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National Academies to fast-track a new climate assessment

Move comes in response to government’s questioning of climate science. The nation’s premier group of scientific advisers announced Thursday that it will conduct an independent, fast-track review of the latest climate science. It will do so with an eye to weighing in on the Trump administration’s planned repeal of…

Ford switches gears, will push smaller EVs over full-size pickup and van

​The e-Transit and F-150 Lightning’s replacements will be delayed awhile.  The Ford Motor Company is adjusting its electric vehicle strategy. The automaker will prioritize smaller and more affordable EVs ahead of the replacement for the F-150 Lightning fullsize pickup truck and e-Transit van. The Lightning replacement, codenamed T3, should…

New executive order puts all grants under political control

All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants. On Thursday, the Trump administration issued an executive order asserting political control over grant funding, including all federally supported research. The order requires that any announcement of funding opportunities be reviewed by the head of…

Stone tools may hint at ancestors of Homo floresiensis

The stone flakes don’t look like much, but they’re a clue in an ancient cold case. Some stone tools found near a river on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi suggest that the first hominins had reached the islands by at least 1.04 million years ago. That’s around the same…

Google discovered a new scam—and also fell victim to it

Disclosure comes two months after Google warned the world of ongoing spree.  In June, Google said it unearthed a campaign that was mass-compromising accounts belonging to customers of Salesforce. The means: an attacker pretending to be someone in the customer’s IT department feigning some sort of problem that required…

Did a rival tribe kill and eat their neighbors 5,700 years ago?

“The evidence points to a violent episode—possibly the result of conflict between neighboring farming communities.” Credit: IPHES-CERCA/Luis Quevedo/Madrid Scientific Films. Human remains from 11 individuals recovered from El Mirador Cave in Spain showed evidence of cannibalism, archaeologists have concluded. According to a new paper published in the journal Scientific…

OpenAI launches GPT-5 free to all ChatGPT users

New model claims fewer confabulations, better coding, and “safe completions” approach.  On Thursday, OpenAI announced GPT-5 and three variants—GPT-5 Pro, GPT-5 mini, and GPT-5 nano—what the company calls its “best AI system yet,” with availability for some of the models across all ChatGPT tiers, including free users. The new…