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Congress temporarily blocks OMB rule giving political appointees control over science grants

A stopgap government funding bill passed by the House and expected to be signed by President Trump includes language, inserted by Senators Patty Murray and Susan Collins, that bars the Office of Management and Budget from enacting a rule letting political appointees decide which research grants get funded or canceled. The freeze only lasts until the funding measure expires on December 11, but it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support—90-6 in the Senate and 370-48 in the House.

House Democrats eye funding cuts to force Trump administration cooperation

House Democrats are preparing oversight plans for 2026, including using appropriations power to pressure Trump aides and family members to comply with subpoenas if they retake the majority. Targets reportedly include funding for Trump's West Wing renovations and a proposed triumphal arch in Washington. Rep. Jamie Raskin said Congress controls the purse strings for federal buildings and can block further alterations to the White House.

OpenAI's upcoming Astra model uses opaque reasoning technique, unsettling safety researchers

According to a report from The Information, OpenAI's forthcoming Astra model employs a technique called 'recurrent depth' or 'opaque recurrence,' which processes queries in loops rather than following the linear, step-by-step reasoning typical of current models. This approach reportedly makes it harder to trace how the model arrives at its answers through conventional chain-of-thought monitoring.

UNEP report concedes world will exceed 1.5°C warming limit, shifts to overshoot strategy

The UN Environment Program's new Limiting Overshoot report acknowledges that global temperatures will rise past the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C threshold, and instead focuses on how to minimize the severity and duration of that overshoot. The plan calls for nations to simultaneously cut greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero and deploy large-scale carbon dioxide removal, treating the latter as a supplement rather than a substitute for emissions cuts.

IEEE Spectrum Careers Newsletter Advocates Informal Mentorship Over Formal Asks

A recent IEEE Spectrum careers newsletter, produced with Parsity, argues that engineers can gain mentorship benefits without ever formally asking someone to be a mentor. The author describes learning by observing and copying admired colleagues' habits, and by asking small, targeted questions about how others solve problems or approach their work.

NASA orders simpler 'Sortie Suit' from Axiom Space to speed up Artemis lunar landing

NASA has directed Axiom Space to develop a lighter, less complex spacesuit variant called the Sortie Suit for the first crewed Artemis lunar landings, aiming to hit a 2028 target date at the Moon's South Pole. The decision, announced internally by Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons, will see the simplified suit used on both SpaceX and Blue Origin landers, cutting mass and easing integration with the spacecraft.

Los Alamos Surplus Shop 'Black Hole' Closes After Decades of Sales

The Black Hole was a surplus store in New Mexico that resold decommissioned equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratories, ranging from vintage oscilloscopes and liquid nitrogen dewars to old dials, calculators, and even A-bomb detonator cables. It functioned as both a working retail operation and an informal museum of Cold War-era nuclear research hardware. A 2017 update confirms the business has since shut down.

Google ships Gemini 3.8 Flash, third Flash update in six weeks

Google has launched Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash-tier model release in just six weeks, alongside a specialized variant called Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber aimed at vulnerability detection and mitigation. The company touts it as its strongest reasoning and coding model to date, with introductory API pricing of $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens through year-end before doubling.

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