Stricter criteria for the business manager visa has left many foreign owners, some of whom have been in Japan for decades, out in the cold and facing a frantic scramble to pack up and leave the country.

Vladimir Putin left China without an agreement on a long-stalled gas pipeline he urgently sought. www.semafor.com/article/05/2...

‘Spooks hotel’: inside the five-star nerve centre of the US takeover of Venezuela

NEW: The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.

Intrusion Logging is a new part of Android’s Advanced Protection Mode, which aims to help protect human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents from government spyware attack and law enforcement forensic devices.

Google DeepMind in talks with UK unions amid staff concern over AI use by US and Israel

UK strikes £3.7bn trade deal with six Gulf states

Breaking news: The Trump administration does not plan to seek approval from Congress for President Trump’s planned 250-foot arch, arguing that they do not need it because lawmakers a century ago authorized a somewhat similar project that was never built.

Discord says voice and video calls outside of stage channels are now end-to-end encrypted by default, after launching its encryption protocol in September 2024 (Jess Kinghorn/PC Gamer) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

The fallout of the Iran war deepened globally as countries struggled to contain the impact of rising fuel and commodity prices. Higher petrol costs have sparked deadly protests and strikes across Africa, with demonstrators in Comoros, Kenya, and Mozambique clashing with authorities in recent days.

NEW: Harvard faculty voted to impose a roughly 20 percent cap on A grades beginning fall 2027, approving the College’s most aggressive attempt to reverse grade inflation and reshape academic standards. Abigail S. Gerstein and Amann S. Mahajan report. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

big scandal in the Korean rail industry this past week: nearly half of planned metal rebars inside concrete beams to uphold the underground GTX Samseong Station platform is missing, per MBC, raising structural integrity questions on the mega-project www.youtube.com/watch?v=Insh...

Since ChatGPT's release, more people are choosing to represent themselves in federal court. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Worth remembering there is still a large US military presence in the Caribbean post Venezuela, including an amphibious ready group and several warships. And the USS Nimitz carrier is sailing north along the Atlantic coast after leaving Brazil en route to Virginia.

Tennessee man jailed over Charlie Kirk post wins $835,000 settlement wpln.org/post/tenness...

Iran claims it coordinated passage of 26 vessels out of Hormuz in 24 hours https://aje.news/3jr0jy

New dataset published: this is the audio + transcripts of AI-generated podcasts using NotebookLM to analyse how it "translated" source documents from different times and cultures. My favourites are the 20 podcasts generated from an empty PDF. The paper about it is in press. doi.org/10.18710/RNT...

Prime Minister Meloni responds

BREAKING: Barney Frank, one of the first openly gay members of Congress who championed Wall Street reform, dies at 86.

South Korean officials say no toll was paid to Iran, which allowed the ultra-large crude carrier "Universal Winner" to exit the Strait of Hormuz today. www.chosun.com/english/nation...

Breaking News: James Murdoch is buying New York magazine, Vox Media’s podcast network and the Vox website for more than $300 million, a dramatic expansion in U.S. media for the younger son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

NEW: America's legal immigration agency, USCIS appears to be moving towards a system of MANDATORY electronic filing, done via an interim final rule with no advanced notice and comment. USCIS currently does not have the capacity to do this for most applications, so how this will work is... unclear.

"Idaho shows America how to build A new zoning law paves the way for more starter homes." www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

"The dysfunction in U.S. air traffic control has an ultimate source" www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... "The FAA has little incentive to improve its own practices because the watchdog to make sure it’s doing the job effectively is … the FAA."

Scoop: EU govts discussing whether ex European Central Bank president Mario Draghi or ex-chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel could rep the bloc in potential talks with Putin, as momentum gathers to reopen formal channels with Russia. w/ @henryjfoy.ft.com @maxseddon.bsky.social @richardmilne.ft.com

Researchers at UC San Diego found that after Trump and RFK Jr recommended leucovorin to treat autism, prescription rates for the drug increased more than 2,000% compared with prior years. today.ucsd.edu/story/leucov...

Nigeria says joint US strikes kill 175 Islamic State militants, senior leaders reut.rs/4v4k7PD

Andrej Karpathy has joined Anthropic to work on pre-training. He previously co-founded and worked at OpenAI and led computer vision and AI at Tesla.

President Lee Jae Myung sharply criticized Samsung Electronics’ labor union over its profit-sharing demands Wednesday, signaling that the government could invoke its emergency arbitration authority if a strike goes ahead. www.koreaherald.com/article/1074...

Thailand is drastically cutting the length of visa-free stays for tourists from more than 90 countries in an effort to curb crime involving foreign nationals, officials said.

After years of tension, Hungary and Ukraine hold talks on Hungarian minority rights

X quietly limits users who didn't pay for verification to "50 original posts and 200 replies per day", down from 2,400 posts per day (Jackson Chen/Engadget) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Another Trump enemy falls as Brad Raffensperger loses Georgia primary

there was that regime CPA thread about The Deal texas had with the PMC and how it fell apart after trump

Elon musk retweeted the “shooters were trans” lies on his personal account of over 200 million followers

JD Vance urges UK anti-immigration activists to ‘keep on going’

“An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.” Excuse me?

New from 404 Media: a realtime video deepfake app marketed to streamers lets them instantly turn into George Floyd, Jeffrey Epstein, and even other streamers. In this case, a streamer turned themselves into Mr. Beast and said “I love touching little boys’ pee pees.” www.404media.co/streamer-rea...

#Syria's province of #Suwayda has emerged as a narco state, run by remnants of #Assad's regime & organized crime leaders -- and protected by #Israel. My latest for @newlinesmag.bsky.social contains *a lot* of exclusive information. newlinesmag.com/argument/how...

A corner of Syria is now effectively a narco-state, run by former Assad officers and organized crime figures, and shielded by Israel. @charleslister1.bsky.social explains how it got this way and why outside powers are running out of options. newlinesmag.com/argument/how...

The U.S. is "significantly scaling down" its conventional military commitments to NATO. The nuclear umbrella stays, but Washington will "shrink" military capabilities available in a "major crisis, such as a military attack on a NATO member." An announcement is expected in Brussels on Friday.

“A Pizza Hut franchisee claims the chain’s AI-powered delivery system, meant to optimize orders and speed up deliveries, instead backfired and cost it more than $100 million.”

Another day, another request by federal prosecutors in Minnesota to throw out another of the criminal cases they filed during the past year. This one is an immigration offense for which they obtained an indictment during Trump's surge into Minneapolis this year.

🚨For the first time, the Senate has voted to hold a debate on a war powers resolution to end the Iran war. 4 GOP 'Yes' votes: Cassidy LA, Collins ME, Murkowski AK, & Paul KY 1 Dem 'No' vote: Fetterman PA A defeat for Trump and GOP leaders.

“I attacked NATO and won.” Franz-Stefan Gady played the role of the Russian chief of the general staff in a war game—and defeated the alliance. Here’s how he did it.

The NAACP launches a campaign calling on Black student-athletes to boycott Southern colleges in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act, leading to the dismantling of one majority-Black congressional district and a push to scrap others.

🇺🇸🇺🇦 The U.S. is interested in Ukraine’s drone technologies. Kyiv said Washington wants access to Ukrainian unmanned systems as part of a potential drone agreement. The discussions also involve intellectual property rights. Read more 👀 theukrainianreview.info/the-us-wants...

States across the US are looking to take major sources of pollution and use them to generate much-needed power. www.wired.com/story/oil-we...