Desmond Milligan

When Michigan House GOP Leader Matt Hall took the stage in May 2024 at a campaign rally for President Donald Trump, Republicans in the state found themselves in the political wilderness, navigating a historic period of full Democratic control of state government for the first time in decades. As his voice blared through the crowd at a Saginaw County airport, Hall urged those gathered to not just send Trump back to the White House. "This election in November, we need to elect Republicans to the Michigan House, so we can take the House back and put a check and balance on Gov. Whitmer," he said, adding that Republican victories would help support Trump's policy agenda in Michigan. Less than a year later, Hall had ascended to House speaker with the support of Republicans who flipped enough blue seats red to deliver a GOP majority in the chamber, and, in his new post, he joined Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the Oval Office to meet with Trump to advocate for Michigan's federal priorities. The two have claimed some wins, including a new fighter jet mission for Selfridge Air National Guard Base, a push by Trump to protect the Great Lakes from invasive Asian carp and a disaster declaration from the president to support ice storm recovery efforts in northern Michigan. But back in Lansing, Hall's tenure as speaker has coincided with a tumultuous new era of divided state government, with a GOP-controlled Michigan House and Democratic-controlled Michigan Senate. Gridlock has come to define Lansing, with a Legislature that hasn't sent many bipartisan policies Whitmer's way. The logjam has Hall pointing his finger at Democratic lawmakers who, in turn, have routinely blasted Hall as uncooperative. Chairman Matt Hall begins a meeting where President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani questions witnesses as they present testimony regarding alleged election irregularities to the Michigan House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020, at the Anderson House Office Building in LansingIn his job as House speaker, Hall pulls strings or pushes buttons, depending on which side of the aisle someone sits. Since taking the speaker's gavel, Hall has helped broker major bipartisan compromises on Michigan's minimum wage and sick leave policies, held back bills that the Legislature before him approved but failed to forward to Whitmer for signature and has yet to emerge from state budget negotiations with a deal after blowing past the July 1 deadline for approving a plan. Hall, 42, of Richland Township outside Kalamazoo, has publicly embraced political partnerships with some Democrats, including Whitmer, whose willingness to collaborate with Trump has received Hall's praise. Whitmer, in turn, has commended Hall for putting forward a road funding plan after years of legislative inaction. But Hall has also angered Democrats who castigate his Trump-like penchant for lobbing insults across the aisle. "It's an unserious approach that's going to lead to dangerous consequences," said House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri, D-Canton, in a May interview about Hall's leadership style. Hall, who doesn't typically shy away from the news media when his legislative priorities are the topic, declined to be interviewed for this profile. A spokesperson for Hall initially agreed to an in-person interview with the Detroit Free Press for this profile but the offer was later rescinded. Asked why he wouldn't go through with an interview, Hall told the Free Press during an April 2025 event that he disagreed with a fact-check the newspaper published in 2021 that found he made a misleading claim, as a state representative, about Michigan's voter rolls. Lansing insiders frequently describe Hall as a creature of politics. "This is what he lives and breathes," said former state Rep. Andrew Beeler, R-Port Huron, in a November 2024 interview after Republicans flipped the state House and the GOP caucus tapped Hall as the next House speaker. Beeler — who chaired the House Republicans' campaign committee during the last election cycle — described Hall then as the hardest working person in Lansing and said he received frequent late-night calls from the GOP leader to strategize. Michigan Speaker Matt Hall speaks before Vice President JD Vance addresses a crowd at Vantage Plastics in Bangor Township on Friday, March 14, 2025.Democratic legislative leaders, however, have complained about Hall's communication with them, saying he had ignored their attempts to negotiate ahead of the July 1 budget deadline. Bipartisan discussions eventually took place as the clock ticked, but when it struck midnight, a deal was nowhere to be found and budget negotiations appear to have reached a standstill. Michigan's next fiscal year begins Oct. 1. During a news conference Aug. 6, Hall again blasted Senate Democrats and their spending plan, saying it doesn't reflect current fiscal realities. He said he does routinely talk to Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, and outlined plans to produce a House budget soon but didn't specify a deadline. Brinks declined a request to comment on Hall for this profile but speaking generally about the legislative session in a May interview, she bemoaned the lack of bipartisan action in Lansing and cast blame on Hall. "So I would say it's easy to be the party of opposition if you have to be, but you know he's got a chamber, he's in the majority and he has an opportunity to actually be productive, so it's unfortunate that he's not taking us up on working together on anything," she said. Hall, on his end, has repeatedly during news conferences blamed Democrats for inaction and touted his ability to bring House lawmakers together across party lines to pass policies to fund police and roads. Still, bipartisan cooperation hasn't always appeared to be Hall's goal. In March, Hall made a last-minute addition to the House's daily agenda that put his Democratic predecessor on the hot seat. He put a bill up for vote, introduced by state Rep. Joe Tate, D-Detroit, who served as House speaker during the previous legislative session. Tate's bill proposed providing driver's licenses for immigrants in the United States illegally. Hall and every House Republican opposed the bill, yet Hall put it up for a vote anyway, likely knowing it would fail. If Hall's goal was to underscore Democratic divisions on immigration — a key issue in the 2024 election — he succeeded. Six Democrats broke from their party to join every Republican lawmaker to vote against the bill. Before the vote, Tate in a speech on the House floor, called Hall's move "nothing but a political ploy." Then-Michigan Speaker of the House Joe Tate talks to a crowd following the Labor Day parade in Roosevelt Park in front of the Michigan Central Station in Detroit on Monday, Sept. 4, 2023.Hall has continued to rile Democrats but his ability to unite Republicans has also faced a test. During a July 24 House session, Hall couldn't cobble together enough Republican members to advance legislation to restrict students' phone use at school and extend the timeline to prosecutors to pursue resentencing hearings to seek life sentences for convicted murderers who committed their crimes when they were 19 or 20 years old. Hall said Democrats reneged on commitments they made to support the bills. Among them was state Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, according to Hall who said the Democratic lawmaker promised to vote for the resentencing legislation. Farhat has denied that he made a deal to vote for the bill. During the House session, Hall ousted Farhat as the Minority Vice Chair on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and during a news conference immediately after the votes, Hall said that he needs a partner to achieve a bipartisan budget deal and said Farhat wasn't up to the job. Hall has rejected Puri's recommendation to reinstate Farhat as the Democratic appropriations chair, made in a letter that blasted the speaker's approach to budget negotiations. On Hall's side of the aisle, state Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, who serves as majority vice chair on the House Appropriations Committee, has praised Hall's speakership. "I'm glad he is where he is, he's been nothing but impressive to me," he said during a July appearance on WKAR's "Off the Record." "He knows what he's doing, he's a fighter and I got his back." Hall makes his way to LansingHall grew up in Rochester Hills but he didn't stay in metro Detroit. He attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, worked as former Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's west Michigan liaison from 2011 to 2015 and received his law degree from WMU Cooley Law School in 2017. Hall fought some of his early political battles with members of his own party, according to Republicans who encountered him as an emerging political force. In 2016, when the Michigan GOP met to choose delegates for the Republican National Convention, it wasn't clear Trump would secure enough delegates to win on the first ballot, which could have seriously threatened his nomination, according to former Michigan GOP Executive Director Jeff Timmer. Trump had won most of the Michigan delegates but U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich each won delegates, too, so their Michigan supporters had some level of bargaining power at the gathering. Former Michigan GOP Chair Saul Anuzis served as the lieutenant for Cruz's presidential campaign, Hall represented the Trump campaign and Timmer helmed the faction for Kasich, and they all cut deals with one another related to which delegates would serve on key committees at the convention, according to Timmer. Ultimately, Timmer said he and Hall sidelined Anuzis, reneging on the deals they made with him. Timmer, who has become a vocal critic of the Republican Party under Trump, said the episode left a lasting negative impression of Hall on him. Anuzis did not respond to a request for comment. In 2018, Hall launched his first bid for the state House with a campaign to take on GOP incumbent state Rep. David Maturen, R-Vicksburg, who represented the 63rd District at the time. On the day of the deadline for candidates to file to run, Maturen said Hall asked to meet him outside the Michigan House chamber, where Hall told the GOP lawmaker that he had launched a campaign to challenge him. The last-minute primary fight in 2018 wasn't pretty, according to Maturen, who said his opponent's campaign operatives portrayed him as evil. Maturen described himself as a moderate Republican running against a "Trumper" and said that he struggled to mitigate the president's influence in the race. "It was a national election based on him," Maturen said of Trump. He recounted questions on the campaign trail seeking his thoughts on the president to which Maturen said he responded by saying he sought a seat in the state House, not Congress. Maturen lost to Hall by 20 percentage points. Hall then won the general election. Republicans tap Hall to leadHall honed his combative style in his first term when he led hearings as chair of the Joint Select Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic, challenging Whitmer's handling of the public health crisis. In 2022, Whitmer won reelection and Democrats flipped control of both chambers of the Michigan Legislature, delivering a Democratic governing trifecta for the first time in 40 years. Hall worked tirelessly to seize opportunities to assert Republicans' power as the minority party. When Democrats temporarily lost their majority to a tied House after a pair of special elections in 2023, Hall insisted that the two parties come together to broker an agreement to share power, essentially asking Tate to relinquish some of his authority as House speaker. Tate didn't budge and Hall proceeded to put on stunning displays of GOP unity. For instance, Beeler — the former GOP state representative — said Hall encouraged every House Republican to stick together to vote against the budget Democrats crafted in 2024, despite funding included for GOP districts. "It was a master class in leadership," Beeler said in November. After Republicans selected Hall to serve as the next House speaker, he led every GOP lawmaker in the state House in a walkout of the 2024 lame duck session, the period of lawmaking after the election when defeated and outgoing Democratic lawmakers still held power. Hall helmed the GOP boycott with the stated goal of forcing a vote on legislation to stop pending changes to Michigan's minimum wage and paid sick leave laws, opposed by business groups. The move infuriated Democrats, who characterized the Republican protest led by Hall as a dereliction of duty by elected representatives. "Republicans aren't here. So how can we have a conversation if they're not here and decided to, you know, go make snow angels in front of the Capitol, I guess?" Tate told reporters in December 2024 on the day Republicans stormed off the House floor. The fallout from the last legislative session has continued to linger over the current one, with an ongoing lawsuit from the Michigan Senate against Hall for refusing to send bills passed in the previous legislative session to the governor's desk. When he took the gavel as House speaker at the start of 2025, Hall expressed hope that Michigan would not transform into a mirror image of politics at the national level. "You know, we've been able to keep all that Washington, D.C. stuff out of here," he said. Yet Hall quickly proceeded to use his speakership to bring Trump's policy fights to the Michigan House. Republicans have passed resolutions, which were nonbinding, supporting the president's efforts to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, encourage county sheriffs and local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and ban transgender girls from competing on girls' sports teams in Michigan. Hall has modeled his quest to slash state government spending after former Trump aide Elon Musk's cost-cutting "Department of Government Efficiency." Michigan's U.S. Senate race: Who's winning — and losing — the fundraising sweepstakes While Hall has reshaped policymaking in Lansing, he has also brought a cutting communication style to the Capitol. He has said one Democratic lawmaker — state Rep. Mai Xiong, of Warren — has a low IQ for calling out Hall for being away from Lansing when he was in Macomb County with Trump for his announcement of a new fighter jet mission at Selfridge Air National Guard Base. Xiong condemned Hall's comment as evidence that he seems more intent on bullying than working together to solve Michigan's challenges. Hall's regular and lengthy news conferences as House speaker, in which he blasts Democrats one minute and then outlines why they should support his policy demands in the next, have become a fixture in the Michigan Capitol. During them, he has advocated for new mandates for state employees to work in-person and a permanent cut to Michigan's income tax. He has also used the forum to take a victory lap, once displaying a photo of him and Whitmer at the Oval Office with Trump in April. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer stands next to Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, as President Donald Trump (not pictured) signs executive orders and proclamations, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 2025.In a July statement, Whitmer said she has been consistent in her willingness to work in a bipartisan manner to deliver results for Michigan. "That's no different this term. We have a productive relationship and I appreciate Speaker Hall's willingness to work together," she said. Michigan's economy: Gretchen Whitmer? Donald Trump? We all lose in semiconductor plant blame bingo. | Opinion John Sellek, chief strategist and CEO of Lansing-based public relations and affairs firm Harbor Strategic, said Hall has set the terms of debate in the Capitol and shown he won't shy away from sharing his conversations with other legislative leaders, publicly to praise or pressure them. Sellek and Hall both worked for Schuette when he was attorney general. Sellek tied Hall's approach back to his path to the state House. "He is not somebody who very carefully ran for school board and then ran for city council and then ran for House. He actually moved and challenged a sitting representative and beat him," Sellek said. "And he carries that same swagger and fearlessness into what he's doing now." Contact Clara Hendrickson: [email protected] or 313-296-5743. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Republican Matt Hall’s path to Michigan House Speaker View the full article

After a viral public beatdown in downtown Cincinnati, another resident and victim of a heinous violent crime is speaking out about his experience with roving mobs in the city. On Sept. 23, 2023, Chris Lewis, then 39, was walking home late at night from a Cincinnati Reds game when he was randomly jumped by three juveniles. "They just immediately sucker-punched me in the eye," Lewis told Fox News Digital in an interview Monday. "And then, right as soon as that happened, I knew that I was in trouble." Christopher Lewis stands on the corner of Liberty and Elm streets, where he was brutally attacked in 2023, in Cincinnati Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. Lewis was attacked by a group of juveniles in 2023, and he permanently lost his left eye.Cincinnati Residents On Edge After Viral Beatdown Sparks Crime Concerns: 'What's Gonna Happen Next?' Over a year-and-half period, Lewis underwent six surgeries to try to correct his vision. None of them fixed the issue, and he ultimately lost his eye. He now wears a prosthetic. "So, after they hit me, I knew immediately my eye was kind of exposed," he said. "I sort of covered my face and sat down on the ground, and I was trying to explain to them that they had just caused a serious injury. And they were kicking me the whole time and sort of like ignoring sort of what I was trying to describe to them." Read On The Fox News App The teens robbed Lewis of his earbuds and phone and ran away into the night. "It's significantly reduced my quality of life," he told Fox News Digital. "Like, I have trouble driving, confidence is kind of, you know, taking a hit. It's really, like, I view my life as the before and after of this event because it's so dramatically impacted just my quality of life, my relationships, just all aspects of it have kind of been hampered by that evening." We Need The Moral Courage To Tell The Truth About Cincinnati Racial Attack None of the juveniles involved in the attack have been arrested, and Lewis said the city's resources are stretched to the limit. "We've been having a lot of issues with juveniles, and I think they're kind of like overexerted trying to keep them in line, and so they did not … spend a lot of resources investigating my crime," he said. "And their attitude was sort of like, ‘This is happening all the time.’ They can't really get it under control." He said the July 26 brawl in Cincinnati brought back difficult memories, though, in his case, the attack was unprovoked. He is disappointed and frustrated with the city's inability to find solutions to violent crime issues, calling the efforts "ineffective" and adding that he resents the political polarization of the crime issue. "I think that everyone deserves to feel safe and secure in their community, and so we should be trying to work together to identify and implement solutions," he said. "So, I got a little frustrated by some of the, like, ingrained, entrenched kind of arguments that were occurring just because I want to find solutions and just sort of prevent this from happening to anyone else. "I wish that our city leaders would take this seriously and work together and identify the root of the problems and then work together to address them," said Lewis. "I think that we ignored some of the uptick in crime that was happening in this neighborhood until it got out of control." Lewis' mother, Karen Lewis, concurs with his view that not enough resources were spent trying to solve the violent crime. She told Fox News Digital detectives had the identities of suspects but never brought anyone in for questioning. "We put up reward signs, and a girl at the school where one of these kids attended heard of the attack and provided my son with the names," she said. "The detective also spoke with her. The detective, in our opinion, did not try hard enough to get the kids who did this to my son. Cincinnati Business Owners Slam Viral 'Out Of Control' Beating Amid Fight To Clean Up Downtown "The detective pretty much told us to move on and not worry about apprehending these kids," Karen Lewis said. "He said even if they did find them, they would basically be let out almost immediately. He said at least one of these kids was a really bad kid and had been in trouble before. He said that he would do something someday and karma would catch up with him." She blames a "soft-on-crime attitude of the juvenile court system" in Cincinnati. "The juvenile court system fails the citizens of Cincinnati. Crime is kept quiet. My son thought he was safe and later found out that a lot of crime is not made public," she said. Cincinnati Police Public Information Officer Lt. Jonathan Cunningham said suspects were difficult to identify because Lewis' beating happened in the early morning hours. "I have not had the opportunity to review this case in detail, but if my memory serves me correctly, extensive investigatory hours were put into this case with all leads being exhausted," he said. "At the onset of this case, many local media covered the story. Again, our investigative teams work tirelessly on all reports of violence in an effort to hold those accountable for their violent behavior." He said a suspect was eventually found, but had a provable alibi. During the brutal July 26 beatdown, which has reverberated across the country, one woman, identified only as Holly, was left with serious brain trauma. "It's been very, very hard, and I'm still recovering," Holly said in a video posted online. "I still have very bad brain trauma." "I just want to say thank you so much to everyone for all of the love and support. It is very humbling that you have sent your prayers, your blessings. It's definitely what's keeping me going, and you have just brought back faith and humanity." According to the latest update from police, four suspects have been arrested, and two more are still at large. Though the viral video shows only two primary victims, police say there are four other victims of the attack. Further investigations, arrests and charges are expected, according to Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval. Original article source: Cincinnati man who lost eye in unsolved random beating says crime 'out of control' after brutal viral assault View the full article

Armed with tens of billions of dollars in funding, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working fervently to expand its ranks. But some of the Florida law enforcement agencies that closely partner with ICE aren’t happy with the way the federal agency is going about its recruitment push: sending email blasts to local law enforcement who had been trained to work with ICE – a practice one department deemed “wrong.” At the end of July, hundreds – possibly thousands – of sheriff’s deputies and police officers working at departments that partner with ICE received an email from the agency’s deputy director, Madison Sheahan, imploring them to consider joining ICE during a “critical time for our nation.” Deputy Director, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan speaks during a press conference, in front of posters of people that law enforcement arrested, held at the ICE-Enforcement and Removal Operation office on May 1, in Miramar, Florida. - Joe Raedle/Getty Images/File“Your experience in state or local law enforcement brings invaluable insight and skills to this mission—qualities we need now more than ever,” said the email, a copy of which was obtained by CNN. “ICE is actively recruiting officers like you who are committed to serving with integrity, professionalism, and a deep sense of duty.” In addition to police officers, ICE is also looking to recruit military veterans and retired ICE employees. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Fox News on Wednesday that ICE had removed upper age limits for applicants. Prospective employees are being offered eye-popping incentives from what is now the most well-funded federal law enforcement agency in the United States, including a recruitment bonus of $50,000 paid out in increments in exchange for five years of service. That’s a figure that less-funded local departments cannot compete with. “I’ve seen bonuses being offered usually in about the $10,000-$20,000 range, but certainly not 50,” said Charles Ramsey, the former head of the Philadelphia and DC Metro police departments and a CNN contributor. The incentives come as the agency is under tremendous pressure to deliver on Trump’s mass deportation campaign. While the White House has sought to ramp up immigration arrests, they continue to lag. The agency also briefly floated the idea of offering cash bonuses for employees who quickly deport immigrants, according to two sources familiar with the proposal – an offer that was first reported by The New York Times and swiftly withdrawn. Law enforcement officials who spoke with CNN said they weren’t necessarily upset by the fact that ICE is attempting to recruit their officers – it’s not uncommon for different agencies to try poaching from each other, or for officers to seek opportunities at departments that offer better pay, incentives or lifestyles. Rather, it was the way the agency went about it. The officers who received the email were trained through the 287(g) program, which allows local law-enforcement agencies to partner with ICE to enforce federal immigration law, were required to provide their emails to log into training sessions as part of the certification process. An official from one Florida county said they had not previously received email blasts from ICE and did not anticipate those emails being used to head hunt their employees. Law enforcement leaders in Florida, which has more agencies partnering with ICE through the 287(g) program than any other state, are especially upset. “We have partnered with ICE like no other state to help ICE do its job of illegal immigration enforcement,” a spokesperson for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “ICE actively trying to use our partnership to recruit our personnel is wrong and we have expressed our concern to ICE leadership.” Orange County Sheriff John Mina said in a statement he is disappointed “that any law enforcement agency would use information from our partnership to try and poach our deputies,” but added: “I am not concerned.” “The Orange County Sheriff’s Office is an exemplary agency with great pay, excellent benefits, and a multitude of opportunities available to deputies – and those opportunities keep them engaged and excited about new challenges throughout their careers.” A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement: “ICE is recruiting law enforcement, veterans, and other patriots who want to serve their country and help remove gang members, child pedophiles, murderers, terrorists, and drug traffickers.” “This includes local law enforcement, veterans, and our 287(g) partners who have already been trained and have valuable law enforcement experience,” said the statement, which did not address questions about criticism from law enforcement officials who described the agency’s recruitment tactics as heavy-handed. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons announces that his agency took nearly 1,500 immigrants into custody in Massachusetts over the month of May during a news conference in Boston, on June 2. - Leah Willingham/AP/FileICE says their recruitment push is working. Noem said on Wednesday that the agency has received more than 80,000 applications since Trump signed his “big, beautiful bill” into law on July 4. ICE said on social media it has extended 1,000 tentative job offers. The agency has not said how many of those offers have been accepted. The frustration extends to some sheriffs who are closely aligned with ICE and its mission. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who often speaks out about crimes committed by people in the United States illegally and is a strong supporter of Trump’s immigration crackdown, said in a video statement provided by his office that ICE is “biting the hand that’s feeding you.” Polk Sheriff Grady Judd speaks during a press conference at the Polk County Sheriff's Operation Center on February 24, in Winter Haven, Florida. - Ernst Peters/The Ledger/USA Today Network/Imagn Images/FileA spokesperson for Judd said hundreds of Polk County deputies received the recruitment pitch from ICE. And Judd noted that those deputies were ICE-trained on Polk County’s dime. “It’s not professional,” Judd said in the video statement. “It’s bush league work is what it is.” Ramsey, the former Philadelphia and DC chief, said he believed sheriffs like Judd have the right to be upset. “At the time they provided [their deputies’ emails], I imagine they didn’t believe that this sort of thing was going to happen,” he said. “Those sheriff’s offices do more than just assist ICE. They have a lot of responsibilities and a lot of duties, and of course, if you lose your personnel, your ability to perform is impacted.” “So I would imagine that’s one of the reasons they’re upset,” he added. “It certainly would be one of the reasons I would be upset.” This is not the first time that ICE or DHS has upset jurisdictions with which it partners. In late May, DHS posted a list of hundreds of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions – places that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement – on its website. DHS removed the list after receiving blowback from several agencies who appeared on it but said they do cooperate with federal authorities and that the list does not accurately reflect their policies. CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com View the full article

“Transgender” Jonah Murray, a biological female who identifies as a man, has announced a resignation from the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission and plans to leave Texas, blaming Republican-led policy changes as the reason. “As a transmasculine person, early on in my transition, I realized I was beginning to be treated differently in society — I realized that I was benefitting from white male privilege. I endeavor every day to use this power in the spaces I inhabit for advocacy and to lift up the trans and LGBTQ+ community with me,” Murray told Voyage Dallas. “The most marginalized voices in our community must be heard and acted upon for there to be any meaningful progress.” During a Fort Worth City Council meeting in early August, Murray said, “I’m going to speak against this resolution and in favor of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And tell you why I am moving away from not just Fort Worth but out of Texas. By the end of this month, I am gone.” “I’m moving to a sanctuary city that actually stands up for transgender rights and other human rights,” Murray continued. As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the Fort Worth City Council voted 7–4 to dissolve its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) department, citing concerns about federal funding risks and rising public backlash. Murray previously served on the board of Finn’s Place, a nonprofit that, according to its own materials, supports “transgender youth.” Critics allege the group encourages minors to make irreversible medical decisions and promotes radical gender ideology. “A camp dedicated to ‘trans’ children where they stay out in the wilderness away from their parents? Not great,” said Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French last year, as reported by The Dallas Express. “They also promote therapists that socially transition children, businesses that offer sexual products, and The Kind Clinic, which offers ‘hormone therapy.’” Murray also served as the LGBTQ liaison on the Human Relations Commission — a position that drew criticism from councilmembers who said the appointment process lacked transparency. “I am deeply concerned that city staff appear to be pushing their own personal and political agendas rather than holding the Human Relations Commission accountable,” Councilwoman Macy Hill said last year. “Their work must remain focused.” Following Murray’s resignation announcement, conservative leaders in Fort Worth responded forcefully. Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French told The Dallas Express: “Since I became the Chair of the Tarrant County GOP I have endeavored to push policies that accomplish exactly this. No sane person wants these mentally ill, child-mutilating groomers walking among us. I won’t rest until they all leave Tarrant County.” Kaden Lopez, executive director of the Texas Family Project, added: “Being transgender is a direct contradiction to God‘s teachings. He does not make mistakes. We have made huge progress in Texas to return sanity to society. Soon, transgenders will have to use the bathroom of their biological sex, all of their identification will reflect their biological sex, and we will continue to implement policies like this. Texas is the wrong place to live for anyone who participates in child indoctrination.” The Dallas Express reached out to Murray for comment but did not receive a response. View the full article

Florida drivers may want to take special care on the roads Friday. It's the riskiest day of the week for crashes, according to an analysis from car dealer Carfax. In fact, more crashes happen on a Friday than any other day of the week in at least 42 other states, the company said, likely because people are rushing home at the end of the work week. "Drivers need to stay vigilant anytime they're on the road," said Chief John Fisher of the Bedford, Massachusetts Police Department. "Law enforcement responds to thousands of crashes on Fridays, often due to heavy traffic, fatigue, and distracted or impaired driving. These incidents can cause major delays, damage, and serious injuries. "While Saturdays see more fatalities, according to NHTSA, the sheer volume of Friday accidents makes it one of the most dangerous days to drive." The day with the fewest crashes? Sunday, in almost all states, Carfax said. A Carfax analysis of the riskiest days to drive on U.S. roads.Florida vehicle crashes dropped slightly in 2024As of mid-July, there were 193,599 vehicle crashes and 1.476 fatalities this year in Florida, according to data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. There were 381,339 vehicle crashes in Florida in 2024. Nearly 3,200 people were killed last year, and 246,436 were injured. That's down from the previous years. 2023 saw 395,175 crashes and 3,375 deaths, there were 397,620 crashes and 3,553 deaths in 2022, and 2021 had 401,540 crashes and 3,741 deaths. Florida adds harsh penalties to 'super speeders'As of July 1, Florida has a new crime: "dangerous excessive speeding," also called super speeding. It applies to anyone exceeding the speed limit by 50 mph or more, or driving 100 mph or more in a reckless manner. Anyone convicted of dangerous excessive speeding can face a $500 fine and up to 30 days in jail, or both Second or subsequent offenses mean up to 90 days in jail, a fine of $1,000, or both Anyone caught doing it again within five years after a prior conviction will have their driver's license revoked for at least six months Also, any drivers who exceed the speed limit by 50 mph or more must now appear in court, rather than just paying a fine. The bill also allows law enforcement to impose additional fines for drivers going 30 mph or 50 mph over the posted limit at their discretion. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Friday is Florida's riskiest day to drive. Which is safest? View the full article

The 2025 Chevrolet Trax is small, but mighty—it’s an economical SUV that feels grown up. Once upon a time in the early 2010s, a subcompact crossover emigrated from South Korea to fill in a space the big General Motors was desperate to fill, having just barely survived its potential demise at the hands of the Great Recession. This little crossover first donned the Buick Tri-Shield as the Encore, and Buick fans loved what they saw. GM noticed, too, deciding its bread-and-butter, as-American-as-apple-pie-and-baseball Chevrolet brand needed this Korean to step up to the plate to hit another home run. This decision gave North American consumers the first-generation Chevrolet Trax, whose sales in the United States peaked in 2019 at 117,000 before tumbling all the way down to just 22,000 examples in 2022 when it was discontinued. By the summer of 2023, though, a newer, bigger Trax would emerge from the training facility for the 2024 model year, ready to hit a few dingers once again. Recently, I reviewed the 2025 model year, specifically the 2RS trim, costing $24,500 MSRP ($27,085 as tested), and draped in Crimson Metallic around my Old Dominion home in Southwestern Virginia. Important things were left unchanged, and finally, many things were improved. This story is 100% human-researched and -written based on actual first-person knowledge, extensive experience, and expertise on the subject of cars and trucks. Great News! The 2025 Chevrolet Trax is No Longer Dowdy!The updated sizing for the 2025 model year was very welcome – Credit: Cameron AubernonFor those who haven’t given much thought to the Chevrolet Trax, the little egg that was is now an attractive compact crossover, receiving its new looks from its siblings like the Equinox, Trailblazer, and Traverse. Not to mention it’s a much bigger machine than before (and a bit shorter, too). Compared to the previous egg, the sleeker and sexier Trax is now four inches shorter, two inches wider, and a whole foot longer. The result is a crossover that’ll look great at the park and the high-end outlet shopping mall, without compromising cargo space for a kid or two. READ MORE: 2024 Chevrolet Trax: This Could Possibly Be Your Ideal First (or Last) Car The Trax is Still Incredibly AffordableCompared to what you get, the price is more than fair – Credit: Cameron AubernonJust like in its first model year, the second-generation Chevrolet Trax is the entry-level crossover for the Bowtie’d brand. It’s also the entry-level vehicle of the 2025 Chevrolet lineup, period. Here’s how much you can look forward to spending when you head into the showroom before the $1,095 destination charge: LS: $20,500 1RS: $22,500 LT: $22,700 2RS: $24,500; $27,085 as-tested, including destination ACTIV: $24,500 Even at the top-of-the-line, the Chevrolet Trax is a bargain. It’s one of the few cars you can buy right now for under $25,000 MSRP. At that price range, it competes with other small crossover SUVs, like the Hyundai Kona, Subaru Crosstrek, VW Taos, Toyota Corolla Cross, and Mazda CX-30. READ MORE: The Chevrolet Equinox EV Impressed Me So Much, I Bought It After Reviewing It Trust Me—You Won’t Miss That Fourth CylinderThe power was balanced for the Trax’s size – Credit: Cameron AubernonNo matter the trim level, the 2025 Chevrolet Trax comes with one powertrain combination: an ECOTEC 1.2-liter turbocharged three-cylinder linked to the front pair of wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission. Yes, just three cylinders to move you and yours around town and, on occasion, to the airport parking lot. That engine pumps out a small stable of 137 horsepower with a combined torque output of 167 lb-ft, which doesn’t sound like a lot compared to, say, the 1,250 electric demon horsies and their combined thunder of 828 lb-ft of torque to all corners of the 2026 Corvette ZR1X, but that’s plenty enough to work with for the everyday. READ MORE: 2025 Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban: A Minor Makeover For an, Even More, Classic 8-Seater SUV Chevrolet Traded Mileage for PowerYou’d think three cylinders translated to great mileage, but… No. – Credit: Cameron AubernonThree cylinders should mean pretty good fuel economy, right? If only. Adding a turbo doesn’t help here, either. Fuel efficiency comes out to a combined EPA estimate of 30 mpg (28 mpg in-town, 32 mpg on the highway). As most of my driving was in town for short periods (I take Mom to work every weekday morning, as the local dial-a-ride doesn’t start at 5 am), I managed to put down just 24 mpg over 127 miles of driving during the week this red baron was with me. At least those turbohorsies need only regular 87 to keep on truckin’; they can also drink from the E85 trough, though that will ding the overall mileage more than non-corn-flavored gasoline. Add in the 13.2-gallon tank to the equation, and the answer is that while you might’ve saved at the dealership, those savings are going to your favorite gas brand more often than not. READ MORE: 2025 Buick Enclave, 2024 Chevrolet Traverse or 2024 GMC Acadia: Which is the Best 3-Row SUV? The Interior is Simple But Doesn’t Feel CheapFor an economy car, the interior wasn’t too shabby – Credit: Cameron AubernonThe 2025 Chevrolet Trax’s interior begins with a driver-focused dash housing a 3.5-inch to 8-inch driver display center (depending on trim level), paired with an 8- to 11-inch center touchscreen display (also depending on the trim chosen). There’s even a flat-bottom steering wheel for the sportier 1RS and 2RS trims, similar to the ones found behind Chevy’s (and, really, GM’s) halo car, the Corvette. Behind all of that is seating for five in either cloth or EVOTEX synthetic leather, further emphasizing the Trax’s place as the entry-level machine for Chevy’s 2025 lineup. The LS and LT trims have available heated front seats via the LS Convenience and LT Convenience packages, while all remaining trims come with such things as standard equipment plus a heated steering wheel (the LT Convenience package offers the heated wheel, while the LS version does not). Head and legroom for all five occupants are quite good (moving up in size does matter here). Finding room for the car seats won’t be the main concern for the rear seats, but finding the LATCH connectors, as the lower anchors can be difficult to locate. READ MORE: 2025 Chevrolet Equinox First Drive: This Sensible SUV Is Now Sportier And More Tech-Filled Standard Safety Features are Impressive, But a Little LackingI was a little shocked by how little the Trax had to offer safety features-wise – Credit: Cameron AubernonFor what you do pay for, the 2025 Chevrolet Trax won’t penalize you for your choices when it comes to safety. For the youngest drivers in the family, you can keep tabs on how they drive with GM’s Teen Driver system, designed to encourage better driving habits by sending report cards to you, and activating specific safety features when a Teen Driver-enabled key fob is used. As far as safety goes, the standard list is good, featuring items like forward collision warning, pedestrian detection, automatic high beams, and forward automatic emergency braking. However, you’ll need to pay a bit more to have blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert, both of which should really be moved over to the standard side of things. Perhaps having those features (as well as adaptive cruise control) on the available side is another way Chevy’s keeping costs low for their entry-level crossover, though. The bang for your buck continues with the 2025 Chevrolet Trax on the tech side of things. The base LS alone offers wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, SiriusXM, and a Wi-Fi hotspot as standard equipment. If you want wireless device charging, though, you’ll also have to get a sunroof via the $895 Sunroof Package, available on the LT through ACTIV trim levels. No name-brand stereo systems to wonder about here, just the number of speakers to fill the cabin with your favorite songs and podcasts. The LS and 1RS offer four speakers, while the rest of the lineup throw on two more. There is a volume knob for the radio, but channel selection is held within the center touchscreen. The HVAC system remains in the physical realm with big knobs for temperature and fan speed. There are a pair of USB ports to charge your devices up front, and two more for the rear occupants. READ MORE: 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV First Drive: There’s A Lot to Love In This Compact Electric SUV The 2025 Model Offers More Room for Your Groceries, TooThe updated dimensions mean more room for, well, more – Credit: Cameron AubernonBack when the Chevrolet Trax was an egg, its backside featured 18.7 cubic feet of space for your groceries, and up to 48.4 cubic feet for bigger items like a flat-panel TV. Now that things are longer and wider overall, the 2025 version of this crossover has more room for those groceries and big items. With the rear 60/40-split bench up, there’s 25.6 cubic feet to work with now. Put those seat backs down, and that space increases to an outstanding 54.1 cubic feet. The low loading floor makes loading all of those groceries easier, too. READ MORE: The 2024 Chevrolet Traverse Redesign: Why This Family SUV Is the Best Yet The Trax Left Quite an Impression on MeIt’s a small SUV with a big personality – Credit: Cameron AubernonAll I knew of the Chevrolet Trax before meeting it for the first time back in 2023 was that it existed. After spending a week with the crossover in 2025, I can say I wouldn’t mind spending more time with it in the future, even if I never own one myself. The Trax delivers an uneventful, though comfortable, driving experience. It handles well around the curvy mountain roads near my home, can pass big rigs fairly easily on the open road, and can handle all of life’s errands in town. My mom had a bit of trouble getting into her seat due to the raised platform built into the floorpan the front seats ride upon (she’s 5 foot 3, carries a bit of weight on her frame, and is in her mid-60s; make of all that what you will), but she found her seat to be okay. With its good looks, everyday capability, and low cost of entry, though, the Trax is worth giving more than a passing glance, whether you’re shopping for yourself or your young driver’s first vehicle. View the full article

Most people would regard Bugatti as being an exclusive brand. The minimum buy-in for one of the luxury maker’s models is currently around $5m, presuming you can get on the list to be allowed to actually buy one. But ultra-rich guys hate sharing anything, which is why Bugatti is set to offer a series of one-off models for its most demanding (and richest) customers. The first of these will be the car you see here, the one-of-one Bugatti Brouillard while will make its debut at Monterey Speed Week. Named after Ettore Bugatti’s favorite horse, the Brouillard is essentially a coupe version of the Mistral roadster. Underneath it shares the same carbonfiber core architecture and quad-turbocharged W-16 as the Mistral, but almost every exterior panel is different. The Brouillard is also the first in what Bugatti says will be a series of “unique commissions” to be sold under the Solitaire subbrand. Design Director Frank Heyl says the plan is to produce will be no more than two of these one-offs a year, allowing buyers to make “unprecedented changes to bodywork and exterior elements of the car… a process similar to coachbuilding.” BugattiRoad & Track was invited to a preview event at Bugatti’s Berlin design studio last month, where we saw a full-size exterior model of the car. This didn’t have a finished interior – something the car at Monterey will have - but Bugatti has released rendered images for those of us unable to get under the rope to see the concept in person. Apparently the finished car will be delivered to its customer in 2027, the company isn’t revealing his name, but says the buyer is “one of the world’s leading Bugatti customers.” BugattiMechanical details are essentially unchanged from the Mistral, the Brouillard using the same 1578-hp version of Bugatti’s long-lived 8.0-liter, quad-turbocharged W-16 engine and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. The car will be delivered in Europe, meaning it has been sold under an individual type approval process rather than the full homologation that would have required multiple examples to be crash tested. Although details of dimensions haven’t been released, Bugatti’s design team confirms the Brouillard is longer than the Mistral, with the extra length in an elongated front end. This still incorporates Bugatti’s traditional horseshoe shaped radiator grille surround, one of the details that Heyl says is non-negotiable when it comes to penning one-off models. BugattiWhile the exterior side profile is similar to that of the Mistral, more tightly-wrapped and sculptural than the curvaceous Chiron, but the Brouillard’s roof is obviously all-new when compared to the always-open roadster. This will include both a see-through glass canopy and elongated milled-from-solid intake trumpets. At the rear is a fixed wing element above the Mistral’s X-shaped taillights, one of the shared few external components on the car. The architecture of the interior is very similar to the Mistral, but the Brouillard’s buyer has given Bugatti’s design team full reign to make radical color and trim choices. The horse theme has been continued with equine graphics incorporated into seats and doors cards, these made from a tartan material created in part from actual horsehair. (Horse lovers will be pleased by confirmation that this is harvested without harming the animals themselves.) BugattiA little more on the nose – and allowing less classy outlets than R&T to make entirely predictable Godfather jokes – is the fact the gear selector contains an aluminum-milled representation of an horse’s head set within glass. Another nod to the pony theme is the horseshoe shaped elements within the vast alloy wheels. How much is all of this costing? You will likely be unsurprised to hear that Bugatti won’t say, although Heyl admits it will be “several times” the cost of one of the maker’s regular models. “Remember that the retail price has to recoup the entire investment of the project,” he says. Which – and we’re guesstimating wildly here – probably means something north of $15m. All for the ability to flex over other owners of what are suddenly going to look like common-or-garden Bugattis. While Heyl refused to rule out seeing other Solitaire one-offs based on the soon-to-retire W-16 platform, he did confirm that the next-generation V-16 architecture that will underpin the forthcoming Bugatti Tourbillon will be much better suited to serving as the basis for other rare-groove one-offs. So if you are already on the list for a Tourbillon, why not open negotiations over adding your own fully unique model to the order? You Might Also Like You Need a Torque Wrench in Your Toolbox Tested: Best Car Interior Cleaners The Man Who Signs Every Car View the full article

The Bugatti Brouillard is a one-of-a-kind hypercar and the first creation from the brand's new bespoke Solitaire division. The Brouillard is named after Ettore Bugatti's favorite horse, and the 1578-hp W-16-powered coupe features an exotic design that mimics the Mistral roadster. Bugatti's Solitaire division is even more exclusive than its Sur Mesure program, as only two commissions will be created per year. It's well-documented that Ettore Bugatti really loved horses. Fittingly, the name of the eponymous brand's latest one-of-one creation is named after Ettore's favorite horse, Brouillard (pronounced brew-yar). A Solitaire ProductionThe Brouillard isn't just another bespoke build for one of Bugatti's ultra-wealthy clientele. The meticulously designed hypercar marks the debut of the automaker's new Solitaire division, which is said to take things a step further than even its in-house Sur Mesure customization program. Just how exclusive is a Solitaire commission? Bugatti says it will only build two cars each year, with the creations using the brand's existing chassis and powertrains. BugattiThe Brouillard's structural foundation is a combination of aluminum and carbon fiber. Bugatti's impressive W-16 engine functions as the 8.0-liter heart, fed by four turbos that help generate a seismic 1578 horsepower. To keep that nuclear reactor mounted behind the passengers cool, there's a pair of prominent air intakes mounted on the coupe's glass roof. Visible both inside and outside the Brouillard is a central spine, similar to the one found on the Chiron. While the Brouillard is one of a kind, its designers took inspiration from other memorable Bugattis. Along with the brand's familiar horseshoe grille, the body sides incorporate a C-shaped element that has become a hallmark of the French hypercars, as it references the same shape in Ettore Bugatti's signature. The headlights are virtually identical to the set seen on the Bugatti Mistral roadster. The bottom portion of the car is exposed carbon fiber and continues to the rear diffuser. A pair of two stacked exhaust pipes is located below the Brouillard's horizontal V-shaped taillights, which have a distinctive holographic look. BugattiAll the Pretty HorsesThe dramatic design cues don't stop there. The Brouillard's carbon-fiber bodywork is equal parts elegant and exotic. "The aesthetics of this car abstain from sharp lines in favor of more reflection-based surfaces that mimic a kind of athletic muscle, like a trained horse." Those are the words of Bugatti design director Frank Heyl. He will be on hand when the Brouillard makes its public debut next week at the ritzy Monterey Car Week in California, and we'll be there to interview him. Inside, the Brouillard's horse theme is on full display. The animal's silhouette appears on the door panels and seats, with embroidered outlines containing a plaid pattern that is also found on the steering wheel. Along with green-tinted carbon fiber, the cabin features custom-woven fabrics from Paris because the buyer is fancy like that. The shift knob was machined out of solid aluminum, and it includes a glass portion with a hand-crafted sculpture of the horse the car is named after. What's the price of the Bugatti Brouillard? That's confidential, but it obviously includes seven digits. Then again, it's hard to put a price on a bespoke rolling sculpture like this. You Might Also Like Car and Driver’s 10 Best Cars through the Decades How to Buy or Lease a New Car Lightning Lap Legends: Chevrolet Camaro vs. Ford Mustang! View the full article

⚡️ Read the full article on Motorious GAA Classic Cars’ July auction reached an 82% sale rate, headlined by a $702K Shelby GT350 and generous charitable giving.The GAA Classic Cars auction held July 24–26 in Greensboro has been hailed as a major triumph for the collector car world, achieving an impressive 82% sale rate and setting new records for sales and charitable contributions. More than just a marketplace, the event became a celebration of history, legacy, and community. Among the top performers was a 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350, which sold for $702,000, turning heads and reinforcing the enduring appeal of Shelby’s American icon. Another highlight came in the form of the Bidder’s Choice Lot, which featured a curated trio of rare Ford GTs. The winning bidder selected a 2006 White GT, one of just 200 Canadian-spec models with a mere 13 miles on the odometer. The second-place bidder didn’t leave empty-handed, securing a 2005 Midnight Blue GT, continuing the theme of elite performance cars finding new homes. The auction also marked a poignant tribute to the past with the sale of the Rawls Collection—a 100-vehicle group offered entirely at no reserve. Jimmy and Julianne Rawls, descendants of the family that opened the nation's first auto auction in 1938, entrusted GAA with the sale, adding a deep sense of heritage to the weekend. Beyond the block, the event also served a higher purpose. More than $225,000 was raised for charities, including Cancer Services and Victory Junction. A standout moment came with the donation of the Richard Petty 50th Anniversary Pontiac concept car, a unique blend of motorsports history and charitable spirit. As the dust settles, anticipation builds for the next auction, set for November 6–8 at Greensboro’s Automobile Palace, a state-of-the-art, 8-acre climate-controlled venue. With 750 vehicles expected, GAA Classic Cars is currently accepting consignments. Collectors and enthusiasts are encouraged to mark their calendars—the November event promises to deliver another round of world-class cars, history-making sales, and community impact. Sign up for the Motorious Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. View the full article

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Las plumas de pavo real, reconocidas mundialmente por su belleza y su brillo iridiscente, acaban de revelar una capacidad completamente inesperada: pueden funcionar como láseres naturales. Este descubrimiento las convierte en el primer ejemplo documentado de "cavidad bioláser" en el reino animal, abriendo un campo completamente nuevo en la intersección entre biología y fotónica. El descubrimiento surge del trabajo de un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad Politécnica de Florida y la Universidad Estatal de Youngstown. Su estudio, publicado en Scientific Reports, demostró que las coloridas plumas de la cola del pavo real pueden emitir luz láser cuando son tratadas con tintes especiales. Nanoestructuras: la ingeniería natural detrás del láser ¿Pero cómo es posible que una pluma produzca el mismo fenómeno que requiere sofisticados equipos de laboratorio? Antes de imaginar aves desfilando como sables de luz emplumados, la respuesta está en una arquitectura microscópica que rivaliza con nuestras mejores invenciones tecnológicas. Las plumas del pavo real no deben su brillo hipnótico a pigmentos ordinarios, sino a una ingeniería nanoestructural de precisión asombrosa. Peacock feathers can emit narrow beams of light—a first in the animal kingdom. https://t.co/rMPnBe3iC9 @NewsfromScience — Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) August 5, 2025 Cada pluma contiene millones de barbas microscópicas: varillas de melanina envueltas en queratina, organizadas con una periodicidad tan exacta que funcionan como cristales fotónicos naturales. Estas estructuras filtran, reflejan y manipulan la luz con una precisión que cambia según el ángulo de observación, creando ese efecto iridiscente que ha cautivado a la humanidad durante siglos. Cristales fotónicos: cómo las plumas emiten luz láser La naturaleza lleva perfeccionando estos "cristales fotónicos" durante millones de años, mucho antes de que los físicos siquiera imaginaran su existencia. Pero el descubrimiento más sorprendente llegó cuando los científicos sometieron estas estructuras a ciclos de tinción controlada y las estimularon con pulsos luminosos: las plumas respondieron emitiendo haces láser coherentes en longitudes de onda específicas –verde esmeralda y amarillo-naranja–, con una precisión que se repetía consistentemente a lo largo de toda la superficie ocular de la pluma. PUBLICIDADAhora bien, ¿qué convierte una luz cualquiera en un láser? Para lograrlo, se necesita una cavidad óptica: un espacio que alinee las ondas de luz para que reboten en fase, amplificándose en un solo haz coherente. Aunque los investigadores aún no han identificado con certeza qué parte de la pluma actúa como esta cavidad, sospechan que podrían ser gránulos de proteína o estructuras internas aún por descubrir. Lo que sí constataron es que las emisiones solo aparecieron tras múltiples capas de tinte, lo que sugiere que el proceso altera o mejora las propiedades ópticas de la pluma. Bioláser: aplicaciones médicas del descubrimiento Este fenómeno no es completamente aislado: ya se habían registrado emisiones láser aleatorias en huesos bovinos manchados, esqueletos de coral azul, alas de insectos, plumas de loro, tejido humano e incluso iridóforos de salmón. Pero esta es la primera vez que se detecta un comportamiento tan claro de láser coherente y estable en una estructura animal. El hallazgo podría tener importantes implicaciones. Algunos expertos afirman que buscar luz láser en biomateriales podría ayudar a identificar conjuntos de microestructuras regulares dentro de ellos. En medicina, por ejemplo, ciertos objetos extraños – tal vez virus con formas geométricas distintivas, según explica Science–, podrían clasificarse e identificarse en función de su capacidad para ser láseres. PUBLICIDADLos investigadores creen que algún día su trabajo podría conducir al desarrollo de láseres biocompatibles que podrían implantarse de forma segura en el cuerpo humano con fines de detección, obtención de imágenes y terapéuticos. El equipo científico demostró que las coloridas plumas de la cola del pavo real produjeron luz láser en longitudes de onda específicas tras ser sometidas a ciclos de tinción controlada.Andreas Hartl/blickwinkel/picture allianceEn cuanto a por qué los pavos reales desarrollaron estructuras capaces de generar efectos láser, solo podemos especular. Como señala Science Alert, dado que los biólogos están descubriendo rápidamente cómo los animales fluorescen y brillan con patrones y colores que escapan a nuestra percepción, puede que sea para exhibirse ante otros pavos reales, que estarían adaptados para verlos. Lo que está claro es que la naturaleza sigue sorprendiéndonos con soluciones sofisticadas que desafían nuestra comprensión e inspiran avances tecnológicos que consideramos revolucionarios. Mientras que los "tiburones con láseres" de Austin Powers nos hacían reír por lo absurdo de la idea, los pavos reales han demostrado que la evolución ya había "resuelto" el problema de la emisión láser mucho antes de que nosotros lo imagináramos. Editado por Felipe Espinosa Wang con información de Scientific Reports, Science, Ars Technica, Interesting Engineering y Science Alert. 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Nhà dưới 2 tỷ gần như biến mất Dữ liệu từ Savills Việt Nam cho thấy, trong quý II, Hà Nội ghi nhận khoảng 8.000 căn hộ mới được mở bán, nâng tổng nguồn cung 6 tháng đầu năm lên 14.900 căn, tăng hơn 121% so với cùng kỳ năm trước. Tuy nhiên, giá bán sơ cấp (chủ đầu tư mở bán) trung bình vẫn neo ở mức 91 triệu đồng/m2, tăng 40% theo năm. Đáng chú ý, 67% số căn hộ có giá trên 4 tỷ đồng. Thị trường gần như không có nguồn cung sơ cấp dưới 2 tỷ đồng. Theo bà Đỗ Thu Hằng, Giám đốc cấp cao Savills Hà Nội, phần lớn các dự án mới thuộc phân khúc cao cấp, có vị trí tốt, được chủ đầu tư định vị cao để tối ưu giá trị thương mại. Đồng thời, chi phí phát triển cao và khan hiếm quỹ đất trung tâm cũng khiến mặt bằng giá bị đẩy lên. Thị trường ghi nhận sức mua ổn định, thanh khoản cải thiện so với cùng kỳ năm trước, cho thấy chưa có áp lực giảm giá. Ngoài ra, tâm lý kỳ vọng vào khả năng gia tăng giá trị trong tương lai nhờ sự cải thiện hạ tầng và tốc độ đô thị hóa cũng khiến nhà đầu tư sẵn sàng chấp nhận mức giá hiện tại. “Việc nguồn cung mới tập trung nhiều ở phân khúc hạng B, trong khi thị trường thứ cấp vẫn giữ giá và chưa xuất hiện làn sóng giảm sâu, càng góp phần củng cố mặt bằng giá cao trên toàn thị trường”, bà Hằng nói. Mặt bằng giá căn hộ chung cư Hà Nội hiện ở ngưỡng cao, khiến nhu cầu ở thực có phần thu hẹp. Ảnh: Hồng Khanh Thống kê từ Savills cũng cho thấy, trong hơn 13.000 căn bán được nửa đầu năm nay, tới 99% là căn hộ hạng A và B. Ghi nhận trong 3 tháng quý II, người mua để ở thật vẫn xuất hiện nhưng tiếp tục chiếm ưu thế vẫn là nhà đầu tư. Nhìn nhận về giá căn hộ tại Hà Nội, bà Đỗ Thu Hằng cho rằng, mặt bằng giá hiện nay ở ngưỡng cao, khiến nhu cầu ở thực có phần thu hẹp. “Đối với các dự án mới mở bán, do xa trung tâm hoặc các khu vực đông dân cư, người mua chủ yếu kỳ vọng vào tiềm năng tăng giá trong tương lai. Một bộ phận khách hàng mua để sử dụng, hướng đến thời điểm nhận bàn giao, đồng thời linh hoạt trong việc chuyển đổi mục đích sử dụng tùy theo biến động của thị trường. Tâm lý đón đầu này khiến nhà đầu tư trở thành lực lượng chiếm tỷ trọng lớn trong tổng giao dịch”, bà Hằng nói thêm. Tuy vậy, chuyên gia cảnh báo cần thận trọng với kỳ vọng lợi nhuận trong ngắn hạn. Bởi, những dự án có nguồn cung lớn và giá bán cao sẽ khó đạt lợi nhuận kỳ vọng, nhất là khi cần thoái vốn nhanh hoặc chuyển sang phân khúc khác. Nếu đầu tư dài hạn ở những khu vực còn dư địa phát triển thì cơ hội vẫn hiện hữu. Năm 2026, chung cư sẽ giảm giá? Chị Thanh Hương (Thanh Hoá) cho biết, hồi tháng 2, chị tìm mua căn hộ dự án nhà ở xã hội Đại Kim (Định Công, Hà Nội) đã đưa vào sử dụng được hơn 7 năm. Khi đó, nhiều môi giới rao bán căn hộ 70m2, 2 phòng ngủ với giá 4,2 tỷ đồng. Tức là, mỗi mét vuông căn hộ nhà xã hội tại đây lên tới 60 triệu đồng. Tuy nhiên, theo lời môi giới, mức giá này rẻ nhất so với các chung cư cùng khu vực. Thấy giá cao, gia đình chị do dự, chưa xuống tiền. Sau thời gian chững lại, đến nay, giá rao bán đã tăng lên gần 70 triệu đồng/m2. Gia đình chị quyết định tạm dừng việc mua nhà Hà Nội để tính toán phương án mới. Theo số liệu từ báo cáo của Viện Kinh tế Xây dựng (Bộ Xây dựng), tại Hà Nội, hơn 55,6% căn hộ thứ cấp hiện nay có giá trên 5 tỷ đồng, chỉ 3,9% căn hộ ở ngưỡng giá dưới 2 tỷ. Những mức giá này được đánh giá là vượt quá khả năng chi trả của phần lớn người dân, bao gồm cả nhóm thu nhập trung bình - cao. Giá nhà liên tục tăng trong khi nguồn cung giá rẻ không được cải thiện, khiến người mua ở thực ngày càng khó tìm được chốn an cư. Savills dự báo từ nay đến cuối năm 2025, sẽ có thêm 11.500 căn hộ mới được tung ra thị trường, nhưng phân khúc chủ đạo vẫn là hạng A và B. Điều này đồng nghĩa, sự đa dạng về sản phẩm vẫn còn hạn chế. Từ năm 2026 trở đi, khi các dự án đang trong diện thí điểm hoàn tất thủ tục pháp lý, nguồn cung mới dự kiến sẽ tăng mạnh. Giai đoạn 2026-2027, thị trường Hà Nội có thể đón nhận 46.600 căn từ 43 dự án. Tuy nhiên, phần lớn các dự án nằm ngoài khu vực trung tâm. Do đó, mặt bằng giá chung có thể điều chỉnh theo hướng giảm nhẹ, nhưng vẫn sẽ phân hóa mạnh. Các dự án có vị trí tốt, được phát triển bởi chủ đầu tư uy tín, nằm ở nơi có nhu cầu cao và quỹ đất hạn chế... được dự báo sẽ tiếp tục giữ giá hoặc tăng giá. Đất nền sau sốt: Nhà đầu tư nghe ngóng, giá nhiều nơi bắt đầu điều chỉnh mạnh Giá đất nền trên thị trường thứ cấp tại nhiều địa phương tiếp tục có sự phân hóa rõ nét. Một số khu vực ghi nhận tăng giá đáng kể, trong khi nhiều dự án lại giảm sâu so với tháng trước. Giá chung cư Hà Nội trung bình 80 triệu/m2 Trong quý II/2025, chung cư ở Hà Nội và TPHCM đều ghi nhận mức giá cao nhất trong gần một thập kỷ với giá bán trung bình lần lượt đạt 80 triệu đồng/m2, 89 triệu đồng/m2. Có chung cư giá bán gần chạm mức 300 triệu đồng/m2. Cắt 'cơn sốt' giá, chung cư Hà Nội chững lại Giá bán căn hộ tại Hà Nội và TPHCM đã chững lại, không còn duy trì đà tăng mạnh như năm 2024, theo báo cáo thông tin về nhà ở và thị trường bất động sản quý I/2025 của Bộ Xây dựng. View the full article

Washington Township families are upset with the direction the school district is taking regarding its technology policy for middle schoolers, which will now send Chromebooks home with seventh and eighth graders. Previously, the districts’ sixth, seventh and eighth graders had access to Chromebooks stored in individual classrooms and students were not expected to carry the devices around all day or take them home. Parents have created a petition with over 100 signatures asking for a pause to the 1:1 rollout or to allow families to opt out, but the district has been pushing forward with handing out devices anyway. This change is frustrating to some parents who say the rollout of the new policy has been unclear and messy but also does not align with their desire to limit technology in their children’s learning environments. “There was no parent engagement, no conversations and it's in direct opposition to what we’ve been championing for the last two years in our district,” said Lindsay Kusy, parent of a seventh grader in Washington Township. At Northview Middle School, where Kusy’s children go, she said the school leaders have actively been pushing for less technology use during the school day and have placed more emphasis on in-person interactions. More news you should know: Drivers could face fines if they don't follow these school zone and bus laws The district said the change is meant to increase students’ access to digital tools “to account for an increasing emphasis on digital resources within our curriculum,” according to an email sent to parents in July. Washington Township leadership also pointed to the state’s increased priorities around STEM education, new testing requirements and the district’s commitment to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, or STEAM education. Move away from more Edtech in classroomsMost school districts across the state and country have implemented 1:1 technology policies ever since the COVID-19 pandemic sent kids home for weeks to do virtual learning. Some Marion County districts have even gone further and are embracing more use of AI technologies in the classroom. But Washington Township parents say the district has been moving away from using more technology in the classrooms and during school time. At Northview, for example, cellphones are not allowed during the school day and students are not allowed to use Chromebooks in the lunchroom. Kusy, who has volunteered at Northview in the last three years, said she’s seen a significant difference in the emotional intelligence of the students after the pullback of technology use. “A lot of these things you see about kids not knowing how to talk to each other anymore or not knowing how to engage with each other, well, our kids are,” Kusy told IndyStar. “Our kids are because they don’t have Chromebooks all day. They’re not taking them to lunch and they’re not walking through the hallways with them.” Concerns over security and safetyBrooke DeRam, whose son was at Northview when the school previously had a 1:1 Chromebook policy, said he would have trouble focusing in class and would often play games on his laptop. The district says that access to non-educational websites, social media and entertainment platforms will be blocked from the Chromebooks, but DeRam says the security blocks won’t stop the kids for long. “Every week there is a new game coming out and a new way to break through IT’s security barriers,” DeRam told IndyStar. More school news: New Indiana IREAD law sparks parent concern as student retention set to rise Parents are also worried about their kids having access to inappropriate material since they can access YouTube during school hours. Washington Township said it would be using a third-party monitoring service, Bark Alerts, to screen students' usage of the Chromebook during after-hours or weekends. The devices would also be automatically turned off every evening from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. “But middle schoolers are getting home at five o'clock off the bus, so you’ve got five hours of them being able to do whatever they want on that computer,” DeRam said. Washington Township parents and students are also asked to sign a "responsible use agreement," and an FAQ was sent to parents on the 1:1 rollout on Sunday, Aug. 3, about three days after the first day of school. Some parents say this information was sent out too late and, in some cases, their child was already bringing home the Chromebook. Move away from tech increased testing scoresMichele Lugosch, who has an eighth grader at Northview, says she still feels like she’s not been given an answer on why the district is pursuing this change in the first place, especially when the school’s testing scores have been improving in recent years. Northview’s ILEARN scores in ELA have improved from 32% proficient in 2022 to 42% proficient in 2025, and in math, the school improved from 13.6% in 2022 to close to 40% proficient now. 2025 ILEARN scores released. What the data shows about Indiana students “I think we’re moving in the wrong direction,” Lugosch told IndyStar. “I think that test scores have been going up and I don’t think that this is the way to teach our children the fundamentals.” This change in technology use is especially confusing to Lugosch when the state has moved to ban cellphones and other “portable wireless devices” from schools. However, the law does allow exceptions for educational purposes. Parents are also worried that teachers will be strained even further in the classroom if they now must monitor what students are doing on their Chromebooks while teaching. Washington Township said teachers would be trained in using classroom management software, Securely Classroom, which will allow for real-time surveillance of students' activities. The district also stressed that the policy doesn’t mean teachers must use Chromebooks in every lesson and can decide when to use the technology. Uncertainty remains over the cost of 1:1 One reason parents were given for the change was that providing 1:1 Chromebooks for the older students would be cheaper than providing more carts of Chromebooks for specific classes. Washington Township did not respond to questions asking how much it has cost the district to roll out its 1:1 Chromebook policy or if the policy is saving the district money. When Washington Township’s neighboring district, Indianapolis Public Schools, rolled out its 1:1 policy in 2020, it cost around $16.5 million to buy 20,000 Chromebooks, 12,000 iPads, and 7,000 wireless hotspots. If the Chromebooks are damaged or lost, Washington Township families would be responsible for paying for the repairs or replacement. Keep up with school news: Sign up for Study Hall, IndyStar's free weekly education newsletter. Those costs could range from $20-$80 to repair things like a broken trackpad or battery charger, or they could be replacing the entire device, according to the Washington Township student handbook. “I can’t say I am going to be on board with paying for a device that we didn’t even agree to purchase in the first place,” Lugosch said. This could be a financial strain for many in the district, which has around 46% of its student population qualify for free and reduced lunch. Now, Lugosch and other parents would like the district to provide an opt-out option for those who do not want the Chromebooks to be brought home, as well as a return to the cart-based model during the school day. Kusy and the other parents plan to bring their concerns to the school board at their next regular meeting on Aug. 13. Contact IndyStar K-12 education reporter Caroline Beck at 317-618-5807 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter (X): @CarolineB_Indy. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Parents oppose 1:1 Chromebook rollout in Washington Township schools View the full article

On summer evenings in the Midwest, the muggy air comes alive with a chorus of crickets, cicadas, and frogs — especially bullfrogs. Their booming mating calls sound like something between a foghorn and a didgeridoo. As far as we know, summer here has always sounded like this. Bullfrogs are native to most of the Eastern US, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast. They evolved here. They belong here. I, for one, adored them as a kid growing up in Iowa, and spent countless summer days trying to catch them to get a closer look. What’s unusual is that a few states west — into Colorado and on to California — summer nights are similarly marked by the iconic call of the American bullfrog. But here, they don’t belong. They’re unwanted. And they threaten the very existence of some of the West’s other amphibious animals, such as the Oregon spotted frog, which is found only in the Pacific Northwest. An American bullfrog tadpole next to a juvenile northwestern pond turtle. | Courtesy of Sidney WoodruffAmerican bullfrogs are not native to the Western US. Humans brought them to the region more than a century ago, largely as a food source. And in the years since, the frogs — which are forest green and the size of a small house cat — have multiplied dramatically, spreading to countless ponds and gobbling up everything that fits in their mouths, including federally threatened and endangered species. Conservation scientists now consider them among the most dangerous invasive species in the Western US, and in the 40-plus other countries worldwide where they’ve been introduced. That leaves bullfrogs in an unusual position. Invasive species are typically brought in from other countries — Burmese pythons in Florida and spotted lanternflies in New York City come from Asia, for example — but American bullfrogs are, as their name suggests, American. They’re both native and invasive in the same country. And the difference of just a few states determines whether we treat them like pests or as an important part of the ecosystem. It’s easy to hate bullfrogs. They do cause a lot of damage and, like other non-native species, they’re leading to what some researchers call the Starbucksification of the natural world — you find the same thing everywhere you go, which can make ecosystems less resilient. Yet bullfrogs themselves aren’t the main problem, but rather a symptom of a much bigger one. View Link How bullfrogs took over the WestOne reason is that people enjoy eating them. Or more specifically, their legs. In the 1800s, as the human population in the West surged amid the Gold Rush, so did an appetite for frog legs, which were associated with fancy French cuisine. To meet that demand, people collected native amphibians from the wild, like the California red-legged frog. But as those species became rarer and rarer — in part, due to overharvesting, researchers suspect — entrepreneurs and farmers started importing American bullfrogs from the eastern US and tried to farm them. For a time, it seemed like the bullfrog industry might take off. “Bullfrog legs! Something to tickle the gustatory glands of the epicurean bon vivants,” a reporter wrote in the Riverside Daily Press, a California paper, in 1922. “Propagation of the bullfrog in this state already has become a successful reality. In the near future, bullfrog farming may be expected to take its rightful place as one of the prominent industries of California.” That never really came to pass. Bullfrog farming proved challenging and financially risky: They take years to raise, they need loads of live food, and they’re prone to disease outbreaks, as Sarah Laskow wrote in Atlas Obscura. And for all that trouble, they don’t produce much meat. A bullfrog in the water at a golf course in Fort Worth, Texas. | Tom Pennington/Getty Images But while the frog leg industry didn’t spread, the frogs, of course, did. They escaped from farms and, with other accidental and intentional introductions, proliferated until they were common in ponds, lakes, and other water bodies throughout much of the West, including Arizona, California, and the Pacific Northwest. Now, in some portions of the region, “you see so many bullfrogs that it’s just sort of alarming,” said Michael Adams, an amphibian researcher at the US Geological Service, a government research agency that monitors wildlife. There are no reliable estimates of the total population of bullfrogs in the West, though a single pond can be home to thousands of individuals. Part of what enabled their success is biology: A female bullfrog can lay as many as 25,000 eggs at one time, far more than most native species. But as several researchers told me, humans have also modified the landscape in the West in ways that have helped bullfrogs take over. While western states have rivers and wetlands, permanent warm waterbodies weren’t common until the spread of agriculture and the need for irrigation, said Tiffany Garcia, a researcher and invasive species expert at Oregon State University. Now ponds, reservoirs, and canals — which bullfrogs love — are everywhere. “It’s a story of human colonization,” Garcia said. “Bullfrogs were brought by people settling and industrializing the West, and they are maintained by people who are natural-resource users of the West. They wouldn’t be here and survive without us changing the landscape to create these systems where they do so well.” Bullfrogs are often found alongside other non-native species, Garcia said, which typically tolerate landscapes modified by humans. And sometimes they even help each other succeed. Research has, for example, shown that bluegill sunfish — introduced in the West largely for sportfishing — can help bullfrogs survive. Sunfish will eat dragonfly larvae that might otherwise prey on bullfrog tadpoles. “You can’t even consider them invasive species anymore,” Garcia said of bullfrogs. “You have to consider it an invasive community.” Bullfrogs are bulliesLike unsupervised toddlers, bullfrogs will put pretty much anything in their mouths. Mice, birds, turtles, snakes, rocks, other bullfrogs — if it fits, they’ll try to eat it. This is a big problem for species that are already rare, such as the Chiricahua leopard frog or the northwestern pond turtle. Bullfrogs are shrinking their paths to extinction. “They’re implicated in the declines, along with habitat loss and drought, of many of our native reptile and amphibian species,” said Sidney Woodruff, a doctoral researcher at the University of California Davis who studies bullfrogs and other invasive amphibians. In May, Woodruff published a study that found that waterbodies in Yosemite National Park that were full of bullfrogs had lower densities of northwestern pond turtles than those without invasive frogs. She also found that where bullfrogs were present, only large turtles could survive. A northwestern pond turtle in Yosemite National Park. | Courtesy of Sidney Woodruff“Our study adds mounting evidence that hatchling and juvenile pond turtle losses to bullfrogs pose a serious threat to pond turtle population persistence,” Woodruff and her co-authors wrote. And where bullfrogs live in communities with other invasive species, native animals often face even greater challenges, said JJ Apodaca, executive director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group. Non-native crayfish, for example, are voracious consumers of plants and other habitat features that native animals hide in. So, where you have invasive crayfish, the local fauna will be that much easier for bullfrogs to eat. Invasive bullfrogs may also be spreading diseases. A study published in 2018 linked the arrival of bullfrogs in the West with the spread of a pathogen called chytrid fungus. While the pathogen typically doesn’t sicken bullfrogs, it has helped drive the decline and extinction of more than 200 amphibian species globally, including those in the West. Okay, so let’s kill all the bullfrogs?No, a bullfrog-killing spree won’t fix ecosystems in the West. They’re already everywhere, so even if scientists manage to eliminate them from a pond or 10 ponds — which often requires fully drying out the water body and hours and hours of effort — they’ll likely come back. “It’s futile,” Garcia said. “We’re not getting rid of bullfrogs. Not really.” Even if we could remove bullfrogs from large areas in the West, ecosystems wouldn’t suddenly revert back to some sort of natural state. Bullfrogs are both a problem themselves and a symptom of change — of the large-scale transformation of land in the West. “There’s kind of an irony,” said Brendon Larson, a researcher and invasive species expert at the University of Waterloo. “We’re nurturing these agricultural systems — which are monocultures and non-native species — and then we’re turning around and saying we’re surprised when a non-native species does well in response to that.” Doing nothing isn’t a great option either. Left alone, bullfrogs will continue to replace native species that comprise the ecosystems we depend on, including insects that pollinate our crops and salamanders that can help limit the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere and accelerating climate change. An American bullfrog in Yosemite National Park. | Yosemite National Park ServiceThe best approach, researchers told me, is to prioritize bullfrog control — to get rid of frogs in areas with endangered species or where conservation scientists are reintroducing native species that disappeared. This works. For her study on pond turtles earlier this year, Woodruff and her colleagues caught more than 16,000 bullfrogs across two waterbodies in Yosemite — using nets, spears, air rifles, and other methods — which they then euthanized. It was only after her team shrank the invasive frog population that they detected small, baby pond turtles in those areas. That suggests that, absent bullfrogs, the turtles were finally able to breed and survive, “providing some hope for turtle population recovery once bullfrog predation pressures are alleviated,” the researchers wrote. Woodruff says she noticed all kinds of other native animals return after clearing out the invasive bullfrogs, including native frogs, salamanders, and snakes. “The coolest thing to me was that the soundscape changed,” she told me. “Over time, you actually started to hear our native chorus frogs again.” Managing bullfrogs is complicated, Woodruff says, and especially for her. She grew up in Alabama and Georgia, where the animals are native. She liked hearing them. But now she lives in California, where she’s studying how they harm the environment, and so hearing them makes her tense up. “It sucks because I love these frogs,” Woodruff said. “It is not the animals’ fault. They are doing what they instinctively want to do — survive and procreate.” She tries to stay focused on the point, she said: “We’re doing this for the native species.” View the full article

The Associated Press shocked many social media users on Wednesday for publishing a story they viewed as sympathetic to Hezbollah terrorists. In September, over 3,000 members of the Iran-backed terror group were injured and at least 30 killed when a covert Israeli operation launched two waves of near-simultaneous detonations of the organization's pagers and other electronic devices across Lebanon and Syria. The AP story focused on how "[s]urvivors of Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover." Reporters Bassem Mroue and Sarah El Deeb spoke to six people wounded during the attack, whom they acknowledged were all "Hezbollah officials or fighters or members of their families." Hezbollah members salute and raise the group's yellow flags during the funeral of their fallen comrades Ismail Baz and Mohamad Hussein Shohury, who were killed in an Israeli strike on their vehicles, in Shehabiya in south Lebanon on April 17, 2024.Gaza Aid Group Says Ap Report Of Us Contractors Firing On Aid-seeking Palestinians Is 'Categorically False' Despite Hezbollah being designated a terror organization by the United States, the article does not refer to Hezbollah members as "terrorists" and instead describes them as a "militant group" or "a major Shiite political party with a wide network of social institutions." Read On The Fox News App One of the people interviewed was Mahdi Sheri, a 23-year-old Hezbollah fighter who was injured in the pager attack. The AP reported on how he returned from the frontlines and was spending time with his family before his pager vibrated, and he went to go check it. Sheri lost his left eye and has very limited sight out of his right eye, according to the AP. Mahdi Sheri, a 23-year-old Hezbollah fighter, had been ordered back to the frontline on the day of the attack. Before leaving, he charged his pager and spent time with family. For his security, no mobile phones were allowed in the house while he was there. "For a while, he could see shadows with his remaining eye. With time, that dimmed. He can no longer play football. Hezbollah is helping him find a new job. Sheri realizes it's impossible now to find a role alongside Hezbollah fighters," the AP wrote. X users roasted the story for presenting Hezbollah terrorists in a compassionate light, calling it "jaw-dropping." "This is me; playing my tiny violin," Twitchy’s Amy Curtis remarked. Conservative activist Robby Starbuck wrote, "Nothing shocks me anymore with media but this really did. They’re literally presenting Hezbollah terrorists as victims. Absolutely jaw-dropping." "Imagine in 1944, the Associated Press published a news article about how Nazi SS soldiers ‘struggle to recover’ from wounds they suffered from battles with the Allies in Europe. It's a moral abomination that this is not a fantasy for the @AP in 2025," Antonin Scalia Law School professor Adam Mossoff commented. "The hostages held by Hamas struggle to survive," radio host Tony Katz wrote. "The AP never got over what Israel did to their office mates," conservative writer Kate Hyde said. In 2021, reports emerged that the AP had shared a Gaza office building with Hamas military intelligence, though it has denied knowing this. TOPSHOT - Mourners attend the funeral of a fighter with the Lebanese Shiite movements Hezbollah, who was killed in clashes with Israel, during his funeral in the southern suburb of Beirut on October 23, 2023. (Photo by ANWAR AMRO / AFP) (Photo by ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images)Associated Press' Rough Week Continues After Report It Hired Anti-israel Activist As News Associate Republican members of Congress also shared and criticized the story across X. "AP: Won’t someone PLEASE think of the terrorists?!" Georgia Rep. Mike Collins joked. New York Rep. Claudia Tenney wrote, "Revoking the AP’s credentials is one of the best decisions of the last 6 months. It’s an utter disgrace that this ‘news’ agency is writing puff-piece articles designed to garner sympathy for terrorists." "The AP is running sob stories for Hezbollah terrorists," Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy wrote. The Associated Press has been accused of sympathizing with Hezbollah in the past.In a statement to Fox News Digital, AP Media Relations & Corporate Communications Director Patrick Maks said that the outlet stood by the story. In September, days after the pager attack, the outlet also came under fire after referring to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as "charismatic and shrewd" in his obituary. Original article source: AP roasted over 'jaw-dropping' story about Hezbollah terrorists' 'struggle to recover' from pager attack View the full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of Florida saw a massive influx of new residents, specifically between January and June of 2020. As states across the country began to implement lockdowns and restrictions to public areas, many Americans found themselves flocking to the beaches of Florida for more space and better outdoor recreational opportunities. Don't missThanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how I'm 49 years old and have nothing saved for retirement — what should I do? Don't panic. Here are 6 of the easiest ways you can catch up (and fast) Robert Kiyosaki warns of a 'Greater Depression' coming to the US — with millions of Americans going poor. But he says these 2 'easy-money' assets will bring in ‘great wealth’. How to get in now Brian and Carol Delahunty were among this cohort. Near the end of 2020, the couple from Long Island, New York moved to Hutchinson Island in Florida with the dream of living on the beach. At that time, Florida was very much a seller's market. “When we moved here, it was like, well, if you like this, you better make a deal for today because it will be gone tomorrow," Brian told WPTV. But a lot has changed since 2020. Less than five years after the Delahuntys moved south, Florida’s housing market has seen a decline in demand, which has led to ballooning inventory, weakened sales and a drop in home prices. Now, as the Delahuntys try to sell their home ahead of their move to nearby Fort Pierce, Florida is anything but a seller’s market. "I figured the time would be a month or two, maybe three,” said Brian, who believed it wouldn’t take long to sell his home. “It's been almost six months now, and it's just a little frustrating." The Delahuntys are now among a growing number of Florida homeowners facing challenges in selling their homes as the state’s housing market undergoes a shift. ‘Florida is uniquely bad right now’According to data from Redfin, home prices in Florida were down 2.2% in June 2025 when compared to the same period last year, and the decline is particularly bad in South Florida. In fact, Palm Beach County — where the Delahuntys live — leads the Florida housing market with an inventory of more than 13,000 active home listings. That’s more than double the inventory in Indian River or St. Lucie counties — and significantly more than other nearby counties like Martin or Okeechobee. "Our realtor had warned us that the market was a little saturated and that the condos aren't selling as quickly," said Brian’s wife, Carol. According to the Miami Association of Realtors, sales in Miami-Dade County dropped 20.2% in May 2025 when compared to the same period last year. Making matters worse, condo sales in Miami-Dade are down 25% over the same period. "South Florida is the epicenter of housing market weakness in the United States,” said Chen Zhao, head of economics research at Redfin, according to Newsweek. “The question for the rest of the country is, will this spread? Florida is uniquely bad right now." When evaluating Florida’s struggling housing market, there are a lot of factors to consider. But Joe Tumolo, a local realtor working with the Delahuntys, believes he knows what’s to blame. “Interest rates are the number one reason," Tumolo shared with WPTV. "A 3% interest rate versus a 7% interest rate is a big difference when it comes to monthly payments." "Affordability is a real issue," Tumolo added. "Interest rates, property taxes, insurance — they all add up and wages just haven’t kept pace." Stay in the know. Join 200,000+ readers and get the best of Moneywise sent straight to your inbox every week for free. Subscribe now. Tips for selling in a down housing marketDownturns in the market make selling your home more difficult, but not impossible. Here are some tips that may help you sell your property during a real estate slump: Price your home competitively: Set a realistic price based on current market conditions, using comparative market analysis to avoid overpricing Enhance your home’s presentation: Invest in improvements and staging your home that make it stand out, focusing on cost-effective updates that maximize visual appeal Choose the right real estate agent: Work with an experienced local agent who understands the current market dynamics and has a proven track record of selling homes in challenging conditions Market aggressively and creatively: Consider using multiple marketing channels, including professional photography, virtual tours and targeted online advertising to reach potential buyers Be flexible with negotiations: Prepare to be willing to negotiate with potential buyers, which can include considering seller concessions, closing cost assistance or other incentives Timing and patience: Understand that selling in a down market may take longer, so be patient and willing to adapt your strategy as needed Consider alternative selling options: Explore alternatives like selling to investors, rent-to-own arrangements, renting as an Airbnb or timing your sale strategically to maximize potential returns What to read nextWant an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan ‘works every single time’ to kill debt, get rich in America — and that ‘anyone’ can do it Here are 5 simple ways to grow rich with real estate if you don’t want to play landlord. And you can even start with as little as $10 Rich, young Americans are ditching the stormy stock market — here are the alternative assets they're banking on instead Here are 5 ‘must have’ items that Americans (almost) always overpay for — and very quickly regret. How many are hurting you? This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. View the full article

Courtesy of Christina Hines EMILY’s List, a national organization focused on electing Democratic pro-choice women, has offered its endorsement to former special victims prosecutor Christina Hines in her bid to claim the open seat in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District. “Christina Hines is an experienced prosecutor who has spent her career fighting for Michigan families and we are thrilled to endorse her in one of the most critical races to take back the U.S. House,” EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler said in a statement. “As chaos continues coming out of Washington, Christina is the best candidate to win in 2026 and take on the reckless Republican agenda that is putting the livelihoods, health care, and freedoms of Michigan’s working families at risk. EMILYs List is committed to helping her flip this seat and deliver real leadership for Michigan’s 10th Congressional District.” While the district is currently held by U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Township), James has opted against seeking reelection, instead launching a bid to be the next governor of Michigan. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report lists Michigan’s 10th Congressional District as “lean Republican” with Democrats viewing the seat as a key target in the effort to retake the U.S. House in 2026. In addition to Hines, Pontiac Mayor and former state Rep. Tim Greimel, attorney Eric Chung, U.S. Army veteran Alex Hawkins, and U.S. Army and Navy veteran Tripp Adams are also seeking the Democratic nomination in 2026. On the Republican side, Michigan Open Carry Inc. President Casey Armitage is looking to retain the district for Republicans. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX View the full article

Tại phiên họp Chính phủ thường kỳ sáng 7/8, Thủ tướng Phạm Minh Chính yêu cầu 34 tỉnh, thành phố trên cả nước tổ chức các hoạt động văn hóa, đêm nhạc và bắn pháo hoa chào mừng Quốc khánh 2/9. Người đứng đầu Chính phủ nhấn mạnh, các địa phương cần “tránh sai sót đáng tiếc”, bảo đảm trang trọng, an toàn, tiết kiệm và tạo không khí vui tươi, phấn khởi, góp phần nâng cao đời sống tinh thần cho người dân. Bắn pháo hoa dịp 2/9 tạo không khí vui tươi cho người dân. Ảnh minh hoạ: Nguyễn Huế Dịp Quốc khánh năm nay, dự kiến có khoảng 200 công trình lớn được khởi công và khánh thành. Đây được xem là dấu ấn thể hiện quyết tâm phục hồi, phát triển kinh tế - xã hội sau đại dịch Covid-19. Trong khuôn khổ các hoạt động chào mừng, lễ diễu binh - diễu hành quy mô lớn sẽ diễn ra với sự tham gia của gần 19.000 cán bộ, chiến sĩ. Có 6 lực lượng chính gồm: lực lượng rước đuốc truyền thống và tiêu binh đài lửa; lực lượng pháo lễ; lực lượng không quân bay chào mừng; lực lượng diễu binh, diễu hành; lực lượng làm nền (tiêu binh lễ đài, 11 khối quân đội và 7 khối công an); cùng lực lượng xếp hình, xếp chữ do Bộ Văn hóa, Thể thao và Du lịch chủ trì. Đáng chú ý, lần đầu tiên lễ diễu binh trên biển được tổ chức với quy mô lớn. Tàu ngầm Kilo 636 – được mệnh danh là “hố đen đại dương”, cùng các tàu mặt nước, không quân Hải quân sẽ tham gia phô diễn sức mạnh trên vùng biển Tổ quốc. Thiếu tướng Tống Văn Thanh, Phó Cục trưởng Cục Tuyên huấn - Tổng cục Chính trị (Bộ Quốc phòng) cho biết, lễ diễu binh trên biển sẽ diễn ra đồng thời với lễ diễu binh của lực lượng xe cơ giới, pháo quân sự và xe đặc chủng công an, truyền hình trực tiếp từ biển về Quảng trường Ba Đình – trung tâm của lễ kỷ niệm Quốc khánh năm nay. Trực thăng, tàu ngầm Kilo 636 luyện tập diễu binh trên biển dịp Quốc khánh 2/9 Tàu ngầm, tàu mặt nước, không quân Hải quân... đồng loạt luyện tập cho lễ diễu binh trên biển kỷ niệm 80 năm Quốc khánh 2/9. Quân đội Lào, Campuchia đã nhận lời tham gia diễu binh Quốc khánh 2/9 Tại họp báo Chính phủ chiều 7/8, Thiếu tướng Tống Văn Thanh, Phó Cục trưởng Cục Tuyên huấn - Tổng cục Chính trị (Bộ Quốc phòng) thông tin chi tiết về công tác chuẩn bị lễ diễu binh, diễu hành nhân dịp kỷ niệm 80 năm Quốc khánh 2/9. Bộ Công an bảo vệ Lễ 80 năm Cách mạng Tháng Tám và Quốc khánh ở cấp độ cao nhất Bộ Công an xác định cấp độ bảo vệ cho các sự kiện kỷ niệm 80 năm Cách mạng Tháng Tám và Quốc khánh 2/9 là cấp độ cao nhất. Bộ đã thành lập Tiểu ban An ninh trật tự do một thứ trưởng làm trưởng ban. View the full article

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林子祥（阿Lam）和葉蒨文（Sally）即將開演唱會，今日（07/08）他們為TVB音樂節目《今晚有歌廳》錄音，也趁機為演唱會做宣傳。他們接受訪問時表示，演唱會已籌備得如火如荼，同行也有XiX和《中年好聲音3》的李金凱和劉洋，被問到有否留意新晉歌手時，葉蒨文笑言：「佢唔知個名㗎。」阿Lam：「後生？太多啦，同埋哋自己都未搞得掂自己。」Sally也補充：「XiX呀，Maggie（趙頌宜）後生出嚟嘅歌手，都非常之開心，同埋《中年好聲音》出嚟，佢哋都係新出嚟。」 林子祥和葉蒨文為TVB音樂節目《今晚有歌廳》錄影。（林迅景 攝）林子祥和葉蒨文為TVB音樂節目《今晚有歌廳》錄影。（林迅景 攝）談到即將舉行的演唱會，林子祥和葉蒨文均表示他們實在太多歌曲，難以選擇，所以唯有盡量揀選大家都耳熟能詳的歌曲。「我有好多歌唱唔到，佢又好多歌唱唔到。我哋盡量揀啲大家都識嘅，同埋最主要啲觀眾聽過。」阿Lam：「我哋好多好多歌，所以夠歌就比較易砌個rundown。」Sally：「係呀，而家困難係邊啲唔唱。應該係話你哋識我哋咁多年，唔會唔識。」問到有沒有「點唱」環節，Sally即時耍手擰頭：「NO......你唔好嚇死我。」至於會不會有嘉賓上台？Sally回答：「我哋兩個就係老朋友，我嘅老朋友就係觀眾。」 林子祥和葉蒨文為TVB音樂節目《今晚有歌廳》錄影。（林迅景 攝）林子祥與葉蒨文的孫女探班，勁可愛！（大會圖片）探班當日還有林子祥和葉蒨文的孫女滿場走，談到孫女時，他們均表示孫女十分精靈，阿Lam：「佢好鍾意音樂。」Sally：「一畀音樂佢，佢即刻跳，而家識唱埋添呀。而家係，我哋相信佢一定有林家音樂細胞。」阿Lam又透露，孫女聽到他的快歌時就十分有反應。Sally又大爆那天綵排後，回到家還自己拆了廁紙筒出來，又唱又跳，有記者問：「會不會送支私家咪畀孫女？」阿Lam：「遲早㗎啦。」Sally和阿Lam也透露，現時和家人已定下規條，不準她太早接觸電話。Sally又表示，孫女已經學識「kiss Grandpa」，說：「佢嚟到屋企，第一件事就係kiss grandpa。」 View the full article

US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs kicked in, reshaping international commerce by instituting levies on imports from friend and foe alike. Though some US allies have secured lower rates than were initially threatened, and Washington’s three biggest trading partners — Canada, China, and Mexico — are still negotiating theirs, friendly nations such as India and Switzerland have been hammered. The protectionist move pushed the effective US tariff rate to its highest level since World War II, with the prospect looming of further increases: Trump on Wednesday said he would impose 100% tariffs on imported semiconductors, after earlier threatening levies on pharmaceutical products that could eventually reach 250%. “Tariff uncertainty hasn’t gone away,” HSBC said in a note to clients. — Prashant Rao View the full article

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Alison Chandra was thrilled and gutted. She was pregnant with a much-wanted second child. But her baby had a rare disease called Heterotaxy, causing heart defects and organ abnormalities. He might not survive, her doctors warned her, describing his condition as “likely incompatible with life.” Chandra is a nurse. She “grew up on the far right, and very staunchly in that pro-life, single-issue-voter camp,” she told me. “That was the first time that I had to come face-to-face with what being pro-life actually meant.” She chose not to terminate the pregnancy. Because she and her husband had no income—they had spent the past half decade volunteering on a medical ship off the coast of West Africa—the family decided to sign up for Medicaid. “I was someone who really thought Medicaid is just for moochers and leeches,” she told me. “Quote-unquote good people should never have to need Medicaid. It was really hard for me to walk into that office and hand over my paperwork.” But she did. “It obviously changed the trajectory of everything because at that point we were able to pursue the best care.” Medicaid covered her prenatal visits, her son’s delivery, and two open-heart surgeries. Eleven years later, her son is thriving, and Chandra is working in suburban Utah as a nurse specializing in the care of children with complex health needs—kids covered, as she and her son once were, by Medicaid. Soon she might not be able to provide that care. This summer, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Donald Trump’s sweeping second-term domestic legislation. The bill does not cut Medicaid, the White House insists. It slashes taxes and offsets the revenue losses by tamping down on what Republicans describe as waste, fraud, and abuse in the health-insurance program. [Annie Lowrey: A big, bad, very ugly bill] Yet the Congressional Budget Office foresees that the law will drain close to $1 trillion of Medicaid’s financing in the next decade and cause 11 million Americans to lose their insurance coverage. Experts anticipate a cascade of effects. Private-insurance premiums and medical-bankruptcy rates will climb. Wait times for appointments with specialists will rise. Care deserts will expand. Hospitals and clinics will have to shut down. The most fragile sectors of our health-care system will be in danger of collapsing. And pediatric care might be first on that list. The law does not target children’s-health coverage or children’s-health initiatives. But nearly half of American children are enrolled in Medicaid or the related Children’s Health Insurance Program. If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act goes into effect as written, sick babies will end up paying for tax cuts for the wealthy. The bill “strengthens” Medicaid, as Republicans put it, by stripping insurance coverage from adults. For the first time, the country is implementing a nationwide work requirement for the program. Any state with an expanded Medicaid initiative (meaning that the state offers coverage to all low-income adults, not just those with a disability or another qualifying condition) will have to verify that enrollees are working, volunteering, or attending school, and kick them off the rolls if they’re not. The work requirement is not expected to spur more people to get a job; studies have found that nearly every adult on Medicaid already works if they can. But states will have to spend millions of dollars to implement it, diverting cash from delivering actual health care. And 8 million Americans are predicted to lose coverage as they struggle to keep up with the paperwork. The bill also contains a series of technical changes to Medicaid’s financing, altering the taxes that states levy on medical providers and the payments they make to them. Experts warn that dropping parents from Medicaid will mean dropping kids, even if those children continue to qualify in their own right. Parents are twice as likely to enroll their children in a public-insurance program if they are enrolled themselves, and states that cover a small share of low-income adults tend to cover a small share of low-income kids too. Already, more than 4 million American children lack health coverage. Hundreds of thousands more might join them in a year or two. A rising uninsurance rate among children is a crisis in and of itself. Kids without insurance are less likely to have a pediatrician monitoring their well-being and development. They’re more likely to be sick, less likely to get immunizations and prescription medications, less likely to be treated for severe health conditions, and more likely to be hospitalized. They are also more likely to die before reaching adulthood. At the same time as the number of uninsured children rises, states are expected to slash spending on “optional” or “nonessential” Medicaid initiatives, such as in-home care for children with chronic health problems and disabilities. These services allow disabled kids to learn in classrooms and sick kids to sleep in their own bedroom, alongside their pets, siblings, and stuffies, rather than in pediatric-hospital wards. Providing care at home reduces emergency-room visits, and slashes the rate of hospital admissions. It is also essential for families, Chandra told me, her tone oscillating between tempered rage and measured despair. “Those are my patients,” she said. “Those are the kids I love.” Medicaid already has an “institutional bias,” explains s.e. smith, the communications director of Little Lobbyists, an advocacy group for children with disabilities and complex health needs. The program covers care in hospitals and clinics more comprehensively than care provided at home or in the community. When state Medicaid programs face financing crunches, they tend to slash in-home services first. The bill will lead to much greater cuts, separating kids “from loving families, depriving them of a free and appropriate public education, and denying them an opportunity to participate in society,” smith told me. [Jonathan Chait: They didn’t have to do this] As at-home care is reduced and demand for in-hospital treatment rises, the bill will make it harder for parents and caregivers to access institutional services too. Over the past decade and a half, health systems have gotten rid of 20 percent of pediatric beds and 30 percent of pediatric-care units. That’s because hospitals make more money admitting adults than children: Kids are much more likely to be on Medicaid, and Medicaid offers lower reimbursement rates than Medicare and private-insurance plans do. As a result, pediatric care has become concentrated in specialty children’s hospitals that cannot meet the existing demand. The country has too few hospital beds for babies and teenagers, too few pediatric-health specialists to make diagnoses and provide treatment, and far too few pediatric-health providers in low-income and rural areas. What institutions exist are fragile: Nonprofit children’s hospitals have profit margins of 2.7 percent, versus 6.4 percent for all hospitals. The system is a rickety structure, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a hurricane-force wind. With fewer kids covered by Medicaid, revenue per patient will go down, giving health systems a yet-greater incentive to focus on providing care to adults and seniors; hospitals will close, affecting not only kids with Medicaid but all children; in surviving pediatric institutions, demand will rise, given that families will have fewer options for treatment. Doctors foresee panicked parents driving their ill and injured kids for hours and hours to a children’s ER or ICU—only to find it overflowing. Health experts anticipate exactly the same dynamic playing out in rural medical care. “This is going to impact 62 million Americans,” Alan Morgan, the CEO of the National Rural Health Association, told me. “If you’re in a rural area, it’s impacting your ability to access health care, because you’re reducing the bottom line of these facilities and the ability of these facilities to stay in the community.” They see the same dynamic playing out in nursing-home, rehabilitative, and long-term care as well. A law intended, putatively at least, to get adults to work might end up destroying fragile institutions for the country’s most vulnerable, and weakening those providing health care to everyone. The bill’s work requirements do not come into effect until after the 2026 midterm election—a sign that, perhaps, Republicans understand just how catastrophic and unpopular the party’s policies are. Aides on Capitol Hill and hospital executives believe that Congress might soften the bill or push parts of it back. But there are tax cuts to pay for, and people with disabilities and cancer available to pay for them. “I have lived and worked in countries where people lack access to health care. I know what that looks like,” Chandra told me. “It is heartbreaking to me that we are facing, potentially, some of the same challenges that I’ve dealt with in some of the poorest countries in the world. It should not be the case anywhere, but especially not in the richest country in the world.” Article originally published at The Atlantic View the full article

The NewsCalifornia’s biggest electric utility pulled off a record-breaking test of cutting-edge grid technology that should make powering the data center boom and avoiding heatwave blackouts cheaper, easier, and greener. The groundbreaking test, carried out with Tesla and the top US rooftop solar installer, will help keep the state’s clean energy momentum going despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on renewables. On a hot Tuesday last week, during the 7pm-9pm window that is typically its time of peak demand as people come home from work and turn on appliances, Pacific Gas & Electric switched on residential batteries in more than 100,000 homes and drew power from them into the broader statewide grid. The purpose of the test — the largest ever in the state, which has by far the most home battery capacity in the US — was to see just how much power is really there for the utility to tap, and to ensure it could be switched on, effectively running the grid in reverse, without causing a crash. The result, which the research firm Brattle published this week, was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost. “Four years ago this capacity didn’t even exist,” Kendrick Li, PG&E’s director of clean energy programs, told Semafor. “Now it’s a really attractive option for us. It would be silly not to harness what our customers have installed.” Tim’s viewSo-called “virtual power plants” — networks of customer-owned assets that utilities can control as an alternative to building new traditional power plants — are the solution to a lot of the biggest problems facing the US power system. Every home battery, smart thermostat, or plugged-in electric car offers a chance for utilities to either draw more electrons into the grid, or shave down peak demand. VPPs are becoming especially important as data centers, heat waves, and other factors drive demand up while costs, supply chains, and bureaucracy remain major impediments to quickly building new power infrastructure. And, as the federal government wipes out tax credits and other support for renewables, VPPs offer a way for residential solar-plus-storage systems to remain economically attractive for homeowners — who get paid for the withdrawn power — and technically viable for utilities. At the same time, to the extent that federal policy changes make the construction of additional renewable projects more difficult, VPPs are a way to make better use of clean energy resources that have already been built. Last week’s test proved that in times of peak demand, PG&E can lean on its customers’ batteries rather than turn on a gas-fired peaker plant or risk a blackout, Li said. VPPs also facilitate the addition of more solar energy on the grid: At the moment, California has so much solar generation at peak hours that it can push the wholesale power price close to or even below zero, a headache for grid managers and a disincentive for renewable project developers. The careful manipulation of networked residential batteries smooths out the timing disparity between peak sunshine at midday and peak demand in the evening, allowing the excess to be soaked up and redeployed when it’s actually needed, and making power cheaper for everyone. The expanded use of VPPs shouldn’t be noticeable to battery owners, Li said, except for the money back on their power bill; nothing about the process prevents them from running their AC or dishwasher while their battery is being tapped. The network can also run in reverse, with the utility taking excess power from the grid at times of low demand and sending it into home batteries for storage. California could easily reach over a gigawatt of VPP capacity within five years, Li said. Nationwide, a Department of Energy study during the Biden administration forecast that VPP capacity could reach up to 160 gigawatts by 2030, essentially negating the need for dozens of new fossil fuel power plants, with no emissions and at a far lower cost. In 2024, utilities in 34 states moved to initiate or expand VPP networks, according to the advocacy group VP3. The biggest problem VPPs face is the complicated paperwork that customers sometimes need to complete for their utilities or battery providers in order to participate, said Ben Brown, CEO of the VPP management firm Renew Home: “There are more barriers in enrollment than there needs to be in a lot of markets.” Room for DisagreementJoining a VPP program means homeowners give up a degree of control over their battery, and runs a small risk of draining the battery just ahead of a blackout when it’s most needed. And VPPs can’t solve the growing US power deficit on their own. Even in the most optimistic scenario for VPP adoption the US will still need hundreds of gigawatts of new power generation capacity in the next two decades. Renewables are still the cheapest and fastest form of new capacity to build, and the Trump administration is making it harder to build them; an analysis this week by the advocacy group American Clean Power Association found that even the administration’s actions that ostensibly only limit renewable energy project development on federal land will snarl projects on all types of property across the country. NotableUS power demand broke records multiple times in July, according to federal data, driven by heat waves and a rising baseline from data centers and factories. View the full article

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits rose modestly last week, a sign that employers still retaining workers despite economic uncertainty related to U.S. trade policy. Jobless claims for the week ending Aug. 2 rose by 7,000 to 226,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday, slightly more than the 219,000 new applications that economists had forecast. The report is the first government labor market data release since Friday’s grim July jobs report sent financial markets spiraling downward, spurring President Donald Trump to fire the head of the agency that tallies the monthly jobs numbers. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 500 to 220,750. The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of July 26 jumped by 38,000 to 1.97 million, the highest level since November of 2021. View the full article