England and India meet in the semi-final of a T20 World Cup for the third time in a row. On the previous two occasions, the winner has gone on to lift the trophy. Neither side has looked like the complete package so far, although England have exceeded pre-tournament expectations.

One Harry Brook century aside, they’ve been all over the place with the bat. The opening stand of Phil Salt and Jos Buttler have averaged just 12, and their route through the World Cup has been punctuated by tight victories. All-rounder Will Jacks, however, has arguably been the player of the tournament.

• Europol leads multinational operation against Tycoon 2FA
• Platform enabled large-scale phishing with MFA bypass
• Authorities dismantled core infrastructure and seized domains

Tycoon 2FA, one of the largest phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms in the world, has been taken down after a global coordinated law enforcement operation.

The operation was led by Europol, and included police forces from Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is not happy — perhaps predictably so — with OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In a memo to staff, reported by The Information, Amodei referred to OpenAI’s dealings with the Department of Defense as “safety theater.”

“The main reason [OpenAI] accepted [the DoD’s deal] and we did not is that they cared about placating employees, and we actually cared about preventing abuses,” Amodei wrote.

Last week, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) failed to come to an agreement over the military’s request for unrestricted access to the AI company’s technology. Anthropic, which already had a $200 million contract with the military, insisted the DoD affirm that it would not use the company’s AI to enable domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry.

Instead, the DoD — known under the Trump administration as the Department of War — struck a deal with OpenAI. Altman stated that his company’s new defense contract would include protections against the same red lines that Anthropic had asserted.

In a letter to staff, Amodei refers to OpenAI’s messaging as “straight up lies,” stating that Altman is falsely “presenting himself as a peacemaker and dealmaker.”

Amodei might not be speaking solely from a position of bitterness, here. Anthropic specifically took issue with the DoD’s insistence on the company’s AI being available for “any lawful use.” OpenAI said in a blog post that its contract allows use of its AI systems for “all lawful purposes.”

“It was clear in our interaction that the DoW considers mass domestic surveillance illegal and was not planning to use it for this purpose,” OpenAI’s blog post stated. “We ensured that the fact that it is not covered under lawful use was made explicit in our contract.”

Critics have pointed out that the law is subject to change, and what is considered illegal now might end up being allowed in the future.

And the public seems to be siding with Anthropic. ChatGPT uninstalls jumped 295% after OpenAI made its deal with the DoD.

“I think this attempted spin/gaslighting is not working very well on the general public or the media, where people mostly see OpenAI’s deal with the DoW as sketchy or suspicious, and see us as the heroes (we’re #2 in the App Store now!),” Amodei wrote to his staff. “It is working on some Twitter morons, which doesn’t matter, but my main worry is how to make sure it doesn’t work on OpenAI employees.”

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword was a bit tricky. I was thrown off by 1-Down, as it turns out there are multiple slow-moving creatures whose names would fit in a five-letter space. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Poli ___ (college major)
Answer: SCI

4A clue: Person with a superior attitude
Answer: SNOB

5A clue: Word whose letters are appropriately found from left to right in … CHARISMA
Answer: CHARM

6A clue: … PRECIPITATION
Answer: RAIN

7A clue: … UNSIGHTLY
Answer: UGLY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Slow-moving creature
Answer: SNAIL

2D clue: Like a groan-inducing joke
Answer: CORNY

3D clue: Co. that created the first floppy disk
Answer: IBM

4D clue: Furry variety of carpet
Answer: SHAG

5D clue: World Class Wreckin’ ___, music group in which Dr. Dre got his start
Answer: CRU

Smartphone design is pretty much the same in 2026. You get a slab of metal and glass with a big, bulky camera module on the back, and there’s only so much you can do with it. Infinix seems to have looked at that trend and said, “Screw it.” That’s because, to design its new flagship phone, the Hong Kong-based smartphone maker called in the legendary Italian design firm Pininfarina. For the uninitiated, these guys were a coachbuilder responsible for designing some of the most iconic cars, including the Ferrari 250 GT and the Testarossa.

Pininfarina has employed some of that expertise to design the Infinix Note 60 Ultra. So, how is it different? Instead of a large camera bump, Infinix has opted for an aluminum unibody design with what it calls the world’s first Uni-Chassis camera module. The entire rear panel is formed from a single sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, creating a smooth, uninterrupted surface. The display is a 1.5K Ultra HDR panel with a 144Hz refresh rate and up to 4500 nits of peak brightness.

The design includes a “Floating Taillight” element on the back that lights up when the phone powers on. Like the new Xiaomi 17 series, there’s also a hidden Active Matrix display embedded in the rear panel that can display notifications, icons, or a pixel-style virtual companion. As expected, colors on the Note 60 Ultra are inspired by Italian racecars, including Torino Black, Monza Red, Amalfi Blue, and Roma Silver.

Pretty Outside, Powerful Inside

Infinix isn’t leaving any stone unturned with the Note 60 Ultra. It’s powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultimate chipset built on a 4nm process. For context, the processor houses one Cortex-A725 core running at 3250 MHz, three Cortex-A725 cores running at 3000 MHz, and four Cortex-A725 cores running at 2100 MHz. Coupled with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, the performance should be good enough for an AnTuTu score of over 1.6 million.

XOS 16, based on Android 16, will run the show, and it introduces a redesigned interface called GlowSpace. The software also integrates several AI-driven tools, including an Advanced Health Monitor for tracking vitals, AI-powered file organization, and an adaptive knowledge base that evolves based on user behavior. The company has promised three years of major Android updates and five years of security patches.

Another neat feature of the Note 60 Ultra is support for two-way satellite calling and messaging. It allows users to stay connected even when they’re outside traditional cellular coverage. This could be particularly useful in remote locations or during network outages.

Battery life is handled by a massive 7,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, which Infinix says has self-healing capabilities that can restore up to 1% of battery health every 200 charging cycles. It’ll be very interesting to test that feature long-term. Charging is fast, too. The device supports 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

Cameras

Despite the not-so-huge camera bump, the Note 60 Ultra packs a triple-camera setup headlined by a 200MP Samsung ISOCELL HPE sensor. It’s paired with a 50MP Samsung ISOCELL JN5 periscope telephoto camera and a 112-degree ultra-wide camera.

The telephoto system supports multiple zoom levels, including a 2x optical crop, 3.5x optical zoom, and up to 7x lossless digital zoom. Infinix says the system can reach up to 100x zoom for long-distance shots. The phone also supports Ultra HDR capture using Infinix’s XDR Image Engine, which should improve dynamic range and preserve details, though I’m yet to test its capabilities myself.

from the lane-violation dept

It was plainly obvious when RFK Jr. decided to fully remake ACIP, the CDC committee that advises the nation on immunization schedules and practices, that it was done so to place Kennedy sycophants that would enact his batshit theories on vaccinations. ACIP, now chockablock with anti-vaxxer, anti-science grift-gremlins, has been slowly chipping away at decades of good medical practice around immunization. The administration has already altered the recommended vaccine schedules for COVID and Hep B, while appearing to potentially question polio vaccines as well. It has been, to be pointed, an unmitigated shitshow thus far.

But at least ACIP has managed to color inside the lines of its own mandate to date. That appears to be about to change, as reporting indicates that ACIP’s meeting next month will put COVID vaccine injuries on the agenda.

Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law San Francisco, said the panel does not typically focus on vaccine injuries.

“Vaccine injuries are not a direct part of the committee’s mandates,” Reiss said in an email. “When they make vaccine recommendations, they should consider vaccines risks, and new risks may lead to changed recommendations; but that’s not directly about vaccine injuries.”

This isn’t to suggest that ACIP completely disregards risks associated with vaccinations, as Reiss mentions. ACIP does make changes to vaccination schedules and recommendations based on macro-data it is provided for specific vaccines. But discussions about the prevalence and validity of claims of vaccine injury are well outside ACIP’s purview. To use but one facile piece of evidence of that, you can review the CDC’s own webpage about what ACIP’s purpose and program does. You will notice that there is not a single reference to vaccine injury within it. Nor does the ACIP page that outlines its own charter. There you will see vague references to ACIP’s duties include the “consideration” of “vaccine safety”, but that is the macro-data I referenced earlier, not a deep dive into the specific topic of vaccine injury.

Vaccine injury is a serious topic, for which the Vaccine Injury Compensation System (VICP) was created in the 1980s. Consulting in lawsuits and writing about vaccine injuries is how Kennedy made millions of dollars. Expanding VICP, a stated goal of his, and using ACIP to add validity to those expansions, is a great way for Kennedy and his allies to make more and more money from these types of lawsuits immediately, or once he’s out of government.

It’s just another grift, powered by hand-picked muppets willing to do his bidding in ACIP.

“Some committee members have made repeated claims about Covid vaccine harms that were either unsupported by verifiable data or reflected clear mischaracterizations of the existing scientific literature,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Last year, Osterholm launched the Vaccine Integrity Project, which serves as an alternative source of vaccine information to the CDC.

“If the committee intends to revisit vaccine safety questions, it has an obligation to do so transparently and rigorously,” he said. “Given past misstatements, members do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

No, they most certainly do not. You may not think that questions about COVID vaccines are all that important any longer. We’ve moved on, you may think, from this novel virus being a major issue in our lives. And for some of us, that is true. I am very pro-vaccination, but I’m not getting every booster out there.

But that’s not really what this is about. Kennedy wants ACIP to spotlight supposed COVID vaccine injuries in a way that will certainly come with questionable evidence at best. Not out of concern for public health, mind you. But almost certainly for money.

Filed Under: acip, anti-vaxxers, cdc, covid, immunization, rfk jr., vaccines