Much of the country lost electricity today in a blackout affecting millions of people. It’s disrupted business and traffic with lights out and intermittent mobile service, ABC reports. Officials are still investigating the cause, according to the national disaster response service, Senapred.
Trump plans to “all but eliminate” the Office of Community Planning and Development as part of widespread layoffs across the federal government, the New York Times reports. It would slash the workforce within that office by 84 percent, the Times says, citing a document it obtained.
The office oversees payments for recovery efforts after major disasters, opening up questions about how North Carolina communities rebuilding after the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene could be affected.
It’s part of the Human Virome Program, an effort to better understand the many viruses that invade our bodies without making us sick. The researchers plan to collect samples from thousands of volunteers this year to analyze using AI.
It launched AI co-scientist, a system that’s supposed to help researchers generate new hypotheses and plans for conducting their work.
“It’s not meant to automate the scientific process,” Google says. The idea is to have a “virtual scientific collaborator” that can help people work faster.
[research.google]
The US wants to bring back domestic chipmaking. But the first generation of factory workers never got answers about their kids born with birth defects.
