A revised charter document for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's influential vaccine advisory committee has been withdrawn by the Health Department over an administrative error, according to a notice published in the Federal Register Tuesday .

The charter's revisions under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would have allowed Kennedy to appoint dubiously qualified anti-vaccine allies to advise the CDC. It also would have directed the CDC panel to focus on alleged vaccine injuries and risks and welcomed fringe groups and anti-vaccine organizations to participate in developing federal vaccine policy.

Kennedy's move to reshape the CDC panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP—came amid Kennedy's many other attempts to undermine it, as well as a court order to undo that meddling.

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At last year's I/O event, Google was still talking about the 2.5 branch of Gemini, and what a difference a year makes. We've gone through the 3.0 and 3.1 families since then, and now it's on to version 3.5. Gemini 3.5 Flash is rolling out across a wide range of Google products starting today, and Google again claims this model is even better than its last-gen Pro model.

That has been a trend with Google's tick-tock model updates over the past year, but the team says this release is special. Gemini 3.5 Flash allegedly offers frontier-level intelligence while also being efficient enough that it may finally make complex agentic tasks worth doing at scale. Tulsee Doshi, senior director of product management for Gemini, explains that the innovations of Gemini 3.5 Flash are woven through multiple Google products, and this is just the start.

Credit: Google

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Almost exactly two years ago, we were gawking at prototypes of 1,000 Hz monitors and wondering who really needed a display that could support such ludicrously smooth frame rates. Now that those prototypes are starting to develop into retail products, we're still wondering how much of a market there is for gaming displays that can update with a new frame every single millisecond.

The latest entry in the ultra-fast refresh race is LG's 24.5" UltraGear 25G590B, which the company announced this week as "the world’s first Full HD gaming monitor with a native 1000Hz refresh rate" ahead of a planned launch in "select markets" in the second half of the year. That "Full HD" promise means LG's 1,000 Hz display hits the 1080p threshold that is by far the most common resolution reported by gamers in Steam's regular hardware surveys .

That would represent a decent step up from the likes of Acer's Predator XB273U F6 , Samsung's Odyssey G6 , or Phillips' EVNIA 27M2N5500XD , all of which have to shift down to a relatively blurry 720p resolution to run at a full 1,000 Hz (but which support 1440p resolutions at a still-quite-fast 500 Hz). LG also notes that its high-end monitor can hit its resolution and refresh rate specs natively, without the need for any "dual mode" rebooting shenanigans to get the fastest performance.

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The 119th Congress might be one of the most dysfunctional and least productive legislative sessions in the 250-year history of the United States, but it seems there's one thing it can agree on: Electric vehicles don't cost their owners enough money. The Transportation and Infrastructure committee has published its bill to fund surface transportation for the next half-decade, and among the provisions in the "Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-term Development for America’s 250th Act" is an annual fee levied against owners of EVs.

“I’m extremely proud of the historic level of investment in America’s bridges—at more than $50 billion, it’s the largest such investment in our history. And the BUILD America 250 Act ensures that electric vehicle owners begin paying their fair share for the use of our roads," said committee chairperson Sam Graves (R-Mo.).

Should the bill pass—and it enjoys support from the Democratic Party, too—you will be required to pay a $130 federal registration fee to drive an EV. And starting in 2029, that fee will increase by $5 each year until it reaches $150. Plug-in hybrids don't escape untaxed, either; the fee for a PHEV begins at $35 a year and will escalate by $5 each year until it reaches $50 annually. And if state departments of transport don't collect this federal EV tax, the federal government will "withhold an amount equal to 125 percent of the amount owed from the state’s highway apportionment."

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"Build a civilization to stand the test of time." That was the promise on the box of Sid Meier's Civilization , the first in a long-running strategy game franchise that has evolved over 35 years and seven mainline entries.

Civ 7 introduced a new approach to play wherein players would change civilizations from their initial selection twice by the end of a game. Lots of players said, "Wait a minute: we're literally not building a civilization to stand the test of time anymore." After such a negative launch reception, longtime series fans began to wonder if the franchise itself would continue to stand the test of time.

It's clearly not a coincidence that the new, major update for the game reaching players today is titled "Test of Time." It's a major reworking of several of the game's key systems, and it reintroduces the ability to play one civ from beginning to end while retaining some of the big ideas that defined Civ 7 at launch.

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A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry.

The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the US power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas generation, and renewables.

The $67 billion deal combines NextEra’s size and reach with Dominion’s positioning as the local utility for the world’s largest concentration of data centers in northern Virginia . But the results are likely bad for consumers and the environment, creating a company with enormous financial and political strength that will be difficult to effectively regulate, according to consumer advocates and analysts.

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As part of its plan to develop a private space station, Vast Space built and then launched a small demonstration spacecraft in early November. This vehicle then completed dozens of test objectives with flying colors before making a successful de-orbit three months later.

The mission, which tested power, propulsion, tracking, and a multitude of other technologies needed for Vast's Haven-1 space station, was evidently so successful that the company is ready to use its spaceflight capabilities for other purposes. The Long Beach, California-based company announced Tuesday that it plans to begin selling high-powered satellite buses.

"Every single successful space company is diversified in its products," said Max Haot, chief executive of Vast Space, in an interview. "So for us it really was a question of when, not if."

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Iran claims it will charge US tech companies fees for using undersea Internet cables that run beneath the contested Strait of Hormuz shipping lanes. The war has already halted multiple projects and led to the suspension of cable repairs in the region—and the latest Iranian threats may accelerate efforts by Big Tech and Gulf countries to find alternative routes for bypassing the Strait of Hormuz’s digital chokepoint.

The latest assertions of Iranian authority over the Strait of Hormuz were announced in a brief statement by Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for Iran’s military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will impose fees on internet cables” Zolfaghari wrote in a May 9 post . It was not immediately clear how Iran might implement such fees or impose its rules on cable projects, given that the majority of routes pass through Oman-controlled waters.

But Tasnim and Fars, both Iranian state-linked media channels, laid out more detailed proposals on how Iran could charge license fees to US tech giants for the use and maintenance of undersea cables carrying regional Internet traffic, according to The Guardian . For example, the Tasnim plan described charging tech companies—specifically naming Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft—license fees for cable usage while also claiming that Iran alone has the right to repair and maintain the subsea cables.

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The Ebola outbreak first reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Friday has seemingly escalated quickly into a large, uncontrolled multinational outbreak.

As of May 17, there were 10 confirmed cases, 336 suspected cases, and 88 deaths in the DRC, as well as two confirmed cases and one death in neighboring Uganda, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has offices in the region. The numbers already put the outbreak within the top 10 Ebola outbreaks recorded by size, though still far from the worst—the 2014–2016 West African outbreak had over 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths.

International emergency

On Sunday, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) , though it noted that it does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency. In making the PHEIC determination, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cited several factors in addition to the immediate large size, including clusters of suspected cases and deaths in multiple DRC health zones, four deaths among healthcare workers, and a lack of apparent links between geographically distant cases and clusters. The features collectively suggest that the outbreak is larger than what is currently being detected and is spreading regionally.

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