August 14, 2026

05 Sci-Tech

Are We Handing Biotech to Chinese Military? House Panel Demands Answers From Pfizer, Merck and More – RedState– redstate.com

pgnewser July 1, 2026 0

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Do American pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials on drugs in China help the CCP’s military capability? A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to know, and they’ve opened an investigation into drugmakers, including Merck, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Bristol Myers ⁠Squibb, and AbbVie (a spinoff of Abbott Laboratories), and are demanding that they detail their policies and due diligence efforts in their overseas operations.

Rep. John Moolenaar (MI-02), chair of the China Select Committee, is leading the charge:

US lifts export controls on powerful AI models, Anthropic says– www.euronews.com

pgnewser July 1, 2026 0

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The US government has lifted restrictions on powerful AI models, such as Fable 5 and Mythos 5, according to Anthropic, the AI firm behind

The company will soon begin restoring global access to its most powerful AI models, it said on Tuesday.

Posting on X, Anthropic said: “We’ve received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5,” adding, “We’ll begin restoring access tomorrow.”

Earlier this month, US authorities blocked access to the models on national security grounds.

Trump is right to threaten tariffs over European digital tax extortion– www.washingtonexaminer.com

pgnewser July 1, 2026 1

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Often untethered to unfair foreign trade practices, President Donald Trump’s fetish for tariffs is foolish. Tariffs reduce prosperity and opportunity for the vast majority of the public in order to benefit far smaller numbers of Americans in specific industries. Still, tariffs have value when it comes to penalizing unfair economic activity by U.S. trade partners. Trump is thus right to now threaten new tariffs on the European Union and European nations over their threat to American technology companies.

In a social media post last Friday, Trump warned that European countries were discussing the “imminent” introduction of digital services taxes on U.S. technology giants. He added that any “country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the [U.S.].” While Trump’s 100% tariff rate is arbitrary, he is right to warn of robust action. Contrary to their claims of justified regulation, the European digital taxes in question serve a simple and wholly unjustified purpose: extorting American companies.

House Advances Bipartisan Bill to Make Tech Giants Pay AI Data Center Power Costs– www.westernjournal.com

pgnewser June 25, 2026 0

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Technology companies that propose to build data centers to provide the computing power for artificial intelligence would have to pay any costs to upgrade local power grids under a bill that took a step forward in the House on Wednesday

The Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340, would authorize states to charge companies building data centers the full cost of new power generation to support the electricity-gobbling centers and transmission upgrades.

The Subcommittee on Energy, a panel that is part of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, moved the bill, which had bipartisan support, forward. The full committee will now consider it.

Media Avoids Scrutiny of Dr. Fauci Amid New Questions on Covid Record– www.newsbusters.org

pgnewser June 25, 2026 0

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It’s routinely amazing that the Left will speak so shamelessly about how some Trump initiative or another displays authoritarian tendencies. Rachel Maddow endlessly discusses what she calls “an authoritarian takeover of our country and the destruction of our Constitution.”

But we have a very recent example of authoritarianism descending on America, controlling our private lives. It was the Covid pandemic. At its outbreak, the coronavirus seemed especially deadly, and the vast majority of Americans consented to all of the mandates, the closing of our schools and our churches, the shaming of anyone gathering in a private home for a birthday or for Christmas. When the vaccines became available, many of us took them when we could.

Getty Images accused AI of wholesale theft. It’s now an official ChatGPT image partner.– www.digitaltrends.com

pgnewser June 25, 2026 1

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The AI industry’s most fascinating stories often come from unlikely alliances, and this is certainly one of them. Getty Images, a company that has spent years raising concerns about how AI models are trained and how creative work is used, is now officially partnering with OpenAI.

The new agreement will allow Getty Images’ licensed content to appear across ChatGPT’s search and discovery experiences. That means users may begin seeing Getty’s professionally licensed photos and visual assets integrated into ChatGPT responses, adding more visual context to searches and AI-generated answers. Getty says the goal is to make AI-powered search more useful and trustworthy by relying on high-quality, licensed content rather than the murky sourcing practices that have sparked countless debates across the AI industry.

Chinese supercomputer displaces US machines as world’s fastest– abcnews.com

pgnewser June 24, 2026 0

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A supercomputer in China now outranks its U.S. counterparts as the world’s most powerful, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess

A supercomputer in China now outranks its U.S. counterparts as the world’s most powerful, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess.

The LineShine computer in Shenzhen, China, displaced top-ranked U.S. computer El Capitan in the latest version of the TOP500 ranking announced Tuesday. It was the Chinese computer’s debut on the list.

‘Unequivocal evidence’ of the age of Earth’s oldest impact crater turns out to be off by half a billion years– www.livescience.com

pgnewser June 24, 2026 0

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Earth’s oldest known impact crater formed when a meteorite slammed into what is now Australia about 3 billion years ago ‪—‬ 470 million years later than scientists previously claimed, a new study suggests.

The impact crater, known as the North Pole Dome crater, is located in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, which is home to some of the planet’s oldest rocks. It remains a record-breaking structure, beating the world’s next-oldest known meteorite impact crater — the Yarrabubba impact structure, also in Western Australia — by roughly 800 million years.

Journal retracts paper skeptical of ‘white power’ in psychology, says it conflicts with ‘values’– www.thecollegefix.com

pgnewser June 24, 2026 0

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Scholars deride move as censorship, threat to academic discourse

A New Zealand psychology journal recently retracted a paper questioning claims about science being a tool of “white power,” stating that it was “inconsistent” with the publication’s “values,” according to a former journal editor.

Now, the editors of the Journal of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists are facing criticism from scholars across the globe.

Dr. Kumari Valentine, a psychologist and former editor of the journal, raised concerns about the retraction in an article Saturday on the substack Psychology at the Crossroads.

Oracle Cut 21,000 Jobs in 12 Months Amid AI Adoption– www.ndtv.com

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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Oracle Corp. reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees in the past 12 months, a wider scale than previously known, including those whose jobs were eliminated by the use of artificial intelligence.

“The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” Oracle said Monday in an annual financial regulatory filing.

The company’s global headcount shrank to 141,000 full-time employees as of the May 31 end of the fiscal year, compared with 162,000 a year earlier, Oracle said. The reductions led to about $1.8 billion in restructuring costs.

Oracle is under financial pressure because of an expensive build-out of AI data centers for customers like OpenAI. Earlier this year, it began cutting thousands of jobs as part of efforts to save cash, Bloomberg has reported. The exact scope of the cuts was never formally disclosed.

As of the end of May, the company had about 49,000 US workers while about 92,000 were employed internationally.

Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak– www.wired.com

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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Meta is pausing a divisive employee tracking program after an internal security issue exposed potentially sensitive data collected through the initiative to other workers.

“We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we’re pausing it while we investigate,” says company spokesperson Tracy Clayton.

Meta rolled out the Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) tool in April to US employees. The tool “collects computer inputs such as mouse movements, click locations and keystrokes, as well as screen content,” according to workers who have been petitioning against it over privacy, security, and personal liberty concerns. When MCI first launched, employees couldn’t opt out, but that changed to a limited degree after workers protested.

Meta executives have repeatedly defended the data-gathering project, saying it was necessary to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do and that employees were the best examples for the artificial intelligence to learn from.

EU bets on digital euro to cut US tech addiction– www.channelnewsasia.com

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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BRUSSELS: The European Union (EU) believes a digital euro is the answer to cutting its addiction to United States payment systems like Visa and Mastercard, as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay, as the bloc seeks to favour European firms over others.

Brussels hopes it could provide an alternative local option for any payments in shops or online since people could easily pay, just like other systems, using a card, an app or via their banking app.

The EU will move one step closer on Tuesday (Jun 23) to creating a digital euro when EU lawmakers hold a long-awaited vote on the virtual currency.

California drivers sue gas stations for allegedly using AI to inflate prices | California– www.theguardian.com

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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Gas ⁠station ​operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers ⁠who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump.

According to a proposed class action, the defendants ⁠violated California’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that ​uses data from competing gas ‌stations to “coordinate high prices ‌and wring more money from the pockets of consumers”.

The lawsuit in the ‌Sacramento federal court said the scheme violated assembly bill 325, a California law that took effect on 1 January and was intended to crack down on algorithmic price fixing.

America’s naval power transformation to be in spotlight at major Threat Status event– www.washingtontimes.com

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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U.S. naval power is undergoing its greatest transformation in a generation, and the nation’s status as the top global military superpower may hinge on the outcome.

That transformation and all the challenges that come with it — including advanced technology integration, shipbuilding labor shortages and budgetary tensions — will be at the center of a special event to be hosted Wednesday by The Washington Times’ Threat Status national security team at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington.

‘We Will Fight to Our Very Last Breath:’ Township Leaders Vow to Fight Nuclear AI Data Center– www.404media.co

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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Board members of a small township in Michigan agreed to “fight to our very last breath” against an AI data center planned in their community. America’s nuclear scientists and the University of Michigan want to build a massive data center in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan. If built, the data center will, among other things, run simulations to help America build nuclear weapons.

The residents of Ypsilanti Township overwhelmingly oppose the construction of the data center and voiced their opposition to the computer warehouse during a public board meeting on June 16. In a show of support that’s often rare from local leaders in communities with data centers, Ypsilanti Township’s board vowed to fight UofM and Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is partnering with the university, with everything they had.

Why More Data Centers Might Mean Cheaper Electricity | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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Economics is full of counterintuitive insights. Rent control can make housing less affordable. Business failures can strengthen an economy. And, yes, higher demand can sometimes lower prices. That’s a possibility worth remembering in the ongoing debates over data centers and electricity bills.

It sure seems like we’re going to build a whole lot more data centers in this country—at least, that’s what Wall Street is expecting. JPMorgan just raised its forecast for data-center capacity growth to 138 gigawatts through 2030, up from 122 gigawatts in its forecast last November. The bank also said it expects $5.5 trillion in AI-related capex through 2030, up from its previous forecast of $5.1 trillion.

Confirmed Ebola cases in Congo top 1,000. More than a quarter have died, officials say.– www.cbsnews.com

pgnewser June 23, 2026 0

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Bunia, Congo — Confirmed cases in the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo have reached 1,003, including 254 deaths, officials said, as tracing those who had been in contact with patients remains a major challenge.

A total of 100 people have recovered in the outbreak concentrated in the Ituri province since it was declared on May 15, Congo’s Ministry of Health said Sunday. At least 365 patients are in hospitals or in isolation, it said.

The Ebola outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no vaccines or treatment, was the worst ever in its first month.

Officials admit there could be far more cases they still don’t know about and that the peak of the outbreak is still ahead.

UK confirms social media ban for kids is coming – Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat respond– www.techspot.com

pgnewser June 17, 2026 0

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What just happened? The UK’s long-expected social media ban for under-16s has finally been confirmed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, though it’s not expected to be introduced until spring 2027. The PM also revealed that livestreaming will be prohibited, while restrictions will be enabled by default for 17-year-olds.

The UK was one of several countries examining potential under-16 social media bans, following the lead of nations such as Australia.

On Monday, Starmer announced a full, rather than partial, ban as he is not “prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children.”

“Social media is making children unhappy, it’s making it easier for bullies to harass and abuse them, and it could even be harming their mental health,” the Prime Minister added.

The ban also includes restrictions on online products such as gaming apps, including removing the option to message with strangers.