The actor, who died on Wednesday, was most famous for “Dawson’s Creek,” but as he got older, he let fans into his real life as a father of six.

Casey Wasserman exchanged flirtatious messages over 20 years ago with Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein. The 2028 board said its review found no other indiscretions related to Mr. Epstein.

Also, the attorney general faces lawmakers’ anger over Epstein files. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.

BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Mint developers say they are considering adopting a longer development cycle, arguing that the project's current six month cadence plus LMDE releases leaves too little room for deeper work. In a recent update, the team reflected on its incremental philosophy, independence from upstream decisions like Snap, and heavy investment in Cinnamon and XApp. While the release process "works very well" and delivers steady improvements, they admit it consumes significant time in testing, fixing, and shipping, potentially capping ambition. Mint's next release will be based on a new Ubuntu LTS, and the team says it is seriously interested in stretching the development window. The stated goal is to free up resources for more substantial development rather than constant release management. Whether this signals bigger technical changes or simply acknowledges bandwidth limits for a small team remains unclear, but it marks a notable rethink of one of desktop Linux's most consistent release rhythms.

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The monthly poll has been used to measure presidential performance for almost nine decades.

His group notched smooth hippie-era hits like “Up, Up and Away” and “The Age of Aquarius” in embracing a genre-blurring sound they called “champagne soul.”

In the race to build anti-drone weapons intended for use in a war zone, it is unclear how they may be used safely in crowded skies.

On the Navesink River, a long and frigid winter has allowed a 135-year-old rivalry to be renewed.

The clips from Jeffrey Epstein’s home office appear to show him with young women.

The world is closer than thought to a "point of no return" after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. From a report: Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish "hothouse Earth" climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed. At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, "the economy and society will cease to function as we know it," scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery. The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said. The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed. It was difficult to predict when climate tipping points would be triggered, making precaution vital, said Dr Christopher Wolf, a scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates in the US. Wolf is a member of a study team that includes Prof Johan Rockstrom at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

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The president is returning to an ancient world, before morality mattered and when human actions were governed only by power.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. economy experienced almost zero job growth in 2025, according to revised federal data. On a more encouraging note: hiring has picked up in 2026. Preliminary data had indicated that the U.S. economy added 584,000 jobs last year. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised that number after it received additional state data, and found that the labor market had added 181,000 jobs in all of 2025. This is far fewer than the 1.46 million jobs that were added in 2024. One bright spot was last month, when hiring increased by 130,000 roles. This was significantly more than the 55,000 additions that had been expected by economists. "Job gains occurred in health care, social assistance, and construction, while federal government and financial activities lost jobs," BLS said in a statement.

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Electric vehicles accounted for just 1% of new car sales across Africa in 2025, but a study published in Nature Energy by researchers at ETH Zurich finds that EVs paired with solar off-grid charging systems -- solar panels, batteries and an inverter -- could become cheaper to own than gas-powered equivalents across most of the continent by 2040. The analysis considered total cost of ownership including sticker price, financing and fuel or charging costs, but excluded policy-related factors like taxes and subsidies. Electric two-wheelers could reach cost parity even sooner, by the end of the decade, thanks to smaller battery packs. Small cars remain the toughest segment. The biggest obstacle is financing: in some African countries, political instability and economic uncertainty push borrowing costs so high that interest on an EV loan can exceed the vehicle's purchase price. South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana are already near the financing conditions needed for cost parity; countries like Sudan and Ghana would need drastic cuts.

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The request, by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, came a day before federal authorities closed the airspace in El Paso because of what they said was a drone threat.

The UK's Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of the country's largest court reporting archive [non-paywalled source], a database built by data analysis company Courtsdesk that more than 1,500 journalists across 39 media organizations have used since the lord chancellor approved the project in 2021. Courtsdesk's research found that journalists received no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, that court case listings were accurate on just 4.2% of sitting days, and that half a million weekend cases were heard without any press notification. In November, HM Courts and Tribunal Service issued a cessation notice citing "unauthorized sharing" of court data based on a test feature. Courtsdesk says it wrote 16 times asking for dialogue and requested a referral to the Information Commissioner's Office; no referral was made. The government issued a final refusal last week, and the archive must now be deleted within days. Chris Philp, the former justice minister who approved the pilot and now shadow home secretary, has written to courts minister Sarah Sackman demanding the decision be reversed.

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Reports of the compact disc's death may have been slightly premature, according to a new analysis from Stat Significant that finds CD sales as a share of U.S. music industry revenue have quietly stabilized after years of steep decline. RIAA data shows CD revenue share fell from 7.15% in 2018 to 3.04% in 2022 but has since flatlined at roughly 3%, coming in at 3.14% in 2023 and 3.06% in 2024. Google search traffic for "CD Player" has ticked upward over the past 16 months after two decades of near-continuous decline, and a May 2023 YouGov poll found 53% of American adults willing to pay for music on CDs -- ahead of vinyl at 44% and online streaming at 50%. Respondents under 45 were more likely to express interest in buying physical formats than older cohorts. But on the supply side, Discogs data shows vinyl remains the dominant format for new physical releases; artists have not meaningfully shifted back toward CD production.

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HP has quietly launched a gaming laptop subscription service called the OMEN Gaming Subscription that lets customers pay a monthly fee to use one of several gaming laptops but never actually own the hardware, even after paying well past the machine's retail price. The service ranges from $50 a month for an HP Victus 15-inch laptop with an RTX 4050 to $130 a month for an Omen Max 16 with an RTX 5080. At current sale prices, subscribers would exceed the cost of buying the laptop outright within 16 to 19 months; at MSRP, that window stretches to roughly 25 months. In exchange for giving up ownership, subscribers get yearly hardware upgrades, next-day replacements, 24/7 support, and an ongoing warranty. There is a 30-day trial period, but cancelling in the second month triggers steep early termination fees -- $550 for the Victus 15 and $1,430 for the Omen Max 16. Cancellation becomes free only after the 13th month. HP also offers accessories like the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headset as add-on rentals for $8 a month.

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Sony will ship its last batch of Blu-ray recorders this month, according to Kyodo News, ending the company's decades-long run in a product category it helped create. The recorders targeted exclusively the Japanese domestic market, where households used them to record broadcast television. Sony had already stopped manufacturing the devices and recordable discs about a year ago, and the final shipments are clearing out remaining inventory. Kyodo attributes the segment's death to the rise of streaming services. Sony will continue selling Blu-ray players "for the time being." The broader Blu-ray ecosystem remains intact. Asus, LG, and Pioneer still produce PC drives in internal and external USB form factors. Panasonic and Verbatim continue manufacturing Blu-ray media. The format turned 20 last year, having debuted at CES 2006 -- one year before Netflix launched its streaming platform.

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T-Mobile is opening registration today for a beta test of Live Translation, an AI-powered feature that will translate live phone calls into more than 50 languages when it launches this spring. The feature operates at the network level, so it doesn't require any specific app or device -- beta participants simply dial 87 to activate it on a call. T-Mobile President of Technology and CTO John Saw told The Verge that Live Translation works over VoLTE, VoNR and VoWiFi, meaning it isn't limited to 5G. The only requirement is that a T-Mobile customer must initiate the translation. The beta will be free, though T-Mobile has not said whether the feature will eventually be paywalled.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Food and Drug Administration has refused to start a review of Moderna's application for its experimental flu shot, the company announced Tuesday, in another sign of the Trump administration's influence on tightening vaccine regulations in the U.S. Moderna said the move is inconsistent with previous feedback from the agency from before it submitted the application and started phase three trials on the shot, called mRNA-1010. The drugmaker said it has requested a meeting with the FDA to "understand the path forward." Moderna noted that the agency did not identify any specific safety or efficacy issues with the vaccine, but instead objected to the study design, despite previously approving it. The company added that the move won't impact its 2026 financial guidance. Moderna's jab showed positive phase three data last year, meeting all of the trial goals. At the time, Moderna said the stand-alone flu shot was key to its efforts to advance a combination vaccine targeting both influenza and Covid-19.

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