The Wire

GTA 6 introduces a suppressive-fire mechanic that lets players deliberately miss shots near police or civilians to confuse and slow down pursuers, offering more nonlethal options during robberies while actions that kill still affect the player's criminal reputation.

Astronomers using ESO's VLT and its SPHERE instrument captured the clearest image yet of Betelgeuse B, the long-suspected stellar companion to Betelgeuse, now estimated to be 2–3 solar masses; this finding helps explain Betelgeuse's brightness changes and could affect its future evolution and supernova, with further observations needed to confirm its orbit.

The article highlights a growing term, “meat proxy,” for people who relay AI-generated text without understanding or validating it. This trend raises concerns about accuracy, learning, and trust in workplaces and classrooms. It argues AI should be used as inspiration with human review and effort to preserve genuine skill and critical thinking, rather than allowing seamless, unchecked relays of AI output.

A new slang term—meat proxies—is spreading to describe coworkers who copy AI chatbot outputs verbatim without editing, fueling worries about cognitive offloading and eroding critical thinking at work and in classrooms. The piece urges users to read, understand, validate, and rewrite AI-generated text to add value, and it echoes Cory Doctorow’s “reverse centaur” idea that humans can reclaim agency—AI is a tool, not an inevitability.

Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb general convicted of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre, died at 84 in a hospital in The Hague while serving a life sentence.

Scientists say a glacier near Langtang Lirung in Nepal rapidly collapsed, sending ice, rock and debris into the Lende Khola river and triggering a massive flash flood on the Nepal–Tibet border; the flood surge rose 7–9 meters in about 30 minutes and overwhelmed monitoring stations. The USGS confirmed the cause was a glacial collapse, not an earthquake, and experts say a combination of tectonic uplift and warming-induced glacier melt may explain why such events—though rare—are becoming more frequent in the Himalayas.

Commensality, or eating with others, is linked to lower depression risk and potential protection against cognitive decline. Studies show shared meals boost emotional wellbeing and may heighten pleasure from food, possibly via endorphins and social bonding. Conversely, dining alone is associated with reduced brain volume in key cognitive areas in some studies, suggesting social eating supports brain health. The world varies in how often people eat in company, with Italy emphasizing convivial meals and modern solutions like social dining apps aiming to counter isolation. Encouragingly, inviting others to dine together or participating in community meals could offer lasting mental and cognitive benefits.

The U.S. military used an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser to shoot down three Mexican cartel drones in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.–Mexico border. Location of the strikes and whether they occurred on U.S. or Mexican soil were not disclosed. Officials said the drones threatened U.S. personnel, reflecting broader border-security efforts and cartels’ increasing use of unmanned aircraft. Mexico’s president warned against unilateral action on Mexican soil as a sovereignty issue.

A federal judge ruled that the Pentagon’s measures against Anthropic were illegal and baseless, giving the AI company a legal win and signaling constraints on government actions regarding AI technologies.

A proposal to protect about 30% of Sark's waters under a marine plan is under consideration, while a Carnamoyle resident alleges quad-bike riders in Lisnagra Woods are harming local wildlife.

In the DRC, Ebola's human cost dominates the response: as of Aug. 24, 5,656 cases and 2,715 deaths underscore that numbers mask personal tragedy. Prof. Pierre Akilimali, who leads the national response, says trust-building, dignified burials, and close community engagement are as vital as vaccines and clinics to stop the outbreak and protect the health system, amid mistrust and cross-border risks and funding challenges.

SpaceX will dramatically cut Falcon 9/Heavy launches from Florida for the rest of the year as it pivots toward Starship, moving most Starlink missions to Vandenberg and planning Starship launches from Cape Canaveral by year-end 2026 (with 2027 more likely). The Florida Space Coast could see only about two launches per month, down from eight–nine, while West Coast flights increase; upcoming Florida missions include a Falcon Heavy launch of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Aug. 30 and a crewed ISS flight in September, as officials plan to phase out Falcon 9 for commercial work in favor of Starship.

SanDisk announced a 1TB microSD Express card for Switch 2 (also compatible with some Asus handhelds) with up to 800 MB/s write and 880 MB/s read speeds, but it isn’t directly purchasable yet and is available only via a sales inquiry; priced around €500 in Germany and about $359 in the US, highlighting the premium cost of high‑capacity game storage.

An Ivy League teaching fellow argues that Gen Z Catholics are flourishing on U.S. campuses, with Yale’s Catholic Intellectual Tradition becoming a surprising highlight. The piece contends that universities should actively expand Catholic history and related perspectives—including women’s voices and queer history—across the curriculum to treat faith as a living, relevant field and to better connect with religious students, rather than isolating it as a siloed identity. The author calls for broader support for religious studies at top schools, citing the trend in Catholic colleges and the relevance of Catholic thought to current events.

In Port-au-Prince’s Kenscoff area, armed gangs killed at least 47 people—many Christians—and burned a church sanctuary, kidnapping more than 50 others in what the U.N. condemned as a brutal attack; the violence, one of the worst mass killings in years, may signal gang strength ahead of December elections amid record displacement in Haiti.

Ziva Sharp and about 30 fellow activists, many of them religious Jews, travel from Jerusalem to the West Bank to protect Palestinian families from violent settlers, forming the Bnei Avraham movement. Their actions highlight a faith-led effort within Judaism to promote compassion and justice, even as clashes and intimidation unfold amid ongoing settlement tensions.

As West Nile Virus cases rise in California (about 30 human infections reported), Photon Matrix is rolling out an AI-powered mosquito zapper that uses LiDAR, radar, and real-time AI to detect and laser-zap mosquitoes. The outdoor model sells for $1,088 and an indoor version for $988; the device claims to target multiple mosquito species while avoiding other insects, offering a chemical-free, energy-efficient approach with a detection range around 20 feet and a maximum mosquito speed of 3.3 feet per second.

Using JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument, astronomers followed 72 young sun-like stars to map how planet-forming material escapes their disks. The findings show gas-dust disks disperse through two shifting regimes: early, magnetically driven jets and winds dominate mass loss, and as disks thin, high-energy stellar radiation drives photoevaporation. This evolving mechanism sets a fundamental clock for when gas giants can form and helps explain where different types of planets are likely to emerge.

Flooding across Nepal following a glacier burst on the Nepal–China border has killed 469 people and left hundreds missing, with rescue teams assessing widespread damage as rivers surged and infrastructure was washed away in several districts; officials warn the death toll could still rise as search and recovery operations continue.

Seven people in Scotland have been charged with malicious damage after vandalising Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course; prosecutors allege the offenses included turf digging, weedkiller spraying, graffiti and damage to facilities, and that the acts were aggravated by a terrorist connection. They are due in court on 31 August.

University of Utah researchers estimate a rock glacier on Mount Timpanogos contains up to 150 feet of ice, enough to fill about 600 Olympic pools, identified through precise gravity measurements mapping ice beneath debris; the ice could sustain late-summer flows into streams and groundwater in Utah’s dry climate, but hidden ice also poses flood hazards, and Utah has about 836 rock glaciers with enough ice to fill roughly 400,000 Olympic pools, underscoring the state’s potential water storage amid warming and seismic risks along the Wasatch fault.

Washington residents can watch a blood moon during a partial lunar eclipse tonight, with 96.2% of the Moon darkened at its peak. The event begins as the Moon enters Earth’s outer shadow at 6:23 p.m., the partial phase starts at 7:33 p.m., the maximum occurs at 9:12 p.m., and the penumbral phase ends around midnight. No eye protection is needed to view it, and temperatures will be in the low 60s. Space.com notes this will be the best North American eclipse until 2028.

Portland-area headlines include a family suing Multnomah County and the housing operator over a resident’s death in publicly funded transitional housing; officials moving some detained youth to Yamhill County to relieve crowding (costing $225–$495 per bed per day); a Vancouver shooting suspect says the fatal shot was accidental; a federal judge paused Trump’s mail-ballot executive order again with potential appeals; plus coverage of education funding pressures, flood relief efforts, and other local developments, with tonight’s near-total lunar eclipse noted as a trending highlight.

Israel rejected a joint statement by 15 countries and the EU condemning its entry into a UNRWA training center in Kalandia and seizure of UN facilities in eastern Jerusalem, accusing UNRWA of ties to terrorism based on a USAID inspector general report; it says UNRWA had no property rights to the site and that the compound will be repurposed as a school and community center, while the Knesset advances legislation to end UNRWA operations in Israel.