Paramount Skydance agreed to a longer-term delay of its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, preventing the companies from combining until after a judge rules on the merits of a case in which a dozen states challenged the legality of the merger.
Under a stipulation filed in court today, the states and companies agreed that the merger will not be completed and the firms will not integrate their operations until "five days after the merits determination in these matters," or on June 1, 2027, whichever is earlier. The delay was also agreed to by the Writers Guild of America, which filed its own lawsuit to block the merger. If there is no merits determination by June 1, the plaintiffs could seek a preliminary injunction to keep blocking the deal.
The agreement amounts to "a months-long halt" to the merger, New York Attorney General Letitia James' office said. “Halting this merger while our case proceeds is a critical victory in our efforts to uphold the law and protect the film and television industries," James said.
© Getty Images | NurPhoto
After criticism from a federal judge, the Department of Justice yesterday withdrew demands for phone records and grand jury testimony from New York Times reporters who wrote about security concerns related to the Air Force One jet donated to Trump by Qatar.
It was a setback in the Trump administration's attempts to unmask journalists' confidential sources. US District Judge Arun Subramanian "grilled Justice Department lawyers for nearly an hour over their handling of the subpoenas" during a hearing on Thursday, The New York Times wrote.
“Either we can quash the subpoenas, or you could withdraw the subpoenas,” Subramanian reportedly told Sean Buckley, chief counsel for the US attorney in New York's southern district.
© Getty Images | Angela Weiss
A proposed law called the AI Kill Switch Act would let US government officials order the shutdown of AI systems "that can cause catastrophic harm," the bill's sponsors said today.
If approved by Congress, the bill would let the Trump administration and future administrations decide when an AI company must block user access, disable or restrict a particular capability, or shut an entire AI system down completely. The bill would require AI makers to deploy technical capabilities allowing them to throttle or shut down the systems when ordered to do so by the government.
The bill would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 with authority for the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to order the suspension or shutdown of AI systems. AI developers that refuse to shut systems down could face fines of up $20 million for each day on which a violation occurs.
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Nature, Published online: 22 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10751-w
Radial velocity measurements provide evidence for a Jupiter-mass exosatellite orbiting the brown dwarf companion CD-35 2722 B, a promising detection of an exomoon-like object.Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate – and think through – the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference?
By Robert P Baird. Read by Simon Darwen
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© Illustration: The Guardian
© Illustration: The Guardian
© Illustration: The Guardian
T-Mobile canceled some longtime subscribers' free-line promotions as part of a forced migration to new rate plans, spurring complaints from customers yesterday. T-Mobile admitted the problem and blamed it on technical errors that it is trying to fix.
The forced plan changes were controversial to begin with, particularly as many longtime users are being hit with price hikes of $6 per line. The unexpected loss of free lines for some of those users could raise prices by a much higher amount if the change isn't reversed.
There is good news, though. T-Mobile told Ars today that it was a mistake and that the company is working to fix the problem. Of course, it's not always easy for telecom customers to get the proper resolution even after a company admits to an error publicly. But given T-Mobile's statement today, we hope the firm will fix the problem for all impacted customers with as little hassle as possible.
© Getty Images | Erik McGregor
The Federal Communications Commission will vote to repeal the National Television Ownership Rule that is supposed to prevent a single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. The proposed change sets up a likely court battle over the FCC claim that it has authority to repeal a limit set by Congress.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has already treated the rule as more of a suggestion. In March, the Carr FCC granted a waiver allowing Nexstar Media Group to buy Tegna in a deal that let it reach over half of TV households. The Carr FCC argued that Congress gave it authority to modify or waive the rule.
Carr now plans to repeal the 39 percent limit and replace it with a "case-by-case review" of each proposed merger, the chairman announced today in an op-ed published on Breitbart. The change would make it easier for the FCC to pick and choose which station groups get to surpass the limit. Under Carr, this would likely benefit news companies that provide favorable coverage for President Trump.
© Getty Images | Heather Diehl
For months, artists and activists have been calling on the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to act on the AI boom as datacentres pop up around the country. Today he made a major speech at the University of Sydney addressing copyright, the regulation of datacentres and the future of AI in Australia
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© Photograph: The Guardian
© Photograph: The Guardian
© Photograph: The Guardian
Nature, Published online: 15 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10781-4
An encyclopedia of more than 92 million enhancer–gene regulatory interactions created as part of the ENCODE4 project provides a valuable resource for future studies of gene regulation and human genetics.Meta's AI-fueled layoffs of 8,000 employees targeted workers with disabilities and those who took protected medical or family leaves, alleged a lawsuit filed by 26 employees who were selected for termination. Meta used internal AI tools to select employees for layoffs, according to the complaint filed yesterday by 26 "Doe" plaintiffs in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
"Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems—including a system referred to internally as 'Metamate,' employee-trained 'second-brain' agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration—to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list," the lawsuit said.
Employees were allegedly graded, among other things, on how much they used Meta's AI tools. "Meta’s internal dashboards classified employees by their stage of adoption of its artificial-intelligence tools, using categories such as 'AI Native,' 'AI First,' and 'AI Enabled,'" the lawsuit said.
© Getty Images | NurPhoto
Nature, Published online: 10 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10853-5
Author Correction: Authigenic mineral phases as a driver of the upper-ocean iron cycle
Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10796-x
A systematic evaluation shows that contemporary humanoid robots can perform laparoscopic surgical tasks through teleoperation, highlighting both their promise and key technical challenges before clinical deployment.Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10759-2
By integrating reinforcement learning with quantum error correction, a quantum computer continuously self-calibrates during computation, achieving record logical error rates and enhanced resilience to drift.
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