‘It’s not acceptable’: Foxborough board and World Cup officials spar over funding gap
Source: US news | The Guardian · Bias: Center Left
Summary
At a meeting of the board that governs the Boston’s World Cup stadium, promises were made if not acceptedTuesday evening’s meeting of the Foxborough, Massachusetts, Select Board is still minutes from starting, but a local resident can’t keep himself from approaching the bench. He has an urgent question for the five members, who in effect serve as the town’s primary governing body. His tone isn’t one of anger, more of concern.“Do you think we’re going to have the World Cup here?” Continue reading...
‘It’s not acceptable’: Foxborough board and World Cup officials spar over funding gap
Center Left
At a meeting of the board that governs the Boston’s World Cup stadium, promises were made if not acceptedTuesday evening’s meeting of the Foxborough, Massachusetts, Select Board is still minutes from starting, but a local resident can’t keep himself from approaching the bench. He has an urgent question for the five members, who in effect serve as the town’s primary governing body. His tone isn’t one of anger, more of concern.“Do you think we’re going to have the World Cup here?” Continue reading...
Acting DNI Bill Pulte has fired more "Deep State" intel officials, according to MS NOW.
The post Happy Freedom 250! Acting DNI Bill Pulte Fires More “Deep State” Intel Officials appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Donald Trump's controversial new intelligence chief is clearing house, and career officers warn the man swinging the axe doesn't know what he's cutting.Bill Pulte, Trump's loyal acting director of national intelligence, began notifying dozens of intelligence officials of their terminations Thursday, part of a downsizing Trump ordered when he installed Pulte at the office two weeks ago, MS NOW reported Friday. An intelligence official, who spoke anonymously citing fear of reprisal, told the outlet that leadership is targeting workers it believes are "deep state" and accused them of failing to hand up a complete picture of available intelligence.But former officials aren't buying his rationale. Several told MS NOW they had never heard of intelligence officers withholding information from their superiors. "The premise is absurd," one said. Another questioned how Pulte, who ran the federal housing agency and has no intelligence background, could reach such a conclusion within days of arriving.“I have a real question of how he would know this. This isn’t a guy who is familiar with intelligence,” a former official told the outlet. “How is he going to get to the bottom of this and rely on any information with a matter of fidelity? It would be like me taking over a hospital and firing dozens of surgeons in a matter of days.”The cuts follow Pulte's earlier removal of six political appointees who served under his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard. His arrival has drawn alarm across party lines: he took the post without ever holding a security clearance, and he can stay in the acting role past November's midterms under federal vacancy rules. Critics note his office doesn't collect intelligence of its own, relying instead on the CIA, the NSA and more than a dozen other agencies to supply it.Democrats and some Republicans fear the purge is less about efficiency than about clearing out analysts who might resist Trump's election claims. The ODNI says it is providing "elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe."
At least two Dallas police officers and members of the Egypt national soccer team’s staff were involved in a physical altercation and shouting match, according to videos.
The fight that scrubbed the world's most powerful AI models from the internet featured personality clashes, industry confusion, and international backlash.Why it matters: Anthropic's models are back online, but the impact of its 20-day showdown with the Trump administration will be long lasting.Behind the scenes: It began when Amazon, Anthropic's partner and investor, sounded an alarm that was later disputed by cybersecurity experts.It warned about a "jailbreaking" issue it found with the AI lab's latest models, Mythos and Fable — meaning a technical flaw that could have caused a failure of their guardrails.Amazon flagged its concerns to the administration, triggering sweeping export controls. A U.S. official said the government conducted its own tests once it became apparent that the issue needed to be addressed.Cybersecurity experts, however, later wrote in an open letter to the administration that other leading AI models have the same issue Amazon warned about with Anthropic.On June 12, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, at the direction of President Trump, called Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Lutnick made clear to Amodei the issue needed to be resolved fast and alerted the CEO that the company would be receiving a letter imposing sweeping export controls, the U.S. official said.Amodei called Lutnick back that night after receiving the letter, realizing it effectively meant the models would have to be taken offline — to which Lutnick responded that was indeed the goal.That decision led to a three-week, multi-agency crash course in AI safety.Anthropic deployed engineers to Washington D.C. According to a U.S. official, the company wanted to prove everything was already resolved and further changes were being fine tuned.But the federal Center for AI Standards and Innovation and the National Security Agency said those changes weren't good enough, prompting further fixes, according to the U.S. official.Gradually, various agency heads approved of the changes, and on July 1 the models were released, the official said.Out of all of the administration officials Amazon's Andy Jassy could have called, it was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who first heard about the jailbreaking issue found in the company report, according to a separate source familiar.Bessent was early to sound the alarm on Mythos, work with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to re-engage the embattled company, and help get a cybersecurity executive order across the finish line.While technical discussions to address the jailbreaking issue took place in D.C., it was Bessent who stood next to President Trump during the G7 where allies called for global cooperation on safety standards.At the center of the showdown was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who also flanked Trump at the G7 meeting while his department's teams led technical discussions.National cyber director Sean Cairncross, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Treasury Department chief information officer Sam Corcos, and the NSA also all participated in technical discussions, according to various sources.Washington mobilized faster to hold scores of meetings and pulled in far more agencies than one would expect for a single technical issue, one source said.The tension spiraled amid personality clashes and poor communication.Anthropic eventually understood that in order to be successful they needed to be on the same side as the government, the U.S. official said.As discussions turned more technical, Anthropic policy chief Sarah Heck and Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown got more involved. Brown also had multiple conversations with Lutnick and Cairncross the weekend of June 12.There was never a moment where Dario stepped offstage and someone else replaced him, one source said, adding that Brown's technical expertise allowed him to sit in a room with government specialists and go line‑by‑line through how models behave under stress.Between the lines: It remains uncertain when and how Anthropic's models will be released to ally countries around the world — which proponents say is key to beating China — or how other labs from OpenAI to Google will release their latest models.OpenAI, whose latest model GPT-5.6 is on hold, did not have visibility into discussions between Anthropic and the White House and is engaged in daily technical discussions on the release of its own model, a source said.The bottom line: There's a lot of work left to be done on a framework for approving future models with a clear inclusive process that has transparency standards and timelines, sources familiar said.
In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, which unveils the accruing political and economic power of artificial intelligence companies — especially Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology’s detrimental impact on the environment. “This is an extraordinary type of AI development that is causing a lot of social, labor and environmental harms,” says Hao in an extended interview.
A scorching heat wave in Europe, a bonfire celebration in Argentina, a Pride parade in Seattle, semiquincentennial celebrations across America, and much more
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) torched what was left of her relationship with President Donald Trump on Thursday after new financial disclosures showed he personally pocketed $2.2 billion during his first year back in office, The New York Times reported Friday. "The Republican Party hijacked MAGA," Greene wrote on X, the Times reported.Some MAGA voices went further, framing the windfall as proof of Trump's business savvy rather than a conflict of interest. Iowa activist Kelley Koch, who chairs a group called MAGA Nation, brushed off outrage entirely: "Let's just be honest, people are checked out right now," she said, speaking with the Times.Democrats weren't nearly as forgiving. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump "the most corrupt president in American history," while Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) accused him of standing "with the billionaire class" while ordinary Americans struggle, the Times reported.
Weekend’s high temperatures and humidity ‘virtually impossible’ without climate crisis, researchers sayThe scorching heat blanketing much of the US this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, researchers have found, warning that the high temperatures could threaten Independence Day celebrations and World Cup matches this weekend.“The climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence,” said Theodore Keeping, extreme weather and wildfire researcher at Imperial College London, in a press release. Continue reading...
