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Robert Charles details Maine's political climate and need for change
Robert Charles, Maine gubernatorial candidate, discusses his strong polling lead despite being outspent. He highlights Mainers' frustration with 'woke' schools, high taxes, crime and insiders, emphasizing a grassroots movement for 'massive change.'
U.S. Small-Business Confidence Ticked Down in May
The National Federation of Independent Business said that its small-business optimism index fell 0.6 points to 95.3 in May, remaining below its 52-year average of 98.0.
US small business sentiment falls in May as inflation worries mount
U.S. small-business sentiment fell in May and the share of owners planning to raise prices over the next three months increased to the highest level in nearly four years, suggesting inflation could remain elevated for a while.
Graham Platner seeks to win Democratic Senate nomination in Maine, and more primary races to watch today
Can Democrats take the Senate? Maine voters may provide a clue
Democrat Graham Platner appears likely to become the party's nominee against Sen. Susan Collins. Platner has been accused of engaging in volatile behavior with women, among other controversies.
Analysis | Maine is bringing Iraq War politics back. This governor is feeling déjà vu.
The state's long-awaited primary is Tuesday.
Will Platner Scandals Dampen Democratic Vote? What to Watch in Tuesday’s Primaries.
Any indication of tepid support for Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, will be seen as a warning sign about his chances against Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent.
A first test for Platner and other key races to watch in Tuesday’s primaries in Maine and beyond
Primaries in four states on Tuesday will offer clues about how much tolerance voters have for candidates embroiled in controversies, while testing President Donald Trump’s sway in a crowded Republican primary and setting up a key race for governor in one of the country’s premier presidential battleground states.
Ohio Small Business Job Openings Decline in May
NFIB’s May Jobs Report shows little change in the employment market as the Small Business Employment Index remained essentially flat.
Small Businesses Outgrow Domestic Payments as Global Sourcing Spreads
An entire generation of American small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have been conducting multinational operations without multinational
Tottenham remain keen on Hearts' Wilson
Hearts forward remains in thoughts of Tottenham as Hibs attacker is due back for pre-season.
Philly skyline, sports complex lights up in blue for injured NJ baseball player
The Philadelphia skyline and several landmarks were lit up in blue to support a 12‑year‑old boy from South Jersey who remains in critical condition after a baseball injury.
What to watch in Tuesday's primaries as Graham Platner tries to clinch Senate nomination in Maine
Voters across Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota head to the polls for another day of primary elections in America
What to watch in Tuesday's primaries as Graham Platner tries to clinch Senate nomination in Maine
Voters across Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota head to the polls for another day of primary elections in America.
New Jersey health inspectors find Delaney Hall food premises ‘satisfactory’
The Democratic governor was also granted limited entry to the immigrant detention center, but remained concerned about conditions.
Platner floats jailing billionaires in fiery pre-primary speech pushing far-left agenda
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner floated the idea of jailing billionaires over campaign finance violations in a fiery pre-primary speech that laid out his far-left agenda.
Mylpf protein serves as a molecular linchpin for muscle health
University of Maine researchers have published new findings about how muscles form, why certain muscle diseases develop and why symptoms may not appear until years after muscle degeneration begins.
How Maine’s Senate race looks similar to another recent major election: From the Politics Desk
Plus, the latest on Israel’s domestic politics amid war with Iran.
Spruce Pine restaurant linked to foodborne illness cases remains open: health officials
The Toe River Health District says five confirmed Salmonella cases have been linked to El Ranchero on Locust Street in Spruce Pine.
Golden Knights forwards remain committed to defense
The entire forward group has made it a point of emphasis to help the Vegas defense corps in the Stanley Cup Final and it has helped give them a 2-1 series lead heading into Tuesday's Game 4.
See you at the Dimon: Immersive live entertainment venue is coming to 950 S. Main St.
(Sponsored) A new era of live theater is taking shape downtown as the Dimon Legacy Theatre prepares for its preview opening in November 2026. This dynamic, custom-built, 21,000-square-foot venue will
We can create the future of science right now
Paul Litvak is the founder and Executive Director of the Robyn Dawes Institute and a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley. He has a PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon where he studied emotions and the sunk cost bias. Over 15 years in industry, he solved a wide range of challenging technical problems. At Meta he created models optimizing the ad review process. At Google he ran experiments to measure social influence. At Airbnb, he was a product manager leading machine learning teams optimizing search ranking and price suggestions. He also co-founded and led product at Rhythmic Health, a venture-backed biosensing startup, creating an accurate low cost system using a color changing strip and a smart phone to measure salivary lactate. The bottleneck At this point, it is uncontroversial to say that science needs to stop using the PDF article as the unit of knowledge and currency. The unbearable slowness of scientific publishing, the profit motive and margins: I’m not saying anything new. The PDF also sucks because it’s hard to extract structured information, which makes it hard to do evidence synthesis. As a result, we do much less evidence synthesis than is needed. And evidence synthesis ultimately undergirds most policy and medical decision-making. I can see second-by-second real-time odds for any sporting or newsworthy event, but a school board can’t see the best evidence on whether their 8th graders should be taught algebra. As a society, we don’t treat this as an important problem. Again, not controversial. Not only is the problem well understood, but the solution has already been laid out. What we need is AI-assisted living evidence synthesis - (1) an open knowledge graph of atomic claims, (2) claims linked to evidence, (3) assessment and synthesis of each piece of evidence, and (4) continuous updating with new data. What few realize (yet) is that the technical capacity to build this vision for a significant portion of science already exists. Not only that, scientists and startup teams are already building many of these components. I know this because I’ve been surveying the space and talking to many of the builders. There are some missing pieces: for example, evaluations of how well some of the components work. But at this point, most of what’s missing is a fully end-to-end working integration of all of these parts. In the rest of this essay, I’m going to lay out all the parts of a working living evidence layer for science and who is working on them, and propose concrete next steps for building this system. What’s now possible The diagram above outlines the components of a living evidence synthesis platform, including some of the teams working on each component1. Scientific PDFs are processed into claims with associated evidence. The evidence is subjected to a forensic audit, methodological evaluation and robustness and reproducibility checks. Finally it’s given a weight in a continuously updating synthesis. What follows is a description and status of each component and a few of the teams working on them. Document understanding The first thing you need to be able to do is turn an article into structured data. Mostly that means parsing PDFs. There are often multicolumn layouts that confuse non-specialized PDF to text processing libraries. For scientific papers, there is the added complexity of parsing formulas and tables and figures. This is a really hot area - there are startups offering APIs, and it seems like a new open source package gets posted to Github every few weeks. What follows isn’t exhaustive. A package called GROBID was the state of the art for a while, they didn’t update their package for nearly two years until very recently. In the meantime reducto.ai released an AI powered PDF extraction API, PaddleOCR became popular, IBM released a model called Docling, and both Mistral and Gemini created models and libraries. I also know of at least one other well-funded psychology research group working on a paper parser. By contrast, there are few open evals in this space, with no extensive evals for complex table comprehension in particular. Nonetheless, I’m confident this will be a solved problem soon, given the combination of LLM advances and developer interest. Hypothesis level extraction There has been increasing interest in comprehending the extracted text of papers and linking information to evidence for each hypothesis. A lot of work has already been done. Trialstreamer (Marshall et al. 2020) and RobotReviewer LIVE (Marshall et al. 2023) demonstrated automated extraction of trial population, intervention, and outcome at scale on clinical RCTs. PaperQA2 (Skarlinski et al. 2024) and Ai2 ScholarQA (2024) extended this to retrieval-augmented question answering with citation grounding. Elicit, Consensus, and SciSpace operationalized claim-level extraction for end users. OpenEval (Booeshaghi et al. 2026) is the most recent and most ambitious: 1.96 million atomic claims extracted from 16,087 eLife manuscripts using Claude Sonnet 4.5, grouped into ~299,000 results, with LLM evaluations showing 81% agreement with human peer review on a 2,487-paper subset. None of these solutions link claims to test-statistics, as you would need to evaluate randomized controlled trials. This is why I built the evidence.guide API - to extract hypotheses and associated test statistics from behavioral science papers. The best public eval of this kind of extraction I’m aware of comes from the recent SCORE project - they had humans code thousands of psychology papers to extract their claims by hand. It would be extremely helpful to the world if all scientific PDFs were available as structured open data. I’ve been working to make this happen, both directly at Berkeley and through coordination with large entities I can’t yet speak of; as hard as it is to do, I think it’s possible2. Forensic audit A lot of work has been done on forensic audit, but some gaps remain. Of course, for biology papers that rely on images for evidence, there are a variety of tools (notably Proofig and ImageTwin) to spot anomalies. These are still well short of what sleuths like Elizabeth Bik can do on her own, but these tools are constant companions among fraud analysts. There’s someone working on auditing Excel files for anomalies, and a number of teams are automating numerical checks like GRIM and SPRITE, including Scrutiny project, the INSPECT-SR team as well as statcheck. The regcheck team is building a way to use AI to compare preregistrations to analyses in papers, to ensure there aren’t significant deviations. Nonetheless, there are many other kinds of anomalies to screen for, both public and less publicly known. And there are no formal evals for anomaly detection that I’m aware of. Still, there’s a lot to draw from in this space and I’m pretty certain we will be able to scan papers for most kinds of obvious anomalies in the near future. Methodological review This area has been white hot, though I fear for many of the startups in this space, because this capability may become commoditized. There are at least six different AI peer review companies, including Refine.ink, Reviewer3, ReviewerZero.ai, Q.E.D. Science, Paper Wizard, and Isitcredible. Coarse (a pun on refine) was also recently created as an open source alternative. These systems provide qualitative feedback on the content of papers, spotting methodological weaknesses and mathematical errors. They seem to work pretty well, and many academics report bitterly that they exceed the average quality of typical peer reviewers. But there are few evals here either. What evals exist so far involve using LLM-as-judge (circularity problems abound) or comparing against human reviews of questionable quality. What you’d ideally want is an eval that measures capturing known errors in papers3. Reproducibility and robustness Another active area has been using AI agents to automate computational reproducibility4 and robustness5 checks in papers that report numerical results. For more recent papers where data and code are available, AI agents can see whether they can re-run the analyses and produce the numbers reported in the published paper. In addition to a handful of individual academics who have been experimenting using Claude Code for this, the Institute for Replication is a leading group working on building an end to end system. The evals related to this problem are the most mature, with CORE-Bench (Siegel, Kapoor, Narayanan 2024) and PaperBench (OpenAI 2025) available to benchmark agents on this task. There is also work on getting AI agents to test alternative ways of analyzing the data to ensure the results are robust to small analytic design choices. Synthesis This is the most underdeveloped area where significant investment is required. Although some automated evidence synthesis systems exist — for example, otto-sr is building an AI agent to write systematic reviews — none of these incorporate the full range of paper level signals to weight evidence appropriately. Nor is there anything like an eval or a gold standard for a good systematic review. Arguably Cochrane reviews are the closest we have to gold standard human systematic reviews, though I’ve heard academics in the know complain about their uneven quality. A key question for a synthesis platform is how to weight anomalies and methodological issues in assessing the quality of a piece of evidence. This is an unsolved problem and one I’m very keen to work on. Continuous updating There are many pieces of basic infrastructure available for monitoring for new research and initiating updates. OpenAlex is the current open citation graph. Retraction Watch integrated into Crossref in October 2023. Scite tracks how citations support, contrast, or mention prior claims. The Living Evidence Network demonstrated continuous-update workflows in clinical guidelines. Engineering this is a relatively straightforward task. When you look over this technical architecture and all the progress being made, it’s hard not to be optimistic that a living guide to scientific evidence will be built. The stakeholders are ready The social infrastructure for this is starting to coalesce — it’s not just a pie in the sky academic exercise to imagine this coming into existence. Institutions like the Center for Open Science, the Institute for Replication, the INSPECT-SR, the Living Evidence Network and more are all working on scaling work to improve research quality. Funders are also aligned. The Sloan Foundation has funded living evidence work through COS. Coefficient Giving supports the Institute for Replication and COS. The Astera Institute and the Institute for Progress have shown interest in this space. NIH has established an Office for Replication and Reproducibility. Although there are (very unfortunately) serious headwinds in science funding generally, there is an active group of funders interested in metascience. A brief word about what I’ve been doing at RDI. First, as a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley I’ve been actively figuring out how a non-profit and a public university can conduct and make public the results of large-scale academic article data mining. With some of the money I raised from donors, I commissioned a legal analysis of recent case law and publisher text data mining (TDM) agreements in order to understand whether a massive open data mining of academic articles is possible (with caveats, it is). I’ve also been working to bring together stakeholders in this space, and identify gaps. I’ve also been doing some software development in this space, with more to come. A pilot proposal The assumption undergirding all of this is that an AI, given all this information, would make the right judgment about a scientific claim with lots of conflicting evidence, weighing all the factors appropriately. That’s the hypothesis we need to test. Randomized control trial research is the best place to focus on first. RCTs are used to make many of the important decisions in society - from medical trials to public policy changes. And they use a relatively uniform set of inferential statistics with lots of known and available diagnostics. Behavioral science experiments, within the broader realm of RCTs, should be first used as a testbed whose results can be generalized. Because behavioral science is at the vanguard of open science practices, replications abound (there are thousands of them) to serve as ground truth training data. Key Hypothesis Therefore the pilot would test, in behavioral RCTs that have been replicated, whether the quality of evidence for a claim can be used to accurately predict whether that claim will replicate. Secondary Hypotheses Compared to claims that replicated, non-replicated claims demonstrate a greater share of forensic anomalies in their source literatures. Hypothesis level claim and statistic extraction is accurate enough to scale living evidence without onerous human review costs. Replication prediction is more accurate than prediction markets6 or journal prestige. If all the different quality signals we gather do accurately predict which studies will replicate, then we can use that model to score evidence to power the living evidence layer. Why this is informative regardless of outcome If the pilot succeeds, the architecture extends to medical RCTs (where Living Evidence already operates and integration is mostly about claim representation), then to slices of basic biology with stable replication structure. If it fails, the field learns which quality signals are load-bearing and which ones metascience has oversold. Either result is a contribution to knowing what the literature supports. Implications for funders Because this burgeoning ecosystem of builders already exists, a well-informed philanthropic or government funder could play a crucial catalyzing role in bringing this future about. They could play at least three roles: creating open structured datasets, publishing open benchmarks and incentivizing the solving of key technical challenges. First, open archives of papers that the government maintains, like PubMed, could be turned into structured data amenable to large scale metascience and claim aggregation. I know the US government already has an interest in doing this, though some key open questions remain unanswered. How do you determine the best models and systems for accurately extracting information from papers? How can you establish a robust way to allow researchers to flag errors and correct them? And finally, how do you create a legal regime in working with publishers to maximize the scope of available papers? For the latter, a university or a private philanthropy may be better positioned to make structured data publicly available under journal subscription terms or fair use. Philanthropists or government funders could also coordinate to create or commission benchmarks that evaluate whether important problems have been solved. For example, an open benchmark for claim extraction from a range of different scientific article types would be extremely helpful. Ensuring the underlying data are accurate is vital for creating these evaluations. I’ve discussed opportunistically using various human-created datasets for this purpose, but a consistent problem is that errors in human data make it difficult for them to serve as a gold standard. Finally, with structured data and benchmarks available, the government or private philanthropy could use them to incentivize groups to develop machine learning systems that meet these benchmarks. Prizes are one potentially valuable tool for this. For example, you could establish a prize for a system that accurately updates a living meta-analysis for a small set of claims. Prizes are particularly useful as signals of problem importance, and can help create vibrant ecosystems of public and private research—see, for example the role the government played in kickstarting the current work on nuclear fusion. Conclusion The drawbacks of the current scientific publishing system are known. Scientists agree, metascientists agree, philanthropists agree: the published PDF plus citation graph isn’t the right substrate for maintaining a representation of the evidence base in science. The pieces needed to build the alternative either already exist or are rapidly taking shape. The community is forming around exactly this problem, with concrete partnerships and shared infrastructure. A pilot should start on behavioral science RCTs because that’s the slice of empirical science most amenable to legibility, where replication ground truth is richest, and where the failure modes are best documented. What’s been missing is the galvanizing mission to assemble these pieces into something that works. That’s what I’m proposing to build. *** 1 I have a broader field map that I’ll release publicly soon. This is me, building in public! 2 If this is something that you are excited about, please reach out and talk to me. 3 More on this very soon too! 4 This tests whether, given the code and the data, you can get the same statistics as reported in the published paper. 5 This tests whether the results are the same as a paper’s given alternative analytical decisions in conducting the analysis (like outlier omission). Closely related is the idea of a “multiverse” where you come up with many different ways of answering the same underlying research question with the same data, and test whether the results hold in all those alternative methods. There’s been work on the latter as well. 6 Some of the replications, e.g. those from the SCORE project, had paired the experiments with forecasts from prediction markets. So we get to look at this for free.
Live Results: Maine midterm primaries
Primaries for U.S. Senate and U.S. House on Tuesday will set the stage for a midterm general election in which Maine is expected to play a critical role in deciding control of both chambers.
Democrat who led #MeToo charge stays silent as accusations emerge against Senate hopeful Graham Platner
Sen. Gillibrand, who led calls for Al Franken's resignation during #MeToo, remains silent on allegations against Maine candidate Graham Platner.
Steve Rao: The AI revolution must include Main Street
Whether it is a family-owned manufacturer exploring automation, a local retailer adopting AI-powered marketing tools or a startup building the next generation of innovative products, small businesses will be among the primary beneficiaries — and users — of AI.
77 headless skeletons found in a field date back 7,000 years
The carefully arranged Neolithic remains show signs of skillful skull removal.
Long-time Quincy business up for sale, owners look for new takers
The Butcher Block, located at 819 Maine St., has posted that it is up for sale.
Will Graham Platner's tattoo, sexting scandals impact Maine primary?
Graham Platner is still expected to win the Maine Senate Democratic primary. But can he keep his momentum through another controversy?
Platner’s ‘living on the sea’ claim dismantled by critics as financial docs paint a different picture
Graham Platner claims he makes a living on the sea, but financial disclosures show his oyster farming income is dwarfed by disability payments.
‘The Targeted’: Six characters in search of a plot
A Red Orchid Theatre's world premiere of Hanna Kime's “The Targeted” on the Chopin Theatre Mainstage takes a provocative look at a problematic subculture, but the playwright merely has a
SEE IT: Maine voters sound off on Platner's divisive campaign as crucial primary nears: 'He's a disgrace'
Maine voters are split on whether Democrat Graham Platner's controversies, including a Nazi-linked tattoo and allegations, disqualify him from the Senate.
UMaine researchers identify a molecular linchpin for muscle health
Jared Talbot University of Maine researchers have published new findings about how muscles form, why certain muscle diseases develop and why symptoms may not appear until years after muscle degeneration begins. The study, published in Nature Communications, focuses on a protein called Mylpf that is essential for the development of…
Platner calls Fetterman ‘a--hole’ at town hall as Democratic feud heats up
Graham Platner calls Sen. John Fetterman "an a--hole" at a Maine town hall days before the Democratic Senate primary election against rivals.
International business students share their experience at Lynn
At Lynn University, international business students learn business analytics, global marketing, cross-cultural communications and more to pursue a wide…
A drug may help people on GLP-1 meds preserve muscle
In a clinical trial, an experimental antibody reduced lean-mass loss in people on a GLP-1 drug. Whether that improves health is unclear.
Business Monday: Century-old Kona Inn Restaurant celebrates new ownership with revamped menu, dining space
The new owners, the Island Restaurant Group, are working to breathe life into the struggling old eatery while maintaining its vibe and nostalgia.
Challenge filed in transgender athlete case
The brief asserts that Bellows, a Democrat who is running for governor, didn’t abide by the state constitution, which gives Mainers broad powers to bring forward citizen initiatives.
Mosquito bite prevention remains best defense against West Nile virus | Health and Human Services North Dakota
North Dakota Health and Human Services (HHS) reminds people that preventing mosquito bites is the most effective way to avoid West Nile virus. Although no human cases of West Nile virus have been reported to HHS so far this year, there is a risk of contracting the disease anytime mosquitoes are active.
Graham Platner gets a lift from friendly Maine crowd
The Democratic primary is still seen as Platner's to win, but he is facing questions about his past that could make it difficult to defeat longtime incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Understanding anorexia’s grip on the brain could unlock new therapies
One-third of people with anorexia nervosa don’t recover and treatment has remained stagnant for years. Now we’re beginning to understand how the condition takes over the mind
Join the Monks this Summer! 2026 Sports Camps Information
STANDISH, Maine – Looking to sharpen your skills, explore a college campus, and enjoy summer on the shores of Sebago Lake? Saint Joseph's College of Maine is excited to announce a full slate of 2026 Summer Sports Camps designed for athletes of all levels and interests. From youth development clinics to elite prospect experiences, there's something for everyone.
The Sports-Entertainment Icon Finding a New Generation of Fans (HBBIP #138)
How the WWE has leveraged creator marketing to advance its current stars and maintain cultural relevancy.
Watch Southwest COO on Strong Business Travel, Price Increases
Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson says business travel has remained “incredibly strong” despite higher costs related to the War in Iran. He speaks with Lisa Abramowicz on the sidelines of the IATA Conference in Brazil.
Maine's Electoral Debate Returns
A Nebraska proposal revives questions about Maine's unique presidential voting system.
Main Line Health, United Healthcare contract dispute could leave 32,000 patients out-of-network later this month
The nonprofit health system's current UnitedHealthcare contracts for employer-sponsored insurance and Medicare Advantage plans expire June 30. The plans cover 32,000 Main Line patients.
Candidate endorsements in Maine and NH and national politics: Letters
Letter writers endorse Manzur in NH and Meyer in Maine, decry laws restricting abortion and assert congressional Republicans enable Trump corruption.
Excitement builds as LMH Health draws closer to completing Therapy Services renovations
The finish line is in sight for LMH Health’s renovation of its facility at the intersection of 6th and Maine Streets. Once complete, LMH Health Therapy Services, currently located on the second floor of the Main Campus, will relocate to a newly expanded clinic designed with patients in mind. The larger space will make it easier […]
Small Business Spotlight: Dog-Eared Books
Main St. is home to many local businesses, including the only locally owned bookstore in Ames. Dog-Eared Books has been open since March 8, 2021. They offer a wide variety of books, community events and a small cafe section. The business is owned by Amanda Lepper and Ellyn Grimm, both originally from Ames and both...
Platner holds town hall in Portland as he looks to steady Senate campaign
Graham Platner was met by an enthusiastic and supportive crowd Sunday at a town hall-style event in Maine as the Democrat moves to stabilize his Senate campaign after new reports about his past treatment of women.
Raman overtakes Spencer Pratt in razor-thin race, AP count shows, but race remains uncalled
Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman has overtaken Spencer Pratt in the latest AP vote count, leading by more than 3,000 votes in the race.
China says 'illegal' outbound investment crackdown won't lead to forced liquidation
China's crackdown on "illegal" cross-border investment won't lead to mainlanders' offshore accounts being closed and assets liquidated forcibly, the securities regulator said, amid investor concerns over the fate of $54 billion worth of assets.
Is Macau Outperformance And Community Investment Altering The Investment Case For Melco Resorts & Entertainment (MLCO)?
In the first quarter of 2026, Melco Resorts & Entertainment’s Macau properties generated 87% of group gross gaming revenue and 75% of EBITDA, with both metrics expanding year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter alongside a 1.3 percentage point gain in Macau gross gaming revenue market share. This outperformance in Macau, coupled with Melco’s ongoing support for inclusion-focused events such as the 2026 Inclusion Conference & Festival and the Macau Golf Masters, highlights how operational strength...
With qualifying days away, 5 competitive House seats remain unchallenged
Palm Beach County’s House District 89 is the closest of the bunch, with 2024 presidential results showing just a 1-point Democratic advantage.
Graham Platner takes questions from Maine voters as he looks to stabilize Senate campaign
U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner is holding a town hall-style event where he is taking questions from voters in Maine
Graham Platner gets a lift from friendly Maine crowd after week of damage control in Senate campaign
Graham Platner has been met by an enthusiastic and supportive crowd at a town hall-style event in Maine | KNX News 1070 AM
Graham Platner to take questions from Maine voters as he looks to stabilize Senate campaign
U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner is set to take questions from voters at a town hall-style event in Maine.
Forget corruption: From Graham Platner to Ken Paxton, both parties embrace the politics of hypocrisy
Democrats and Republicans both overlook scandals in their own candidates, from Graham Platner's allegations in Maine to Ken Paxton's history in Texas.
The Virtual OS Museum lets you relive over 600 operating systems right on your desktop
From mainframes, to Mac OS, and everything in between.
2026 Season Opener Countdown: 98 Days Remaining
We continue our countdown to the Panthers opening the 2026 season against the Chicago Bears
Roob's Observations: Even with A.J. gone, Eagles are still loaded on offense
The Eagles may have lost A.J. Brown, but their offense remains loaded heading into 2026.
WHO urges targeted action to strengthen emergency workforce capacities for shared health risks across the Asia-Pacific region
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 11 June 2026 – At a time when the world is more interconnected than ever, the World Health Organization (WHO) is disseminating a comprehensive regional analysis of shared health risks across Asia and the Pacific, urging Member States to invest in enhancing workforce capacities regionwide to mitigate these risks and ensure health systems are better prepared to anticipate, tackle and withstand a range of crises and shocks. Over 100 delegates from 49 countries and areas in the Asia-Pacific region reviewed results from the regional risk analysis during the WHO-led Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APSHAF) Stakeholders Meeting in Malaysia. Synthesizing insights from 21 strategic risk assessments and more than 800 multisectoral experts, the regional analysis highlighted an urgent imperative: countries must proactively invest in emergency workforce preparedness to navigate a landscape where climate hazards, disease outbreaks and geophysical events increasingly overlap. These complex converging crises create devastating, compounding impacts on health systems and communities - reiterating the need for investing in a fit-for-purpose regional health workforce and multisectoral action. Key findings: an evolving risk landscape More than half of the participating countries ranked flooding, cyclones, dengue and pandemic-potential respiratory pathogens as being of high or very high risk, while antimicrobial resistance, landslides and gastroenteritis remain widespread concerns as well. “Given that 51% - over half - of these assessed hazards are deeply interconnected, isolated health interventions are no longer sufficient,” said Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific. “Extreme weather events like cyclones and floods directly trigger subsequent disease outbreaks, while environmental degradation - driven by sea-level rise, coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion - fuels health risks across the Pacific. Mitigating these cascading risks requires unified, cross-sectoral action linking environmental, agricultural and public health policies to build true regional resilience.” Priority recommendations for action To address critical vulnerabilities, WHO calls on Member States in the Asia-Pacific region to urgently prioritize the following strategic actions: Bridge workforce capacity gaps. Embed and standardize emergency preparedness within academia to promote regional workforce interoperability. Foster multisectoral coordination. Address ad-hoc taskforce responses and fragmented surge support through formalized contingency plans and standard operating procedures that are frequently updated and tested. Secure sustainable financing for emergencies. Overcome systemic barriers to access dedicated funding for both immediate anticipatory actions and long-term emergency preparedness initiatives. Enable emergency-ready primary health care. Embed emergency management into public health workforce readiness planning. Ensure that emergency planning is inclusive. Establish clear pathways for inclusive emergency planning that actively involves communities most at risk and other vulnerable groups. Optimize communication. Update risk communication and community engagement strategies, aligning them with seasonal risk calendars. Elevating workforce readiness to meet regional health risks While the gaps identified are significant, the Asia-Pacific region possesses solid foundational pillars, including dedicated clinicians, laboratory staff, rapid response teams, emergency medical teams and extensive community networks. However, to adequately address the compounding nature of modern crises, the various components of the emergency workforce must collaborate cohesively. True resilience depends entirely on transforming this currently fragmented workforce into a highly trained, interconnected and rapidly deployable asset. To achieve this, WHO is actively advancing regional workforce capacities through the Global Health Emergency Corps initiative. This initiative - supported by the Gates Foundation and Institute of Philanthropy - seeks to build a seamless network of emergency workforce across borders and sectors, ensuring that when a crisis strikes, a standardized, well-coordinated and trained workforce is immediately ready to respond. “Scaling up emergency workforce readiness is no longer optional,” said Dr Gina Samaan, Regional Emergency Director for WHO in the Western Pacific. “It is the definitive factor that will determine how effectively the Asia-Pacific region safeguards health and protects lives in an increasingly unpredictable future.” For more information, or to arrange media interviews, contact: Ara Johannes, WHO Western Pacific Health Emergencies Division: johannesa@who.int WHO Western Pacific Communications: wprocom@who.int
Evaluating Expand Energy (EXE) After Business Shift And Barclays Downgrade
Analyst downgrade meets business reset at Expand Energy Expand Energy (EXE) is back in focus after the company outlined a new emphasis on gas marketing and commercial optimization, while Barclays downgraded the stock, highlighting a weaker gas outlook and fewer clear near term catalysts. See our latest analysis for Expand Energy. At a share price of $92.07, the stock has fallen about 15% to 20% on a 3 month and 1 year share price basis, while 3 and 5 year total shareholder returns remain...
How Investors May Respond To OPKO Health (OPK) Boosting Its Nicoya Stake And RAYALDEE Milestones
In early June 2026, OPKO Health reported amending its agreement with Nicoya Therapeutics, gaining a 15% equity stake while maintaining eligibility for up to US$115.0 million in potential milestone payments tied to the commercialization of RAYALDEE for chronic kidney disease patients in Greater China and related territories. This deeper partnership not only expands OPKO’s economic interest in RAYALDEE but also tightens its alignment with Nicoya ahead of planned 2027 regulatory filings across...
Assessing Tencent Music Entertainment Group (NYSE:TME) Valuation After A Prolonged Share Price Decline
Recent performance snapshot Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) has been under pressure, with the stock down 2.4% on the day, 1.5% over the past week, and 33.9% over the past 3 months. Over the past year, the stock has declined 48.1%. The current share price is US$9.08 and the market value is about US$14.3b, with reported annual revenue of CN¥33,441 and net income of CN¥8,856. See our latest analysis for Tencent Music Entertainment Group. For context, the stock’s 1 year total shareholder...
LIVE! Watch UFC Vegas 118 Post-Fight Presser Here
Now that the action is in the books from UFC Vegas 118 earlier tonight (Sat., June 6, 2026) LIVE on Paramount+ from inside UFC’s Meta Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada, fight fans can check out the post-fight presser for all the best reaction and official bonus winners. On a night that featured a main event […]
Tomas Hertl with a Powerplay Goal vs. Carolina Hurricanes
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation: 22 New Screenshots Showcasing Its World, Combat, And More
It’s hard to believe, but after almost a decade, the Unknown Journey will conclude in Final Fantasy Revelation next year. Officially shown off at Summer Game Fest Live this week, Revelation is shaping up to be an exciting conclusion to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake saga, as well as a good-looking game on top of...
Backfire News Weekly Recap: June 4–6, 2026
It was a packed week on Backfire News, with coverage spanning Formula 1, NASCAR history, truck culture, collector cars, and a few somber losses across the racing world. Thirteen posts went live between June 4 and June 6, 2026. Here is the full rundown. Formula 1 in the Spotlight F1 dominated the week. A feature on the Monaco Grand Prix experience explored why the street circuit remains the sport's most iconic and unusual weekend, while a look at a $75 million superyacht captured the glamour that
Massachusetts accounts for 4th-most contributions to Graham Platner campaign
Massachusetts accounts for the fourth-most contributions out of all 50 states sent to controversial Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign, with the Somerville-based Democratic Party PAC sending him an eye-popping $3.6 m…
Mental health must be part of cancer care
Mental health parity laws have been passed to ensure equal coverage of mental and physical health conditions, but access to quality, affordable care remains a challenge for millions of Americans.
Dodgers' Japanese-born starting trio establishes unique MLB mark
With Roki Sasaki establishing himself in his past four starts, Los Angeles' pitching staff remains internationally celebrated.
How the Shortened Belmont Stakes Distance Changes the Race
The Belmont Stakes remains at 1 1/4 miles at Saratoga, creating a different challenge than the traditional 1 1/2-mile race.
Assessing Caesars Entertainment (CZR) Valuation As Digital Growth Supports A 12.4% Undervaluation Estimate
Recent performance snapshot Caesars Entertainment (CZR) has drawn fresh attention after recent trading, with the stock last closing at $29.20. Short term performance has been mixed, with a slight decline over the past day but a small gain over the past week. See our latest analysis for Caesars Entertainment. At around $29.20, the stock has recently posted a 1-month share price return of 5.19% and a year to date share price return of 23.94%. The 1-year total shareholder return of 13.49%...
Why Oscar Health (OSCR) Is Up 10.3% After Leadership Shift And Analyst Upgrade
Oscar Health, Inc. recently amended and restated its employment agreement with co-founder Mario Schlosser as he moved from President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer to Co-Founder & Advisor to the CEO, effective June 1, 2026, while he continues to support the company’s artificial intelligence and digital health agenda and remains on the Board. At the same time, a major Wall Street firm upgraded its view on Oscar Health after Q1 2026 results exceeded expectations and reinforced...
The Trump administration makes it harder for some sick Americans to maintain Medicaid
Millions of sick Americans could have a tougher time retaining – or even signing up for – Medicaid coverage after the first-ever federal work requirement begins in January.
4-star WR Demare Dezeurn decommits from Oklahoma
Four-star Westlake (Calif.) wide receiver Demare Dezeurn has decommitted from Oklahoma, he tells Rivals. Dezeurn had been pledged to the Sooners since September, when he chose them over offers from USC, Nebraska, Michigan, Texas Tech and a host of other programs. However, other schools have remained in contact with him since that initial commitment, pushing […]
Ndicka wanted by Inter, Tottenham and Marseille
Roma defender Evan Ndicka is reportedly on the market for €35m with Tottenham Hotspur, Inter and Olympique Marseille interested, but could also remain.The centre-back came to the Eternal City as a f...
How an Española cleaner became New Mexico’s top small business owner
Performance Maintenance Inc. started as a side gig for Eric and Celina Quintana to afford Christmas gifts for their sons more than 30 years ago. Now, its an award-winning family business employing over 200 people and serving one of the state's major laboratories.
Graham Platner says Maine voters will 'have my back' despite scandals
“The state of Maine raised me. And the state of Maine saved me.”
Manchester City believe Barcelona defensive target will renew contract
Even though their absolute priority is the signing of a new centre-forward, FC Barcelona remain on the lookout to strengthen the centre-back position.For a while, Alessandro Bastoni appeared to be the...
Opinion | Graham Platner and the Rise of the ‘Dirtbag’ Democrat
And what the Maine candidate reveals about politics today.
A Maine gubernatorial candidate is running as a political outsider. His last name is Bush
Jonathan Bush, the nephew of former President George H.W. Bush and cousin of former President George W. Bush is trying to break through a crowded GOP field in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary and put Maine in play this fall.
Vulnerable Republicans increasingly willing to defy Trump’s agenda as midterms approach
President Donald Trump remains the clear leader of the Republican party. Yet his grip is weakening among Republicans on Capitol Hill who’ve grown frustrated by what they view as increasingly brazen decisions in his second term.
Here’s the cockroach of credit myths that just refuses to die
Some credit card holders still think you need to carry a balance and pay interest on it to build or maintain an excellent credit score.
\"Star Wars\" franchise has a rocky road back to relevance [Unscripted column]
I regret having to say it, but my main thought while leaving the new “Star Wars” movie was that Disney is far, far away from a galaxy that contains any
WATCH: Maine voters divided on Platner as scandals shadow Democratic primary
Maine voters are split on whether explosive allegations against Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner will affect their vote in Tuesday's primary.
Graham Platner blasts new allegations as 'false accusations': 'Maine, you have my back'
Democrat Graham Platner calls allegations against him "politically motivated" as he rallies supporters in Bar Harbor amid multiple controversies.
Amid Mounting Democratic Concern, Platner Says His Past Is Being ‘Weaponized’
The presumptive Democratic Senate nominee in Maine said the state would have his back in the face of accusations he has denied
Graham Platner says his past has been ‘weaponized’ at rally in Maine
Supporters brush off negative stories about the Democratic Senate candidate and rebut suggestions that he is the wrong person to take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins.
The Messy Rise of Graham Platner
The Maine oyster farmer’s dark years are a mounting liability for Democrats in their quest to gain control of the Senate.
Padres OF Ramón Laureano likely to miss remainder of 2026 season after undergoing hip surgery
Becerra advances to November, moves closer to becoming California's first elected Latino governor
Democrat Xavier Becerra consolidated enough support from Democratic base to advance beyond a bitter primary to California governor, while the second spot remains up for grabs.
Democratic dread in Maine: From the Politics Desk
Plus, a preview of Trump’s “Meet the Press” interview.
Giants Retain Catching Depth as Logan Porter Clears Waivers
Logan Porter remains in the San Francisco Giants' organization after clearing waivers.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin Is in Development at PlatinumGames
Paramount has made a significant move in the world of video games, and announced its first major project, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin from Bayonetta developer PlatinumGames. Here's everything you need to know.
PENN Entertainment Bets On New Aurora Casino And Valuation Gap
PENN Entertainment (NasdaqGS:PENN) is opening the new US$360 million Hollywood Casino Aurora as its latest land-based flagship in Illinois. The long-running Hollywood Casino riverboat in Aurora is set to close after more than 30 years of operation as activity shifts to the new property. The new complex combines gaming, hotel rooms, dining, and entertainment offerings in a single, purpose-built facility. The move reflects PENN Entertainment's push to grow its brick and mortar footprint...
‘What else do we have?’ Maine Democrats signal they’ll stick with Graham Platner, some with regret
Graham Platner is still likely to win Maine’s Democratic Senate nomination in Tuesday’s primary — but some voters in the state who once were excited by his campaign now say they’ll hold their noses while casting their ballots after a series of negative reports about his personal behavior.
Steak n Shake says it ‘remains undefeated in political endorsements’ after Trump-backed candidate loses in Iowa
Fast food chain Steak n’ Shake is touting its political prowess after the Republican candidate it endorsed for Iowa governor defeated a challenger backed by President Trump. The restaurant posted o…