Senate Democrats blocked a measure that would encourage, but not require, states to protect consumers from power rate hikes tied to data center growth, and had no limits on A.I. use or deployment.

A new report by the Federal Reserve’s independent inspector general concluded that a nearly $2.5 billion construction project was poorly managed but made no referrals to the U.S. attorney general.

Judge Patrick J. Schiltz had warned that the administration’s actions “created a grave threat to the rule of law.” The attorney general accused him of “obvious bias.”

Google is reportedly testing a program that pays around 100 publishers based on how much their content contributes to its AI-powered search features. According to The Information, one publisher earned more than $1 million over a year, while another has received roughly $50,000 to $60,000." Digiday reports: Once a publisher joins the "AI contribution pilot," they receive an extra AI earnings widget via their Search Console dashboard. This displays a monthly earnings number (with some history), though no other detailed information on how payouts are calculated currently. Payments are based more on value than raw usage, meaning Google only pays when it judges that a piece of content has meaningfully contributed to an AI-generated response. Publishers can opt out at any time. [...] Digiday has learned that at least dozens of publishers have been approached by Google for the AI contribution pilot, though the program has been more appealing to small and mid-sized, rather than large publishers and has widened far beyond news publishers. Digiday couldn't get final confirmation of the number. Screenshots from Google Search Console, seen by Digiday, show an "AI contribution" panel that appears once a publisher opts into the program. The interface lists the program name and a monthly payout figure. "It's quite black box," as one exec with knowledge of the matter told Digiday. "Do I wish they were more transparent? Definitely," said one publisher exec who is in the program. "But I'm hopeful that the fact that they're setting a precedent for exploring paying publishers directly for content through this is meaningful," they added.

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A Republican measure to limit, but not bar, congressional stock trading faltered in the Senate as Democrats thwarted a G.O.P. bid to show progress on an issue that has rankled voters.

As A.I. capabilities accelerate, the technologist is shocked by the “complete lack of engagement” with the question of how to manage its risks.

Mayor Karen Bass and her onetime ally, Nithya Raman, made their case to voters with just five weeks left until the election.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Some tech workers in San Francisco hooked up ChatGPT to a Toyota Corolla and got it to drive around a parking lot. This may not sound impressive in the age of the self-driving car until you realize that the LLM driving the car was a general purpose chatbot running on a laptop and not the purpose-built driving system based on millions of hours of training data used by Waymo or Tesla. The people behind the stunt call themselves DrivingBench and they've posted their code, their prompts, and videos of the experiment online. In the experiment, DrivingBench hooked up GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1, Grok 4.6, and GPT-5.6 Sol to a Toyota Corolla and gave the LLMs control over the car's steering, accelerator, and brakes. Then they set up a small cone course in a public parking lot and prompted the chatbots to navigate the space. The goal, they said, was to find out if untrained, off-the-shelf frontier AIs can drive a real car. The results were mixed. Grok, Sol, and Fable only drove a few meters and didn't finish the course. GPT-6 Astra, however, did eventually learn to navigate the course and complete it. But not without a lot of troubleshooting. "It's an interesting demonstration of potential emergent capabilities," said Mahns. "It can fail a turn, and then the next turn, next try, it will be able to do that turn and other turns that it hasn't seen before. Not necessarily saying LLMs are gonna put Waymo out of business or something, just an interesting demonstration of where things are, and things are just moving fast." "Most people that are familiar with ChatGPT have used it in this white collar, kind of like in the computer, and it's definitely imminent to the point that this capability will start having more impact in the physical world. So I think seeing the sparks of this happening, the shift of this utility coming into the physical world, is also somewhat exciting."

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District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said a woman’s report to police in 2024 saying she had been raped at a fraternity did not support a criminal case. But he said he is now reaching out to her.

The student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, covered the allegations of rape at a fraternity party since they were first made in 2024 and led the reporting on the case.

Nearly every Democratic senator voted to advance a measure calling for a human rights report on Israel’s conduct in the West Bank, as some in the party propose punishing settlement activity with sanctions.

A seating chart of the meeting illustrated growing divisions within the artificial intelligence industry and how it is viewed by the White House.

The health secretary, Vice President JD Vance and other top officials addressed a conference sponsored by corporations, including A.I. companies and others with business before the government.

Chi Phi’s Cornell chapter was shuttered after a woman said its members sexually assaulted her. It was one of the oldest fraternities at the school, where Greek life has thrived.

Democrats amplified statements from America.gov that frequently contradict the president on tariffs, election fraud and other topics.

A Republican eager to prove the former special counsel was dishonest appeared to instead demonstrate his own confusion over basic facts.

President Trump’s meetings with tech leaders produced some voluntary safeguards and a commitment to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” the term that Mr. Trump prefers.

On the technological, diplomatic and biological fronts, Trump is creating a disaster.

Firefox 157 is rolling out a major redesign across desktop and mobile, bringing rounded "bubble" tabs, a curved address bar, refreshed icons and colors, and a more consistent visual language across devices. Mozilla is also adding more themes and wallpapers while bringing back Compact Mode, which the company says "reduces the size of your tabs and toolbar to give more of your screen to the web, with an auto-compact option for smaller screens." The Verge reports: According to Mozilla, the design changes will have "no cost to your browser performance." Mozilla says the overhauled design is a "renewal" for Firefox, following major updates over the last year, like homepage widgets, Split View, a built-in VPN, and controls for disabling the browser's AI features.

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Employees and security researchers said that they had cautioned the company on safely testing its A.I. models and strengthening its corporate infrastructure, but that OpenAI did not listen.