Trump administration to create a strategic reserve for rare earth elements The Journal Gazette
from news.google.com
05 Sci-Tech
‘AI swarms’ are mass-producing credible misinformation. Democracy may get stung observer.co.uk
from news.google.com
PARIS — French prosecutors searched the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into a range of alleged offences, including spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes.
The investigation was opened in January last year by the prosecutors’ cybercrime unit, the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a statement. It is looking into alleged “complicity” in possession and spreading of pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.
In addition, prosecutors filed a request for “voluntary interviews” of Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X from 2023 to 2025, scheduled for April 20. Employees of the platform X have also been summoned that same week in April to be heard as witnesses, the statement said.
SpaceX Wants a Million Satellites for AI: Is This the Future of Computing or a Space Disaster Waiting to Happen?
SpaceX has submitted a daring proposal to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch a constellation of up to one million satellites into Earth orbit, not for Internet coverage like Starlink but as orbital data centers designed to power artificial intelligence applications on a global scale. The plan, if approved, could reshape how humanity processes data, runs AI models and thinks about computing infrastructure and it is already stirring excitement and controversy across tech and space communities.
According to a recent report, the White House is set to start using artificial intelligence to write new transportation regulations. It’s no longer a question whether this technology will have power over our lives — that moment has arrived.
As its influence grows, AI will be the source of even more heated political debates. Some on the left are horrified about the lack of DEI and the hateful expression in AI, while the White House has claimed it is too woke. Some say AI is scraping from predominantly Western sources, so it is too Western. Some Christians are horrified by the implications of what happens when you ask generative AI moral and spiritual questions, while others seriously argue that AI can be an ethical counselor and decisionmaker. The AI debates, be they political or moral, are all framed around competing assertions of truth.
The medical watchdog group Do No Harm published a report this week, disputing claims made in a widely-cited study conducted by economists Michael Frakes and Jonathan Gruber that suggests increasing the share of Black physicians in military medical facilities leads to better outcomes for Black patients.
The TikTok deal has officially closed, with a “mostly American” investor group mutually led by Oracle and Silber Lake. ByteDance will still have a 20% stake, meaning TikTok will help fund the CCP. The venture will be led by a board that will have a majority of U.S. directors on it.
Deal for TikTok to Operate in U.S. Officially Closes, Desperate Dems of Course Call for an Investigation – RedState
For years, the fate of social media titan TikTok has hung in the balance, with potential deals falling through which would have overcome concerns about just how safe it was for people in the U.S. to use.
One of the concerns over the platform was that with the parent company ByteDance being based in China, it has entaglements with the authoritarian government and Chinese Communist Party. So, in the waning hours of the Biden administration, Congress passed a law that would ban access to the site unless it sold to a new owner outside China.
The new Trump 47 administration also took it up with the Supreme Court in an amicus brief, but SCOTUS chose not to stand in the way of the ban, something that President Trump delayed several times in hopes of making a deal.
Climate science has been hijacked by philosophical globalism and alarmism, psychology research is controlled by gender, anti-racism, and decolonization ideologies, and unorthodox studies are shunned and blackballed.
So say Breakthrough Institute senior fellow Patrick Brown, Benjamin Lovett from Teachers College, Columbia University, and Andrea Clements, the assistant chair of East Tennessee State University’s Department of Psychology, in interviews with The College Fix and panels they have taken part in over the last year.
Ideological, political, and corporate interests now influence research and its outcomes, say the trio of scientists representing the fields of psychology and climate science.
Big Tech social media companies could face Big Tobacco moment as landmark trial begins baltimoresun.com
from news.google.com
The e-commerce giant has been cutting costs while pouring resources into building data centers to compete in the race to dominate artificial intelligence.
from www.nytimes.com
TikTok Faces Backlash, Outages, Competition Following Change In U.S. Ownership 01/27/2026 MediaPost
from news.google.com
PARIS: French lawmakers on Monday (Jan 26) were set to vote on draft legislation to ban social media for under-15s, an effort championed by President Emmanuel Macron as a way to protect children from excessive screen time.
The legislation, which also provides for a ban on mobile phones in high schools, follows Australia banning social media for under-16s in December, a world first.
As social media has grown around the world, so has concern that too much screen time is arresting child development and contributing to declining mental health in minors.
“The emotions of our children and teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, either by American platforms or Chinese algorithms,” Macron said in a video broadcast on Saturday.
‘Epoch-making’: Xi Jinping urges home-grown AI breakthroughs – but flags risks South China Morning Post
from news.google.com
A chilling new “suicide pod” has been unveiled that seeks to streamline the euthanasia process by gassing two people to death at once, all while being powered by artificial intelligence (AI) automation to eliminate human safeguards.
The disturbing new AI-powered “suicide pod” is being pushed forward by a radical euthanasia activist, accelerating what critics warn is a globalist effort to normalize mechanized death under the guise of “choice.”
The new device is known as the “Double Dutch Sarco.”
The U.S. and Taiwan recently reached a historic trade deal. Taiwanese companies will invest at least $250 billion in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, pledged $100 billion in U.S. investment in 2025. Taipei will provide an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees to Taiwanese companies.
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari couched a chilling prediction within a warning at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon control not only most of the world’s legal, education, and healthcare systems, “AI will take over religion.”
“This is particularly true of religions based on books, like Islam, Christianity, and Judaism,” the homosexual atheist claimed.
“Anything made of words will be taken over by AI,” said Harari, so, “What happens to a religion of the book when the greatest expert on the holy book is an AI?”
Water demand for AI expected to surge, new research says Water Finance & Management
from news.google.com
Elon Musk Seeks $134 Billion in Damages from OpenAI and Microsoft in Legal Battle breitbart.com
from news.google.com
World has entered an era of ‘global water bankruptcy,’ U.N. warns
Humans are using more water than Earth can support, with many water sources already damaged beyond repair, a report from the United Nations found
Humans use more water than the planet can support, entering an era of “global water bankruptcy,” a new report from the United Nations warns. Almost 75 percent of the world’s population now lives in countries that are experiencing significant water insecurity, according to the report.
Rivers, lakes, wetlands and other water sources are already “damaged beyond realistic prospects of full recovery,” the report states.
The report compares the situation to a bank account going into the red: humans are using more water than our planet can produce and using more water that is stored in sources such as glaciers, wetlands and aquifers.
The University of Maryland is teaching its doctors to hate white people through a course called “Decolonizing Medicine: Steps to Actionable Change.” The course claims it covers how “colonial legacies” still affect “global health systems.” It also claims the “concept of the White Body” was the standard for medical training.
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told The College Fix, “The title of the course as well as the description reflects the ideological view of oppressors (white colonialists) versus the oppressed (people of color), a fundamental anti-white racist view. The statement that modern medicine has been shaped by ‘colonialism’ makes no sense to me … Modern medicine was shaped by scientific advances.
“The purpose of medicine, according to the late Donald Seldin, is to relieve pain, reduce disability, and postpone death. It is not about social reform. Framing medicine through Marxist concepts of oppression is destructive of the art and science of medicine,” Orient added. “Doctors are not called to judge their patients’ worth or to engage in cultural revolution.”
Physicians are raising concerns over new course offerings at the University of Maryland that incorporate identity politics into various public health and medical programs at the public institution.
“Decolonizing Medicine: Steps to Actionable Change” is a one-credit undergraduate public health course, first taught in the spring of 2025 and offered again this semester.
Designed for students studying medicine, public health, or health policy, it covers how “colonial legacies” impact “global health systems” and the “concept of ‘the White body’” as the standard in medical training, according to the university registrar’s catalog. The “student-facilitated discussion-based” course also is open for registration for the current spring semester as a two-credit elective.
Where did cannabis compounds like THC, CBD, and CBC come from? Scientists at Wageningen University & Research have now provided the first experimental proof showing how cannabis developed the ability to make these well-known cannabinoids. Along the way, the team also created enzymes that could be useful for producing cannabinoids through biotechnology, especially for medical use.
Their findings were published in the scientific journal Plant Biotechnology Journal. To reach these conclusions, the researchers rebuilt enzymes that no longer exist today but were active millions of years ago in early ancestors of the cannabis plant. Enzymes are essential to cannabinoid production in cannabis, driving the chemical reactions that create these bioactive compounds with recognized medicinal potential.
A recent study published in Cell Reports Medicine demonstrated that, under the right conditions, the brain can repair itself using a compound that restores NAD+ levels.
Although conducted in animal models, this research offers a ray of hope for someday treating Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It serves as a vital reminder that we must never abandon hope or withhold care from anyone, no matter how fragile their medical condition or health.
For decades, AD has long been thought to be permanent and irreversible. Yet, researchers from Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, and the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center in Cleveland found that restoring proper levels of the critical cellular energy molecule NAD+ not only prevented AD-like pathology in mice but also reversed advanced cognitive decline and brain injury.
SPRINGFIELD, VA — Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) have secured a major legal win following a Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that declares a longstanding federal statute restricting the mailing of handguns unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
The decision stems from the case Shreve v. U.S. Postal Service, filed in July 2025 in the Western District of Pennsylvania. GOA brought the lawsuit on behalf of its members, challenging 18 U.S.C. § 1715 — a statute that has prohibited law-abiding Americans from using the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to ship or receive concealable firearms, such as pistols and revolvers.
Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Arizona, and Sandia National Laboratories have developed a new device that generates controlled vibrations on the surface of a microchip. These waves could help future smartphones become thinner, faster, and more efficient at handling wireless signals.
According to the research paper, they have developed a surface acoustic wave (SAW) phonon laser that can create “the tiniest earthquakes imaginable”. Instead of light, this laser sends mechanical waves that skim along the surface of a material.
Phones already rely on surface acoustic waves to clean up messy wireless signals, but it requires multiple components. This new approach aims to compress much of that work into a single, compact chip, freeing up space while improving performance.
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.
Over the past couple of weeks oil—specifically, Venezuelan oil—has been all over the headlines.
It started late on January 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, which they did early the next morning. Last week the country’s interior minister said the action killed 100 people.
US orders aircraft carrier to Middle East as Iran tensions escalate Yeni Safak English
from news.google.com
Elon Musk says saving for retirement is unnecessary in an AI-driven future KTLA
from news.google.com
AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Yahoo Finance
from news.google.com
U.S. Navy Railguns are Pure Fantasy. Navy Hypersonic Missiles Are Mach 6 Reality 19FortyFive
from news.google.com