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Trump says he was joking about UFC’s Dana White as spokesman
President Donald Trump said he was “only kidding” when he offered the job of White House Press Secretary to UFC chief Dana White. Trump’s comments to reporters in Florida before heading back to Washington resolved a 24-hour mystery over whether...
Trump says he was joking about UFC’s Dana White as spokesman
President Donald Trump said he was “only kidding” when he offered the job of White House Press Secretary to UFC chief Dana White. Trump’s comments to reporters in Florida before
Trump says he was ‘only kidding’ about offering UFC’s Dana White press secretary job
Dana White, UFC chief executive and longtime Trump political supporter, will meet with the president on Monday "on other matters," Trump said.
Why Austin Butler Cannot Drive the Iconic Black Ferrari in Miami Vice '85
New videos from the set of Miami Vice ‘85 reveal Austin Butler’s Sonny Crockett and Michael B. Jordan”s Ricardo Tubbs driving in a white Ferrari Testarossa, the wrong car for the period of the TV series that director Joseph Konsinski’s film is retelling. And there’s likely a legal reason for that.
Democrats weigh probes of Trump family, DOGE and Elon Musk, key lawmaker says
“This is the most corrupt family to ever be in the Oval Office, in the White House,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
White House vows not to slow down immigration enforcement in wake of midterms defeat
The Department of Homeland Security also insists it is not backing away on the round-up.
Jeffries says Democrats will not work with Trump's new chief of staff
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a Nov. 8 television appearance that the elevation of Stephen Miller to White House Chief of Staff was \
Todd Blanche defends former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles
The attorney general says an accusation that Wiles thwarted a MAHA initiative to protect sugar industry contributions isn’t cause for DOJ scrutiny.
FATAL TRANSMISSIONS ⟩ She Studied Political Science in Britain. Now She Tracks Russian Troops and Guides Drone Teams to Their Positions.
Lipstick, white powder, long eyelashes, a snow-white fluffy jumper, a puppy in the corner… H. makes an effort when she goes to work. “We put the layers on top of each other… Like this. And when the cake is ready…” she explains in front of a monitor, clicking around the screen.
AP sources: Staff at U.S. center for AI safety are reporting to the White House, raising independence concerns
Officials with the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, or CAISSI, an independent division of the Commerce Department, recently were asked to informally report to an office of the White House.
Political science expert on new fallout from the midterm election
Larry Gerston, Political Science Professor Emeritus San Jose State analyzes the new fallout from the midterm election, such as Stephen Miller becoming new White House Chief of Staff.
Island Resident's Work Celebrated by Academy of Arts and Sciences
Last month, Vineyard summer resident Deborah Gray White was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The honor recognizes Ms. White’s career as a scholar of African American and women’s history.
Ex-RFK Jr adviser requests records on Wiles’s health policy influence
Calley Means, a former top adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., requested records on former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s health policy influence be preserved following all…
Is AI taking white-collar jobs? Latest hiring report suggests not yet.
Despite AI fears, a sector often seen as a measure of white-collar work added 70,000 jobs. But one economist calls it a “head fake.”
Two men rob a South Side business, threaten an employee, then flee with merchandise
San Antonio police are investigating a South Side armed robbery off I-35 South after a clerk had a gun pointed at them. Two men in a white sedan grabbed merchandise and fled. No injuries, no arrests so far.
UFC's Dana White says he will meet with Trump Monday over offer to be White House press secretary
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he has offered the job of White House press secretary to his friend and UFC boss Dana White.
ICE presence outside Boyle Heights hospital prompts protest
Community members and advocates gathered outside Adventist Health White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights on Saturday afternoon to protest the presence of ICE agents at the hospital.
Dana White reacts to President Trump’s job offer
Dana White already runs the UFC, Zuffa Boxing, and Power Slap, but President Donald Trump apparently thinks he has room for one more job. On Saturday, Trump announced that he had offered White the position of White House press secretary. Now, White has addressed the offer for the first time. Speaking at a boxing event…
Trump asks UFC’s Dana White to be his next press secretary
President Donald Trump said he is offering the role of White House press secretary to UFC chief Dana White, asking him to “please take the job.” It wasn’t clear if
Democratic congresswoman calls Trump’s chief of staff move ‘desperate’
Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean joined CNN’s Jessica Dean and shared her reaction to President Donald Trump picking Stephen Miller to replace White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
Former Maryland Gov. Hogan calls midterms ‘complete and total rebuke of Trump’
On CNN, Republican Larry Hogan criticized the White House for doubling down on unpopular approaches while ignoring political independents.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson accuses Trump administration of corruption
On Joe Rogan's podcast, the senator from Wisconsin cited claims by a former White House adviser and accused Trump aides of catering to special interests.
Trump taps UFC boss as press secretary, urges criminal probes into Democrats
Facing an incoming Democratic congress, US President Donald Trump struck a combative tone Saturday, offering friend and "violent fighter" Dana White the White House press secretary role and ordering t...
Two detained during anti-ICE protest at Boyle Heights hospital
Federal immigration officers reportedly detained two people late Friday evening amid an anti-ICE demonstration near a hospital in Boyle Heights.
Dana White Reportedly Meeting with Trump About Press Secretary Gig as Political World Scratches Its Head
President Donald Trump is serious enough about offering Dana White the press secretary gig that they are reportedly meeting on Monday to discuss it.
NMSU Physical Science Laboratory marks 80 years of aerospace, defense research
NMSU's Physical Science Laboratory celebrates 80 years, tracing its evolution from White Sands rocket testing to modern aerospace and defense research.
Trump says he’s asked Dana White to serve as press secretary
President Donald Trump said Saturday he asked Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to be his next press secretary.
Trump says he's asked UFC's Dana White to be his press secretary
Trump's social media post about the offer came as his White House is in a period of major transition and struggling with his party's deep losses in Tuesday's midterm elections.
Trump says he's asked UFC's Dana White to be his press secretary. No one will say if he's joking
President Donald Trump says he's offered the job of White House press secretary to his friend and UFC boss Dana White.
Rep. Brendan Boyle talks Democrat priorities, negotiating with Trump
With Democrats taking control of the U.S. House, Congressman Brendan Boyle is poised to be the chair of the House Budget Committee. Just days after the midterm election, he talked to political reporter Lauren Mayk about his new role, Democrats’ priorities, negotiating with the Trump White House and his decision not to run for U.S. Senate in 2028.
Donald Trump offers UFC CEO Dana White press secretary job
President Trump’s continues his shakeup of the White House following the Republican defeat in the midterms by inviting Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to be his new press secretary.
Trump says he offered White House press secretary role to UFC’s Dana White
If was not immediately clear whether the UFC chief executive, a longtime supporter who worked with Trump to host an MMA event at the White House, had accepted.
Bryan Cranston's chicken acting masterclass, that 'eerie' Charles Manson encounter
Bryan Cranston's fearsome Walter White was infamously the one who knocks on the door in "Breaking Bad."
3 things to know about Stephen Miller, new White House chief of staff
Here’s three things to know about President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff.
Home health aide gunned down inside East Harlem apartment was weeks away from retirement: relatives
Elsa Espina-Espinal’s body was found inside NYCHA’s Gaylord White Houses on 2nd Ave. near E. 105th St. Thursday night — less than five weeks before she planned to quite her job and move to Santo Domingo with her husband, her d…
Paul Whitehouse to release ‘proper silly’ TV show for children
Comedian Paul Whitehouse is to release a new animated sketch show for children that is “just proper silly entertainment”.
Old News | Local business owner sells cigar, confectionery and fruit business; Wilfred R. Woods among those invited to White House luncheon; Wenatchee High School homecoming queen named
115 years ago — 1911
With Susie Wiles’s Departure, Big Business Loses a Sympathetic Ear
The former White House chief of staff served as a conduit between the business community and the Trump administration.
Stephen Miller’s promotion shows the White House is ready for war
Donald Trump is building a war bunker.
Why Washington Punishes the Loyalty It Cannot Price
On a Sunday night in August, Senator Jon Ossoff told a campaign rally in Atlanta that President Trump would rather build his ballroom and “travel with Natalie” than do his job. He never used her last name. He did not need to. Natalie Harp, the White House aide known to colleagues as Trump’s “human p...
Harry Enten explains ‘extinction level results’ after GOP’s midterm collapse upends 2028 race for White House
New eats, entertainment and extensive upgrades coming to iconic Whitehall shopping center
There are new tenants expected at the Whitehall Plaza, including a theater with magic shows, a supermarket and a Japanese restaurant.
Senior White House & Political Correspondent for CBS News, Ed O'Keefe on Texas' blue wave election
NMSU’s Physical Science Laboratory marks 80 years of innovation
Eighty years ago, a partnership between New Mexico State University and what was then known as the U.S. Army’s White Sands Proving Ground helped launch what would become one of the university’s...
The White House’s post-election shake-up: From the Politics Desk
Plus, the midterms reveal a much larger slice of the electorate is up for grabs.
Kristaps Porzingis stepping away from basketball amid health issues: 'Not where I want to be'
Kristaps Porzingis cited his ongoing health struggles in his decision to step away, as the Warriors reportedly stopped his $20 million salary payments.
Trump’s triumphal arch is blocked for now, but a new website highlights the plans
The White House highlighted the website the morning after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order that prohibits work on the site for 14 days.
Before the White House, Susie Wiles built political ties in Northeast Florida
Before Susie Wiles became a nationally known Republican strategist, she built a career in Northeast Florida, working behind the scenes for Jacksonville mayors and developing ties to the region’s political and environmental issues.
Former White House health aide accuses Trump advisers of catering to special interests
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Calley Means accused top administration aides and strategists of favoring powerful industries.
Trump names Stephen Miller his next chief of staff after major Republican midterm losses
President Trump's White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is stepping down. She is Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff and the first woman ever to hold the position.
Trump names Stephen Miller chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles after midterm losses
President Donald Trump announced Friday that Stephen Miller will become White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles.
Trump names Stephen Miller new White House chief of staff
President Donald Trump's current White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is leaving her post.
Stephen Miller will become White House chief of staff, Trump announces
Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, is departing the role and will be replaced by Stephen Miller, a longtime aide to President Donald Trump.
Science Policy Faces a Post-Election Shake-Up in Congress
Decisions on spending and White House control over science grants await a lame-duck Congress.
Early Black Friday Fluance RT81+ turntable deal
Fluance's RT81+ is an ideal pick for anyone looking to upgrade from an entry-level turntable. The Piano White model is $53 off ahead of Black Friday.
Jobs report doesn't show AI creating a white-collar wipeout
White-collar hiring was robust in October; professional and business services added 70,000 jobs. Economists say AI is reshaping in-demand job skills.
How to plan a successful offsite company meeting
Pari Marsh, who helps businesses and organizations plan meetings, retreats and conferences in the White Mountains, explains why planning down time during your company’s next offsite meeting is just as important as mapping out your speaker schedule.
Empiricists strike back: Midterms propel scientists and physicians to Capitol Hill
Undoing the White House’s war on science won’t be easy. Having new Democratic scientists and doctors in Congress will be a big help.
Rhea Ripley makes shocking public appearance amid WWE injury absence
Absent from WWE for months now, Rhea Ripley was recently spotted in public after a long time. Ripley recently appeared on stage at the Nov. 5, 2026 concert of metalcore band Motionless In White in Orlando, Florida. Chris Motionless, the lead singer of the band, publicly expressed gratitude to Ripley for promoting metal music and gothic culture […] The post Rhea Ripley makes shocking public appearance amid WWE injury absence appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Meteorite found in the Sahara shows what Mars was like 4.1 billion years ago
Teghaza 001, a meteorite found in 2022 in West Africa, could reveal clues about the earliest history of Mars.
Talarico and Hamilton Called for Cooler Heads. Will They Prevail? | WSJ Politics Newsletter for Nov. 6
Plus, the White House is battling to keep Trump’s conservative coalition together, and Democrats plan to roll back the trade war with Canada.
Past White House adviser Raj Panjabi has written a playbook for 'living room' crises
Dr. Raj Panjabi is the author of Safer: A Playbook. His goal is to help people face a personal crisis — health, workplace, family conflicts — and "turn fear into action."
Midterm results could shape 2028 presidential dialogue
Democratic upsets in this year’s midterms could reshape the electoral map, and the fight for the White House in 2028.
UFC veteran openly slams Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing pay
Dana White’s UFC has always been known for paying some of its lesser-known fighters an extremely low salary, which has often been a topic of debate. Earlier this year, Ronda Rousey, ahead of her MMA return and retirement fight, called out the UFC’s pay scale and thrashed White over. Recently, after Conor Benn was offered a huge new contract by […] The post UFC veteran openly slams Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing pay appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Graduate College of Health Club honors Día de Muertos
Lehigh’s Graduate College of Health Club hosted a two-day Día de Muertos event to commemorate lives lost to ICE and immigration enforcement.
Chamber honors business and community leaders at annual awards banquet
Photo by Tom Rivers LYNDONVILLE – The Orleans County Chamber of Commerce held its 28th annual awards dinner this evening at the White Birch Golf Course. About 80 people attended the event. Pictured from left, front row: Erin Hackenberg, owner of EH Collectives, New Business of the Year; Brandon Johnson, owner of Dance Theater Premier […]
Deontay Wilder launches Heavyweight Truth with Dana White
Deontay Wilder and Kerry KingBrown launch “Heavyweight Truth,” a combat sports show promising unfiltered talk, with Dana White as the first guest.
White House denies Hegseth, Rubio will leave jobs amid Republican election fallout
The Trump administration has downplayed reports the pair could be on their way out after heavy Republicans election losses.
Trump signs proclamation to prevent changes to Oval Office, other White House rooms
Trump signed a proclamation designating the Oval Office and Cabinet Room a national monument to prevent future presidents from altering them.
WATCH: First lady Melania Trump hosted Russian and Ukrainian officials. Trump met with Putin's envoy
President Donald Trump said he met with Vladimir Putin’s envoy at the White House on Thursday but did not meet with Ukrainian officials who were also visiting.
Trump signs proclamation he says will prevent future changes to Oval Office and Cabinet Room
Since returning to the White House, Trump has overseen numerous design changes to various rooms, including the Oval Office, where he has filled the wall space with portraits, a copy of the Declaration of Independence and numerous golden accents.
Newsom wants to empty death row. Most politicians wouldn’t bother
Newsom's decision, as he ponders a run for the White House, is a self-inflicted test of political endurance from a savvy politician who didn't need to go there.
NIST Releases Cybersecurity Guide for Solo Business Owners
What: On November 2, 2026, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a document titled, Small Business Cybersecurity: Non-Employer Firms (NIST Cybersecurity White Paper 50). The guide provides practical cybersecurity steps fo
Lady Gaga, Shakira, Jack White and Boy George lead the 2027 Songwriters Hall of Fame nominees
Lady Gaga, Shakira, Pink, Boy George, Jack White, Sia, Vince Gill, Ne-Yo, Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein are among the impressive list of nominees for the 2027 Songwriters Hall of Fame class | KMBZ
The Daily Mauling: 11/5/26
Kansas Jayhawks News The Topeka Capitol-Journal has Leroy Blyden and Tre White’s reactions to the Fordham win Andy Kotelnick talked to the press and gave his preview of this weekend’s UCF game ICYMI, the women’s hoops team won their season opener over Omaha this week Links! Jacoby Brissett is going to try and save Baltimore’s […]
SNP calls on US policymakers, investors to advance brain health and nutrition efforts
The Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) has released a new white paper outlining strategies to help improve brain health in the U.S.
When papers become currency: a Chinese debate about trust in science
Last Saturday, 31 October, I went to the University of Hong Kong’s Beijing Centre for its Talent Forum. It was the fourth stop in the series this year, following events in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang, Shenzhen’s Qianhai, and on HKU’s main campus. The programme covered a remarkable distance in one afternoon. HKU’s Xiao-Jing Wang discussed computational neuroscience, intelligence, and the prefrontal cortex—before even delivering his inaugural public lecture to students back in Hong Kong. His colleague Bing Zhang took us from the Big Bang to artificial intelligence. Tsinghua’s Xue Lan asked how AI might reshape the institutional infrastructure underpinning higher education. There were lively panels featuring industry leaders from JD.com, Xiaomi, Haier—and Kaiser Y Kuo on the closing panel discussing innovation and international connections. I cannot pretend to have followed every detail of the brain models or the astrophysics. The talk that stayed with me was closer to something we have covered before: Zhou Zhonghe 周忠和 on papers, evaluation, and scientific trust. Zhou is a palaeontologist, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is also editor-in-chief of The Intellectual (知识分子), China’s leading science commentary platform. His subject was uncomfortable enough for a room full of successful academics: what happens when the system for recognising good science starts rewarding something else? Part of my interest came from our sister newsletter, The East is Read, which covered the controversy around “Geng Tongxue” in May. A PhD dropout from Beihang University, Geng has publicly challenged papers by prominent researchers through detailed online allegations of manipulated images and fabricated data. At Tongji University, an investigation into a challenged Nature paper found academic misconduct, and the dean of its life sciences school was removed. The affair brought doubts about academic integrity well beyond laboratories and university committees. How could someone outside the established hierarchy spot problems in papers that had passed through prestigious journals and institutions? And what, exactly, had all that prestige guaranteed? Zhou approached these questions through two essays published in July by The Intellectual: one by Wang Xiaodong, director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, and a response by Wang Liming, of Shanghai’s Shangsi Institute of Natural Sciences. Both began with the controversy over Geng. Their arguments deserve a wider audience, so I want to put parts of them alongside what Zhou said on Saturday. Wang Xiaodong’s starting point is evolution. A research system selects for the behaviour it rewards. Grants, jobs, journals, talent programmes, and prizes collectively determine which scientists prosper and which practices get passed down from advisors to students. “Whatever the system rewards is what it will evolve to produce,” he writes, citing the ancient Chinese saying: The King of Chu loved slender waists, and many in the palace starved to death. That is a more demanding diagnosis than saying there are dishonest people in science. Punishing a fraudster does not change the selective environment that made a particular kind of research profitable. His account also gives scientific success an awkward role in the story. As Zhou put it on Saturday, science became a victim of its own success. Once research became central to industry, national power, and economic growth, universities and laboratories expanded, and public money followed. That created an administrative need for rapid decisions: who should get the next grant, the next laboratory, the next appointment? The difficulty is that the true value of a discovery may take years or decades of testing and building to become clear. Resource allocation cannot wait that long. Publication counts, journal prestige, impact factors, and citations therefore become convenient ways to make an instant judgement. “The real problem is not that these indicators have no value,” Wang Xiaodong writes, “but that they are trying to answer a question that only time can answer.” Telling administrators simply to stop counting papers will never be enough. They still have budgets to distribute and appointments to make. Something has to replace the shortcut. Zhou described the consequences inside publishing. Papers acquire ever more requirements: a complete story, polished presentation, extensive datasets, and accessibility to readers beyond the immediate field. Individually, those demands sound reasonable. Together, he warned, they produce formulaic “eight-legged” papers 八股文 and rigid reviewing, while genuinely original or non-consensus work struggles to get past journal editors—some of whom wield immense gatekeeping power despite having limited laboratory experience themselves. Meanwhile, the demands for sprawling, “complete” narratives have fuelled a wider replication crisis. Wang Xiaodong uses a mahjong metaphor to describe the result: put the complex papers published by the exact same lab over several years side by side, and they often look like “Thirteen Orphans” (十三不靠)—every tile completely unrelated to the next, and none of them reproducible by outsiders. Zhou also spoke frankly as an editor who has trouble finding reviewers. Everyone wants someone else to review their work; qualified senior researchers have little time to return the favour. The labour is anonymous, unpaid, and brings almost no institutional recognition, so it increasingly gets passed down to postdocs and graduate students. And while anonymity protects reviewers from rank and personal favours, hyper-specialisation means an author’s most qualified reviewer is often a direct competitor, shielded from accountability. The protection and the problem coexist. Wang Liming takes the argument a step further. The decisive change, in his essay, is the instant conversion of academic honour into material resources. Once a paper can be cashed in for funding, a job, students, commercial investment, or even a company valuation, scientists are alienated from their work: they must keep minting this “research currency” to keep their teams alive. He is careful not to romanticise the past. The old world of gentleman scientists—financially independent figures like Boyle and Darwin who needed nothing from external funders—was also a closed club that excluded people without inherited wealth, women, and much of humanity outside the West. Professional science allowed ordinary people, himself included, to become researchers. Nobody should want to undo that. The problem, in his account, is an exchange system that becomes too uniform and too difficult to correct. His most pointed Chinese example is the “hat” (帽子): the prestigious talent designation that brings continuing access to money, laboratory space, students, and institutional influence. “If papers are the circulating currency of the research system, then a ‘hat’ is a bond that pays interest over the long term,” he writes. A paper at least requires another round of peer review. A title in the Chinese context can lock in a judgement made years ago and turn it into permanent status rent, regardless of whether its holder is still doing good science. Here, official institutions hire, organise, and evaluate scientists. Unlike honours awarded by autonomous academic communities in the West, a Chinese “hat” blends non-scientist administrative power with state authority. Once granted, it turns a past judgement into permanent status rent that is nearly impossible to revoke—because taking a hat off would imply that official authority erred in putting it on. Both Wangs see China as experiencing, at compressed speed, pressures present across global science. Research expansion, rising investment, publication growth, and elaborate evaluation metrics arrived in China within two or three decades rather than two or three centuries. Zhou agreed with that international framing—noting that recent US White House science policy documents and the new president of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow palaeontologist who recently visited Zhou’s institute in Beijing, have raised strikingly similar warnings about consensus-bound peer review, short-term project grants, and the replication crisis. Still, Zhou emphasised that China’s traditional hierarchy, personal networks (guanxi), and the ethos that “a good scholar becomes an official” (学而优则仕) amplify those pressures at home. So what would change things? Here Zhou’s tone differed from the call for a revolution in scientific trust in Wang Xiaodong’s essay. As an evolutionary biologist, Zhou favoured patchwork repair (修修补补). Living systems survive through accumulated adjustments; dramatic mutations are usually fatal. Science cannot return to a small, slow-moving pastoral era, especially after the successive accelerations of professionalisation after the Second World War, the internet, and now artificial intelligence. But it can alter the local environment in which researchers work. He pointed to domestic experiments designed to support unconventional research and diversify funding, including Tencent’s New Cornerstone Investigator Program, the Xplorer Prize, and the Future Science Prize. He also mentioned participating in reviews for “major non-consensus projects” under the National Natural Science Foundation of China. One guiding principle he recalled was wonderfully direct: “Failure is allowed; corruption is not” (允许失败，不允许腐败). That distinction would mean quite a lot if taken seriously. An honest attempt that fails should not have to disguise itself as a success to survive an assessment. Wang Liming’s essay adds a sharp caveat to the optimism about new domestic funders. Multiple organisations do not automatically produce multiple ways of judging science. If the same pool of senior domestic scientists makes the decisions through the same two-round review procedures, it is still “fake diversity.” He argues for three distinct kinds of money: broad baseline funding governed by fair procedures; patient funding for questions that take ten years; and non-consensus funding based on individual taste, deliberately empowering a few genuine experts to make biased, contrarian bets on eccentric ideas that would inevitably be averaged out by a committee. Replacing one monopoly with another achieves little; a healthy ecosystem needs variance. Zhou’s proposals for publishing were similarly concrete: strip papers of their resource-allocation burden and return them to recording discoveries and establishing priority; separate dissemination from evaluation, as eLife and Peer Community In do; adopt more modular “micro-publications” and real-name endorsements; recognize the labour of editors and reviewers; and give replication work proper credit rather than treating it as an unpublishable dead end. AI makes every part of this debate more urgent—and Zhou wove it throughout his talk. In his own preparation, he used AI to survey the declining influence of academic monographs, noting how tools are already changing how scholars gather information. More fundamentally, he placed AI as the latest great acceleration in scientific history: just as the internet sped up the pace of research and tightened external resource pressures, AI is compressing the cycle again. In the essays Zhou cited, AI cuts both ways. Wang Xiaodong expects large language models to erase much of the English-writing disadvantage long faced by Chinese scientists, further swelling the flood of papers coming out of Chinese labs. Wang Liming sees AI accelerating both ends of the trust crisis: it lowers the cost of paper mills and fabricated images just as quickly as it lowers the cost of automated image forensics, data auditing, and code reproduction. “Whoever builds the verification layer wins,” Wang Liming writes. His proposed alternative to the static, packaged “story paper” is a continuously versioned “unit of discovery” containing a falsifiable claim, raw data, analysis code, experimental parameters, and an ongoing log of independent checks—where negative results and failed replications are recorded rather than buried. Zhou ended his keynote by bringing AI back to the question of scientific honour and credit. Citing a recent Intellectual discussion on “What AI Means for Mathematics” featuring Fields Medalist Deng Yu 邓煜—at a moment when AI is already batch-solving mathematical conjectures, as HKU Vice-President Lin Chen noted in his opening remarks—Zhou agreed that human researchers must remain the principal agents: AI is a tool that frees scientists from tedious calculation to think about deeper, messier real-world problems. Yet that partnership creates a thorny new evaluation problem. When a breakthrough is made with AI, what is the human contribution and what is the machine’s? And since AI models distil centuries of accumulated human scholarship, is it right that the credit and value flow so heavily to the private AI companies building the tools? The old struggle over how to assign scientific honour is acquiring a whole new layer. What I took away was a serious discussion of how science can remain trustworthy as its scale, incentives, and tools change. These were scientists with real standing inside China’s system questioning how that standing is produced, and proposing changes that would affect their own institutions and peers. That made the afternoon at HKU’s Beijing Centre worthwhile. At the close, Wang Feng, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at HKU, said the value of the forum series—which heads to Hangzhou in December and cities like Chengdu early next year—would lie in the real cooperation it helped bring about. The university has plenty to celebrate: this week it topped the QS Asia rankings for a second consecutive year, alongside its 11th-place position in the QS World University Rankings 2027. For me, bringing this debate to an audience beyond the people who review papers and allocate grants was a useful contribution. Share [ The East is Read PhD dropout’s exposé forces an academic fraud reckoning in China A former doctoral student turned blogger has shaken China’s academic establishment by publicly accusing prominent university scholars of fabricating data and manipulating papers, triggering investigations at several leading institutions and drawing rare attention from state media… Read more 5 months ago · 43 likes · 8 comments · Yuxuan JIA ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/phd-dropouts-expose-forces-an-academic?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=47580)
Raiders waive ex-Seahawks, Steelers wide receiver
The Las Vegas Raiders feasted on In-N-Out hamburgers thanks to quarterback Kirk Cousins . But the franchise made a roster change three days after celebrating the tasty win over the New York Jets. With this move involving former Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Cody White. Vegas made the decision to release White Wednesday. […] The post Raiders waive ex-Seahawks, Steelers wide receiver appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Trump talks ballroom construction day after election shellacking
President Donald Trump highlighted the new White House ballroom construction Wednesday, a day after Democrats swept the midterm elections, while fielding questions about how he closed out the campaign.
WATCH: Trump previews ballroom construction the day after voters rejected GOP rule
President Donald Trump gave extended comments Wednesday, not about the Republican Party's midterm election wipeout but instead justifying his building a sprawling White House ballroom.
Trump touts White House ballroom in first appearance since GOP midterm losses
Cheap Android TV boxes came with malware, and Google says the manufacturer was behind it
The backdoor was discovered in the firmware of multiple Videostrong devices, such as the Mecool KTI, as well as several white-label Android TV boxes. Seattle-based cybersecurity and...
Pritzker won big. Now comes the hard part.
With a third term secured and a possible White House bid looming, Pritzker faces tough fights over Illinois' budget, the Bears and data centers.
Today in White Sox History: November 4
Happy birthday to a true underachiever, Skeeter Webb!
Trump’s Whole Theory of Power is in Ruins
More than any American president, Trump has used fear as a central tool of policymaking. He doesn’t look so fearsome today.
A Political Reckoning Shatters Trump’s Grip on Washington
Republican midterm losses leave the president weakened during his final two years in the White House.
Angry Voters Usher in Beginning of the End to the Trump Era
The electoral backlash extended even into deep red states and indicated that President Trump has lost his hold over the coalition that lifted him to the White House twice.
AFGHS co-signatory countries ask health care users to help fill the financing gap
Hundreds of thousands of Ugandans living with HIV on antiretrovirals could be targeted for user fees or community health insurance schemes requiring modest premium payments, according to the April 2026 version of the country’s America First Global Health Strategy implementation narrative.1 As part of the “sustainable financing for the private not for profit sector” strategy, 491 facilities will be targeted for a phased introduction of user fees and scale up of community health insurance programs.2 In the Ugandan context, PNFP facilities include faith-based hospitals and other health facilities, US missionary organizations and centers of excellence—services that are often co-located at government facilities but run with additional financial and technical resources. 402,000 people—or about 28 percent of the total Ugandan adult PLHIV population on treatment—get ART from the private not for profit sector. The selected facilities provide the majority of ART and prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services. The plan doesn’t give the total number of clients served by the 491 facilities, so it is not possible to give a precise number. But the majority of 402,000 is a figure in the hundreds of thousands—hence the estimate I’m using.3 The April draft of the Ugandan implementation plan narrative is the only one I’ve been able to review. But the government of Uganda is not alone in turning to health care users to help fill the financing gaps caused by the abrupt withdrawal of US funds. In July 2025, the Government of Liberia introduced user fees for previously free services including “registration, accommodation, patient feeding, hospitalization, and a wide range of surgical and diagnostic procedures.”4 Earlier that year, Liberia rolled out a revolving drug fund designed to stabilize drug supplies by “allowing patients to pay a small fee for standardized, quality medications,” according to a Ministry of Health press release.5 (Both of these approaches had been proposed in the National Health Policy 2022-2031; media coverage explicitly connects the launch with the US foreign aid cuts.) The health financing strategies proposed by Uganda and established in Liberia are qualitatively different from user fees officially adopted by specific health facilities to cover funding shortfalls caused by the new US approach.6 The latter is a stopgap, adhoc change. The former is a national governmental adoption of policies that pass costs on to health care users, despite evidence that such approaches can exacerbate inequities and leave deficits unfilled. Two countries does not make a pattern, but they do point to urgent questions: Have other countries, including Liberia, included user fees or community health insurance schemes in their implementation plans? If so, do any of these narratives have what Uganda’s lacks: a fall-back plan in place in case these strategies for sustainable health systems fail to deliver—as they have before? I wonder if you think about it Subscribe Predictable pitfalls Both community-based health insurance and user fees are as old as the hills. And after decades of people climbing up these hills, duking it out, climbing back down—neither strategy has shown the results the Ugandan implementation plan is counting on. This is, in fact, a hill some folks are willing to die on. (You knew I’d get there, right?) In November 2025, an African-led team of health system experts published a paper directed at low- and middle income country governments trying to figure out how to create self-sustaining health systems. The money wasn’t coming back. It had been more than nine months since the season of freezing, waivering and wood-chippering; two months since AFGHS tumbled into the world touting co-financing requirements and reductions in future US government health aid. Governments were looking for strategies for sustainable, self-financed health systems, the authors wrote. For countries considering user fees and community health insurance to fill the financing gaps, they had a simple message: Don’t. On user fees, the paper states: “Reliance on user fees is ultimately a regressive and inequitable approach. It places a disproportionate burden on the poor and undermines health system goals of equity and financial protection. […] There is overwhelming evidence that user fees mobilise very limited resources for the public health sector, making it an inefficient mechanism for revenue mobilisation.” On community health insurance: “Attempting to shift the burden of funding previously donor-funded services, such as HIV care and management, and TB treatment, onto contributory schemes would exacerbate their fragility and fail to protect the population.”7 The WHO says that community-based health insurance “cannot be expected to provide a major source of funding or coverage,” and noted that most schemes offer only moderate benefit to individuals paying into them, and exclude the poorest segment of the population.8 And yet, the US-Ugandan implementation plan says that community health insurance is “the central pillar of this [PNFP] sustainability strategy” and that this approach that will generate “pre-paid pooled funding at facility and community level [that] improves financial risk protection for households, reduces catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditure, and generates structured, transparent revenue streams that can progressively absorb recurrent costs including health worker salaries.” Unfortunately, Uganda’s own history suggests the pillar might not be able to bear this weight. Ugandans Have Been to this Rodeo Before—and Some Want Their Money Back Uganda introduced its first community health insurance scheme in 1996 with support from international donors.9 Thirty years later, somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 percent of the population is covered by CHI; just over 1 percent has any kind of health insurance.10 User fees were universally introduced in 1993 as a condition of a World Bank loan.11 They were abandoned in 2001, and in 2004—the year I moved to Uganda to watch the free HIV program get underway—a definitive study found that the fees did not improve health systems and outcomes.12 In 2004, most clinics and hospitals had ‘free’ and ‘fee for service’ options for getting care.13 The fee for service, or “cash and carry” programs had often been established in the years prior to PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. People who could afford to paid for the drugs, often at facilities in the private-not-for-profit (PNFP) sector. When free drugs arrived, some people who’d been paying kept on doing so, perhaps because of shorter wait times, greater confidentiality, convenience or other factors. But in the year that I spent visiting the same clinics around the country week after week—including a “center of excellence” that maintained separate days for cash and carry clients and those accessing free ARVs—lots of people who had been paying tried to switch to the free option. They’d paid because they had no other choice. They’d sold pieces of family land, begged family members for loans, bought pills by the week, and sometimes by the day. Or they were just cash-strapped, like most of us, and wanted the funds for other things. 14 Twenty-two years later, this hasn’t changed. Ugandans pay out of pocket for 30-40 percent of their health care costs, leading one paper to declare that “falling ill is more than a health crisis. It is a financial emergency.”15 One recent study found that up to 48.5 percent of households dealing with tuberculosis sold something, took out a loan or dug into savings to defray the costs of TB care—which is supposed to be universally free.16 The Ugandan implementation plan does anticipate challenges. It proposes a phased approach, with 187 facilities introducing user contribution systems in Year 1, 152 in Year 2, and 153 in Year 3. Willingness to pay and feasibility studies will precede roll out; fees will be tiered by region, and a waiver system is proposed to ensure that no one has to pay who is unable to. Moreover, the plan provides for quarterly reviews of epidemiological data to “ensure that user contributions do not compromise epidemic control gains, ART continuity for the client cohort, TB case management, or PMTCT services.” Alt text: A screenshot of a table included in the implementation plan narrative that is the subject of this stack. It’s got a fetching pink bar at the top. It uses the abbreviation “CHI” which is Community Health Insurance, and FBO which is Faith Based Organizations, and it details the number of facilities that will implement user fees with waivers and community health insurance schemes over the five years of the agreement. As I said in the footnote, this is a super interesting document with a lot of other rich material. Tell me what you see—and what you would have focused on. And if you’ve seen something like this, or anything else that strikes you, in another implementation plan, tell me that too. You can use the Substack message platform or try me on Signal at @endaplague_again.25 (because @mercoonfan was, weirdly, taken). But the plan doesn’t fully explain what will happen if this approach doesn’t work out. Yes, progress will be monitored, and corrective action triggered. However, there is no specified funding replacement if premium and fee revenue prove inadequate. Instead, the authors write, “Currently, COEs serve a total client cohort of over 180,000 across 28 facilities. In the initial years, the U.S. Government (USG) will provide financial support for clients; over time, user fees generated by COEs will become the primary source of funding for sustaining their services.” Failure does not really seem to be an option. Health insurance schemes are more acceptable to the Ugandan population than user fees. Members of Parliament and civil society traveled to Ethiopia to see how that country’s scheme worked. In a follow up report, a veteran civil society group recommended allowing the “health insurance ecosystem to grow organically and [to] keep reviewing the law and regulations as this growth takes root.”17 One study found that more than three-quarters of Ugandans were willing to join a health insurance program.18 However, coverage of community-based health insurance is minimal, as is coverage of any kind of insurance—including private plans.19 A national health insurance scheme bill has been stalled for several years and presently sits with President Yoweri Museveni.20 Community-based health insurance scheme that do exist are expanding in number, but losing enrollees. Between 2022 and 2026, the number of community-based health financing schemes across the country increased by 42 percent, while the number of people enrolled decreased by nearly 11 percent.21 None of this means that community-based health insurance should not happen in Uganda—or that people do not want insurance. It doesn’t even mean that user fees and waivers won’t ever work. But there is highly relevant evidence from Uganda and the surrounding region that it is quite optimistic to describe community health insurance and user fees as central supports for sustainable financing in any sector of the health system. And now for the best-case scenario In the best-case scenario22, the Ugandan approach does exactly what it sets out to do, and so does the Liberian fee structure and revolving pharmacy fund—though I’ve not confirmed that these are in the MoU. In one best-case scenario, Uganda is an outlier, and user fees and community health insurance are not recurrent pillars of self-sustaining financing in other countries’ implementation plans. In another best-case scenario, all countries that include these strategies enjoy success beyond anyone’s evidence-informed wildest dreams: reliable funding generated by health care users fees, great health care outcomes for everyone, no exacerbation of inequities, no crippling household debt. No sold land, repurposed school tuition or high-interest loans. In the best-case scenario, not one of the hundreds of thousands of Ugandans living with HIV receiving antiretrovirals from 491 PNFP facilities misses a refill or leaves care because of user fees or community health insurance premiums. This is the best-case scenario for these people for their own health, and for their families. It is also the best-case scenario if Uganda wants to stay on the path to eliminating HIV as a public health threat. According to the country’s most recent data, 96.5 percent of people living with HIV on antiretrovirals are virologically suppressed. Epidemic control depends ensuring that 95% of people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent of those individuals are on ART, and 95% of those individuals are virologically suppressed. Uganda is still struggling with the first “95"—a frankly abysmal 85.3 percent. If HIV epidemic control and the attendant prevention of new infections, avoidable suffering and premature death matter, the country cannot afford to lose any clients who are currently in care.23 As I write this a couple hours before the polls close for the US elections in the city I live in, I say with soul-deep sincerity: I am rooting for the best-case scenario. I think it’s safe to say that we all are.24 I think it’s also safe to say that if the US and co-signatory governments have inked plans that lead to successful expansion of community health insurance and strategic use of user fees, we all would like to know, now, so that we don’t miss the opportunity to celebrate when success happens. The implementation plan narratives have to enter the public domain. They are the fullest expression of a strategy co-created by two governments. There are assumptions and details that people living in the US and co-signatory countries need to understand that are not available in the MoUs or, to date, in the Congressional Notifications. Some of these details can help other countries that are, as I write this, still working on implementation plans. Others, like a solid count of how many other countries have plans for expanding user fees or health insurance, are important for regional and global health architecture reform initiatives. No matter how this election night turns out, there will be a slew of new Congressional member orientations, briefings and talking points papers in the next few months. Release of implementation narratives should be a bullet point in every context that AFGHS is discussed. These documents can be redacted so that procurement sensitive information isn’t disclosed. There is much more historical precedent for sharing such documents than there is for relying on user fees to fill health financing gaps. Let’s look at the information together so we can hope for the best and prepare for, you know, the other thing. Alt text: A substack first: a bicep selfie! It’s my arm - peachy-white skin, black shirt (flannel, notch neck, too hot for this appallingly balmy November weather, if you’re wondering) and a sticker that says I VOTED 2026. Beige letters on red for I voted. Beige on blue for 2026. You bet I did.25 In your wildest dreams. Subscribe 1 This is a really, really rich 95 page document. There are fascinating ideas and detailed plans in it. It is all worth reading AND I have, in this post, highlighted an instance of content that could pose challenges and certainly posits success of strategies that haven’t worked before. I would love to hear what readers’ see that’s interesting and should be lifted up as something to check for in other implementation plans. I will also shortly be adding a static page to the substack site where implementation plan documents will live. I will put the url into this footnote and it will also be there on emilybass.substack.com by the end of the week. Uganda Implementation Narrative Section 4 April 22 2026 Draft 1.51MB ∙ PDF file Download Download 2 User fees are costs charged for visits, labs, medicines or other health services, usually at the time they are provided. Community health insurance, or community-based health insurance, is what the World Health Organization calls “micro insurance,” which is health insurance targeted at low-income people. 3 As usual (by which I mean always), please prove me wrong. 4 https://smartnewsliberia.com/liberias-ministry-of-health-announces-2025-hospital-service-fees-for-public-facilities/?utm 5 https://moh.gov.lr/news/2025/grand-cape-mount-leaders-residents-embrace-new-community-pharmacy-program/?utm 6 https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/09/hiv-usaid-pepfar-africa-foreign-aid-cuts-mission-hospitals/?utm 7 https://gh.bmj.com/content/10/11/e021270 8 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/community-based-health-insurance-CBHI 9 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2827475/ 10 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10861328/#b3-jpmph-23-110 11 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC527704/ 12 Same citation as the footnote 2 - the article is called “Learning from failed health care reform in Uganda.” To which I say: If only. If. Only. 13 There is a whole taxonomy of user fees to be aware of, if not commit to memory. Out of pocket costs are everything that someone pays for themselves. In this Stack, user fees are planned and policy-supported out of pocket costs. There are also out of pocket costs that people pay to buy drugs or receive tests or health care assessments that would be free if the drugs were on the shelves, or the machines or kits were available, or the staff were on site. A user fee is usually designed to be modest, pegged to willingness to pay, and may be waiveable at the point of care for anyone who is unable to do so. The costs for things that would otherwise be free are whatever the market will bear and people either have to pay them or go without. Out of pocket costs for services and stuff that aren’t available in public facilities are different again from bribes or unofficial fees that some health workers may impose, even though most are indefatigable, tireless and tired, and devoted to their clients. 14 For the record—which really is these footnotes—I would give a whole stack of fridge magnets for a systematic analysis of the economic and social impact of the Mass Unemployment Event in AFGHS countries among the very people who used to be able to afford and cover user fees, both for themselves and vast family networks. Locally employed USAID technical staff, house cleaners, caregivers, drivers and technicians were financial anchors for cousins, friends, friends’ children, friends’ childrens’ cousins, teachers, pastors, neighbors and so many other kinds of kin. Aid recipients lost direct funding; many other people who had not been aid recipients, but parts of the elaborate care webs that function as safety nets for so many people, lost crucial support too. And that’s even before we get to the people who worked at the hotels and restaurants and bars where people employed by the US and its implementing partners used to spend disposable income. Those businesses have lost revenue; those folks have lost jobs. It will be some time coming—and someone will have to fund this work—but I do hope it happens. And I hope, as usual, to be proven wrong. 15 https://eprcug.org/blog/how-out-of-pocket-healthcare-costs-keep-driving-ugandans-into-poverty/ 16 Another straight-to-the-point journal article title. Households experiencing catastrophic costs due to tuberculosis in Uganda: magnitude and cost drivers. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32938411 17 https://www.cehurd.org/download/technical-policy-brief-on-community-health-insurance-scheme/?wpdmdl=13661&refresh=6ae9122f5d4ed1793659439 18 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10125197/ 19 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10861328/#b3-jpmph-23-110 20 https://ugandapost.news/uganda-to-make-health-insurance-mandatory-by-2026/ 21 https://shu.org.ug/download/235 22 With a nod, tip of the stack hat, and wag of the Mercoon tail to a deeply valued reader who told me that I have a tendency to speculate about the worst-case scenarios a little too much of the time. 23 https://news.mak.ac.ug/2026/10/uphia-2025-shows-ugandas-hiv-status-awareness-gap-despite-strong-treatment-outcomes/ As you’ll see in the next footnote, I’ve already written a subSubstack on another topic, so I will be brief with regard to the study referenced in this article. The Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment, or UPHIA, will never happen in this way again. For more than a decade, PHIAs have been supported by the US government as a way to generate accurate estimates of country progress on key HIV indicators. They are a holdover from the PEPFAR program that was laser focused on ensuring US taxpayer dollars subsidized progress in pandemic control. There may be other population-level surveys and the data may even be publicly released, as the entire set of FY2026 MER data have not. But PHIAs will never happen again. If you’re wondering whether the estimates of HIV progress at country level might get less reliable….you’re not alone. 24 Ooh baby, I hate “we” in almost all forms. But sometimes I go there, when I am looking for company, which I am. Because this Stack moves into the somewhat-uncharted territory of assessing what the implementation plan narratives may suggest about co-signatory countries’ roles and responsibilities to the people living within their borders. The MoUs, specimen and data sharing agreements were templates. Countries’ answers fit into pre-specified questions that did not include, “how are you going to fill financing gaps and stabilize your health system as this plan unfolds?” In contrast, the implementation narratives are open form—the product of co-creation between the two governments. Co-creation can mean lots of things, but nothing leads me to believe that implementation plans are ghost-written by the US government, or that contents were imposed by the US counterparts. Instead, I think the parts of the plans that read like country government initiatives are endorsed, if not initiated by, those governments. For instance, the Ugandan implementation plan narrative describes plans for revenue-generation through fees charged for equipment calibration, repair and maintenance provided through Uganda’s National Equipment Calibration Laboratory, and laboratory accreditation through the Uganda National Accreditation Service (UGANAS), targeting private sector, PNFP, research and academic clients. That’s super specific and also quite ambitious. It doesn’t read like an American idea. There’s also a provision for solar panels, and other stuff that feels country owned and driven. This is where it gets interesting. If co-creation is the case, then both the US and co-signatory governments are accountable for the contents and the outcomes. Most discourse about AFGHS to date has focused on the decisions that America has made, or demanded that other countries make. The AFGHS architects have monopolized the hot seat. As they should, in so many ways. America absolutely created the conditions under which countries needed to come up with health financing strategies to fill unanticipated, catastrophic funding gaps. And with not-too-long a lens, we can look back and see that America is also on the hook for its role in the Bretton Woods institutions that made user fees and health system fiscal austerity conditions of loans during the era of structural adjustment. But in the here and now, it is not at all clear to me that the US is requiring Uganda or any other country to implement specific approaches to sustainable financing. Instead, it is as the authors of that paper up in footnote 6 suggest: African governments have agency. As implementation plans roll out—whether or not the narratives are shared—it will be important to understand what this agency looks like and what it means for people, including the poorest of the poor. And it will be important to figure out how to talk about it safely, respectfully and critically in places other than the literal and metaphorical footnotes. 25 This week’s song is “Once upon a time” by the Moody Blues. (I know, this is gonna be a weird, largely banger-free end of 2026 playlist. HMU with requests.) AND please do watch the video and appreciate the truly amazing opening sequence—a drum kit wasteland, a coupla plastic bags, a bit of sand. Sort of like the hill where fiscal austerity policies that put costs on health care users might go to perish. But then there’s a lady with amazing hair. It’s worth it.
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