Nova Launcher could soon introduce Nova AI, a built-in AI assistant complete with a chatbot, and a new Nova Plus subscription tier

United States President Donald Trump has denied being dragged into war with Iran by Israel as he faces increasing criticism over the conflict, including from segments of his own base.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/58799415

By Robert Ariail

Traces of cocaine that pollute rivers and lakes may accumulate in the brains of salmon and disrupt their behaviour, according to researchers who warn of unknown consequences for fish populations.

Juvenile Atlantic salmon that were artificially exposed to the drug and its main breakdown product swam further and dispersed more widely across a lake, suggesting the substances can affect where the fish go, what they eat and how vulnerable they are to predators.

What impact the pollutants have when they enter watercourses from sewage works is unclear, but the fish may pay a price if they burn more energy, or face greater risks from predators if they have to forage for more food to keep their energy up, scientists say.

“Largely, we don’t know the consequences, but I expect there to be trade-offs,” said Dr Jack Brand at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “They may end up in worse condition or have to offset it by foraging a lot more, meaning they spend more time out in the open.”

Scientists have said before that pollution from common drugs poses “a major and escalating risk to biodiversity” and have called on pharmaceutical companies to make greener medicines that breakdown in the environment. Concerns over the contaminants have been fuelled by reports of trout “addicted” to methamphetamine and perch losing their fear of predators because of antidepressant medications.

In 2019, tests on freshwater shrimp in rivers in Suffolk found traces of dozens of different drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, antidepressants, anxiolytics for anxiety and antipsychotics, but the researchers did not draw any conclusions about their potential to cause harm.

Countries are navigating between the desire to speed up the green transition and worries over Beijing’s clean-tech dominance.

KeShaun Pearson is the leader of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP), based in Memphis, Tennessee, which is focused on fighting for environmental and climate justice in the predominantly Black community of southwest Memphis that’s most impacted by the concentrated pollution from nearby toxic release facilities. MCAP is currently campaigning against Elon Musk’s polluting xAI Colossus supercomputer. Tricia Boehlke is an organizer with No Data Center in DeForest, which recently succeeded in halting a proposed data center that was pushed by a private equity-owned company in a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Lee Ziesche organizes with the Tucson Democratic Socialists of America and the No Desert Data Center Coalition, which has been taking on Project Blue, a huge data center proposed in the Tucson, Arizona, area. The campaign against Project Blue won a victory when Amazon recently pulled out of the project, but its developers are again trying to advance it.

...

Activate your community as quickly as you possibly can and inform as many people as possible. These projects move with an urgency and speed by developers that we haven’t seen before. They’re steamrolling our communities and our elected officials. Also, if they’re talking about one data center, remember that it’ll likely be two or three. That’s something I wish Memphis Community Against Pollution knew earlier, because now there are three sites for the xAI project here.

...

Once we realized that the big ‘public meetings’ about the data center were propaganda sessions, we held our own events to expose the disinformation and present the truth and discuss next action steps.

...

Make resistance to the data center part of local culture.

...

The community resistance on both sides of the aisle is so enormous. This feels like the one thing that is connecting everybody together.

...

If you're like me, you probably need to update your image tag to this new major version. I'll probably wait for a minor release first.

The then cabinet secretary, Simon Case, appeared to advise Keir Starmer to complete security vetting for Peter Mandelson before announcing an appointment, documents reveal.

The documents released last month by the Cabinet Office as part of the disclosures over the US ambassadorial appointment also show Mandelson was offered a “higher tiers” briefing before his vetting was finalised.

In a letter written by Case to the prime minister, he is advised that in order to give the Washington role to a political appointee, the Foreign Office would “develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice”.

The letter, sent on 11 November 2024, said the decision would then be formalised by the foreign secretary in a letter to the Foreign Office. Mandelson’s appointment was announced by No 10 just over a month later, on 20 December.

The documents also show Mandelson was offered a “higher tiers” briefing on 6 January, before his developed vetting was confirmed on 29 January. This means he was offered highly classified briefing from the Foreign Office as US ambassador before he finished the formal vetting process, one he is now known to have failed before that outcome was overruled by the Foreign Office.

The DDoS attack against Mastodon's flagship server comes less than a week after Bluesky was targeted with junk web traffic.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/20/mastodon-says-its-flagship-server-was-hit-by-a-ddos-attack/

A police report, which The Informer received soon after the release of MPD’s statement, said at least a dozen officers arrived at the scene and recovered a white Ford E-150. Some of those officers, Williams said, went to great lengths to stop him from recording, even threatening to arrest him. 

“For them just to have a body hanging and not say s— to the community about it was crazy,” Williams told The Informer. “There were many, many people out there. Parents, grandparents, and children, and they couldn’t understand what was going on.” 

Days after his footage attracted nearly 9,000 views on YouTube, Williams continues to question why MPD didn’t immediately publicize the gruesome discovery.   

“The only thing I did see was some little flash reports…that just said police [were] over the scene,” Williams said. “They just made no issue that there was a body hanging in broad daylight at 1:30 p.m. They tried to cover it up… and then nothing came out after that.”

GROSS BRITANNIEN

plz. i saw the tbred about how mahe podts bad amd i wan f pist a fly bad post but suemthig.is hplding me bacj. stinky owls stink