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Brooklyn Democrats blast chair over plan to overhaul key committee
The New Kings Democrats have said they have the votes to oust Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.
When should politics end a friendship, plus how to date in Houston
Welcome to the first edition of “Ask the CM Three,” a new advice column from CultureMap city editor Eric Sandler, home and design contributor Emily Cotton, and me, Brianna McClane. The three of us gathered for happy hour at Anvil to discuss questions submitted by readers, choosing three to tackle in our first column.
France issues warning over thousands of substandard condoms
French anti-fraud and health agencies have issued a recall order for roughly 260,000 condoms. They advised users to consider sexually transmitted infection and pregnancy tests amid risks of bursting or perforations.
Trump announces plan to lower beef prices. Some Republicans are already balking
The president said on social media that he had committed to ensuring the imported beef would be sold at 25% below current market rates
Trump announces plan to lower beef prices. Some Republicans are already balking
The president said on social media that he had committed to ensuring the imported beef would be sold at 25% below current market rates
Democrats remain far behind GOP in cash on hand as midterms near
New filings find the Democratic National Committee trailing its Republican counterpart by more than $100 million, with millions of dollars in debts.
Neutrogena breaks silence after Hayden Panettiere's past claims spark backlash following her death
Neutrogena admitted making Hayden Panettiere "feel unsupported" after she spoke about postpartum depression, pledging a significant new investment.
Top Dems go silent after McCarthy vindicated for booting Swalwell off intel committee
Democrats rallied behind Eric Swalwell as Republicans raised alarms over Fang Fang — newly declassified FBI files are now casting fresh light on what agents knew.
Schmitt feels optimistic on upcoming vote for Protect College Sports Act
U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., spoke to reporters at Memorial Stadium on Thursday regarding the Protect College Sports Act, which he is a co-sponsor of. He met with Missouri coach
Aisha Wahab wins special election to replace Eric Swalwell in Congress
Wahab claimed a much smaller margin of victory than in two previous contests after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions opposing her.
Seahawks sale unanimously approved by pair of key NFL committees
League approval of the sale of the Seahawks is now all but assured following approval by a pair of committees.
The power of quality improvement: How a cath lab transformed care for PCI patients
A multidisciplinary committee formed in 2022 to identify ways to improve safety and efficiency in their facility's cath lab. By 2024, it was clear the group's proposals had made a major impact.
SGMC Health Honors Dr. Jared Sanders with Excellence in Care Physician Award
SGMC Health has recognized general surgeon Jared Sanders, MD, as the latest recipient of the Excellence in Care Physician Award, a biannual recognition presented by the SGMC Health Provider Wellness Committee.
PFF wildly underrates Jaguars running back room in NFL rankings
PFF ranked the Jaguars’ running back room last in the NFL, but Jacksonville’s young committee has more upside than the ranking suggests.
Business U.S. 20 work in Freeport begins Aug. 24
FREEPORT – The Illinois Department of Transportation announced today that weather permitting, construction Business U.S. 20 (Galena Avenue) will...
Sevastopol Forming New Business Association
Business representatives and a Town of Sevastopol ad hoc committee are working toward the formation of a new Sevastopol Business Association. The committee was scheduled to meet Aug. 19 for an […]
ActBlue co-founder pleads Fifth Amendment in closed-door House GOP grilling
Matt DeBergalis pleaded the Fifth Amendment during his deposition before three House committees investigating ActBlue's fraud prevention standards.
Josh Franco Receives the 2026 APSA Award for Teaching Innovation -
The APSA Award for Teaching Innovation honors a wide range of new directions in teaching by recognizing a political scientist who has developed an effective new approach to teaching in the discipline. Citation from the Award Committee: [...]
U.S. National Security Science & Technology Strategy
The following is the White House National Security Science and Technology Strategy released earlier this week. From the report This document establishes a National Security Science and Technology Strategy (NSSTS) to support and enable the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). It satisfies the Congressional requirement for a “Strategy…on the nation’s economic security, science, research, and innovation to support the national security strategy” (42 USC 19221; Sec. 10612 of the CHIPS and Science Act, P.L. 117-167) to be submitted by the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) after the transmission of each National Security Strategy. The NSSTS
Kelly applauds Trump administration's announcement of $35 million in new rural health care funding for Pennsylvania
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), a member of the Ways & Means Subcommittee on Health, applauded the Trump administration that $35 million, made possible through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), is being put to work to improve health outcomes among rural Pennsylvanians by updating to new, more modern screening technology, buying equipment to bring additional operating rooms online, and expanding transportation options.
Constitutional Politics in Action – Part I: The Petitions for the Constitutional Review of the 16th and the 17th Amendments of the Hungarian Fundamental Law
The Fidesz-KDNP parliamentary group submitted petitions to the Constitutional Court in July 2026 challenging Hungary’s newly adopted Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments. The petitions demonstrate how constitutional doctrine can be strategically reconfigured when political actors move from exercising constitutional power to challenging its exercise by others. After losing control of constitutional power, Fidesz strategically reconfigures elements of domestic doctrine that had been used to resist its own autocratization.
Technical College System of Georgia Launches Statewide Partnership for Mental Health Support
The Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), which oversees the state's technical colleges, adult literacy programs, and a host of economic and workforce development programs, today announced a new statewide initiative that will expand mental health support to students across 16 of its colleges. Through a collaboration with Uwill, the leading mental health and wellness solution for colleges and students, the system has committed to ensuring TCSG students have immediate access to counseling an
California voters deserve to see Becerra and Hilton debate
The Democratic front-runner has signaled his willingness to debate his GOP foe, but hasn't committed to a time or place. Hilton is eager to meet anytime, anywhere.
Analysis | Darline Graham’s ‘oops’ moment and the pitfalls of acknowledging ignorance
Like the senator from South Carolina, candidates have admitted to not knowing things before. Doing so rarely ends well for them.
RNC chairman weighs in on Florida primary results
Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters spoke with Spectrum News about Florida's primary results.
SGMC Health Honors Shalese Aycock with Excellence in Care Advanced Practice Provider Award
SGMC Health has recognized Shalese Aycock, NP at SGMC Urology, as the inaugural recipient of the Excellence in Care Advanced Practice Provider Award, a recognition presented by the SGMC Health Provider Wellness Committee.
Roundup: Partnership CEO search / Broadband expansion / Tariff negotiations
Time frame: The Greater Baton Rouge Economic Partnership tells Daily Report it expects to have a new CEO in place in three to four months. The organization launched its national search for a new CEO on Aug. 4. While internal milestones won’t be shared, the Partnership says it remains committed to moving thoughtfully and steadily […]
EigenQ and Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp Submit Draft S-4 for Proposed Business Combination
EigenQ and SVAQ have submitted a draft Form S-4 to the SEC as they advance their proposed business combination, expected to close in Q4 2026
Mental health provider accused of sharing data with Meta, Google settles lawsuit for $3M
While LifeStance Health maintains it did not knowingly do anything wrong and is committed to the privacy of its patients, it has agreed to make sure that no third-party tracking technologies are running on its website.
Mysterious polling firm behind fake election surveys closes after admitting ‘social experiment’
Median Strategies admitted its polls on the Los Angeles mayor race and Wisconsin primary were fabricated as a "social experiment" before closing.
Man Utd transfer news: Barcelona midfielder Gavi rejects chance to join Old Trafford
Latest transfer news and headlines as Crystal Palace star Adam Wharton emerges as a Man City midfield target; Saudi side Al Hilal have submitted a £38.5m bid for Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins; Harry Kane is ready to snub Saudi millions and commit his future to Bayern Munich
Player Availability Report: #SKCvSTL
Player Availability Report is SportingKC.com’s look at the latest status updates around the team ahead of upcoming matches and is presented by Saint Luke’s. All details listed are from the league’s official Player Status Report that is submitted the day prior to the match. Sporting Kansas City returns home this
WKU Institute for Rural Health presents to Kentucky General Assembly
WKU Institute for Rural Health (IRH) gave a presentation to the Kentucky General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Health Services about its work to improve healthcare access and outcomes in rural Kentucky.
Bill Maher rips left-wing lawmaker for sacrificing liberal values to appease Muslim voters
Bill Maher slammed Melissa Chaudhry, a progressive Democrat challenging Rep. Adam Smith in Seattle, for omitting LGBT rights to appeal to Muslims.
On the Hill: New Leadership for House Health Panels
While the Democratic succession appears largely settled, the race for the top Republican position on the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee remains wide open.
Minnesota grant cancellations political, Trump administration concedes
The Trump administration admitted it canceled more than $7.5 billion in federal grants last October “based solely” on whether the projects were planned in Democratic states.
WA allocated $800k for a behavioral health report that ‘just went nowhere’
A state committee met for nearly two years to develop a report on Washington’s behavioral health system. The report seems to have sat on the shelf ever since.
Mark Johnson Receives the 2026 APSA Community College Faculty Award -
The APSA Community College Faculty Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor exemplary contributions that advance the multi-faceted goals of community college faculty. Citation from the Award Committee: Mark Johnson has been [...]
Mike Caruso arrested on child sexual abuse charges
The arrest came one year to the day after Gov. DeSantis appointed Caruso as Clerk.
T.O.L.K. café mixes art and coffee, tackles NYC business costs
Ilia and Liliia Penzina's T.O.L.K. café in Bushwick blends art and coffee. Despite financial issues, they remain committed to their NYC business.
The fun and flexibility of data science
Taylor Bolt spent his Ph.D. and postdoc digging through brain imaging data for clues to cognition. In industry, the datasets are different but the joy of answering questions with data remains.
Justice Department watchdog to review DEA tactic that permitted deadly fentanyl to hit streets
The review will examine government policies and wiretap investigations in which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration may have learned of fentanyl deliveries before they happened but stood down to avoid jeopardizing larger prosecutions.
House Ethics Committee announces sexual misconduct investigation into Rep. Jimmy Gomez
The committee said it is investigating allegations that Gomez engaged in “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.” He said he did not violate the law or House ethics rules.
House Ethics committee investigating CA congressman
The announcement follows a New York Post story from two months ago
Accused murderer leaves U.S. from Virginia mental health facility
An accused murderer who was committed to a Virginia mental health facility left the country on a flight while out on a weekend pass, according to court documents.
Pennsylvania Highlights Housing Investments to Improve Health
Pennsylvania officials have committed $1 million in state funding to connect vulnerable Medicaid recipients with housing and health services. | State funding will bring housing support for Medicaid recipients with chronic health conditions.
Former Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt seeks return to elected office
Former Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt will once again run for his old job. It marks a return to politics for the city's longest-serving mayor.
Akon Rates His Biggest Fails and Finesses for Complex
The R&B singer called the African prince story an undeniable finesse and admitted he and French Montana both got burned by a fake Rolex.
San Juan County Board of Health calls for restoration of public health funding
Submitted by San Juan County.
Massive Trump merchandise store goes out of business - because nobody is buying anything
‘We’re not busy anymore,’ one employee of the Trump store admitted
Democrats officially set their 2028 primary calendar, with South Carolina going first
The Democratic National Committee passed the party’s calendar Saturday.
Democrats and their big roll of the dice
For Republicans on the ballot this fall, the hand they are forced to play is rather set. Even if so many of them had not so meekly submitted to President Donald Trump’s agenda, they would still be largely tethered to the President’s unpopularity and depth-charge-level approval ratings. On the other hand, Democrats, as the party […]
Debbie Maue
Having worked remotely sporadically for 11 years, Debbie Maue says that splitting time between the action in Chicago and launching a development in Montana (“Landmark Whitefish” in Whitefish, Mont.) was a natural transition. She says that she’d already been doing FaceTime and recorded video tours for almost two years prior to the shutdowns, and as a result, sees virtually “walking through” a property as natural as an in-person tour. She is president of Real Estate to the Rescue and chair of Chicago Association of Realtors International Committee.
Republican National Committee announces lottery for midterm convention tickets
Organizers expect 20,000 attendees at the event.
Player Availability Report: #COLvSKC
Player Availability Report is SportingKC.com’s look at the latest status updates around the team ahead of upcoming matches and is presented by Saint Luke’s. All details listed are from the league’s official Player Status Report that is submitted the day prior to the match. Sporting Kansas City is back in
Mike Beltran sues political group over doctored campaign image
Former State Rep. Mike Beltran sued a political action committee that he says forged an image of him that did not depict reality, and that it failed to disclose it was built with AI — as required under Florida law.
New Mexico behavioral health committee approves $40M in funding for rural behavioral health plans
The New Mexico committee tasked with rebuilding the state's behavioral health infrastructure approved $40 million in funding requests Friday.
Lisel Hintz, Feyda Sayan-Cengiz, Madonna Kalousian, and Devrim Yavuz Receive the 2026 APSA-PSA International Partnerships Award -
The APSA-PSA International Partnerships Award honors political scientists engaged in collaborative and productive cross-national partnerships that make a significant contribution to the discipline in the areas of teaching, research, or civic engagement. Citation from the Award Committee: [...]
IRC launches health, child protection response as Colombia earthquake death toll rises
As search and rescue efforts continue following the deadly earthquake in western Colombia, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has launched a response to assist the most vulnerable communities, including children.
Effort to ban genetically modified animals dies in California Legislature
A bill that would have banned the sale of genetically-modified pets for cosmetic reasons died in committee Thursday.
$5 billion science research bond clears California Assembly committee
The California Assembly Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to advance a UC-sponsored bond measure that would fund scientific research across the state. The California Science and Health Research Bond Act – or Senate Bill 895 – would create the California Foundation for Science and Health Research to award $5 billion in grants and loans to public and private research institutions, including UC campuses.
Investors sue Selena Gomez for alleged fraud over mental-health start-up
Singer and actor Selena Gomez was sued on Thursday by investors who say the "Only Murders in the Building" star committed fraud by failing to fulfill duties to build and promote her mental health start-up.
U.S. Chamber endorses LePage for Congress in Maine
At Sheridan Construction in Fairfield, U.S. Chamber representative Stephen McAllister said the group — the largest business organization in the world — was impressed by LePage’s business background and work to reform the permitting process.
BREAKING: Netflix to shut down two more game studios
Netflix is sticking with video games but once again reducing the number of studios it owns making games. The streaming giant is closing Los Angeles-based Night School studio, which it acquired in 2021 and plans to close Helsinki-based Moonloot, which was founded in 2022. Just six weeks ago, Night School had released Unhinged, a novel 30-minute first-person horror game, streamable on TVs to Netflix users. The game was hailed by Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters in a call with investors. Six weeks later, Night School is closing. Prior to its Netflix tenure, Night School had developed the award-winning supernatural thriller Oxenfree. A second Oxenfree game followed after the purchase, as well as a mobile game designed to tie in to an episode of the Netflix show Black Mirror. Netflix attributed the studio closures to a prioritization around kids gaming, party games, story-driven fare and games with mainstream hooks, such as a recently released FIFA game. “We see an opportunity to be more focused in our execution, so we are making organizational changes to the business to match those priorities,” a Netflix spokesperson told Game File. Netflix is also cutting jobs from its internal games team. A rep declined to say how many jobs were being lost by these cutbacks. “We are incredibly grateful to the talented colleagues we’re saying goodbye to today. We thank them for all their contributions to Netflix, and wish them the best,” the rep said. Netflix started releasing video games, initially on mobile as a free bonus to subscribers, in 2021. By 2023, Mike Verdu, then the head of Netflix’s game operations, was telling me that the company was committed to growing carefully, as it offered more games and built up internal game studios. At the time, it hadn’t made any gaming job cuts. Since then, Netflix has altered its approach. In 2024, it shut down Team Blue, a start-up studio led by ex-Call of Duty and Halo developers that was exploring making a high-end first-person game for the service. Last October, Netflix shut down another studio, Boss Fight, shortly after Peters praised the team’s Squid Game game to investors. (One of Boss Fight’s main developers now works on the Netflix FIFA game for outside studio Delphi.) And in December, Netflix sold cozy game studio Spry Fox back to its founders. Amid all of this, Netflix has shifted from emphasizing mobile games to offering games through TVs and PCs, via streamed connections, with phones used as controllers. That’s how Night School’s Unhinged worked, along with games such as Boggle and Party Crashers that have collectively helped the Netflix game controller app chart well on mobile app stores. The studio cuts leave Netflix with a central gaming team that works with external developers, and a dedicated first party studio in, Helsinki-based Next Games, which produced many of the company’s couch-centric party games. The move away from having a roster of internal game studios aligns with Netflix’s own approach to shows and movies, which are largely produced externally. The company owns few TV/film production studios of its own. The gaming industry overall is seeing large holders of multiple studios cut back, with Sony, Ubisoft, Embracer, Microsoft and other giants closing or selling off studios. Cuts in California-based studios, where costs often run relatively high, have been particularly acute. Netflix has faced skepticism about its gaming plans for years. The moves today are likely to fuel them, and the company has few upcoming projects to counter the narrative. Among the few hinted, acclaimed independent studio Don’t Nod said last year it was working on a game tied to a major Netflix franchise.
Fall Open Streets 2026 Celebrates Healthy Hearts, Healthy Brains
The Lawton-Fort Sill Open Streets Committee and its partnering agencies are proud to announce the Fall Open Streets event, happening September 19th, from 10:00 a.m. –&nb
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Asia-Pacific parliamentarians urge bolder action for universal health coverage, climate resilience and responsible AI
Parliamentarians representing 16 countries from across the Asia-Pacific region concluded the Ninth Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health (APPFGH) today, reaffirming their key role in advancing universal health coverage (UHC) amid the risks and opportunities posed by AI and climate change. In adopting the Phnom Penh Communiqué, parliamentarians urged fellow legislators regionwide to strengthen sustainable financing for UHC to widen access to health for all, including the most vulnerable populations; promote responsible governance of AI amid ethical concerns over this fast-evolving technology; and build climate-resilient health systems to anticipate and respond to mounting pressures ranging from rising sea levels in coastal areas to air pollution and other environmental degradation.The National Assembly of Cambodia, with support from Cambodia’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), hosted the Forum in Phnom Penh from 11 to 13 August 2026 – the first time the Forum has convened in a Mekong country.Parliamentarians urge action to close gaps in accessIn the Communiqué, parliamentarians recognized that at-risk and marginalized groups are the ones most severely affected by gaps in access to health services. These groups include people living in poverty, women and children, persons with disabilities, older people, migrants, refugees, and those in rural, remote or island communities. The Communiqué urges fellow parliamentarians and policy-makers to advocate for laws and policies that support sustainable financing to protect people from financial hardship, with a focus on primary health care, prevention and equity. "The Communiqué is a call to action. It sets out ambitious, concrete measures that deliver meaningful impact on the ground. We are all accountable for advancing universal health coverage and translating our commitments into tangible results. Cambodia is fully committed to advancing UHC, including the promotion of ‘healthy people, prosperous country’ campaign,” said Samdech Maha Rathsapheathika Thipadei Khuon Sudary, President of the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia.His Excellency Professor Chheang Ra, Minister of Health of the Kingdom of Cambodia, highlighted the need for collaboration beyond the health sector. “Universal health coverage cannot be achieved by the Ministry of Health alone. It requires support, particularly from parliamentarians, across political, legislative, financial, social protection, education, infrastructure, and environmental domains. While each country follows its own path, one factor is universally critical for success: strong governance and leadership. We all believe in this principle, and in our respective political roles, we remain committed to strengthening these key success factors to ensure that no one is left behind.”Promoting responsible AI adoption Parliamentarians acknowledged that, while AI has already demonstrated its ability to improve access to health services and support delivery, careful and ethical governance is necessary to safeguard quality, safety, privacy and public trust. This underscores the importance of parliamentarians in promoting legal and regulatory frameworks addressing liability, records ownership and data governance, while embracing innovation that protects ethical practice.“Without strong governance, safeguards for privacy and data security, sustainable financing, and attention to those most at risk of exclusion, new technologies may widen existing gaps instead of closing them. This is why parliamentarians matter. We pass laws. We approve budgets. We scrutinize government action. We represent communities. We can ask whether health services are reaching rural, remote, ageing, poor, and marginalized populations. We can ask whether innovation is being guided by equity, evidence, and ethics,” said Hon. Man Hee Lee, President of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health.Building climate-resilient health systemsParliamentarians also reiterated that the climate crisis is a direct threat to people’s health and to achieving UHC more broadly, deepening the same gaps in access already faced by at-risk and marginalized communities. They recognized the need for WHO Member States to ensure sufficient national appropriations and oversight, and for parliamentarians to raise awareness in their constituencies and mobilize local action in building climate-resilient and sustainable health systems.“Universal health coverage, climate change and AI cannot be addressed in isolation. The same communities struggling to access health services today are often the ones most exposed to climate shocks, and most in need of the opportunities AI can offer if this technology is governed responsibly,” said Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific. “Having served previously in this Forum myself as a parliamentarian from Tonga, I recognize how the Phnom Penh Communiqué reflects the shared resolve of legislators across the Asia-Pacific region: the laws parliamentarians pass and the budgets they approve help ensure this progress reaches the people who need it most.”As the Forum drew to a close, delegates reflected on what they would carry back to their own parliaments and constituencies.“I wish to share three points here worth carrying home from Phnom Penh: we need to invest in primary health care as the foundation of coverage; we need to remove the barriers that keep people from care, whether financial, geographic or social; and we need to build systems that are inclusive by design, protecting those most at risk of being left behind,” added Hon. Ouch Borith, First Vice-President of the Senate of the Kingdom of Cambodia.###Notes for editors:The Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health (APPFGH) is a platform for parliamentarians to exchange ideas, build political will, strengthen capacity and foster collaboration towards sustainable health action. This was the ninth meeting of the APPFGH, with the theme “Universal Health Coverage in the era of Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence”. Target 3.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls on countries to achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health services, and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. In the Western Pacific, UHC service coverage index (SDG 3.8.1) rose from 63 in 2000 to 81 in 2023 (figures include Indonesia), and roughly one in four people in the Western Pacific have experienced financial hardship (SDG 3.8.2). Progress towards UHC in the Asia-Pacific region remains uneven, with hundreds of millions of people still lacking access to essential health services or facing financial hardship due to health-related expenses. Strengthening the role of parliaments – through legislation, financing and oversight – is central to closing this gap and accelerating progress towards UHC across the region.Parliamentarians participating in APPFGH in Cambodia this week include: Hon. Pehin Dato Adanan YUSOF, Brunei Darussalam; Hon. Rosmawatty ABDUL MUMIN, Brunei Darussalam; Hon. LORK Kheng, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. YOS Phanita, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. KHOUN Khundy, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. HENG Halim, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. KHOENG Noupheap, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. SENG Nhak, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. LY Sukry, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. NHOEURN Raden, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. Dr Ratu Atonio LALABALAVU, Republic of Fiji; Hon. Vijay NATH, Republic of Fiji; Hon. Man Hee LEE, Republic of Korea; Hon. Dr Jiho CHA, Republic of Korea; Hon. Jonghun BAEK, Republic of Korea; Hon. Youngsuk SEO, Republic of Korea; Hon. Dr Phayvanh KEOPASEUTH, Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Hon. Suhaizan Bin KAIAT, Malaysia; Hon. Dr Perpetua KONMAN, Federated States of Micronesia; Hon. Ganmaa DAVAASAMBUU, Mongolia; Hon. Charmaine SCOTTY, Republic of Naoero; Hon. Vincent Ambance KUMURA, Papua New Guinea; Hon. Dr Edwin CRUZADO, Republic of the Philippines; Hon. AUUAPAAU Mulipola Aloitafua Mulipola, Samoa; Hon. ASIATA TAVUI Tafu Salevao, Samoa; Hon. Dr Alani Petelo TANGITAU, Tonga; Hon. Paul PAOLO, Republic of Vanuatu; Hon. Franklyn Ezra WILLIAM, Republic of Vanuatu.For more information, contact: WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific: wprocom@who.int National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia (International Relations Department): ir.nacambodia@gmail.com
BOP Public Health Service Officer Earns Prestigious Award
Honoring a career committed to improving patient outcomes across federal health systems.
Louisville basketball gets Seth Trimble, another high-profile transfer
Former North Carolina guard Seth Trimble tells ESPN he has committed to Louisville but will play only if fifth year of eligibility is upheld in court.
Alex Rodriguez: The Dodgers are ‘great’ for baseball
While some fans and media believe the Los Angeles Dodgers are ruining Major League Baseball, Alex Rodriguez appears to be a fan of their spending. After admitting he voted in Awful Announcing’s 2026 MLB local TV announcer rankings during an appearance on The Michael Kay Show on ESPN New York, the discussion turned to the…
NV lawmakers mull maternal health protections for '27 session, punt on child welfare funding fix
Nevada state lawmakers are considering a wide-range of health-related policies in the next year’s legislative session that includes implementing a slate of maternal health protections in a “momnibus” bill, bolstering efforts to investigate Medicaid insurance fraud, and reducing reporting requirements for state health agencies. Also at Tuesday’s interim Health and Human Services committee meeting, discussion […]
Niwot Incorporation Committee outlines business impact
The Niwot Incorporation Committee (NIC) held two informational meetings on Aug. 5 and Aug. 6 at Niwot Hall focused on how incorporation could affect local businesses. A total of about 30 people attended the two meetings. Opening the meetings, Tony Santelli, business vitality lead for NIC, said, "We're not here to convert you or to change you. We ju...
Opinion | One Senate committee chases Dr. Fauci while another takes aim again at Steward’s elusive Ralph de la Torre
One Senate committee chases Dr. Anthony Fauci while another takes aim again at Steward’s elusive Ralph de la Torre.
KCMO City Council moves to repeal, replace 45-year-old minority, women's business program
The Kansas City, Missouri, Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee advanced two ordinances Tuesday that would dismantle the existing Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program.
Small business owner and veteran Sam Jimenez joins East Palo Alto council race
Sam Jimenez submitted papers to run for one of two open seats on the City council that will go before voters in the November election.
PhysCOS Third Early Career Workshop, Sept 2026
We are excited to invite you to the 3rd Early Career Workshop organized by NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos Program and the Physics of the Cosmos Program Analysis Group (PhysPAG) Executive Committee. 22-24 Sept 2026
Winchester families can now register for Cool Science Club
The following was submitted by the Cool Science Club: Registration for the Cool Science Club is now open for the summer of 2026! We are excited to welcome both new and returning students to the Cool Science Club for another summer of discovery! CSC offers a wide array of engaging,
Michigan Football trending up with ELITE wide receiver recruit
Michigan Football is trending up for an elite WR that is teammates with two recruits committed to the Wolverines. That and more in today’s Recruiting Roundup:
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
Charleston County schools invest millions in special ed, teachers, mental health
The Charleston County School District is heading into the new school year with more than $11 million committed across special education, teacher development and mental health programs this year.
DiJonai Carrington shares the real reason behind her hard foul on Sophie Cunningham
Chicago Sky guard/forward DiJonai Carrington opened up on why she committed the Flagrant 2 foul on Sophie Cunningham that got her ejected from their last game. Carrington swiped Cunningham out of the air on a layup attempt at the end of the first quarter of the Sky’s 86-90 loss to the Indiana Fever on Saturday.
Why LA Council chief says Nithya Raman reached ‘political bottom of barrel'
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson says despite Raman’s claims that she’s being punished for running for mayor against Karen Bass, she knew about her committee assignment change. Conan Nolan reports for the NBC4 News at 7 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 10, 2026.
Ernst Names Small Business of the Week, Lone Arranger
Read the release on Sen. Ernst's website HERE. Throughout this Congress, Chair Ernst plans to recognize a small business in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties. RED OAK, Iowa – U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, today announced her Small Business of the Week: Lone Arranger of Adams County. Throughout the 119th Congress, Chair Ernst plans to recognize a small business in each of Iowa's 99 counties. "Lone Arranger has been in full bloom in Adams County for more than 28 years,” said Chair Ernst. "One bouquet at a time, Jessica has created beautiful arrangements for countless occasions – from displays for Governors Chet Culver and Terry Branstad to serving as a longtime vendor at the Adams County Fair. Lone Arranger is beloved for its high-quality products and attentive customer service, all stemming from hard work that has not gone unnoticed." Lone Arranger got its start as the “Flower and Garden Center” founded by Dale and Caroline Jackson out of their home. Over the years, the business passed into the hands of Larry and Sherry Archer, followed by Ros and Darlene Peterson. In 1999, Jessica Wilson purchased the shop after completing two internships there and earning a degree in floriculture from Kirkwood Community College. Today, under Jessica’s leadership, Lone Arranger has continued to grow its presence both locally and beyond. The shop contributed to the award-winning Rain Bird float featured in the 2010 Tournament of Roses Parade and has provided decorations for community organizations and events, including the Adams County Chamber of Commerce. The florist is cherished by Iowans for its versatility to cater to all events, including proms, weddings, and baby showers. Jessica’s “Operation Dream Closet” helps high schoolers in need access free prom attire through donations and has made an exceptional difference in the local community. Stay tuned as Chair Ernst continues to recognize outstanding Iowa small businesses with her Small Business of the Week award. ###
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
http://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/media/press-releases/pallone-trumps-gold-standard-vaccine-executive-order-puts-politics-ahead
Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) released the following statement on President Trump’s executive order establishing so-called "Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations:"
http://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/media/press-releases/pallone-trumps-gold-standard-vaccine-executive-order-puts-politics-ahead
Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) released the following statement on President Trump’s executive order establishing so-called "Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations:"
Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe
Key Takeaways The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys map with their own observations to explore our universe and search for rare phenomena. The 2D map serves as the foundation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey to measure the universe in 3D and investigate dark energy. Hold on to your telescopes: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion. The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published. “It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” said David Schlegel, a co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.” Covering roughly 75% of the sky in visible and near-infrared light, the updated map provides a deep view of the extragalactic universe not blocked by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way. Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come. More than 160 scientists contributed to data collection for the project, and a team of 20 produced the final dataset released today. It was built by combining 263,407 telescope exposures from three ground-based sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. That was supplemented by years of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite mission and additional public data. “For our team, these data are fundamental to our investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy,” said Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab. “But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to explore the sky and marvel at its wonders.” Here be galaxies The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally conducted to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. The Legacy Surveys’ 2D map is essentially a deep photograph of the sky; it records where galaxies and stars appear and how bright they appear. This crucial step enables DESI to select objects and measure their light in different wavelengths to determine their distances, building the largest high-resolution 3D map ever made. Scientists study the way galaxies have clustered at different ages of the universe to track dark energy over time. In April 2026, DESI completed its original five-year survey ahead of schedule and with vastly more objects than expected. The early results have shown surprising hints that dark energy’s impact may be weakening over time — a paradigm shift that could potentially shape the predicted fate of our universe. DESI expects to publish improved results using their first five years of data in 2027 and is continuing observations into 2028. DESI was so efficient at observing galaxies, the Legacy Surveys map needed to expand. Early on, “it became clear we might run out of galaxies to look at and run out of sky, and we better start doing something about that,” said Schlegel, who also works on DESI. The new Legacy Surveys map has been used to select DESI targets since June 2026 and will guide the telescope’s operations over the coming years. Computing the cosmos Merging hundreds of thousands of images taken on 2,285 nights, each with unique atmospheric and telescope conditions, was a massive computational effort. It took about a year to develop the computer code and eight weeks to process all the images at the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. Beyond supporting DESI, the Legacy Surveys will be a foundational reference for the next generation of telescopes. As new observatories like the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (jointly funded by NSF and DOE’s Office of Science) and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope come online, researchers can compare their observations with one of the deepest and most comprehensive views of the sky ever assembled. The Legacy Surveys data will also help scientists train artificial intelligence tools to analyze petabytes of astronomical data and accelerate new discoveries. It will be among the datasets used in an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility; the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences; and the partner institutions. DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and NERSC. Additional support for DESI is provided by the NSF; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
STONY BROOK MEDICINE COMMUNITY MEDICAL GROUP WELCOMES BESTIN KURIAKOSE, DO, TO LONG ISLAND ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY AND SPORTS MEDICINE
SMITHTOWN, NY, August 10, 2026 – Bestin Kuriakose, DO, has joined Long Island Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, a practice of Stony Brook Medicine Community Medical Group, part of Stony Brook Medicine's expanding network of community practices. “At our practice, we are committed to providing seamless, patient‑centered musculoskeletal care,” said Sandra Iannotti, MD, FAAOS, Orthopedic Surgeon, Long Island Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine. “I’m pleased to welcome
Trump admits 'contractor error' on Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
For the first time, Trump admitted there was a construction error on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which is seeing another round of costly renovations.
'We're Totally Supporting It' — Take-Two Boss Says Borderlands 4 Performance 'Has Not Affected Our Plans at All' as Fans Await Year 2 Roadmap
Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has insisted publisher 2K remains committed to Borderlands 4, and that the looter shooter's commercial performance hasn’t affected plans to support the game.
Jabari Smith Jr. Aims to Improve his Ball Handling Skills
Jabari Smith Jr. states that he is committed to improving one of his biggest weaknesses: ball handling.
Sony Will Remain Mum On PlayStation Disc Making Process
While PlayStation seems committed to ending their physical copies, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a massive homebrew scene to fill the void in the immediate future
Cowboys Legend Troy Aikman Announces Honest CTE Health Update After Admitting Concussion Concerns Still Linger
Once considered one of the toughest quarterbacks in Dallas Cowboys history, Troy Aikman has long been questioned about whether his health has taken setbacks because of the sport. With more cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) coming to light, Aikman was asked about his concerns.
Chicago's DiJonai Carrington ejected for hard foul on Sophie Cunningham
Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington is ejected from her side's defeat by Indiana Fever for committing a hard foul, before taking to social media to post "white privilege".
Fauci contempt vote reflects the enduring politics of COVID
Republican lawmakers and Secretary of Health RFK Jr. continue to scrutinize the legacy of COVID-19, recently voting to hold retired immunologist Anthony Fauci in contempt after his refusal to testify before a Senate committee.
Retraction: The App Store Rejection of the Week That Was, in Fact, a Correct Rejection
My disdain for astrology is so utter, and my esteem for Godier’s previous work so high, that it simply never occurred to me that he might have actually made and submitted to the App Store an astrology app, let alone that he’d then feign surprise and frustration that an astrology app was rejected for being an astrology app.
New site recommended for Caddo Parish sports complex
A new area is under consideration for a proposed $70 million Caddo Parish sports complex, following a presentation Thursday to the Caddo Parish Economic Development Committee.
Speeding driver plows through South St. Louis County sidewalk, foot from crashing into a business
St. Louis County Police said the incident happened around 2:40 a.m. Aug. 7. The driver admitted to speeding and losing control to officers on the scene, according to a statement from police.
MURKOWSKI CONGRATULATES INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE DIRECTOR MARK CRUZ ON SENATE CONFIRMATION
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, congratulated the Senate’s confirmation of Mark Cruz to serve as Director of the Indian Health Service (IHS) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of an en bloc package of nominations on August 7, 2026. “I congratulate Mark […]