From a lone clinic in Texas to an entire school district in North Dakota, the virus is upending daily life and revealing a deeper crisis of belief.

The number of doctoral graduates globally has grown steadily over recent decades, creating a massive imbalance between PhD holders and available academic positions. Among the 38 OECD countries, new doctorate holders almost doubled between 1998 and 2017. China's doctoral enrollment has exploded from around 300,000 students in 2013 to more than 600,000 in 2023. This growth has forced PhD graduates into non-academic careers at unprecedented rates. A 2023 study of more than 4,500 PhD graduates in the United Kingdom found over two-thirds were employed outside academia. In South Africa, 18% of more than 6,000 PhD graduates reported difficulty finding jobs related to their expertise. Some countries have begun adapting their doctoral programs. Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom now offer training and paid internships during doctoral studies, including "industrial PhD" programs where students conduct research in collaboration with companies.

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Hackers suspected of working on behalf of the Chinese government exploited a maximum-severity vulnerability, which had received a patch 16 months earlier, to compromise a telecommunications provider in Canada, officials from that country and the US said Monday. ArsTechnica: "The Cyber Centre is aware of malicious cyber activities currently targeting Canadian telecommunications companies," officials for the center, the Canadian government's primary cyber security agency, said in a statement. "The responsible actors are almost certainly PRC state-sponsored actors, specifically Salt Typhoon." The FBI issued its own nearly identical statement. Salt Typhoon is the name researchers and government officials use to track one of several discreet groups known to hack nations all over the world on behalf of the People's Republic of China. In October 2023, researchers disclosed that hackers had backdoored more than 10,000 Cisco devices by exploiting CVE-2023-20198, a vulnerability with a maximum severity rating of 10. Any switch, router, or wireless LAN controller running Cisco's iOS XE that had the HTTP or HTTPS server feature enabled and exposed to the Internet was vulnerable. Cisco released a security patch about a week after security firm VulnCheck published its report.

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Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said a staffing crisis kept her from letting officers participate in a Brooklyn theater group that began after the death of Eric Garner, who died after a police officer put him in a chokehold, in 2014.

Questioning its final witness, the government laid out flight plans, escort prices, hotel reservations and a web of payments for sexual encounters in 2023.

Bacteria can be used to turn plastic waste into painkillers, researchers have found, opening up the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing the drugs. From a report: Chemists have discovered E coli can be used to create paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles. "People don't realise that paracetamol comes from oil currently," said Prof Stephen Wallace, the lead author of the research from the University of Edinburgh. "What this technology shows is that by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time." Writing in the journal Nature Chemistry, Wallace and colleagues report how they discovered that a type of chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement, a process that has never been seen in nature, was biocompatible. In other words, it could be carried out in the presence of living cells without harming them. The team made their discovery when they took polyethylene terephthalate (PET) -- a type of plastic often found in food packaging and bottles -- and, using sustainable chemical methods, converted it into a new material.

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The three men had been hiking in Soda Springs, Calif., when they jumped into the water near Rattlesnake Falls, a remote and isolated area that made rescue difficult.

Microplastics are present in all beverages, but those packaged in glass bottles contain more microplastic particles than those in plastic bottles, cartons or cans. This was the surprising finding of a study conducted by the Boulogne-sur-Mer unit of the ANSES Laboratory for Food Safety. The scientists hypothesised that these plastic particles could come from the paint used on bottle caps. Water and wine are less affected than other beverages. These findings have highlighted a source of microplastics in drinks that manufacturers can easily take measures to address.

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FICO credit scores will begin incorporating buy-now-pay-later data for the first time. From a report: With over 90 million Americans expected to use BNPL for purchases this year, critics argue that existing credit scores paint an incomplete picture of an individual's ability to pay back loans. Fair Isaac Corp., which runs FICO, said Monday that it will launch two separate credit scores including BNPL data. FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL will "represent a significant advancement in credit scoring, accounting for the growing importance of BNPL loans in the U.S. credit ecosystem," the company said in a statement. "These scores provide lenders with greater visibility into consumers' repayment behaviors, enabling a more comprehensive view of their credit readiness which ultimately improves the lending experience," FICO added.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: AI firm DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations, a senior U.S. official told Reuters, adding that the Chinese tech startup sought to use Southeast Asian shell companies to access high-end semiconductors that cannot be shipped to China under U.S. rules. The U.S. conclusions reflect a growing conviction in Washington that the capabilities behind the rapid rise of one of China's flagship AI enterprises may have been exaggerated and relied heavily on U.S. technology. [...] "We understand that DeepSeek has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China's military and intelligence operations," a senior State Department official told Reuters in an interview. "This effort goes above and beyond open-source access to DeepSeek's AI models," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak about U.S. government information. Chinese law requires companies operating in China to provide data to the government when requested. But the suggestion that DeepSeek is already doing so is likely to raise privacy and other concerns for the firm's tens of millions of daily global users.

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Housing affordability and quality-of-life concerns are pushing longtime Black New Yorkers out of the city, underscoring Democrats’ challenges with their base ahead of the mayoral election.

A powerful new telescope will usher in a new era of cosmic discovery, but in a political climate vastly different from when it was named for a once overlooked female astronomer.

When Israel began its assault on Iran, President Trump kept his distance. But within days he was on a path that led to an extensive bombing mission aided by political and military ruses.

Among the most likely options are asymmetric or terrorist attacks, although the time frame is impossible to gauge.

The order to release Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from criminal custody as he awaits trial was a rebuke to the Trump administration. But he is likely to remain in immigration custody.

With his strikes on Iran, President Trump is betting that the United States can repel any retaliation, and that the U.S. has destroyed the regime’s chances of reconstituting Iran’s nuclear program. David Sanger, the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, explains the risk.

U.S. consumers "rank problems with public electric vehicle charging and the time it takes to recharge as their top two reasons for rejecting electric vehicles," writes the New York Times, citing figures from data analytics firm J.D. Power. But are things getting better? Automakers and charging companies are building new stations and updating their cars to allow drivers to more easily and quickly recharge their vehicles. They're also outfitting charging stations with items such as food and bathrooms, and making the devices more reliable. Because chargers are only as fast as the cars they connect with, automakers are designing new cars to absorb electricity at higher speeds. In addition, many automakers have cut deals with Tesla to allow owners of other cars to use the company's fast-charging network, the largest in the country and widely considered the most reliable. Early evidence suggests efforts to improve electric vehicle charging are paying off. In recent years, J.D. Power surveys showed about 20% of attempts to charge electric vehicles at all public stations ended in failure because of faulty chargers, long lines or payment glitches. But in the first three months of 2025, overall failure rates fell to 16%, the biggest improvement since the surveys began in 2021. "The industry is finally elevating as a whole," said Brent Gruber, an executive director at J.D. Power. The number of chargers has also increased. There were about 55,200 fast chargers in the United States in May, up from 42,200 a year earlier, according to federal data. In February, a former Phillips 66 gas station in Apex, N.C., near Raleigh, became the first "Rechargery" from Ionna, a company created by eight automakers, including General Motors, Hyundai Motors, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Their chargers can deliver up to 400 kilowatts of juice, much more than Tesla's 250-kilowatt Superchargers. Some cars can replenish a battery in 30 minutes or less at the higher charging speeds. When connected to chargers of 350 kilowatts or more, including those at Ionna and Electrify America, another fast-charging network, a Hyundai Ioniq 5 can fill its electric "tank" from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes... Some models from BMW, Hyundai and Kia have also enabled a national "Plug and Charge" standard that lets car owners begin charging their vehicles at Ionna stalls without first having to use a smartphone app or swipe a credit card, eliminating a step that sometimes results in errors. Tesla's chargers have long worked this way for Tesla cars and now work with some other vehicles, including Rivian's SUVs and pickups. More cars and charging stations are expected to have plug-and-charge capability in the coming months... Nearly every major automaker is redesigning their cars with plug outlets and software that are compatible with Tesla chargers. Infrastructure upgrades are happening elsewhere too, according to the article.Texas-based gas chain Buc-ee's is offering "premium" charging using renewable power (working with Mercedes), while Waffle House plans to install BP Pulse fast chargers next year. J.D. Power's Gruber says that while America's federal charger program only helped construct a tiny fraction of new chargers, it did also published guidelines which helped automakers and charging companies work together and address technical problems.

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His vision for how to ship packages overnight led to not just a new company, but also a new sector of the world economy and a now-familiar English verb.

The former president’s endorsement came as Letitia James, the state attorney general who supports Andrew M. Cuomo’s mayoral rivals, criticized the former governor over harassment allegations.

Both Vice President JD Vance and Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, acknowledged questions about the whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade nuclear material.