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Decatur Street businesses host block party amid construction challenges
The construction began nearly nine months ago, and business owners say it has significantly affected sales.
Pacific North Sports comes back late for victory in 53rd running of Ski to Sea
MARR's Heating AC, Plumbing/Electrical finishes second after holding a nearly two-minute lead in final leg
Manny Nosowsky, Waggish Crossword Constructor for The New York Times, Dies at 94
For nearly two decades, the prolific puzzle maker, a retired urologist, charmed solvers with his penchant for witty, waggish puns.
Star Wars has big opening weekend with "The Mandalorian and Grogu"
After nearly seven years out of theaters, the latest Star Wars film, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" topped the box office, showing the franchise can still bring in audiences.
‘Mandalorian and Grogu’ tops charts and ‘Obsession’ grows in second weekend
After nearly seven years away from the big screen, a new Star Wars movie drew healthy but not record-breaking crowds to global theaters this weekend.
The Atlantic Ocean Was Hiding a Massive Freshwater Reservoir Big Enough to Supply NYC for 800 Years
Scientists have discovered a massive freshwater reservoir buried beneath the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from New Jersey to Maine — and early estimates suggest it could hold enough water to supply New York City for nearly 800 years. Researchers believe the reservoir dates back to the last ice age, though it could take years to determine whether the water can — or should — ever be tapped.
Scientists say house cats could help unlock new cancer treatments for humans
Scientists have cracked open the “black box” of feline cancer in a landmark study that genetically analyzed nearly 500 cat tumors from around the world. The research uncovered striking similarities between cancers in cats, dogs, and humans — including shared cancer-driving genes tied to aggressive breast cancers.
Chance photo leads scientists to rediscover plant missing from the wild for nearly 60 years
"It's one of these situations where everything had to fall into place and there was a bit of good fortune involved."
What to know about sepsis: Life-threatening but hard to spot
Consider sepsis an invisible threat. It kills about 350,000 Americans a year and may cause nearly one-fifth of deaths globally. But you won’t find it on any “leading causes of death” lists.
Why nearly every Scripps Bee finalist has a coach — and why one stands above the rest
Professional spelling coach Scott Remer, charging up to $180/hr, has guided five Scripps Bee champions but draws mixed reviews.
What a George Floyd Square-area business seeks nearly 6 years after his death
His ChatGPT Companion Nearly Ruined Him. To Recover, He Had to Destroy It.
Unrequited love drove a 57-year-old man to an AI. Delusions of grandeur followed.
Wegovy linked to rare “eye stroke” that can cause sudden blindness
A new analysis is raising concerns about Wegovy, the blockbuster weight-loss drug, after researchers found it may carry the highest risk of a rare “eye stroke” that can cause sudden vision loss. The study, based on millions of FDA side-effect reports, found the risk signal was nearly five times stronger for Wegovy than for Ozempic, despite both containing semaglutide.
Bond breakout? Big effects of bad data. Immigration and thermostatic politics & dad-chat is coming for dad-books.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Anna Airy, A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918 Bond breakout - John Authers Across the developed markets, bond markets are staging a slow-motion car wreck. Looking at the drastic moves in the US, Japan, the UK and France, Barclays’ Ajay Rajadhyaksha commented: “Last week, long bonds broke. Not in one country. In all of them. Simultaneously. Four countries. Four different political systems. Four different central banks. But the same trade — “get me out of duration!”” Each country has its own contributing political problems, but the uniformity of the shift out of long-term bonds with high duration makes clear that something broader is afoot. For Rajadhyaksha, it is “simple and uncomfortable.” The developed world “has too much debt, too little fiscal discipline, and no political appetite for fixing either.” If there’s a trigger, it has been the Iran war and the resulting shock to oil supply. Source: Bloomberg G7 countries are now borrowing at rates that were enjoyed by EM in the early 2020s For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Trade between China and Russia has grown in recent years For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Big effects of bad data A decade ago nearly nine in ten Americans, when approached, agreed to fill out the Current Population Survey, which is administered to about 60,000 households each month and asks about, among other things, employment. Fewer than seven in ten do so now (see chart 1). For the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which tries to capture 3,700 households monthly, the response rate is down from 68% to 40%. … When the information becomes less reliable, investment decisions get more difficult to make. Some may be delayed, creating a potential drag on the economy. A new working paper by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Erica Groshen, former head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) now at Cornell University, and Duncan Hobbs and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, hazards an estimate. Preserving trust in “the integrity and quality of official statistics”, the authors claim, generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the BLS, the agency with an annual budget of $700m that is responsible for many of these data. To arrive at their conclusion the quartet analysed an ignoble episode in the BLS’s recent history. On August 1st 2025 Donald Trump sacked Erika McEntarfer, appointed as the agency’s commissioner by his predecessor, Joe Biden. The president alleged, without evidence, that the BLS’s steep downward revision to recent jobs numbers had been “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. In fact, it was the wanton dismissal that looked bad in the eyes of many observers. In the following seven days there was a 50% leap, relative to the week before, in the average value of the index of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), which tracks the number of articles mentioning such uncertainty that are published daily in American newspapers. This was a discernible jump even when compared to the chaos caused by Mr Trump’s trade war in April 2025 and his real one in Iran in the past two months (see chart 2). Based on Mr Bloom’s earlier study with other colleagues of the EPU’s impact on business investment, industrial production and employment, the authors estimate that the jump reduced American GDP by over $100bn (0.3%) and non-farm payrolls by 168,000 (0.1%). Source: The Economist Immigration and thermostatic politics (Sarah O’Connor in the FT) A strange thing happened a year and a half ago. No sooner had Americans elected Donald Trump as president on an explicitly anti-immigration platform than US public opinion began to swing much more favourably towards immigration. … to political scientists who study “thermostatic” politics, this development is no surprise at all. Public opinion often moves against the prevailing party, especially if they are perceived to have gone “too far” in one direction. The phenomenon was first explored in the 1990s with reference to fiscal policy, but in recent years it has been particularly evident in the realm of immigration policy. While these swings in opinion polls can make it seem as if people don’t know their own minds, they can be a useful democratic check on governments by sending bright flashing warning lights when policies stray too far from the public’s comfort zone. The problem comes when politicians misinterpret those signals. When people tell pollsters they want less immigration, or think it is bad for the country overall (or the converse), they are often expressing an opinion about how things appear to be going in that moment relative to their preferences, rather than a deep shift in their underlying views. According to Alexander Kustov, a political scientist, most Americans’ views are quite stable and moderate: they support immigration that is controlled and in the national interest, and oppose flows that are disorderly or under-enforced. In the US, he argues the Trump administration over-interpreted dissatisfaction with high immigration under Joe Biden, and implemented policies that went too far for many voters. “People don’t necessarily change their idea about their ideal immigration policy, but they can react to what the government is currently doing,” he told me. “A lot of people are not happy with what the Trump administration are doing — right now we’re not talking about border enforcement, we’re talking about people not just getting harassed, but killed.” But similarly, he added, pro-immigration advocates would be making a mistake to interpret the recent, more favourable swing towards immigration as a deep-seated ideological shift in attitudes. The recent history of UK immigration policy offers another cautionary tale. After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell. This was partly because net migration statistics declined, but also because people felt a sense of catharsis and control, says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think-tank. By 2019, the public ranked immigration as only the ninth biggest issue of concern, according to Ipsos polling. But when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022, that helped net migration to surge. And so, too, did public concern. Today’s Labour government has implemented another sharply restrictive turn in immigration policy. As Kustov and researcher Caitlyn Yates argue, thermostatic public opinion should be a useful check on politicians. Instead it seems to have helped to magnify the pendulum swing in the UK. The government over-interprets and overreacts to a change in public opinion, which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way. Source: Financial Times HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Anna Airy, Shop for Machining 15-Inch Shells: Singer Manufacturing Company, Clydebank, Glasgow, 1918 Racing for a vaccine … we have been here before! The deadly Ebola outbreak in two African countries driven by a virus species with no vaccine has triggered an urgent search for a potential jab, in a test of troubled global efforts to avert threats posed by emerging diseases. A World Health Organization advisory group is due to would meet on Tuesday to recommend candidate jabs to prioritise for clinical trials, the global health body said. It will assess data including an analysis by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which was set up after failures in the international response to a previous Ebola crisis. The latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has infected hundreds of people and killed more than 80, health authorities say. Cepi’s reaction will be a crucial indicator of its progress towards its wider goal of producing vaccines for pandemic threats in just 100 days, despite steep cuts to international health funding. “If there was ever a time that we could show the world why Cepi is needed and show the world why the 100-day mission is needed, it’s now,” Nicole Lurie, the organisation’s executive director for preparedness and response, told the FT. “We’re happy to accept that responsibility, but obviously we need help from partners — particularly financial help in the long run.” DR Congo and Uganda would make the final decision on whether to press ahead with any vaccine candidates endorsed for clinical trials by the WHO experts, the global health body said. “Other ethical and community acceptability issues will be considered,” said the WHO, which declared the latest outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. “This will be important to make sure that the trial, if it happens, will be adequately communicated to the population.” Lurie said Cepi had provided information from a survey of research teams and companies working on drugs that might be effective against the Bundibugyo virus behind the outbreak. The organisation hoped soon to announce partners in the quest for a jab, she added, although she declined to give a timescale for when one might be developed. Cepi’s Nicole Laurie said global health bodies were ‘getting some live-fire drills’ with hantavirus and the latest Ebola outbreak. The hunt for a vaccine should be helped by scientific advances including the use of artificial intelligence to find drugs active against viruses, Lurie said. Existing jabs against the Zaire Ebola virus responsible for many previous outbreaks might provide a basis for tackling the Bundibugyo species, she added. “We’ll see how far and how fast we can get,” Lurie said, adding that Cepi had done preliminary work recently on a possible jab for the rat-borne hantavirus responsible for a recent fatal outbreak on a cruise ship. “Both with hantavirus and now with Ebola, [we] are getting some live-fire drills.” Source: Michael Peel in the Financial Times Dad-chat is coming for dad-books. (By Pamela Paul and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the WSJ) They were the go-to gifts for Father’s Day: a book about some little-known chapter of World War II, the sweeping narrative of a shipwreck, perhaps the latest presidential biography. These days, dad books are a dying breed. Nonfiction book sales have been in decline for the past four years, and are now the most challenged segment of the print book market. Publishers say certain types of books still fare well—including celebrity memoirs and religious titles. But in recent years, print sales in such categories as biography, current affairs and business and economics—what publishers refer to as “serious nonfiction” and which tend to resonate especially with men—have fallen considerably. Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. Publishing has long been subject to cyclical changes, with trends in format and genre taking over bookshelves in grand sweeps. (Remember the adult coloring-book craze? Or the stratospheric rise of romantasy?) But many in publishing believe the decline in serious nonfiction is more existential. “The trend couldn’t be clearer,” said Jonathan Karp, the former chief executive of Simon & Schuster and publisher of the new Simon Six imprint. “This is a sea change and people should wake up and realize we’re living in a new world.” One culprit for the shift: a new media diet for fans of more serious nonfiction. … Sixty-two percent of men and 54% of women consumed a podcast in the prior month, according to a recent survey by Edison Research at SSRS, up from 46% and 39%, respectively, in 2023. “When we have internal meetings to talk about this problem, it always comes around to podcasts,” said Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of the Harper Group at HarperCollins Publishers. “The man who wants to read American history is now tuning into one of the many good podcasts about history that lends the quiet attention to a serious subject he’s looking for. It makes the idea of sitting down with a 700-page Ron Chernow book less appealing. You’ve scratched that itch.” Source: Wall Street Journal Remarkable report by Novara from the nationalist rally in London in mid May. Anna Airy, Leopard Moth and Plums, 1915 If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
Budget conference: Florida State nets $174M in PECO funding
The sum includes nearly a $92M investment in the joint FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.
Ebola outbreak now third largest recorded and "spreading rapidly"
Ebola outbreak risk level increased as deaths reach 177 with nearly 750 cases.
Three arrested after $250K reported stolen from Thomas Co. business over span of nearly a year
Three people were arrested after a Thomas County business owner reported a theft from their business.
Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ hit with another legal challenge
The Trump administration’s newly created nearly $1.8 billion fund for allies of President Donald Trump who say they were wrongly targeted by the government was hit with a second lawsuit on Friday, adding to the growing legal and political backlash facing the White House.
Scientists discover thriving hard-substrate fauna in Oceania's deep sea
In the crushing darkness of the hadal zone—deep ocean trenches plunging 6,000 m to nearly 11,000 m—scientists have uncovered a hidden community. A study published in Science on May 14 reports the discovery ...
Shakeup at JPL? Control over iconic NASA center could change for 1st time in nearly 100 years
This is part of an even-larger "restructuring" at NASA.
Google has apparently ended updates for every Chromecast except one
Following a strange issue causing first-generation Chromecast devices to fail, Google has ended software updates for nearly every other Chromecast...
The Democrats’ Autopsy Isn’t Helpful. New Ideas Are
At long last, and after much scrutiny, the Democratic National Committee’s audit of the 2024 election cycle is out. And so are the knives. The nearly 200-page report landed with a thud, angering the party faithful just five months before an election that demands Democrats play error-free ball. While the DNC has oddly distanced itself from its own report, which hardly seems that revelatory or controversial, actual Democrats already seemed to be implementing some of the lessons.
Bungie reportedly eyeing up "significant" layoffs, no plans for Destiny 3: what happens after Destiny 2's final update in June?
Nearly nine years later, the writing is on the walls for Destiny 2 as Bungie looks ahead to a very uncertain future.
Poll shows voter confidence in economy plummeting to a nearly 4-year low
Concerns about rising costs are a problem for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections as Trump struggles to deliver on affordability pledges.
Philadelphia correctional health workers go weeks without pay after YesCare bankruptcy
Medical staff at six Philadelphia correctional facilities have gone nearly a month without pay after their employer, YesCare, filed for bankruptcy, prompting the city to step in with emergency support.
5 Notable Moments From Candace Owens’s Warm Interview With Hunter Biden
In a nearly two-hour conversation, Mr. Biden discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol, and Ms. Owens apologized for her past remarks about him.
UC Davis Undergraduates Take Top Prize at Big Bang! Business Competition
UC Davis Mike and Renée Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship awarded nearly $100,000 at the 26th annual Big Bang! Business Competition, with the top prize going to First Bite, a biomedical engineering student team developing a safer device to secure breathing tubes for infants.
Nearly 1.2 billion people worldwide are living with mental disorders. The number has been growing
Nearly 1.2 billion people had a mental disorder in 2023, a new study has found — reflecting a 95.5% increase since 1990.
Korean Content Leaders Take Stock After a Decade of Growth and Look to Future: ‘Korean Entertainment is Everywhere’
The world of Korean entertainment has come a long way since “Gangnum Style” set dancers galloping around the world nearly 15 years ago. Korean content industry leaders on both sides of the Pacific gat...
Best of Santa Cruz County entertainment, arts & food events this weekend, May 21-25
With the long weekend nearly here, check out things to do around Santa Cruz County with a recommendation from Lily Belli and a specially curated list from Lookout's BOLO events calendar.
Michigan business leaders launch statewide alliance to boost startup ecosystem
Nearly 100 organizations from across Michigan are joining forces to establish a statewide innovation alliance.
Stuck in the hospital? A WA program offers a path to speed recovery, save money
On any given day in Washington, state estimates show nearly 850 patients are medically ready for discharge, but myriad barriers keep them in the hospital.
Bonus 228: The $1.776B Political Question
Every so often a story comes along that is so brazen, so cleanly emblematic of the moment we are living through, that staying quiet about it feels like a kind of complicity unto itself. Monday’s announcement by the Department of Justice that the Acting Attorney General has unilaterally created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate so-called “victims of lawfare” is one of those stories. And the reason I want to write about it here, in a newsletter ostensibly devoted to the Supreme Court and the law and politics surrounding it, is that I’m increasingly worried that we’re asking the wrong institution to save us from one of the most offensive, alarming, and anti-constitutional things we’ve seen from any president in American history. As I explain below the fold, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is not principally a legal problem awaiting a judicial fix. It is a shockingly egregious political abuse—the President suing his own government, purporting to settle with himself, and routing nearly $2 billion from the Treasury to his own supporters as a not-so-subtle (and not-so-formal) reward, if not an incentive, for political violence. And the Constitution’s answer to political abuses of this kind and magnitude is a political remedy, not a legal one. In his majority opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius (the Affordable Care Act case from 2012), Chief Justice Roberts defended the Court’s endorsement of Congress’s power to adopt the individual mandate by noting that it is “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” As much of a judicial supremacist as I am, that sentiment is, for better or worse, an entirely correct (and, in the long term, normatively desirable) institutional assessment. One can believe in substantial judicial power without believing that literally every political dispute in our country can and should be resolved by unelected judges. The real upshot of this latest headline (among so, so many other similar headlines) is that it is past time to reinvigorate impeachment—not because conviction is realistic in this Senate, or even because impeachment itself is feasible in this House, but because forcing every member of Congress to vote on the record whether this brazen, corrosive, and affirmatively dangerous corruption is impeachable is itself a point worth fighting for (and fighting with our friends over). Assuming the courts will save us absolves our political leaders of both responsibility and accountability for allowing this kind of mischief to continue, and it absolves all of us of our responsibility to refuse to tolerate those who would just as quickly shrug their shoulders and move on. For those who aren’t paid subscribers, we’ll be back (no later than) Monday with our continuing coverage of the Supreme Court. For those who are, please read on.
Maternity care deserts are common in Louisiana. Compare states, parishes
Nearly one-third of Louisiana parishes face limited or no access to maternity care, impacting maternal and infant outcomes. Figures from Tulane University's Newcomb Institute reveal stark disparities across the state.
The numbers behind global mental health and its different disorders
Nearly one in eight people in the world lives with a mental disorder, and one person dies by suicide every 43 seconds.
e.l.f. Beauty plans price cuts to court price-sensitive shoppers
After the company cut the price of e.l.f.'s Halo Glow skin tint from $18 to $14, sales picked up nearly 40%.
Oregon unemployment holds at 5.2% for fourth month; health care adds nearly 2,000 jobs
Oregon unemployment holds at 5.2% for fourth month; health care adds nearly 2,000 jobs
Musk’s SpaceX discloses massive losses ahead of expected record-breaking IPO
The company, whose initial public offering is expected to attract record investment, had nearly $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 but overall lost $4.9 billion.
Scientists Warn AI Slop Is Wreaking Havoc in the Research World
A new study finds that AI hallucinations produced nearly 150,000 fake citations appearing in research papers.
AMD Announces Ryzen AI Halo, the Compact DGX Spark and Mac Mini Rival
AMD today released Ryzen AI Halo, a compact AI development computer designed by AMD to serve as a nearly full-stack machine for AI development, inferencing, and generative AI content creation. Ryzen AI Halo is designed to strike a unique balance of price, performance, and capabilities that rival App...
Why legal experts say Trump's new 'anti-weaponization' fund is unprecedented
President Donald Trump’s administration has created a nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay people who say they were victims of government “weaponization,” raising questions about whom among his allies and supporters – including those who rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6 – might get payouts from taxpayers, as well as what kind of influence Trump will wield over the fund.
Runoff surprises and shockwaves: What Tuesday’s results may reveal about Georgia’s political mood
According to the Georgia Secretary of State's website, with a nearly 28% turnout of active voters, more than two million people cast a ballot in the May 19 Georgia primary election. A panel of political analysts discussed what the results and voter turnout will mean for the November midterm election.
Nearly 60% of college students with a psychosis diagnosis are not receiving the recommended mental health treatment
Despite a low overall prevalence of psychosis in the United States, affecting three percent of the population, this condition is a serious public health concern because people often delay seeking care ...
Incoming freshmen get taste of ETHS sports, activities
Evanston Township High School hosted its annual Incoming Freshman Sports and Activity Fair Tuesday evening, drawing nearly 700 attendees to the Willie May
What to know about Ebola and how it spreads, as the outbreak widens
The outbreak has been linked to nearly 600 suspected cases and 139 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This specific virus has no available vaccines or treatments.
Lost for 150,000 years: Rainforest discovery upends human history
For decades, scientists believed ancient humans avoided dense rainforests, treating them as nearly impossible environments for early survival. But a groundbreaking discovery in West Africa is rewriting that story. Researchers uncovered evidence that humans were living deep within rainforest environments in present-day Côte d'Ivoire around 150,000 years ago — far earlier than anyone thought possible.
Taylor Bishop soars toward political career thanks to MSU internships
When Taylor Bishop (Class of 2026) came to Morehead State University from nearly three hours away in Greensburg, he found two things that put him on a clear path to college graduation and his future career. The first was his interest in history growing up, which expanded into political science after he started taking classes at MSU. "I really got interested in politics when I got to Morehead State," Bishop said. "It was like learning a language that I'd never known, and I fell in love with it instantly." The second key factor that shaped much of Bishop's college experience was taking his First-Year Seminar with instructor Rebecca Wright. Wright is also the coordinator of internships for MSU's Center for Career Development & Experiential Education and gave Bishop some important advice. For more information on gaining real-world experience like education abroad and internships at Morehead State University, contact the Center for Career Development & Experiential Education at careerservices@moreheadstate.edu or 606-783-2233. To learn more about MSU's Department of History, Philosophy, Politics, Global Studies and Legal Studies programs, contact hgpl@moreheadstate.edu or 606-783-2655. "You need to get internships wherever you can so it can get you wherever you want." Bishop took those words to heart and for much of his undergraduate career, he benefited from several meaningful experiences outside of the classroom that expanded both his knowledge and his confidence to succeed.
FDA approves first-in-class hypertension drug from AstraZeneca
The pivotal trial for baxdrostat showed nearly double-digit placebo-adjusted systolic blood pressure reduction.
Blanche defends nearly $1.8 billion 'anti-weaponization' fund
The acting attorney general told lawmakers there will be quarterly reports with information about payout recipients
Scientists solve 200-year-old puzzle of how tobacco plants make nicotine
Scientists have uncovered how tobacco plants naturally make nicotine, solving a mystery that has puzzled researchers for nearly two centuries. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, could ...
Live Results: Oregon midterm state and congressional primaries
Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek and the nearly two dozen challengers hoping to defeat her are among the candidates who will seek their parties’ nominations for state and federal offices in Tuesday’s primary.
Lauxera Capital Partners raises a hefty €520M for health, medtech companies
Lauxera Capital Partners has nearly doubled the size of its first funding drive with a €520 million ($605 million) raise for health and medical technology companies. | Lauxera Capital Partners has nearly doubled the size of its first funding drive with a €520 million ($605 million) raise for health and medical technology companies.
Blanche will face questions from lawmakers over a nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears on Capitol Hill for his first congressional testimony since taking over at the Justice Department.
U.S. Senate to examine sports gambling’s ‘mental health crisis’
Americans wagered a record $165 billion on sports in 2025, while nearly 20 million people reported "problematic gambling behavior."
It took 20 years and nearly $100,000 to pay off my student loans
I finally made the last payment on my student loans. It's been hard paying for a career I left years ago.
Former leader of major Durham political group indicted on embezzlement charges
Cassandra Stokes, former chair of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, is accused of misappropriating nearly $75,000.
Some Pensacola Beach businesses seeing payoff from traffic increase but others are hurting
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- A record number of cars made their way onto Pensacola Beach on Saturday. Nearly 28,000 cars passed through the Bob Sikes Toll Plaza.
School science experiment fire leaves student with severe burns on nearly half her body
Multiple businesses came together to support a student who was injured in an accident during a school science experiment.
School science experiment fire leaves student with severe burns on nearly half her body
Multiple businesses came together to support a student who was injured in an accident during a school science experiment.
School science experiment fire leaves student with severe burns on nearly half her body
Multiple businesses came together to support a student who was injured in an accident during a school science experiment.
What to know about Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-fueled fund for his allies
The unprecedented lawsuit President Donald Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns years ago has led to an unprecedented arrangement that will make nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds available to allies of the president who say they were unfairly investigated by the government in the past.
Indianapolis 500: Alexander Rossi and Pato O'Ward involved in huge practice crash
Rossi's car snapped loose in Turn 2 before nearly flipping over.
Children’s Mental Health Visits Have Shot Up, Research Shows
Doctor’s visits for children’s anxiety rose by more than 250 percent over 10 years, according to a study of nearly two million children.
New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science
From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. The resulting system already significantly outperforms general-purpose AI tools like GPT-4 at predicting material properties, and the team hopes it can accelerate scientific discovery by serving as a robust research partner that provides grounded insights and generates step-by-step instructions for synthesizing novel materials. A paper describing this work was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. “Traditional simulations can provide the physical rigor required for materials science, yet their computational cost remains prohibitive for high-throughput screening. Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Oregon’s primaries
Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek and the nearly two dozen challengers hoping to defeat her are among the candidates on the ballot in Oregon's primary.
AP Decision Notes: What to Expect in Oregon’s Primaries
WASHINGTON (AP) — Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek and the nearly two dozen challengers hoping to defeat her are among the candidates who will seek their parties’ nominations for state and federal offices in Tuesday’s primary. Voters will also decide a statewide ballot measure that would raise ...
Indianapolis Tabbed No. 3 Best Sports Business City by Sports Business Journal
CHARLOTTE – Sports Business Journal (SBJ) has named Indianapolis as the No. 3 Best Sports Business City in the United States, the organization announced on Monday. The Best Sports Business Cities™ list highlights the top 50 cities for businesses operating in and around sports and influences strategic direction for sports business professionals across the United States. Started in 2023, Best Sports Business Cities™ is an editorial initiative developed by Sports Business Journal, the industry’s leading news source on the business of sports. Using extensive data from dozens of sources and insights from nearly 120 influential sports business executives, SBJ evaluated more than 2,000 markets to identify the top cities based on opportunity, economic environment and industry sentiment to identify cities with strong business presence, hiring potential and long-term investment viability.
Indianapolis Tabbed No. 3 Best Sports Business City by Sports Business Journal
CHARLOTTE – Sports Business Journal (SBJ) has named Indianapolis as the No. 3 Best Sports Business City in the United States, the organization announced on Monday. The Best Sports Business Cities™ list highlights the top 50 cities for businesses operating in and around sports and influences strategic direction for sports business professionals across the United States. Started in 2023, Best Sports Business Cities™ is an editorial initiative developed by Sports Business Journal, the industry’s leading news source on the business of sports. Using extensive data from dozens of sources and insights from nearly 120 influential sports business executives, SBJ evaluated more than 2,000 markets to identify the top cities based on opportunity, economic environment and industry sentiment to identify cities with strong business presence, hiring potential and long-term investment viability.
America wrestles with its ‘Leaving MAGA’ phase
For those Americans who glance at President Donald Trump and only see a raving lunatic, little is more confounding than the millions of MAGA adherents who discern a force for good. Reconciling these differing viewpoints feels nearly impossible. Dismissing this conflict as just politics misses the visceral intensity of the emotions embraced on each side […]
Five Points businesses say IRONMAN road closures hurt access, customers; city promises better communication
Jacksonville’s first-ever IRONMAN brought nearly 2,000 competitors to a route spanning parts of Duval and St. Johns counties this weekend, drawing crowds downtown, and prompting widespread complaints about traffic, road closures and access issues in neighborhoods like Riverside’s Five Points.
A 750 HP Mustang Took On A Dodge Demon And The Results Weren't Even Close
A 1,025-hp Dodge Demon took on a 750-hp Ford Mustang in a drag race and finished nearly a second quicker, with a faster mile-per-hour as well.
Lebanon War Losses Exceed $26 Billion Since 2024, Business Leader Warns
In remarks published Sunday by the Lebanese newspaper Ad-Diyar, Al-Bawab said that nearly $12 billion of the losses are needed for reconstruction efforts, warning that the figure will continue to rise if the conflict persists.
Packers last Wednesday game came nearly a century ago
The NFL has successfully invented a new timeslot with the Packers and Rams playing on “Thanksgiving Eve” this year. And though a game on the night before Thanksgiving might be a new phenomenon, it’s not the first time the Packers have played on a Wednesday. Buckle up, because this is a weird one. Though it’s […]
A unique Oregon law allows it to block healthcare deals. In five years, the state hasn’t done so once
Lawmakers said that giving the state oversight would stop multibillion-dollar deals from reducing care and increasing costs. Some who supported the law say it hasn’t been nearly as effective as they hoped.
2️⃣ goals in two minutes ignites United vs Forest encounter
Man United were cruising in their Premier League clash against Nottingham Forest at half time. The Red Devils led after Luke Shaw ended his nearly four-year goal drought with a fifth-minute strike.Mic...
Kissimmee mayor seeks to shut ethics probe over city grants to her businesses
Three businesses owned by Espinosa and her family received nearly $50,000 from a program paid with federal dollars but overseen by Kissimmee staff.
SpaceX Dragon Docks to Station Filled with New Science Experiments
At 6:37 a.m. EDT, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module, carrying nearly 6,500 pounds of food, supplies, and equipment for the Expedition 74 crew. This is the 34th SpaceX commercial resupply services mission to the space station for NASA.
I quit Google after 18 years. I felt pressured to adopt AI too quickly
A man who worked at Google for nearly 20 years quit because he felt unhappy with its AI policy.
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success
At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
Randy Bennett's 1st ASU roster nearly set
A look at what ASU's starting lineup could like and where the roster could use more help ahead of Randy Bennett's first season at the helm.
As global crises multiply, scores of US diplomats say they have been forced out
Amid ongoing foreign policy crises around the globe and as the Trump administration struggles to reach a deal to end the war with Iran, the State Department last week finalized the firings of nearly 250 foreign service officers in a brief, impersonal email.
Prep Sports Report: Brossart scoring machine takes team title in Class 1A girls region track meet
By Terry Boehmker NKyTribune sports reporter The Brossart girls track and field team was a scoring machine that produced points in nearly event during the Class 1A, Region 4 meet on Friday at Brossart. In 11 of the 18 events, Brossart picked up 10 points or more and finished with a 166 team total to...
PGA Championship: Wyndham Clark nearly takes someone's head off ... and it wasn't his fault
Scientists warn that the world’s rivers are running out of oxygen
Rivers around the world are quietly running out of oxygen — and climate change is emerging as the main culprit. A sweeping global analysis of more than 21,000 river systems found that nearly 80% have been steadily losing dissolved oxygen over the past four decades, threatening fish, biodiversity, and the overall health of freshwater ecosystems. Surprisingly, tropical rivers are being hit the hardest, even more than rivers in rapidly warming polar regions.
First-ever direct image of the cosmic web reveals the Universe’s hidden highways
Astronomers have revealed the sharpest image ever captured of a filament in the cosmic web — the enormous hidden structure connecting galaxies across the Universe. The glowing strand stretches 3 million light-years and links two galaxies from nearly 12 billion years ago. By observing this faint intergalactic gas directly for the first time in such detail, scientists gained new insight into how galaxies are fueled and formed.
The world’s richest musician has a nearly $3 billion net worth. Can you guess who it is?
Music is big business.
The ACM Awards are nearly here with first-time host Shania Twain. Megan Moroney leads the nominees
The 2026 Academy of Country Music Awards will take place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas | Talk 1370
Scientists discover hidden “brakes” that stop massive earthquakes
A mysterious underwater fault near Ecuador has been producing nearly identical magnitude 6 earthquakes every five to six years, baffling scientists for decades. Researchers now believe the fault contains hidden “brake zones” where seawater and unusual rock structures work together to stop quakes from becoming even larger. The discovery came from ultra-detailed seafloor recordings that captured how the fault behaves before and after major earthquakes.
Westwood business students win national awards
FROM A NEWS RELEASE ISHPEMING — Eleven Westwood High School business students attended the Business Professionals of America National Leadership Conference, “Amplify Your Impact,” from May 6-10. Nearly 7,000 delegates attended the conference, which was held in Nashville, Tennessee. Three students came home national winners. National award winners are: Lucy Ostola, third place, legal office […]
Democratic primary candidates for comptroller to debate on NY1 stage on May 21
Democrat Thomas DiNapoli has held the position for nearly two decades; he now faces challenges from Drew Warshaw and Raj Goyle.
The Brabus Bodo Makes Aston’s Vanquish Look Underpowered And Cheap
The exclusive GT honors Brabus founder Bodo Buschmann and features a twin-turbo V12 with nearly 1,000 hp
First Round Of Rural Health Transformation Funds Now Available - West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The state’s nearly $200 million award from the federal government for 2026 aims to strengthen rural health systems statewide.
Entertainment: Book of Mormon Sales begin, Hoku Finalists
"The Book of Mormon" returns to the Blaisdell Concert Hall later this year after a sold out Honolulu run nearly a decade ago.
Majority of Florida voters favor tighter limits on sports betting, UNF poll finds
A majority of Florida voters want the state to place tighter limits on sports betting, even as nearly one in four say they have placed an online wager, according to a new statewide poll.
Shania Twain broke down country music's doors. A new generation of women is coming in after her.
Before women dominated country music, Shania Twain broke nearly every rule of the genre to pave the way.
Datavault AI Provides Q1 2026 Business Update Highlighting Tokenization Adoption and Infrastructure Progress
More than $800 million in tokenization contracts signed; generating nearly $100 million in fees expected to be recognized in 2026 First Quarter…...
This founder was nearly homeless after 3 failed startup ideas. Then he built a $150 million business
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Chartbook 449: Voldemort on Threadneedle street. The Bank of England and the "haunted house" of English politics.
Imagine the scene: In some Harry Potter version of 21st-century London, a group of deathless UK Treasury officials gathered from across the last century huddle over warm pints and glasses of Chardonnay. Around the table there are officials from the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1970s, 2022 and today. Inevitably, in May 2026, the subject of conversation is the disintegration of the current Labour government. Despite its huge majority in parliament, it has been reduced to tatters by catastrophic local election result. These exposed the fact that rather than having a government with a clear popular majority, the UK is like most other modern societies divided into 5 segments each of which commands between 26 and 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leadership at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street - where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) work - seem paralyzed. They are caught between mounting discontent over unfairness and the cost of living, and tough fiscal strictures that push them into making unpopular spending decisions. In the London pub, the Treasury officials from across the ages, can barely hide their satisfaction at the latest display of democratic politics caught in the vice-grip of financial logic. “Remember the mur d’argent and the banker’s ramp?” “Just like yesterday!” There are smirks around the table. Then the representative of 2026 pipes up: “One thing you have to say about the current lot (referring to the latest hapless Labour government), you don’t have to teach them about the bond market!” There is a murmur of ascent from the Treasury Mandarins. The trauma of the fiscal crisis of September-October 2022 sits deep. Back then, in the final stages of Tory decay, a ‘mini budget’ that challenged fiscal orthodoxy led to a brief but fierce panic in one of the oldest government bond markets in the world (aka gilt market). Now all you have to do is to mention the “bond market” to hush debate. [ Paul Mason@paulmasonnews In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/ 3:57 PM · May 12, 2026 · 466K Views 224 Replies · 674 Reposts · 3.93K Likes ](https://x.com/paulmasonnews/status/2054229532404519082?s=20) “And the funny thing is”, the young man in the huddle continues, “they don’t even want to talk about … ”. There is a sudden hush. Significant looks are exchanged around the table. About? One of the senior figures puts down his glass with a decisive “clink”. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has entered their thoughts. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a grubby pub in Bloomsbury, two conspirators from the camp of Critical Macrofinance huddle over cans of low-alcohol IPA. They look at each other and blurt out loud: “The Bank!” “Everyone in the bloody Labour party is talking about the bond market. But why aren’t they even mentioning … the Bank of England!?” “Why is no one talking about Voldemort?” In Paul Mason’s blogpost, after much chest-thumping about basic fiscal logic, the basic point about the Bank of England is buried in the fine print at #3 in his list of suggestions as to what a radical Labour government might actually be able to do! [ Conflict & Democracy Down with the bond market! Down with gravity! It may seem unfair to focus on Labour MP Paula Barker for her off-the-cuff assertion that the bond market would have to “fall in line” with Andy Burnham, should he replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But Burnham himself told the New Statesman that Labour had to “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets… Read more 2 days ago · 100 likes · 3 comments · Paul Mason ](https://htsf.substack.com/p/down-with-the-bond-market-down-with?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Back in Bloomsbury they shake their heads and ask: “Didn’t we learn anything from the Eurozone crisis?” Meanwhile, as if summoned to the conversation by some higher force, the “pink pages” announce: “The days of ultra-cheap government borrowing have come to an end” and Martin “Whizzard” Wolf publishes the graph of the season Look at the UK in 2026, perilously positioned on the upper edge of the pack. No wonder no one in London needs any lessons about the “bond market”. But, look again. Imagine how they feel in Rome. What is London’s nightmare in 2026? The nightmare is that you end up like Italy in the early 2010s during the Eurozone crisis. Once comfortably situated in the middle of the pack, watching with horror as your ten-year yields explode to 7 percent and “spreads” become a national nightmare. One of the largest economies in Europe, a founding member of the euro, stigmatized. But the message of the Italian experience is ambiguous. After all, the stigma didn’t last. In 2026, Italy borrows at rates lower not only than the UK but the US. The US, which, as everyone knows, enjoys the “exorbitant privilege” of being the issuer of reserve, safe asets. What kind of magic is this? How did Italy, in the space of fifteen years, go from being good, to bad and back again? Which brings us back to our dissident friends in their Bloombury boozer and their memories of the Eurozone crisis. Italy never was Britain - with its ongoing fiscal deficits. Without interest payments, on primary balance, from 2000 to 2020 Italy ran a tight fiscal ship. Even in 2008 it barely went into deficit and when it was being put on the rack in the early 20210s its primary surplus matched that of austere Germany. So, what happened? How did it end up stigmatized? Of course Italian politics didn’t help. Berlusconi was at the helm and he had legal issues. But amongst friends in the Bloomsbury pub, Berlusconi is a sideshow, the name we whisper to each other is “Trichet”. From 2004 to 2011 the ECB was headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, ex of the French Treasury, more German than the Germans. After 2009 as the news of the Greek fiscal disaster broke, the European bond markets wento into panic mode and Trichet began a brutal game of cat and mouse. Between 2009 and 2011, Trichet intervened in the bond market to help, only when he thought he had compliance with austerity. When he thought they were uncooperative, he withdrew. In the summer of 2011, he even made direct suggestions to his Italian counterparts in Rome, as to how Italy should be governed. It was this cat and mouse game that drove the bond markets crazy and exposed Italy to a violent squeeze. When Mario Draghi took over the ECB at the end of 2011 and declared “whatever it takes”, the pressure on Italy, gradually eased. It is that starring role that has made Draghi into the towering figure in European politics that he remains today. So now you see why voices in London hush when it comes to the Bank of England. “The bond market” isn’t an irresistible objective force like the weather or an avalanche. It can appear like that. But that depends on the way it is being handled, or not handled by the central bank. Which is why the silence about the Bank of England in London right now is so significant. If you think this all sounds a bit fishy, coming from a left-liberal Keynesian like myself, well, let me introduce you to Robin Brooks, who, to put it mildly, plays on a different quidditch team to me. Here, from the position of a fiscal hawk is Robin’s celebratory account of the Bank of England’s role since 2022; In October 2022, at the height of the bond market blow-up in the UK, something incredible happened. Governor Andrew Bailey told British pension funds the Bank of England would end its support program for the country’s fragile gilt market, drawing a line under how much help the central bank was willing to give to exposed pension funds and - implicitly - the government. By the end of that week, Kwasi Kwarteng - the finance minister - had resigned. Prime Minister Liz Truss would soon follow. This episode is so incredible because it contrasts with what happened in the Euro zone earlier that year. Bond markets in Spain and Italy were under pressure amid high inflation and rising interest rates. In the middle of this, Mario Draghi - Italy’s Prime Minister - resigned, compounding pressure on bond markets of high-debt countries on the Euro periphery. Unlike the Bank of England, the ECB caved. It bought Italian and Spanish government bonds in an effort to cap yields and introduced a new tool that signaled to markets it might do such caps more frequently going forward. Faced with pressure on bond markets, the ECB capitulated to political pressure from high-debt countries like Italy and Spain. The Bank of England stood its ground and toppled the Truss government. This kind of thing has long-lasting consequences. It means markets price a higher probability of yield caps in the Euro zone, which keeps Italian and Spanish yields artificially low, while markets feel free to push up UK yields without fear of central bank intervention. As I flagged in yesterday’s post, this means you really can’t compare UK yields to those of other high-debt countries. The UK looks worse, but only because its central bank isn’t interfering with markets. There’s more to this than just that 2022 episode. The Bank of England has also been much more aggressive in its quantitative tightening (QT) than other central banks. If one motivation for quantitative easing (QE) is to lower bond yields - especially longer-dated ones - then it stands to reason QT pushes yields up. The left chart above shows a four-quarter moving average of UK government debt issuance (black line) in percent of GDP and which sectors absorb this issuance, including the Bank of England (blue bars). The right chart above compares the Bank of England’s accumulation or run-off of government bonds (blue line) with that of other central banks, where this blue line is the same as the blue bars in the left chart. The Bank of England was quicker and more aggressive than other central banks in downsizing its bond holdings, so UK yields will have risen more than elsewhere also for this reason, not just because of Governor Andrew Bailey’s remarks in October 2022. Back in October 2025, after a conversation in New York with friends in British politics, my sense of dysphoria was such that I raised the issue of the Bank of England openly in the FT Since 2008, the UK has slid into a deep economic and political predicament. Growth has stagnated to a degree far worse even than in the 1970s. The Tory leadership’s wager on the Brexit referendum spectacularly backfired, leaving the UK isolated from Europe and at the mercy of its special relationship with the US, many of whose political class regard the UK as a basket case. After years of austerity, the Labour party lurched to the left and then back to the centre. The Tory party has been eclipsed by the populist nationalism of Reform. Any British government should be worrying first and foremost about how to restart growth. Instead, Keir Starmer is beset by shades of the gilt market panic triggered by the Liz Truss government in 2022. The debt level is higher than in recent years, but there is no cause for panic. UK debt is at far from critical levels and of long duration. Whether you want to “take back control” or launch progressive economic policy, a democracy dogged by fear of bond market vigilantes is unhealthy. In a country that is a monetary sovereign, this climate points to one thing: a disconnect between the government and the central bank. Since 1997, the independence of the Bank of England has become a sacred cow. But independence is what you make of it. And in the wake of the gilt market crisis of September 2022, relations between the Bank of England and the UK government need a reset. In normal times, there is no doubt that an inflation-targeting independent central bank can serve a country well. But since 2008, the UK and other advanced economies have not had the luxury of such simple problems. To their credit, central bankers around the world have not stood on orthodoxy. After 2008, the US Federal Reserve rescued the global banking system and, through quantitative easing, it stabilised the Treasury market in the face of huge deficits. In Europe, things were trickier. Both the Bank of England under Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank played cat and mouse with national governments. This was a high stakes wager that between 2010 and 2012 escalated bond market tension and triggered a disastrous turn to austerity. Shaken by the impact of those shocks, their successors, Mark Carney and Mario Draghi adopted a more protective stance (assuming you were not the government of Greece). Recall that Draghi’s legendary slogan, “Whatever it takes”, was uttered to face down the City of London’s bond vigilantes. In 2015, Draghi launched QE — financial repression by another name. In 2016, Carney used the authority of the Bank of England to stabilise markets following the vote for Brexit, an exemplary demonstration of how central banks can underpin democratic choice, even when those choices are wrong headed. All these were independent central bankers steeped in the best practice of the 1990s, who recognised that historic crises demanded radical action. It was the price surge of 2021-2023 that poisoned the atmosphere. Though the shock came mainly from the supply side, central banks ended up in the dock. Nowhere more so than in the UK. The Bank of England reacted with aggressive normalisation. Faced with a cost of living crisis, the governor called for workers to accept real wage cuts. In early 2022, as gas prices were at record levels and Russia’s army was poised to invade Ukraine, the Bank adopted a stringent programme of quantitative tightening, elevating interest rates. When the Truss government got itself in trouble, the Bank took almost a week to come to the rescue. Rather than enacting a charade of normality, it is time to recognise that in 2025 the UK faces a period of historic transition. To meet this challenge, what is needed is a new concordat with the Bank. This should not ignore inflationary pressures or the long-run trajectory of debt, but should affirm the priority of reviving investment-led growth. One could follow Donald Trump in demanding interest rate cuts. The Bank could shadow the ECB in its commitment to capping Eurozone yields. But the top priority should be to lay the ghost of September 2022. The Bank’s slowing of QT last month was a concession. An immediate and complete end would send the right signal. Such a concordat will not by itself restore sanity to politics, solve the housing problem or rebuild the NHS. But it would help to lift the fear of bond market crisis, which is paralysing the effort by democratic politicians to answer the fundamental questions facing the nation. Now, that call for a new concordat between government and Bank of Englands seems more urgent than ever. The problem is that in October 2025, Starmer still had some authority. Today the government is in tatters. And when you are the “under the harrow” - to echo a phrase of Montagu Norman’s from the 1920s - it is the worst possible time to consider institutional change. To make general arguments at a time of crisis can only seem like special pleading rather than a general argument for long-term change. The same, unfortunately, is also true for the other basic institutional reform that Britain urgently needs i.e. the abolition of the out-dated first past the post electoral system and its replacement by a moderated form of proportional representation. And thirdly - whilst we are saying the quiet parts out loud - Britain needs to reopen the question of EU membership. What the local election results of 2026 show is that this remains a key issue. And what they also show is that there is a clear majority that would favor a return. Until these basic features of Britain’s political economy are addressed the country will carry on its politics as though in a haunted house, governed by governments that lack actual majorities, conjuring up false constraints whilst ignoring the real ones. This one is for DG and MI. I love writing the newsletter. If you enjoy it too and fancy buying me a coffee once a month, you know what to do. Click below! Subscribe
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