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By Michelle Andrews for KFF Having a baby in the United States is about to get more complicated. Under new billing codes that take effect in January, doctors who manage maternity care will start charging à la carte for visits and services related to pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care. It’s an about-face from recent years, when doctors have often received a single “bundled”…

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Notion's head of product said he was "astonished" at “the amount of people RT-ing this."

Scott Pelley spent 37 years at CBS News, only to be fired last week after coming into conflict with Free Press founder Bari Weiss, who took control of the network last October. In a New York Times sit-down interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro published Sunday, Pelley said Weiss personally interfered with the network’s coverage of the ICE officer who killed Renée Good in Minneapolis.

Pelley told Garcia-Navarro that, hours before an episode of 60 Minutes on the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti was set to air, Weiss sent an email to his boss asking for changes to the episode. “Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”

On June 3, Pelley posted on Instagram that “New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.” Now, it’s clear that story was about the ICE agent who killed Renée Good: video of Good’s final moments posted by CBS Evening News does not in fact show her driving toward an officer.

A CBS spokesperson told the New York Times that Weiss’ comments “had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible.”

“My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration.”

“My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration,” Pelley said. “Constantly looking out for the views of the president.” But that, to him, wasn’t the worst part. “The bigger problem, Lulu, frankly, is not any kind of political influence,” he told Garcia-Navarro. “The problem was the incompetence. You don’t break a deadline. That episode came within 19 minutes of not making it to air.”

CBS has previously pulled 60 Minutes segments, including one in December reporting on the Trump administration deporting people to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison—a key ally of President Donald Trump—installed Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS shortly after buying her website, The Free Press, for a reported $150 million.

If you had told us years ago that one day, a bigoted former TV star would be leading the charge in another former reality TV star’s war in Iran, we probably would have taken off running for the hills—or Canada. But alas, we live in a timeline where Pete Hegseth leads the Defense Department and where President Donald Trump launches wars with no plan or end in sight. So as we suffer…

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"Chat is dead" — at least, according to a senior OpenAI employee.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

There is so much high-profile big-time badness all the time right now that sometimes things that are just a little bit more low-key terrible get lost in the shuffle. So you might have missed just how much this administration has been decimating consumer protection rules. Okay, credit where credit is due. Sometimes the administration has help from the feckless Republicans in Congress and the…

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Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 300 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new. Prince Rogers Nelson, the musical genius known to most of the world simply as Prince, was born on June 7, 1958…

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A cartoon by David Horsey. Related | It’s not a great week for Mark Zuckerberg…

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This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Maxing out at around 200 tons, the blue whale is not only the largest animal on the planet, it is also the largest animal ever to exist. These creatures become so massive by eating a diet comprised almost entirely of krill, the translucent, thumb-sized organisms that thrive in the frigid waters of Antarctica. 

Blue whales are baleen feeders: In place of teeth they have baleen plates, made from keratin, that serve as a sieve. Swimming toward huge concentrations of krill, they open their triple-hinged jaws to gulp in huge volumes of water and prey, then filter out the water. The only baleen whale that almost exclusively eats krill, blues can consume as much as 16 metric tons of the shrimp-like crustaceans in a day.

But this food supply appears to be faltering. Climate change, which is warming the oceans and melting polar ice, is causing large-scale changes in the Southern Ocean krill population, changing their distribution and behavior and in some places contributing to declines of as much as 80 percent. Parts of Antarctica are warming five times faster than the global average. Last fall the British Antarctic Survey warned that “dramatic and extreme changes in Antarctica are happening faster than expected,” and the continent could be approaching a tipping point.  

Calls for restrictions on the krill industry are growing louder among scientists, activists, and some politicians.

Now another possible threat to krill populations is worrying researchers and conservationists. The crustacean’s massive concentrations in the Antarctic have attracted supertrawlers from around the world that vacuum up to 1,000 tons of krill a day, then process the animals onboard into krill oil. Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the oil is used in human nutritional supplements, as food for aquaculture, and in pet food.

Thanks to technology that allows large-scale harvesting, the business began to take off about 15 years ago and is now booming. Last October, Norway began lobbying the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which manages the krill fishery, to double the allowable take in the Southern Ocean. The krill industry is worth as much as $900 million annually. 

But there is growing alarm among researchers and conservationists about what the harvest could mean for whales, in addition to imperiled seals and penguins. Earlier this year, the European Union passed a resolution calling for a five-year moratorium on all krill fishing in the Southern Ocean as a precaution while more data are gathered. 

“Our calculations suggest an alarming possibility that we might harvest krill to the point where we do real damage to recovering whale populations,” said Matthew Savoca, a whale researcher at Stanford University and the coauthor of a recent study that addressed this issue. 

The Norwegian Aker BioMarine’s Antarctic Sea trawls for krill in the Southern Ocean off the coast of the South Orkney Islands, north of the Antarctic Peninsula, on March 10, 2023. David Keyton/AP

Nowhere on the planet do krill—considered the most abundant wild animal species in the world, as measured by biomass—occur in higher numbers than in Antarctica. A keystone species in the Southern Ocean ecosystem, krill are an essential food for other baleen whales, seals, penguins, and a variety of birds. Populations of the crustaceans are especially dense in the Scotia Sea, which stretches between the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney Islands; estimates vary widely, but the area may contain as much as half of the global population.

Not surprisingly, this is also a place where whales aggregate. Savoca recently returned from a research trip to Antarctica and said he was bowled over by the number of cetaceans in a small area. “This is Serengeti-migration-level stuff,” he said. “It’s a full-on sensory experience. You are surrounded by blows,” or whales spouting. “You see the blows, hear the blows, and you smell the blows because it’s kind of stinky. It smells like rotting cabbage.”

“Given the existential threat to the Antarctic ecosystem that climate change poses, we should not be adding other risk factors.”

Such mass whale gatherings are largely the result of an international moratorium on whaling that went into effect in 1986, allowing baleen whales—fin, humpback, sei, minke, and right whales—to stage a remarkable comeback. The super-abundance of krill in the region has also contributed to their climb back to healthy population levels. Blue whales feed here, too, though they remain listed as endangered, with their population 95 percent lower than in pre-whaling days.

Thanks to the growing demand for krill oil spurred by health-conscious consumers, as well as the proliferation of fish farms, supertrawlers as long as football fields now work the same space as krill-eating whales. The trawlers use echo sounders, a type of sonar, and even drones to find massive swarms of krill. Some fishers use fine mesh nets to bring them aboard; Aker Qrill, part of Aker Biomarine, the Norwegian company that takes almost two-thirds of the total Antarctic krill quota of 620,000 tons, uses a method called continuous pumping, in which a hose inserted into a krill swarm vacuums crustaceans onto the deck of the ship for immediate onboard processing.

A number of studies have established that climate change, which is driving a decline in sea ice, is affecting the resilience of krill, which are in some regions in steep decline. “Krill are very reliant on ice,” said Savoca. “When krill are young, they need to hide under the ice from predators, and they eat algae off the underside of the sea ice. And if there is less ice, both in extent and duration, they don’t recruit as well.” 

Whales are difficult to study in the extreme environment of Antarctica, but one recent study showed that the decline in the availability of krill can lead to fewer pregnancies and reduce viability in humpback whales. Other krill-consuming species that are more accessible to researchers have been studied as a proxy. The Antarctic fur seal and the emperor penguin were recently added to the IUCN endangered list because of their falling populations, due in part to a decline in prey driven by climatic changes and to krill shortages. 

This year the limit on krill was reached three months early in the year-round season, in part because the industry has grown and in part because trawlers were not bound by spatial distribution rules and so concentrated their efforts in krill hotspots. This is the first time the quota has been met so early, and it spurred some of the 27 nations in the CCAMLR to call for expanding the limit.

Opponents of expansion argue the CCAMLR is obliged by its bylaws to abide by the precautionary principle, which states that in the absence of definitive science, management should be cautious. But a recent study found that krill fishery managers were not taking into consideration the synergistic effects of krill fishing and rapid climate warming on penguins—factors that researchers say likely affect whales too. 

“Given the existential threat to the Antarctic ecosystem that climate change poses, we should not be adding other risk factors,” said Peter Hammarstedt, the chief campaigns officer for Sea Shepherd Global, which lobbies to end the krill fishery. “We need to remove all other risk factors to create ecological resilience. That’s why it’s troubling the krill fishing is expanding.”

Calls for restrictions on the krill industry are growing louder among scientists, activists, and some politicians. And while the EU’s passage of the resolution calling for a five-year moratorium on krill fishing in the Southern Ocean was a symbolic victory for conservationists—there are no EU countries that fish for krill—an actual ban cannot go into effect without the unanimous approval of the CCAMLR. 

Two large drugstore chains in Germany and a large chain of stores in the UK have reportedly committed to phasing out krill oil products.

Meanwhile, a battle over the term “sustainable” rages. In 2010 the fishery was first certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international nonprofit that monitors and certifies wild fisheries, and it has since been recertified several times, including this year.

Because the requirement that krill fishing be spatially distributed lapsed in 2024, the fishing trawlers concentrated their catch where populations are densest—and where the most whales and other wildlife are present. These are also areas most affected by climate change. Earlier this year, the World Wildlife Fund called on the MSC to remove its sustainable designation. 

“Antarctic krill are the powerhouse of the Southern Ocean,” said Rhona Kent, polar oceans program manager at WWF-UK, “and mismanagement of the krill fishery is having a major negative impact on species which depend on krill,” including whales. To protect those species and their ecosystems, “WWF is calling for an immediate moratorium on krill fishing and a review of the sustainability certification issued by the MSC.” 

For its part, the industry argues that it operates with the best available science in a sustainable manner, taking only 1 percent of the total Antarctic population. “CCAMLR has been trying to move from 620,000 tons to a more science-based quota,” said Pål Skogrand, chief policy officer for Aker Qrill. “And the science says it could definitely be doubled.”

Chile and Argentina, members of the CCAMLR, have repeatedly introduced proposals to establish a Marine Protected Area for portions of the Scotia Sea, including the South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, but there have been years of disagreements over boundaries and restrictions on krill fishing. Again, it takes a unanimous council to pass resolutions, and both China and Russia have opposed this measure. The Norwegians have said they would support an MPA if the overall catch was doubled.

Other groups aren’t waiting for consensus. In April, allies of anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and now operates the Paul Watson Foundation, steered the foundation’s ship into a krill fishing vessel owned by Aker Qrill. Damage was slight; the company said it is pursuing an investigation.

Sea Shepherd Global, a separate organization, takes scientists and journalists to monitor and raise awareness of the krill fishery; it’s also spearheading a media campaign that asks retailers to stop carrying krill oil supplements in favor of stocking plant-based omega-3s. Hammarstedt says that two large drugstore chains in Germany—a large market for krill oil supplements—and a large chain of stores in the UK that sell nutritional supplements are committed to phasing out krill oil products. Some two-thirds of the value of krill is in oil for supplements, and if they were no longer made, Hammarstedt said, “it would absolutely end this fishery.” 

As the pressure on this industry increases, there remain more questions than answers. “You have a fragile system that is pushed to the brink with climate change,” said Savoca. “Does it make sense to fish for krill and add another threat? And if we do, how can we do it in a way that is smart and cautious?” 

Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) says it helped to develop a code of safety for future remotely operated and autonomous cargo ships. The executive body, responsible for maritime law and safety policy, represented the UK’s interests in working groups during development of the first non-mandatory International Code of Safety for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS Code). This code, set to be published by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on July 1, is the first stab at a global regulatory framework covering uncrewed cargo ships. It will be followed by a mandatory MASS Code based on reviews of this set of regulations, slated for adoption in 2030, for entry into force on January 1, 2032. Autonomous vessels are already being tested out. In Norway, for example, a ship called the Yara Birkeland is used to carry chemicals and fertiliser from an industrial plant where they are produced to the deep-sea container harbor at Brevik, from where they are shipped to customers around the world. Yara Birkeland is the world's first fully autonomous and electric zero-emission container ship, but is relatively small at about 80 meters (260 ft) long and a weight of 3,200 tonnes. A scoping exercise by the IMO to help inform the regulations identified four degrees of autonomy - inspired by those applicable to self-driving cars. Degree one has seafarers on board to operate and control shipboard systems and functions, although some operations may be automated. Degree two is a remotely controlled ship with crew aboard, able to take control if necessary. Degree three covers a remotely controlled ship without any crew, and Degree four is a fully autonomous ship. The IMO said it identified a number of high-priority issues, cutting across several instruments, that must be addressed at a policy level in future. These involve the development of MASS terminology and definitions, particularly in clarification of who is responsible for the ship in Degrees Three and Four. Others include actions normally be carried out by the crew, including firefighting, cargo stowage and securing, maintenance, watchkeeping and implications for search and rescue. The latter is a legally binding duty that applies to all vessels, without exception. “The maritime industry is inherently global, so progress towards a harmonised regulatory framework is vital to support consistency, fairness and – most importantly – safe operations internationally,” said MCA assistant director for Future Technical Standards Leanne Page. “We’re very proud to have played a leading role in reaching this major milestone.” The next step is building a framework for an experience-building phase, the MCA says, to inform development of the mandatory MASS Code. Both the MCA and the UK’s Department for Transport will continue industry consultations to provide further information and guidance on this new non-mandatory MASS Code. ®

A half-century after Richard Hoover co-founded Santa Cruz Guitar Company, the internationally acclaimed guitar maker is celebrating its roots with a museum exhibit, concerts and a one-of-a-kind guitar crafted from Santa Cruz redwood and sycamore.

In his provocative new book, “Founding Daughter,” novelist and longtime Santa Cruz journalist Wallace Baine imagines a different Founders story for America — one shaped by a brilliant Black teenage girl in Revolution-era Philadelphia. The book came out in April and is, Baine writes, his way of coming to terms with the soaring prose Jefferson penned about equality and the bitter reality that he owned slaves. Here, Baine discusses who gets remembered, who gets erased and whether America’s 250-year-old ideals can survive their flawed origins.

The UK's long-running asylum IT overhaul may finally have put the 25-year-old Case Information Database (CID) out to pasture, but Parliament says that officials are still relying on spreadsheets and disconnected systems to keep track of asylum cases. A new report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found asylum data remains scattered across multiple systems, making it difficult for officials to track cases, spot emerging backlogs, or understand where pressure is building across the wider system. As of December last year, the Home Office was still heavily dependent on CID, a decommissioned platform dating back to the turn of the century, while attempting to move asylum operations onto Atlas. The PAC's findings suggest the migration has not solved a more familiar government IT problem: getting different systems to share information. The committee said that there is still "no single, reliable view of cases across the asylum system." While the Home Office told MPs it has now fully moved to Atlas for asylum case management, officials noted that the transition has been complex, involving legacy data migration, functional improvements, and staff training. MPs also heard that some Home Office staff continue to maintain their own spreadsheets alongside official systems. The committee warned this can leave multiple versions of the same information in circulation and contribute to ongoing data quality problems. One of the bigger gaps sits between the Home Office and HM Courts & Tribunals Service. The two are working to link their case management systems, but MPs said current data-sharing arrangements still make it impossible to follow an individual case through the entire asylum process. The report also echoes earlier National Audit Office findings that a reliable single record for each asylum seeker is still unavailable. Information on issues such as repeat appeals and absconders remains incomplete, inconsistent, or unavailable, while MPs said officials struggled to provide some key figures with confidence. The committee concluded that departments still lack the integrated data needed to understand how people move through the asylum system or whether attempts to fix one bottleneck are simply creating another elsewhere. What’s more, without reliable data, MPs said that they cannot properly assess whether the asylum system is improving or whether taxpayers are getting value for money. “Departments still lack integrated, system-wide data and agreed performance measures needed to manage the asylum system effectively,” the PAC report states. “Until these gaps are addressed, senior leaders cannot fully understand where pressures are building or assess whether interventions are working as intended, and Parliament cannot obtain robust assurance on progress or value for money.” The old database may be on the way out, but MPs are not convinced the underlying data problems went with it. ®

England's exams watchdog is warning that the next generation of school cheating may arrive not in a student's pocket, but perched on their face. In a new podcast, Ofqual chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham said advances in consumer technology are creating fresh headaches for exam authorities, with smart glasses, hidden earpieces, and other connected gadgets raising the prospect of increasingly sophisticated cheating during exams. "We shouldn't underestimate the challenge involved here," Bauckham said, warning that regulators will need to move quickly as technology evolves. Students smuggling phones into exam halls is hardly a new phenomenon. According to Ofqual, mobile phones and other smart devices were involved in 2,225 malpractice cases during 2025 exams, accounting for 44.3 percent of all student malpractice incidents. Device-related offenses have been the largest category of student malpractice every year since 2018. What appears to be keeping regulators awake at night is what comes next. A smartphone hidden in a blazer pocket is one thing, but a pair of ordinary-looking glasses quietly displaying information to the wearer, or a near-invisible earpiece feeding them answers from elsewhere, is harder to spot from the back of an exam hall. The concerns arise as consumer technology companies continue to cram cameras, microphones, AI assistants, and internet connectivity into an ever-growing range of wearable devices. What starts life as a gadget for checking messages or translating languages can easily become something more useful when sitting a three-hour mathematics exam. Bauckham also suggested artificial intelligence poses a separate challenge outside the exam hall. Ofqual is examining ways to ensure coursework remains authentic as AI-generated submissions become harder to distinguish from student work. Possible responses include tighter requirements around referencing sources and greater involvement from teachers in verifying that students actually produced the work they hand in. Bauckham even floated the possibility of removing coursework entirely from some qualifications if confidence in its authenticity cannot be maintained. For now, students are still expected to turn up with a pen and whatever knowledge they've managed to retain. But as smart glasses and AI gadgets become cheaper and harder to spot, invigilators may soon need to know as much about consumer electronics as they do about exam regulations. ®

Republicans have been able to use social media to attract attention, rally voters, and impact politics. But the party has a track record of embarrassing gaffes and bigoted memes that has exposed the significant downside of its social media focus. That dynamic was on display this past week after GOP Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee posted on X, “homosexuality has no place in America”—a hateful…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Why Trump doesn’t give a damn about his slush fund fiasco…

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By Christina Waters Almost a year after her death on June 23, 2025, the estate of Santa Cruz musician, singer, and teacher Gabrielle Stocker released her Allaria Trust bequests.by You need to sit down for this. Turns out the well-loved music aficionado dedicated over $1 million each to New Music Works, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary […]

In a letter, a group of Democratic Congress members wrote that ProPublica’s reporting on the deal “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence.” By Robert Faturechi for ProPublica A group of lawmakers demanded answers from the White House this week following a ProPublica investigation revealing that a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon…

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Even with Lockdown Mode, ChatGPT could be still vulnerable to prompt injections, but the goal is to reduce the likelihood that sensitive data gets shared in the process.