A federal appeals court panel rejected the Trump administration's bid to lift a ban on using a federal immigration database to check the accuracy of citizenship records on states' voter rolls. read more
OpEd: President Trump's administration is waging war against children, especially those in our nation's poorest families. read more
A U.S. Air Force base has ceased extending religious greetings at its gates to uniformed members following the reported intervention of an anti-discrimination organization. read more
President Donald Trump's newly proposed Space Force uniform has sparked comparisons to Nazi military attire as the science fiction movie Starship Troopers inspired the design.
President Donald Trump will be at the center of this week's GOP midterm convention. Many of his fellow Republicans are hoping he doesn't make it all about him. The parade of lawmakers, candidates, donors and party officials now headed to Dallas for the two-day spectacle are counting on Trump to make a compelling pitch on the national stage before voters hit the polls.
Related ...
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious' travel patterns (November 2025)
apnews.com
... The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.
Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over -- often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement's radar.
Once limited to policing the nation's boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country's interior that can monitor ordinary Americans' daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years. ...
ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok all went down at once; enterprises need a backup plan
www.computerworld.com
... Thursday's outages across the three services highlight an uncomfortable reality: Enterprises are automating work faster than they're planning for AI failures.
Enterprises are facing a disturbing new question in the age of AI: What happens when agentic assistants go dark?
This became a very real scenario on Thursday, as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and SpaceXAI's Grok near-simultaneously, and somewhat mysteriously, experienced significant, prolonged outages.
Beginning in the morning, Eastern time, several ChatGPT models went down over a roughly two hour period, Claude models over a four-hour span, and Grok models for a near three-and-a-half hour duration. All three companies acknowledged the "elevated" issues and applied fixes. ...
Nvidia's Jensen Huang says 'AGI has arrived' after OpenAI GPT-6 Astra rollout for which Sam Altman said 'sorry'
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
... Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has congratulated OpenAI following the debut of its latest frontier model, Astra, and declared that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has finally emerged.
Taking to social media platform X, he celebrated ChatGPT-maker's rapid technological progression while highlighting that Astra was developed using Nvidia's advanced hardware.
The term AGI refers to automated systems capable of equaling or exceeding human cognitive abilities across various domains. ...
@#5 ... how long before AI takes over? ...
OpenAI chief scientist warns no-one is prepared for consequences of AI
www.bbc.com
... OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki has called for "extreme caution" over AI's runaway progress and warned more intervention may be needed to ensure "humans remain in control of the future".
"I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence," he wrote in a blog post entitled "An Alien Mind". ...
Fact Sheet: Costs of Iran War (August 2026)
www.americanprogress.org
... The Trump administration's war in Iran has cost at least $1,200 per household. With no end in sight, American families are paying a price. ...
US diesel prices hit record high as conflicts intensify supply crunch
www.usatoday.com
... Average U.S. diesel prices jumped to record highs on Thursday, as a global supply crunch intensified after renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran and on disruptions caused by Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, a major source of diesel exports. ...
Industry watchers warned that already-elevated prices could climb further as seasonal demand picks up. Farmers harvesting crops in the Northern Hemisphere, combined with preparations for planting in the Southern Hemisphere, are expected to boost diesel consumption in the coming months. Demand for heating oil, a distillate fuel similar to diesel, also typically rises ahead of the winter heating season.
Higher diesel prices can ripple through the broader economy because the fuel is widely used in trucking, agriculture and industrial activity. This boosts transportation and production costs that can ultimately raise food prices, Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, said. ...
"Farmers and truckers typically use more diesel in the autumn, which raises the stakes for the current crisis and increases the risk of sharper price increases," he said. ...
Is Trump's $1 coin now on sale a legal tender? What the law says
www.firstpost.com
... The US Mint has begun selling the 2026 Donald Trump $1 coin, a legal-tender issue marking America's 250th anniversary. Rolls of 25 cost $61, while 100-coin bags cost $154.50. The coin has a $1 face value and features Trump alongside the Presidential Seal as part of the Semiquincentennial programme ...
The coins are also available online at the website of the US Mint, although as of Thursday, the product was unavailable or on back-order due to rising demand.
Because the coins are sold at a premium above face value, the US Mint is categorising them primarily as collectible numismatic products, even though they are legally minted as circulating currency. ...
@#15 ... "A nuclear power plant produces power for decades; the nuclear waste it leaves behind will remain lethal for 10,000 years. Put on a blackboard the year the EPA has determined these materials will be safe, 11,993" ...
Yup.
Apropos tune ...
John Hall - Plutonium Is Forever (1979)
www.youtube.com
Another view ...
Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time
www.reuters.com