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Anthropic has said it wants to unlock treatments for rare diseases, and its biology work has gone beyond "in silico" ‌or computer evaluations.

"We went on the bus, and I see my sister unresponsive and lifeless ... I'm like, OK, how did this happen?" her sister said.

Las Vegas Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty's relationship status seems to have changed, according to social media.

The Raiders may have to pursue a 2-0 start without Brock Bowers. Coach Klint Kubiak said the star tight end is being listed as doubtful for Sunday’s game against the Chargers at SoFi Stadium, potentially extending his absence to a second consecutive game after a minor knee procedure. Bowers missed the season-opening victory over the...

It was the largest demonstration in the country since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February. 

The actor put his hair and makeup department through drills for efficiency.

The actor put his hair and makeup department through drills for efficiency.

4 Charged With Fraud Involving Millions Of Taxpayer Dollars For Homelessness Aid

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times,

Federal prosecutors in California on Sept. 16 announced charges against four people who are accused of diverting millions of taxpayer dollars meant for homeless housing and services to fund lavish lifestyles, including a new nightclub and bingo hall.

The defendants accused in the separate schemes include nonprofit Home At Last founder Michael Young, CEO and executive director of The Big Blue Umbrella Donye Mitchell, and Special Service for Groups employee Lakiya Malone.

The fourth defendant, executive director of the nonprofit Abundant Blessings Alexander Soofer, agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering for taking at least $2 million in taxpayer funds for personal gain.

Attorneys for the defendants could not be reached. Home At Last did not immediately return a request for comment.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said on Wednesday that Young, a founder of the Culver City-based nonprofit, was arrested and charged with "sham vendor fraud."

He allegedly committed fraud to misappropriate more than $7.5 million in taxpayer funds to open and operate personal projects, such as a high-end restaurant and nightclub in Inglewood and an adjacent bingo hall.

The money he received from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was supposed to be used toward providing housing and services to homeless people. Instead, prosecutors allege, he made a web of shell corporations and fraudulent billing practices to boost his real estate portfolio, which included $1 million in taxpayer dollars to open the Six Seven Five Lounge restaurant and nightclub.

"Taxpayer money also allegedly paid for a liquor license for that business, in addition to the architect, developer, and high-end finishes for this nightclub," Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division Colin McDonald said during a press conference on Wednesday.

"The taxpayers did not sign up to fund this nightclub."

Young is charged with wire fraud, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison if convicted.

In a separate case, Donye Mitchell, the CEO of The Big Blue Umbrella, was awarded more than $1.2 million in Los Angeles County-funded grant money from Amity Foundation after allegedly claiming his nonprofit was a major homeless-housing provider, which prosecutors say was false.

Mitchell is accused of using grant funds on inflated salary payments, paying his bail for domestic violence and assault charges, paying off credit card debt, transferring money to family, paying rent, and paying charges associated with his PlayStation.

Amity allegedly canceled the contract with The Big Blue Umbrella in May 2025 after it already sent $315,000. Amity's decision to cut ties was over concerns that Mitchell misrepresented his spending and failed to meet agreed-upon milestones.

Mitchell, who is not in custody and considered a fugitive on Sept. 16, is also charged with wire fraud.

"L.A. is called, they say, the City of Angels, but there's nothing angelic about bribery, about stealing money from taxpayers, about lying, about serving our nation's most vulnerable citizens, and while these fraudsters have lined their pockets, American people have been dying in our streets," Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said.

In the third case, Malone, an employee of the nonprofit Special Service for Groups, was arrested on a 21-count indictment that accused her of taking more than $180,000 in bribes and kickbacks from Alexander Soofer in exchange for priority housing referrals, including "ghost" clients who never lived at the sites.

Prosecutors say the scheme included making fake welcome letters, sign-in sheets, and eligibility forms that helped inflate more than $17 million that Soofer received from Special Service for Groups.

Malone faces up to 20 years per wire fraud count, 10 years per bribery count, and five years on the conspiracy charge if convicted.

"The scale and brazenness of these fraudsters expose a profound failure by the State of California and Los Angeles County to safeguard public funds," First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said.

"Millions [of dollars] intended to house the homeless allegedly financed private real estate, a nightclub, a bingo hall, and personal expenses. Taxpayers deserve accountability.

"We will follow the money, expose the corruption, and prosecute those who exploit the American people for personal gain."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 15:00

Costco for less.

"What you need is a paladin, a brave knight to ride into battle for you."

Kyle Tucker's near-cycle headlined a promising week for him and the Dodgers

One video of the big cat posted on X by @CKaftonKTVU shows it wandering behind bushes in the small front yards of multiple homes, with a window above the animal slightly open.

America Is Using The Wrong Artificial Intelligence Scoreboard

Authored by Paul Meeks via RealClearMarkets,

Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, America has kept score in the artificial intelligence race by asking which lab has the best model. Unfortunately, that scoreboard is dangerously incomplete. Frontier capability matters, but temporary benchmark leads do not by themselves create durable technological dominance by any single nation. The true national edge comes when its technology becomes the platform on which the world builds.

The distinction came into focus at the White House in August. Administration officials met with leading AI companies to discuss a voluntary framework for government testing of the most advanced models before release. However, the framework will not cover open-weight models, whose underlying parameters can be downloaded and adapted. That was the right decision. But declining to restrict open models is not the same as having a strategy to ensure that the world builds on American models.

The Trump administration already understands the stakes. Its AI Action Plan warns that open models could become global standards in business and research and therefore have "geostrategic value." It calls for leading open models founded on American values. The insight is correct. Implementation has not kept pace with the market.

In strict technical terms, open-weight is not the same as open-source. The former makes a model's learned parameters available; the latter also implies access to such elements as training code and data. Most models commonly called "open-source AI," including China's leading releases, are actually open-weight. Economically, however, the important point is that users can download, operate and adapt them without remaining dependent on a single provider.

American companies dominate the market for high-end closed models. Customers access them through websites or application programming interfaces, while the companies retain the model weights and charge for usage. China has pursued a different strategy. Its developers are releasing increasingly capable open-weight models cheaply or freely, inviting companies, researchers and governments to customize them and build products on top of them.

This is where China is converting diffusion into market power. Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 reached the top tier of global models while being released open-weight. Alibaba's Qwen family has spawned more than 100,000 derivative models on Hugging Face, more than any Western model family. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2026 "Two Loops" analysis even cites one Andreessen Horowitz partner's rough estimate that 80% of American startups use Chinese base models to develop derivatives for their businesses.

Even if that figure is only directionally correct, the warning is extraordinary. A meaningful share of America's AI application layer may already rest on Chinese foundations because developers found capable, affordable and adaptable models when they needed them.

We are in a contest over far more than individual models. It is also a contest over the technology stack on which they will run. This will shape the skills developers learn, the products entrepreneurs build, the infrastructure customers buy, and ultimately own the standards that eventually become difficult to dislodge. America's objective should be clear: the world's AI economy should be built primarily on an American and allied technology stack.

China knows - and is building policy around the fact - that every adoption strengthens the ecosystem. Developers create compatible tools. Workers learn model-specific skills. Investors finance complementary applications. Businesses integrate the technology into workflows that become costly to change. The resulting feedback loop attracts more users and produces more improvements. In investor terms, diffusion creates the moat. In foreign policy terms, diffusion locks in global influence.

American closed-model companies are not behaving irrationally. Restricting access protects intellectual property and produces recurring revenue. But the business model that maximizes revenue for a few companies does not necessarily maximize American economic power. A closed model can sell many tokens while an open competitor becomes the technological language learned by the rest of the world. Washington should not confuse the commercial interests of dominant vendors with a national strategy.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has raised the strongest objection towards open-source diffusion warning that once capable model weights are released, they cannot be withdrawn, and bad actors may use them without guardrails or monitoring. That concern deserves a serious response but it also does not justify American abstention. China will continue releasing capable open models regardless of what U.S. labs do. Unilateral restraint would not reduce the number of open models in circulation; it would determine which country supplies them.

America has the computing power, talent and capital to lead both the closed and open portions of the AI market. What it lacks is a sustained strategy to put those advantages into circulation - and to ensure that the developers, companies and governments adopting AI abroad can build on trusted American technology rather than becoming dependent on Chinese model ecosystems.

The AI race will not be decided by which company tops the next benchmark. It will be decided by whose technology stack becomes indispensable: whose models developers choose, whose tools they learn, whose infrastructure they deploy and whose standards organize the applications built above them. Implementing an American open-weight strategy is not a departure from AI dominance. It is how America ensures that the world builds on an American technology stack - and how technological leadership becomes durable.

Paul Meeks is a technology-sector investor with more than 30 years of experience in public and private markets. He is a Professor of Practice at The Citadel's Baker School of Business.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 14:52

Suffolk County has unexpectedly delayed the replacement of its current gunshot detection system with a more controversial and potentially invasive version from Flock Safety.

Oswaldo Cabrera has already found a new home.

Mark Walter has more legal troubles amid an ongoing federal investigation

It may be time to take this old-school pastime off the shelf.

A Georgia couple is fighting to save their first home after an HOA sought foreclosure over disputed dues that reportedly ballooned to roughly $20,000.

China Rare Earth Giant Eyes Takeover Of MP Materials' Seventh-Largest Shareholder As Resource War Intensifies

One way to view the Reuters report saying that state-owned China Rare Earth Group is in takeover talks with Shenghe Resources is that the deal could further cement Beijing's control over critical materials, especially rare earths. But what's most intriguing is that Shenghe holds a minority stake in US rare earth producer MP Materials.

The potential takeover would bring one of China's top rare earth mining and refining companies under the state group's control, with some private ownership. It would also extend that control to Shenghe's overseas holdings, including a 3.11% stake (7th largest shareholder) in MP Materials.

The outlet reported:

Talks between the two companies have been underway since earlier this year, said the sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter. China Rare Earth Group wants to take a controlling stake, one of the people said.

The takeover would almost certainly cause some alarms in Washington: a major Chinese state-owned supplier could inherit a minority holding in a US company amid efforts by Washington to break China's stranglehold on critical materials supplied to the West.

The sources did not know what would happen to Shenghe's foreign assets and stakes.

In terms of leverage, China Rare Earth Group's takeover of Shenghe Resources would give Beijing tighter control over materials that are critical to electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics and the defense sector. These are the same materials that Beijing has restricted some access to the US over the past 1.5 years amid a resource war. 

Recall that one move in Beijing's playbook was buying Canada's only antimony mine and then shutting down operations several years ago. Antimony is a critical mineral used in military hardware, from small arms and artillery shells to advanced missile seekers and night-vision goggles.

Beijing's leverage over the US lies in critical materials, while the US crusade from Venezuela to the Strait of Hormuz has been about leveling the playing field with China and squeezing Beijing's access to crude.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 14:40

The "Nashville" alum died on Aug. 16 in Greenville, South Carolina, at 36 years old. The investigation into her passing remains ongoing.