September 4, 2026

00 First Filter

US judge releases alleged Jeffrey Epstein suicide note: ‘Choose one’s time to say goodbye’– www.news24.com

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Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was connected with several prominent people including politicians, actors and academics. Epstein was convicted of having sex with a girl.

Rick Friedman/Rick Friedman Photography/Corbis via Getty Images

  • A US judge ordered the release of a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein.
  • The note was said to have been found by Nicholas Tartaglione, his former jail cellmate.
  • The judge did not vouch for the note’s authenticity, nor assess its chain of custody.

A federal judge on Wednesday released a document described as a suicide note purportedly written by the late Jeffrey Epstein and including the line: “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.”

Epstein, the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell ‌in August 2019 in what was ruled a suicide.

North Korea not bound by nuclear non-proliferation treaty, UN envoy says– www.euronews.com

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North Korea’s UN envoy said his country was not bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons and external pressure would not change its status as a nuclear-armed state, official media reported on Thursday.

Pyongyang threatened to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1993 and formally did so in 2003.

It has since conducted six nuclear tests, prompting a raft of international sanctions, and is believed to possess dozens of nuclear warheads.

Signatories of the NPT have been holding a review meeting of the landmark pact at the United Nations.

There, “the United States and certain countries following its lead are groundlessly calling into question the current status and exercise of sovereign rights” of North Korea, Pyongyang’s top UN envoy Kim Song said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“The status of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a nuclear-armed state will not change based on external rhetorical claims or unilateral desires,” he added, using North Korea’s official name.

“To make it clear once again, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will not be bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty under any circumstances whatsoever.”

He continued that the country’s status as a nuclear-armed state has been “enshrined in the constitution, transparently declaring the principles of nuclear weapons use.”

Congo’s president warns next elections can’t take place unless the conflict in the east is resolved– abcnews.com

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KINSHASA, Congo — Congo’s president warned on Wednesday that the African nation will not be able to organize and hold elections after his term ends in two years unless the conflict that has gripped the country’s east is resolved and stability returns.

The remarks by Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi, whose term expires in December 2028, came during a televised address to the nation in which he discussed a range of topics, including deportations of migrants from the United States under a deal with the Trump administration.

Congo’s decades-long conflict escalated in January 2025, when the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu, which they took in February as they seek to expand their presence. The fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened what was already one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with around 7 million people displaced.

A U.S.-mediated peace agreement to end the fighting and other efforts have stumbled.

DOJ targets slow immigration judges as Trump pushes faster deportations– abcnews.com

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PHOENIX — The Justice Department is aiming to weed out immigration judges who it feels are ruling too slowly or aren’t following the law, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday, as the Trump administration seeks to remake the courts and cut down on the backlog of 3.7 million cases to ease its mass deportation push.

Blanche was in Phoenix to address the Border Security Expo, a yearly gathering that draws top immigration officials, local and state law enforcement officers and representatives from companies doing business with the federal government. Blanche’s appearance at the gathering reflects the way immigration enforcement and border security have become priorities throughout the Trump administration.

Blanche, who has led the Justice Department since Pam Bondi was ousted last month, spoke to The Associated Press after his appearance at the conference. His comments were some of the most detailed on the changes to immigration courts since he took over the role.

“You take an oath and you’re not allowed to make decisions based upon what appear to be just sympathy or your whim,” Blanche said.

“If there’s judges that are just not applying the law in the way that it needs to be applied, delaying inappropriately, have backlogs that are just unacceptable, they’re the folks that we’re going to try to find somebody different to fill that spot.”

Texas Court Orders Terror-Front CAIR to Disclose Major Donors and Travel Records– gellerreport.com

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The ruling by U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright demands documents on donors giving $5,000 or more over the past decade, including foreign sources, plus recipients of CAIR’s larger donations and itineraries for Executive Director Nihad Awad’s trips to nine Middle Eastern countries from 2019 to 2023. The order stems from CAIR’s lawsuit challenging Abbott’s November 2025 proclamation labeling CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations under Texas law, which bars them from buying land in the state. Abbott called the decision progress in his legal fight, while the case highlights debates over transparency, terror allegations, and civil rights protections, with discovery still ongoing.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott made enormous strides in his legal fight against CAIR. Abbott declared CAIR a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The terror group sued to block it. So he demanded CAIR give turn over its donor list and details for Nihad Awad’s travel to nine countries hosting Islamic terror.

A federal court granted his request.

For those of working to expose this terror tied group for decades, this is a major victory.

MIT scientists discover millions of “silent synapses” in the adult brain– www.sciencedaily.com

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MIT neuroscientists have uncovered a surprising feature of the adult brain. It contains millions of “silent synapses,” which are immature connections between neurons that remain inactive until they are needed to help form new memories.

For many years, scientists believed these silent synapses existed only during early development, when the brain is rapidly learning about the world. But the MIT team found that in adult mice, roughly 30 percent of synapses in the brain’s cortex are still silent. This suggests the adult brain holds a large reserve of unused connections that can be activated when new information arrives.

Researchers say this hidden pool of synapses may explain how the brain continues to learn throughout life without disrupting existing memories.

“These silent synapses are looking for new connections, and when important new information is presented, connections between the relevant neurons are strengthened. This lets the brain create new memories without overwriting the important memories stored in mature synapses, which are harder to change,” says Dimitra Vardalaki, an MIT graduate student and the lead author of the study.

Justice Department launches civil rights probe into prosecutor in Virginia – The Washington Post– news.google.com

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  1. Justice Department launches civil rights probe into prosecutor in Virginia  The Washington Post
  2. Dept. of Justice investigating Fairfax County’s top attorney over handling of cases involving immigrants  WTOP
  3. DOJ probes Fairfax prosecutor over alleged bias involving undocumented immigrants  FOX 5 DC
  4. Justice Department launches investigation in Fairfax County prosecutor Steve Descano  WJLA
  5. BREAKING: DOJ investigating Fairfax prosecutor over policy on immigrant defendants  FFXnow

US says warplane disabled ship that tried to break Iran port blockade– www.channelnewsasia.com

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WASHINGTON: A US Navy warplane fired on and disabled the rudder of an oil tanker that tried to break Washington’s blockade of Iranian ports, the US military said on Wednesday (May 6).

It is the second time the US military has fired on a ship it said was attempting to violate the blockade, which has been in place since April 13.

US forces warned the Iranian-flagged M/T Hasna, which was unladen, that it was in violation of the blockade, but its crew “failed to comply,” so a US F/A-18 Super Hornet “disabled the tanker’s rudder by firing several rounds from (its) 20mm cannon gun,” Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a post on X.

“Hasna is no longer transiting to Iran,” CENTCOM said, adding: “The US blockade against ships attempting to enter or depart Iranian ports remains in full effect.”

Japan fires missile in joint drill with U.S., allies in Philippines, facing South China Sea– japantoday.com

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Japan’s Self-Defense Forces fired a Type 88 anti‑ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with U.S., Australian, and Philippine forces on ‌Wednesday, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the South China Sea.

The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defence equipment transfer, made ‌possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports.

Discussions ⁠include the possible early transfer of Abukuma class destroyers and ⁠TC-90 aircraft to ⁠the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said.

Philippine ‌Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and Koizumi witnessed the live missile firing on the ground, ⁠while Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos ⁠Jr watched the exercise from military headquarters in Manila via a live video feed, the president’s office said.

“The exercise showcased coordinated maritime strike operations among allied forces and highlighted the AFP’s growing capability to operate alongside ⁠international partners in promoting regional security and freedom of navigation,” it said ⁠in a statement.

Oregon man indicted for assaulting federal officers during anti-ICE siege of Eugene federal building | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com

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Ryan Bruce Gaither Jr., 37, of Eugene, has been charged with assault on a federal employee involving physical contact and aggravated assault on a federal employee causing bodily injury.

An Oregon man has been indicted by a federal grand jury for an alleged physical attack against federal officers during an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) demonstration in January. The incident occurred outside the Eugene federal building.

Ryan Bruce Gaither Jr., 37, of Eugene, has been charged with assault on a federal employee involving physical contact and aggravated assault on a federal employee causing bodily injury. The defendant was arraigned in federal court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty, the Oregon US Attorney’s Office said in a press release.

On January 27, 2026, Gaither allegedly spat on a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer on the Special Response Team (SRT) and bit a second officer, according to court documents.

Video footage of his arrest shows Gaither struggling with two CBP SRT officers while he lies on the ground, handcuffs tied behind his back. He can be observed shouting with an angry facial expression before being taken into custody. As he gets whisked away, an aggressive mob of protesters surrounds federal officers, screaming and hurling projectiles, video shows. A sign stating “ICE kills” was seen being waved in the air.

Anthropic AI says deal struck to use SpaceX data centres– www.cbc.ca

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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.

Anthropic on Wednesday said it had reached a deal to tap the computing resources of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, marking a détente with its one-time critic and ‌a boost for both companies in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race.

Under the agreement, Anthropic will use the full computing power of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tenn., which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give the Claude chatbot maker 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month.

The deal gives the IPO-bound SpaceX a marquee customer as it looks to sell investors on its AI ambitions, while helping Anthropic ​ease capacity constraints following a surge in demand for products such as its AI coding ​tool, Claude Code.

The announcement came as Anthropic held a developer day in San Francisco on Wednesday, where it unveiled a new Claude AI feature called “dreaming,” meant to help its AI systems learn by reviewing work between sessions, spotting patterns and updating ​files that store user preferences and other context.

Affirmative Action In NIH Grants Revealed– www.science20.com

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The Supreme Court recently issued another ruling that seeks to end racial discrimination. most recently in specially-created political districts. What has not been an issue, because it was not obvious like universities and Louisiana politics, is how grants get chosen.A new study says that there was a component of racial favoritism in science funding as well, and it’s only been revealed in the wake of NIH grant cuts.

To the public, science is like sports – a meritocracy. The best win. The reality is more like politics. It helps to have friends, and it’s important that you say you will do what they want you to do. After the COVID-19 vaccine saved millions of lives and got a Nobel Prize, for example, both the NIH and the University of Pennsylvania attached themselves to it. Both were blatantly lying. The NIH had refused to fund the mRNA work of Katalin Karikó, Ph.D. Penn not only refused her tenure, they demoted her because she believed in mRNA but the federal government did not. She quit academia specifically because she knew the private sector funded nearly all actual basic research(1) while government often wanted to engage in cultural agendas or fund ‘safe’ studies guaranteed to show a positive result before the grant was up.

Scientists reverse diabetes in mice with lab-grown insulin cells– www.sciencedaily.com

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Scientists in Sweden have developed a more reliable way to create insulin-producing cells from human stem cells, bringing new momentum to efforts to treat type 1 diabetes. The research, published in Stem Cell Reports, shows that these lab-grown cells can effectively control blood sugar in tests and even reverse diabetes in mice.

Type 1 diabetes develops when the immune system attacks and destroys the pancreas’s insulin-producing cells. Without insulin, the body cannot properly absorb glucose from the bloodstream, leading to dangerous blood sugar levels. Replacing these lost cells has long been seen as a promising solution, but earlier attempts to grow them from stem cells have produced inconsistent results.

“We have developed a method that reliably produces high-quality insulin-producing cells from multiple human stem cell lines. This opens up opportunities for future patient-specific cell therapies, which could reduce immune rejection,” says Per-Olof Berggren, professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, and corresponding author alongside Siqin Wu, researcher at Spiber Technologies AB

AI is splitting the housing market in two: Bay Area luxury homes up 13%, affordable ones collapsing– fortune.com

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As AI mints new millionaires, billionaires, and even trillionaires, it’s also threatening to replace entry-level workers and sparking fearful chatter of the “permanent underclass.” There’s no place that’s more evident than in the Bay Area, at the heart of Silicon Valley, where technology is wedging a deeper divide in the K-shaped economy, especially in the housing market.

A new Redfin report found that since the launch of ChatGPT’s first model in Nov. 2022, luxury home prices in the region—classified as those selling between $3.1 and $7.6 million—have jumped 13.4%. At the same time, home values for lower-end properties in the Bay Area—those $535,000 to $615,000—have fallen by 3.8%.

“Some owners of lower-end properties have missed out on the AI boom, with home prices in the most affordable Bay Area zip codes declining over the past two years,” Yingqi Xu, Redfin senior economist, said in a statement. “It’s another sign of the K-shaped economy taking shape in the Bay Area, with AI lifting the fortunes of some households and neighborhoods much more than others.”

Many Americans today are grappling with the sobering reality of high mortgage rates, inflated home prices, and a housing stock shortage. Many are delaying homebuying by a near decade from just a few years ago, as the median age of the first-time homebuyer hit 40 in 2025, up from just 33 in 2021.

Iran reviews U.S. proposal for deal to end war as Trump issues new threats – National– globalnews.ca

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Iran said it was reviewing the latest American proposals on ending the war, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the country with a new wave of bombing unless a deal is reached that includes reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz to international shipping.

Hope that the two-month conflict could soon end buoyed international markets on Thursday, even as the U.S. military fired on an Iranian oil tanker attempting to breach an American blockade of Iran’s ports hours earlier. The developments followed days of mixed messaging from the Trump administration over its strategy to end the war.

Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that he did not detail.

“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.

Even brief AI use could hurt your ability to think, a new study finds– www.digitaltrends.com

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A new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford, and UCLA suggests that using an AI chatbot for just 10 minutes could negatively impact your ability to think and problem-solve. And honestly, the findings are a little alarming.

As reported by Wired, the researchers asked participants to solve problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension tasks. Some participants were given access to an AI assistant that could solve the problem for them.

When the AI was suddenly removed, those participants were far more likely to give up or get the answer wrong. In other words, the moment the AI crutch was gone, people struggled.

Iran’s top negotiator trolls Trump — RT World News– www.rt.com

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“Operation Trust Me Bro failed,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has said, after the US president suspended efforts to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s top negotiator has mocked US President Donald Trump after he abruptly suspended American efforts to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, adding that Washington was again spreading falsehoods about ongoing talks.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf ridiculed Trump with a sarcastic one-liner: “Operation Trust Me Bro failed. Now back to routine with Operation Fauxios.”

Ghalibaf’s comments came after Trump paused ‘Project Freedom’, an operation aimed at clearing a path through the strait for more than 1,500 commercial vessels stranded in the Persian Gulf, just two days after its start. The US president, however, insisted that the decision was made based on what he described as “great progress” in negotiations and a request from Pakistan.

Houchengzui Stone City: This ancient Chinese megacity hides mysterious underground tunnels buried for over 4,000 years | World News– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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A huge ancient stone city buried for thousands of years in northern China has just become even more mysterious. Archaeologists working at the Houchengzui Stone City in Inner Mongolia have uncovered a hidden underground tunnel network dating back roughly 4,300 to 4,500 years. The tunnels were reportedly hidden beneath one of the largest and most heavily defended early stone cities ever found in the region. At first glance, the site already looked impressive enough with massive walls, defensive gates, and layers of protection everywhere. Then researchers discovered something underneath it all.Experts say the tunnels may have been used for both defence and movement inside the city, which raises all kinds of questions about how advanced these early communities really were. Some of the passages are still remarkably intact. You can apparently still see tool marks carved into the walls, which feels strangely personal considering the tunnels were dug more than four millennia ago.