u/Kamoto31

Arlington County, Virginia, has become the first governmental body to sue over President Donald Trump’s proposed Triumphal Arch, asking a federal court to halt the project’s advance toward construction until required environmental review is completed. The county filed its lawsuit Thursday in the Eastern District of Virginia, challenging the National Park Service’s handling of the proposed monument at Memorial Circle, on federal parkland west of the Potomac River near Arlington National Cemetery. The complaint alleges that the agency is moving toward ground disturbing construction while maintaining that no final decision to build has been made. It describes the review process as rushed and alleges it is “a pretext designed to shore up justifications for building the Arch in accordance with the President’s repeated marching orders.”

The county, represented by legal advocacy group Democracy Forward, is seeking compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and proper analysis and testing before the project proceeds. County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said officials had participated in the review process in good faith but that their concerns about “severe, unique, and wide-ranging negative impacts” on residents had been ignored. The White House rejected that account. Spokesman Davis Ingle said the administration had been “fastidiously compliant with all procedural and legal requirements” and predicted that the “meritless and dilatory lawsuit” would be dismissed. He also said the arch would become an iconic landmark and improve the visitor experience for veterans, families of the fallen, and other visitors to Arlington National Cemetery. Those competing claims have not been resolved by a court ruling reported in the article.

The lawsuit follows aviation safety objections from Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson, who said the proposed 250-foot arch would compound concerns left unaddressed after the January 2025 collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people. Nelson also criticized Trump’s proposal to make the arch a “top grade military complex” capable of hosting drones and snipers and storing ammunition. Separately, three veterans and an architectural historian have sued in federal court in Washington, arguing that congressional approval is required. The judge in that case directed the administration to give the court 48 hours’ notice before undertaking activities related to or preparing for construction. The project has received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all appointed by Trump, but that approval does not resolve the distinct environmental and congressional authorization challenges described in the article.

Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang told CBS News he flatly rejects recent warnings from AI researchers that the technology could threaten humanity’s survival within just a few years, calling such predictions overblown “doomsday narratives” that aren’t “grounded in science.” “2030 is not going to be the end of the world. There is 0% chance that’s going to be the end of the world,” Huang said in the Friday interview with CBS senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent. “Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible.” His comments were a direct response to former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who claimed on social media earlier this month that AI developers “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” remarks that ignited broader public debate and prompted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and other industry leaders to call for slowing AI development.

Huang’s position carries obvious financial weight given Nvidia’s central role in the AI ecosystem: its specialized chips power the large language models behind AI systems built by OpenAI and others, and demand for that hardware has pushed Nvidia’s market value to $5.3 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company. Asked directly why Americans should trust his safety assessments given that financial stake, Huang argued Nvidia’s incentives actually align with responsible deployment rather than against it: “our company’s success is directly connected to the safe deployment of products and services. If we don’t continue to do that, our value would be diminished.” He extended that logic to oppose new AI regulation entirely, even in the wake of several recent security incidents, including a July episode in which OpenAI bots reportedly hacked the AI company Hugging Face, and OpenAI’s disclosure Thursday of six additional incidents it described as “unexpected or concerning” model behavior, disclosures that have prompted some lawmakers to push for tighter oversight. Huang argued existing US product liability and unauthorized entry laws are already sufficient, aligning himself with President Trump’s stance against additional AI guardrails: “you have all kinds of liabilities associated with cybersecurity and damage liability laws. Apply that first, don’t let this doomsday narrative allow someone to relieve them of the laws that currently exist.”

On the geopolitical front, Huang weighed in on the ongoing US-China chip competition, an area where Nvidia has been directly constrained by federal export restrictions. While the Trump administration allowed Nvidia to begin selling its H200 chips to “approved customers” in China last December, the US still prohibits the company from selling its most advanced AI chips there. Huang said he believes American-made technology should benefit the US first, but pushed back against outright government bans on selling to China: “every single chip company should go and serve the world, compete for the world. That’s all about competing. America is about competition.” Huang is set to attend a White House dinner on September 24th where Trump will host Chinese President Xi Jinping, and said he hopes to discuss establishing global AI development standards with Xi directly, framing Chinese ambitions sympathetically: “they want China to have the benefit of AI. They want China to prosper, just as we want America to prosper. Don’t you wish every country would have aspirations for a better tomorrow? And I love that about them.” He did note some areas, like national security and defense applications, where US-China AI cooperation wouldn’t be appropriate.

On the domestic backlash against AI data centers, Huang struck a more conciliatory tone, acknowledging the industry moved too fast in engaging local communities during the recent buildout: “I would say we’re sorry we didn’t come talk to you sooner. We need to go engage the communities long before we set up the data centers.” He argued data centers have become more energy- and water-efficient over time while also driving local job growth and economic activity, and suggested the buildout could help “bring back building and manufacturing again.” On the question of wealth and taxation, Huang, whose $182 billion net worth ranks him eighth-wealthiest globally according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said he wouldn’t object to California’s proposed billionaires’ tax on this fall’s ballot, a measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on residents worth $1 billion or more, despite opposition from other California billionaires. “The fact that I can afford to pay $8 billion in taxes over five years is a privilege,” Huang said. “I feel it’s a privilege. It’s a responsibility. And nothing would give me more joy than to be able to pay even more taxes,” adding, “I’m not afraid of paying taxes, I’m just afraid of being poor.” Huang also reflected on his origins, calling himself “the ultimate American dream” and recalling that he was working as a dishwasher at Denny’s when he first conceived the idea for Nvidia: “I was just really, really focused on doing dishes like no dishwasher ever did dishes.”

A Delaware judge ruled Friday that Fox Corp. must turn over hundreds of documents that could reveal how Rupert Murdoch and longtime board director Jacques Nasser, the former Ford Motor Co. CEO, handled a string of major scandals at Murdoch’s media properties over the past two decades. Vice Chancellor Bonnie David ruled fully in favor of the plaintiffs in a shareholder lawsuit originally filed three years ago seeking to hold Murdoch, his son and Fox executive chairman/CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and other board members and executives legally responsible for a business model the suit alleges has repeatedly exposed the company to scandal and costly litigation. Fox will now have to produce a list of every email address ever used by Nasser or Rupert Murdoch, years of Fox board meeting minutes, roughly 700 documents containing the phrase “phone hacking,” and emails from Nasser’s Ford accounts, according to the ruling.

The lawsuit traces back to Fox’s nearly $800 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s spread of conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election, and a related, ongoing defamation case brought by Smartmatic USA, which is seeking $2.7 billion from Fox. The suit also cites an undisclosed settlement with the family of Seth Rich, a former Democratic National Committee staffer whose 2016 shooting death Fox falsely linked to leaked documents in a story it later retracted, as well as the British phone hacking scandal that has cost sister company News Corp. roughly $1.5 billion to date; Fox Corp. was actually split off from News Corp. following that scandal specifically to shield Murdoch’s American television licenses from potential regulatory challenges, even as the Murdochs have more recently explored merging the two companies back together.

The entire shareholder case now hinges on what plaintiffs’ attorneys can uncover about the decades-long relationship between Murdoch and Nasser, who served as an independent director across News Corp., 21st Century Fox, and Fox Corp., eventually becoming Fox Corp.‘s lead independent director until stepping down in 2023, the same year the Dominion case settled. Nasser’s role was meant to serve as a check on the Murdochs’ concentrated control, but shareholders are challenging whether that independence was ever real; if evidence shows Nasser was close enough to the Murdochs to consistently favor their interests over the company’s, plaintiffs argue they’d have grounds to establish that more than half of Fox’s board wasn’t genuinely independent, likely sending the case to trial. Attorneys are specifically probing Nasser’s decade on the board of British Sky Broadcasting, where court documents allege he backed James Murdoch’s appointment as CEO, stood by the family during the phone hacking scandal, and supported a stock buyback program that “increased the clout of the Murdoch family.” Nasser also spent a combined decade on the boards of 21st Century Fox and Fox Corp., and both he and Rupert Murdoch are longtime members of the American Australian Association, an organization founded by Murdoch’s father.

A central point of contention in Friday’s hearing involved Murdoch’s text message habits: Fox’s attorneys acknowledged that Murdoch had been auto-deleting his text messages until around April 2022, notably after Dominion had already filed its lawsuit over the network’s 2020 election coverage. Fox attorney Anitha Reddy pushed back on characterizing this as wholesale deletion, telling the court “that documents were deleted wholesale is incorrect,” and explaining that Murdoch typically communicates via email rather than text, while still conceding “there was a period… when text messages were not retained.” Beyond the newly ordered document production, plaintiffs’ attorneys will also gain access to sealed court records from the Smartmatic case addressing Murdoch’s alleged “spoliation,” the legal term for destroying evidence, in that dispute Smartmatic has separately accused Fox and Lachlan Murdoch of intentionally destroying evidence, according to CNN’s reporting last year, and Fox’s own attorneys have accused executives at both Dominion and Smartmatic of evidence destruction in their respective cases and sought sanctions. This isn’t the first time preservation failures have surfaced in Fox litigation either: during the Dominion case, the voting tech company’s lawyers accused several Fox personalities, including Pete Hegseth, now serving as defense secretary, along with company executives, of failing to preserve texts and emails that should have been retained. Fox did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.

Disney+ has updated its subscriber agreement to permit advertising before and after movies and shows across all subscription tiers, effectively eliminating the option of fully ad-free streaming on the platform, even for subscribers paying the highest price. That change directly affects the Premium plan, which costs $18.99 a month and had originally been marketed specifically on the promise of an uninterrupted, commercial-free viewing experience, a core selling point that’s now being quietly walked back. Subscribers logging in are now met with an on-screen prompt requiring them to actively accept the updated terms before they can continue watching, meaning the change isn’t optional or something users can simply ignore.

According to an email Disney sent to subscribers, all plans may now include promotional content, sponsorships, and advertisements before and after playback, and an update on Disney’s official support page clarified that live events and linear channels will carry regular commercial breaks regardless of which plan a subscriber is on. The only carve-out is Junior Mode profiles, which will remain entirely free of commercial advertising and sponsor placements. The updated terms go further than simply introducing ads, though: subscribers are warned they may not be able to skip certain promotions, and using an ad blocker could cause playback to shut down entirely, while Disney has explicitly declined to guarantee any specific amount or frequency of advertising on any tier, leaving the door open to increase ad load over time without further notice tied to a specific commitment.

The change effectively narrows the practical gap between Disney+‘s tiers even as the price gap remains wide. The ad-supported Basic plan currently costs $11.99 a month, meaning the $7 premium subscribers pay for the top tier now buys meaningfully less differentiation than it used to, since the core promise that justified that markup, an ad-free experience, no longer exists. This isn’t happening in isolation either: it follows a difficult stretch for the platform after Disney+ subscribers canceled in large numbers when annual pricing jumped from $79.99 to $159.99 for select customers, suggesting the company is layering another significant change onto a subscriber base that’s already shown it’s willing to walk away over value concerns.

President Trump said Friday that his son Donald Trump Jr. has repaid Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin, for hosting two nights of post-wedding celebration parties, though neither Trump nor the Trump Organization has produced any documentation or evidence confirming the repayment actually occurred. Asked in the Oval Office whether it was appropriate for his son to have accepted the gift, Trump defended the arrangement as unremarkable while simultaneously claiming it had already been resolved: “Well, it’s totally, it’s totally allowed. And a lot of people have parties and all, but it’s totally allowed. But as I understand it, he paid them back. He didn’t want to have that, so I hear he paid them back. A person that he knows pretty, I guess a friend of his, gave him a wedding party. That’s very common.” ProPublica was first to report on Kremlev’s gift to Trump Jr.

The arrangement has drawn concern from lawmakers and critics who warn that accepting expensive gifts from individuals tied to foreign adversaries can create serious conflicts of interest and potential leverage over a president’s family. When a reporter pressed Trump specifically on Kremlev’s close relationship with the Kremlin, Trump offered a somewhat different defense, suggesting his son simply hadn’t vetted the man beforehand, saying Trump Jr. “didn’t do a background check.” Notably, a reporter pointed out that Friday’s comments marked the first time the public had heard any claim that Trump Jr. had repaid Kremlev, prompting Trump to elaborate further: “No, I heard I heard about that. I actually heard that, when I heard the story, I asked about it. He said, ‘No, I’m paying it back, Dad.’ So, and that was a while ago.” That account relies entirely on Trump’s secondhand recollection of a conversation with his son rather than any documented proof of an actual transaction, and ABC News has since asked both the White House and the Trump Organization to provide evidence supporting the repayment claim.

The gift itself has already been publicly acknowledged by the family. Trump Jr.‘s wife, Bettina Anderson, wrote in an Instagram post that Kremlev “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding,” calling it “an extraordinary gift from a friend and something for which were and remain incredibly grateful,” language that frames the arrangement as a personal friendship rather than raising any of the foreign-influence concerns critics have flagged. Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica that “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and said the two first met “a couple of years ago.” ABC News has reached out to Kremlev directly for comment.

A wave of restaurants and chefs are capitalizing on growing public disgust with AI-generated food imagery by posting simple, handwritten notes on social media pledging they’ll never use AI to promote themselves, a trend that’s rapidly turning into a viral marketing win. The backlash it’s responding to has been building for months, as restaurants trying to cut costs by generating promotional images with AI instead produced bread resembling “reptile skin” and croissants compared to “alien larva,” images so unsettling that they’ve driven customers away rather than attracting them, with social media users regularly mocking local businesses for using the technology. As 404 Media first reported last month, some restaurant owners have now flipped the script entirely, uploading photos of themselves holding up handwritten signs with messages like “We will not be using any AI to promote ourselves.”

Since that initial report, the trend has expanded rapidly to include recognizable names in the food world, among them “Chopped” champion Nikko Cagalanan, Brooklyn’s Sicilian pizza chain L&B Spumoni Gardens, and Phoenix restaurant Niu Mama, all of whom have posted similar pledges. The posts aren’t just a niche curiosity, some are racking up hundreds of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments, suggesting the gesture is resonating with a real and substantial audience rather than a small pocket of tech skeptics. That reaction fits into a broader pattern of growing public frustration with AI’s spread into nearly every corner of daily life, often without consent, a frustration that’s escalated from casual annoyance into more organized public pushback, particularly as AI data centers with significant environmental footprints continue to be built across the country, a concern that has drawn bipartisan criticism.

The dynamic is especially charged in the restaurant industry specifically because cooking carries cultural and personal meaning that AI-generated content can’t authentically replicate. The New Yorker, in a recent piece on the trend, argued that AI-generated food images function as an unintentional tell about the food itself, writing that such images act as “a sort of shorthand for saying, ‘Yes, we serve food, but it is slop, just like the photos we use to market it,’ likely frozen and factory-made, shoved into a grease-caked frier, and still somehow lukewarm and soggy when you take your first bite.” Against that backdrop, a handwritten pledge not to use AI, however low-effort it might seem, reads to customers as a signal of authenticity and care, and the online response bears that out. “This is how you catch a fish,” one user commented on a photo of Cagalanan holding up his note, while another wrote, “Just gained a new fan and will be there asap!”

President Trump announced Saturday that he’s creating an “AI Force,” a move he compared to his first-term establishment of Space Force, while flatly rejecting concerns from tech leaders and researchers that rapid AI development could pose an existential threat to humanity. In a Truth Social post, Trump called fears about AI becoming a dangerous superintelligence a “hoax” and pledged the government would actively support the industry’s expansion rather than regulate it preemptively. “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows! However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System,” he wrote, framing existing courts as a sufficient check on AI-related harm rather than new dedicated regulation. He described AI as “the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet,” but argued it will ultimately be even more consequential, potentially accounting for “as much as 25% of our Country’s GDP,” and tied the push explicitly to competition with China.

Alongside the AI Force announcement, Trump said he will soon formally name an “AI Czar,” a role that’s had a somewhat unsettled recent history. Trump had originally appointed David Sacks as “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar” back in December 2024, but Sacks said in March 2026 that his time in that role as a special government employee had ended, leaving the position effectively vacant since then. In an interview with CBS News last week, Sacks echoed Trump’s dismissive stance on existential AI risk, saying he believes fears about AI threatening humanity are overblown and that while some caution is warranted, development should continue largely unimpeded.

That position puts Trump and Sacks at odds with a growing chorus of warnings from within the AI industry itself. On September 8th, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives” by pursuing self-improving “superintelligence” systems. Even more notably, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has publicly urged the industry to slow down its pace of development, told CBS News “Sunday Morning” that “there are real dangers” associated with AI, adding pointedly that the “industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risks,” a striking admission coming from the head of one of the field’s leading companies rather than an outside critic.

A Montana District Court has granted a preliminary injunction preventing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from removing more than 900 bison from federal land in Montana, a decision Earthjustice and Cochenour Law Office had requested on behalf of American Prairie in August. The groups argued the agency misinterpreted the Taylor Grazing Act and violated federal law. Without the injunction, American Prairie would have had to cull or relocate hundreds of bison by the end of September; instead, the herd will now remain on public lands in Montana while the underlying lawsuit proceeds.

In his decision, Judge Brian Morris wrote, “No statutory language or judicial precedent exists that requires a livestock operation to focus exclusively on production and entirely ignore conservation, range improvement, preservation, or other values.” He added, “Congress recognized livestock grazing and livestock management often includes and considers preservation, improvement, and thoughtful development, hand-in-hand with other uses.” Jenny Harbine, managing attorney with Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office, called the ruling “an important victory in the fight to ensure American Prairie’s bison can continue grazing on Montana’s prairie, as they have for over two decades.” She added, “The Trump administration’s decision to force more than 900 bison off federal land was illegal and politically motivated. We look forward to presenting our case to ensure bison can remain on public lands across the country.”

For more than 20 years, BLM authorized American Prairie to graze its bison on federal lands, but the agency abruptly reversed course on those permits following the change in presidential administrations, adopting a position favored by the livestock industry that BLM had long rejected. Under this new standard, BLM would disqualify livestock owners who prioritize conservation practices from obtaining grazing permits, even though such practices benefit rangeland and riparian health. Because this new test departs from BLM’s longstanding interpretation of grazing statutes, it would jeopardize permits nationwide for bison and other animals managed with conservation in mind, not just American Prairie’s herd in Montana.

The policy shift has also drawn support for American Prairie from tribal nations, which have cited similarities in land management practices and noted that bison from American Prairie’s herds have helped tribes start and grow their own commercial and cultural herds, including those supporting food sovereignty efforts. Revoking American Prairie’s permits would jeopardize both bison conservation and tribal food sovereignty programs that rely on federal lands to sustain their herds. The article notes that American Prairie’s bison have caused no documented harm to public lands in Montana; on the contrary, BLM’s own records show bison grazing has improved rangeland productivity and riparian health, since bison function as a keystone species that creates cascading environmental benefits for countless other wildlife.

A group funded by tech industry billionaires called Build American AI is launching a massive ad campaign meant to sway public opinion around AI data centers in key battleground states, including Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kansas, according to Bloomberg reporting. The ad blitz is described as being in the “millions of dollars” range, though Build American AI hasn’t disclosed an exact figure. Among the group’s backers are venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, both heavily invested in continuing the data center boom, along with OpenAI president Greg Brockman, whose $100 million super PAC Leading the Future is reportedly bankrolling the publicity campaign.

In a statement to Bloomberg, a representative for Build American AI framed opposition to data center development as an existential threat to America’s future, characterizing widespread public resistance as coming from “the loudest and most extreme voices.” The group said, “The stakes are too high to allow the loudest and most extreme voices to dictate America’s future. Driving responsible investment away will cost Americans good-paying jobs, weaken communities and undermine America’s ability to lead.”

That framing runs directly counter to actual public sentiment on the issue. An August survey by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that a record 61 percent of US adults oppose new data centers in their backyards, up 12 percentage points from a survey conducted in March. Given that opposition to data centers is an increasingly popular and mainstream stance among American voters rather than a fringe position, the campaign faces a steep uphill battle in trying to reshape public opinion through advertising alone, particularly with the industry’s public image already strained heading into the November elections.

More than 1.2 million Texans have been placed on the state’s Voter Suspense list ahead of the fall’s contentious midterm elections, representing over 6% of the state’s roughly 18 million registered voters, according to the Dallas Morning News as reported by the Texas Observer. Many of those affected reportedly aren’t even aware their voter registration has been suspended, meaning some could show up to cast a ballot in November without realizing there’s an issue until they’re already at the polls.

Despite the scale of the suspensions, Texans still have time to resolve their status before the election. The deadline to update voter registration is October 5, and voters can check and correct their status through the Secretary of State’s website, by mail, or in person at a county Elections office. For anyone who discovers they’re on the Suspense List only after arriving at their polling place in November, there’s still a path to voting: they can request a Provisional Ballot, and their vote will count as long as elections workers can locate them on the list.

To register or maintain valid registration, Texas residents must meet several eligibility requirements: they must be U.S. citizens, residents of the county where they submit their application, and at least 18 years old by Election Day. They must also not be a convicted felon unless they are “off paper,” meaning they have fully completed their sentence, including any parole or probation, and must not have been declared by a probate court to be totally or partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.

A Chinese national studying at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, allegedly crossed into the United States earlier this year to photograph facilities near O’Hare International Airport in Chicago under the direction of a suspected Chinese government official, according to newly filed court records reported by 404 Media. Weiheng Zeng, an undergraduate who has crossed into the U.S. roughly two dozen times since 2022 according to an FBI Special Agent’s affidavit, was allegedly directed by someone referred to in court documents as his “Chinese Contact,” who repeatedly instructed him to destroy SIM cards used for communication and rely instead on a Huawei phone he was told never to bring into the United States. Court Watch’s Seamus Hughes first identified and posted the records on Wednesday, and the case offers insight into how Chinese state actors reportedly use students to crowdsource imagery of sensitive U.S. locations and military aircraft while training them to avoid detection.

The case surfaced after an unknown individual was spotted in April inside the FedEx employee parking lot at O’Hare, appearing to photograph aircraft and airport infrastructure, at one point climbing onto a forklift for a better vantage point and attempting to get into a FedEx truck. Authorities identified the person as Zeng after tracing a dark blue Chrysler Town & Country vehicle seen leaving the area. When Zeng attempted to re-enter the U.S. the following Sunday, Customs and Border Protection agents interviewed him repeatedly and reviewed his phone, finding numerous aircraft photos. Zeng initially claimed he photographed “model aircraft being tracked for a flight radar website” and described it as a hobby; agents also found photos of Zeng and others in tactical clothing holding rifle-style firearms, which he said were airsoft guns.

Zeng’s story reportedly changed multiple times before he admitted the photography was more than a hobby, revealing that his Chinese Contact assigned him specific planes by tail number to photograph and paid him $20 to $30 per picture. He said the contact sent him SIM cards for communication, then instructed him to destroy the cards, delete the chats, and erase the photos, later shifting communication to the Huawei phone. Zeng claimed the contact first approached him about a year and a half ago through an aviation spotter website, and said he believed the person was connected to the Chinese Communist Party after being shown a photo of an official-looking badge; investigators noted the contact’s language “was very organized and managed, not language typically used between friends.” When the FBI investigated the spotter website, it reportedly found no evidence the site actually existed. Among the requested targets was an American Airlines aircraft with a “unique, temporary paint job” that was described as highly desired, and the contact allegedly asked Zeng to travel to Orlando, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles to photograph specific airport locations, requests Zeng said he declined, ultimately accepting only two tasks over 18 months, including photographing the interior of the FedEx facility at O’Hare, earning $500 total. According to the court record, “Zeng stated ‘Chinese Contact’ was not satisfied with the photographs and the photographs were fine, but not what were ‘expected.’”

The deadly floods devastating parts of Nepal originated from a massive landslide and glacier collapse high in the Himalayas that set off a powerful chain reaction Wednesday, according to geophysicist Göran Ekström of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, speaking to ABC News. Ekström explained that a landslide in a mountain pass tore away a large glacier, or significant portions of one, with a force so intense it registered as a 5.2 magnitude earthquake on seismographs around the world. While similar events have occurred in the Himalayas before, Ekström described Wednesday’s collapse as a “massive geophysical event” distinct in scale from typical occurrences.

The mechanics behind the disaster involve a destructive feedback loop: when rocks tumble down a mountain, the friction generates substantial heat, which can melt surrounding glacial ice, likely explaining why such an enormous volume of water surged into the valley below. Ekström estimated the resulting flood waters reached extraordinary heights, possibly between 130 and 160 feet, and that the water may have moved at speeds up to 44 miles per hour as it rushed downhill carrying ice, debris, and floodwater into populated areas. Ekström connected the event to a broader climate pattern, noting that while landslides of this kind can occur without climate change, warming conditions may be intensifying their frequency and severity. “In general, these landslides in these mountainous regions are becoming more frequent, that has been determined, and that is linked to the melting of glaciers,” he said.

The human toll from the disaster is severe and still developing. As of Wednesday evening, at least 157 people had been killed and 75 others wounded in the flooding, according to local authorities. Separately, the Nepal Tourism Board reported that 384 people remain missing from the affected area, including 291 foreigners and 93 Nepalis, with at least 47 American tourists among those unaccounted for.

German designer Simon Weckert has created an intentionally garish Hawaiian-style shirt specifically engineered to make its wearer invisible to AI-powered surveillance systems, using a chaotic mix of colors and shapes designed to confuse detection algorithms rather than simply look unattractive, according to Dezeen as reported by Futurism. Weckert explained that the shirt’s ugliness isn’t incidental but functional, since the “interplay” of jarring colors and forms is specifically what disrupts an AI system’s ability to recognize a human figure. “AI systems are made of multiple layers and never learned what a human is — they learned what humans statistically look like in millions of training images,” Weckert told Dezeen. “A ‘person,’ for the machine, is a bundle of visual statistics — and that is exactly its weakness.”

The pink, orange, and green blobs covering the shirt are specifically designed to “break the continuity of the body’s outline,” Weckert explained, “so the detector can no longer bind the parts into one figure.” The effect, he says, creates two entirely different experiences depending on the viewer: “To a human it reads as an almost hypnotic textile; to the AI model it reads as nothing at all.” In a fitting twist, Weckert actually used AI itself to design the disruptive pattern, employing a trial-and-error technique known as an adversarial loop, where the system iteratively refines a design specifically to defeat detection algorithms similar to the one it was built with. The concept echoes a piece of speculative fiction, the “ugliest T-shirt in the world” imagined by William Gibson in his 2010 novel “Zero History,” a garment he described as “beyond punk, beyond art, and fundamentally, somehow, an affront.”

This isn’t Weckert’s first foray into using unconventional tools to expose or exploit the blind spots of automated systems. The designer, who describes himself as a “modern-day digital wizard,” previously made international headlines in 2020 after pulling a small wagon loaded with dozens of smartphones through the streets of Berlin, tricking Google Maps’ traffic algorithm into displaying fake traffic jams along his route.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is sending PlayStation users an email reminding them that their digital games are “licensed to you, not sold,” a message whose timing has struck many as pointed given the current backlash over the company’s decision to phase out physical media, according to a report citing tomwarren on X. The email, titled “PlayStation Terms – Copy for your records,” notifies recipients that they recently accepted several PlayStation agreements, including the Terms of Service, Code of Conduct, End User License Agreement, and Privacy Policy, framing the message as being sent for “your convenience and future reference” while asking users to retain it for their records. The specific language comes from Section 1.4 of the End User License Agreement, headed “The License to you,” which states plainly, “The Software is licensed to you, not sold.”

That section describes the license as “limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal,” permitting users to play or use the software only for “private, non-commercial use” on the intended system, while explicitly reserving all rights not directly granted, including the underlying intellectual property. It’s worth noting the licensing policy itself isn’t new, this language has long been part of Sony’s existing software terms, but sending an unsolicited reminder of it at this particular moment has amplified suspicion that the timing wasn’t coincidental. Sony recently announced that physical game disc production for new PlayStation titles will be discontinued starting in January 2028, a decision that has triggered significant backlash from players who argue physical media provides genuine ownership, enables resale, and preserves games independently of digital storefronts that could theoretically disappear or revoke access at any time.

This licensing reminder email arrives at a notably awkward moment in that fallout, landing just one day before a planned week-long “economic and gameplay blackout” organized to protest the end of physical media. Rather than calling for an indefinite boycott, organizers are urging PlayStation users to participate in a symbolic seven-day blackout running from Sunday, August 23 at 7 p.m. local time until Sunday, August 30 at 7 p.m. local time. The juxtaposition of Sony reasserting its licensing terms just as players mobilize around ownership concerns has become a focal point of the backlash itself, with critics framing the email as either remarkably poor timing or a calculated move to reinforce the company’s legal footing right as it eliminates the purchasing option that let users avoid the licensing model altogether.

Attorneys for former Olympian David Hearn are asking the D.C. Superior Court to permanently dismiss his Reflecting Pool vandalism case, arguing in a new Friday filing that President Trump’s continued public comments about the matter show the government “cannot be trusted” to fairly exercise prosecutorial discretion. Hearn’s case, originally treated by federal prosecutors as vandalism, was dropped by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office after officials later acknowledged the damage “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor” rather than intentional destruction. Despite that reversal, Trump has continued insisting there was vandalism and that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro made a “mistake” in dropping the case, even while separately acknowledging there was “some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening.” Hearn’s attorneys argue this contradiction is precisely the problem, writing in their filing, “the record in this case demonstrates a substantial and specific risk that, if the indictment is dismissed without prejudice, Mr. Hearn will face renewed charges, however meritless, driven by political pressure rather than the evidence.”

The filing directly cites multiple social media posts and public comments from Trump reacting to Pirro’s decision to drop the case, arguing that his continued promotion of what they call a “false version” of events, that meaningful damage occurred beyond contractor error, constitutes ongoing “harassment” that threatens Hearn’s liberty. This comes even after Pirro reportedly brought a box of evidence to the White House supporting her prosecutors’ conclusion that the damage stemmed from a botched installation rather than deliberate vandalism, according to sources who spoke with ABC News. “The public political pressure campaign being conducted through the Executive Branch in this case shows that the government cannot be trusted to properly exercise its prosecutorial discretion,” Hearn’s attorneys wrote, framing the ask for dismissal “with prejudice” as necessary specifically because a standard dismissal would leave the door open for prosecutors to refile charges under continued political pressure regardless of the underlying evidence.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for September 4, when a judge will hear arguments on Hearn’s request to permanently close the matter.

Police in Fort Worth, Texas arrested local radio host and political activist EJ Carrion early Wednesday morning, pulling him over near his home for a turn-signal violation before informing him there was a warrant out for his arrest, according to an arrest report obtained by 404 Media. The warrant stemmed from a Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court meeting on August 4, where Carrion had criticized officials over a plan to slash polling locations ahead of the November midterms, saying, “you said you were all about cooling the temperature and yet you vote for this extremist bullshit. All of you are bullshit,” before turning and walking away from the microphone, shouting back “I’m walking out, small man.” County Judge Tim O’Hare responded by ordering him removed and declaring the meeting in recess. Carrion is now charged with two counts of disrupting a meeting or procession, a Texas misdemeanor, with the arrest report stating he “did intentionally hinder an official proceeding […] by noise or violent or tumultuous behavior.” Carrion told NBC DFW he’d simply been out with friends and was pulling into his own cul-de-sac around 3 a.m. when officers stopped him.

The underlying dispute centers on Tarrant County’s plan to cut polling places nearly in half, from 316 locations in the last election down to a proposed 176, a move Carrion and other residents have fought publicly for months. He wasn’t the only speaker punished that day, either. About 30 minutes after his removal, a woman took the microphone to criticize the meeting’s conduct, saying, “people are removed for clapping. People are removed for speaking out. People are treated like a disruption instead of the reason this government exists… you keep telling us not to ‘California my Texas’ while in reality you keep Russia my Texas. You three boys from the GOP—” before O’Hare cut her off and cleared the chambers. An hour later, former Texas state representative Lon Burnham was also removed and charged with the same two counts after picking up a microphone during his remarks opposing the polling plan; when O’Hare told him to set it down, officers physically dragged Burnham out of the chamber.

The arrest has drawn public criticism from within the county’s own leadership. Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. said in a Facebook statement, “I am deeply disturbed by the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Efrin ‘EJ’ Carrion earlier this morning. Government must exercise extraordinary restraint when speech at a public meeting leads to involvement with the criminal justice system. Residents should never have to wonder whether speaking forcefully to their elected officials could result in a warrant, an arrest, or an encounter with law enforcement. Because once that fear takes hold, the damage reaches far beyond one person.” Miles Jr. called on fellow commissioners to make public meetings a space where residents can speak freely, adding, “there must be a line the government does not cross. The authority entrusted to us does not belong to us. It belongs to the people […] this must stop. And I will not be silent when the public trust, the safety of our residents, and their rights to be heard are at stake.” Carrion’s case fits a broader national pattern of local officials cracking down on public comment, following incidents like the February arrest of an Oklahoma farmer for speaking too long at a data center meeting and the July arrest of a Kansas resident for clapping during public comments at a similar hearing. Neither Carrion nor the Fort Worth Police Department responded to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Nuclear power, long promoted as a highly efficient alternative to dirtier fuels like coal or natural gas, is now buckling under the pressure of Europe’s record-setting heatwaves, as water levels in the continent’s major rivers plunge to all-time lows and cripple the cooling systems reactors depend on. While the receding water has been a boon for archaeologists uncovering ancient ruins along riverbeds, it’s created a genuine crisis for nuclear engineers, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, which reported that facilities like Hungary’s two-gigawatt Paks nuclear plant have come dangerously close to powering down entirely as critically low flow from the Danube threatened the plant’s ability to cool its reactors. That’s a serious problem for Hungary specifically, since the Paks plant generates nearly half the country’s total electricity supply in any given year. The Hungarian government has responded by mobilizing engineers to dump roughly 145,000 cubic meters of rocks into the riverbed, a manual effort to slow the current and conserve water upstream, according to ABC.

Romania is facing an even more dire version of the same crisis, with Reuters reporting that the state-owned nuclear power producer may be forced to completely shut down its last remaining reactor. The country hasn’t gone down without a fight, though: earlier this month, the Romanian navy detonated 180 kilograms of explosives specifically to redirect water from the Danube toward cooling its nuclear reactor. France is contending with a different but related set of problems, where a combination of extreme drought and a recurring jellyfish invasion has cut the country’s nuclear energy production by 20%, though its more diversified energy grid has kept the situation from spiraling as severely as in Hungary or Romania.

With another heatwave already looming on the horizon, these disruptions may represent only the beginning of a much larger reckoning for Europe’s nuclear infrastructure, an energy source built around the assumption of predictable water availability that a warming climate is actively undermining.

A new study of Latin inscriptions from Hispania shows that Roman women played a far larger role in public banquets than ancient accounts often suggest, using their personal wealth to fund communal meals and build public status for themselves and their families. Researchers examined 36 inscriptions dating from the late first century BCE to the third century CE, finding that 20 recorded banquets funded by women, 14 by men, and two involving both, a female share the study calls striking since public generosity in Roman cities is typically linked with male civic power. These meals, known as epula, were formal public feasts that often followed religious rites and animal sacrifice, gathering communities around food tied to worship, civic events, honors, or the dedication of statues and buildings. Paying for such a feast was itself a public act, allowing a wealthy donor to feed the community while placing their name in a lasting public record that could strengthen family status for generations. The largest concentration of evidence came from the province of Baetica, which produced 29 of the 36 total banquets and 17 of the 20 female-funded ones, with towns including Munigua, Cartima, and Nescania each yielding multiple examples.

Many female donors used their wealth specifically to honor husbands, sons, fathers, or other relatives, with 12 of the 20 female-funded inscriptions directly linking a woman’s banquet to a public honor or statue, allowing the meal to mark a significant family event while giving the donor herself a visible civic role. About 70% of these inscriptions included the phrase sua pecunia, meaning “with her own money,” a wording that explicitly identified the funding source and created a clear personal link between the woman and her donation. One standout example, Iunia D. f. Rustica, left an unusually rich record of public spending, having helped rebuild porticoes, paid a public tax, donated land for baths, gifted a bronze statue of Mars, funded additional bath construction, paid for a banquet, and funded two equestrian statues. Religion offered another significant pathway to public influence, with six female donors in the study serving as priestesses or flaminicae, many tied to the imperial cult, roles that carried recognized civic duties within their cities. One priestess, Baebia C. f. Crinita, left money in her will for a banquet and a temple dedicated to Apollo and Diana, also requiring a statue built in her own honor, with her temple donation totaling 200,000 sesterces before a 5% inheritance tax reduced it to 179,000 sesterces.

The study also uncovered evidence of women attending these public meals as guests, sometimes alongside men and sometimes in gatherings organized specifically for them. An inscription from Naeva records a banquet held for both male and female residents, while another from Munigua uses a formula describing a meal divided by sex. Three inscriptions from Italy go even further, recording banquets where women were the sole recipients, including one donor who provided a meal plus two sesterces for each woman, and another who funded a meal for mothers, sisters, and daughters of council members alongside female citizens across all social ranks. Still, the evidence shows real limits on women’s participation, since municipal banquets often centered on male elites, particularly local council members, meaning women didn’t gain equal access to every public gathering and their civic role remained shaped by existing Roman social rules. Among the female benefactors identified, roughly 40% were married women, 17% were identified as daughters, and nearly half had no stated marital or family status at all, suggesting these women operated within the civic system on the strength of their own wealth and standing rather than purely through family ties.

FINDINGS: https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbag035

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for an emergency stay to keep construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom moving after a lower court paused it, with the injunction set to take effect August 21 unless the justices intervene. Solicitor General John Sauer called the injunction “extraordinary and unlawful,” arguing it would endanger the president’s security and override guidance from the nation’s top military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials, writing that if allowed to stand, it “would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.” The district court had ruled Trump lacks authority to overhaul the White House without congressional approval, a decision a divided federal appeals court upheld earlier this month, though the lower court’s order would still permit below-ground construction and any measures deemed necessary for national security or presidential safety. Sauer pointed to six “recent assassination attempts,” including “the threat of a missile attack against Air Force One on July 8,” to argue that halting construction directly threatens the president’s life, and maintained that “the President of the United States of America is not a tenant, but rather the sole, elected head of the Executive Branch, and Congress has authorized him to renovate, secure, and protect the White House and its grounds, as other Presidents have been allowed to do, without exception.”

The administration’s filing offered striking new details about the construction’s current state, claiming the project is 65% complete with $200 million already spent or committed, built by a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, on a structure that spans five stories deep, rises 70 feet above ground, and covers 50,000 square feet. The government insists the project is “on time” and “under budget” and that “zero taxpayer dollars are needed or required,” notably without mentioning the White House’s separate $1 billion funding request to Congress for security hardening and enhancements, a request many lawmakers see as connected to the ballroom project. Joshua Fisher, the White House director of management and administration, warned in a sworn declaration that stopping now would be catastrophic, writing, “if work is stopped in line with the district court’s injunction, it will be a disaster. Quite frankly, if the building were tragically ordered to be taken down, or even altered, by the court, there would be no way to do so,” and describing the concrete-and-steel superstructure as now “beyond the point of no return” since its freestanding walls “cannot be left as-is without being tied together with the designed structural steel.” The filing also included declarations from senior officials including the secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the FBI and Secret Service, laying out national security justifications for the project.

The legal fight isn’t just playing out at the Supreme Court. Senate Democrats formally asked the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday to audit the project and its funding, writing that “the scale of this project, the destruction of historic architecture, the opaque and unorthodox combination of public funds with private funding sources, and the absence of standard federal review processes raise serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and stewardship of this national landmark.” The government argues it’s likely to prevail on appeal, contending the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the original lawsuit, lacks standing and that federal law has long allowed presidents to handle the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurbishment, and improvement” of the Executive Residence. The Supreme Court is expected to request a response from the National Trust for Historic Preservation within the next week before ruling on the stay, and Sauer indicated the administration also plans to ask the Court to take up the underlying case for expedited oral argument and a full decision on the merits.