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Watsonville Community Hospital may close in the next six to 12 months if it does not improve its financial situation. 

That was the message from hospital CEO Tim Moran at Tuesday’s Pajaro Valley Health Care District special meeting. 

According to CFO Julie Peterson, the hospital lost $22.4 million in 2025. As the hospital faces a cash shortfall of $85,000 per day, closing service lines was proposed as a partial solution, which included the neonatal intensive care unit, Women’s and Children’s Services and a return to ICU tele-intensivists. 

The conference room was packed with nurses and community members voicing their concerns over the potentially permanent NICU closure at Watsonville Community Hospital, which began on July 10.

Hospital administrators originally cited staffing shortages as the reason for temporarily shuttering the NICU. But as the hospital faces a large daily cash shortfall, closing service lines was proposed as a more permanent solution.

“I think we really haven’t done what’s needed to get done,” said Board member Joe Gallagher, a retired physician, regarding potential service line closures. 

H.R. 1, also known as the Big Beautiful Bill, was also a cause for discussion. Taking effect in January, H.R. 1 is also projected to hit hard, as a loss of insurance (in this case, Medi-Cal) often results in emergency room visits after patients prolong treatment for lack of affordability. This bill is expected to cost the hospital $4 to $6 million over the next year and close to $100 million over the next 10 years, according to Peterson. 

The Board also heard potential growth strategies and operational improvements to increase profits, which included growing interventional gastroenterology, general surgery and orthopedic offerings. 

“We cannot grow our way out of this,” Peterson said regarding the increased possibility of closing service lines.

Around 100 people attended the meeting, many dressed in red scrubs representing the National Nurses United union that represents Watsonville Community Hospital nurses. Nurses pointed out concerns with the potential closures, citing patterns that the closure of other women’s services often follow suit.

Roseann Farris, an intensive care unit nurse who has worked at WCH for 30 years, said the closure of the NICU can accelerate the closure of the OB department through severe clinical risks, loss of revenue and attrition of skilled doctors and nurses.

“Our hospital’s values need to be reflected in your decisions to put people first, to provide the highest quality of care and earn their trust,” Farris said. “These decisions about service lines and access to healthcare will affect our entire county for decades to come.”

Others urged the Board to consider the long-term impacts closure would have on community members and staff. 

Carmin Powell, a pediatric doctor at the hospital, reminded the Board that labor patients will still come to the hospital seeking care. Celeste, an ER nurse, described what a birth in the emergency department, where these patients would likely end up, looks like.

“My first call is always ‘L&D, I need you,’” she said. “We are not set up in the ER to deliver babies daily.

Another nurse echoed her concerns.

“As an ER nurse thinking about the downstream effects, I’m pretty terrified,” said one of the speakers.

LouAnn Martin, who has been working as a labor and delivery nurse at WCH for 26 years, said the local hospitals are not prepared to take on our level of patients. 

A nurse from Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, one of three hospitals set to absorb pregnant patients should the closure accelerate, agreed and said their own hospital is understaffed and “absolutely not at a place for extra patients.” 

Jessica Cruz, a labor and delivery nurse, pointed out the difficulty transferring patients in or near active labor, saying some emergency medical services won’t do it due to risks. 

Financially, neonatal transfers add up, with the added cost of transferring the 80 babies the NICU serves on average per year is between $800,000 and $4.4 million.

“I’m concerned we’re making decisions based on numbers without thinking about the nitty gritty,” Cruz said.

Tuesday’s meeting was a special board meeting, during which the Board received a presentation and heard discussions, but made no decisions. Board Chair Tony Nuñez said future meetings will be held in a bigger room to account for increased attendance. 

Gallagher said the Board is not ready to make a recommendation.

“You, as board members, have to decide that women and children are worth fighting for,” said Myrna Mungal, a pediatric hospitalist at the hospital. “Do not allow only the privileged to survive childbirth.”

Syd Fluker is a California Local News Fellow. Visit fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.

After months of public debate, the Watsonville City Council has decided to deactivate and remove 17 Flock cameras, reducing the number of cameras in Watsonville from 37 to 20. Additionally, data will only be stored for seven days as opposed to the previous 30 day period and will no longer be searchable by other police departments in California. 

The Watsonville City Council voted 4-3 Tuesday evening to tighten limitations on the current use of Flock cameras by the Police Department. The city must also conduct a third-party audit, research public safety alternatives and organize a town hall concerning Flock camera usage. 

Flock is one of the largest vendors of Automated License Plate Readers in the country. These cameras capture a wide range of vehicle characteristics: license plate numbers, make, model, color, and unique vehicle features like scratches, bumper stickers or missing plates. 

While law enforcement agencies say the technology helps solve cases and find suspects in criminal cases, opponents see it in a different light.

They worry that it could be used by immigration officials, and say that the data has already led to the arrests of innocent people.

A flock camera in Watsonville. (Tarmo Hannula/Pajaronian file)

The American Civil Liberties Union in a report titled “You Are Being Tracked” says that the relatively new technology has no regulatory framework, and has been used by some law enforcement agencies to build permanent databases of information about millions of people.

During the meeting, Watsonville Police Chief Brian Shab and Assistant Police Chief David Rodriguez described Flock cameras as a vital tool for law enforcement, presenting on how the department uses the technology and the guardrails that are supposed to ensure responsible camera use. 

“You can debate the appropriate safeguards, and we should,” Shab said. “We can debate the retention periods, access auditing, security and cost… But ultimately, when the next case happens, I want our investigators to have every lawful and appropriate tool available.”

Shab drew some criticism from the city council for showing the image of a man whose death remains unsolved to drive home an emotional point about the value of Flock cameras.

“Stick to the facts,” said Councilmember Eduardo Montesino in response to the presentation. 

Watsonville Police Department said that the use of Flock cameras assisted in 894 cases. But when Councilmember Ari Parker asked for an estimate on the number of cases primarily solved using Flock, Shab put the number at “probably half a dozen.”

The issue saw a lengthy public comment, during which the vast majority of speakers urged the city council to cancel the contract. Elias Gonzalez, a Watsonville community member who ran for District 4 Supervisor earlier this year was among those who spoke in opposition. 

“Surveillance is not the same thing as safety,” he said. “True public safety requires an investment in community. That means investing in young people, mental health and behavioral health services.”

Even after the reduction to 20 cameras, the Watsonville Police operate more Flock devices than any other city in the county. Critics at the meeting were wary of this disparity, noting that Watsonville has a much higher proportion of Latino residents than the rest of the county. 

A smaller number of people spoke in support of the cameras. Former Mayor Lowell Hurst spoke as a community member defending camera use. 

“Don’t allow the misuse of this technology, but make sure that your trusted officers have the tools that they need to keep us all safe,” he said. 

Following public comment, the City Council launched into an extensive discussion over appropriate regulations. Councilmember Montesino suggested at one point to reduce data sharing to only neighboring counties, which failed to gain support. All members of the city council supported some level of new restrictions. 

Councilmembers Dutra, Quiroz-Carter, Parker and Orozco supported the final terms, while Councilmembers Montesino, Clark and Salcido opposed them.

Quiroz-Carter was the only councilmember to express a desire to completely end the contract. 

“I don’t think it’s safe. I don’t like it,” she said of Flock cameras. “But if the best that we can do is make some changes, I’m willing to do that with my colleagues.”

On the same day, Monterey County voted to shut down its Flock camera network completely. The Monterey County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to order the Sheriff’s office to close off access to all 63 cameras and remove them as soon as possible. 

Wendy Root Askew, Kate Daniels and Glenn Church voted in favor of ending camera usage, while Chris Lopez and Luis Alejo voted to keep them.

A fire on Sept. 18 burned through part of the battery energy storage facility that was significantly damaged during the January 2025 Vistra battery fire. 

Monterey County officials announced the fire was no longer an active threat around noon later that day, though shelter-in-place notices were in place until later Friday afternoon.

Workers at the Vistra plant noticed a flare-up early Friday morning when roughly 1,200 inaccessible battery modules that were still charged spontaneously ignited, said Chief Jess Cortez with the North County Fire Protection District in a briefing Friday afternoon.

During the 2025 fire—the cause of which is still unknown—toxic black smoke choked the air for days, affecting air quality as lithium-ion batteries containing nickel, manganese and cobalt burned. 

The incident sparked widespread public concern and increased scrutiny of plans for battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities, including a proposed project by Invenergy on Minto Road near Watsonville.

Though the fire on Friday was nowhere near the level seen in 2025, residents are raising concerns about the potential health impacts and organizing against the proposed Seahawk Battery Energy Storage System on Minto Road. 

“This is a hazardous industrial use that is being allowed by the county of Santa Cruz to be constructed and operated on land zoned for agriculture and that is adjacent to a densely-populated working-class families, and near schools, elderly and youth care centers and the College Lake ecosystem and water supply,” said Becky Steinbruner, a community advocate and resident of rural Santa Cruz County. 

Steinbruner has been active in the fight against Seahawk and encourages residents who experienced physical symptoms last Friday and Saturday to report their symptoms to their County Health officials for documentation. 

Nina Audino, founder of Stop Lithium BESS in Santa Cruz County, supports BESS as a transition out of fossil fuel dependence—just not with lithium sited near communities.

Placing an industrial grid-scale lithium BESS on 16 acres of active, prime farmland violates the voter-approved Measure J policy and related county codes that protect farmlands, Audino said. 

“We need to respect a lithium battery like we respect an open flame,” Audino said. “The grid scale LFP BESS proposed for 90 Minto Road presents untenable hazards to public safety, active farmlands and the surrounding natural habitat.”

Phoenix Artemisia, a local business owner and concerned resident, joined her neighbors in the ongoing effort to prevent Seahawk BESS from being built.

According to Artemisia, Watsonville isn’t the only location where a BESS could be built in Santa Cruz County.  

“Nobody wants it in their backyard in the wealthier sections of Santa Cruz County,” Artemisia said. “The county supervisors are, I think, afraid of answering to their constituents. They just peg Watsonville as the most convenient place to dump this project.”

Audino, Artemisia and Steinbruner have been working with other concerned residents to protest this positioning, which lies within one mile of 2,000 residents who are predominantly Latino and working class. 

1,480 residents have signed their petition urging the City to stop the Seahawk project.

“They just don’t think that people will be able to hold a good case about it, that they don’t have the education level or the money to fight back, but we’re going to show them something different,” Artemisia said.

Patrick Orozco, chairman of the Pajaro Valley Ohlone Indian Council and state-level cultural monitor, said he reached out to the Seahawk project managers regarding its placement near Ohlone burial grounds. The project developer said the project would not touch the cemetery. 

“My main concern is the people that live in that vicinity,” Orozco said. “The project is going to affect their health and safety … and in the middle of College Lake, there’s a ditch that runs through there that’s spawning grounds for the steelhead (trout) and a sanctuary for the bird life.”

Audino, Steinbruner and Artemisia also pointed out evacuation issues with the planned BESS site, referencing construction on PG&E power poles at Minto and Green Valley Road that took half an hour to get through.

“If that’s what it’s going to look like whenever they’re building out a BESS, then imagine what would happen if there was a toxic lithium fire with people trying to evacuate,” Artemisia said. “There’s nothing for us there. Nobody would be able to move. Nobody would be able to evacuate.”

Audino said the decision to place the Seahawk project 500 to 700 feet from dense residential neighborhoods at the end of a no-through road ignores the critical safety risks inherent to BESS, “turning a hardworking, low-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood into a sacrifice zone.”

Artemisia said those looking to get involved can write to the California Energy Commission and submit an e-comment on the Seahawk project portal. A community meeting will be held on Saturday, Oct. 10 at noon at Pinto Lake City Park with speakers from Stop Lithium BESS, Ban Lithium BESS Santa Cruz and environmental and social justice experts. The meeting is a potluck, and Spanish translation will be provided.

Syd Fluker is a California Local News Fellow. Visit fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.

Workers repair the Corralitos Bridge in March of 1956.

FreeBSD is now available for the desktop, in a roundabout way. Colin Percival, a maintainer and release engineering lead for the open-source OS’s release, announced the desktop distro on Thursday. “Most people think of FreeBSD as being a server OS which is used only via the command line, but as anyone who has attended a BSD conference can attest, it works just fine with a GUI too,” he wrote. He’s not wrong about that, but left unsaid is that FreeBSD doesn’t include a GUI. Users need to install one. The desktop version of the OS therefore includes the KDE desktop. Percival packaged it as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), the image Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud needs to run an instance. “Desktop AMIs are designed to make it easier for new users to discover and start using FreeBSD,” Percival wrote. “You can boot them in EC2, including as part of the AWS Free Tier, and connect to them using the same Remote Desktop Protocol used for connecting to Windows VMs.” “Indeed, I've carefully designed the AMIs to behave as much like Windows images as possible,” he added, “with the exception, of course, that since they run FreeBSD, you don't have to pay for the operating system.” You read that right: One of the more prominent members of the open source community wants the project he works on to behave like Windows! The AMIs include Chromium and LibreOffice pre-installed, a combination Percival rates “a useful starting point.” His post includes detailed installation instructions that mention using an m7i-flex.large instance, a cloudy VM type that run 4th-gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, with 2 to 64 vCPUs and 8 to 256 gig of memory. Percival also points out that the AWS Console “doesn't understand that these AMIs support RDP, so if you launch an instance via its ‘Launch an instance’ wizard it will suggest creating a security group with port TCP/22 open rather than port TCP/3389; and the ‘Connect’ wizard will show SSH instructions rather than the RDP instructions which are shown for Windows.” “I've asked Amazon to provide a mechanism for AMIs to be marked as RDP-enabled in order to turn on that missing functionality.” “If you've been thinking of trying out FreeBSD, this is your cue,” Percival’s post urges. “Go launch an instance!” ®

In the early months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the streets of New York were filled with protests. Hundreds of people were arrested, bridges and tunnels were blocked; the Statue of Liberty was at one point taken over. In the ensuing years, with Trump’s repression of the movement for Palestine—deporting, jailing, and otherwise silencing many of its leaders—things have gotten quieter.

But on September 24, when Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations General Assembly, it didn’t look that way. Hundreds of New Yorkers formed a human chain across a road leading to the United Nations complex as Netanyahu was about to begin his speech. Then, hours later, thousands of people filed into the surrounding streets carrying Palestinian flags for a massive march of well over a thousand people. “We’re getting 2024 numbers!” one participant said.

Though New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not join the protests himself, he told CNN on Monday that he’s not particularly enthused about Netanyahu’s presence in his city either.

“When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, I have described him as I believe him to be: a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people,” Mamdani said. “If the International Criminal Court deems someone worthy of an arrest because of a violation of those laws, then who are we to say that anyone should be above that? And I think very clearly that everyone should be held accountable to it.”

Among the protesters were local elected officials like city councilor Chi Ossé and several high-profile progressive congressional candidates like Darializa Chevalier, who won a hotly contested election for New York’s 13th congressional district; Chris Rabb, the nominee for a House district that includes much of Philadelphia; Melat Kiros, who won a major upset in the race for a Democratic-leaning district in Colorado; and Adam Hamawy, the Democratic candidate to succeed retiring New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Celebrities like Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon joined the protest—both, alongside Chevalier, were arrested.

“There’s a group of folks coming into Congress who are not being tethered to corporate money and to institutionalists,” said Rabb, a state legislator from Philadelphia who won the backing of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic Party notables in his primary win for a solidly Democratic seat earlier this year.

“We’re going to use all of our authority as members of Congress to speak up against injustice and use everything in our toolbox to fight these atrocities and the people who allowed them to happen,” Rabb added as he sat in the middle of the street, linking arms with Hamawy.

“There’s no such thing as progressive if it doesn’t include Palestinian freedom,” Stefanie Fox of Jewish Voice for Peace said.

Though local and state-level progressive elected officials don’t have the power to enforce the International Criminal Court’s war crimes warrant against Netanyahu, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement who identified herself as Nas Issa proposed other moves, including “divesting city pension funds from Israel bonds, cracking down on illegal sales of stolen Palestinian land happening in the city, investigating the charitable status of charities that profit from sending military supplies to settlements,” and ensuring cities and states that work with ICE cease to do so.

Two weeks ago, President Trump approved yet another $2.8 billion sale of weapons to Israel. The killing in Gaza has not stopped. But on both sides of the wall of the United Nations building, few people seemed to want to hear Benjamin Netanyahu attempt to justify it.

President Donald Trump is using taxpayer dollars to finance a new ad meant to stop the blue wave that’s barreling toward Republican candidates in this fall’s midterm elections. The ad features a quick-cut montage of Trump photos and videos set to the song “Love Me” by JMSN. JMSN told Politico that he has not authorized the use of his song and is “looking for a lawyer now in order to see…

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Trump will have his name on Kennedy Center—or let it go bankrupt…

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Google has augmented its live dialogue model Gemini 3.8 Live with a feature called "Live Avatar" that's capable of conjuring animated characters and realistic human simulacra to lip-sync Gemini's machine-generated speech. "Conversation is inherently multimodal: we listen, look, speak, and use facial expressions to communicate," explained Shuo-yiin Chang, research scientist at Google DeepMind, and CJ Zheng, Gemini software engineer, in a blog post. "Live Avatar brings these capabilities to enterprise agents. By processing visual and audio inputs simultaneously, it generates enriching conversations for a more comprehensive experience." Five years ago, DeepMind warned about various risks associated with the use of large language models, among them human interaction harms like anthropomorphising AI models – the attribution of human characteristics to software-based interactions. Anthropomorphism here applies broadly to visual human imitation as well as human-like speech and text. "Anthropomorphizing [language models] may inflate users' estimates of the conversational agent’s competencies," noted the more than 20 authors of DeepMind's paper [PDF], "Ethical and social risks of harm from Language Models." "For example, users may falsely infer that a conversational agent that appears human-like in language also displays other human-like characteristics, such as holding a coherent identity over time, or being capable of empathy, perspective-taking, and rational reasoning. As a result, they may place undue confidence, trust, or expectations in these agents." That was in 2021. In August 2025, the risks posed by humanizing AI reached the courtroom when the parents of Adam Raine sued OpenAI, alleging [PDF] that ChatGPT contributed to their son's suicide. Among other things, the complaint lays blame on "anthropomorphic mannerisms calibrated to convey human-like empathy." By December 2025, Google boffins were still grappling with the need to understand the impact of humanizing AI. In a paper [PDF] titled "How Tech Workers Contend with Hazards of Humanlikeness in Generative AI," Mark Díaz, Renee Shelby, Eric Corbett, and Andrew Smart from Google Research reported that tech workers participating in focus groups expressed similar reservations to those cited in the company's prior work. "Tech workers expressed significant concern that humanlikeness fosters a false sense of reliability and trust shaping their concerns as both users and developers, linking to fluid, natural language and tone, which can obscure errors," they wrote. So even as Google AI researchers highlight the need to understand how the "humanlikeness" of AI relates to perceived hazards and responsible AI development, Google Gemini Enterprise is moving straight to deployment. Live Avatars can be drawn from a pre-made library of characters or a custom avatar can be deployed if enterprise allow-listing is enabled. Noting how Live Avatar can make tool calls and fetch data in the background, as well as converse in 97 languages, making it suitable for scenarios like handling hotel guest check-ins, Chang and Zheng insist that Google created these Gemini-generated personas with trust and safety in mind. "We built Live Avatar with strict safeguards designed to respect identity, and keep AI-generated content transparent," they said. ®

A crook has been using three open source AI harnesses to target hundreds of online retailers and other companies, swiping more than 600,000 credit card records and installing card-stealing skimmers - and all at trivial cost. AI security company Gambit recovered the human operator’s staging server, and used that access to reconstruct the data-theft campaign, whose victims include a Fortune 500 hospitality company, a major US airline, a large private US industrial supplies distributor, and a US online fashion retailer. Between September 10 and September 15, the crook launched at least 105 attacks, and compromised, “to varying degrees,” at least 27 companies, Gambit director of threat intelligence Eyal Sela wrote in a Tuesday alert. The Chinese-speaking operator used three different open source AI harnesses - Strix, Cairn, and Hermes - to run the near-autonomous attacks and hit “tens” of companies each day. “Where access was achieved, it usually took less than a day, and in many cases just a few hours,” Sela wrote. “We also detected instructions in the attacker’s playbook that could disrupt the operations of a company as a result of data deletion or cleanup procedures run by the agent - and this has indeed happened in some of the breaches.” The operator also used OpenRouter for AI model access, and according to an August 25 account balance, they spent $7,005.71 over the previous four weeks. They then continued with the attacks for three more weeks, and operated at twice the daily volume of model calls. Gambit estimates the total cost of the campaign sits somewhere between $12,000 and $18,000. The operator's own cost review put their mean spend at $25.46 across 101 completed scans. The cheapest scan cost just $3.13, with the most expensive racking up a bill for $79.31. Each of the three AI harnesses played a different role, with Hermes acting as the campaign orchestrator. The always-on AI assistant acts independently to execute multi-step tasks and manage workflows, and it can write and edit its own skills. The human operator loaded a Chinese system persona titled “SOUL - Red Team Operator” on Hermes with 121 skills. Of those, 78 were attack skills. One of the skills even removed the content security filters of the AI harness. Hermes used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 - Gambit reports that newer models refused the attack requests - and the human operator typed 1,951 prompts in Chinese across 260 sessions. The prompts, translated into English, include the following: See whether the file upload in the report can give code execution Read the vulnerability report, test the sudo password first Read the report, is there anything worth doing here Get into the web backend Can it get code execution? The attacker used Strix, an open source penetration testing tool, to search for vulnerabilities to exploit at targeted organizations. They ran Strix through OpenRouter on GLM 5.2 and then on DeepSeek v4 Pro. Between August 23 and 31, the operator ran Strix 146 times in “deep mode” against 138 hosts, totaling 633 hours of scanner time in 195 hours of clock time. After finding vulnerabilities, Strix handed the next stage of the attack off to Cairn, another autonomous penetration testing AI tool, running on DeepSeek v4.1 Flash. Cairn receives target domains and an attack objective - like deploy a shell, or achieve admin access. It then runs until it either achieves the objective, times out, or is stopped by a human. Between September 10 and 15, Cairn launched 105 attack projects. The AI chose each attack path “in real time through extensive probing and exploitation attempts, resulting in dynamic and mostly different TTPs across victims,” Sela wrote. In one instance, the AI agent used SQL injection, obtained a plaintext one-time password and then accessed a web panel. From there the agent uploaded a web shell, escalated privileges through a misconfigured sudo rule, and accessed AWS credentials, ultimately dumping 46 secrets, totaling 102KB. In two of these near-autonomous attacks, the AIs exfiltrated more than 600,000 credit card records from just two victim companies. Injecting card-stealing skimmer scripts into the checkout pages of online shops was another one of the human operator’s primary goals for the campaign. According to Gambit, the malfeasant ordered skimmer deployment against at least 27 named victims, with scripts confirmed as present on 19 websites. Security researcher Varys also helped detect more than 100 additional infected websites linked to this campaign. While the attacker used various methods to inject and deploy skimmers, the most common involved appending the code to an existing JavaScript file. Gambit argues that this campaign shows how the remediation clock - how much time organizations have to detect an intrusion and remediate vulnerabilities - has dramatically shortened. “The harnesses ran at a tempo no human operator sustains, with the person reduced to short instructions between autonomous runs,” Sela said. “When exploitation arrives within hours of exposure, patch speed stops being the only lever, and the question shifts to how quickly the services a business depends on can be brought back.” ®

In the past month, Waymo has expanded its fleet in Texas by 49%. There are other hotspots as well.

What’s going on over at the Federal Bureau of Investigation? Ostensibly, the agency is supposed to be in charge of cybersecurity, not the victim of cybercrimes. But that didn’t stop the FBI from getting hacked, and boy, did it get hacked badly. The more we learn, the worse it gets. The hacking group, ShinyHunters, got access to the FBI’s online jobs portal…

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Quick Take

• Doctor Who will head to the theaters this year for David Tennant’s 20th anniversary for one night only.
• Doctor Who: The Satan Pit Extended Cut will bring a feature-length, extra-long version of arguably the Tenth Doctor’s scariest adventure.
• Nerdist take: If you’re going to see any episodes as a celebration of David Tennant’s iteration of Doctor Who, this would be them.

Right now, Doctor Who is in a precarious, or at least uncertain, place. The series hasn’t gone without a production team since the 15-year break between 1989 and 2005. Right now, the BBC has sent Doctor Who out for competitive tender, so how will they choose to celebrate the upcoming 63rd anniversary? Why, by instead celebrating 20 years of arguably the most popular Doctor this side of Tom Baker. David Tennant, the 10th Doctor, on the big screen from BBC Studios, Fathom Entertainment, and CinemaLive. And not just his era, but among the best stories in which he appears.

BBC

In news we saw on Polygon, for one night only, Whovians will get a chance to see Doctor Who: The Satan Pit Extended Cut. This is, of course, an extended, feature-length cut of the two-part story, “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit,” among the very best episodes of the Tenth Doctor tenure. The story sees the Doctor and Rose (Billie Piper) end up in the far future on an Earth outpost on a planet perched precariously on the edge of a black hole without falling in. The crew digs deeper into the planet to get a better reason for why, unknowingly unleashing ancient evil forces, perhaps from the dawn of time, which point to our very conception of the Devil himself.

These episodes whip ass, I have to say. These are easily top five Tenth Doctor episodes. They’re scary, weird, supremely thoughtful, and they introduced the Ood, one of the modern era’s more iconic aliens. This two-parter came from Tennant’s first season on the show, 20 years ago, of course, and remain a high-water mark for two-parters. If you’re going to see any episodes as a celebration of David Tennant’s iteration of Doctor Who, this would be them.

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Why DOCTOR WHO and Its Fandom Need This Hiatus

The extended version of these episodes will include never-before-seen extended scenes in addition to deleted scenes which had previously only been out as DVD extras. That in an of itself is a cool enough reason to go see this. Additionally, the night at the movies will include “an exclusive interview with BAFTA-award-winning director and producer James Strong, reflecting on the behind-the-scenes work that went into creating one of the scariest episodes in Who history.”

Natasha Spence, Global Events Director at BBC Studios, shared in a press release: “Doctor Who Day is the perfect moment to celebrate that sense of discovery with fans. We’re delighted to be working with CinemaLive again to bring this unforgettable Tenth Doctor and Rose story to the big screen, and to give audiences the chance to experience it together in cinemas for the first time.”

BBC

Tickets for the event will go on sale September 25 at 9am local time. Fans can find which of the 1,000 cinemas in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will be participating in the event here. US fans can find out here.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post DOCTOR WHO Scariest Episodes Heading to Theaters appeared first on Nerdist.

Google will loft its tensor processing units (TPUs) into orbit aboard a SpaceX rocket next week, in the latest phase of its previously announced Project Suncatcher space datacenter initiative. The launch is part of a test mission to better understand how its homegrown compute platform will handle both the rigors of launch and the harsh environment of space. Long term, the Chocolate Factory believes that space-based datacenter clusters powered by a limitless supply of solar energy from our sun could hold the answer to more sustainable AI. Not everyone is convinced. Earlier this year, Gartner analyst Bill Ray described the idea as “peak insanity.” He argued that space-based datacenters won't be viable for decades and in the end won't serve terrestrial needs. But that hasn't stopped the likes of Nvidia and Google from trying. Google has been particularly pragmatic relative to others like SpaceXAI, which like any other Musk-run outfit can't help but set ambitious targets like 250-kilowatt satellites. Rather than grand plans and satellite concepts backed by dubious launch economics, Google's Project Suncatcher is being treated for what it is: a moonshot. Like past moonshots, it may ultimately go nowhere. Remember Project Loon? Google is still in the early stages of development here. It hasn't announced a space-rated TPU and instead has subjected its existing Trillium accelerators, which we looked at back in 2024, to a series of tests here on Earth to understand whether it can be done. The challenges are numerous, as Suncatcher's project leaders explained in a recent blog post touting the proof-of-concept launch. The first challenge is surviving the trip into space. During launch, they explain that the chips will be subjected to as much as 50-100 gravities worth of amplified forces. If not accounted for, the systems could literally shake themselves to pieces. Since announcing Project Suncatcher last year, Google's moonshot team has conducted several tests, including one involving a vibration table, to simulate these forces, but it won't know for sure if its kit will survive until it's actually in orbit. As you probably already guessed, once in orbit, the challenges facing Google's systems are far from over. Beyond the atmosphere, the chips will be subject to solar activity and cosmic rays that could cause single-event upsets, such as bit flips, as well as cumulative damage from ionizing radiation. By bombarding its TPUs with energetic particles using UC Davis' Crocker Nuclear Laboratory's proton beam, Google is reasonably confident that its TPUs won't fizzle out shortly after reaching their target orbit, but once again lab tests can only tell you so much, and there is a lot more that can go wrong. In particular, there's the issue of cooling. Heat can't be carried away by convection in the vacuum of space, and so these satellites will ultimately have to rely on radiation to reject it. According to Google, it will need roughly 1.3 square meters of radiator area to dissipate the heat generated by a single TPU, and the search and advertising giant hopes to pack dozens of TPUs into each satellite. This translates to a rather large radiator area. Once again, Google arrived at this conclusion based on testing within a temperature controlled vacuum chamber. However, this is only part of the challenge. There's also the issue of getting the heat from the TPU to the radiators in the first place. Here Google is exploring existing technologies like heat pipes and pumped coolants. With its first launch, Google aims to see what works, what doesn't, and to identify points of failure that can be addressed in future missions. The test sat is scheduled to launch aboard the Transporter-18 rideshare mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 1. However, Google's challenges extend far beyond the chips themselves. Even if Google can figure out how to build space-rated TPUs without breaking the bank, the available launch systems put a practical limit on how big they can be built. Because of this, space-based AI training and inference will have to be spread across multiple satellites, necessitating high-speed interconnects. At the distances required, this means laser-based communication, which Google argues is well understood, but hasn't been adapted for the requirements of orbital AI just yet. Most existing inter-satellite communications have relatively low bandwidth over a wide area. Its clusters will need the exact opposite: extremely high bandwidth over relatively small distances. But even if Google can prove that orbital datacenter clusters can be made to work, there's no guarantee it'll be economical. Speaking with El Reg earlier this year, space datacenter startup Orbital admitted the entire venture depends on rockets from SpaceX and others driving the cost to orbit from around $7,000 per kilogram today to just $10 per kilogram, a target that many have expressed skepticism SpaceX will actually be able to deliver. Speaking of SpaceX, the rocket company's AI wing SpaceXAI aims to put its first space-based test systems into orbit by the end of next year. If all goes to plan, the simplified system will be the first of what could eventually become a constellation of up to one million satellites. But as is often the case with Elon Musk's claims, and Google's moonshots for that matter, their dreams don't always become reality and even when they do, it doesn't always happen as quickly as they'd hope. ®

The majority of local high school cross country teams are starting to hit their stride as they begin to head deeper into the 2026 fall campaign.

That includes Monte Vista Christian, Pajaro Valley and St. Francis, which continue to improve on a daily basis while competing in the Pacific Coast Athletic League.

Monte Vista Christian

The Mustang boys’ team is a sophomore-heavy squad led by Owen Beckmen, who was the No. 2 runner in 2025 and set every freshman distance record in school history.

Beckmen continued that momentum during the summer. His biggest highlights were finishing a 5K race in 15:50 and placing 77th overall in 31:51 at the 2026 Wharf to Wharf race.

He recently broke the all-time school record in a three-mile race that was previously held by his older brother, Gavin Beckmen (Class of 2026).

Owen Beckmen placed 11th in a record-setting 15:06.7 in the Green Varsity A division race at the 45th Annual Woodbridge Cross Country Classic in Irvine on Sept. 19.

Teammate sophomore Joseph Palacios (15:48.3) placed 31st in a field of 225 runners, followed by sophomore Jesse Campos (16:36.5) in 65th and senior Luciano Guerra (16:46.7) in 74th.

The Mustangs were missing sophomore Jake Tabor, yet they still placed sixth out of 29 teams.

Palacios returns after finishing as MVC’s No. 4 runner in 2025. Providing valuable leadership are Guerra and junior Neal Rada, who enter their fourth and third years, respectively, as varsity runners.

MVC placed sixth as a team in the Gabilan Division race during the PCAL’s first Center Meet of the season at Pinto Lake County Park in Watsonville on Sept. 17.

Hollister won the race with a team score of 32 points, followed by Alisal (45) in second, Salinas (59) in third, North Monterey County (86) in fourth and Carmel (136) in fifth.

MVC head coach Erik Beckmen said both the boys and girls teams started the season right where they needed to be. He’s already seen some outstanding individual performances and great team efforts early in the year.

“I’m extremely proud of this group and the hard work they put in throughout the offseason,” Beckmen said. “That commitment is starting to show, and we’re excited about what lies ahead as we continue to improve throughout the season.”

The Mustang girls’ team is led by junior Anna Conca and senior Finley Castro, who have been the foundation of their program over the past three years.

Castro is a four-year varsity runner, while Anna enters her third. Erik Beckmen said both are tremendous workhorses, exceptional leaders and set the standard for the rest of the team through their work ethic and commitment.

Conca also broke the three-mile school record by winning the Green Varsity A division race in 17:21.2 at the Woodbridge Classic. Castro (18:52.7) placed 11th, followed by sophomore Cara Lorenzen (21:47.4) in 79th, junior Kylie Fitzpatrick (24:15) in 104th and junior Charley Moggia (25:06.2) in 109th.

Other notable runners on the girls team include seniors Sophia Jurian and Maya Moore, who Beckmen said is another incredibly hard-working athlete who has put together an excellent summer of training.

With a total of 10 girls on the roster, this is the largest girls team since Beckmen became the head coach in 2023. He said it’s a significant milestone since having just four girls in his first two seasons and seven in 2025.

The Mustangs placed sixth with a team score of 145 points in the first Mission Division race of the season.

Pacific Grove won the race with a team score of 41, followed by Alvarez (44), North Monterey County (96), Salinas (115), Carmel (120) and Watsonville (165) in seventh.

Beckmen added that the continued growth of the program has been exciting to see, and he believes this girls group has the talent to compete for a berth at the California Interscholastic Federation State Cross Country Championships alongside the boys team.

“Both teams have worked extremely hard to get to this point, but we know the season is still young,” Beckmen said. “Our goal is to continue building, stay healthy and be running our best when it matters most at the end of the season. I’m proud of what this group has accomplished so far and excited to see what they can do together.”

Pajaro Valley

Pajaro Valley has veteran junior William Cruz-Santos leading the way for the boys team that competes in the PCAL’s Santa Lucia Division this season.

Cruz-Santos was the fourth-fastest guy in 2025, just one minute slower than graduate Patrick Lopez.

Grizzly head coach Yafeet Garcia said in an email that Cruz-Santos is excited to compete since they now have a larger group who are around his pace, and they are as passionate as him about training and competing.

Cruz-Santos is joined by sophomores Noah Ortiz and Dominic Fantham, who had a massive breakout during the 2026 track and field season.

“Having Noah and Dominic on the team has led to a friendly rivalry where they are constantly trying to outperform each other at races,” Garcia said.

Ortiz placed third in 18:56.8 in the Santa Lucia Division race at the first PCAL Center Meet of the season at Pinto Lake County Park in Watsonville on Sept. 16.

Teammate freshman Romeo Lopez (19:34.3) took 10th, while Cruz-Santos (20:04.3) placed 18th. Junior Donovan Valoroso (20:09.5) finished 20th, followed by sophomore Julian Hernandez (20:20.4) in 23rd, junior Diego Gonzalez-Cisneros (20:47.8) and Fantham (20:56.6) in 30th.

Lopez was part of a small group of runners that competed at the Baylands Invitational in Sunnyvale on Sept. 4. He placed 17th out of 223 runners in 14:21.3, setting the all-time school record in a 4,000-meter race.

On the girls side, sophomore Amairany Hernandez Delgado also set an all-time school record in a 4,000-meter race. She placed 24th in 18:02.58 in a field of 104 runners at the Baylands Invitational.

Hernandez Delgado recently placed ninth in 22:43.3 in the Cypress Division race at last week’s PCAL Center Meet in Watsonville.

“She’s definitely in contention for being in the top two for our team this year,” Garcia said. “She also has a bright future, which her times have indicated.”

Other top finishers for Pajaro Valley included senior Danna Perez (26:15.6) in 33rd, junior Gisella Martinez (27:52.3) in 43rd and junior Miriam Hernandez (31:52.5) in 53rd.

St. Francis

Sophomore team captains Liam Refugio and Louis Patzoldt are two key returners to watch for the Sharks boys’ team this season.

St. Francis head coach Ramona Young said in an email that Refugio brings tremendous leadership skills, helping keep the team focused and on task.

Patzoldt has put in many miles over the summer, and he’s looking to cash in on that preparation in Santa Lucia Division action this season.

On the girls side, junior Amaya Castillo is a newcomer to keep an eye on in the Cypress Division.

Although she may be a rookie on the team, Young said Castillo has already shown tremendous grit, determination and motivation to succeed.

Castillo placed 17th in 23:59.7 in the Cypress Division race at last week’s PCAL Center Meet in Watsonville.

Young mentioned that Castillo is a multisport athlete who understands how to balance the demands of academics and athletics, and her work ethic should make her an important contributor this season.

“With strong leadership from its returning captains and the emergence of motivated newcomers like Castillo, St. Francis cross country will look to make its mark this season,” Young said.

#tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item1 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Romeo-Lopez-PV-boys-cross-country-WEB-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item2 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Anna-Conca-holding-medal-MVC-girls-cross-country-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item3 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/MVC-cross-country-team-at-Woodbridge-WEB-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item4 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Amairany-Hernandez-Delgado-PV-girls-cross-country-WEB-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } 1 of 4 Pajaro Valley High freshman Romeo Lopez, No. 638, was part of a small group of runners that competed at the Baylands Invitational in Sunnyvale on Sept. 4. He placed 17th out of 223 runners in 14:21.3, setting the all-time school record in a 4,000-meter race. (contributed) Monte Vista Christian junior Anna Conca broke the three-mile school record by winning the Green Varsity A division race in 17:21.2 at the 45th Annual Woodbridge Cross Country Classic in Irvine on Sept. 19. (contributed) The Monte Vista Christian boys and girls cross country teams pose with the medals they earned at the 45th Annual Woodbridge Cross Country Classic in Irvine on Sept. 19. (contributed) Pajaro Valley High sophomore Amairany Hernandez Delgado, No. 643, was part of a small group of runners that competed at the Baylands Invitational in Sunnyvale on Sept. 4. She placed 24th in 18:02.58, setting the all-time school record in a 4,000-meter race.(contributed)

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Hollywood is on life support, and the A-list actors aren’t censoring why they think that is. “This is all men’s fault. Rich white men to be specific,” actress and writer Issa Rae said at Variety’s LA Power of Women event Wednesday night. While the line might have been said with some jest, the “Barbie” actress isn’t playing around. The legendary West Coast industry has been struggling…

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the defensive when he took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. His country is facing growing condemnation from all sides: In September, 11 European countries and Canada announced a joint plan to sanction Israel’s West Bank settlements, and in 62 percent of Americans report a negative opinion of his government in a recent Pew poll; Netanyahu himself faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes including genocide. Protesters blocked streets outside hours before Netanyahu took the podium, and within the UN chamber, half of Netanyahu’s audience walked out before his speech even began. 

Room empties out at the UN as Netanyahu begins his speech. pic.twitter.com/plGg9wDRQ7

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 24, 2026

Netanyahu nonetheless appeared determined to declare victory, as he faces a contested reelection back home, thanking his “great American friends” for their help in “the battle against the barbarians.” 

Did he mean the bombardment of Gaza, in which the US has spent millions of dollars funding the killing of an estimated one-tenth of the enclave’s entire population? Israel’s expansion into Lebanon? The US-Israel war on Iran? Or the Israeli settlements that move ever-further into the West Bank? “We delivered crippling blows to all of them,” Netanyahu said. 

Netanyahu: In this battle against the barbarians, we've had no greater partner than President Trump. I thank him pic.twitter.com/n3iZ7s9PEt

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 24, 2026

Netanyahu appeared particularly eager to defend settlers in the West Bank, whose state-supported violence against Palestinians and international observers is extremely well-documented by reporters, activists, and international human rights groups. Those settlers, he said, are nothing more than “a handful of young juvenile delinquents, about 150 in number, who throw stones, who chop down olive trees.” 

“Only maybe two, three” people have been killed by settlers, he said. That is false: a September UN report said that 81 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers in the West Bank this year alone, and according to the BBC, at least 23 of those deaths “have occurred in the context of settler attacks.” 18 were children. 

Netanyahu didn’t mention those killings as he asserted that there have been “thousands of terrorist attacks against the peaceful settlers, honorable people, law-abiding people.” 

Laith Shalabi, a Palestinian New Yorker with family in the West Bank, told Mother Jones that he has seen an uptick in violence against his family and community this year. Traveling to visit his grandmother in his family’s West Bank village, Shalabi said he saw more Israeli flags along the route to his family’s village than ever before—and more soldiers. “Since the genocide, a lot of Israeli soldiers have kind of been more on edge with Palestinians,” Shalabi said, “on the attitude of shoot first, ask questions later.” 

When he arrived at the village, Shalabi learned that settlers had set up camp nearby. Locals told him about settlers who, at the slightest provocation, beat Palestinians with the butts of their guns or even shot at them—often within view of Israeli soldiers, who at best don’t intervene, at worst participate in the violence. People in the US “should know what these settlements do,” Shalabi said. “It’s important for me that Americans understand where their tax dollars are going and what they’re supporting and funding.” 

After another thirty minutes on the theme that allegations of genocide in Gaza constitute “the greatest lie of the century,” and shots at Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife, as well as podcaster Hasan Piker, Netanyahu left the stage. Protests continued outside.

Hasan Piker mentioned during Netanyahu’s speech at the UN pic.twitter.com/PZOTuWtfxV

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 24, 2026

Civil rights lawyer Brad Parker of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in an interview before Netanyahu’s speech, characterized the Israeli prime minister’s status as “absolute impunity.” Federal authorities could follow the lead of the UK and France, and sanction the settlers—which, despite even Trump’s Israel ambassador Mike Huckabee characterizing settler conduct as terrorism, the White House and Congress appear resolutely opposed to doing.

“Most indicted war criminals do not leave their countries, but Netanyahu just breezes in and out,” Parker said. “Putin, for example, his travel is very selective because of that. But it’s sort of an exception for Israel right now.” 

One of our closest allies now believes that it can’t rely on the United States under President Donald Trump’s leadership.

Belgium’s foreign ministry warned that America was “no longer the ally it has been in the past,” according to a late-2025 strategy document reviewed by the Financial Times.

The Belgian document called for a “thorough re-evaluation of the relation between the European Union and Belgium on the one hand, and the U.S. on the other hand.” It argued that the current political dynamics in the United States were “likely to compromise several vital interests of Belgium and the European Union.

The document maintained that engagement with the Trump administration was “indispensable,” but also acknowledged that it was mostly a lost cause. The document advised that a dialogue with levels below the federal government should be “significantly reinforced,” that discussions should be held with Democratic opposition, and that Belgian officials should focus on “identifying the new generations of bipartisan elites that could play a role in tomorrow’s America.”

The document was produced around the same time that the Trump administration issued its controversial 2025 National Security Strategy, which showed a clear ideological shift to implicitly condemn centrist and liberal governments in Europe, and boost the right-wing groups that opposed them, warning them to curb immigration or risk “civilizational erasure.”

Simultaneously, the Trump administration continued in its unwanted advances to acquire Greenland from Denmark, while flubbing its proposed peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Clearly, European countries would be right to be concerned: since then, the president has continued issuing threats to pull U.S. forces out of Europe altogether.

Steve Deace is freaking out about Republicans’ prospects in Iowa this November. If you aren’t familiar with Deace—and I suspect most of you are not—he is a longtime far-right media personality who hosts “The Steve Deace Show” on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV. An influential voice in Iowa’s evangelical conservative movement, he holds politics that combine staunch social conservatism and evangelical…

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