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• Dr. Vinay Prasad discusses his departure from the FDA and his critique of the agency's broken public health infrastructure. • He highlights a specific instance where a drug was approved via an override memo by a single official, despite opposition from hundreds of expert staff who cited lack of efficacy and potential harms. • Prasad explains that his experiences within the government have shifted his political perspective toward libertarianism, citing systemic failures in regulatory oversight.

• SemiAnalysis has released data showing that open-weights AI models are rapidly closing the capability gap with closed frontier models. • The report indicates a consistent acceleration in progress, with open-weights models halving their catch-up time during each successive phase of LLM development. • This trend spans critical evolutionary stages of AI, including early scaling, reasoning capabilities, and the transition toward agentic systems.

US president’s lawyers in court filing say Washington arts complex must undergo repairs or risk demolitionThe John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could be demolished if repairs are not carried out, Donald Trump’s administration warned in a court filing on Monday.Lawyers for the US president said the national arts complex in Washington DC must undergo a $250m renovation or risk facing the wrecking ball. Continue reading...

The Republican Senate candidate announced the plan with a graphic X flagged as ‘Made with AI’US politics live – latest updatesKen Paxton, a Republican candidate for the US Senate in Texas, has unveiled plans to tackle the “negative impact” of datacenters amid a growing backlash across the political spectrum.Paxton, endorsed by Donald Trump but facing a close contest against Democrat James Talarico, posted a “Texas first” datacenter plan on X with a graphic that the social media network flagged as “Made with AI”. Continue reading...

• President Trump and HHS Secretary Kennedy have implemented sweeping health policy reforms over the last 555 days to combat the chronic disease epidemic and revitalize public health. • Key achievements include securing pledges from insurers, medical societies, and providers to improve national behavioral health quality and best practices. • The FDA has announced a strategic plan to phase out animal testing requirements for monoclonal antibodies and various other drugs.

Prime minister praised for rejecting US trade proposal as Trump shows little interest in retreating from spatAre you a Canadian boycotting US products? We’d like to hear from youMark Carney said on Monday that while American negotiators saw the French language in Canada as an “irritant … in Quebec, these are rights,” days after receiving widespread praise from political leaders for rejecting a US trade proposal that many perceived as weakening the country’s Francophone culture.The prime minister’s remarks came hours after the US president, Donald Trump, showed little interest in retreating from the spat, posting on social media that Canada had been “ripping off the United States of America for years” and threatening a swath of new, economically devastating tariffs on cars and trucks. Continue reading...

Joshua Aviles says he is on a nine-month Middle East deployment and learned his has father has been arrested while he was waiting for green card approvalThe father of a US sailor on board the USS Abraham Lincoln ⁠aircraft carrier deployed in the Middle East during the Iran war has been taken into federal immigration detention, the sailor ⁠said.The border ​patrol arrested Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, originally from Nicaragua, after conducting a vehicle stop in Key West, Florida, a spokesperson for the US homeland security department said on Sunday. Continue reading...