Ubuntu Noble's likely last point release lands, then loses its desktop download

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 09:45
Ubuntu 24.04's likely final scheduled point release barely made it out the door before an installer bug sent its x86-64 desktop image back to the workshop. Meanwhile, October's interim release is approaching. 24.04.5 was released on September 10, but its x86-64 desktop installation image was withdrawn after a bug caused the installer to crash when users selected the extended installation option. Other images and official flavors are unaffected. For the time being, if you try to download the graphical desktop version, the "Noble Numbat" download page is serving the 24.04.4 ISO image instead. The other versions on that page – Server, WSL2 image, and the Netboot version – are not affected. The issue only affects fresh installations: if you already have 24.04 installed, a full system update will result in 24.04.5 in the usual way. Version 24.04.5 is very likely to be the last point release of the 2024 Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu 26.04 is the latest LTS release, but 24.04 remains supported. As we reported when Resolute Raccoon launched in April, it uses Linux kernel 7.0, and that means that a new install of 24.04.5 comes with kernel 7.0 as well. This is part of Canonical's system of LTS Enablement stacks, also called Hardware Enablement or HWE, as we described back when 24.04.3 appeared in August 2025. The same applies if you upgrade an existing copy of 24.04. We upgraded one of our test laptops and it too got the new kernel version automatically. Kernel upgrades depend on which kernel track the installation follows. Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop defaults to HWE, while Server defaults to the original general-availability kernel; some desktops use an OEM kernel instead. HWE updates bring newer kernels and graphics support to an existing LTS release. A successful installation doesn't establish that every device or feature works correctly, or that later updates offer no benefit. As we wrote in January 2025, we have a couple of laptops with onboard Nvidia GPUs that need kernel 5.x to run the Nvidia binary drivers, so we downgraded them to Ubuntu 22.04's original 5.15 kernel. It still works and it's still getting bug fixes from Canonical. Alongside the newer kernel, the release includes a graphics stack based on Mesa 26.2. There's a detailed list of issues and fixes in the 24.04.5 release notes, as well as a list of security fixes in Ubuntu Security Notices. Here comes a stingray! (Ooh-wah, ooh-wah) In other Ubuntu update news, version 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" is getting close. At the start of the month, the company announced in-progress development snapshot 3, and the beta is scheduled for September 24. Both a standard x86-64 installation image and a build optimized for processors supporting x86-64-v3 are on the download page. Post-install, it should be possible to switch to the newer-CPU binaries. As the June development roadmap specified, 26.10 is now in feature freeze, but a big one sneaked in right under the wire: it should come with Linux kernel 7.3. Kernel 7.2 came out last month, with the kernel team's new faster AI-assisted development cycle. The following version is already at RC-2 stage and the final version 7.3 should be out right around the same time as Stonking. If necessary, the Stingray may be set free with a pre-release kernel and updated within days. Canonical did promise earlier this year that it was aiming to make Ubuntu interim releases exciting again, and this would certainly qualify. GNOME 51 is nearly a month into its beta cycle and should appear a couple of weeks before Stonking. This release should also finish the process of replacing all the Unix-style core utilities with Rust versions. There should also be a version of the Myna speech-to-text tool, as we mentioned back in June. If you want to see the new look, there's a public Google Drive folder with the new wallpapers available now. ®

States and Cities Sue To Stop Trump’s Immigrant “Wealth Test” Rule Before It Takes Effect

Mother Jones - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 09:21

New York is leading a 22-state lawsuit against the Trump administration for unlawfully expanding the “public charge” rules that restrict entry to the United States for immigrants deemed likely to make use of public benefits. A group of municipalities, led by New York City, are separately suing over the same rules.

The new regulations, scheduled to go into effect September 18, reverse a set of 2022 rules which prohibited immigration officers from considering immigrants’ potential future use of non-cash public benefits—like food stamps, Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits, and Medicaid—when determining whether to grant visas. Under the rules scheduled to go into effect this week, officials can use an applicant’s need for food or medical aid to help determine grounds for inadmissibility.

In a report released this summer, health policy organization KFF estimated that between 1.4 million and 4.1 million Medicaid and CHIP enrollees in mixed-status households could disenroll out of fear. The cities and states suing over the rule change argue that it “throws out more than a century of settled law and decades of federal guidance and gives officers wide latitude to make decisions that are inconsistent and discriminatory,” representatives for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote in a press release.

Trump attempted to establish similar rules—sometimes described as a “wealth test for immigrants”—during his first administration. In 2020, as my colleague Noah Lanard reported, some mixed-status families were forced to choose between green cards and food for their children.

The public charge rule was sometimes described as a plan for denying green cards to people who used public benefits programs like food stamps and Medicaid. The reality is that immigrants are rarely eligible for public benefits until they get a green card. What the public charge rule did was deny green cards to people who immigration officials decided were likely to use public benefits after they became eligible for them. 

It’s a revival of a 19th-century policy that grew out of a nativist backlash to Irish and Italian immigrants. The New York Times argued in 1887 that the public charge rule would prevent Italy from sending “monthly consignments of Neapolitan mendicants.”

“The new public charge rule seeks to push immigrant families away from the programs that have kept people fed and healthy for decades,” Mamdani said in a statement announcing the cities’ lawsuit. “That fear will not stop at the families that the federal government is targeting. Families who remain fully eligible for benefits will feel a chilling effect, and all New Yorkers will pay for it.”

Categories: Political News

Trump Jr.’s Wife Says Putin Ally Didn’t Pay for Wedding—Just the Party

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 09:15

Donald Trump Jr.’s new wife defended her husband’s “dear friend” Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, following a bombshell report that he dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on their wedding.

In a post on Instagram Monday, Bettina Trump claimed that it was merely a coincidence that the lavish weekend getaway had turned into a last-minute wedding celebration.

“The weekend that followed had actually been planned well in advance as a fun weekend with friends. It was never intended to be our wedding weekend. When our original wedding plans changed, we simply decided to get married before it and arrived at an already planned weekend as newlyweds,” she wrote. (Her post included a picture of a personalized matchbook inscribed for “Don & Bettina”— a thoughtful detail for a supposedly impromptu wedding party.)

“Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.”

Of course, it really couldn’t matter less whether it was intended to be their actual wedding weekend or not. It was still a wildly expensive vacation on a Russian oligarch’s dime—one who’s deep in Putin’s pocket.

The original ProPublica report specified that Kremlev was not present at the private 18-person wedding ceremony, but he and a sizable delegation of Russians were attendees to the roughly 50-person afterparty. Kremlev rented out a private island where the reception was held, and guests were housed for $100,000 per night. He paid an estimated $70,000 for a massive fireworks display, and his team even helped to plan the festivities.

Bettina insisted it was all innocent fun. “Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift,” she wrote on Instagram. When it comes to Russian oligarchs rubbing elbows with the president’s son, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Categories: Political News

Cyberattack sends International Meteor Organization crashing back to Earth

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 09:00
The International Meteor Organization (IMO) is watching for fireballs again, but much of its website remains offline after a cyberattack that it says will take weeks to recover from. The Belgium-based nonprofit, which coordinates meteor observations and brings together amateur and professional astronomers worldwide, is currently serving visitors a stripped-down holding page explaining the outage. "We recently suffered a cyberattack that dealt a critical blow to aging infrastructure, taking much of our site offline," the organization said. "We expect several weeks of partial downtime as we transition to new infrastructure and services." IMO has not disclosed when the attack occurred, how the attackers gained access, or whether they accessed or encrypted any data. The organization collects reports from people who spot unusually bright meteors, or fireballs, and uses those observations to help document and analyze events. Its notice says it prioritized restoring that capability after the attack. "We prioritized restoring fireball reporting, and it is available again," IMO said. "If you saw a fireball or a bright light in the sky, you can still submit your observation." Other parts of the site remain unavailable while the organization rebuilds its infrastructure. IMO's warning that the process will take several weeks suggests this is more than a case of simply restoring a compromised web server, although the organization has not disclosed the extent of the damage. The incident also leaves some unanswered questions about the data held on the affected systems. IMO operates services used by meteor observers and members around the world, but has not said whether information belonging to users or contributors was exposed during the attack. The Register asked IMO when the attack occurred, which systems were affected, whether any data was compromised, and whether it has identified who was responsible, but has not yet received a response. IMO is used to documenting things that burn up spectacularly. It probably didn't expect its IT infrastructure to join them. ®

Republican Nominee Marched at Violent Neo-Nazi Rally

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 08:37

Florida will likely send a neo-Nazi to its state House of Representatives.

Florida state House of Representatives nominee Marshall Rawson marched in the 2017 neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

New reporting from Talking Points Memo Monday revealed that Rawson and his wife marched in the racist parade as part of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate, pro-secessionist group. He can even be seen in video near James Alex Fields Jr., the Nazi who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters and killed Heather Heyer. 

Last month Marshall Rawson won upset victory in GOP primary for seat in Florida House of Representatives.
Here he is arriving at infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally. He's greeted, by name, by members of League of the South, a white nationalist/southern secessionist group pic.twitter.com/mxzvbGYDH4

— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) September 14, 2026

Rawson, 34, also ran a violently racist anonymous Twitter account, and has been involved with the League of the South since at least 2014, when he was a college student at Shorter University. In 2023, he advocated for a religious justification for slavery.

Once he did run for office in 2026, he got $15,000 in donations from individuals who identified as or had ties to white nationalists, according to an analysis from TPM. He even received $200 from Kristine Duke, the daughter of infamous Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Now he will likely win the general election in Florida’s 10th district in November. 

The League of the South is an extremely racist organization. Its leader Michael Hill has called for the group to “restore the South as White Man’s Land” and has long advocated for succession. 

“I pledge to be a white supremacist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a homophobe, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, and any other sort of ’phobe that benefits my people, so help me God!” Hill wrote in 2016.

Two years earlier, he posted a picture of Rawson at a League of the South event, while writing that “Southern Nationalism is the cutting edge and the wave of our future for Southern youth.” 

Rawson claims to have ended his relationship with the League of the South, even as he continues to receive donations from white supremacists, uses his campaign to elevate white nationalist dog whistles, and pledges to “stand up to the radical left and protect our heritage and values.” 

The Florida GOP fully supports Rawson in all his bigotry, and has yet to comment on TPM’s report. Rawson did offer a statement. 

“Over the entire span of my adult life, I’ve been very active defending historical monuments from destruction or removal, and I feel that way about almost all monuments, not just those associated with southern history,” he told TPM. “I don’t screen my donors, and I put in tens of thousands of requests for donations by email, text, and phone. I’ve been extremely transparent about my campaign agenda, and any donation to my campaign is presumably an endorsement of my agenda and not my campaign’s endorsement of a donor’s views or agenda.  Obviously, I’m not privy to any conversation you reportedly had with any donors and cannot speak to those conversations.

Categories: Political News

Trump Throws JD Vance Under the Bus for 2028

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 08:33

Donald Trump thinks JD Vance is “terrific,” but he still isn’t ready to endorse his number two guy in the 2028 race.

Speaking with reporters on the tarmac of Shannon International Airport in Ireland Sunday, Trump claimed that it was “too early” to throw his weight behind Vance’s highly probable bid for president.

“I think he’s terrific, he’s got so many terrific people,” Trump said as the engines of Air Force One blared nearby. “I just think they’re all very good, but JD is fantastic.”

Q: Are you ready to throw your weight behind JD Vance?

TRUMP: It's too early pic.twitter.com/yu5C8LE0k6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2026

Vance is the early Republican front-runner in the 2028 race, though he has not yet formally announced his candidacy. Despite playing coy, the vice president received widespread support for his potential bid at the Republican midterm convention last week, where the attending crowd repeatedly chanted, “JD! 48!”

Vance has stressed that his decision hinges on the results of the midterm election cycle.

“We got to take care of business this November. Then we’ll worry about what comes next,” Vance said at the convention.

Other Republican presidential contenders include Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who last ran for America’s highest office against Trump in 2016) and former Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Some prediction sites—including City & State and Kalshi—are including Trump in the lineup as well, despite the fact that he is term-limited.

Vance, however, has an extra edge above his conservative competitors as the heir apparent to Trump’s MAGA movement.

A national polling average compiled by Race to the White House found that—as of September—Vance has a 40.6 percent chance of beating out the rest of the GOP field. Rubio is behind him, with a 21.9 percent chance, while Donald Trump Jr. is in third, with an 8.8 percent chance of winning.

Categories: Political News

Trump and JD Vance Completely Shut Down Calls for AI Guardrails

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 08:17

Industry leaders in artificial intelligence are sounding the alarm over the catastrophic risks of unchecked progress—but President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance insist that everything is fine.

On Sunday, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei called for the AI industry to reduce the speed of its work, following insiders’ concerns that the race to develop self-improving superintelligence could cause a mass extinction event. More than 1,000 employees of AI companies have called for increased government regulation.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has bet big on data centers to drive the president’s so-called “Golden Age” of industry. Plus, the president clearly gets a kick out of posting AI slop.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday morning. “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’—and we will continue to do so!”

Trump claimed there was a sick “conspiracy” against AI and data centers—even though the warnings were coming from within the industry itself—and implied that only China stood to benefit from a slow down. “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” he added.

Vance, whose rise to power was bankrolled by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel and his network of tech billionaires in Silicon Valley, also came out against the industry’s request for more guardrails.

“I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the company, and begging the government to regulate them,” Vance told reporters Monday. “It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So, I think we just have to be careful about this.”

The vice president’s comment suggests he is concerned that large firms hope to extract favorable terms over their competitors.

Categories: Political News

Rocket Lab calls foul on Blue Origin's $700M Mars comms contract

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 08:15
Blue Origin is getting a taste of its own medicine after Rocket Lab filed a formal protest over NASA's decision to award Jeff Bezos' space biz a contract worth up to approximately $700 million to build the agency's Mars Telecommunications Network. NASA issued the award in early September following a request for proposals in May. It tasks Blue Origin with designing, developing, integrating, launching, and operating a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) that will, among other things, serve as a communications relay for missions to the red planet. Rocket Lab has now filed a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) over the decision, writing: "NASA's award decision appears to be inconsistent with the eligibility criteria mandated by Congress. In addition, the agency's punitive review of Rocket Lab's technical volume was inconsistent, making incorrect assertions and conclusions." This isn't the first time Rocket Lab has bristled at NASA's decision-making. In 2025, The Register spoke with Richard French, Rocket Lab's veep for Business Development and Strategy, over NASA's rejection of its Mars Sample Return proposal, which included a Mars communications orbiter. "We're asking for leadership," French said at the time. "We're fine with an open competition. We think open competition is how the best ideas come about." Blue Origin threw its toys out of the stroller in 2021 after NASA awarded SpaceX a contract to develop the next lunar lander. Bezos' biz filed an official protest with the GAO, offered discounts, and even lobbed a sueball to no avail. Blue Origin later won a separate competition. In 2023, NASA selected the company as the second Artemis lunar lander provider in a contract worth $3.4 billion. Blue Origin's MTO design is based on its Blue Ring spacecraft, which combines hybrid solar-electric and chemical propulsion with 13 ports for mounting payloads, including scientific instruments and small spacecraft. Multiple Blue Ring spacecraft are already in production, and Blue Origin reckons it can produce four vehicles per year – a rate that could be scaled up if required. Tory Bruno, formerly of United Launch Alliance and now president of Blue Origin's national security arm, Blue National Security, said: "This awarded contract is a testament to the Blue Origin team that has been building Blue Ring with exactly this kind of mission in mind. We're ready, and so is the hardware." ®

MR. IRRELEVANT Trailer: David Corenswet’s Sports Movie Will Make You Sob

The Nerdist - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 08:09
Quick Take
  • Mr. Irrelevant’s trailer introduces David Corenswet as former NFL player John Tuggle, who fought a battle bigger than an unlikely roster spot.
  • John Tuggle was the last player selected in the 1983 NFL draft, earning him the title that gives the film it’s name.
  • Nerdist’s Take: Mr. Irrelevant will tell an emotional story that goes well beyond one player’s quest to earn an unlikely NFL roster spot.

Football fans know who “Mr. Irrelevant” is. The last player selected in the NFL draft every year earns that title. But soon even moviegoers who don’t know the difference between a blitz and an audible will know why it’s possible for someone to rise about that ignominious moniker. The new emotional trailer for Mr. Irrelevant introduces Superman‘s David Corenswet as John Tuggle. He was a member of the New York Giants who fought a battle much tougher than earning an unlikely roster spot.

Nerdist Take: This Sports Movie Is an Emotional One

Hearing your name called at the NFL draft doesn’t guarantee you’ll play in the NFL. The large majority of players selected between rounds 3 and 7 don’t make their team’s roster. And the later in the draft you’re taken the lower your odds of breaking through. And there’s no spot lower than the very last pick, which is where John Tuggle went in his draft year. But that’s only the start of his story. As this trailer for Mr. Irrelevant shows saw, he dealt with something much bigger than a game. Here’s the film’s official synopsis from Paramount Pictures:

Mr. Irrelevant is the inspiring true story of John Tuggle, the last player selected in the last round of the 1983 NFL draft by the New York Giants. A true underdog, Tuggle defied expectations on the field and off for his then first-year head coach, Bill Parcells, his newfound love, and his team, proving that remarkable hope and perseverance can transcend even the greatest challenges.

A mustachioed David Corenswet in football gear next to a gray haired Michael Shannon in Mr. IrrelevantParamount Pictures Mr. Irrelevant Release Date and More

The film comes from director Jonathan Levine (50/50, Warm Bodies). Mr. Irrelevant also stars Michael Shannon as Hall-of-Fame head coach Bill Parcells and Isabel May as Tuggle’s new love interest. And sports fans and moviegoers alike will learn why John Ruggle was never irrelevant later this year. Mr. Irrelevant kicks off in theaters this Christmas.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @‌burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post MR. IRRELEVANT Trailer: David Corenswet’s Sports Movie Will Make You Sob appeared first on Nerdist.

Categories: Nerd News

Kennedy Center Leaders Warn It’ll Collapse Without Trump’s Name

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 07:57

President Trump’s allies claim the Kennedy Center for the Performing Center will collapse unless he gets to take it over and put his name on the building.

The Washington Post reports that Trump’s handpicked officials leading the center are claiming that “within a matter of weeks,” they won’t be able to pay employees or fulfill regular maintenance contracts, and that giving Trump the recognition he wants could secure the funds that would keep the center alive.

The center is in structural danger as well. A severe storm caused a four-by-five-foot section of ceiling plaster to fall in the building’s Grand Foyer, sending debris near the Concert Hall entrance, Trump’s handpicked executive director Matt Floca told trustees. Water damage is reportedly widespread throughout the building.

The officials recommend that the center close immediately, saying that keeping it open would put lives at risk. If the board approves the recommendations, which were laid out in a 57-page document distributed to the center’s board of trustees, the center could close on Tuesday, when the board meets next.

The document all but says that Trump’s support is contingent on receiving public credit. The financial resolution proposed to the board states that Trump has offered to “raise the necessary funds to keep the center from bankruptcy” while the building gets a major renovation, but he is unlikely to provide “fundamental oversight” to rescue the building without “appropriate recognition.”

Trustees are being given 10 different text options to put on the building’s exterior underneath its name. One of them is “Renovation Restoration and Endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.” That’s very similar to another plan the board approved less than a month ago to inscribe “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” on the building’s facade, which is being challenged in federal court.

One of the trustees is Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, who sued to remove Trump’s name from the building, and her lawyers blasted the proposal in a statement to the Post.

“This constant effort to add Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center facade is the definition of insanity,” attorneys Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky said. “This is now the third attempt to deface this sacred memorial and turn it into a vanity project for one man’s ego.

“Worse still, now Trump is taking the Center hostage and threatening to in effect kill it unless he gets his way,” Zelinsky and Eisen added. “This has to stop.”

Trump has threatened to demolish the Kennedy Center if he can’t have his name on it, and his attempted takeover has led to performers canceling their engagements at the center and ticket sales plummeting with fundraising drying up. He proposed closing the building earlier this year, but that was blocked by a court challenge. One wonders how much of this latest news is an attempt to force through his takeover.

Categories: Political News

Perfect-10 GitLab bug under attack days after patch lands

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 07:30
CISA says attackers are exploiting a maximum-severity GitLab flaw that lets unauthenticated miscreants read arbitrary files from vulnerable servers after the code shack released fixes on September 10. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added CVE-2026-85706 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The vulnerability is a path traversal bug in the repository commits API affecting GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. GitLab rates it a perfect 10.0, the maximum score on the CVSS v3.1 severity scale. Under certain conditions, an attacker doesn't need to log in before abusing the flaw to read arbitrary files from the GitLab server. GitLab blamed the problem on improper path confinement combined with missing authentication enforcement in the affected API. That's not an especially comforting combination on a platform that can be stuffed with source code, configuration files, and credentials. GitLab shipped fixes on September 10 in versions 19.3.2, 19.2.6 and 19.1.8, and urged operators of affected self-managed installations to upgrade immediately. The bug affects versions from 18.7 before 19.1.8, the 19.2 branch before 19.2.6, and 19.3 before 19.3.2. GitLab.com is already patched, while GitLab Dedicated customers don't need to take action. Security outfit watchTowr said over the weekend that it was observing probes for CVE-2026-85706 in the wild. The firm warned that widespread exploitation was likely to follow quickly. According to watchTowr, exploiting the flaw can be as simple as sending a single HTTP request, potentially allowing an attacker to get at local files, configuration data, credentials and other secrets. The firm advised organizations running internet-facing self-hosted GitLab instances to patch them or pull them from public access. Admins investigating potential exploitation attempts should check logs for HTTP POST requests to /api/v4/projects/{id}/repository/commits/ containing file.path parameters, watchTowr said. "These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise," CISA said. "While BOD 26-04 applies only to FCEB agencies, CISA encourages all organizations to adopt risk-based vulnerability management and prioritize remediation of KEV Catalog vulnerabilities." For exposed, unpatched installations, that upgrade belongs on today's to-do list. ®

Are Trump and His Sons About to Dump All of Their Crypto?

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 07:25

President Donald Trump and his three sons are poised to receive a massive payout from their shady crypto scheme, The Washington Sun (formerly NOTUS) reported Monday.  

In May, four digital wallets moved more than 20 billion in $WLFI tokens—launched by the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm—into a vesting contract, which would allow the owners to sell their shares after a two-year waiting period. The wallets precisely matched the initial amounts of crypto awarded to Trump and his sons Donald Jr., Eric, and Barron, all listed as founders of World Liberty Financial. 

Eric Hagerman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, told the Sun that new governance rules required the owners to shed 10 percent of their holdings, and the only way to do so was to place them in a vesting account. But three experts that reviewed the company’s governance documents found that doing so was strictly optional.

Zach Everson, the research director at Public Citizen, warned that the president’s family was headed for a massive payout. “It has never been clear what World Liberty Financial was supposed to do other than enrich the Trumps, and here we have them taking the first avenue they can to offload their coins,” he told the Sun. 

Trump’s total holding of 14.175 billion in $WFLI tokens is currently worth about $1 billion, while his sons each hold roughly 2.75 billion in tokens, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The value of these tokens would likely plummet if the president or his sons sold off their shares.

Trump has used his family’s business to rake in cash while in office. In 2025, he took in $526 million in token sales from World Liberty Financial and $635 million from a license agreement with a company connected with his $TRUMP meme coin. The president’s crypto scheme has long been a source of corruption concerns; shady players who bought large amounts of coins have received favors from the White House. 

Meanwhile, investors are already losing money. Nearly one million people who bought the president’s meme coin lost a total of $3.81 billion through the end of June.

Categories: Political News

Trump’s EPA Will Let Power Plants Poison Our Air as Much as They Want

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 07:21

The Environmental Protection Agency no longer intends to protect any environment from the interests of America’s power plants.

Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator and Donald Trump’s former impeachment defense attorney, will announce plans Monday to walk back several critical national regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from plants that burn coal and gas, reported The New York Times.

By the EPA’s own analysis, the power sector is the second-largest contributor of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the U.S., accounting for a quarter of all emissions in the country.

Zeldin is expected to announce the change while meeting with international energy ministers from the G20 countries. He intends to make the case that greenhouse gases from power plants do not endanger human health or the rest of the world, delegitimizing the legal grounds used to develop the 1963 Clean Air Act.

If U.S. courts agree with the EPA’s new parameters, it could restrict future administrations from enacting similar regulations.

Environmentalists and climate scientists that spoke with the Times argued that, if the U.S. power sector were its own nation, it would be the fifth-largest global polluter behind China, the U.S.’s various other industries, India, and Russia.

“This is another nail in the coffin for this administration’s commitment to protecting people and tackling the climate crisis,” Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times. Bapna added that Zeldin is ending the EPA’s “legal and moral responsibility to end climate pollution.”

It’s the latest of many efforts by Trump and his allies to diminish or completely rewrite the destructive realities of climate change and global warming. Yet evidence abounds proving the catastrophic forecast: Summer 2026 was the hottest season in U.S. history (surpassing the national average temperature during the infamous 1936 Dust Bowl heatwave), the California coast—from Malibu to the San Francisco bay area—is falling into the sea due to land erosion caused by rising sea levels, and intense, sudden rainfalls in the Grand Canyon caused by a spike in temperature killed two people last month.

The changes have been even more harrowing on a global scale. Last month, a glacier several times the size of the Empire State Building melted away from its perch atop the Himalayas, which have experienced climate change at a disproportionately higher pace than the rest of the world—sometimes warming as much as twice the global rate.

The glacial chunk crashed into a valley along the Nepal-Tibet border nearly 7,000 feet below, carving into the land and reshaping the earth before landing in the Lhende Khola River, where the enormous quantity of rock and ice displaced enough water to trigger a nine-meter flash flood. The entire event killed at least 1,300 people, and more than 5,300 are still missing in the region.

Categories: Political News

Trump Says He’s Using AI—but Refuses to Explain Further

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:46

President Trump doesn’t want us to know what he’s using AI for.

The question was raised Sunday night in the Air Force One press gaggle while Trump spoke about trying to beat China in the AI arms race—something he and many others in government seem to think is of highest priority.

“Whoever wins AI—and we’re leading by a lot—whoever wins AI wins,” Trump said.

“Have you ever used it yourself?” a reporter asked.

“I use AI, yeah I do.”

“How do you use AI?”

“But uh, I would say for the most part you can use AI for a lotta things,” he continued, ignoring the question.

“What do you use it for?” the reporter pressed.

“I don’t wanna tell you that.”

Q: Have you ever used AI yourself?

Trump: Yeah, I use AI.

Q: How do you use AI?

Trump: You can use AI for a lot of things.

Q: What do you use AI for?

Trump: I don’t want to tell you that. pic.twitter.com/FkNBQGdsWe

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 13, 2026

The Trump administration is certainly AI-obsessed. Trump has used it to make disparaging, racist posts of his political adversaries, portray himself as Jesus Christ, depict the Gaza Strip as a post-genocide beach resort, and even literally speak for him in a campaign ad. His administration has also been extremely friendly to the AI industry, with everyone from DOGE to the Department of Defense implementing it into their protocols and wars—all while the technology goes largely unregulated. And yet even with all that in mind, it’s troubling to imagine what else Trump may be using it for as president. Maybe lately he’s asking ChatGPT what “Ansar Allah” means.

Categories: Political News

Teravolt looks to cannibalize older industries to meet AI power demand

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:45
The current AI market doesn't add up. US hyperscalers have reportedly taken on $220 billion in debt in the past year. The two leading US frontier AI model makers have not yet shown they can operate profitably. And the US public has begun pushing back against the development of the datacenters needed to fulfill anticipated AI demand. But plausibility and politics aside, it's unclear where the world will get the electrical power to sustain the imagined AI industry. Gartner predicts world datacenter power demand will reach 132 GW in 2026, up from 104 GW in 2025, and 290 GW by 2030. Morgan Stanley expects US datacenter demand could go as high as 74 GW by 2028, with a projected shortfall of about 49 GW. By 2036, Teravolt, a London-based AI infrastructure company, foresees AI demand requiring 410 GW, a 240 GW shortfall for the 170 GW the biz anticipates will be available from the grid at that time. Datacenters can be built in one to three years but building out new grid infrastructure takes a lot longer – five to 15 years for planning, permitting, and construction, according to Teravolt. As a result, the company contends some AI projects won't happen, some AI workloads will move to areas with spare energy, some energy will be diverted from other industries, and legacy power generation infrastructure like coal and gas plants will be maintained longer than planned. The company's plan to bridge that gap leans into its business model – repurposing existing energy assets like old thermal power plants, industrial sites, or refineries that bring with them some levels of infrastructure, permits, contracts, and staff. Such retrofitting has been going on for several years with Bitcoin mining operations – AI tokens can be sold for more than intermittently minted crypto tokens. And the math works for other industries too. For example, Teravolt suggests that an aluminum smelter making $170 to $190 of gross revenue per megawatt-hour (assuming 4 to15 MWh per metric ton at an aluminum price of about $2,600) makes more sense as an AI datacenter generating $450 to $900 of revenue and about $300 of EBITDA. Laert Karaashev, co-founder and managing partner of Teravolt, said he expects almost everything in the AI stack will be commoditized – software, the orchestration layer, chips, and GPUs. "But the bottom layer, which is power, it is hard to imagine how to commoditize it," he said. That is to say, there's no quick way to meet energy demand. It will take years of investment. The faster way to get there is to cannibalize existing industries, at least while AI workloads are so much more valuable than other industrial output. Denis Alkhazov, founder and general manager, argues the margin you can extract from one megawatt of power selling AI compute is two orders of magnitude more than you can get from classic industries like metal production or more recent gambits like cryptocurrency mining. "The low marginal users of power will be cannibalized by the new form of extracting value from the power," Alkhazov said. Alkhazov said AI is on the verge of becoming economically self-sustaining and he expects that later this year we'll see companies emerge that build AI services with few people but many AI agents and high token expenditures. "This process starts from developed countries, where salaries are high," he said, "and it will move to other regions soon." Karaashev said Teravolt is focused on the market in Eastern and Southern Europe at the moment because there are still good brownfield sites to convert at a reasonable cost. In the US and Western Europe, he said, "those sites are already repriced four or five times more than they cost like five years ago." The Eastern and Southern European market also makes sense based on timelines demanded by Teravolt's customers. Alkhazov said most customers – e.g. mid-sized AI labs that want 20,000 GPUs – expect delivery in 12 months or less. "It's completely unachievable in Western markets," he said. "So you have to be creative and have to shift to other geographies to provide some solutions for that kind of demand." ®

The Terrifying Person Who Bankrolled Trump Jr.’s Wedding

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:12

Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish destination wedding was bankrolled by a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, ProPublica reported Monday.

Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch, dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on Don Jr.’s big day, according to records reviewed by ProPublica, as well as three people familiar with the event who spoke with the outlet.

Kremlev rented out a private island where the reception was held, and guests were housed for $100,000 per night. He paid an estimated $70,000 for a massive fireworks display, and his team even helped to plan the festivities.

Kremlev is president of the International Boxing Association, which is financed by Gazprom, a Russian state-owned energy company. The wedding payments were sourced from an entity in Dubai that IBA uses for financial transactions.

The event was small—just 18 people attended the ceremony, and around 50 attended the reception—which made it all the more conspicuous that there was a large delegation of Russians wandering around. None of the family’s pictures showed Kremlev, but the top of his bald head could be spotted in a group picture posted by a friend of the bride.

Kremlev has extensive ties to Putin: The Russian president has positioned Kremlev as a central figure in the sports-betting industry and chosen one of his companies to run the national lottery. In 2023, Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company—and Kremlev promptly became its owner.

“Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.”

The previously unreported relationship between Don Jr. and a Russian oligarch should raise serious concerns about the level of access Putin’s inner circle has to President Donald Trump and his family. Also in attendance at the wedding was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has held a central role in negotiating a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

It’s not clear why Kremlev would bankroll Don Jr.’s wedding, considering that the president’s son already has a net worth of $300 million. Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles, told ProPublica that the arrangement reeked of quid pro quo. “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” he said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute that his wedding was paid for by a Russian oligarch, insisting that Kremlev was a “personal friend” and “not someone he has a business relationship with.” Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr. have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”

Categories: Political News

Trump, 80, Appears to Forget About January 6 Altogether

The New Republic - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:12

President Donald Trump didn’t seem to remember the January 6 Capitol insurrection when asked about one of his Truth Social posts by a reporter Sunday.

On Friday, Trump posted a video of his speech on the White House lawn from January 6, 2021, urging rioters to go home. Why he chose to post that video on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is unclear, and when he was asked about it a few days later, he was clueless.

“Well, I posted about 30. Which one are you talking about?” Trump replied to a reporter on Air Force One. When the reporter tried to explain the video to him, he asked, “Who?” and then said, “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

President Trump seems to be confused about his own social media posts

Reporter: You reposted a video you took on January 6th.

Trump: Well, I posted about 30. Which one are you talking?

Reporter: You posted a video you took and posted on January 6th asking the rioters to go… pic.twitter.com/zPHD8AzYI6

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 13, 2026

It’s another example of what appears to be Trump’s ongoing cognitive decline. He’s forgotten how to spell the word “dumb,” repeatedly told a fake 9/11 story, and keeps falling asleep in public. Why can’t he remember one of the final moments of his first term as president, and one of the worst, at that? Is another symptom of his declining mental state that he goes on posting binges without realizing what he’s putting on social media? He somehow remembered posting 30 videos, so he can’t pawn this off on an aide.

Either Trump is lying about the January 6 post and trying to play dumb, or he legitimately does not remember. In either case, he should not be occupying America’s highest seat of power.

Categories: Political News

Monday morning traffic: Highway 9, Highway 1 lane closures, delays

Lookout Santa Cruz - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:04

Here’s what’s happening on Santa Cruz County roads this morning…

Map of A map showing the locations of road incidents from today's newsletter

▼︎ new incidents

Road incidents as of 6 a.m. on September 14
  • Alternating lanes are closed on Highway 9 at Pool Drive in the San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. The closure is expected to last until April 30, 2027.
     
  • There is one-way traffic control on Highway 129 at Salsipuedes Creek Bridge in the Watsonville area because of pavement work. This is expected to last until Sept. 16.
     
  • Highway 9 at Ramona Drive in the San Lorenzo Valley has one-way traffic because of drainage work. The closure is expected to end at 7:01 p.m. today.
     
  • A lane on north Highway 1 at Mar Monte Avenue in Aptos is closed for road excavation work. The closure is expected to end today at 4:59 p.m.
     
  • On south Highway 1 at Bay Avenue in Capitola, alternating lanes are closed for shoulder work. The closure is expected to end at 6:30 a.m. today. 

The post Monday morning traffic: Highway 9, Highway 1 lane closures, delays appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:00
Microsoft has confirmed that its latest security updates can disrupt Remote Desktop Services, silence some USB audio devices, and break pasting in Excel. September's Windows patches hardly support Microsoft's insistence that it is sorting out quality. The known issues list suggests there's still work to do. Reports of problems with Remote Desktop Services (RDS) began circulating on social media shortly after the update, and Microsoft has now acknowledged that, for some users, RDS has indeed been broken across multiple Windows versions, including Windows 11 26H1 and Windows Server 2012. The latter is due to drop out of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program on October 13, 2026, so perhaps administrators might consider this a going-away present from Microsoft? Connections might fail after a few minutes, servers might hang at "Please wait for the Remote Desktop Configuration," and so on. "Related tools, including Microsoft Management Console (MMC), RDS Licensing Diagnoser, and File Explorer might also become unresponsive," Microsoft admitted. "Additionally, the Windows Update page might stop responding and continuously display a loading indicator." If a virtual machine becomes inaccessible through RDP, stopping (deallocating) and restarting it might temporarily restore connectivity. Microsoft is working on a fix. Microsoft also confirmed issues with support for some USB Audio Class 1.0 devices on Windows 11 26H1, 25H2, and 24H2. The standard dates back to the previous century, but affected users might find themselves with no audio, broken sound settings and volume controls, or problems with multichannel audio. Some customers have restored audio by switching to two-channel mode, Microsoft says. The company is working on a fix but has not provided a timeline. Users of Microsoft's productivity applications were not left out. either A fix for Excel remote code execution and information disclosure vulnerabilities has broken a basic spreadsheet function. "The paste operation might fail silently," according to Microsoft. Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2024 are affected. Microsoft said: "Although users try to paste content, the source remains selected and the destination is unmodified. When this issue occurs, users receive no indication of the failure, such as a beep or error message." The bad news for users with automatic updating turned on is that this update could have already been downloaded and installed automatically. Microsoft has not published a workaround, and one forum user reported resolving the issue by uninstalling and reinstalling Office, while others reported success using commands to uninstall the security update. Removing the update also removes its security fixes. ®

Huawei pitches near-packaged optics as co-packaged costs bite

The Register - Mon, 09/14/2026 - 05:30
Huawei wants near-packaged optics (NPO) standardized for AI networks, pitching it as a replacement for conventional pluggable modules without the cost and maintenance headaches it attributes to co-packaged optics. The Chinese tech giant showcased an NPO module with a capacity of 7.2 terabits per second (Tbps) at the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) held in Shenzhen over September 9-11, and said this will form part of the company's next-gen SuperPOD AI systems. NPO refers to the placement of the optical engine in a network switch as close as possible to the switch's application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), but still as a separate package plugged into the mainboard. This is one potential option to supersede the pluggable modules now widely used to terminate optical fiber links to a switch. Pluggable modules typically contain a digital signal processor (DSP) to clean up the incoming signal, and their power consumption and heat output increase with network speed. With AI infrastructure pushing network connections to 800 Gbps and even 1.6 Tbps, this is becoming a problem. Another upgrade path for switches is co-packaged optics (CPO), where the optical engine sits even closer – on the same substrate as the switch ASIC silicon. This is expected to deliver low latency and power consumption, but Huawei says the advanced packaging is expensive and makes failed optical engines difficult to replace in the datacenter. This is why Huawei says it is pushing NPO as the pragmatic choice for the near future. "When it comes to optical interconnects, there are two technical choices. One is NPO, near package optics. The other is CPO, co-packaged optics. Compared with CPO, the NPO technology is more mature, making it easier for production ramp up and it's easier for maintenance. So NPO stands as the most mature technology at the moment, and it is also a practical choice in this day and age," said Dr Man Jiangwei, director of Huawei's Advanced Opto-Electronics Laboratory. Huawei says its NPO design eliminates the module's separate DSP by integrating those functions into the ASIC. Man claims this cuts latency from 100 nanoseconds to 10 nanoseconds and reduces power consumption by around 60 percent. "When you put all these factors together, we're able to bring down the cost by a large margin," he claimed. But a project to define NPO standards was officially started only in May this year, at the Q2 meeting of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF). Its members include Cisco, HPE, Arista, and Nvidia. The members there were focused on defining a 6.4 Tbps NPO interface with a future extension to 12.8 Tbps, while Huawei is already demonstrating its 7.2 Tbps product. Asked about this at a roundtable to discuss NPO, Dr Man said 6.4T and 7.2T represent the fan-out bandwidth capabilities required by different vendors and system players. "I believe this kind of technical divergence or differing opinions is quite common in standardization. Looking ahead on the standards platform, I'm confident we'll find an appropriate way to ensure compatibility between 6.4T and 7.2T, meeting the needs of the entire industry chain," he said. One of the goals of the OIF NPO project is to come up with common electrical interfaces, mechanical form factors and connectors. Huawei's NPO is understood to employ 200 gigabits per second per lane across a total of 36 lanes, while the proposed 6.4 Tbps OIF interface would use 32 lanes. The company has already committed to using its own NPO in the upcoming third generation of its SuperPOD AI infrastructure platform, an analog of Nvidia's NVL rack-scale systems. The SuperPOD platform links large numbers of Huawei's Ascend neural processing units (NPUs). Huawei declined to say when this SuperPOD will be available, but Dr Man hinted more will be revealed at the Huawei Connect event in Shanghai later this week. He also said Huawei will be "more than happy to share this product with our customers in the downstream, and not only downstream, but we also like to share this technology with the suppliers on the upstream, including various vendors from different countries and regions." Huawei's exposure to US export restrictions, imposed on national security and foreign policy grounds, raises a related question. One roundtable participant asked whether industry adoption could suffer if the Trump administration perceives NPO as Huawei-driven technology. Man said he wasn't the right person to discuss the political environment and reiterated Huawei's commitment to openness and collaboration. "We are happy to work with vendors from different regions, including vendors from the United States, from China, and from Japan. So together we can advance the development of the NPO ecosystem and ultimately contribute to the booming AI ecosystem," he said. NPO isn't the only alternative to CPO. Earlier this year, Arista Networks unveiled its eXtra-dense Pluggable Optics (XPO) concept, which proposes updating pluggable modules to include cooling via an integrated liquid cooling cold plate, and offering up to 12.8 Tbps per module (64 lanes at 200 Gbps each). Huawei pitches NPO as the most mature option; XPO retains the front-panel plug-in module format. Which format will get the widest adoption will depend on switch vendor support as well as customer priorities, and it is likely that NPO, CPO and XPO will coexist for some time. ®

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