The Trump administration's Justice Department has concluded that UCLA's medical school gave preference to Black and Hispanic applicants over white and Asian candidates during the last three admissions cycles, violating federal law and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned race-conscious admissions. The seven-page letter marks the first time DOJ has publicly accused a university of racial discrimination in admissions since that ruling. The findings cite data showing admitted Black and Hispanic students had lower GPAs and MCAT scores than their white and Asian counterparts, alongside internal policies and emails demonstrating intent to use race in decisions. The administration has opened multiple investigations into colleges' admissions practices and is demanding years of application data. UCLA maintains its process is "grounded in a rigorous, comprehensive review" and is reviewing the report.
The 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling ended decades of affirmative action in college admissions. The Trump administration has aggressively enforced this decision, with DOJ's Civil Rights Division led by Harmeet Dhillon investigating numerous universities. UCLA is separately being sued by Students for Fair Admissions, with DOJ joining that litigation earlier this year.
MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Yale's Pascual Restrepo found that US companies since 1980 have frequently deployed automation not to maximize productivity but to eliminate workers earning "wage premiums" — higher salaries than comparable peers. This targeting of better-paid non-college-educated workers has driven income inequality more than previously understood: automation accounts for 52 percent of inequality growth from 1980 to 2016, with 10 percentage points specifically from wage-premium displacement. The study estimates this inefficient automation focus offset 60-90 percent of potential productivity gains. Acemoglu notes that despite abundant new patents and technologies, US productivity statistics remain "fairly pitiful" — suggesting firms prioritize short-term salary cuts over optimal long-term growth paths. The research appears in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Acemoglu and Restrepo have published extensively on automation's labor effects since the 2010s. Their methodology analyzed 500 demographic groups across 49 industries using Census Bureau and American Community Survey data. The "wage premium" concept refers to workers earning above-market rates for their education and experience level.
OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati testified in a video deposition shown at the Musk v. Altman trial that CEO Sam Altman lied to her about safety protocols for a new AI model. Murati stated Altman falsely claimed OpenAI's legal department had determined the model did not need review by the company's deployment safety board. She verified with general counsel Jason Kwon that this was untrue, then ensured the model went through proper review. Murati described her tenure as "incredibly hard" in "an organization that was very complex," saying Altman undermined her work and pitted executives against each other. Her testimony aligns with cofounder Ilya Sutskever's memo alleging Altman's "consistent pattern of lying" and former board member Helen Toner's 2024 statement about evidence of Altman's manipulation. Murati briefly served as interim CEO after Altman's November 2023 firing before leaving in 2024 to found Thinking Machines Lab.
The trial concerns Elon Musk's lawsuit to reverse OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit structure. Murati joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016 and became CTO in 2018. The board's November 2023 firing of Altman cited his lack of "consistent candor" in communications.
SpaceX's planned initial public offering would grant Elon Musk "virtually unchecked executive authority" while stripping shareholders of standard legal protections, according to Reuters excerpts from the confidential registration statement. The filing combines supervoting shares giving Musk majority control, mandatory arbitration clauses, and Texas corporate law to prevent shareholder lawsuits and class actions. Investors would "irrevocably and unconditionally" waive jury trial rights. Musk would retain over 50 percent voting power post-IPO and personally control board appointments, mergers, and other governance decisions. The structure exploits a September 2025 SEC policy shift permitting mandatory arbitration. Governance experts call the arrangement "unprecedented" for simultaneously closing "the voting door, the courthouse door and the proposal door." The filing follows Musk's Delaware pay package voiding and Tesla's Texas relocation, suggesting SpaceX is designed to prevent similar shareholder challenges.
SpaceX currently has 42.5% equity ownership and 83.8% voting control. The IPO structure makes it a "controlled company" exempt from independent director requirements for key committees. Texas law, where SpaceX recently relocated, restricts unsolicited tender offers and proxy contests.
Israel conducted its first air strike on Beirut since the April 16 US-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah, hitting the group's southern stronghold of Dahieh on Tuesday evening. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he personally approved the attack targeting a commander of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, stating "no terrorist is immune." The strike came despite ongoing ceasefire violations by both sides: Israel has killed over 120 people in Lebanon this past week per health ministry figures, while Hezbollah continues rocket and drone attacks on Israeli troops. Dahieh residents have largely stayed away since the ceasefire due to strike fears. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has rejected meeting Netanyahu, with talks stalled at the ambassador level. The ceasefire, announced by President Trump, has failed to stop the conflict as Israel maintains occupation of a border strip and both sides trade accusations of violations.
The Israel-Hezbollah war began after Hamas's October 2023 attack, with Hezbollah launching rockets in solidarity. The April 2026 ceasefire was the second attempt after a November 2024 agreement collapsed. Israel seeks a "Hezbollah-free security zone" in southern Lebanon; over 2,700 have died in Lebanon since March 2025.
Anthropic announced at its Code with Claude conference a compute partnership with SpaceX, gaining access to the full capacity of SpaceX's Memphis data center containing over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs. The deal immediately doubled Claude Code's five-hour usage limits for Pro and Max subscribers, removed peak-hours restrictions, and raised API limits for the Opus model. CEO Dario Amodei said the agreement provides over 300 megawatts of new compute capacity. The partnership marks a notable shift: Elon Musk had criticized Anthropic as recently as February, declaring it "hates Western Civilization," but tweeted Wednesday that extended meetings with the team "did not set off my evil detector." Anthropic has struggled with demand surges amid infrastructure constraints, recently signing similar deals with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia. The company also expressed interest in SpaceX's proposed orbital data centers to address terrestrial power limitations for AI training.
SpaceX's Memphis facility, called Colossus 1, is among the world's largest GPU clusters. Anthropic's Claude Code is an AI coding assistant competing with GitHub Copilot and Cursor. Usage limits had frustrated developers on Hacker News and Reddit, prompting the rapid capacity expansion.
Researchers have demonstrated two-qubit quantum gates with 99% fidelity using mobile electron spin qubits in silicon, a breakthrough for scalable quantum computing. The team shuttled two spins toward each other in traveling potential minima, achieving tunable interaction strength through precise spatial control. At 240 nanometer total displacement, the two-qubit gate reached approximately 99% average fidelity. They also implemented conditional quantum state teleportation between qubits separated by 320 nanometers with 87% fidelity. Mobile qubits enable dynamic, reconfigurable quantum processor architectures that can adapt connectivity patterns during operation and optimize resource allocation across functional zones. This addresses a key scalability challenge: traditional architectures restrict interactions to nearest neighbors, constraining error correction options. The work, published in Nature, suggests operations on mobile qubits will become standard in large-scale semiconductor quantum processors.
Semiconductor spin qubits offer compatibility with existing chip manufacturing and potential for high-temperature operation. Previous work achieved 99.5% shuttling fidelity across 10 micrometers. Mobile qubit approaches in trapped ions and neutral atoms have shown reconfigurable arrays; this work extends that capability to solid-state platforms.
SpaceX is gradually reducing Falcon 9 launches as it shifts focus to the larger Starship rocket, president Gwynne Shotwell confirmed plans for roughly 140-145 Falcon launches in 2026 down from 165 last year. The transition is visible at Cape Canaveral, where Launch Complex-39A is being converted to Starship operations and now handles only occasional Falcon Heavy missions. One of two Florida-based drone ships has been retired for Starship transport duty. Most Starlink missions now launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where Falcon 9s can fly every three to four days. The Falcon 9 will remain operational at least through International Space Station retirement, now likely 2032 or later, as it and the Dragon capsule are the only US vehicles certified for crew transport. The Space Force also relies on Falcon vehicles into the 2030s. Starship will eventually launch upgraded Starlink satellites and nodes for an orbital data center constellation.
The Falcon 9 first flew in 2010 and achieved 165 launches in 2025, making SpaceX the world's busiest launch provider. Starship, still in testing, is designed for full reusability and Mars missions. SpaceX acquired xAI to develop the orbital data center concept for AI training workloads.
The Supreme Court is considering a decade-old lawsuit that could reshape how Americans' retirement savings are managed, with significant implications for private equity and hedge fund investments in 401(k) plans. Intel employees sued in 2015 alleging their retirement funds were mishandled through high-fee, risky "alternative" investments. A lower court ruling favored Intel, but the Consumer Federation of America, AARP, and other advocates are urging justices to reverse it, arguing the decision blocks legitimate lawsuits under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act and creates false impressions about appropriate investment strategies. The case highlights growing private equity incursion into retirement accounts. In a related recent decision, the Court unanimously supported workers' rights to sue employers over high-fee 401(k) funds. The outcome could affect millions of workers whose plans increasingly include opaque, high-cost alternative assets.
ERISA sets fiduciary standards for employer-sponsored retirement plans. Private equity in 401(k)s has grown dramatically, often with higher fees and less transparency than traditional mutual funds. The Intel case specifically involves allegations that plan fiduciaries imprudently selected hedge fund and private equity investments.
Researchers at Acadia University conducted the first study dosing fish with psilocybin, finding that the psychedelic compound reduced aggressive behavior in mangrove rivulus fish. The study, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, is the first to demonstrate psilocybin's aggression-reducing effects in any animal model. The fish, a hermaphroditic species that produces genetically identical clones, showed fewer high-energy aggressive charges toward peers after low-dose exposure, though lower-energy sizing-up behaviors remained unchanged. Lead researcher Dayna Forsyth called this selectivity "definitely a surprise." The work opens paths to study neural mechanisms underlying behavioral change and could inform understanding of psilocybin's effects across species, given shared neural anatomy with humans. Forsyth plans follow-up research on dose tolerance and long-term behavioral shifts. The study adds to growing research on psychoactive compounds in fish, including recent work on cocaine-exposed salmon.
The mangrove rivulus can survive months out of water and reproduces primarily through self-fertilization, producing clones that eliminate genetic variation as a confounding factor in behavioral studies. Psilocybin research has expanded significantly following FDA breakthrough therapy designation for depression treatment.
