New Orleans is testing just how much Americans are willing to trust artificial intelligence when the stakes are considerably higher than writing an email or ordering dinner, according to the New York Post.

The city has begun allowing an AI system to field certain 911 calls, apparently making it the first major U.S. municipality to put a bot directly between emergency callers and human operators.

The idea is largely about volume. New Orleans' emergency communications center receives more than 1,000 calls on a typical day, and officials believe automation can clear some of the clutter while dispatchers concentrate on genuine emergencies.

The technology isn't supposed to take over the entire 911 operation. Instead, it can deal with situations that appear redundant or relatively routine when human operators are tied up. A flood of calls about the same already-reported car accident, for example, could potentially be filtered through the automated system rather than occupying multiple dispatchers.

The Post writes that city officials insist humans remain at the center of the operation. But skeptics say emergency calls are precisely the kind of messy, unpredictable interactions computers may struggle to interpret.

People dialing 911 aren't reading from scripts. They may be terrified, whispering, intoxicated, injured, confused or speaking through heavy background noise. In some situations, callers intentionally conceal what's happening because another person is nearby.

One online critic who identified himself as a former 911 dispatcher called the experiment “the worst idea you could possibly think of,” arguing that experienced operators routinely listen for clues beyond the caller's literal words.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/new-orleans-becomes-first-major-us-city-let-ai-answer-911  

A high school English teacher took to social media to share his concerns about the state of education in the U.S.  He was brought to tears as he revealed that in his class, he has seniors who cannot write a single sentence.

“I literally broke down in the middle of class because I’m teaching seniors,” he shared. “These kids are leaving high school and going to college, hopefully, after they finish.”

“We had two paragraphs to read, one sentence, complete, to write. I gave them the sentence stems. I basically completed the sentence for them in the model.”

“These are 17 and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn’t fill in four words. Four words.”

“I gave them the scenario. We annotated together. I gave them the answers before we even had the problem.”

“And they couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t know. I simply don’t know where the problem is.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/high-school-english-teacher-brought-tears-as-he/  

The Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is set to install privately-funded, dedicated Islamic foot washing stations in the facility, according to documents from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

...some say this will help eliminate the use of sinks in that capacity and keep the floors dry.

“The airport already maintains dedicated prayer rooms for Muslims and provides Qurans on the shelves,” one X user said. “Texas is already one of the top states being invaded by Muslims, with over 220 mosques throughout the state, with more being built…”

Other airports have similar accommodations for Muslim travelers, including Chicago O’Hare and the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the latter of which announced its ritual washing and prayer stations in 2024.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/13/dallas-airport-installing-foot-washing-stations-for-muslim-travelers/  

People took cover in their cars as a huge swarm of locusts darkened the sky in Russia.

The arrival of millions of locusts turned a peaceful Sunday into an apocalyptic scene in the southwestern corner of the country.

The grasshoppers swept across a field in the Kizlyar district of Dagestan on Sunday, with the sky almost blocked out as they flew over.

Despite being a frightening sight, the locusts are not directly harmful to humans, although they can inflict devastation on vital crops, making them one of the world’s most harmful agricultural pests.

Dagestan’s ministry of agriculture and food said today that it has taken active pest control measures.

The animals can travel up to 93 miles per day.

https://metro.co.uk/2026/08/05/apocalyptic-scenes-swarm-locusts-fill-sky-29306508/  

The University of California’s grand experiment with “equity” in college admissions is running headfirst into an inconvenient reality: thousands of professors say incoming students are showing up without the basic academic skills needed to handle university coursework.

UC ditched standardized testing requirements in 2020, first going test-optional amid the COVID panic and then fully test-blind, all in the name of “equity.”

Regents claimed the tests discriminated against students of color and lower-income applicants, even though a faculty task force had found the opposite: the SAT and ACT were strong predictors of college success and actually helped identify talented disadvantaged students who might otherwise have been overlooked. The data was ignored. Ideology won.

Six years later, the results are in and they are catastrophic.

According to the LA Times, more than 3,000 UC faculty, including STEM professors and department chairs, have signed open letters demanding the return of the tests.

At UC San Diego, a faculty report documented a roughly 30-fold surge between 2020 and 2025 in incoming freshmen whose math skills tested below high school level.... moreover, 70% of those students fall below middle school levels...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/woke-failure-more-than-3000-university-california-professors/  

Company representatives for a proposed data center left a city council meeting in Oregon after they discovered protestors had brought a guillotine and displayed it outside during the municipal session.

The company reps departed the late July meeting in Salem prematurely, citing “safety concerns,” Yahoo News reported.

A raucous, vocal crowd also gathered outside of Salem’s Loucks Auditorium to protest a proposed multi-billion-dollar AI data center, according to news reports.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/07/watch-protestors-show-up-with-guillotine-at-city-council-meeting-and-scare-off-data-center-reps/  

Scientists at Stanford University have used artificial intelligence to design 16 new viruses capable of being reproduced in a laboratory, a breakthrough intended to help combat antibiotic-resistant infections but one that has prompted warnings from biosecurity experts about the risks of the technology.

The BBC reports that the experiment relied on AI models called Evo1 and Evo2, which differ from text-based systems like ChatGPT in that they are trained to predict the genetic codes of viruses, bacteria, plants and even humans. Researchers used the models to generate hundreds of designs for a type of virus known as a bacteriophage, which targets E. coli bacteria. Of those designs, 16 were successfully produced, according to findings published in the journal Science.

The research marks the first time an entire genome has been successfully designed using AI. Scientists say the development of new bacteriophages could eventually lead to novel treatments for infections that no longer respond to antibiotics.

“This is a next step in the complexity that’s designable by generative AI, this is the first time generative AI has been used to design a complete genome, it’s something that can replicate and have other functions inside cells… this was new territory for us,” Brian Hie, an assistant professor at Stanford University, told the BBC.

The achievement has also raised concerns about the broader implications of synthetic biology, the field focused on engineering new forms of life that do not naturally exist, and its potential for misuse in creating pathogens harmful to humans.

In a commentary accompanying the study’s publication in Science, Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Moritz Hanke of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security wrote that the findings raise “urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions.”

The two doctors wrote that efforts to design new viruses capable of causing disease “should not be pursued.”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/08/07/biosecurity-alert-stanford-researchers-use-ai-to-design-16-viruses/  

The force stated: "Following a recent spate of overnight arson attacks on hay stacks in the north of England there appears to be a TikTok challenge to 'set fire to as much stuff as possible.' I know the farming community will be aware of the dangers of the dry weather but if it is possible to send out a message to all your members to be extra vigilant."

Humberside Police are investigating six suspected deliberate bale fires reported overnight on 30 July across North Lincolnshire at East Butterwick, Messingham, Susworth and Kirton in Lindsey. Reports included suspicious dark-coloured vehicles and quad bike tracks near the stacks.

Around the same period, about 1,200 hay bales were destroyed in a major overnight fire near Saxondale Island close to Bingham in Nottinghamshire, treated as suspected arson. In Oxfordshire, a fire involving around 600 hay bales tore through stacks in the village of Hinton Waldrist on 20 July; Thames Valley Police continue to investigate.

Roughly 250 hay bales were deliberately set alight at Hackpen Hill near Swindon in Wiltshire. The blaze, confirmed by police as thought to have been started deliberately, took firefighters more than 28 hours to extinguish. Neighbouring farmer James Hussey described it as "quite a loss" for the owner.

Near South Milford a deliberate hay bale fire spread across 15 acres of fields. North Yorkshire Police stated: "Deliberately setting fire to hay bales not only causes significant financial loss to farmers but also presents a serious risk to life, property, livestock, and the wider countryside, particularly during periods of warm and dry weather."

Farmers already battle weather, regulation and thin margins. Deliberate fires on top of that threaten winter feed stocks, next year's harvest and the basic security of the food chain. Rural communities are left footing the cost while the perpetrators chase likes.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/meanwhile-england-idiocy-knows-no-bounds   

We have been reporting on Europe’s summer from hell, where they are battling high temperatures, wildfires, and droughts.

One of the most dramatic cases if the mythical Danube river that is so low that the Nuclear Power Plants in Hungary and Romania had to be shut.

Now the situation has worsened even more to the point where remnants of the past are arising from the bottom of the river: dozens of WW2 ships and boats...

Reuters reported:

“The remains of what is believed to be an ancient mammoth have been revealed ​in northern Bulgaria, after Danube River water levels ‌receded to a record low level, the BTA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing historians.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/european-drought-danubes-water-level-has-gotten-so/