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On Saturday, Iran’s military announced it had closed shipping along the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US violated its deal to end the war by allowing Israel to continue to bomb Lebanon. Iran had just signed on to a preliminary agreement with the US to reopen the strait and allow for safe passage of commercial vessels for 60 days.

Lebanon’s state media and civil defense officials reported that Israeli strikes killed at least 16 people on Saturday morning, and the country’s health ministry said at least 47 people were killed on Friday. The Israel Defense Forces stated on Friday that four of its soldiers were killed in Lebanon. It also claimed its airstrikes hit 80 targets connected to the militant group Hezbollah, killing “dozens” of its members. 

This isn’t the best start. 

Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon on Friday after the fighting looked like it would break up talks between the US and Iran in Switzerland. Earlier in the day, Iranian officials declined to meet with US negotiators, citing the fighting in Lebanon. JD Vance, on who Trump and Republicans have pushed responsibility for the negotiations, also postponed a trip to Switzerland.

As I wrote on Wednesday, the first point in the US-Iran deal released this week requires Iran, the US, and all of their allies to immediately end all military operations, with the text explicitly including a close to bombing in Lebanon. But Israel did not agree to the deal, after repeatedly stating it will continue attacking southern Lebanon. Trump has recently criticized Israel for its military campaign in Lebanon, noting that it could dismantle his announced deal.

Before Israel and the United States launched their current war, roughly 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas transited through the strait. Closing the passage has led to massive increases in petroleum prices. 

This week, the Trump administration said it would commit to finalizing an agreement to end the war in 60 days. Getting Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz again isn’t the best start. 

Aptos High junior Nick Bjorn was named the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League’s Most Valuable Player for his superb play on the golf course during the 2026 spring season.

Bjorn was runner-up in the SCCAL individual championship at Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz on April 28. He earned medalist honors in seven of the 10 league matches played this season, helping lead Aptos to an SCCAL regular season team championship.

Aptos coach Paul Zech was named the SCCAL’s Coach of the Year, while freshman Brayden Wilson earned all-league first team honors.

Below is a complete list of All-SCCAL honorees for boys golf, boys tennis, boys volleyball and girls beach volleyball.

Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League 2026 all-league teams Boys golf Individual Awards

Most Valuable Player: Nick Bjorn (Jr.), Aptos

Sportsmanship Award: Cash Moran (Sr.), Soquel

Coach of the Year: Paul Zech, Aptos

First Team

Tanner Brewer (Sr.), SLV 

Brayden Wilson (Fr.), Aptos 

Kyler Samples (Sr.), Harbor 

Seamus Drees (Sr.), Scotts Valley 

Riley Shank (So.), Soquel 

Garret Dahlen (Jr.), SLV

Second Team

Andrew Roberts (Fr.), Harbor

Peter Roboloth (Jr.), Soquel

Gunther Krueger (So.), Harbor

Gavin Easton (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Brogan Beasley (Sr.), Scotts Valley

Gavin Doherty (Jr.), Scotts Valley

Honorable Mention

Santiago Toledo (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Fischer Howard (So.), Santa Cruz

Lochlin Bishoffberger (Jr.), SLV

Carson Chubb (So.), SLV

Cade Mosely (Fr.), Harbor

Nico Marinovic (Sr.), Harbor

Cole Christensen (Jr.), Soquel

Kyle Lambrecht (So.), Soquel

Jack Garvey (Jr.), Aptos

Adrian Creamer (Jr.), Scotts Valley

Hudson Spielvogel (So.), Scotts Valley

Zane Siechen (Sr.), Scotts Valley

Boys tennis Individual Awards

Most Valuable Player: Hudson Ward (Sr.), Soquel

Coach of the Year: Kumaran Arulanantham, Santa Cruz

First Team Singles

Ben Zaretsky (Sr.), Aptos

Jeremy Arulanantham (Jr.), Santa Cruz

Tenzin Fathman (Fr.), Santa Cruz

Hudson Ward (Sr.), Soquel

Second Team Singles

Stellan Wu (Fr.), Santa Cruz

Torin Miller (Sr.), Soquel

Raphael Bouchet (Jr.), Scotts Valley

Aditya Hannon (Sr.), Scotts Valley

First Team Doubles

Kai Vargas (Jr.), Santa Cruz

Oscar Sapunor (So.), Santa Cruz

Ian Burchell (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Sam Galli (So.), Scotts Valley

Second Team Doubles

Nate Wexler (So.), Scotts Valley

Zabel Oatey (Jr.), Harbor

Sawyer Amos (Jr.), San Lorenzo Valley

Nico Salinas (Jr.), Aptos

All-Sportsmanship Team

George Jertberg (So.), Aptos

Lukas Novotny (Fr.), Santa Cruz

Everett Callendar (Jr.), SLV

Freddy Padilla (So.), Scotts Valley

Abraham Bachar (Jr.), Harbor

Elias Garcia (Sr.), Soquel

Boys volleyball Individual Awards

Most Valuable Player: Cooper Lastition (Sr.), Harbor

Mark Brewer Award: Nikowa D’Costa-Hemp (Sr.), Mt. Madonna

Coach of the Year: PK McDonald, Mt. Madonna

First Team

Solomon Coleman (Jr.), Mt. Madonna

Lucas Kamalani (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Guillermo Mazier (Jr.), Santa Cruz

Grady McKee (Sr.), Harbor

Nikowa D’Costa Hemp (Sr.), Mt. Madonna

Matty Rayray (Jr.), Santa Cruz

Josh Rejfir (Sr.), Harbor

Second Team

David Monclus (Jr.), Mt. Madonna

Rocklin Paco (Jr.), Harbor

Charlie Hess (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Keoni Raatior (So.), Soquel

Zach Livingston Shults (So.), SLV

Xavier Knight (Sr.), SLV

Ryan Wait (Sr.), Harbor

Honorable Mention

Hans Hagge (Sr.), Mt. Madonna

James Lagerwey (Sr.), Aptos

Sean Mullen (Sr.), Aptos

Thomas Obrero (Sr.), Soquel

Johnny Abbott (Jr.), Soquel

Guillermo Mazier Bittar, Santa Cruz

Nathan Monroe, Santa Cruz

Troy Thompson (Sr.), Scotts Valley

Will Shanks (Sr.), Scotts Valley

Zack King (Sr.), SLV

Hunter Lallemand (Sr.), SLV

JJ Laughlin (Jr.), Harbor 

Freddie Morgali (Sr.), Harbor

Girls beach volleyball First Team [A-Division]

Emma Benedetti (So.) and Lana Walding (So.), Soquel

Leela Whiting (Fr.) and Haisley Flanagan (So.), Santa Cruz

Cecile Novembre (Jr.) and Dylan Schutz (Jr.), Harbor

Cia Johnson (So.) and Caitlin Lavelle (So.), Aptos

Hayden Smith (Sr.) and Rylee Giesen (Sr.), Scotts Valley

Kenzie Smith (Sr.) and Emily Mumford (Fr.), Aptos

Second Team [A-Division]

Lyla Vyvyan (Jr.) and Ruby Hyatt (So.), Soquel

Chloe Schantz (So.) and Maggie Redwine (Jr.), Santa Cruz

Kaia Harrah (So.) and Lena Jordan (So.), Aptos

Eliana Russell (Sr.) and Chloe Goodman (So.), Santa Cruz

Liberty Niesen (Jr.) and Lise Corstorphine (So.), Harbor

Coco Castro (Sr.) and Marina Tucker (Sr.), Harbor

First Team [B-Division]

Mayla Spahn (Jr.) and Jessie Ingram (So.), Monte Vista Christian

Hollyn Hearne (Sr.) and Xienna Novoa (Sr.), King City

Stephanie Velasquez (Sr.) and Ella Rubbo (Fr.), King City

Monze Camacho (Fr.) and Fernanda Cid (Fr.), King City

Gretel Martin (Fr.) and Hope Tyler (Fr.), St. Abraham’s

Farrin O’Hara (Sr.) and Amelie Pan (Jr.), Pacific Collegiate School

Second Team [B-Division]

Norah Rondia (So.) and Audrey Nelson (So.), MVC

Jocelyn Jacquez (Fr.) and Melody Sanchez (Fr.), King City

Kamila Lindsay (Fr.) and Mia Sudek (So.), PCS

Sariah Braddock (Fr.) and Ruby Brownlee (Fr.), St. Abraham’s

Cecilia Tannaci (Jr.) and Lily Graney (Fr.), PCS

Sam Bertoldi (Sr.) and Claire Marshall (So.), MVC

While it's not flashy like Apple’s new Siri AI and Apple Intelligence upgrades, there are still a number of additions to iOS 27 worth looking at.

The Trump family seems to follow strict gender roles: The men drum up business and broker deals while the women are the face of brands and commodities. Kai Trump, the 19-year-old daughter of Donald Trump Jr. and ever-present granddaughter of the sitting president, is no exception—and she’s taking advantage of her proximity to the spotlight. Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka opted to step…

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Aptos High junior Cole McGillicuddy earned All-Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League First Team honors for the 2026 baseball season.

The Cal-Berkeley commit batted a .500 average (33-for-66), including six home runs, 11 doubles, 30 RBIs, 28 runs scored and 14 stolen bases, according to the Max Preps website. 

On the mound, McGillicuddy owned a 4-2 record with a 3.40 ERA while tallying 40 strikeouts in 10 appearances for the Mariners, who were runners-up in the SCCAL standings with a 9-6 record in league play.

Teammate junior Finn Cormier earned All-SCCAL Second Team honors. He batted a .321 average (17-for-53), including three home runs, a pair of doubles, 18 RBIs, 14 runs scored and seven steals.

Below is a complete list of the 2026 All-SCCAL baseball teams.

Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League 2026 all-league baseball teams Individual Awards

Player of the Year: Jake Escalante (Sr.), Soquel

Pitchers of the Year: Joey Raffo (Sr.), Harbor; Luke Shoemaker (Jr.), Soquel

Coach of the Year: TJ Moran, Soquel

First Team

Connor Corlett (Sr.), Soquel 

Dylan Hull (Sr.), Soquel

Noah Solano (Sr.), Harbor

Cole McGillicuddy (Jr.), Aptos

Hudson Summerrill (Sr.), Soquel

Rex Thompson (Jr.), Scotts Valley

Pierre Bell (So.), Harbor

Brady Downs (Sr.), Soquel

Cam Fusari (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Cash Moran (Sr.), Soquel

Trey Sousa (Sr.), Soquel

Second Team

Elliott Smith (So.), Scotts Valley

Adam Fowler (So.), Santa Cruz

Luke Santee (Jr.), Soquel

Finn Cormier (Jr.), Aptos

Bryce McDonnell (Jr.), Scotts Valley

Brody Egner (Sr.), San Lorenzo Valley

Caleb Cmaylo (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Sam Whelan (Sr.), Soquel

Larrabee Mitchell (Jr.), SLV

Matteo Caltabiano (Sr.), Santa Cruz

Honorable Mention

Damien Espinoza (So.), Aptos 

Alec Mendoza (Jr.), Aptos 

Logan Felich (Jr.), Harbor 

Evan Lampel (Fr.), Harbor 

Liam Fields-Rapley (So.), SLV 

Spencer Bruce (Jr.), SLV 

Merrick Smith (Fr.), Santa Cruz 

Merrick DaCosta (Fr.), Santa Cruz 

Monte Jordan (Jr.), Scotts Valley 

Dash Baker (Jr.), Scotts Valley 

Anthony Skinner (So.), Soquel 

Scotty Miller (Jr.), Soquel

Humans tend to be “a little bit precious about humans,” according to Eric Brandwine, distinguished engineer and VP at Amazon Security. We like to think we are all very good at our jobs, and we have high opinions of ourselves, he explained during a phone interview with The Register. “But when you actually get down to it, humans are not terribly consistent,” Brandwine said. Humans, like AI agents and systems, are non-deterministic. Neither can be guaranteed to produce the same output given the same input twice. Both will make mistakes and even make stuff up. However, we’ve got millennia of experience dealing with humans and less than a decade with more modern LLMs and the AI systems built on top of them. “We know how humans fail,” Brandwine said. “We're comfortable with it. So human-in-the-loop isn’t necessarily the gold standard.” For years, vendors have told companies that the solution for dealing with any automated system was to put a human in the loop. That battle cry became much louder with the advent of modern AI systems and reached a fever pitch when enterprises started deploying agents into their IT environments. More recently, however, big tech is changing the way it talks about agentic governance and rethinking the whole human-in-the-loop concept. Normalization of deviance In 2017, Brandwine gave a talk on the normalization of deviance at AWS’ annual re:Invent conference. It’s a gradual process that happens when people in an organization take shortcuts, or don’t follow the established procedures or standards, and sometimes it occurs over years. As long as nothing catastrophic happens, this deviant behavior becomes the norm. “It’s a thing all humans fall prey to, and one of the most heartbreaking stories I read in this area was about emergency departments and emergency rooms,” Brandwine said during a phone interview with The Register. “You’ve got all these machines, and they’re all beeping. Your first day on the job, you jump every single time one of the alarms beeps – but the patient is fine. It's a spurious alarm. You go back to your station, you sit down, and over time, after enough of these false alarms, enough of these repeated beeps with no actual consequence, your discipline slips, and you stop responding. And eventually some tragic outcome occurs.” This, he admits, is a very high-stakes example. And yet it’s a documented occurrence among healthcare workers, firefighters, and even Army pilots. “Literally, someone’s life is on the line, and people still struggle to maintain discipline,” Brandwine said. “That’s the human condition.” Here’s how this all applies to agentic AI governance and security. Humans build LLMs and AI systems, and having a “human-in-the-loop” ensures that a person reviews the AI’s output and approves (or not) any actions before the AI performs them. “If you put a human inside of this tight loop, and ask them to make approval decisions for agentic tools repeatedly, time after time, they'll do a good job,” Brandwine said. “And then they'll do an okay job. And pretty quickly they'll be doing a poor job.” This is why at Amazon, “we’re not huge fans of human-in-the-loop,” he added. “It's something that you should use judiciously, where you absolutely need it. But it’s not something that you can do at high velocity. You will not get the results that you want to get.” Big tech pulls the human-in-the-loop Amazon isn’t the first or only tech giant to start talking differently about the role humans should play in agentic governance. "It is very clear that we have moved from a human-led defense strategy, to a human-in-the-loop defense strategy, to an AI-led defense strategy that's overseen by humans," Google Cloud chief operating officer Francis deSouza told reporters during a press conference ahead of Google's annual Cloud Next shindig in April. "Our model for the future is an agentic fleet that does a lot of the routine cyber security work at a machine pace and then is overseen by humans." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in an X missive earlier this week, argued for “loop learning,” instead of having a human check an AI’s output at every step. “Companies need to turn their workflows, domain knowledge, and accumulated judgment into AI systems that improve with each use,” Nadella wrote. “Private evals should capture whether a model is actually improving against outcomes that matter to the business (not just external benchmarks!). Private reinforcement learning environments should let models grow stronger on real traces from inside the organization.” Also this week, IBM execs called for human accountability – not humans in the loop – at all stages of AI development, deployment, and governance. Amazon’s alternative to human-in-the-loop is "accountability end to end," according to Brandwine. This means human identity and ownership track through the entire workflow, even when humans aren't directly approving every step. “If I sit down at my keyboard and I type a command that takes a service down, I caused an outage,” Brandwine explained. “If I run a script that takes a service down, it's still me that caused the outage. If my agent writes a script that they then run, and it causes an outage, that's still my responsibility.” (Secret) keys to the kingdom This also highlights the importance of managing and securing agentic identities – the accounts, tokens, and credentials assigned to AI agents so they can access corporate apps and data. At Amazon, all of the agents have independent identities assigned to them, we’re told. “So, as we track agentic activity across our systems, it does not show up in the logs as: ‘Eric did this.’ It shows up as: ‘this agent did this on behalf of Eric,’” Brandwine said, adding that this isn’t to “make people afraid to use this technology.” “It’s to make people pause and think: is this the right way to use this technology? Is this how I should be deploying this?” We still have the humans involved, we still have the humans making decisions, but we're trying to play to the strengths of the humans rather than placing them in this unfair, repeated decision making, human-in-the-loop position.” Brandwine told us that Amazon has run into a couple of hurdles when it comes to deploying agents across its businesses, and one of the biggest is what he calls “goal-seeking behavior.” This is when a person asks an agent to do a specific task - for example, upgrade a database – and the agent becomes laser-focused on just one action to achieve this goal, ie, deleting the database. This is separate from prompt injection because there’s no malicious input. “It’s just the agent getting stuck on the wrong action,” Brandwine said. Simply telling the agent, “you don’t have permission to do this,” is likely going to cause the agent to look for a different path to do the same thing (delete the database). Telling the agent why it doesn’t have permission to do something tends to produce a better outcome, according to Brandwine. This means telling the agent it’s not allowed to do that, and the reason why is because it would cause a production impact. And also include “don’t cause a production impact” as part of the prompt. “Giving it that extra feedback has gotten us dramatically better results,” Brandwine said. Of course, this is not a fail-proof method. “You still need to be careful with agents,” Brandwine told us. “We have millennia of experience with humans. Agentic AI is a very, very new field, we don't have an intuition for this, and one of the fundamental differences between agents and humans is that humans fear consequences,” such as losing a job or even going to jail. Agents don’t have these fears. This is where setting permissions on what the agent can and can’t do or access comes in. Much like everything else with AI, it’s nuanced, and it depends on the employee's role in the company, and the company’s tolerance for risk. “The person that wants to run the agent wants to give the agent many permissions because that makes the agent more powerful,” Brandwine said. "It could do more things for them, it can recoup more of their time, it can deliver more.” The security lead, on the other hand, wants to limit an agent’s permissions, and this causes yet more tension between the security and development teams. There is no one right solution or policy answer to solve this, according to Brandwine. Instead, it involves dynamic policies that set permissions based on the agent’s specific task. There are some overarching, static guardrails – such as an agent must never perform destructive actions or delete entire servers – and then there are policies underneath that establish the maximum set of privileges that the agent can have. “Then we’ll have a further scoped-down policy for this action, and there's various techniques for automatically generating policies based on prompt and the end-user's intent,” Brandwine said. Even for Amazon, it’s not always easy. “It's all driven by risk,” he said. “This is a space that's changing quickly, and so we're trying to balance the risk of using untried, untested software against the risk of falling behind and not being able to deliver for our customers. As with all such things, it's complicated.” ®

Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean. This month is Caribbean American Heritage Month. The National Parks Service explains that on June 20,1965, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. laid a wreath at Marcus Garvey’s grave in…

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A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Trump’s birthday bash leaves an ugly, swampy stain on DC…

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This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultrathin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and the sun, according to new research published in Science on June 11. 

These fungal communities form intimate relationships with the roots of plants, which they provide with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, 1 billion tons of which the networks sequester underground annually, previous research has found. If the fungal network wasn’t storing it, that carbon would be warming the atmosphere.

But those networks have never been mapped globally until now. The new study led by Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), an organization founded to map mycorrhizal fungi networks, used a combination of literature review, soil samples from around the globe, machine learning, and laboratory testing to estimate the distribution and mass of these systems and map where they are densest. 

“This is the moment where we went from knowing that this system exists to really knowing where it is, how dense it is and where it’s been,” said Toby Kiers, executive director and co-founder of SPUN and a co-author of the study.

“You’re getting a win-win. The plants are growing better, and carbon’s being drawn down. ”

For decades, researchers have known arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi form intimate symbiotic relationships with roughly 80 percent of the globe’s plant species and are found nearly everywhere plants are. But the extent of those networks and where they are densest, such as grasslands, and where they are being lost, like in agricultural areas, hasn’t been well understood until now.

“[The study] helps us come to grips with how important these below ground organisms can be to everything that we see above ground,” said James Bever, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas who studies the interactions between plants and microbes like fungi in soils but was not involved in the new study. 

Justin Stewart, an evolutionary ecologist at SPUN and lead author of the study, said previous studies the team had done on biodiversity of fungi were similar to asking someone to describe the forest outside their home.  

“They could say, ‘Well, there are three tree species in it.’ That’s great. That tells me about the biodiversity,” he said. “But you don’t actually know how big the forest is, how far apart the trees are. You don’t have information on its structure.”

Mycorrhizal fungal networks are made up of hyphae, each smaller than a strand of human hair. These living pipes transport the nutrients and carbon between the plants and fungi.

Because they are so long and thin, Stewart said, they can reach deeper into soils than roots, getting nutrients deep underground that plants can’t reach, while simultaneously storing carbon where it can stay put for a long time under the right conditions. 

“You’re getting a win-win,” Stewart said. “The plants are growing better, and carbon’s being drawn down. That all depends on having dense fungal networks and soils that are active and alive.”

Quantifying these fungal networks started with a review of existing studies on mycorrhizal fungi. Those studies contained 16,000 core samples taken from ecosystems around the world to understand the length of the fungal threads in a volume of soil. Each sample was geolocated, and from there the team was able to use machine learning to create predictive maps of fungal networks globally, and identify where the model is performing well and where uncertainties show more data is needed.

Working with AMOLF, a research institute in Amsterdam, they developed a technique using a robot with a camera that recorded fungal networks growing over time in a lab, to get better estimates of their widths. From there, the team was able to calculate the network’s mass, which amounted to about five times the weight of all humans on Earth.

The study only covers living arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, Stewart said, and doesn’t include dead fungal networks, which also help to store carbon and add to the total biomass and influence of the networks on ecosystems. Research into dead fungal networks is still being explored.

Ninety percent of fungal communities across the globe are unprotected.

The study also found where these networks are most threatened. Fungal network densities across croplands are about half of what they are in wild ecosystems. Meanwhile, wild grassland ecosystems hold about 40 percent of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal biomass. Yet those grasslands are among Earth’s least protected ecosystems, and they are converted into farmland at four times the rate of forests, posing a potential threat to these networks and the benefits they bring to plant life and carbon storage. 

Previous research from SPUN has found 90 percent of fungal communities across the globe are unprotected, and many ecosystems, like the deserts of the American Southwest, are understudied.

What exactly is driving mycorrhizal fungi losses, and the consequences of that decline, need to be explored next, the researchers said, which is why the SPUN team will be at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference—COP31—to present to policymakers about the importance of the networks and the role they could play in protecting ecosystems and sequestering carbon. 

Understanding mycorrhizal fungi more deeply at the ground level is key, said Corentin Bisot, an AMOLF biophysicist and co-author of the study.

“We’re still far from completely understanding how, if you have a grassland next door, and you want to [increase] microbes and fungi there,” Bisot said. “We don’t have the toolbox for you to do it.” 

This study, Stewart said, is just the first map. And like the first maps the Spaniards drew of California—which presented the state as an island, he said, there will be new discoveries about the density of fungi networks around the globe to grow the public’s understanding of them.

The publisher of The New York Times recently made an extraordinary speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s received surprisingly little public reaction. What makes A.G. Sulzberger’s speech extraordinary is that it was unabashedly crusading, and crusading is a stance New York Times publishers have rarely if ever adopted over the newspaper’s 175-year history. What makes the scant reaction surprising is that the speech’s audience—fellow leaders of some of the world’s most powerful news organizations—have a commercial self-interest in the crusade Sulzberger is advocating for. What’s more, the accusations Sulzberger made, the plainspoken language he used, the alleged villains he called out by name—Google, Meta, OpenAI—are the stuff of high drama.

Sulzberger’s core argument when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1 was that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy, and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist it. 

Big Tech’s “hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI products—a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale,” Sulzberger argued. “Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work.” 

If such stealing is allowed to continue, he continued, we risk a “future where a crucial wellspring of a healthy society and a stable democracy—the truth, understanding and accountability provided by original journalism—continues to dry up.… The news industry’s only path to counteracting [Big Tech’s machinations] … is by working together” to protect the industry’s property rights, including through lawsuits. (The Times, he noted, has spent $20 million on such lawsuits.)

In sum, the publisher of one of the world’s most influential newspapers has accused some of the richest, most powerful companies on earth of being criminals; of building their vast fortunes on a foundation of lies and theft at grand scale. And he urged the rest of the media to join the Times in fighting back, for the sake of not only their own commercial survival but the survival of a free press and the democracy it nourishes.

Bravo to Le Monde, Variety, and Press Gazette for writing about the speech, and to The Seattle Times for publishing excerpts on its opinion page. But given the big names, enormous sums, and profound stakes involved, why has there been so little other coverage? Why are those outlets the exceptions?

Here’s a hint: The Times itself didn’t report on the speech. Instead, the business side of the paper issued a press release containing the text. But there was no mention of the speech in the news, business, opinion, or other sections of the paper. That absence reflects a view long held by newsroom traditionalists: We (almost) never report on ourselves. The corollary—nor do we report on our competitors—likely explains why the rest of the media has been silent.

Perhaps such coverage is still to come; certainly Sulzberger’s call to arms warrants the attention of any specialist outlet focused on the news media. And maybe there are executive conversations taking place right now that will result in other newsrooms joining Sulzberger’s movement. After all, his speech did invite journalists and news executives to get in touch, offer their own ideas, and explore possible collaborations.

Covering Climate Now welcomes this opportunity, and we urge fellow journalists around the world to consider pursuing it, as well. We find Sulzberger’s analysis of the dangers facing our industry and our society persuasive, and highly pertinent to our core concern of how journalism reports on the climate emergency and its solutions.  

AI, in case it isn’t obvious, is bad for the climate because its data centers demand gargantuan amounts of scarce water and costly electricity, but it is also bad because building AI chatbots, among other things, sucks away revenue that rightfully belongs to news outlets. That theft is one reason why, as Sulzberger noted, the U.S. has “lost 75% of its journalists and more than 3,000 newspapers” over the last two decades. That’s 3,000 newspapers that will never tell the climate story. 

Even for news outlets that remain in business, shrunken revenues make it challenging to cover even routine subjects, much less a story like climate change. AI is no friend to a free press or a livable climate, and it’s time journalists grapple with how we respond.

This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

The Stop Killing Games movement was dealt a blow this week after the European Commission decided not to propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they are no longer commercially available. Users of licensed software that depends on online components may also find this development of interest – more on that later. The grievance concerns online video games that become unplayable when publishers shut down the servers they run on. Almost 1.3 million grumpy gamers signed a petition calling for publishers to ensure games enjoy an afterlife, leading to a public hearing in the European Parliament. It's a contentious issue. On one hand, customers who have purchased a game might feel aggrieved when it is rendered unplayable by a commercial decision. On the other, publishers argue that shutting down services must be an option when a game is no longer commercially viable. A middle path would be a patch that lets the game run standalone, or releasing software so enthusiasts can host their own. Ross Scott, founder of the Stop Killing Games movement, told The Register: "The behavior of the Commission seems to go beyond simply disagreeing this is a problem that needs solving. On the contrary, they haven't clarified how the law views this situation and are trying to pass the ambiguity off to individual nation states. This is a recipe for policy fragmentation, which is under the Commission's charter to prevent." Scott added that the group was not calling for "endless support" for online games. "All we can say is the Commission appears to have an agenda independent of the initiative's request and their charter." Business is not a game Software shutouts are a depressingly familiar scenario for users. Licensed software can stop working or suffer reduced functionality when online services are lost. A recent example is the impending demise of Microsoft Office 2019 for macOS, which will reach the end of the road in July due to a certificate expiration. If the application cannot reach the licensing servers, users can't edit or save documents – rendering it mostly useless. Scott told us the group was focused on video games for the time being because "they have an almost unique place under the law." "EU court rulings consider them more than 'just' software due to all the copyrighted content contained within them and thus subject to more laws than just those that pertain to software." The European Commission cited existing intellectual property protections for creators and publishers as one reason not to propose new rules. It also noted that EU consumer law already provides some safeguards. "Video game providers must inform consumers about the duration and the conditions for terminating the contract before the consumers sign up for the video game," it said. Instead, the Commission said it would work with the industry to draw up a code of conduct. Stop Killing Games posted on X: "This decision is not unexpected. But we were prepared. Hence, we're pushing forward with @Europarl_EN amending #StopKillingGames to the Digital Fairness Act." In other words, the next step is to try to get the group's suggestions into the Digital Fairness Act, a legislative proposal by the European Commission, which, according to Scott, "coincidentally is an excellent fit for it." ®

Britain has raised its drone commitment to Ukraine to 150,000 this year and will send air defense missiles and radars as part of a £752 million aid package to help the country defend against Russia. The drones and air defense systems were announced this week at a NATO defense ministers meeting by Defence Secretary, Dan Jarvis MP, who recently took over after John Healey resigned in a dispute over the government's defense spending plans. Britain's government had previously said it would deliver at least 120,000 drones in 2026, calling it "the biggest ever drone package" for Ukraine in April. The revised package will also include more than 350 air defense missiles and radars, including Lightweight Multirole Missiles (LMM) and ground-based radar systems, according to the Ministry of Defence. LMM, also known as Martlet, is a laser-guided weapon designed to take down slow-moving aerial drones and fast attack boats at a range of over 6 km (4 miles). It equips the Royal Navy's Wildcat helicopters and has also been deployed as Ground-Based Air Defense (GBAD) against drone attacks at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. "This package of drones, air defense missiles, and radars will help to protect innocent Ukrainian people from Putin's barrage of drones and missiles, and it is an honor to welcome President Zelenskyy to this important meeting," Jarvis said in prepared remarks. Jarvis also confirmed the UK will take command of the Multinational Force for Ukraine Headquarters (MNF-U) next month, when Major General Tom Bateman takes over as commander in the rank of Lieutenant General. Bateman will lead the multinational team coordinating support to Ukraine and helping prepare for the long-term regeneration of its armed forces in the event on a peace deal. Some might wonder why Britain is funding Ukraine's defense when its own forces continue to be subject to cutbacks, and much-needed new equipment arrives later than planned. Others know that supporting Ukraine to hold back Russia is vital. The government says this particular funding is coming out of the UK's contribution to the G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) loan for Ukraine, which will be repaid using profits generated by seized Russian assets. ®

The World Cup is here. 

For the first time, the tournament is happening in three countries at once: the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It’s bigger than ever, with more teams, more games, more viewers, and more money on the line.

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This special World Cup episode of Reveal looks beyond the spectacle of the beautiful game to the organization behind it: FIFA. The global soccer body stands to take in billions from the tournament, while fans face soaring ticket prices and host cities pay massive sums for transportation, security, and infrastructure.  

“Sport is this incredible glue that brings people together,” human rights advocate Mustafa Qadri tells Reveal. But he says that also makes it “highly vulnerable to cynical people coming in and exploiting it for their own gain.”  

This week, reporters Alex Shephard, Tim Murphy of Mother Jones, and Reveal producer Artis Curiskis follow the money, power, and politics behind the World Cup—and ask who gets to be part of the world’s biggest game.

A 22-year-old woman accused of threatening the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees last month has been arrested.

Tanya Diaz was charged with making a criminal threat, a felony. She was booked into Santa Cruz County Jail on $25,000 bail, according to jail records. She was no longer in custody as of Friday afternoon.

Police do not believe there is an active threat to the community or PVUSD staff.

Board President Carol Turley did not respond to a request for comment.

Watsonville Police did not specify the nature of the threat.

Trustee Misty Navarro said during the board meeting Wednesday that it came after the May 20 meeting, when the board voted 5-2 to approve more than 100 teacher layoffs.

Navarro then read a comment she said was posted on the Lookout Santa Cruz website.

“Who do we need to shoot for this? I think we should start taking these people out, they’re not going to stop just saying.”

A handful of people had “liked” the comment, Navarro said, adding that it remained on the Lookout website for six hours before it was removed despite her requests.

The Pajaronian has reached out to Lookout for comment.

Navarro said the threat reflects the often vitriolic culture that has come to define board meetings.

Navarro pointed to comments made during Wednesday’s board meeting, including Trustee Gabe Medina calling her a “racist” and a “white supremacist” without offering evidence.

“I have a balance of logic and emotion, and I will vote in the way that I believe is the best for my community,” Navarro said. “But I will not do so at my own peril. And I do not believe that my volunteer service warrants a death threat, which is why I said 100 percent, please prosecute this person to the full extent of the law.”

After the district reported the threat, investigators served a search warrant at Diaz’s residence in the 200 block of Mesa Verde Drive.

No firearms were found during the search, and no guns are registered to Diaz, police said. During the investigation, she admitted that she wrote the threatening social media comment.

“The Watsonville Police Department takes all threats seriously, whether made in person or online,” WPD stated in a Facebook post. “Every threat is thoroughly investigated to ensure the safety of our community.”

“I raise this tonight because it does not exist in isolation,” Navarro said, pointing to a recent San Jose Mercury News story detailing a significant rise in threats against public officials, particularly women.

“This district is not exempt from that trend,” she said. “We owe one another and the public we serve a basic standard of conduct when it does not include language inviting violence against elected trustees. I ask that Lookout and this community hold the same standard.”

French serial entrepreneur and open-source legend Jean-Baptiste Kempf has been building Kyber, an infrastructure layer to control remote devices in real time.

Enter for a chance to win tickets to Sister Act by Cabrillo Stage at the Crocker Theater in Aptos on July 9. Drawing Date is July 2, 2026.

Juneteenth is the celebration of Black emancipation from slavery in the United States. The commemoration began after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the news finally reached Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, freeing 250,000 Black people still enslaved in the isolated state. It became a federally recognized holiday under President Joe Biden in 2021.

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