Federal officials began clearing a forest where dozens of homeless people live in derelict R.V.s and cars.

Sam Altman's eye-scanning identity project, now called World, officially launched in the U.S. with six in-person registration sites. CNBC reports: Here's how it works: You go up to an Orb, a spherical biometric device, and it spends about 30 seconds scanning your face and iris, then creates and stores a unique "IrisCode" for you verifying that you're a human and that you've never signed up before. Then you get some of the project's cryptocurrency, WLD, for free, and you can use your World ID as a sign-in with integrated platforms, which currently include an open API integration with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Discord. Starting Thursday, the company is opening six flagship U.S. retail locations where people can sign up to have their eyeball scanned: Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville, Miami and San Francisco. At an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, the venture announced two high-profile partnerships: Visa will introduce the "World Visa card" this summer, available only to people who have had their irises scanned by World, and the online dating giant Match Group will begin a pilot program testing out World ID and some age verification tools with Tinder in Japan.

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Mayor Eric Adams celebrated his vision for a $115 billion budget for New York City, but some experts warned that it didn’t properly account for further cuts in federal funding.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to block California from implementing plans to block new sales of gas-powered vehicles in a decade. In a 246-164 vote, members approved House Joint Resolution 88, which seeks to withdraw a waiver granted by the Environmental Protection Agency to California during the Biden administration to implement the ban. Thirty-five Democrats joined 211 Republicans in backing the measure. [...] The House also approved two other measures which withdraw waivers on the state's plans to increase sales of zero-emissions trucks in a 231-191 vote, along with the state's latest nitrogen oxide emission standards for engines in a 225-196 vote. Following Thursday's vote, Newsom's office issued a statement saying the House illegally used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal the state's Clean Air Act waivers. The governor's office also said the move contradicts the Government Accountability Office and Senate Parliamentarian who have ruled the CRA does not apply to the state's waivers. "Trump Republicans are hellbent on making California smoggy again. Clean air didn't used to be political. In fact, we can thank Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon for our decades-old authority to clean our air," Newsom said. "The only thing that's changed is that big polluters and the right-wing propaganda machine have succeeded in buying off the Republican Party -- and now the House is using a tactic that the Senate's own parliamentarian has said is lawless. Our vehicles program helps clean the air for all Californians, and we'll continue defending it." Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) said in a statement: "House Republicans' misguided and cynical attempts to gut the Clean Air Act and undercut California's climate leadership ignores the reality of California's strength as the fourth largest economy in the world... ... If Senate Republicans take up these measures under the Congressional Review Act, they will be going nuclear by overruling the Parliamentarian, all to baselessly attack California."

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The ruling, which is limited to the Southern District of Texas, prohibited the administration from using the wartime law because the president’s claims about a Venezuelan gang do not add up to an “invasion.”

The president’s supporters acknowledge that the ride is bumpy. But they say they are willing to sacrifice and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nature: A forthcoming policy from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will target - and at least temporarily stop -- funding to laboratories and hospitals outside the United States, threatening thousands of global-health projects and international collaborations on topics such as emerging infectious diseases and cancer. The NIH, the world's largest funder of biomedical research, plans to release the policy in the next week. Some agency staff members have already been instructed to hold funds for foreign institutions that are part of both new research grants and grants coming up for renewal, according to multiple agency employees who spoke to Nature under the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

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Determined to cut costs and manage communications, the Trump administration is moving too slowly to contain the virus, experts say.

Chinese scientists have achieved a significant nuclear breakthrough by successfully refueling a thorium-based reactor while it remains operational, according to reports from Chinese state media. The experimental 2-megawatt thermal reactor, which came online in June 2024, represents the revival of technology originally developed and abandoned by the United States in the mid-20th century. The milestone was revealed during a closed meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where project leaders shared results demonstrating the reactor's ability to be refueled without shutdown -- a capability conventional uranium reactors lack. Though small compared to MIT's 6-megawatt research reactor, this achievement shows China's accelerating nuclear ambitions. The country has surpassed France in nuclear generation and recently approved 10 new reactors worth over $27 billion in investment. This thorium reactor joins other revived nuclear concepts, including molten-salt cooling systems and high-temperature gas reactors, as developers look to the past for solutions to advance nuclear energy's future.

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Schools turn to little-known consultants, owned by private equity firms, to find applicants and calculate scholarships. Here’s how that affects the price you pay.

Ensemble-driven plays like “Purpose” and “English” received a slew of nominations, while Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Idina Menzel were overlooked.

A raid on a largely Hispanic nightclub last weekend highlighted the wrenching choices mayors face between anti-Trump constituents and federal pressure for police cooperation.

A "small percentage" of Google's users in the US will begin seeing an AI Mode tab in Google Search "in the coming weeks," the company said Thursday, marking the tool's first deployment outside the company's experimental Labs environment. Unlike traditional search results that display URLs based on user queries, AI Mode generates conversational responses from Google's search index. The feature will appear as a dedicated tab positioned before the standard "All," "Images," and other search filters. The deployment represents Google's direct challenge to LLM-powered search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT. AI Mode differs from existing AI Overviews in Google Search, which merely insert AI summaries between the search box and web results.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The video game website Polygon has been sold to click-farm powerhouse Valnet and much of its masthead has been laid off, Kotaku has learned. The sale was subsequently announced in a press release. Multiple staff members have posted online about losing their jobs or about colleagues now being out of work.

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During every scene of this western, I couldn’t stop thinking about the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on set in an entirely preventable tragedy.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has this week sounded the alarm on AI adoption speeds. Though self-described as an AI optimist, Jassy cautioned that this technological shift "may be quicker than other technology transitions in the past." Jassy pointed directly to declining education quality as "one of the biggest problems" facing AI implementation, not the technology itself. He questioned whether schools are adequately preparing students for future tool use, including coding applications.

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Nvidia publicly criticized AI startup Anthropic on Thursday over claims about Chinese smuggling tactics, just days before the Biden-era "AI Diffusion Rule" takes effect on May 15. The confrontation highlights growing tensions between AI hardware providers and model developers over export controls. "American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in 'baby bumps' or 'alongside live lobsters,'" an Nvidia spokesperson said, responding to Anthropic's Wednesday blog post. The Amazon and Google-backed AI startup had called for tighter restrictions and enforcement, arguing that "maintaining America's compute advantage through export controls is essential for national security." Anthropic specifically proposed lowering export thresholds for Tier 2 countries to prevent China from gaining ground in AI development. Nvidia countered that policy shouldn't be used to limit competitiveness: "China, with half of the world's AI researchers, has highly capable AI experts at every layer of the AI stack. America cannot manipulate regulators to capture victory in AI."

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The filmmakers said that they hoped the finished product would honor the work and memory of its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was shot and killed on the set.

The Trump administration did not immediately provide details about the agreement, and it was not clear what it meant for the future of U.S. military support for Ukraine.

The Bank of Japan predicted growth of just 0.5 percent, cutting its previous forecast in half, and decided against another hike in interest rates.