Senate Republicans Again Block Bid to Halt Iran War Without Authorization
Senate Democrats failed for the third time to advance a resolution that would force the removal of troops from hostilities in Iran unless Congress approves offensive operations.
Delta Air Lines Says It Will Suspend Special Services for Congress Members
Airport escorts and “red coat” assistance for lawmakers will be suspended, the airline said on Tuesday, citing the extended partial government shutdown.
San Francisco Killed 8th-Grade Algebra. Now It’s Set to Come Back.
The San Francisco school board will vote on a plan to restore algebra as an option at all middle schools, more than a decade after it was removed over equity concerns.
OpenAI Is Shutting Down Sora, Its A.I. Video Generator
The start-up said it would discontinue Sora just three months after signing a multiyear deal to bring Disney characters to the service.
TSA Airport Delays: What It’s Like Waiting in Line for Hours
Scenes from extra long lines at two airports, and a surprising discovery at a third.
Wine 11 Rewrites How Linux Runs Windows Games At the Kernel Level
Linux gamers are seeing massive performance gains with Wine's new NTSYNC support, "which is a feature that has been years in the making and rewrites how Wine handles one of the most performance-sensitive operations in modern gaming," reports XDA Developers. Not every game will see a night-and-day difference, but for the games that do benefit from these changes, "the improvements range from noticeable to absurd." Combined with improvements to Wayland, graphics, and compatibility, as well as a major WoW64 architecture overhaul, the release looks less like an incremental update and more like one of Wine's most important upgrades in years. From the report: The numbers are wild. In developer benchmarks, Dirt 3 went from 110.6 FPS to 860.7 FPS, which is an impressive 678% improvement. Resident Evil 2 jumped from 26 FPS to 77 FPS. Call of Juarez went from 99.8 FPS to 224.1 FPS. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands saw gains from 130 FPS to 360 FPS. As well, Call of Duty: Black Ops I is now actually playable on Linux, too. Those benchmarks compare Wine NTSYNC against upstream vanilla Wine, which means there's no fsync or esync either. Gamers who use fsync are not going to see such a leap in performance in most games.
The games that benefit most from NTSYNC are the ones that were struggling before, such as titles with heavy multi-threaded workloads where the synchronization overhead was a genuine bottleneck. For those games, the difference is night and day. And unlike fsync, NTSYNC is in the mainline kernel, meaning you don't need any custom patches or out-of-tree modules for it work. Any distro shipping kernel 6.14 or later, which at this point includes Fedora 42, Ubuntu 25.04, and more recent releases, will support it. Valve has already added the NTSYNC kernel driver to SteamOS 3.7.20 beta, loading the module by default, and an unofficial Proton fork, Proton GE, already has it enabled. When Valve's official Proton rebases on Wine 11, every Steam Deck owner gets this for free.
All of this is what makes NTSYNC such a big deal, as it's not simply a run-of-the-mill performance patch. Instead, it's something much bigger: this is the first time Wine's synchronization has been correct at the kernel level, implemented in the mainline Linux kernel, and available to everyone without jumping through hoops.
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The U.S. Military Said It Helped Bomb a Drug Camp in Ecuador. It Was a Dairy Farm.
The Times visited a village where the United States and Ecuador said they destroyed an armed group’s training camp. Residents said it was actually a dairy farm.
Meta Ordered to Pay $375 Million Over Child Safety Violations
In one of the company’s first major losses, New Mexico jurors found that it had misled consumers about the safety of its platforms, enabling sexual exploitation of young users.
Key Adviser Quits Federal Vaccine Panel
Dr. Robert Malone, vice chair of the committee, was appointed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after a purge of the previous advisers.
Republicans Step Up Efforts to Reach DHS Funding Deal and End Shutdown
A day after President Trump said he did not want a compromise, Senate Republicans sent Democrats a plan that would break off ICE enforcement funding and reopen the rest of the department.
Google's Android Automotive Is Moving From the Dashboard To the 'Brain' of the Car
Google is expanding Android Automotive from the infotainment screen into the broader non-safety "brain" of software-defined vehicles. With its new Android Automotive OS for Software-Defined Vehicles, the in-car experience will feel "much more cohesive and the latest features will reach your driveway faster," Matt Crowley, Android Automotive's group product manager, writes in a blog post. "From a truly integrated voice experience to proactive maintenance reminders, your car will become a true extension of your digital life," Crowley adds. The Verge reports: With its new software, Google is promising faster over-the-air software updates, better voice assistants, and more proactive vehicle maintenance alerts. Non-driving functions like climate control, lighting, and seating adjustment would fall under Android's control. And the system would move beyond basic infotainment to create a unified ecosystem for features like remote cabin conditioning, digital key management, and personalized driver profiles.
For automakers, the new system promises less expensive software development costs and an opportunity to focus on what matters most to them: branding. By providing the "foundational code and a common language for their software," Google says automakers will be free to design cool experiences for their customers. Google says its already working with companies like Renault Group and Qualcomm to bring its new software-defined vehicle version of Android Automotive to more cars. A variety of automakers already use regular Android Automotive, like Volvo, Polestar, General Motors, Nissan, and Honda.
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Russian Oil Shipment Puts Focus on Kremlin Spy Outpost in Cuba
Moscow may be challenging President Trump’s effort to choke Cuba’s economy. China also has suspected listening posts on the island.
Newsom Says He Regrets Remarks Comparing Israel to ‘Apartheid State’
The California governor suggested that he had meant to refer to Israel’s potential future direction, not its current policies. “I revere the state of Israel,” he said.
Iran’s ‘Nuclear’ Option
How U.S. strategy encouraged mutually assured destruction.
United States Said to Have Sent Iran a Plan to End the Middle East War
The 15-point plan was delivered via Pakistan, whose army chief has emerged as the key interlocutor between the United States and Iran, officials say.
Russia Launches Daytime Attack on Ukraine With Over 500 Drones
The assault, which came after overnight strikes across the country, was one of the largest of the war, the Ukrainian authorities said.
The War Is Going Better Than You Think
How the fight in Iran compares to past conflicts.
OpenAI Discontinues Sora Video Platform App
OpenAI is shutting down Sora, its generative-AI video creation platform it launched in December 2024. "The move is one of a number of steps OpenAI is taking to refocus on business and coding functions ahead of a potential initial public offering as soon as the fourth quarter of this year," reports the Wall Street Journal.
CEO Sam Altman announced the changes to staff on Tuesday. "We're saying goodbye to Sora," the Sora Team said in a post on X. "To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing. We'll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work."
Last week, OpenAI announced plans to combine its Atlas web browser, ChatGPT app, and Codex coding app into a singular desktop "superapp." "We realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks, and that we need to simplify our efforts," said CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo. "That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want." This could behind the decision to kill Sora as the company redirects its resources and top talent towards productivity tools that benefit both enterprises and individual users.
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Trump Picks ‘Alpha Male’ Influencer to Be Tourism Envoy
Nick Adams, known for his crass humor and internet trolling, was previously nominated to be the ambassador to Malaysia. But his nomination was pulled earlier this year.
Arm Unveils New AGI CPU With Meta As Debut Customer
Arm unveiled its first self-developed data center chip, the AGI CPU, designed for handling agentic AI workloads. The new chip was built in partnership with Meta and manufactured by TSMC. Other customers for the new chip include OpenAI, Cloudflare, SAP, and SK Telecom. Reuters reports: The new chip, called the AGI CPU, will address data-crunching needed for a specific type of AI that is able to act on behalf of users with minimal oversight, instead of responding to queries as part of a chatbot. For years, Arm, majority-owned by Japan's SoftBank Group has relied only on intellectual property for revenue, licensing its designs to companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia and then collecting a royalty payment based on the number of units sold.
"It's a very pivotal moment for the company," CEO Rene Haas said in an interview with Reuters. The new chip will be overseen by Mohamed Awad, head of the company's cloud AI business, and Arm has additional designs in the works that it plans to release at 12- to 18-month intervals. TSMC is fabricating the device on its 3-nanometer technology and is made from two distinct pieces of silicon that operate as a single chip. Arm plans to put it into volume production in the second half of this year but has received test chips that function as expected. In addition to the chip itself, Arm is working with server makers such as Lenovo and Quanta Computer to offer complete systems.
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