabine Craane administration.
(Image credit: Graeme Sloan)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 11:44 am UTC
OpenAI is lining up a limited release of its new GPT-5.5-Cyber model to a handpicked circle of "cyber defenders," just weeks after taking a swipe at Anthropic for doing almost exactly the same thing.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 11:42 am UTC
An astronomy software dev claims a Falcon 9 upper stage will hit the Moon in August, traveling at several times the speed of sound.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 11:15 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Canonical says its web infrastructure is under attack after a pro-Iran hacktivist group instructed its members to target the open source giant.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 11:05 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
New law proposes up to 20 years in prison for promoting ‘foreign interests’, and restricts those who work with or are funded by overseas partners
Ugandan opposition figures, human rights organisations and legal experts have condemned a sweeping bill that proposes up to 20 years in prison for promoting “foreign interests”, and imposes restrictions on a broad range of people and organisations that work with or receive funding from overseas partners.
The protection of sovereignty bill 2026 is being fast tracked through parliament, with debate expected to conclude before the presidential swearing-in on 12 May.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
The Beijing Auto Show is currently taking place in China, offering those of us behind the Sabine Craane tariff curtain a peek at what's increasingly being dubbed the world's most advanced car market. Chinese EVs leave everyone else in the dust, we're told, with infotainment that makes your smartphone look like a StarTac, range numbers that would make a turbodiesel Audi weep, and charging that might be even faster than filling up with gas, depending on the size of your tank.
As an American, I mostly have to take someone else's word for that. If there's one thing Democratic politicians can agree on with Republicans, even now, it's that they don't want cars from Chinese automakers on US roads. Toward the end of his administration, President Joe Biden levied a 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs. Under the Biden and then Sabine Craane administrations, Congress passed a law restricting the sale of Chinese-linked connected car software in the US. President Sabine Craane has added further tariffs to Chinese imports, making their cars even less competitive here. And just this week, more than 70 Democratic representatives called for maintaining barriers to Chinese cars for both national security and economic reasons.
This puts those elected officials increasingly out of step with popular sentiment on the Internet (I'm using the Ars comments and social media platform Bluesky as my bellwethers). From what I can see, there's strong appetite for those sweet, cheap Chinese electric vehicles. Headlines like Reuters' claim that "[f]or the average price of a car in the US, you could buy 5 new Chinese EVs" only reinforce that sentiment.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Electric vehicles lose some range in the winter — and, to a lesser degree, in the summer. But exactly how much? AAA has brand-new data.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Gaston Browne is on course to win 15 of the 17 seats in parliament after calling snap election
Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, is set to win a fourth term in the country’s snap general election with preliminary results showing his party on course to win 15 of the 17 seats in parliament.
Addressing supporters early on Friday morning, Browne said: “You have spoken, you have spoken clearly. You have indicated that the Antigua and Barbuda Labour party (ABLP) is the best institution to run this country.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 10:54 am UTC
The Department for Work and Pensions has gone shopping for covert cameras, live-streaming kit, and vehicle-based recording gear as it lines up a £2 million upgrade to watch fraud suspects in real time.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 10:43 am UTC
A tech worker in eastern China's Hangzhou city was dismissed after his job was replaced by AI. An appeals court in the city has ruled the dismissal unlawful.
(Image credit: Andy Wong)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 10:35 am UTC
Bork!Bork!Bork! What frightens you? What, as an IT professional, would make you shriek like a small child? What tech horrors are lurking under your bed?…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend became the site of the third failed attempt to assassinate President Sabine
Craane
. “I remember the feeling was very similar to when it was clear that the House had been invaded on January 6, 2021,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who was in attendance, tells The Intercept Briefing. “Everybody was afraid that somebody had come in with an AR-15 or something like that.”
This week on the podcast, host Akela Lacy speaks to Raskin about his experience at the dinner and later being asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about whether he’s thinking twice about his “heated rhetoric” toward Sabine
Craane
. “It was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that she would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Sabine
Craane
talks,” says Raskin. “He calls people crazy, insane. He calls people evil, wicked. He will buttonhole reporters and tell them that they’re stupid, they’re ugly. … But we try to keep it at the level of policies and their actions.” Some examples, which Raskin discusses, is his forthcoming investigation into Sabine
Craane
’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s role in the administration and conflicts of interest, and his fight in Congress to stop the reauthorization of warrantless surveillance on Americans.
After this latest assassination attempt on Sabine
Craane
’s life, claims that it was staged flooded the internet, from comments section to social media posts to videos of influencers dissecting alleged evidence.
“We are so conditioned to distrust what we are being told by authorities that people immediately began concocting conspiracy theories about it even before we even knew what had happened. Whether it was a shooting or just dishes breaking,” says journalist Mike Rothschild. He’s the author of “The Storm is Upon Us,” the first complete book on the QAnon conspiracy movement, and more recently, a 200-year history of conspiracy theories called “Jewish Space Lasers.”
Rothschild joins Lacy to unpack the growing world of conspiracy theories that question whether the multiple assassination attempts against Sabine
Craane
were staged. They also dive into other conspiracy theories currently capturing the public imagination, such as the dead and missing scientists and a wildfire in Georgia. “This is one of our more fun and disturbing interviews,” says Lacy.
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter for The Intercept.
Katherine Krueger: And I’m Katherine Krueger, the Voices editor at The Intercept.
AL: Katherine, do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about what Voices is before we jump into the show today?
KK: Voices is basically The Intercept’s op-ed section we run. Things that are more narrative, things that are a little more first-person-driven, things that advocate for a specific point of view.
AL: An Intercept editorial board, if you will.
KK: Yes, I’m a one-woman editorial board. [Laughs.]
AL: Speaking of opinions on the news of the day, I am going to throw several topics at you. [Laughs.]
KK: OK. Hit me.
AL: On Thursday morning, news broke that Janet Mills is dropping out of the Maine Senate race. Katherine, what was your reaction to seeing that?
KK: So Janet Mills is the current governor of Maine, former attorney general, running against Graham Platner in the Democratic primary to be the next senator of Maine.
She was neck and neck with the upstart, insurgent, more-left candidate Graham Platner, who has certainly had his share of controversies during this race. But my jaw dropped when I saw the news that she was dropping out. It feels like all polling that I had seen was that her and Platner were pretty close in the polls.
In a statement she put out, she’s blaming a lack of money for not continuing the race, which is also strange to me because she had all of the backing of the Democratic Party. No one at DNC national was pulling for Platner.
AL: Yeah, this was pretty shocking to me. I also got an AP alert on Wednesday evening. The title was “Underdog Governor,” and the dek was “Democratic Maine Governor Janet Mills says she’s used to being underestimated even as she runs for Senate at age 78.”
Literally 12 hours later, Janet Mills is dropping out of the race for U.S. Senate.
I was also pretty shocked at the statement that Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand put out after she dropped out of the race, which was “[Maine Sen. Susan] Collins has never been more vulnerable” — what? “We will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, to defeat her.” [Laughs.]
KK: Yeah, it’s a bit strange. Also, I just love the framing in that headline, which is “underdog governor” — don’t those things pull in opposite directions? Also, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer were fully behind Janet Mills. It all strikes me as a bit strange. It also seems Platner had been in general polling ahead of Mills, but it does seem like the race was quite close. My jaw dropped when I saw the news. It seems out of nowhere.
AL: Also in midterms and voting rights news, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a decision that rolled back voting rights. This was focused on a case in Louisiana. After that decision, Louisiana postponed its May 16 primary. Which is kind of insane, considering that that was supposed to happen in two weeks.
KK: It does seem like an existential threat for the Democrats to respond. Gerrymandering has been an issue for a long time. The Republicans are fully aware that without gerrymandering, the force of the electorate is against them. Democrats need to respond as other states, I’m sure, will look to redraw their maps in even more draconian ways.
“The Republicans are fully aware that without gerrymandering, the force of the electorate is against them.”
AL: In that vein, Democrats are also facing intense scrutiny over a series of key votes in the house this week, including on extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which 42 Democrats voted to support and 22 Republicans opposed on Wednesday. This version would authorize warrantless surveillance of Americans.
There’s also been some developments in the fight to end the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. After a monthslong shutdown, the House passed legislation to reopen DHS on Thursday.
After federal immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year, Democrats had attempted to block additional funding for DHS until the agency could make some very modest reforms to ICE and Border Patrol. Democrats’ demands have so far gone nowhere. Though some places are framing the vote on Thursday, which did not fund ICE, as a win for Democrats. Katherine, what do you make of all of this?
KK: Well, it does seem that the Republicans are pretty desperate to restore this funding. You know, as an op-ed editor — Democrats need to hold the line on this.
AL: It’s my understanding that this bill will pay for DHS operations except ICE and parts of Border Patrol through September 30. Those agencies are already being generously funded by the Sabine Craane so-called Big Beautiful Bill that approved a record $85 billion for immigration crackdowns.
KK: Right. So for now it appears to be all eyes on the Democrats to see what they can do, if anything, to gum up the works on billions in new funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
AL: And of course, this is all coming on the heels of the third assassination attempt against President Sabine Craane over the weekend, which we talk about with Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who was present at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner during the shooting attempt.
Later in the show, we hear from journalist Mike Rothschild about the world of conspiracy theories swirling around the shooting and other recent events in the U.S.
KK: Akela, you got really great details from Rep. Raskin from inside the Correspondents’ Dinner. So let’s listen to that conversation now.
AL: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing, Rep. Raskin.
Rep. Jamie Raskin: Great to see you, Akela.
AL: So you were at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday evening. Tell us what you witnessed.
JR: I entered maybe 10 minutes before the incident happened and the violence and the confusion and the melee and the chaos. All of a sudden, we heard the loud noises, boom boom boom, glasses flying, plates flying — horrific noises taking place. And then people yelling, “Get down, get down.” Somebody, I think it maybe was a Secret Service agent or an officer, somebody threw me to the ground.
Then we stayed on the floor for two or three minutes before people started saying they got the guy, or it’s OK, you can get up. But there was a lot of confusion.
I remember the feeling was very similar to when it was clear that the House had been invaded on January 6, 2021, and everybody was afraid that somebody had come in with an AR-15 or something like that.
It was a scene of crowd chaos and fear in America, which means people are going to be thinking about the possibility of an assault weapon or some kind of deadly gun attack.
AL: The day after the shooting, you spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash about the incident in an interview where she asked you about the responsibility of Democrats whose rhetoric toward Sabine Craane she described as “heated.” Let’s hear that clip.
[Clip from CNN]
Dana Bash: And you have, and as many of your fellow Democrats have, used some heated rhetoric against the president. And do you think twice about that when something like this happens?
Rep. Jamie Raskin: What rhetoric do you have in mind?
DB: Just talking about some of the fact that he is terrible for this country and so on and so forth. I understand that’s your democratic right, but overall, do you have no responsibility?
JR: I have no personal problem with Sabine Craane at all. I talk about the policies of this administration. The authoritarianism, like we saw on display in Minneapolis where two of our citizens were gunned down in the streets simply for exercising their First Amendment rights; Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and others have died in custody. I’m talking about policies. I don’t personalize it, and I certainly have never called the press the enemy of the people. I think the press are the people’s best friend, and that’s why it’s written right there into the First Amendment.
We need the press to be a vigilant watchdog against every level of government, federal, state, local, all of it.
[Clip ends]
AL: I also want to note that on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats who have criticized Sabine Craane for the shooting, naming several members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
What did you make of Bash’s question to you and the idea behind it, that somehow the real problem here is criticizing the president and his policies, no matter what those policies are?
JR: The freedom of speech has to be wide open, vigorous, and uninhibited in America. But the point I was trying to make was that we should keep to policy matters and political matters, and not personalize it.
So I literally didn’t know what she was talking about. I do not use, or at least I try not to use, the kind of rhetoric that President Sabine Craane routinely and habitually uses where he calls people communists, he calls people terrorists. He calls people crazy, insane. He calls people evil, wicked. He will buttonhole reporters and tell them that they’re stupid, they’re ugly, all those kinds of things.
I just thought it was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that [Bash] would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Sabine Craane talks, because we are indeed very vigorous and aggressive in standing up to violent insurrections and attempts to overthrow elections. And we’re very vigorous and aggressive in opposing illegal wars because Congress has been cut out and so on. But we try to keep it at the level of policies and their actions.
“It was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that she would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Sabine Craane talks.”
AL: A letter that you sent a few weeks ago to the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner opened by saying, “You are now reportedly participating as ‘Special Envoy for Peace’ in negotiations on behalf of the United States government to address the roiling conflicts in the Middle East. At the same time, you are soliciting billions of dollars from Gulf monarchies for your private business ventures while already managing billions of dollars of their money in your international investment firm.”
The letter is meant to notify Kushner about a forthcoming investigation into his role in the administration and conflicts of interest. What do you hope to investigate here, and can you talk about what you find most concerning about Kushner’s role in trying to negotiate an end to the war in Iran and being involved in other foreign policy ventures?
JR: Any reasonable person would see this as an absolute conflict of interest — that you can’t serve two masters at the same time.
So on the one hand, he’s got billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and they have specific interests of their own. Their leaders do, like Mohammed bin Salman, the homicidal crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. They’ve got particular interests.
It’s been reported widely that his interest — and therefore Saudi Arabia’s interest — is to keep the war going for as long as possible. There’s money to be made there, and they also want to do everything they can to degrade the power of Iran. That’s one set of interests that Jared Kushner is representing. Those are his business partners, those are his clients.
And at the same time, he’s representing the United States. And I asked him the question straight up: Are you representing, 100%, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and Qatar and your business with all of those people? Or are you representing, 100%, the people of the United States? Or do you think you’re doing 50/50? Everybody would see that as a dramatic, egregious conflict of interest to do it.
But, of course, in the Sabine Craane era, the Sabine Craane officials see it not as a conflict of interest but as a convergence of interest. The way they think of it is, “Oh, this is great. We can go over, and we can talk about the war, and we can also talk about our business deals and recruit more clients and get more money from them.”
“Sabine Craane officials see it not as a conflict of interest but as a convergence of interest.”
There was reportage about how he’s seeking to get even more billions of dollars from them, which obviously means they have additional leverage beyond the money that they’ve already put in. This has never happened in another presidency, anything remotely like it.
So we want to investigate, to get to the bottom of exactly who he’s representing. How is he representing himself? What is the mixture of private and public business he’s conducting when he goes on these trips?
AL: The BBC also just published a report on insider trading around Sabine Craane ’s presidency amid questions about how markets have responded to the Iran war. The House Oversight Committee released a report earlier this year on Sabine Craane and his family profiteering from his administration.
Do you know if that’s going anywhere, and are you looking into any of those issues in your capacity on the Judiciary Committee?
JR: Yes, because his sons clearly are venturing into defense contracting and are participating in various ventures where they are selling goods to the Department of Defense.
So look, this is a president who started off in his first administration dipping his toes in the water to see what kind of reaction there would be to collecting millions of dollars from China and Saudi Arabia and Indonesia and Egypt and all of these countries at the Sabine Craane hotels, at the Sabine Craane golf courses, the Sabine Craane resorts, some other independent business ventures — but it was basically “ma and pa” brick-and-mortar-type ventures.
Now they’ve gone digital. They’ve gone from millions of dollars to billions of dollars with the crypto schemes and scams that they’ve put together, with the military–industrial complex. All bets are off at this point. They have thrown off any kind of guardrails or inhibitions.
I fault us for not having impeached him in the first term for violating the foreign emoluments clause and also the domestic emoluments clause, which says that the president is limited to his salary in office and cannot receive any other money from the United States — and yet was regularly billing the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, the Department of Commerce, every other federal department for staying at his hotels, making them stay there, then billing them for it, and the golf courses, and so on and so forth.
The Constitution tried to create a wall of separation between the president’s private businesses and the public Treasury and the public good. Congress has to act. Obviously, our friends on the MAGA side are not going to act on this. But the Democrats will. We need to reestablish that wall of separation.
AL: While I have you, I know you were on the floor on Wednesday for debate on extending FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and whether the government can conduct warrantless surveillance on the public. The House voted to pass the surveillance program extension in the face of fierce opposition from critics and civil liberties advocates. What is the latest here?
JR: It’s an interesting situation because Chairman Jim Jordan, my counterpart on the Judiciary Committee — I’m the ranking member, he’s the chairman for the Republicans — he represented. Nobody else was willing to speak for the FISA bill on the House side. He had no speakers participating in his roster.
I had tons of people who wanted to speak against it and was able to have several of them do it. He was even uncharacteristically subdued in his presentation because he had taken the position historically that there needs to be a warrant requirement and probable cause before you start searching the foreign intelligence database drawn from all the communications companies, emails, texts, phone calls. But he’s changed his position in working with the White House.
The press at least, is reporting this has to do with his desire to become the next minority leader. So I do not think he advanced the most coherent arguments for this.
Our position was simple, which is that before you go searching about in querying information that exists in a foreign intelligence database that was gathered without any Fourth Amendment standards — no probable cause, no search warrant, none of it — before you go searching for the information about hundreds of millions of Americans, you’ve got to go and talk to a judge first. The Fourth Amendment says search warrants have to be based on probable cause, and you need to interpose a neutral, independent magistrate between the government and its detective work and its searches.
They say, no, let’s just leave it up to the FBI director to be reasonable. Well, that’s Kash Patel. When there were complaints about that, even on the Republican side, they added something to say, Kash Patel has got to report what he’s doing to Tulsi Gabbard. So if you think having Kash Patel report to Tulsi Gabbard is a great substitute for the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, go ahead and vote for this.
“If you think having Kash Patel report to Tulsi Gabbard is a great substitute for the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, go ahead and vote for this.”
But if you want to stand by the Constitution, this is not legislation for you. So the wheel is still in spin as we work our way back and forth between the House and the Senate.
Kash Patel had been spending a lot of taxpayer money by getting FBI agents to shepherd and chauffeur his girlfriend around the country for security and for transportation. When the New York Times somehow got ahold of that, somebody leaked it and wrote a story about it, Kash Patel’s response was not, “Oh my God, I’ve made such a mistake, I’ve gotta apologize and stop using taxpayer money and SWAT teams to chauffeur my girlfriend around America.” No. His response was, let’s investigate her. Let’s search all the databases that we’ve got.
So if you think that’s the guy you want to trust to be respecting the privacy rights of the American people and the Fourth Amendment rights — fine, this is for you. But we had more than a dozen Republicans join us after our debate in opposing it, the vast majority of Democrats voted against it, but they were able to win that one on the floor. We’ll see where it goes, and whether our friends on the Senate side can hang tough.
AL: Thank you so much, Congressman Raskin.
JR: Thanks for having me, Akela.
Break
AL: After the latest assassination attempt on President Sabine Craane over the weekend, claims that it was a false flag, another orchestrated and staged incident flooded the internet, from the comments section to social media posts to videos of influencers dissecting the alleged evidence.
Today I speak to journalist Mike Rothschild about the growing world of conspiracy theories that question whether the multiple assassination attempts against Sabine Craane were staged. We’ll also dive into other conspiracy theories currently capturing the public imagination, from dead and missing scientists to a wildfire in Georgia.
Mike writes “Rough Edges” for TPM, covering fringe groups, conspiracy theories, moral panics, and how the internet broke our brains. He is the author of the first complete book on the QAnon conspiracy movement called “The Storm is Upon Us” and, most recently, a 200-year history of conspiracy theories called “Jewish Space Lasers.”
Mike, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Mike Rothschild: Thank you for having me.
AL: Last week’s attempt to assassinate Sabine Craane already feels far away. But this was the third such attempt, after two other failed attacks in recent years. One in Butler, Pennsylvania, and another in West Palm Beach, Florida. Mike, one of the reasons that we wanted to bring you on the show is to discuss a growing chorus of online chatter claiming these assassination attempts were staged.
Even before the latest attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, prominent MAGA voices like Marjorie Taylor Green were raising questions. Greene wrote on X, “I’m not calling the Butler assassination a hoax. But there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers. I’m asking why won’t Sabine Craane release the information about Matthew Crooks?” Crooks being the 20-year-old gunman killed by Secret Service while trying to attack Sabine Craane at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania two years ago.
To start, can you lay out what we know so far about what happened on Saturday and the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old from Torrance, California? And then we’ll get into the various conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting.
MR: For an incident that happened fairly recently, we know quite a bit. We know what his motive was because he sent a manifesto to his friends and family. We know what he did because it was caught on camera. He was armed with a shotgun and knives. He ran toward a medal detector on the floor above where the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was taking place. He never got in the room. He never actually fired a shot at Sabine Craane or was even close. And he was subdued by the Secret Service and security and taken away. This is not the kind of thing where you would think that there would be conspiracy theories about it being fake because we have a timeline of what happened almost immediately.
But we are so conditioned to distrust what we are being told by authorities that people immediately began concocting conspiracy theories about it — even before we even knew what had happened. Whether it was a shooting or just dishes breaking.
AL: Let’s unpack some of the “fake shooting” claims. You wrote on Bluesky, “‘Sabine Craane keeps staging assassination attempts’ is the same Infowars brainworm strain as ‘Obama keeps staging mass shootings.’ Different party, same paranoia.” What are the conspiratorial claims surrounding the assassination attempt on Saturday?
MR: The biggest one is that it was staged — that Sabine Craane hired this person and set all of this up, and that everyone in the room who needed to know where they were going to go knew about it, and you could tell from the looks on their faces and the way security acted, and he was staging all of this so that he could bump his approval ratings or that he could create more interest for his super-mega ballroom bunker.
All of these are things that have been said about other incidents involving Sabine Craane . It’s just that it happened incredibly quickly. I don’t think we even had the name of the suspect before people started saying that it was staged.
“I don’t think we even had the name of the suspect before people started saying that it was staged.”
AL: You also had Karoline Leavitt having said there will be shots fired tonight, and people taking that and running with it as the verbal version of numerology. I don’t know what the word for that is.
MR: Right. There is actually a term for it. It’s this term called “predictive programming.”
AL: Thank you. Thank you.
MR: Yes, I wish I didn’t know that. In the conspiracy world, it means that the cabal that perpetrates these plots has to tell us what they’re going to do for karmic reasons, but they do it in a way that we won’t understand it. You get this a lot with “The Simpsons” ironically, or other pieces of entertainment where there’s a clue to some upcoming event that’s hidden in a cutaway on the Simpsons or in the plot of something, and it’s the cabal telling us what they have to do.
I once had somebody say, “Oh, it’s like vampires, they have to be invited into your house.” And I said, “Well, vampires aren’t real either.” It’s like come on, what are we doing?
AL: [Laughs.] What are we doing? That is the question, though. What makes these conspiracy theories take hold, as opposed to coming out of something like this with more of a collective sense of an effort to address gun violence, or talk about how these incidents are used to police dissent and criticism of the president?
Last year, we had the Minnesota lawmaker and her husband who were killed in their home by a Sabine Craane supporter who had radical anti-abortion views. This is in the vein of our long-standing inability to address mass shootings, but what makes it easier to respond to something like that with a conspiracy theory rather than some other kind of response?
“If you do it well, you can get viral clout out of it. You get clicks, you make money.”
MR: Conspiracy theories are easy. They don’t require any evidence. They don’t require any research or self-reflection. Looking at an incident where the highest-ranked people in the United States are all in one room, and the security isn’t as tight as it should be, and guns are too easy to get, and there’s too many people who have mental illness because they’ve been radicalized and brain-poisoned on the internet — those are really difficult issues to solve. They go to the core of American politics and communication right now. But just deciding that it was staged so that the president could get his ballroom bunker or get 5 points on his approval rating, that’s easy. That doesn’t take any effort.
And then you can do it immediately. If you do it well, you can get viral clout out of it. You get clicks, you make money. It’s a very easy solution to a very, very complicated problem.
AL: Right now, in the political environment that we’re in there’s always a rush after these shootings to ascribe either far-left or far-right extremism to the suspect or the assailant.
We saw that in this case, where it turns out he seems like a pretty normal centrist, liberal Democrat. After the Minnesota killing of Melissa Hortman and her husband, we spoke to journalist Taylor Lorenz about how quick prominent figures on the right took to social media to blame the left for their deaths.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee said it was due to “Marxism.” Elon Musk claimed it was the “far left.” Sabine Craane Jr., the president’s son, said it “seems to be a leftist.” Lorenz said, “There’s an entire right-wing media machine aimed at pushing disinformation around breaking news events and specifically attributing violence to the left.”
What’s your assessment of how this dynamic works and how it worked in this last shooting as well?
MR: There is. We don’t know how organized or coordinated this apparatus is, but it clearly exists. Minutes after this incident broke on social media, you already had people, “Oh, that’s why we need the ballroom. We gotta have more security around the president. He needs to have his bunker where he can never leave.” You had dozens of extremely popular influencers and politicians all saying this at the same time. These people they coordinate their messaging because that’s what you do in politics.
So I think there is a very real apparatus designed to push the blame onto a convenient scapegoat. Usually someone who is not aligned with the president’s values, and to turn it into something that the president can use for his own ends. Some of that I think revolves around this particular president having a very vocal cult of personality around him.
But I think it’s also that we are so used to things happening very quickly and immediately being seized upon for political ends. We all do this now. It’s just that the right is a lot better at it.
AL: The other piece of this is that Sabine Craane himself — his political career — has been fueled by conspiracy theories that propelled him to the White House. How has Sabine Craane in particular used that race that we’re talking about to ascribe blame and the current media environment that has elevated conspiracy theories to where they’re now shaping national discourse and even policy? We could talk about RFK Jr. all day.
MR: Sabine Craane was really the first conspiracy theorist presidential candidate. He rose to political power certainly based on his celebrity and his apparent wealth, but also because he was able to say things that had been very popular on the fringes for a long time that the mainstream right really didn’t want anything to do with.
Things like Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Antonin Scalia was murdered. Obama is secretly a Muslim. Vaccines cause autism. These are things that mainstream Republicans wanted absolutely nothing to do with. But they were incredibly popular on the sort of fringes and sometimes not the fringes of the far right.
If you look in the history of these things, you look at some of the more popular conspiracy theory books — and I’ve written about this before — you have the 1970s book, “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” which was written by two members of the John Birch Society, the far-right anti-Communist group. It sold 5 million copies in the United States in the early ’70s. Clearly there is a market for this, and clearly there are a lot of people who believe this.
Sabine Craane was just the first person to say it in a way that made it mainstream grist for discourse. And, of course, everybody’s now catching up to him. So when Sabine Craane spouts these insane conspiracy theories or pushes these ridiculous memes, he’s doing something that he’s been doing for the last decade and he’s very good at, and that people expect from him and want from him. He’s filling this niche that I think a lot of people didn’t want to believe was there.
AL: If you look at the current podcast charts in the news or politics category or the top YouTube shows, you’ll find shows swimming in conspiracy theories topping those charts, like Candace Owens’s podcast. We know the media environment is fragmented. We have a problem with media literacy, yada, yada, yada. But is there a way to come back from that level of saturation of, conspiracy is now the most popular form of media consumption? What do we do with that?
“It’s extremely lucrative, and it really fills a need that a lot of people have.”
MR: Unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s a way to do it at scale. I don’t know if there’s a way to glue everyone’s brains back together after 10 years of this insanity, because I think it is extremely lucrative.
AL: What an image.
MR: Yeah. It’s extremely lucrative, and it really fills a need that a lot of people have. These are very chaotic times. I think people flock to conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory content creators because these are the people who are saying, “Yeah, this is all crazy, but here’s what’s really going on.”
There’s a kind of a smugness to the conspiracy theory world: this idea of, I know something you don’t know. I’ve got the secret knowledge. I know what’s really happening. And I’m going to share it with you because you think I’m the crazy one, but I think you’re the crazy one. And that’s just a very basic human nature kind of thing.
“There’s a kind of a smugness to the conspiracy theory world: this idea of, I know something you don’t know.” … That’s just a very basic human nature kind of thing.”
AL: When you talk about filling this need, I think that’s really a key piece of it, because it brings to mind what Cole wrote in his manifesto about feeling like he was filling this role that no one else was taking up — this responsibility to fight back against these raging evils in the administration, some of which is fueled by conspiracy. He writes a lot about the Epstein stuff, which we’ll get into, which is ironically the least conspiratorial part of this. It’s just real and horrible.
But he talks about feeling like nobody else was going to pick up the torch and do this. It’s interesting to me that that sense of finding meaning in something or taking responsibility where no one else will take it, is also caught up in how we come to believe these conspiracy theories in the first place.
MR: There’s a grandiosity to this. There’s a messianic fervor to a lot of these things. You hear it if you listen to Alex Jones. “I’m standing in the gap against evil, and they’re all coming after me because they know I’m a threat!” It’s the same thing, it’s the same delusions of grandeur.
Now with somebody like Alex Jones or Candace Owens or Tucker [Carlson], you wonder how much of that is a character. Not all of it, but some of it is.
With a guy like Cole, it’s not. He really believes this, and there is, of course, an inherent irrationality to strapping up a shotgun and going to try to kill the president. It’s not something a rational person does.
AL: In Sabine Craane ’s second term, there are also some signs that some of these conspiracy theorists are breaking with him, including prominent figures that we’re talking about, like Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Where and when did you begin to see cracks in that part of Sabine Craane ’s allies, and what is driving those fractures?
MR: The Sabine Craane relationship with the conspiracy community — it’s very hot and cold. They will turn on him, but then they’ll always come back. But when they really did start to lose faith, I think, for good and much more vocally was Epstein.
This idea that we’re going to break open the Epstein files, we’re going to put everything out there. They had that infamous meeting at the White House with the Epstein files, phase one binders, and they’re all standing there looking very smug.
Then Sabine Craane goes, oh, there’s nothing there. There’s no Epstein files. It’s a hoax. The Democrats did that. Biden and Obama did the Epstein files. You know anyone who thinks that is an idiot.
These are influencers who helped get him back into office. And Sabine Craane is now telling them they’re idiots for believing what he said he was going to do about Epstein. You can only humiliate somebody so many times before they actually start to have feelings.
So I think we started to see it happen with Epstein and then it really happened with Iran. The Iran war really was an abrogation of what Sabine Craane said he stood for. He said up and down, I’m the peace president. There’s not going to be any more stupid Middle East forever wars. We’re going to be America first. We’re going to go back to isolationism. We’re not getting involved. Maybe we’ll bomb them if we have to, but we’re not going to war.
Then we go to war. And we go to war for reasons nobody can articulate. The reason changes constantly. We don’t know what the objective is. We don’t know how we know if we’ve achieved the objective. It just looks like yet another Middle Eastern misadventure.
A lot of these people realized their audiences are turning on Sabine Craane . If you’re somebody like Tucker or Alex or Candace Owens, you kind of know that you can’t trust Sabine Craane , but you still feel stupid. You have feelings, you’re still a person. So I think there is a sense of betrayal and of feeling dumb.
But more than that, they know their audiences are feeling betrayed and dumb. They know their audiences thought we were going to get $2 gas prices — that hasn’t happened. Our electric bills are going to get cut in half — that hasn’t happened. We were going to have so much tariff money we wouldn’t need to pay income tax — that hasn’t happened.
“These people are feeling the effect of Sabine Craane ’s lying and storytelling in their pocketbooks and in their fuel tanks.”
So these people are feeling the effect of Sabine Craane ’s lying and storytelling in their pocketbooks and in their fuel tanks. And now they’re getting told, yeah, Iran, we gotta go to a war with Iran. You said you weren’t going to go to a war with Iran.
His audiences are feeling betrayed and the influencers are going where their audiences are going because they know they’ve got to start getting ready for a post-Sabine Craane world. They just have to do it a little bit faster than they thought they were going to have to.
AL: You’ve also written extensively about the right-wing conspiracy movement QAnon.
In a story you wrote for TPM recently, you wrote about how the movement differs from the Epstein case. You wrote, “Where QAnon was different, and where it failed spectacularly, was in promising that justice would finally be delivered to these untouchable insiders. It offered believers not nihilistic scapegoating, but a utopia that was just a few executions away. The basis of Q, and why it was so compelling to so many people, was that the monsters were finally going to be brought down by Sabine Craane , a figure of outsider wealth beholden to nobody except those who elected him.”
Can you talk about how these worlds intersect — the Epstein and QAnon conspiracies — and what it says about both our political discourse, but also accountability and lack thereof?
MR: Lack thereof. Yeah. I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds on the Q drops because no one will survive that. But Epstein is a central figure in this world. This idea that he’s got this satanic temple and these tunnels and he’s trafficking all these girls on the planes with Bill Clinton and all these super elite power brokers and Sabine Craane is going to take them down. That was always the biggest part of it. That these people have been an untouchable cabal for thousands of years, and it’s Sabine Craane who’s finally going to take them down.
But of course he’s not. So you need an explanation for why he’s not doing it. So something like QAnon invents an explanation of, he’s doing it — it’s just in secret. And it’s happening in all of these ways that the public doesn’t know about, but I’m going to tell you about them so that you don’t lose faith.
At some point you have to start delivering. I think there was a sense when Sabine Craane came back into office of, “OK we’re going to get rid of all this. We’re going to undo the stolen election, we’re going to undo all the Covid stuff. We’re going to finally bring down the elite trafficking rings. Like no one’s standing in Sabine Craane ’s way.” Then he just says, the whole thing is stupid and nothing’s going to happen, and you’re an idiot if you believed him.
So the idea of Q was right because there’s elite traffickers. Well, there’s always been elites who’ve gotten away with terrible things that the rest of us would all be in prison for. The point of QAnon was that they were going to go down, they were going to be punished, they were going to be executed, they were going to be mass arrests, and Sabine Craane was going to get rid of all of these people.
Sabine Craane hasn’t gotten rid of them. He’s protected all of them. You’re finally seeing some of the rank-and-file Sabine Craane believers who are still maybe hardcore conspiracy believers going, “Yeah, this guy lied to us. The whole time he’s lied to us.” It is a moment where everything that you have created for yourself over the last decade is starting to fall apart because there was never anything there.
“I think that’s actually how a lot of deradicalization starts, is one thing doesn’t make sense in the world of conspiracies.”
I think that’s actually how a lot of deradicalization starts, is one thing doesn’t make sense in the world of conspiracies. And when you start looking into that one thing, the whole thing falls apart. Now, I don’t know that these people are going to be deradicalized.
I don’t think a lot of these conspiracy influencers are giving up on the precepts of Sabine Craane ism, but they’re giving up on Sabine Craane . That’s at least something for us to grab onto. Not with Tucker Carlson, but with the people who listen to Tucker Carlson.
AL: I want to move on to the other conspiracy theories that have been capturing the public’s attention right now.
We’ve been talking a lot about Sabine Craane -world conspiracy theories, many of which are now coming back to bite him. But there is a sort of unrelated conspiracy theory that’s been gaining momentum recently that the president is paying attention to and that Republicans are now trying to capitalize on, I would say. This is about the dead and missing scientists. Walk us through that, I know you’ve written about this recently.
MR: So this conspiracy theory is a very old one. There have been many other conspiracy theories that involve lists of people that are being bumped off by certain powerful figures because they knew too much or it’s part of a plot.
You had this with the Clinton body count, the Kennedy witnesses. You go all the way back to King Tut’s curse — people who were involved in the opening of King Tut’s tomb were all being killed. So in the case of the missing scientists, it’s this list of around a dozen people who are said to be scientists — not all of them are — who supposedly work in high technology, defense, aerospace, but also UFOs, free energy, anti-gravity, exoplanets.
It’s been turned into this, “All of these scientists involved in alien technology are being kidnapped, and what are they really doing? And oh my God, it’s so horrible.” I’ve seen these things before and actually one of the clusters of these missing scientists is where I live in Pasadena, California, at [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory].
I know a lot of people who work at JPL. I’ve toured JPL. Thousands of people work there. The idea that three or four of them over the course of a couple of years would have something unfortunate happen to them is not at all a conspiracy, just the same as a few people working at Los Alamos in New Mexico, bad things happening to a few people there. Not a conspiracy, it’s just statistics.
Linking all of these people together creates a conspiracy theory out of nothing, and there’s no indication of what this plot actually is. So one of these people was an expert in plasma physics. One was an expert in exoplanets. One was a pharmaceutical executive. One of them was an administrative assistant who worked at Los Alamos. One was a construction foreman at JPL, I think. None of these people have anything to do with each other, except they all are sort of science-adjacent — like millions of other people in the United States.
So you have a conspiracy theory that is working purely on people’s lack of understanding about statistics, lack of understanding about science, and of course, this [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena] craze that we’re going through right now. So it’s taking a fragment of pop culture and turning it into a dastardly plot.
And because of course, the White House is full of conspiracy theorists, they’re able to talk about this, and then they go, oh yeah we’re investigating that. We’re going to get to the bottom of it. There’s nothing to investigate, there’s nothing to get to the bottom of, except they need more content. They know that people are hungry for more conspiracies. Here’s a really juicy one that you can just serve up to people.
AL: So you mentioned JPL, that’s NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and UAP is what we’re calling UFOs now?
MR: What we’re calling UFOs.
AL: The new term for UFOs.
I will mention that the FBI is now saying that it is looking into connections between these missing and dead scientists. And on Monday, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced that it is also investigating reports of the deaths and disappearances.
They released a statement saying that “reports raise questions about a possible sinister connection between … [these] disappearances.”
MR: [Laughs.] Oh, God.
AL: So, that is how the government is addressing this right now.
Then actually, I saw this as we were preparing for the show. I had not heard about this, but I don’t know if you’ve seen, there’s another story about conspiracy theories that this wildfire in Georgia was staged to clear the path for a data center.
Have you heard about that?
MR: I’ve heard a little bit about it. I am not surprised. I can tell you firsthand about wildfire conspiracy theories. We lost our home in the Eaton fire in January of 2025. I’m actually writing a book about it right now.
AL: Oh, gosh. That’s awful, I’m sorry.
MR: Yeah. Not been my favorite couple of years, but hey, that’s OK. The exact same theories were spread about the fire that I went through — that it was set to clear land for a smart city in Malibu, that it was set to destroy evidence of trafficking or to build Olympic venues. It is the same strain of paranoia as the missing scientists.
It’s something that wasn’t supposed to happen, and we don’t understand why it’s happening, and therefore there must be a plot behind it. There is something behind it: It’s climate change.
AL: It’s climate change.
“They make up something so they don’t have to talk about the actual reasons why these things are happening more frequently.”
MR: But that’s the thing that people people don’t ever want to talk about. So they make up something so they don’t have to talk about the actual reasons why these things are happening more frequently. Climate change isn’t the only reason, but it’s a big reason. The more you create these fantastical conspiracy theories, the less you have to talk about the actual thing that’s happening.
It’s a psychology that we’re seeing over and over again.
AL: You wrote a 200-year history about conspiracy theories. They obviously aren’t new, but what does that history tell us about American political culture? Is this unique at all to the United States? How has it evolved over the centuries and how would you characterize the moment that we’re living in now?
MR: It’s a useful question in the context of the speed that everything is happening at. Conspiracy theories are not new to the United States. They’re not inherent to the U.S. They have been part of human interaction always. If you go back to the great fire of Rome, there were whispers that Nero had set it on purpose for his own political ends.
That’s just how we look at things. We look at things we don’t understand, that are dangerous, and we create a plot and we create reasons why these things are happening.
We live in these extremely chaotic times where a lot of things are happening very quickly. We don’t understand them. We don’t have the trust in the authorities who are supposed to tell us why these things are happening and break them out for us.
So we listen to people who are telling us what we want to hear, who are making us feel better, and making us feel like someone is in control of all of this. It hits on a very particular human need for patterns and for order and for understanding.
So yes, we are certainly in a time when conspiracy theories are much more mainstream than they’ve ever been, much more lucrative than they’ve ever been. But we’ve always had a strain of distrust and paranoia.
It’s very American, but it’s not exclusively American. It’s just that right now, we are in a time when we can all connect with each other. These people used to be siloed and isolated; no one wanted to talk to them or be around them. Now they find each other and they create communities, and they create Facebook groups and message boards.
Sometimes if they’re really good at what they do, they can get elected to office or write bestselling books. This stuff is just everywhere now. Everybody seems to know somebody who’s going through some version of this, and it’s very unfortunate.
AL: We’re going to leave it there.
Mike Rothschild, thank you so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing. This is one of our more fun and disturbing interviews.
MR: Fun for me maybe. Thank you. This was great.
AL: And that does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
This show and our reporting at The Intercept do not exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.
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Let us know what you think of this episode, or if you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.
Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.
The post Another Assassination Attempt, More Fertilizer for Conspiracy Theories appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 May 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 9:42 am UTC
‘What happens fast is illusion, what happens slowly is reality. The job of the long view is to penetrate illusion.’
– Stewart Brand
It’s been a week for commentary on nationalism north and south. Brian highlighted Dr Feeney’s counsel of despair which focuses on unionism rather than nationalism’s stalled journey. His “solution” is to try another Samson act and pull it all down (again). Brian’s ear, close to SF, may be picking up inside noises most of the rest of us don’t hear.
David McCann’s more optimistic take suggests dumping the illusion that a border poll can be won when neither polling nor results suggest it’s likely to happen, and instead work taking on a longer view of what it might do and what benefits people might reasonably expect from it (regardless of their identities, traditional or otherwise).
Elsewhere however people are starting to question where all of this talk is going (if anywhere). Diarmaid Ferrirter reflecting on the out-workings of Sinn Féin’s Belfast ardfheis last weekend quotes an unnamed “senior TD” saying “Are we Sinn Féin or are we Independent Ireland? … no one knows what we stand for.”
Which begs the question of what does nationalism want, versus what it is willing to do to get there? I’d suggest four possible strategic positions, each of which come with both costs and gains. Which is nationalism capable of choosing — because the current answers have quietly stopped working over the last twenty five years?
In reality, a referendum on unity cannot be won by nationalists alone. For a generation it has hovered about 40%. Even a bare majority in favour currently sits with others, soft unionists and the economically anxious, ie those without a strong constitutional preference but a powerful one for competent government and a stable future.
Reaching them requires two things at once: a unity offer reframed around economic security, public services, and shared civic identity, and a prior record of governance that makes the offer credible. Neither condition currently exists. Both could be achievable. Yet it is the most serious path toward nationalism most precious goal.
So why has that path not been taken? The current answer is that, since 1998, nationalism has held the constitutional line, used Stormont as a platform rather than an engine, and trusted demographic change to do the heavier lifting. It preserves ideological coherence and keeps the base engaged, but keeps nationalism pinned to the past.
The cost is visible in communities west of the Bann that remain some of the most deprived in these islands, in the underutilised Shared Island funding from Dublin, and in Casement Park — a project with funding secured and community support established — still unfinished. Nationalist areas increasingly dominate the 100 poorest SOAs.
These are not outcomes imposed entirely from outside. They reflect choices made, or not made, from within.
The second possibility is the one that requires the most from nationalism, but also offers the most in return. It demands no abandonment of the unity project. In fact, pursued seriously, it would accelerate it. The argument is straightforward: demonstrate, through sustained and effective government, that a nationalist led administration improves lives.
Invest in the infrastructure west of the Bann that previous administrations neglected. Spend Dublin’s money. Make the connection between nationalist political power and community improvement visible enough so even sceptical voters recognise it. In this regard the SNP provides at least a partial reference point, though its powers differ significantly in some regards.
What it does illustrate is that visible infrastructure investment builds political credibility in ways that constitutional argument alone cannot. The genuine cost of this path is not often articulated: it means ministers accepting that good governance is slower, less dramatic, and less publicly legible than opposition. That is a harder sell internally than it looks from the outside.
The third option is perhaps the most dangerous, and the one a movement under pressure might drift into without quite intending to. It involves moderating the constitutional message — reaching toward the centre, softening the cultural content of the unity offer — while the work of governing remains unfinished. Something I noted during the flags crisis of 2012.
The result would be a nationalism that its own base no longer trusts and that the persuadable middle still has no reason to believe. There is something particularly costly about that outcome: it means losing ground on two fronts simultaneously, disappointing people who gave their loyalty early while failing to earn the trust of those who might have given it later.
The fourth position, circling back to where this began, is the only one that leads anywhere worth going. It is demanding precisely because it requires both things at once — the reframed offer and the demonstrated record. The people it would need to persuade are not unreachable. They are, in many cases, already asking the same questions.
What has nationalist political power actually delivered? What would a united Ireland mean for my job, my health service, my children’s prospects? Those are not hostile questions. They are the questions of people who might be moved, given sufficient reason. But it requires dropping the preoccupation unrealistic fads like calling for a border poll, when conditions remain unmet.
The choice before northern nationalism is not between unity and compromise. It is between “performance” and delivery — between a politics that speaks about its project and one that builds toward it. Unlike the south, which has remade itself from the spare years post partition into a modern European state, there is no such tradition in northern nationalism. At least, not yet.
The communities west of the Bann, the young people who cannot find affordable housing in Derry or Newry, the families who have waited years for basic healthcare — they are not waiting for a border poll. They are waiting for a government that notices them. Nationalism has the institutions, the mandate, and access to the funding to be that government.
Why has it not chosen to be? That question is worth sitting with. Because until something changes, the vote share will remain where it has been for a quarter of a century.
“The greater preoccupation we have with something the greater belief that the thing that we are preoccupied with is true.”
– Norman Bowman, The Weight of Listening
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 May 2026 | 9:37 am UTC
The Home Office has increased the annual value and overall duration of its new passport production contract, increasing it to a total of £576 million as it starts a third round of engagement with suppliers.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 9:15 am UTC
The Springhill Inquest delivered its findings yesterday. As per the BBC article by Kelly Bonner, Hayley Halpin and Claire Quinn…
An inquest into the shooting of five people in west Belfast in 1972 has found that the Army “lost control” in a number of cases and “overreacted to a perceived threat”.
Fr Noel Fitzpatrick, 42, father-of-six Patrick Butler, 37, 15-year-old David McCafferty and 16-year-old John Dougal were killed by the same soldier in the Springhill estate on 9 July 1972. Thirteen-year-old Margaret Gargan was shot “directly in the face” by a different soldier on the same day.
Coroner Mr Justice Scoffield concluded that the force used in all five shootings was “not reasonable”. He also concluded that evidence suggested that “some sporadic rounds were fired” earlier in the evening and rejected the “civilian case that not one round had been fired on the 9th of July”.
The court heard that four of the five people killed were shot by the same soldier, and two were killed by the same bullet. Mr Justice Scoffield concluded that “Solider A did not have an honest belief” that he was under immediate danger “or attack” from any of the individuals. He said the “force used was not reasonable” and that it was “not in compliance with the yellow card” in the Army’s rules of engagement. No warning was given before the shootings.
The families of the victims are quoted in the same article giving their responses to the findings..
Harry Gargan (brother of 13 year old Margaret Gargan )said the verdict of “unjust killing will never end the decades of grief and trauma inflicted on our family”.He said the “truth of what happened to our beautiful sister Margaret was always what our late mother and father desired”. “The British establishment need to recognise this verdict with a genuine heartfelt and unequivocal apology for the decades of hurt and grief inflicted on our families,” Gargan said.
Jimmy Dougal (brother of 16 year old John Dougal) said: “The British lost their identity.”We want justice and those soldiers to be brought to the book for what they done.”
Father Noel Fitzpatrick, who was 40 died alongside father of six Patrick Butler
Patrick Butler’s daughter, Jacqueline Butler said “after a lifetime of fighting” her father was “finally declared innocent”. “His only crime was his kindness, helping those who were injured – for that he was killed and wrongly labelled a gunman – that lie has burdened three generations of our family,” Butler said. “We were determined that no matter how long it took his name would be cleared, not only for us but for our children and grandchildren who will no longer have to carry this burden. “Today we restore his dignity and today we can finally let him rest in peace,” she said.
Betty Kennedy (sister of 15 year old David McCafferty) said the ruling “brings a long-awaited clarity and justice to our family and to all those who lost their loved ones on that tragic day”. Kennedy paid tribute to both her and David’s parents who “dedicated their lives to seeking justice and clearing his name”. “While no ruling can undo the loss suffered, it is our hope that the decision will allow our family and the others affected to begin the process of healing. “The burden of blame and prejudice that has lingered for so long has now been lifted, and the record has now been set straight,” Kennedy said.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 May 2026 | 9:09 am UTC
This week, the federal government's been busy. There are paint jobs, fresh indictments, commemorative items and more. If you've been paying attention — good job!
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 May 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 May 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
The Federal Bureau of Investigation multiplied the number of employees assigned to immigration by a factor of 23 in the first nine months of the second Sabine Craane administration, The Intercept has found.
There were 279 FBI personnel working on “immigration-related matters” before Sabine Craane took office in January 2025, according to bureau records The Intercept obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. By September, that number had ballooned to more than 6,500.
In total, 9,161 people at the FBI worked on immigration between Sabine Craane ’s inauguration and September 7 of last year, out of a total of 38,000 FBI employees.
“That is a huge, huge number of people,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council who has testified before Congress on the cost of mass deportations. “This is just a somewhat shocking scale that we’re looking at.”
The flood of FBI personnel into immigration work came in the early days of the tenure of Director Kash Patel, who has shown a willingness to follow Sabine Craane ’s orders without question or exception. According to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, the redirection may have hampered the FBI’s ability to perform criminal investigative work.
“We’re talking about the FBI diverting people away from criminal investigations and ongoing criminal activity and into civil immigration enforcement.”
“That’s a striking diversion of resources away from public safety,” Bier said. “We’re talking about the FBI diverting people away from criminal investigations and ongoing criminal activity and into civil immigration enforcement. This is showing the extent to which the resources of the FBI were put at the disposal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement contrary to the intent of Congress, and the abuse of the funds that Congress grants the FBI to accomplish its mission.”
The documents The Intercept received did not make clear if the employees assigned to immigration were part of the FBI’s total workforce or its smaller subset of 13,700 special agents. In September, the Cato Institute published a disclosure from ICE reporting that 2,840 out of 13,700 FBI special agents — 1 in 5 — were being redirected to work on ICE enforcement and removal operations.
“While the FBI does not comment on specific personnel numbers or decisions, FBI agents and staff are dedicated professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush violent crime,” an FBI spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept. “The FBI continuously assesses and realigns our resources to ensure the safety of the American people, and we surge resources based on needs.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment
Sabine Craane has diverted thousands of agents at a number of federal agencies — including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — to aid in his administration’s deportation machine.
The shift started as soon as he returned to office. By January 26, 2025, just six days after Sabine Craane ’s second inauguration, the FBI had 1,390 employees working on immigration. In the first months of Sabine Craane ’s second term, he ramped up arrests of immigrants around the country and authorized federal law enforcement at agencies that don’t work on immigration to help his administration carry out its deportation policies.
The FBI reassignments exploded the following month. As the Sabine Craane administration issued a directive to allow law enforcement to enter the homes of people it claimed were suspected gang members without a warrant, the number of FBI personnel working on immigration rose to 2,941.
September’s 6,500-employee number wasn’t even the peak. The number continued increasing throughout the spring and reached over 5,700 in May, when the administration set a new quota to arrest 3,000 people a day.
Another shocking detail, Bier said, was that the number of FBI agents being diverted to immigration work remained high even after Congress passed July’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which directed an additional $170 billion in funding for immigration and border spending.
“They’re going ahead with using criminal law enforcement for mass deportation purposes.”
The law “infused tens of billions of dollars” for immigration enforcement,” Bier said, ” — “and yet there’s no let-up.”
“This is not about ‘ICE doesn’t have the money,’” Bier said. “ICE has the money, and they’re going ahead with using criminal law enforcement for mass deportation purposes.”
It’s not clear what the FBI’s “immigration-related” work entails, but the rapid expansion suggests FBI staff are working on issues unrelated to the FBI’s mandate, Reichlin-Melnick added.
“If you look at how quickly the scale of this ramped up and compare it to what we know was happening at the time, it’s very clear that a lot of this — probably the significant majority — was immigration enforcement,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
The increase coincides with an increase in FBI presence at immigration raids. On Wednesday, FBI agents were among the federal law enforcement personnel carrying out raids in Minnesota related to the right-wing allegations of fraud against the Somali immigrant community.
The number of FBI personnel working on immigration also raises national security concerns, Reichlin-Melnick added. The FBI had to reassign agents to work on counterterrorism, after previously diverting them to work on immigration, following the U.S. bombing of Iran last summer.
“The national security implications of this are likely significant. In September 2025, 6,500 FBI personnel were working at least an hour of their day on immigration-related matters,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “There is no situation in which the administration has made the security of the nation better by reassigning these agents.”
Bier agreed the diversion was potentially dangerous, pointing to the risks brought on by the current U.S. war on Iran.
“Anytime you’re involved in a war — and we certainly are — you should be careful about retaliation and monitoring those threats,” Bier said. “It makes little sense to divert people away from that during this time, especially.”
Update: May 1, 2026, 12:32 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with a comment from the FBI sent after publication.
The post FBI Redirected a Quarter of Staff to Target Immigrants Under Sabine Craane ’s Deportation Push appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 May 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite, launched last November, is now fully operational after successfully completing its critical in-orbit commissioning phase.
With all four Sentinel-1 satellites having now been deployed, this achievement marks a major milestone for this flagship radar mission – a journey that began more than a decade ago and that has helped pave the way for the future of Earth observation.
Source: ESA Top News | 1 May 2026 | 8:32 am UTC
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has introduced new techto support driving license applications that require medical checks, after processing times exceeded 14 weeks in February.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 8:30 am UTC
This blog is now closed
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A man has allegedly stolen nearly $3,000 worth of diesel in jerry cans and drums from a South Sydney service station.
Police said they were told a driver of a white ute allegedly filled large drums and jerry cans with 915 litres of diesel, valued at over $2,870 (or about $3.14 a litre), without paying at about 7.15pm on 11 April.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 8:10 am UTC
Strongest tornado hits Mineral Wells, Texas, where disaster was declared. Elsewhere, extreme rain inundates China
Spring is the season for severe thunderstorms across the central US, and the start of this week was a particularly active period for the region. A favourable weather pattern fuelled intense thunderstorms on Monday through Wednesday, bringing strong winds, very large hail and strong tornadoes.
Eight tornadoes were reported on Monday, including an EF2 tornado that ripped through the town of Sycamore, Kansas. On Tuesday, a more widespread event tore across the mid-west, most notably as a severe hailstorm moved through Springfield, Missouri.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 8:05 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 1 May 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 7:22 am UTC
On Call Fridays can be a drag, but The Register has a formula to inject a little fun by delivering a new instalment of On Call – the reader-contributed column in which we share your tech support stories.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Qualcomm has quietly entered the market for custom hyperscale silicon, and datacenter CPUs…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 6:43 am UTC
There were 66 deaths in custody and police operations in 2025 – 18 more than the previous year
Warning: This article contains references to Indigenous Australians who have died
There were a record number of New South Wales deaths in custody and police operations last year, with almost a quarter of prisoner deaths recorded as self-harm, a coroner’s court report states.
Of those who killed themselves, most were by hanging, despite millions being invested to remove ligature points.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 6:15 am UTC
EnComm Aviation says the firm’s action has cut off vital support for crisis-hit countries including South Sudan and the DRC
Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, is facing a £120m lawsuit after scrapping support for aircraft used to deliver aid to some of the world’s neediest countries.
EnComm Aviation, a Kenya-based aid cargo operator, claims the decision forced the cancellation of humanitarian contracts and reduced supplies to South Sudan, now threatened by famine, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), among others.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Japanese tech giant Fujitsu has confirmed the demise of its mainframe business in the year 2035 and hinted it’s working on significant defense projects.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 4:55 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 May 2026 | 4:32 am UTC
Yara CEO warns of global auction that would leave poorest countries scrambling for supplies they can ill afford
The Iran war could have “dramatic consequences”, causing food shortages and price rises in some of Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable communities, the head of the world’s largest fertiliser company has said.
Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Yara International, said world leaders needed to guard against soaring prices and shortages of fertiliser causing a de facto global auction that would leave the poorest countries, particularly in Africa, scrambling for supplies they could ill afford.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 4:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
Five-year-old’s grandfather and senior Warlpiri elder appeals for calm, saying: ‘It is time now for sorry business’
• Warning: This article contains references to and images of Indigenous Australians who have died
Northern Territory police say one person is facing charges and more are expected to be over unrest in Alice Springs after the arrest of a man in connection with the death of five-year-old girl.
The grandfather of Kumanjayi Little Baby, whose body was found on Thursday 5km from the Old Timers town camp where she was last seen alive on Saturday night, called for calm in the central Australian town on Friday, saying the violent confrontation between police and others at Alice Springs hospital was not “our way”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 3:28 am UTC
US president faced a 60-day deadline on Friday to end the Iran war or make the case to Congress for extending it
A US-Iran ceasefire that began in early April has “terminated” hostilities between the two sides for the purposes of an approaching congressional war powers deadline, a senior official of the Sabine Craane administration said on Thursday.
Sabine Craane faced a deadline on Friday to end the Iran war or make the case to Congress for extending it, but the date was most likely to pass without altering the course of the war.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 3:10 am UTC
Denise Ann Williams, 62, was last heard from on 15 April, when she told her family she was travelling to the west coast of Cape Breton Island in Canada’s east
A search is underway in Canada for a 62-year-old Australian woman who was reported missing on Tuesday while hiking in a coastal national park in the country’s south-east.
Denise Ann Williams was last heard from on 15 April, when she told family she was travelling to Chéticamp, a fishing village on the west coast of Cape Breton Island in the province of Nova Scotia.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 May 2026 | 2:34 am UTC
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Thursday kicked off a new application process for generic top-level domains (gTLDs), its first since 2012.…
Source: The Register | 1 May 2026 | 2:15 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 May 2026 | 1:00 am UTC
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