One week ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Trump vs Intel snafu (which lasted just a few days, until Lip-Bu Tan showed up at the White House and became BFFs with Trump), we said that it is likely that the US government would take a stake in Intel, the same way it the Defense Department did with MP Minerals (a move which we also correctly predicted), becoming the largest shareholder in the rare earth minerals company. 

The Pentagon took a stake in US rare earth miner MP Materials… when will it do the same with Intel

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 7, 2025

We were right. 

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is in talks with Intel Corp. to have the US government potentially take a stake in the beleaguered chipmaker, helping support the company’s effort to expand domestic manufacturing, according to people familiar with the plan who may have been keeping a close eye on our X account in recent days. 

The deal would help shore up Intel’s planned factory hub in Ohio. The company had once promised to turn that site into the world’s largest chipmaking facility, though it’s been repeatedly delayed. The size of the potential stake isn’t clear.

The plans reportedly were prompted from a meeting this week between President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The idea is for the US government to pay for the stake and details are being sorted out, one of the people said. Another cautioned that the plans remain fluid. 

Needless to say, news of the proposed minority investment sent Intel shares soaring, erasing all of the company’s post-earnings losses.

In response to a Bloomberg request for comments, Intel said that “we look forward to continuing our work with the Trump administration to advance these shared priorities, but we are not going to comment on rumors or speculation.”

Any such (much needed) agreement would bolster Intel’s finances at a time when the company has been slashing spending and cutting jobs. It also suggests that Tan will remain at Intel’s helm. Trump had called for his ouster before the meeting over concerns about Tan’s ties to China.

It’s the latest direct intervention by Trump into a key industry. Earlier this week, the Trump admin reached an agreement to receive a 15% cut of certain semiconductor sales to China and took a so-called golden share in United States Steel Corp. as part of a deal to clear its sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel. 

More importantly, and just as we said it would, Bloomberg writes that “the Intel idea also echoes the Defense Department’s unprecedented announcement last month that it will take a $400 million preferred equity stake in the little-known US rare-earth producer MP Materials Corp. — a deal that would make the Pentagon the company’s largest shareholder. That move turned conventional wisdom on its head among investors, analysts, industry executives and even longtime government officials in terms of how private industry has dealt with the government.“

Not too long ago, Intel was the undisputed world chip industry leader, but it has struggled in recent years, hurt by the loss of market share and its technological edge. Tan’s predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, touted the Ohio factory expansion as part of a comeback plan. But Intel’s financial woes have imperiled the project. Earlier this year, the build-out was delayed until the 2030s, and the company said in July that it would further slow the Ohio plan. Since taking over in March, Tan has focused more on getting Intel’s financial house in order.

WK Kellogg is the first company to commit in a legal agreement to removing artificial dyes from its products, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Aug. 13.

“I’m proud to officially say Kellogg’s will stop putting these unhealthy ingredients in its cereals,” Paxton, a Republican, said in a statement.

Studies have linked the artificial dyes to health problems, including hyperactivity.

Kellogg’s produces a variety of cereals, including Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes. They currently contain dyes such as Red 40 and Yellow 5.

As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, Paxton began investigating Kellogg’s earlier this year for possibly violating state law by advertising cereals as healthy despite them containing the additives.

“There will be accountability for any company, including Kellogg’s, that unlawfully makes misrepresentations about its food and contributes to a broken health system that has made Americans less healthy,” Paxton said in a statement in April.

The investigation led to an assurance of voluntary compliance, a legal document that certifies that the company is committed to removing artificial colorings from its cereals by the end of 2027.

A spokesperson for Kellogg’s told The Epoch Times in an email on Aug. 14 that the company appreciates the chance to work with the office of the Texas attorney general.

The spokesperson confirmed that Kellogg’s will remove the artificial dyes from its products by the end of 2027.

“We see the growing focus on health as an opportunity to meet consumer needs in even more meaningful ways,” the spokesperson said.

The company has said that 85 percent of its cereal sales contain no artificial dyes, and that it long ago removed Red No. 3, which federal regulators in January said they were banning.

Regulators later banned two additional dyes—Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B. They stopped short of banning the other allowed artificial colors, saying they wanted to work with companies to voluntarily remove them.

After the announcement, on April 28, a Kellogg’s spokesperson told The Epoch Times that it was reformulating its cereals served in schools so that they would not contain the dyes, and that it would not launch any new products with the dyes effective January 2026.

At the time, the company also said it was working with federal officials to figure out ways to “effectively remove” dyes from the products that still contain them, but did not commit to a timeline for the removal.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a meeting in March that featured an executive from Kellogg’s that companies have two years to remove the dyes.

By Robert Walton of Utility Dive,

Summary:

• The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday selected 11 advanced reactor projects to participate in a nuclear pilot program that aims to expedite deployment without Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, according to a June request for applications.

• DOE wants to achieve criticality of at least three test reactors using an expedited authorization process by July 4, 2026.

• Oklo and its Atomic Alchemy subsidiary were selected to develop three of the projects. DOE “is opening the door to the market so new ideas, new approaches, and new designs can be built more quickly and efficiently,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said in a statement.

DOE unveiled its reactor pilot program in June, building on a May executive order signed by President Donald Trump that reformed reactor testing. The program aims to expedite testing of reactor designs authorized by DOE and located outside of the national laboratories.

DOE cited the Atomic Energy Act’s authorization of reactors under the agency’s “sufficient control,” in authorizing the pilot.

“Reactors built and operated pursuant to the DOE pilot program will not require Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing,” the June request for applications said. “Nevertheless, DOE-approved reactor designs can and will be fast tracked for future NRC licensing. … [The pilot will] provide a fast track to an NRC license, and hence, commercialization for authorized reactor design.”

DOE on Tuesday named 10 companies that could access a “fast-tracked approach to future commercial licensing activities.” They are: Aalo Atomics; Antares Nuclear; Atomic Alchemy; Deep Fission; Last Energy; Oklo; Natura Resources; Radiant Industries; Terrestrial Energy; and Valar Atomics.

Each company will be responsible for all costs associated with designing, manufacturing, constructing, operating, and decommissioning their test reactors, the DOE said. 

“Seeking DOE authorization provided under the Atomic Energy Act will help today’s selected companies … unlock private funding and provide a fast-tracked approach to future commercial licensing activities,” it said in a release.

DOE Deputy Secretary of Energy James Danly said in a statement that the agency will “do everything we can” to support the companies’ aim of “safely” achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.

“This shows that the DOE is ushering in a new era of building new nuclear in America by unleashing its unique capabilities to enable American nuclear innovators to build,” Oklo’s DeWitte said. “DOE’s selection of a number of projects provides a sweeping injection of urgency to meet the moment.”

DOE tapped Oklo for two projects and its subsidiary, Atomic Alchemy, was selected for a third. Oklo completed its acquisition of the radioisotope producer in March.

While nuclear boosters have hailed DOE’s pilot program, critics say the lack of NRC licensing requirements creates safety risks. 

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in May criticized the White House’s plan to move nuclear reactor siting, licensing and fuel supply for some projects outside the NRC.

“By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety and livelihoods of millions,” Lyman said.

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

While not everyone is on board with President Trump’s “America First” philosophy, its importance when it comes to energy is brought into sharp focus when considering where the U.S. would be if it capitulated to the whims of global organizations like the United Nations or obeyed the verdicts of world courts.

The frightening attitudes of believers in global rule were recently on display courtesy of a New York Times opinion piece headlined “Climate Science is Now the Law,” penned by three writers who are all part of something called the Center for International Environmental Law. In their article, the authors claim, “The science on climate change has long been settled. Now the law is, too.”

How did this phenomenon occur? The writers inform us that the International Court of Justice – the judicial branch of the United Nations – has ruled on a petition from “the South Pacific archipelago nation of Vanuatu and other climate-vulnerable countries, with the help of Pacific Island students” who “secured” a U.N. resolution asking the court “to clarify what existing international law requires governments to do about climate change and what legal consequences they face if their failure to uphold the law causes serious harm.”

The result? Not a surprise. The court ruled that “countries must protect citizens from the ‘urgent and existential threat’ of climate change. When a country fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions — whether by producing or consuming fossil fuels, approving new exploration to find them or subsidizing the industry — it may be held liable for ‘an internationally wrongful act,’ the court’s 15 judges said.”

The authors conclude, “This makes it much harder for any government or company to say that rules don’t apply to them or they don’t have to act. … It is a cease-and-desist notice to fossil fuel producers.” So there!

One can easily imagine the Biden administration subjugating itself to the international judiciary. Fortunately, the Trump administration – remembering that little document called the U.S. Constitution – treats rulings from international courts with the same level of respect paid to “Do Not Remove” tags on couch cushions.

At about the same time that the International Court of Overstep was issuing its decree for nations to kneel at the feet of the wind and solar gods, the Trump administration took another giant leap in its race to reverse Biden’s disastrous energy policies. On July 7, the Energy Department unveiled its “Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security,” as required under President Trump’s April executive order to examine the topic.

“This methodology equips DOE and its partners with a powerful tool to identify at-risk regions and guide federal interventions to prevent power outages, accelerate data center deployment, and ensure the grid keeps pace with explosive load growth driven by artificial intelligence and reindustrialization,” the DOE reported.

Rather than follow international directives and judgments to rid itself of energy sources like natural gas, which is necessary to power technology, manufacturing and the coming AI data centers, the DOE is, fortunately, doing the exact opposite. Among the biggest DOE findings:

• If current plant retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged “most regions will face unacceptable reliability risks within five years.”
• Radical change is necessary because otherwise, the magnitude of projected AI data centers and other manufacturing “cannot be met with existing approaches to load addition and grid management.
• The coal and gas plant retirements previously planned by 2030 “could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation.”
• Even with plans to replace 104 gigawatts of plant retirements with 209 gigawatts of new generation by 2030, “only 22 (gigawatts) come from firm baseload generation sources,” meaning that “the model found outage risk in several regions rises more than 30-fold.” (A gigawatt is equal to 1 billion watts.)

In other words, replacing firm baseload sources like natural gas with alternative sources like wind or solar is not an apples-for-apples proposition, since “renewables” put the grid at greater risk. Establishing arbitrary end dates for our most affordable and reliable energy sources is both illogical and reckless.

On the heels of the international court’s irresponsible and (thankfully) unenforceable decree, and the DOE’s astute recommendation to do the opposite of what the court prescribed, came a story from Reuters declaring that the Trump administration’s actions to end or curtail Biden-era subsidies and credits for “renewables” are, fortunately, having an impact.

“Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Heliene’s plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never get built,” the news agency reported.

President Trump is putting America first and leading an energy renaissance that should be in full bloom on our nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. It’s difficult to imagine a greater Independence Day gift to the American people than freedom from the cold, dark landscape that would result from following the directives of global agencies and the rulings of international courts.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!

The $19 billion sale of CK Hutchison’s 43 global ports, including two strategically vital ports on the Panama Canal (Balboa and Cristóbal terminals), to a BlackRock-led consortium is far from completion, mired in the crossfire of US-China trade and geopolitical tensions. 

CK Hutchison co-managing director Frank Sixt told Wall Street analysts during its interim earnings results earlier today that the deal’s complexity means it likely won’t be completed this year, especially after China demanded earlier this summer that its largest shipping company, Cosco, be included in the Western-investor deal.

“We are in a new stage of our deal and that includes, as we have said, discussions with a major strategic Chinese investor,” Sixt said.

He continued, “I believe that there is a reasonable chance that those discussions will lead to a deal that is good for all of the parties, ourselves included, and most importantly, that will be capable of being approved by all of the relevant authorities.”

Wall Street analysts paid close attention to comments from CK Hutchison’s exeutives about deal progress that has been pushed to next year.  

While analysts’ 12-month forward EPS forecasts for CK Hutchison have sunk to their lowest level since 2009, the stock in Hong Kong has rebounded since an April bottom on the prospects of a deal. This means the stock is 9 times forward earnings; in other words, no longer a bargain.

“So much hinges off this port sale,” said David Blennerhassett, an analyst at Quiddity Advisors.

Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

Molecular biologist Mike Rossner, who has committed his life to following the science, now finds himself playing an unexpected if urgent role – exposing the fraud of his fellow scientists. 

Rossner is part of a network of experts that sniff out researchers who intentionally or recklessly fabricate, falsify, or plagiarize evidence. Rossner, a consultant specializing in identifying manipulated and duplicated images in journal papers – a telltale sign of deceit – has been dismayed by his findings at U.S. research centers. Scientists often have deleted the data underlying the images, making misconduct harder to prove and casting doubt on the validity of the research. 

“Science is about finding the truth, and an inaccurate representation of what was actually observed means that you are not representing the truth,” said Rossner, a former managing editor of The Journal of Cell Biology. “This is harmful to the progress of science and to our society that depends on it.”

In recent years, research misconduct has tainted the country’s most venerable universities, including Harvard and Johns Hopkins. To date, more than 20 Nobel Prize winners have had papers retracted by the journals that published them, a move often associated with misconduct, according to Retraction Watch. The watchdog group says that retractions worldwide increased fivefold in the last decade.

That a profession with noble intentions finds itself beset by a surprisingly high incidence of not just honest errors but fraud – estimated at about 1% to 2% of all research papers – is a complicated story. Experts say it reflects a breakdown in ethics by scientists under intense pressure to frequently publish to keep their jobs. This problem was highlighted by a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the growth of clandestine “paper mills,” which exploit the “publish or perish” culture of research. The operators of mills produce low-quality and fake papers – giving authorship to scientists at a price – that are published in “predatory journals” without peer review, fueling the growth of retractions and fraud.

The problem runs deeper. Lax oversight at some universities and research centers, which are required by federal agencies to police themselves and yet depend on the grants that published research brings in, allows wrongdoing to go unchecked. 

When fraud is suspected, the misconduct investigations that follow are shrouded in secrecy – even though much research is federally funded. Universities typically reveal nothing at all, even though federal rules clearly allow them to disclose details of cases when misconduct is found, out of fear of defamation suits from scientists and internal employment policies. 

What’s more, institutions as well as the federal funding agencies that oversee the investigations, mainly the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Research Integrity, don’t disclose anonymous data on the total number of allegations, investigations, and findings of misconduct each year. This lack of transparency makes it almost impossible to determine if the problem is getting better or worse. It’s a big black box. 

Still, two research integrity officers (RIOs) who handle these probes told RealClearInvestigations that misconduct findings at some institutions are on the rise, stemming from an increase in the volume of substandard papers and greater scrutiny of them. 

“We have had more findings of misconduct at Northwestern in recent years than we did 10 years ago and generally it’s been on the rise,” Lauran Qualkenbush, research integrity officer at the top ranked university, told RCI. “There is greater public awareness and more people actually reporting misconduct.”

More than academic reputations are at stake. Many misconduct cases are concentrated in biomedical research, which clinicians depend on to make diagnostic and treatment decisions. Among the examples of fraudulent research potentially harming patients, a study by JAMA found such a link with hydroxyethyl starch, which is used to treat people experiencing a rapid loss of blood. 

The harm is also to science itself at a time of deepening public skepticism in the enterprise. When solid findings on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines are rejected by officials in the Trump administration, which is also aiming to cut funding by about a quarter in its campaign against “woke” research, self-inflicted cheating scandals can only weaken public support for the value of science. 

Obstacles to Investigations

Research integrity officers on the frontlines face institutional obstacles that go well beyond the deletion of data. In the university hierarchy, these investigators are known to be dedicated but are also often low-ranking. They depend on their bosses, typically a university’s head of research or chief academic officer, to run interference for them. 

“It’s important that RIOs have support of the most senior people because of the things that they have to deal with,” said Northwestern’s Qualkenbush.

What RIOs often confront are tenured scientists with impressive reputations and institutional backing because of the funding and publicity they attract to the university. Since a misconduct finding can lead to dismissal or a years-long ban on federal funding, it’s not surprising that more scientists are filing defamation suits to “silence the critics” and derail investigations, according to a Cambridge University Press article.

These investigations are unfolding in a conflicted atmosphere. Misconduct is often first suspected by researchers in the same lab where they work. Everyone in the lab, from the faculty members who run it to the younger post-docs and grad students, knows each other. They celebrate breakthroughs and birthdays together. So researchers are very reluctant to report evidence of fraud because of a fear of career-harming retaliation from their colleagues. 

At Northwestern, Qualkenbush goes to great lengths to protect whistleblowers and get their cooperation. She has helped find them positions in other labs, creating a safe distance from their former colleagues before informing the accused of an inquiry. She has arranged for the writing of letters of recommendation from faculty members who are not involved in the wrongdoing. One Northwestern graduate student waited a year to report allegations – until immediately after the person was awarded a Ph.D. and could move on to a new opportunity without fear of reprisal.

“Fear of retaliation is a huge problem that RIOs have to deal with on a regular basis,” Qualkenbush said. “You can’t have a grad student make allegations against their principal investigator and go back to work in the lab the next day. When the accuser is in a vulnerable position, it’s just horrific.”

Stefan Franzen, a whistleblower at North Carolina State University whose long saga was chronicled by the local media, became the target of an unrelenting retaliation campaign. Franzen told RCI that his troubles began when, at the urging of his dean of research, he started working with two researchers who had just published what was considered a groundbreaking paper in the prestigious journal Science. Together, they would form a competitive team to win grants. 

But Franzen, then a tenured chemistry professor, and a grad student dug into the paper and found several flaws in its central finding. After informing the two researchers of his concerns and getting no response, Franzen says, he intended to send a correction to the journal. But the researchers objected, saying the data wasn’t his to correct – an argument that Franzen found preposterous – and the dean sided with the duo, saying the university could be sued.  

Undaunted, Franzen did file a complaint with N.C. State’s research integrity officer. The RIO investigated the matter and sent a report to the National Science Foundation that oversaw the case because it had provided the grant. 

“The next thing I know, everyone, top to bottom, is upset with me because I’m going to cost the university money,” Franzen said. “The dean went around telling people how terrible I was. If you’re the whistleblower, you are the one who gets hurt.”

Franzen says research center directors made it difficult for him to use their equipment. Worse, the dean backed an investigation accusing Franzen of grant fraud, which included a visit by two armed federal agents. Franzen was cleared.

It took a decade before Franzen won a bitter-sweet victory. In a 2015 letter of reprimand, NSF banned the two researchers from receiving more federal funding because of a “misrepresentation of data on which a conclusion was based.” N.C. State, for its part, tried to distance itself from the controversy, saying the reprimand didn’t target the university and not much more. A year later, Science retracted the paper. 

“I went through a really tough patch,” Franzen said. “My own administration was doing everything it could to get me to leave, but yes, I’ve recovered.”

N.C. State did not respond to a request for comment. 

Harvard, Stanford and Dana-Farber

While Franzen’s case may be extreme, university leaders have more subtle ways to slow walk and obstruct inquiries to protect the reputations of scientists and their institutions. Under federal rules, an allegation of misconduct must make it through two steps – an initial assessment to weed out frivolous accusations and next an inquiry to find out if there’s evidence of wrongdoing – before a full investigation begins. 

As part of the process, a small committee of about three researchers and experts is set up, typically by a high-ranking administrator if not the RIO, to guide the investigation. While committee members are supposed to be free of conflicts of interest with the accused and the accuser, that doesn’t mean they always conduct a thorough and honest probe, according to one experienced RIO who asked not to be named.

Some committee members struggle to take a tough stand against a fellow researcher, the source said. Others are unwilling to invest the considerable time required over a year or more, including interviewing everyone in a lab, examining up to 30 drafts of a paper, and reviewing hundreds of emails to determine who committed the falsification and whether it was intentional. 

The hardest part of the investigation, the source said, is to pin the wrongdoing on the lab directors. Junior researchers do most of the work on the experiments and papers, leaving their fingerprints on everything. The directors often claim they were unaware of the falsification, but it’s difficult to determine if this is true or if their lax supervision allowed the wrongdoing to occur. 

It’s easier for investigative committees to find that the falsification was human error, recommend that a correction be printed, and close the probe.

“I’ve had cases where someone in-house told me, ‘We don’t want to make a big deal of this,’” the source said. “And I say, ‘This is a big deal. These are serious allegations against a prominent researcher.’” 

Science Sleuths Find Evidence of Misconduct

When leaders of an institution are accused of misconduct, the conflicts of interest are so significant that independent experts should be called in to investigate, according to an article co-authored by Lisa Rasmussen, a professor who studies research ethics and has served on investigative committees at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Stanford and Harvard did turn to outsiders to investigate their presidents, but the prestigious Dana-Farber Cancer Institute kept its recent review of CEO Laurie Glimcher and other leaders in-house.

Last year, Glimcher and other Dana-Farber researchers had their names on an embarrassing wave of 31 corrected and six retracted papers. Science retracted a paper co-authored by Glimcher, citing discrepancies in the data and a lack of confidence in the findings. 

Although the media reported that a committee of trustees would make a final determination on Glimcher, a spokesperson told RCI that she couldn’t even confirm if Dana-Farber conducted an investigation or any other details, citing federal confidentiality rules. But experts say those rules don’t apply once the investigation and findings are complete. 

“It would have been better for Dana-Farber to bring in an outside panel of experts to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest,” said Professor Rasmussen. “It would also be in the public interest and probably in Dana-Farber’s interest to be transparent in such a high-profile case to restore trust.”

Most misconduct would probably remain uncovered or quiet in-house affairs if not for the exposés by independent investigators such as Sholto David, who first revealed the erroneous papers at Dana-Farber. A biologist with an irreverent style, David, along with dozens of other scientists, is part of an informal network of sleuths who scrutinize thousands of published papers annually and frequently find fabricated and manipulated evidence. Their detailed examinations, typically published online in PubPeer, provide the initial evidence that often leads to retractions and misconduct investigations. The sleuths have become so prolific that their revelations can overwhelm the ability of universities to investigate them, according to an article in PubMed.

Retraction Watch, co-founded by medical doctor and science editor Ivan Oransky, is a key player in the sleuthing world, providing groundbreaking reports on retractions and misconduct cases. Its long-term tracking of retractions, which journals typically announce in a brief notice, provides a roundabout method of monitoring trends in misconduct, since researchers have found that about two-thirds of retractions are due to wrongdoing rather than human error. 

The number of retractions is climbing fast. Retraction Watch counted 139 total retractions globally in 2005, soaring to 1,542 a decade later. That number spiked more than eightfold to 13,107 by 2023 – due to a flood of retractions by Hindawi journals. Last year’s figure of 5,475 continues the general upward trend. 

In all, Oransky says, about 1 in 500 or 0.2% of papers are retracted. But sleuths and whistleblowers can’t possibly identify all the papers that deserve to be pulled. He estimates that the percentage should be about 1 in 50, or 2%. 

That figure lines up with several studies of potential misconduct. When Rossner was at The Journal of Cell Biology, he found that about 1% of accepted papers contained evidence of image manipulation and thus likely wrongdoing. Scientist and sleuth Elizabeth Bik reviewed a sample of more than 20,000 papers in 40 journals, finding that about 2% had “features suggestive of deliberate manipulation.” 

If anywhere near 2% of research papers are the product of wrongdoing, that’s a significant problem. Among the proposed reforms, Rossner says research institutions and journals should require the screening of papers for image manipulation before publication to catch misconduct. The publisher Springer Nature says it screens accepted life science manuscripts for Nature and its research journals. 

Oransky wants more transparency by requiring universities to release their investigative reports to shed light on strategies to curb fraud. Professor Rasmussen sees the need for an independent national commission, separate from federal funding agencies, to set policy, closely monitor investigations, and gather data on misconduct.

“We can tweak regulations and make investigators more rigorous, but this is fundamentally an ethical issue,” said Mark Barnes, a lawyer and prominent expert on misconduct investigations. “Institutions need to be proactive and deal with this issue on the front end by training young researchers in ethics to curb misconduct before it happens.”

Oh great, more surveillance!

A team of Penn State computer scientists has cooked up a chilling new way to eavesdrop: detecting the microscopic vibrations your smartphone gives off during a call and translating them into words using artificial intelligence.

The method relies on millimeter-wave radar, the same high-frequency tech powering self-driving car sensors, motion detectors, and 5G networks. Aim it at a phone and it can capture the subtle tremors from the earpiece when someone is speaking. These vibrations are invisible to the naked eye but, with the right tools, can become a transcript of your conversation.

The radar data is run through a modified version of Whisper, an AI speech-recognition model originally designed for clean audio. Instead of retraining the whole system, the team used a low-rank adaptation trick to tweak just 1% of the model’s parameters – enough to boost performance without starting from scratch.

The result? Roughly 60% accuracy on continuous speech from up to 10 feet away, covering a vocabulary of about 10,000 words. It’s not perfect, but it’s plenty to grab key phrases, names, or numbers that could be pieced together to expose private information.

“When we talk on a cellphone, we tend to ignore the vibrations that come through the earpiece and cause the whole phone to vibrate,” said Suryoday Basak, the project’s lead researcher and a doctoral candidate in computer science, adding “If we capture these same vibrations using remote radars and bring in machine learning… we can determine whole conversations.”

This is an evolution of a 2022 project where the same team could only identify 10 pre-set words with 83% accuracy. Now, they’ve moved into the far more complex world of live speech.

As Interesting Engineering notes further; 

Radar tech breakthrough

The experimental setup involved positioning the radar sensor about three meters (10 feet) away from the phone to capture the minute vibrations.

The data was then fed into the customized AI model, which produced transcriptions with around 60 percent accuracy over a vocabulary of up to 10,000 words.

While this is far from perfect, the researchers noted that even partial keyword matches could have serious security implications.

“The result was transcriptions of conversations, with an expectation of some errors, which was a marked improvement from our 2022 version, which outputs only a few words,” said co-author Mahanth Gowda, associate professor of computer science and engineering.

“But even picking up partial matches for speech, such as keywords, are useful in a security context.”

The team compared their approach to lip reading, which typically captures only 30% to 40% of spoken words but can still help people infer conversations when combined with context.

Similarly, the radar-AI system’s output, though imperfect, can reveal sensitive information when supplemented with prior knowledge or manual correction.

Privacy risks amplified

Basak emphasized the potential privacy risks posed by this emerging technology.

“Similar to how lip readers can use limited information to interpret conversations, the output of our model combined with contextual information can allow us to infer parts of a phone conversation from a few meters away,” he said.

“The goal of our work was to explore whether these tools could potentially be used by bad actors to eavesdrop on phone conversations from a distance. Our findings suggest that this is technically feasible under certain conditions, and we hope this raises public awareness so people can be more mindful during sensitive calls.”

The U.S. National Science Foundation supported the research, and the team stressed that their experiments are intended to highlight possible vulnerabilities before malicious actors exploit them.

They envision future efforts to develop protective measures to secure personal conversations from this kind of remote surveillance.

As wireless technology and AI evolve rapidly, this study serves as a crucial warning: even the faintest vibrations from your everyday devices can potentially betray your most private words.

The study has been published in, published in the Proceedings of WiSec 2025: 18th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

As I approached the start of my first-year torts classes at George Washington University, we have a rather intriguing tort action being threatened by the First Lady. Melania Trump has been pursuing media outlets claiming that she was introduced to or had close contact with the notorious Jeffrey Epstein. However, the latest recipient of a notice letter is none other than the son of the prior president, Hunter Biden.

The letter below focuses on two statements made by Biden in a video interview with Channel 5’s Andrew Callaghan, posted to YouTube in early August.

a. “Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep.”

b. “Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania, that’s how Melania and the First Lady and the President met. Really? Epstein made the intro? Yeah, according to Michael Wolff.”

The First Lady’s counsel, Alejandro Brito, wrote to Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, that the statements are defamatory per se. The common law has long recognized per se categories of defamation where damages are presumed and special damages need not be proven.  These include: (1) disparaging a person’s professional character or standing; (2) alleging a person is unchaste; (3) alleging that a person has committed a criminal act or act of moral turpitude; (4) alleging a person has a sexual or loathsome disease; and (5) attacking a person’s business or professional reputation.

It would be interesting if Hunter’s counsel claimed that the First Lady is technically a “public official” to trigger a higher standard of proof.

In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court crafted the actual malice standard that required public officials to shoulder the higher burden of proving defamation. Under that standard, an official would have to show either actual knowledge of its falsity or a reckless disregard of the truth.

The First Lady has a federal budget, staff, and official duties.

In the end, it is likely a moot point since, even if she is not a public official, she is clearly a public figure.

The actual malice standard was later extended to public figures.  The Supreme Court has held that public figure status applies when  someone “thrust[s] himself into the vortex of [the] public issue [and] engage[s] the public’s attention in an attempt to influence its outcome.” A limited-purpose public figure status applies if someone voluntarily “draw[s] attention to himself” or allows himself to become part of a controversy “as a fulcrum to create public discussion.” Wolston v. Reader’s Digest Association, 443 U.S. 157, 168 (1979).

Brito is claiming damages of $1 billion notice over statements that are “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” made about the First Lady:

“These false, disparaging, defamatory, and inflammatory statements are extremely salacious and have been widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums. Indeed, the video has since been re-published by various media outlets, journalists, and political commentators with millions of social media followers that have disseminated the false and defamatory statements therein to tens of millions of people worldwide.”

In laying the foundation for reckless disregard of the truth, Brito is citing the dubious source for the information as “serial fabulist Michael Wolff, whose lies were published by The Daily Beast in the article titled ‘Melania Trump ‘very involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author.’”

Wolff is highly controversial. We previously discussed how his sensational claims have been regularly challenged. That led to a rare rebuke from Special Counsel Mueller after the publication of his book “Siege: Trump Under Fire.” The Special Counsel’s office has already made a rare public denial of one of those claims: that Mueller’s office actually drafted indictments against Trump for obstruction of justice. The New York Times reported on the new book as coming out “despite lingering questions about its accuracy.”

While Mueller’s office categorically denied the claim, Wolff insisted ‘My source is impeccable, and I have no doubt about the authenticity and the significance of the documents.”

The notice letter is ironic given Hunter Biden’s scorched Earth strategy of threatening lawsuits, including defamation, against critics. It did not work. Indeed, Biden abandoned lawsuits after his pardon by his father.

Previous media outlets have pulled similar statements against the First Lady.

The Daily Beast pulled the article detailing allegations by Wolff that Melania Trump was introduced to her husband, Donald Trump, via a modeling agent connected to Epstein. It ran the following notice: “Editor’s Note. After this story was published, The Beast received a letter from First Lady Melania Trump’s attorney challenging the headline and framing of the article. After reviewing the matter, the Beast has taken down the article and apologizes for any confusion or misunderstanding.”

Likewise, James Carville apologized to the First Lady after repeating the claim and stated on his podcast:

“In last week’s podcast episode, we spoke with Judd Legum. After the episode, we received a letter from Melania Trump’s lawyer. He took issue with our title of one of those YouTube videos from that episode and a couple of comments I made about the first lady. We took a look at what they complained about, and we took down the video and edited out those comments from the episode. I also take back these statements and apologize.”

Hunter Biden is reportedly facing financial challenges and the threat of a lawsuit cannot be welcomed news. Biden has been engaging in unhinged, profane diatribes attacking both Democrats and Republicans. The thrill of trash-talking will likely end if Hunter finds himself yet again in court.

Here is the letter: Melania Trump Lawsuit Letter

A power bill crisis is gripping parts of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and is set to worsen, threatening to financially crush households as long-range forecasts point to a brutally cold winter. What began in Baltimore, Maryland – as first covered in our reporting one year ago– has now spread to New Jersey, where residents are furious over skyrocketing electricity costs. 

The common denominator in both states? A disastrous green energy agenda, pushed by radical leftist lawmakers, is dismantling reliable and cheap fossil fuel power generation in favor of unstable solar and wind. This has unleashed a power bill armageddon on working-class and middle-class households, as well as mom-and-pop businesses, all while baseload power demand surges in the era of AI data centers.

Fox News is beginning to latch onto the power bill crisis theme, starting with coverage of New Jersey residents who are absolutely furious over exploding power bills. This new development could severely damage the state’s Democratic leaders in the upcoming elections.

You don’t say… https://t.co/iX4l8J6otj pic.twitter.com/M620Jd7Pog

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 14, 2025

This all started when New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities approved a 17 to 20% rate hike for power bills in June. Many residents were shocked when they opened their bills at the end of last month. 

“$200 more, I know my electrical bill,” one Jersey woman told Fox News reporter CB Cotton, adding, “I was shocked. So to say the least, I’m very disappointed. This is killing us, and every time you turn around it’s something more. You only get little pleasures in life that you enjoy, and my air conditioner is one of them.”

Perhaps Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to shutter the state’s nuclear and coal plants, without a one-to-one replacement for lost capacity on the grid, was a catastrophic error that is only now coming home to roost. He also prioritized offshore wind farms and other green energy projects, which have left the grid more fragile than ever. 

Murphy took six power plants offline and invested a billion dollars in chasing his offshore wind dream. Mikie enabled the obsessions of climate activists by voting in favor of the trillion dollar green new scam (aka, inflation reduction act). Instead of investing in existing… https://t.co/6MXgSHbT60 pic.twitter.com/ka2EfhB9W6

— Protect Our Coast NJ (@njcoast_protect) July 29, 2025

Fox News pointed out, “Murphy himself is term-limited from running for office again, but the Democratic nominee in the race, Mikie Sherill, is facing many of the same criticisms.” 

Let’s head three hours south down the I-95 corridor to Baltimore, Maryland, where far-left activist lawmakers, including Governor Westley Watende Omari Moore, who is being positioned for the party’s 2028 presidential run, have sparked a very similar power bill crisis. 

Cut from the same climate-crisis-cult cloth, these Democratic leaders across the Mid-Atlantic states have failed voters with disastrous green policies.

In Maryland, the power bill crisis seems much more severe than in New Jersey!

In the political arena, the Democratic Party is panicking to keep Gov. Moore afloat as his ratings implode over the affordability crisis sparked by power bill madness in the era of AI data centers.

“Governing is hard. Just ask Governor Wes Moore — plummeting 14 points in a year, scraping a dismal 50% approval in deep-blue Maryland,” Change Annapolis, a bipartisan group of taxpayers, wrote in a post on X. 

Change Annapolis continued, “Marylanders are tired of his presidential vanity tour, crushing tax hikes, and an energy crisis of his own making,” adding, “He’s polling worse than O’Malley and Glendening at this point in their terms.” 

The power bill crisis is still in its early stages. Goldman analyst Hongcen Wei wrote an alarming note to clients on Wednesday, warning that a majority of U.S. power grids “have already reached dangerously low spare capacity levels that are at or below the critical reliability threshold. This raises blackout threats and results in power price spikes during high-demand usage hours.”

In other words, the power crisis is here, and high energy costs could very well doom Democrats in Mid-Atlantic states. Each month, voters are reminded of the impact of failed green energy policies when they open their soaring utility bills.

Authored by Athan Koutsiouroumbas via RealClearPennsylvania,

Is artificial intelligence coming for your job? It may depend on who you voted for in the 2024 presidential election.

If you voted for Donald Trump, your job is likely safe.

If you voted for Kamala Harris, you have reason to be concerned.

Quietly last month, Microsoft released a study of the jobs most and least likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence. The study results track closely to the socioeconomics of the 2024 presidential election and the political realignment sweeping the nation.

The jobs most likely to be displaced by artificial intelligence fit the profile of the college-educated elite who are backing the Democratic Party. These jobs include writers and authors, reporters, historians, and political scientists.

These are roles rooted in so-called knowledge work, which is the gathering and interpreting of information, producing written content, and communicating ideas. These are the tasks artificial intelligence currently does best.

The jobs least likely to be displaced are the blue-collar workers who are building the new Republican majority. These jobs include highway maintenance workers, cement masons, painters, and truck drivers. All roles with a high physical component and minimal overlap with AI’s current capabilities.

Nationwide, about 8.5 million jobs are at the highest risk of being replaced by AI. Based on an analysis of Microsoft and state data, in Pennsylvania, that represents a little under 300,000 jobs. Conversely, about 5.5 million jobs nationwide, and roughly 240,000 in Pennsylvania, are in categories least likely to be affected.

The Microsoft study’s methodology is worth noting. Researchers analyzed 200,000 anonymized conversations between Americans and Bing Copilot, classifying the “user goals” and the “AI actions” according to work activities defined by the U.S. Department of Labor’s O/NET database.

By measuring how frequently AI assisted with or performed these activities, how successfully it did so, and how broad the potential impact was, they created an “AI applicability score” for each occupation.

These roles share a heavy reliance on information gathering, writing, editing, and communicating, which are areas where AI already demonstrates high task completion rates and broad applicability.

From a political standpoint, the study’s findings mirror the cultural and economic realignment of the last decade. The Democratic coalition has grown more white-collar, more urban, and more dependent on credentialed professions. The Republican base has grown more working-class, more rural or exurban, and concentrated in the skilled trades.

In short, the jobs that AI is poised to displace are concentrated in the Democratic coalition, while the jobs still untouched by AI are clustered in the Republican one.

The implication? AI disruption may accelerate the realignment – replacing jobs in industries that overwhelmingly vote blue while leaving red-leaning jobs largely untouched.

But the study also warns against simple “automation doom” narratives. Many of the most at-risk occupations are not necessarily destined for elimination; they may instead be transformed. AI can assist rather than replace, potentially boosting productivity and changing job descriptions rather than eliminating them entirely.

Still, the scale of potential change is enormous. The biggest concentration is in customer service (2.85 million nationally) and sales representatives (1.14 million nationally), which are fields where AI can already answer questions, present information, and resolve issues with impressive fluency.

AI’s trajectory may mirror past innovations, such as ATMs, which reduced the need for tellers but also enabled banks to expand and redeploy staff. The Microsoft study suggests we may see similar patterns with AI.

Yet the cultural dimension is new: automation risk is not spread evenly across the political spectrum. It clearly clusters along partisan lines.

Pennsylvania, poised to become the “AI capital of the United States,” will be both the factory floor and the test lab for this disruption – producing the tools that may displace thousands of its own white-collar workers while expanding opportunity for skilled trades.

For policymakers, the challenge is twofold: they should provide soft landings for those being displaced while ensuring our educational system is producing enough workers with the necessary blue-collar skills to usher in the economy of the future.

During the era of globalization, policymakers demonstrated they either did not care or could not help the millions of displaced industrial workers who anchored the American middle class.

This is an opportunity for GOP policymakers to rise to the occasion to bring even more Americans into its Big Tent by providing solutions for these soon-to-be displaced workers, largely concentrated in the suburbs. 

The study ends on a note of humility as AI’s impact is a moving target. Capabilities will evolve, jobs will adapt, and new occupations will emerge. While truck drivers are on the “safe” list today, self-driving trucks are not far away. 

Want to know if AI is coming for your job?  Pull up a county-by-county map of the 2024 election. You might find your answer in red and blue.