from the an-actual-political-prisoner dept

In Trump’s America, the First Amendment is a dead letter. If you’re seen as anti-Trump, you apparently no longer have any rights at all. We’ll get to the man who moved a box of zines and got thirty years — he wasn’t even at the protest, but the judge claimed he was aiding a “terrorist on the run” (he was not). To understand how that’s even possible, though, you first have to look at how some people who actually tried to overturn democracy were treated. Because they walked.

Just look at the treatment of the January 6th insurrectionists, who literally sought to hang the Vice President, invaded the Capitol, blocked the certification of the free and fair 2020 presidential election, and generally tried to take down the federal government. While some were convicted of their crimes and given jail sentences commensurate with their actual crimes, Donald Trump then pardoned them all and is now trying to pay them millions of dollars, claiming that it was so unfair that the government was “weaponized” against them.

Now, compare them to the Prairieland protestors, who went to the Prairieland ICE detention center in Texas last year on July 4th. It was like plenty of the angry protest gatherings we’ve seen lately: a bit rowdy, with a few individuals going too far. Some set off fireworks. Some engaged in vandalism. One person fired a gun which appears to have hit a local police officer (who was released from the hospital soon after with no lasting damage).

It seems totally reasonable for prosecutors to prosecute the actual crimes that happened: mainly the person who fired a weapon at someone, and perhaps some of the vandalism. But, instead, the federal government tried to turn this into “an antifa terror cell” engaging in “domestic terrorism.” While a small number of those arrested knew each other and had planned to show up and be disruptive, many others didn’t know those who were engaged in the planning or the vandalism. They were just there.

some of the defendants – like Batten, Elizabeth Soto and her husband, Ines Soto, were not involved in the planning, arrived separately at the protest, and left when guards at the facility asked them to do so.

The whole case was always nonsense:

“This indictment stretches far beyond a specific, violent criminal action that might have taken place,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It characterizes these people who put together a protest as being in an antifa cell and tars all of them with this label of domestic terrorists.”

Levinson-Waldman said the overreach threatens the civil liberties of all Americans. 

“This is not just about antifa,” she said. “Anything that somehow feels at odds with this administration’s policies could be considered domestic terrorism and will be pursued with the full force of the federal government.”

But the cases were filed in North Texas before two of the most Trumpy judges around: Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor. As we discussed back in March, the DOJ was able to get convictions against the protestors, including the one who wasn’t even there (hold that thought… it’s coming further down). A big part of the evidence was the weapons that some of the protestors brought to the protest. But, this is Texas. You’d think that in “we love the Second Amendment, Texas” that this wouldn’t be seen as a crime, but we’re dealing with a clearly ideologically driven prosecution.

This week, some of those convicted had sentences handed down, and they are so extreme and so long that they literally seem unbelievable.

Eight activists found guilty of terrorism-related charges in connection with an attack on an immigration detention facility in Texas in which a police officer was shot were sentenced to decades in prison Tuesday. One person in the group was sentenced to 100 years in prison, federal court records show.

Benjamin Song, who shot an Alvarado Police Department officer in the neck during the July 4 incident at Prairieland Detention Center outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was sentenced ​to a century behind bars, according to court documents reviewed by USA Today.

Maricela Rueda, another defendant, was sentenced to 70 years in prison, records show.

Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Autumn Hill and Meagan Morris were each sentenced to 50 years in prison….

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Again, Batten and Soto had no connection to those who planned the event or who showed up with weapons or engaged in violence. And they left when guards asked them to leave. And now they’ve been sentenced to 50 years in prison. For what?

Even if we compared these sentences to the absolute longest sentence for January 6th insurrectionists, they are nowhere near as long as this. From The Guardian’s coverage of the sentencing:

The punishment for the protesters exceeds the lengthiest prison sentences given out for the attack on the Capitol on January 6. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Tarrio and Rhodes were found guilty of detailed planning to overturn a presidential election. All anyone involved in the Prairieland case did was… get mad about ICE kidnapping and kicking their neighbors out of the country, and maybe a bit of vandalism.

Song, who was sentenced to 100 years did fire his weapon and hit a law enforcement agent, meaning he was always going to face some more serious sentence, but he claims he did so because he thought the officer was going to shoot protestors. From The Guardian again:

In a statement, Song said he had fired at the police officer, Lt Thomas Gross, because Gross had his weapon drawn and Song believed he was about to shoot a protester.

“I never want to see good people, standing for what they believe in, gunned down in the street,” he said. “Now 21 people have been arrested, have been persecuted, have been punished. For knowing me or being my friend? This is wrong. This is mass punishment. Collective punishment. This is guilt by association. This is injustice.”

Even worse, Judge O’Connor (who has been one of MAGA’s favorite judges, and who has no problem making it clear that he rules on purely ideological grounds) allegedly told some of the defendants that the long sentences were necessary to make sure that leftist ideology was seen to be punished:

If you can’t see that, it’s a post from a group that is supporting the defendants (and hasn’t yet been confirmed by other reporting) saying that O’Connor said, from the bench: “the state wants to send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”

If accurate, that would be incredibly damning. Judges aren’t supposed to increase sentences to stamp out ideology. That’s about as blatant a clear First Amendment violation you could imagine.

The Intercept has some other quotes from the courtroom, and while they don’t have the same ideology quote from O’Connor, the quotes they do have from him are pretty bad on their own:

O’Connor, the judge, said several times that the defendants had committed an “assault on democracy.”

“What happened here was not by any stretch of the imagination a protest,” he said during the sentencing of one defendant.

I mean… come on. January 6th was an “assault on democracy.” It was quite literally an attempt to overturn a democratic election. What happened in Texas was quite clearly a protest where a few protestors went too far. It happens at plenty of protests. It’s not an “assault on democracy” unless you’re a partisan activist. Given that we’re talking about Reed O’Connor, the claims of being a partisan activist have stuck on him for years.

Again, it’s clear that some of the defendants did break some laws, though most seemed to be minor property damage. There is zero indication of anything even remotely looking like a “terrorist” plot.

But the worst, most ridiculous case is that of Daniel “Des” Sanchez-Estrada. He wasn’t even at the protest. He was arrested for… moving some left wing zines after his wife — Maricela Rueda, one of the people just sentenced to 70 years — was arrested. Prosecutors claimed that moving a box with zines in it amounted to “corruptly concealing a document.” It sounds unbelievable, but you can read the criminal complaint against him, which really is just about him taking a box of leftist zines from his and his wife’s house (after she called him from jail) to another apartment.

He was just sentenced to 30 years in prison.

I need to repeat that. He moved a box of zines. He wasn’t at the protest.

He’s now been sentenced to THIRTY YEARS in prison.

For scale, this is in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton (currently running for the US Senate) let a repeat child sex abuser plead down to one day in jail. One day for a child abuser. Thirty years for moving a box of pamphlets.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has rightly called out how utterly unconstitutional this is:

Texas artist Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison today for transporting a box of zines, or political pamphlets. The prosecution claimed Sanchez moved the zines so they wouldn’t incriminate his wife, who attended a protest outside the Prairieland immigration detention center near Dallas, where a police officer was wounded by gunfire.

The zines at issue may have discussed controversial political views, but they said nothing about the shooting or the Prairieland protest, and prosecutors did not allege that Sanchez’s wife, Maricela Rueda (who was sentenced to 70 years today), fired any shots or had anything to do with the shooting.

According to The Intercept, O’Connor insisted that moving the box of zines was helping a “known terrorist.”

Sanchez Estrada said he still could not understand why he was convicted.

“I am a father, I am a husband, I am a teacher, a poet — I am many things, Your Honor, but I am not a terrorist,” he told the court.

O’Connor said he disagreed with the idea that moving the box of the zines was harmless. At the time of Sanchez Estrada’s actions, Song was still on the run from police.

“What was at stake at that time was a known terrorist was on the run for shooting a police officer during a terrorist attack,” he said.

Even if Song was a “known terrorist” (he’s not), that still…. means nothing. Sanchez moved a box of zines. What the fuck does that have to do with Song being on the run? The answer is absolutely nothing.

Yes, the Trump administration has been desperately trying to drum up some sort of violent organized opposition because they need that to justify the suppression of everyone’s rights as part of their continued authoritarian project. That the Trump Justice Department and a couple of famously partisan judges played along with this travesty of a prosecution, doesn’t make it legitimate by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s just another sign that in Trump’s America those who violate the law in support of Trump get told they can do whatever crimes they want, and Trump might even get them paid, but protesting the ongoing fascism, may get you sent to prison for decades. It’s so extreme that it’s almost difficult to believe it has happened in the United States. This case will go down in history among the most ridiculous, partisan, bullshit attacks on free speech, and Judges Pittman and O’Connor will both be remembered for being the judges responsible for this travesty.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, autumn hill, benjamin song, daniel sanchez estrada, elizabeth soto, excessive punishment, free speech, ice, ice protests, ken paxton, mark pittman, meagan morris, prairieland, reed o’connor, savanna batten, terrorism, texas, todd blanche, zachary evetts

Qualcomm has signed Meta as the first named customer for its new Dragonfly C1000 data centre processor, the strongest signal yet that the mobile chipmaker is serious about competing in the AI infrastructure market. The company announced the deal at its investor day in New York on Wednesday, alongside a new AI300 accelerator chip and its confirmed acquisition of AI software startup Modular for roughly $3.9 billion in stock.

The Dragonfly C1000 is a general-purpose server processor designed to sit inside data centres alongside Qualcomm’s AI accelerator chips. Meta has committed to using the C1000 and its successors across its facilities. The chip will not be available until 2028, meaning the partnership is a forward-looking commitment rather than an immediate deployment.

The Dragonfly brand, which Qualcomm first revealed at Computex in early June alongside an ASIC supply deal with ByteDance, covers three product categories: data centre CPUs, AI inference accelerators, and custom silicon built with hyperscalers. Wednesday’s event filled in the product details that the Computex teaser left out.

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On the accelerator side, Qualcomm added an AI300 chip to a lineup that already included the AI200 and AI250. The AI200, built on Qualcomm’s Hexagon neural processing unit technology with direct liquid cooling and up to 768GB of LPDDR memory, is on track for initial customer shipments later this year. The AI250 is expected to follow in 2027.

These accelerators are designed for inference, the process of running trained AI models at scale rather than training them from scratch. Qualcomm argues that its decades of mobile chip design give it an advantage in power efficiency, a claim that matters as data centres strain electricity grids worldwide. Whether that mobile expertise translates to data centre performance remains unproven at scale.

The Modular acquisition, which TNW reported was nearing completion on Monday, is now confirmed at roughly four billion dollars in an all-stock transaction. Qualcomm will issue roughly 19 million shares to Modular’s owners. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year.

Modular makes the Mojo programming language and the MAX inference engine, software that lets AI models run across chips from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm without developers rewriting code for each processor. That is a direct challenge to Nvidia’s CUDA platform, the software layer that has locked AI developers into Nvidia hardware for two decades. Breaking that lock-in is the central challenge for every company trying to compete with Nvidia in AI infrastructure.

The strategic logic is straightforward. Qualcomm can design competitive chips, but without a software ecosystem that makes developers want to use them, the hardware alone is not enough. Modular’s cross-platform tooling could give Qualcomm the kind of developer on-ramp it currently lacks.

CEO Cristiano Amon framed the deal as part of an industry movement toward open, multi-vendor architectures. That framing positions Qualcomm as the anti-Nvidia, offering flexibility where Nvidia’s CUDA demands loyalty.

Qualcomm’s ambition is large but its data centre track record is thin. The company generates the vast majority of its revenue from smartphone processors and modems, and its previous attempt to enter the server market with the Centriq processor in 2017 ended in a shutdown. The current push has more institutional support, a named hyperscaler customer in Meta, and a clearer market opportunity in AI inference, but the gap between investor day announcements and shipped revenue remains wide.

The Meta partnership is notable for what it implies about diversification. Meta currently builds AI infrastructure primarily around Nvidia GPUs and has also invested in its own custom MTIA chips. Adding Qualcomm to that mix suggests Meta wants more supplier options as it scales inference, not that it is replacing Nvidia, which announced a multiyear strategic partnership with Meta earlier this year.

Qualcomm shares have climbed about 30 percent this year on expectations that AI would open a second growth engine beyond smartphones. The investor day was designed to turn that expectation into a roadmap. With the Modular acquisition providing the software layer, Meta providing the first marquee customer, and the AI200 approaching shipments, the pieces are assembling on paper.

Whether they assemble in practice depends on execution over the next two years. The C1000 does not ship until 2028, the Modular deal has not closed, and the AI accelerator lineup has no published benchmarks against Nvidia’s current or upcoming hardware. Qualcomm is making the right moves to enter the market, but it is entering a race where Nvidia has a commanding lead and every major cloud provider is also designing custom silicon.

Warhammer 11th Edition has arrived with the Armageddon launch box, and although a new edition seems like the perfect way into the hobby, it’s a daunting prospect. What do you need to build your models? What do you need to play the game? I’ve tried to make it easy for you by scouring Amazon for some Prime Day deals to get started.

• View the full Amazon Prime Day sale

I’ve found deals on paints, brushes, Citadel plastic glue, gaming accessories and some models to complement the main starter set, whether you pick the bestial orks or the dogmatic Space Marines.

Obviously the Armageddon 11th Edition launch box set including 23 Space marines, 38 orks & rulebooks is the big-ticket item with $50 off, but I’d also recommend the Infernus Marines & Paints Set, which comes with starter paints and a paintbrush. It’s good value although there’s no discount: it’s a gentler introduction to the build and paint side of things, and easier on your wallet, too. I’ve also recommended cheaper, well-known brands like Army Painter to save you money.

Check out the deals below, or visit our Amazon Prime Day US live blog for more deals as we find them.

Amazon Prime Day Warhammer sale — top picks

Amazon Prime Day Warhammer sale

from the using-the-public’s-money-to-shortchange-the-public dept

There aren’t many governments out there actually trying to be more transparent. Every so often, a law gets passed that benefits the public more than its benefits the government, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

California experienced one of these anomalies fairly recently. In 2019, a law was passed that finally made police misconduct records public records. They were no longer something simply buried in PD filing cabinets until they could be destroyed. They became presumptively public, putting the burden on the government to explain refusals to relinquish records.

The law enforcement wing of California’s government was less than pleased. As soon as it became apparent the bill had a good chance to become law, law enforcement agencies began destroying records. After its passage and enactment, the state’s Attorney General began pretending the law wasn’t retroactive and the state itself was sued by police unions. The law still stands and police agencies hoping to keep these records out of the public’s hands have been shut down repeatedly at multiple levels of the court system.

Now, the state is poised to take a big step backwards in terms of transparency, thanks to the efforts of a legislator whose bill doesn’t even have the support of her own party. In March, Assembly member Blanca Pacheco introduced a bill that would have erected a significant paywall for public records, with the obvious intent of deterring records requests.

After running into internal and external opposition, Pacheco performed a legislative head-fake:

Amid opposition from transparency advocates and public access concerns from her own Assembly colleagues, though, the Downey Democrat diluted her proposal to simply give governments more time to respond to records requests, a change that allowed the measure to sail through the Assembly in May. 

Now that it’s gotten over this initial legislative hurdle, Pacheco is turning her proposal back into the one she really wants — the one that couldn’t pass without being stripped of its objectionable clauses.

Now, she’s brought the controversial elements back — and they are even more restrictive than before, drawing fierce opposition from transparency advocates.

The latest version of her proposal, Assembly Bill 1821, is co-written by the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties. It would allow government agencies to delay responding to certain requests and to charge $22 to $66 an hour to search for and review the records they deem are for “commercial use.” 

Government agencies could also take requests to court if they believe someone is asking for the records for a malicious reason. 

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Pacheco says this is nothing more than some needed “minor amendments or minor tweaks” meant to prevent government agencies from being “inundated” by records requests, “especially” those “generated by artificial intelligence.”

But that’s just one of several explanations given by Pacheco. She also says the new fee structure is meant to prevent taxpayers from “subsidizing” public records requests made by commercial entities. She also claims several discussions with local governments prompted this effort, as well as stuff she learned while she was enjoying paid-for trips to multiple tourist destinations for the ostensible purpose of getting better at legislating.

The initiative originated from one of Pacheco’s many trips sponsored by special interest groups last year, her spokesperson, Alina Evans, told CalMatters in March. Last year, Pacheco reported receiving more than $45,000 in sponsored travel — the most of any California lawmaker — including a study tour in Spain, a golf tournament in Pebble Beach and a conference in Maui. When asked Wednesday, however, Pacheco said she did not remember which one inspired her measure and said the idea came from multiple conversations with local governments. 

While I can absolutely believe most government agencies would prefer to handle fewer public records requests, public records request laws are supposed to benefit the public that pays for all of this, not the agencies that are supposed to serve the public.

Pacheco claims these are minor tweaks. The mandatory fees ($22 to $66 an hour) and giving agencies more options to sue records requesters aren’t small adjustments. They’re changes that will lead to exactly what so many government agencies want: fewer requests, more opacity, and a whole lot of leeway when it comes to responding.

Pacheco’s measure would create barriers that would chill the public from filing requests, effectively gutting the state’s open records act and violating the spirit of Californians’ constitutional right to government information, transparency advocates argue. 

“The only way that there’s any government accountability is that people know what the government is doing,” said David Snyder, a former journalist and now the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

[…]

[C]alifornia would be the first state to explicitly allow agencies to sue for “malicious intent.” Requesters the court deems malicious would have to pay an hourly fee to obtain records to compensate agencies for their time. 

[…]

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“It would be easily weaponized by agencies seeking to thwart transparency and accountability, as has already happened elsewhere in the country,” Snyder said.

The threat of a lawsuit alone would “chill requesters from submitting public requests,” said Shaila Nathu, a senior attorney with ACLU of Northern California, which also opposes the bill. 

Governments (including those in California) are already allowed to reject requests they deem “burdensome” or “vexatious.” They’ve always been able to go to court to justify refusals to release records. This addition gives California agencies a new offensive weapon in the war on transparency.

On top of this, the proposal would allow agencies to take however long they want to respond to requests. Most requests are now handled through online portals, but the 10-14 day timeline for request responses would now only apply to requests “made in person” or via email during “normal business hours.” It seems like a small thing, but in practice would allow agencies to ignore a large majority of records requests indefinitely.

The bill is still a few steps away from landing on the governor’s desk. But beyond a few people in government agencies who think the public has too much power, Pacheco seems to be on her own here. With any luck, it will remain that way and this terrible proposal will become something else that can be ignored indefinitely. But never underestimate the government’s constant trend towards opacity. It takes periodic resets to set it back on the road towards accountability. This is nothing more than Pacheco crafting an off-ramp, and being urged on (mostly secretly) by agencies who love the public’s money, but feel they owe nothing to the public in return for their paychecks.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, accountability, blanca pacheco, california, free speech, public access, public records, transparency

Save up to $700 on OLED TVs from popular brands, including LG, Samsung, and Sony, with these Prime Day deals.

Whether you’re looking to run an OLED TV as an external display for your Mac or want to swap out your existing living room TV to stream programming, there are numerous Prime Day OLED TV deals in effect this week.

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Save up to $700 on current and closeout models from LG, Samsung, and Sony, ranging from 48-inch panels to 77-inch sets.

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Samsung OLED TV Prime Day discounts

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You can also save on Paramount Plus and Apple TV with Prime Day streaming service deals to use with your new TV.

Slate, maker of the stripped-down EV pickup truck, found another way to simplify its product: the battery.

When the startup revealed its starting price on Wednesday — $24,950 before destination, taxes, and other fees — it also said it had changed its battery strategy, eliminating the optional 240-mile pack but bumping the standard pack from 150 miles to 205. 

How Slate pulled that off illustrates just how significantly the battery market in the U.S. has changed in the past four years.

Initially, the startup planned to use nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cells. The chemistry is widely used in the automotive industry and favored for its energy density, which translates into longer range. But NMC is also expensive, mostly due to high nickel and cobalt prices.

More recently, automakers have begun to use another chemistry, lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP). Battery packs that use LFP are less energy dense but cheaper by about 40%, thanks in part to lower-cost ingredients like iron, one of the main cathode materials, which replaces nickel and cobalt.

There were good reasons why Slate, and other automakers, started with NMC. The LFP supply chain today is today concentrated in China. That wasn’t always the case — early U.S. battery startup A123 Systems was founded to commercialize the technology. But after a few missteps, it fell into bankruptcy and was bought in 2013 by a Chinese auto parts company. Since then, Chinese battery companies have embraced the chemistry and dominated production of LFP cells.

LFP’s foreign origin meant that, before last summer, EVs that used it wouldn’t qualify for a $7,500 tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act. Only batteries made of materials sourced domestically or from companies with which the U.S. had a free trade agreement would qualify. But when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act axed the tax credits, those concerns evaporated, as well. Chinese manufacturers were back in consideration. Slate said it is working with Hefei-based battery company Gotion to source the cells, which will be built at a factory in Illinois, according to InsideEVs.

The other reason automakers passed over LFP batteries was their limited range. Automakers selling into the U.S. market have prioritized range, though vehicles that can travel more than 300 miles on a charge tend to be pricey — pretty much the opposite of what Slate is going for.

In reality, most people don’t need that much range, and as charging networks have grown in size, reach, and speed, range anxiety is gradually waning. While LFP cells will never match NMC in energy density, modern variations of the chemistry have helped close the gap. Ford, GM, Rivian, and Tesla all offer models that use LFP cells.

The industry’s embrace of LFP cells has also coincided with its transition to cell-to-pack technology, which Slate is using to build its battery packs.

Previously, when automakers assembled a battery pack, they first loaded cells into modules, which were then loaded into the pack. That setup allowed them to use pouch cells, which are cheaper and lighter. But over time, they realized the module approach canceled out the cost and weight savings the pouch cells offered. Though some EVs still use modules, the industry is moving toward cell-to-pack construction, in which rigid batteries, either prismatic or cylindrical, are loaded directly into the pack itself. 

Cell-to-pack trims manufacturing steps and boosts volumetric energy density, a helpful trait for a small EV like the Slate truck. Plus, LFP cells can be charged to 100% with fewer concerns about degradation than NMC, meaning drivers can use the full pack on a daily basis.

While there was probably a moment when Slate’s leadership had to green-light the switch from NMC to LFP, the momentum toward that decision had been building for years. LFP won’t take over the entire market — automakers like GM are betting on an entirely different chemistry — but its combination of low cost and decent range make LFP an obvious choice for what will be the cheapest EV in the U.S. 

• AWS becomes the first cloud provider offering rentable PCIe 6.0 processors
• Graviton5 combines 192 Arm cores with 96 PCIe lanes
• Memory bandwidth exceeds 800GB/s across AWS’s latest server platform

AWS has quietly achieved a milestone that neither AMD nor Intel reached first in commercially available cloud infrastructure by deploying a PCIe 6.0-capable processor.

The company’s Graviton5 CPU is now generally available through Amazon EC2 M9g and M9gd instances, allowing customers to rent PCIe 6.0 hardware by the hour.

Light from a galaxy that lived just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang traveled more than 12 billion years to reach us. Astronomers examining long Hubble exposures of a deep sky field spotted something they had not expected to see at such an early time. The galaxy, cataloged MXDFz4.4, sent out ultraviolet radiation strong enough to change the gas in its immediate surroundings from opaque to clear.

This object existed at the tail end of a long period when neutral hydrogen gas filled space and blocked energetic light. MXDFz4.4 sits in the MUSE eXtremely Deep Field, a region already studied by several telescopes. Hubble’s visible-light images captured the galaxy’s output after cosmic expansion stretched its original ultraviolet light into wavelengths the telescope could record.

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The galaxy itself measures roughly 100 times smaller in area than the Milky Way yet forms stars about 10 times faster. Most of that activity happened in tight clusters of young, massive stars only a few million years old. Those stars produced intense radiation that broke apart hydrogen atoms in the surrounding gas. As the gas ionized and thinned, between 50 and 100 percent of the ionizing light escaped the galaxy and its immediate neighborhood.

Combined Hubble and Webb photos show the galaxy as part of a dense field that includes thousands of other distant objects. Colors in the composite indicate areas where light broke free and gas cleared. Instead of a continuous production, the power came from bursts of star formation. Short-lived big stars most likely exploded, causing further holes in the remaining gas.

The discovery, according to lead author Ilias Goovaerts of the Space Telescope Science Institute, was previously thought to be impossible. Hubble not only captured the departing light, but also identified the concentrated young stars driving the alteration. Co-author Marc Rafelski pointed out that astronomers were already aware of the existence of many galaxies at the time. Prior to MXDFz4.4, no one has demonstrated unambiguous evidence of ionizing photons escaping.

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope provided information about the galaxy’s total mass and the evolution of its oldest stars. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope helped determine its exact distance and timing. Together, the three facilities demonstrated how a single tiny system may influence conditions directly around it during a pivotal shift in cosmic history. The discovery provides the first direct evidence of an individual galaxy changing its surrounding gas in this manner. Previous detections of similar fleeing light occurred later in time, around 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang or more. MXDFz4.4 brings the record closer to the time when the cosmos as a whole went from murky to clear.

The air will run thick with nostalgia as Scotland face Brazil at the FIFA World Cup 2026, with both teams aiming to book their place in the knockout stage – and you can live stream the game around the world for free.

Mention this fixture to members of the Tartan Army and they will immediately go dewy-eyed, as they recall Scotland’s battles with Brazil at World Cups of yore. This is the Scots’ fifth meeting with A Selecao at the tournament – they have not played any other country more than twice – but their finals record against the five-time winners is not the best, with a 0-0 draw in 1974 followed by defeats in 1982, 1990 and 1998. It falls on Steve Clarke’s Class of 2026 to change the narrative in Miami, where they may need a point to qualify for the knockout stage following their 1-0 defeat by Morocco last weekend. Finish third, and it’s calculators out as one of the eight best records. If they do that, they will become the first Scotland side in history to progress beyond the group stage of a major tournament.

If you’ve been waiting for ASUS’s latest RTX 50-series laptops to arrive in India, we have some great news. ASUS has finally announced the availability of its newest premium gaming and creator laptops in the country, headlined by the flagship ROG Zephyrus Duo. The lineup also includes refreshed versions of the Zephyrus G14 and G16, the TUF Gaming A14, and the creator-focused ProArt PZ14. The new machines are powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra, AMD Ryzen AI, and Snapdragon X processors, paired with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. ASUS is also leaning heavily into AI this year, with some models offering dedicated NPUs capable of delivering up to 80 TOPS of AI performance.

The Zyphyrus Lineup

The most interesting laptop in the lineup is undoubtedly the ROG Zephyrus Duo. ASUS describes it as its most advanced gaming and creator laptop yet, and it’s easy to see why. The machine features dual 16-inch 3K OLED Nebula touch displays, giving users significantly more screen real estate for multitasking, streaming, video editing, or keeping multiple applications open while gaming.

Under the hood, the laptop can be configured with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU and Intel Core Ultra processors. ASUS has also included its ROG Intelligent Cooling system to help keep temperatures under control during long gaming or rendering sessions.

For users who want flagship performance without carrying around a massive gaming laptop, ASUS is also bringing the latest Zephyrus G14 and G16 to India. Both laptops feature premium lightweight designs, OLED Nebula displays, and NVIDIA RTX 50-series graphics. The G14 gets a 73Wh battery, while the larger G16 bumps that up to 90Wh. ASUS says the machines are designed for users who want a single laptop for gaming, content creation, and everyday work without sacrificing portability.

TUF Gaming A14 & ProArt PZ14

The TUF Gaming A14 targets gamers and students who need something more portable than a traditional gaming laptop. Weighing just 1.46kg, the laptop combines AMD Ryzen AI processors with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 graphics. ASUS has also retained the military-grade durability the TUF series is known for, making it a more rugged alternative to the Zephyrus lineup.

Meanwhile, the ProArt PZ14 caters to creators looking for a highly portable AI PC. The device features a detachable Bluetooth keyboard and a 2-in-1 design, allowing it to function as both a laptop and a tablet. It runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite processor and includes a 14-inch 3K ASUS Lumina Pro OLED display. At just 0.79kg, it’s easily the lightest device in the lineup. ASUS is also positioning it as an AI-focused machine, thanks to support for up to 80 TOPS of AI performance.

Price and Availability

The new ASUS laptops are now available across ASUS Exclusive Stores, ROG Stores, the ASUS eShop, Amazon, Flipkart, Reliance Digital, Croma, Vijay Sales, and other authorized retail partners. Pricing starts at ₹1,99,990 for the TUF Gaming A14 and goes all the way up to ₹6,99,990 for the top-end Zephyrus Duo with RTX 5090 graphics. ASUS is also offering No Cost EMI options through ASUS Easy Pay for up to 18 months, with monthly payments starting at ₹11,111.