F.B.I. Raids Home and Office of L.A.U.S.D. Chief Alberto Carvalho
The investigation appears to be related to a $6 million contract the district had with a tech start-up whose staff had ties to the superintendent, Alberto Carvalho.
Prediction Market Platform Kalshi Discloses First Insider Trading Enforcement Action
Kalshi, the prediction market platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has for the first time publicly disclosed the results of an insider trading investigation, naming an editor for YouTube's biggest creator as the offender.
The company identified Artem Kaptur, an editor for MrBeast, who it says traded around $4,000 on markets tied to the streamer and achieved "near-perfect trading success" on low-odds bets -- a pattern investigators flagged as suspicious. Kalshi froze Kaptur's account before he could withdraw any profits, fined him $20,000, suspended him for two years, and reported the case to the CFTC.
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Trump’s State of the Union Was a Win for Democrats
Ezra Klein and Aaron Retica react to Trump’s 2026 State of the Union speech.
Inside Tapalpa, the Town in Mexico Where El Mencho Made His Last Stand
Times reporters visiting Tapalpa found a serene town in shock after Sunday’s raid on its outskirts left dozens dead and people fleeing. And, surprisingly, no police or military presence where the battle took place.
Trump’s Push for Election Power Raises Fears He Will ‘Subvert’ Midterms
The president appears to be undermining Americans’ faith in the outcome, at a moment when Republicans face an uphill climb to keep control of Congress.
45 Years After Failed Coup, Spain Declassifies Files About Why It Failed
Ending more than four decades of conjecture, the Spanish government moved to publish documents from a long-secret investigation of a failed 1981 coup.
Everyone Hates This Highway. What’s the Best Way to Fix It?
Community groups are opposing proposals to expand the decades-old Cross Bronx Expressway in favor of more limited repairs and improvements to local streets.
Nvidia’s Quarterly Profit Hits $43 Billion on Strong A.I. Chip Sales
Total profit for the fiscal year was $120 billion, the company said. Three years ago, it was just $4.4 billion.
Antonio Tejero Molina, 93, Dies; Spanish Colonel Led Failed Coup
He held Spain’s Parliament hostage for 18 hours on Feb. 23, 1981, before surrendering after it became clear that he had little support from the country’s armed forces.
Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey Resigns From Monolith Amid Epstein Emails
Mr. Kerrey has left his role as chairman of the company, Monolith, after Justice Department documents showed he had met and corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein.
Bird Flu Strikes California Elephant Seals for the First Time
Thirty seals, primarily weaned pups, have died since late last week, scientists said.
Tech Firms Aren't Just Encouraging Their Workers To Use AI. They're Enforcing It.
Tech companies ranging from 300-person startups to giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce have moved beyond encouraging employees to use AI tools and are now actively tracking adoption and, in several cases, tying it to performance reviews. Google is factoring AI use into some software engineer reviews for the first time this year, and Meta's new performance review system will do the same -- it can track how many lines of code an engineer wrote with AI assistance.
Amazon Web Services managers have dashboards showing individual engineer AI-tool usage and consider adoption when evaluating promotions. About 42% of tech-industry workers said their direct manager expects AI use in daily work as of last October, up from 32% eight months earlier, according to AI consulting firm Section. At software maker Autodesk, CEO Andrew Anagnost acknowledged that some employees had been using initially blocked coding tools like Cursor stealthily -- and warned that AI holdouts "probably won't survive long term."
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Casey Means, Surgeon General Nominee, Sidesteps Questions on Vaccines at Senate Hearing
Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer, author and supporter of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said that “anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been part” of her message.
Americans Are Destroying Flock Surveillance Cameras
An anonymous reader shares a report: Brian Merchant, writing for Blood in the Machine, reports that people across the United States are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras, amid rising public anger that the license plate readers aid U.S. immigration authorities and deportations.
Flock is the Atlanta-based surveillance startup valued at $7.5 billion a year ago and a maker of license plate readers. It has faced criticism for allowing federal authorities access to its massive network of nationwide license plate readers and databases at a time when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is increasingly relying on data to raid communities as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
Flock cameras allow authorities to track where people go and when by taking photos of their license plates from thousands of cameras located across the United States. Flock claims it doesn't share data with ICE directly, but reports show that local police have shared their own access to Flock cameras and its databases with federal authorities. While some communities are calling on their cities to end their contracts with Flock, others are taking matters into their own hands.
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Larry Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Jeffrey Epstein Revelations
Mr. Summers, former president of the school, had stepped back from teaching after documents showed a closer relationship to Jeffrey Epstein than previously known. He will leave at the end of the academic year.
U.S. Will Offer Embassy Services in a West Bank Settlement for the First Time
Palestinians and Israelis on the right and left all say that the move is a step toward legitimizing the Israeli settlements, which most of the world considers illegal.
Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform
Seamus Blackley, one of the original founders of Xbox who helped convince Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to back a console project more than 26 years ago, told GamesBeat in an interview that he believes Microsoft is quietly sunsetting the platform under the guise of an AI-driven leadership transition.
Microsoft recently announced that Asha Sharma, whose career has focused on AI and software as a service, will replace Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO, and that COO and president Sarah Bond is leaving the company. Blackley said he expects Sharma's role to be that of "a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," arguing that Satya Nadella's all-consuming bet on generative AI has turned every business unit -- Xbox included -- into a nail for the same hammer.
He compared the appointment to putting someone who doesn't like movies in charge of a major motion picture studio, and advised Sharma to either develop a genuine passion for games or find a way to leave the job soon.
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Hacker Used Anthropic's Claude To Steal Sensitive Mexican Data
A hacker exploited Anthropic's AI chatbot to carry out a series of attacks against Mexican government agencies, resulting in the theft of a huge trove of sensitive tax and voter information, according to cybersecurity researchers. From a report: The unknown Claude user wrote Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security said in research published Wednesday.
The activity started in December and continued for roughly a month. In all, 150 gigabytes of Mexican government data was stolen, including documents related to 195 million taxpayer records as well as voter records, government employee credentials and civil registry files, according to the researchers.
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DVD Sales Decline Slows Sharply as Gen Z Discovers the Appeal of Physical Media
DVD and Blu-ray sales have been in freefall for years, but the decline is slowing considerably as Gen Z buyers turn to physical media and drive a measurable uptick at video rental stores and retailers across the U.S.
Overall disc sales fell just 9% last year after dropping more than 20% in both 2023 and 2024, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, and U.S. consumers spent 12% more on 4K UHD Blu-rays in 2025 than the prior year. The Criterion Collection, a leading boutique Blu-ray label, confirmed significant year-over-year sales increases that its president credits to younger customers.
Vidiots, a video store in Los Angeles, averaged 170 rentals a day in January 2026 -- its biggest month ever -- after loaning about 22,000 discs total in 2023 and roughly 50,000 in 2024. Barnes & Noble reported DVD and Blu-ray sales growth of "mid-double digits" over the past year.
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With Epstein Deposition, Hillary Clinton Is Again Answering for Bill Clinton’s Actions
The former first lady, senator and secretary of state had no dealings with Jeffrey Epstein but is once again under pressure to answer for the actions and relationships of her husband.