DJI has now given the Osmo Pocket 4P a wider global release after initially limiting its most capable pocket camera to China. It is now available across the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia, but the US remains missing from the list.

The Standard Combo starts at £529 or €599 and includes the camera, a fill light, carrying pouch, and a handle with a tripod thread. In Canada, DJI lists the same bundle at US$619, as prices on its Canadian storefront are displayed in US dollars. The Vlog Combo costs £605, €689, or US$669 in Canada and adds a Mic Mini 2, Mini Tripod, larger carrying bag, and the Osmo FrameTap remote.

The second camera is the big upgrade

The Osmo Pocket 4P uses a 1-inch primary sensor paired with a 20mm equivalent f/2.0 lens. It supports up to 17 stops of dynamic range using DJI’s new 10-bit D-Log 2 profile, giving creators more room to adjust highlights, shadows, and colors during editing.

The bigger addition is a second 1/1.28-inch sensor paired with a 60mm equivalent f/1.8 telephoto lens. It delivers 3x optical zoom and gives creators another framing option for portraits, products, and distant subjects without relying entirely on digital cropping. The wide camera records slow-motion video at up to 4K/240 fps, while the telephoto reaches 4K/200 fps. A 2-inch OLED screen offers 1,000 nits of brightness, and DJI claims up to 210 minutes of battery life.

Why is the US still being left out?

DJI has not announced US pricing or a release date for the Pocket 4P. The company’s recent launches continue to face roadblocks as the FCC tightens restrictions around DJI and foreign-made technology. Older products such as the Osmo Pocket 3 remain available because they received authorization before the crackdown.

The government has since expanded the same Covered List approach to foreign-made robots, including future robot vacuums and Roombas. For US creators, the Pocket 4P is therefore another DJI product they can see launched almost everywhere else but cannot officially buy at home.

from the making-things-worse-at-scale dept

Flock Safety’s aggressive expansion into the law enforcement market has been coupled with nearly constant negative coverage of its tech and its practices. Multiple cities have paused or cancelled their agreements with Flock following public outcry over the surveillance tech.

Flock’s willingness to allow law enforcement agencies to search a nationwide network of cameras has generated plenty of negative headlines of their own, including the fact that Texas cops were using Flock to track someone (possibly) seeking an abortion after she’d already left the state.

Flock’s statements in its defense are, well, super-defensive. It claims it can’t control what cops do with its tech. That’s somewhat true, but it’s also true that Flock has made zero effort to limit abusive access until it’s been forced to by its government customers or outside pressure.

Flock also claims its tech has contributed to investigations and reducing crime. This is probably true but it doesn’t mean all that much when pretty much any extensive surveillance network is going to generate some additional arrests. It’s the trade-off that’s the problem and Flock doesn’t seem to care at all about the millions of people subjected to its surveillance. Martial law would likely lower crime rates, but that’s not a an acceptable justification for martial law.

The problem with ALPR tech being ubiquitous is that it isn’t really making police work better or smarter. Instead, it just seems to be allowing cops to be wrong faster and at scale. And police officials who love this tech will always remind us that there’s a price to be paid to live in a safe society. What they never admit is that they keep changing the price tag with each new rollout of surveillance tech.

Flock’s contribution to the problem means it’s just going to keep making headlines. And while Flock may not be a direct contributor to what’s discussed here, these things wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Flock.

First, there’s this story, which involves automotive journalist Joel Felder and the Range Rover he was test driving. His loaner from Range Rover kept getting flagged by Flock as stolen. That Felder is alive to tell his story is more due to his race and location than the so-called police work that resulted in him being ambushed by Minneapolis cops in mall parking lot.

On an otherwise normal Sunday afternoon in late June, I’d decided to take the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing that week out to run some errands with my wife. Little did I know that choice would complete a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement that led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl’s parking lot in suburban Minnesota.

After dropping off our Amazon returns, we’d just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in. The officers jumped out and started shouting. It’s a situation that can quickly and frequently turn bad, so as unprepared as I was, I followed their orders, got out with my hands up, and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

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It turns out cops in the area had been tracking the Range Rover for days, following alerts from Flock. But they kept losing the trail when Felder returned home. When he passed a Flock camera near his stop, Plymouth, MN police showed up to accost him.

The main problem was something either Flock or the PD could have taken a closer look at. The Range Rover loaner had New Jersey plates. And on NJ plates, two digits are printed smaller than the rest of them.

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

Which means this is also a nationwide problem, on top of being a specifically New Jersey problem. The automated plate readers are reading these plates wrong, meaning any plate starting with 34 and ending with DTM would automatically be flagged as stolen. Who knows how bad that’s going in New Jersey (we’ll wait for those headlines to roll in!), but it’s already a bit of problem in Minnesota, and not just for this particular The Drive contributor.

In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

And just to let you know how the cop problem possibly outweighs the Flock problem, I’ll let these Plymouth (a suburb of Minneapolis) cops speak for themselves:

“You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

Cool cool cool.

No doubt this also kept the gun-play to a minimum, according to the Plymouth PD report:

“I observed the driver, who was a white male wearing shorts and a green shirt, as he was putting something in the back seat of the car. I could also see a white female getting into the front passenger seat…”

But Flock’s contribution to public danger isn’t limited to stolen plates. Its system also tracks vehicles of people who are suspected to have stolen something other than the vehicle they’re riding in. Here’s what happened to an unlucky Colorado resident who found herself on the wrong side of this surveillance tech:

Chrisanna Elser got a summons from Columbine Valley police accusing her of stealing a package. The evidence? A license-plate-reader camera that placed her truck near the scene. The problem? She wasn’t there. According to Denverite, Elser had to dig up her own timestamped truck video and a neighbor’s doorbell camera footage to prove it. Nobody verified the camera’s implication before the summons landed. The camera spoke, and the system listened — no further questions asked.

Elser was forced to prove her own innocence as a cop stood in her doorway. Fortunately, she had the evidence on her phone. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened? Certainly not the officer who did nothing more than convert the faulty data into a summons.

When Elser tried to get the officer to watch the time-stamped video from her truck, the officer told her he simply wasn’t interested in anything she had to show him that might prove her innocence:

On her doorstep, the officer issued a summons, without ever looking at the surveillance video Elser had.

“We can show you exactly where we were,” she told him.

“I already know where you were,” he replied.

It took Elser five weeks to get the charges dropped and it took escalating it to the Chief of Police to get it done. While the chief didn’t go so far as to apologize, he did at least let her know she did a “great job” proving her innocence, when that’s not how it’s supposed to work in the first place.

While I understand the presumption of innocence only really applies once criminal proceedings are underway, law enforcement’s reliance on unreliable tech is now forcing people to document their own movements and actions just as thoroughly as Flock tracks theirs, just in case the cops have it wrong. That’s fucked up. We shouldn’t be obligated to constantly generate a history of our movements just to get bogus criminal charges dropped, especially when we know that doing so just means providing the government with additional ways to track our movements.

When cops are boxing you in as you’re trying to leave the mall, they’re the ones who should be as absolutely sure as possible that their actions are justified. The imbalance of power between citizens and law enforcement demands better from law enforcement, but every new tech tool that cops embrace just makes it easier to make more mistakes faster. There’s nothing out there that even slightly suggests pervasive surveillance is reducing crime, but cops treat everything an algorithm spits out as gospel because it means they won’t have to think for themselves. This is unacceptable. And just because no one got arrested or killed doesn’t mean these errors are harmless.

Filed Under: alprs, colorado, false positives, license plate readers, minnesota, surveillance

Companies: flock safety

Security

A lesson for aspiring vandals: Take out all the cameras, not just the ones that flout your ideals

Note to privacy-conscious vandals: If you’re going to destroy Flock license plate readers, make sure you also take out the other CCTV cameras in the area that could catch you in your crime. Otherwise, you’ll end up like one unlucky Californian.

Marcus Bee, 40, was arrested by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday, accused of joining the ever-growing band of US citizens damaging the controversial cameras popping up across the country.

A police report filed this week stated that Bee, of Pismo Beach, was arrested on suspicion of attacking at least three Flock cameras in Lockwood and Bradley.

According to the deflock.org website, which maps Flock camera deployments, there are only three of the automated license plate readers (ALPRs) running in the two communities – one in Lockwood and two in Bradley, roughly 25 miles away.

Police allege Bee caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to “public safety infrastructure.”

Monterey County Sheriff’s Office added that Bee was caught after “his actions were captured by other surveillance cameras located nearby,” along with other investigative leads. 

“This arrest sends a clear message that anyone who intentionally damages public safety equipment will be identified, arrested, and held accountable,” said Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto. 

“These cameras have become an invaluable investigative resource that helps us solve crimes, recover stolen vehicles and ag equipment, locate missing persons, and protect our communities. Any attempts to disable these systems will not prevent us from doing our job. 

“In this case, the suspect’s own actions were captured on surveillance cameras, leading directly to his arrest. We will continue to aggressively investigate these crimes and seek prosecution against anyone who targets public safety infrastructure.”

Bee was jailed with bail set at $30,000.

The case follows a similar one in Georgia last week, although local police were unable to identify the suspect(s) behind the two attacks, which involved setting two ALPRs on fire.

The two attacks were timed fairly close together, although the phenomenon of inflicting criminal damage onto Flock cameras is something of a long-running trend.

Several US police forces have been tasked with arresting alleged Flock vandals, including Jeffrey Scott Sovern, 41, who authorities believe was behind a spate of attacks on ALPR cameras in North Suffolk, Virginia, between April and October 2025.

He said, at a hearing in June, that he believed the technology was unconstitutional.

Flock cameras: A problem or simply misunderstood?

Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said Flock’s cameras “are an important investigative tool” used to help solve various types of crimes, including missing persons cases, car thefts, and violent crimes such as shootings and homicides where suspect vehicles are involved.

Contrary to the opinions held by many, it went on to say that the cameras “are used exclusively to support legitimate criminal investigations,” and refuted the notion that they are used to support the US government’s anti-immigration efforts.

Likewise, Flock has repeatedly denied offering contracts to agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), although reports suggest police were instead carrying out searches on ICE’s behalf. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has also allegedly used Flock data in its own immigration investigations.

Other critiques of the technology used by thousands of police departments across the US include problematic abuses, such as police officers using it to stalk romantic interests.

The Institute of Justice is aware of at least 26 cases of this behavior, it reported earlier this month, with the majority taking place since 2024.

Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) takes issue with the scale of data gathering by ALPRs.

It claims that less than 1 percent of the cars scanned are connected to crime, yet they still have details added to a database, such as vehicle manufacturer, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and scratches.

Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed this week in an interview with The Drive that the company’s cameras were used to solve around 1 million crimes across the US last year.

Responding to claims such as Sovern’s – that the cameras are unconstitutional, specifically that they violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights – Langley said there are no legal issues, and he doesn’t foresee any arising in the future.

Flock’s spokespeople have repeatedly condemned the cases of camera vandalism, highlighting the risk of losing evidence that could be crucial to solving ongoing criminal cases. ®

from the criminalizing-ideology dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A little-noticed presidential national security directive is now the legal engine behind a wave of terrorism prosecutions against left-wing protesters.

That domestic campaign now has an international dimension, one that American officials had been planning for months, culminating on July 16, 2026, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism drew representatives from more than 65 countries to Washington. The gathering was informally called the “Antifa summit.”

Rubio described antifa-aligned networks as sharing infrastructure across borders and accused Iran and Cuba of helping bankroll the movement, without offering evidence. The White House declared the summit the start of an “unprecedented global offensive” against what it calls “radical left terrorism.”

This offensive is built on the same domestic legal architecture that has now sent American activists to prison for decades.

That architecture is National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on Sept. 25, 2025, which for the first time appeared to authorize preemptive law enforcement measures against Americans based not on whether they are planning to commit violence but for their political or ideological beliefs.

Nearly a year later, that blueprint has moved from paper into practice.

The Justice Department has built task forces staffed by counterterrorism prosecutors. The FBI has set up its own NSPM-7 mission center to oversee investigations into left-wing movements, including a joint effort with the IRS to investigate nonprofit groups.

The Justice Department has used this machinery to convict activists and send some of them to prison for decades.

NSPM-7 was not passed by Congress. It’s a lesser-known tool of executive power: a presidential memorandum.

As an international relations scholar who has studied U.S. foreign policy decision-making and national security legislation, I recognize that presidents can take several types of executive actions without legislative involvement: executive orders, memoranda and proclamations.

This structure allows the president to direct law enforcement and national security agencies, with little opportunity for congressional oversight.

Presidential national security powers

Executive memorandums direct agencies to prepare reports, implement policies or align programs with the administration’s priorities. Unlike executive orders, they aren’t required to be published. When they relate to national security, like NSPM-7, they’re called national security directives – many of which stay classified and may not be declassified for years or decades.

The stated purpose of NSPM-7 is to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence, focusing mainly on perceived threats from the political left. The memorandum identifies “anti-Christian,” “anti-capitalism” or “anti-American” views as potential indicators that a group or person will commit domestic terrorism.

The memorandum claims that political violence originates with “anti-fascist” groups that hold the following views: “support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The strategy includes preemptive measures to disrupt groups before they engage in violent political acts, empowering multiagency task forces to investigate potential federal crimes related to radicalization and the groups’ funders. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 2025 implementation memo went further, ordering a five-year review of agency files on antifa. A task force staffed with counterterrorism and organized-crime prosecutors is carrying out these investigations.

‘Domestic terrorist organizations’

The memorandum directs the Department of Justice to focus FBI resources from approximately 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces on investigating “acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons” for the purpose of “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights; and the violent deprivation of any citizen’s rights.”

NSPM-7 also allows the attorney general to propose groups for designation as “domestic terrorist organizations.” That includes groups that engage in “organized doxxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.”

Existing laws allow the secretary of state to designate groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” that are then subject to financial sanctions.

But these laws do not permit the president to label domestic groups this way.

That gap hasn’t stopped prosecutions. In Texas, eight defendants tied to a “North Texas Antifa Cell” were sentenced in June 2026 for a 2025 armed confrontation at the Prairieland immigration detention center. One man received 100 years, and others who never fired a weapon still drew decades in prison under terrorism sentencing guidelines.

In Minnesota, 15 members and associates of a group called Direct Action Minnesota were indicted in June 2026 on conspiracy and assault charges. A 94-page indictment cited behavior such as wearing an “I’m Antifa!” sweatshirt, possessing a bullhorn or including a devil emoji in a Signal message.

Defining terrorism

NSPM-7 marks a major conceptual shift in U.S. counterterrorism policy, departing from approaches that primarily targeted foreign threats.

Earlier directives, dating to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, treated terrorism as a global menace countered through military power and diplomacy. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration reframed it as a domestic challenge after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

After 9/11, the Bush administration fused counterterrorism with national defense through the global war on terrorism. The Obama administration later tried to narrow those powers, asking whether targeted individuals “pose a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons” — a standard focused on tactics and capture feasibility, not ideology.

The first Trump administration used a “travel ban” against several “terror-prone” countries, while President Joe Biden redirected focus toward weapons of mass destruction.

Notably, the “domestic terrorist” label itself has rarely produced actual charges. The State Department designated four antifa-aligned groups as foreign terrorist organizations. But antifa is a decentralized movement, not a formal group with a roster.

This designation lacks any real legal weight because U.S. law has no formal domestic terrorist organization category. Creating one risks infringing on First Amendment protected speech. Domestic terrorism itself is not a chargeable offense.

Prosecutors have instead leaned on older statutes such as material support for terrorism and conspiracy laws, tools originally built for cases like the ones above, not protest movements.

First Amendment rights at risk

There is no single official definition of terrorism in U.S. law; definitions vary by purpose – criminal law, intelligence collection, civil liability.

Definitions in all those areas typically focus on identifying violent or dangerous acts done with the intent to intimidate or coerce civilians or influence government policy.

But more than redefining terrorism, NSPM-7 reorients the machinery of national security toward the policing of belief.

The First Amendment generally prevents the government from punishing people for unpopular opinions. It also protects the ability for people to associate to advance public and private ideas in pursuit of political, economic, religious or cultural goals.

The directive’s emphasis on ideological orientations – “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-American” views – as indicators of domestic terrorism potentially jeopardizes First Amendment rights.

Thirty-one members of Congress sent a letter to Trump in October 2025 expressing “serious concerns” about NSPM-7, warning that it poses “serious constitutional, statutory and civil liberties risks, especially if used to target political dissent, protest or ideological speech.”

As the ACLU warns, any definition of terrorism that includes ideological components risks criminalizing people or groups based on belief rather than based on violence or other criminal conduct.

Congress has declined to create a domestic complement to the foreign terrorist designation in large part because of the potential for impinging on First Amendment–protected association and speech.

But I fear that chilling speech may be the point.

Silencing dissent

NSPM-7 does not criminalize previously legal conduct.

Rather, it states that the Trump administration will focus investigations around the identity and ideology of supposed perpetrators. Prioritizing investigations into this broad swath of ideologies serves to instill fear, silencing anti-fascist and other messages in opposition to the Trump administration.

Law professor Steve Vladeck frames this chill as “obeying in advance,” in which organizations self-censor rather than risk investigation, prosecution or defending against the “domestic terrorist” label. Federal judges in the Prairieland case have shown little sympathy for that distinction: One judge described the protest itself as “an assault on democracy,” even for defendants who never touched a weapon.

Although left-wing violence has risen in the past decade, empirical evidence shows it remains far below historical levels of right-wing or jihadist violence.

Most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, accounting for the vast majority of domestic terrorism fatalities.

Yet NSPM-7 focuses disproportionately on left-wing ideologies. NSPM-7 departs from prior U.S. counterterrorism frameworks by prioritizing the suppression of ideologically motivated dissent, even where, as in Minnesota, judges have already dismissed roughly half of similar federal cases for lack of evidence.

Melinda Haas is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh

Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, domestic terrorism, fbi, free speech, marco rubio, nspm-7, presidential memorandum, radical extremism

Okta on Thursday agreed to acquire AI identity security startup Permiso Security, betting that demand for protecting AI agents and other machine identities will grow as enterprises deploy autonomous software across their operations.

The identity management company did not disclose the terms of the transaction. But TechCrunch has learned that the acquisition is valued at just under $200 million and is structured as an almost all-cash deal, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. A spokesperson for Okta did not dispute the figure when asked by TechCrunch, but would not comment on specifics of the deal terms.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of its fiscal 2027, Okta said, subject to customary closing conditions.

Okta’s move to buy Permiso comes as identity management companies seek to expand beyond verifying users at login to continuously monitoring what users, applications, and AI agents do once gaining authorized access to a network environment. That shift has intensified competition to secure machine identities as enterprises embed AI deeper into everyday operations.

Permiso, which emerged from stealth in 2022, develops software that helps security teams spot suspicious activity in cloud environments after users or applications have been granted access. More recently, the startup has expanded its platform to monitor AI agents and other machine identities.

Co-founded by former FireEye executives Paul Nguyen and Jason Martin, Permiso specializes in detecting attacks that use stolen or compromised identities to move through cloud infrastructure. In April, the startup also introduced SandyClaw, a platform designed to analyze AI agent skills in a sandboxed environment to identify malicious behavior before they are deployed.

The deal strengthens Okta’s push into securing AI agents and other non-human identities alongside its core identity management business.

“Permiso will extend Okta’s identity security fabric with proven identity threat detection and response capabilities, and an incredible threat research and security team that will advance Okta’s threat detection and prevention capabilities,” Okta’s chief product officer Ely Kahn said in a prepared statement.

Permiso has raised about $29 million to date, including an $18.5 million Series A round in April 2024 led by Altimeter Capital. People familiar with the financing said the Series A valued the Palo Alto-based startup at about $80 million on a post-money basis.

Rumor mill: Google’s Pixel 11 is coming into focus thanks to two separate leaks. One is an official teaser video released by Google itself, while the other is a Bluesky post from WinFuture’s Roland Quandt detailing the phone’s storage options, battery capacity, and pricing.

The Google video is the more visual of the two. It offers a close look at the Pixel 11 Pro’s rear camera bar, where the phone retains its three-lens setup while adding a circular light effect beside the cameras. The clip does not name the feature or explain what it does, but the spinning colors suggest Google is building something new around the camera area rather than adding a feature elsewhere on the phone.

Google’s narration only mentions familiar services such as Gmail, Maps, Search, Calendar, and Gemini. The video title teases “the next obvious move,” but Google leaves the meaning deliberately vague. That has fueled speculation that the light could serve as a status indicator, a Gemini-related processing light, or a notification system, but none of those theories have been confirmed.

The second leak comes from Bluesky, where Quandt posted what appears to be retailer-sourced information about the Pixel 11 lineup. According to the post, 256GB will be the minimum storage option across the entire range, marking a long-awaited shift for Google’s standard models. The leak also claims that the Pixel 11 will cost £879 in the UK, while the Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL will be priced at £1,079 and £1,279, respectively.

Those pricing figures are not as straightforward as they initially appear. The Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro are technically cheaper than their 256GB Pixel 10 counterparts, while the Pixel 11 Pro XL costs more than last year’s model. However, the difference stems from Google’s decision to eliminate lower-capacity storage tiers rather than from a broad price cut across the lineup.

Pixel 11 256GB = 879 GBP, 4985mAh Pixel 11 Pro 256 GB = 1079 GBP, 4850mAh Pixel 11 Pro XL 257 GB = 1279 GBP, 5115mAh

– Roland Quandt (@rquandt.bsky.social) July 28, 2026 at 3:06 AM

Quandt’s Bluesky post also includes battery capacity details. The base Pixel 11 is said to feature a 4,985mAh battery, while the Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL are listed with 4,850mAh and 5,115mAh batteries, respectively. If accurate, the base model and the larger Pro XL would receive modest battery upgrades, while the regular Pro would see a slight reduction compared with the previous generation.

Google is set to unveil the Pixel 11 lineup on August 12. Until then, the picture remains incomplete.

Imagine you’re a company. You’ve got sensitive data you need kept safe, and you’ve got a cloud service provider that’s protecting it. But do you know how far that protection goes, and at what point it’s your turn to take over?

The sheer number of data breaches due to human error, specifically database misconfiguration, suggests that many don’t know that they, not the provider, are responsible for securing all the data properly (or are unsure how to do it).

As wildfires continue to devastate southern Europe, Apple is backing relief efforts with a donation announced by CEO Tim Cook.

North America isn’t the only region struggling to combat the growing problem of wildfires; it’s an ongoing problem in Europe as well. According to the Joint Research Centre, more than 434,976 hectares have been burnt in 1,400 fire instances in 2026 alone.

Recent fires in southwestern France have burned so intensely that they created a fire-generated thunderstorm, according to CNN. Other countries, like Spain, Greece, and Italy, remain on high alert as the risk of wildfires grows across the region.

In response, Cook took to X on Thursday to announce that Apple would be donating to first responders and relief efforts in the affected areas.

Apple routinely donates to relief efforts worldwide. In June, it pledged aid to help Venezuelans affected by a pair of earthquakes that struck Venezuela’s northern coast.

In October 2025, it donated to relief efforts after Hurricane Melissa tore through the Caribbean. The following month, it offered aid in the wake of a deadly fire that devastated a high-rise apartment complex in Hong Kong.

from the needlessly-stupid dept

The American healthcare system and the portion of the government in charge of our health have been a failure of record proportions for the second consecutive year. In 2025, America set a record for collecting the most confirmed cases of measles since 1991, with 2,289 confirmed cases. This year, America already blew past last years case total, where we now sit at 2,318 confirmed cases. We’re only about 58% of the way through the year, in case that little fact escaped you, which means we’re very likely to have many, many more total cases this year than last.

That is happening despite healthcare professionals and some media members sounding the alarm bells over all of this going all the way back to February of 2025! If you need the government’s perspective on this embarrassing failure, one in which we’ve allowed a disease officially declared eradicated to roar back into existence all because there are some liars out there who scare people about vaccines, well, RFK Jr. thinks he’s doing a bang up job managing the whole thing.

He hasn’t. He’s a large part of the reason this now 19 month outbreak exists to begin with. He hasn’t mobilized any vaccination efforts, preferring to leave that to the states. His messaging around vaccination and how to handle the measles has been so all over the place that he might as well have no stance on the matter at all. He’s checked out from most of his job, by some reports.

And as all of this failure is staring us in the face, Kennedy is still allowing the anti-vaxxer messaging to spread undisputed and uninterrupted, which is the precise reason the measles has returned in the first place. And it’s very likely to get worse.

“There were two healthy little girls in West Texas that died from measles,” said Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in an email to TIME. “Those were the first measles deaths in a child in this country in more than 20 years. I think it is fair to say that measles is epidemic in the United States. And if people are coming from outside this country to the United States, they better make sure they’re up-to-date on their immunizations.”

Adds Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine: “For all practical purposes measles has returned to the United States, both in terms of cases and hospitalizations, as well as two needless deaths.  We should expect our annual winter-spring surges of measles to get even worse in subsequent years.  And it won’t be just measles—pertussis is also returning, and other childhood infectious diseases might follow.”

Measles has this fun little curve ball it likes to throw at its victims: immune amnesia. One of the more insidious things this virus does is destroy T-cells and B-cells, which are the long-term immunological memory cells. They’re the part of our bodies that recall infections from long ago and build in the longer lasting immunity we get either from infections themselves or from vaccinations. Allowing measles to get worse means not only dealing with that disease, but potentially many others that could come roaring back. Like pertussis. Or polio.

We haven’t developed therapies for measles in decades. We didn’t have to. Vaccination rates meant there was nearly no disease for which therapies were needed. That appears to be changing now, with reports that researchers are starting to develop drug therapies due to the record case counts.

That is valuable time, expertise, and money that is being spent to treat a disease that we were fucking rid of two decades ago. Thanks to liars and charlatans like RFK Jr., combined with a percentage of our populace that is uncaring of its own community.

I very much do not look forward to writing about breaking this record again in 2027, but I fear I will be.

Filed Under: anti-vaxxers, epidemic, health & human services, measles, rfk jr., vaccinations