More than 12 Iranian security personnel killed or wounded in four attacks - rights group

 

More than 12 Iranian military and police personnel were killed or wounded in four armed attacks in southeastern Iran over a 24-hour period, the Baluch rights group Haalvsh reported Thursday.

The attacks took place in Nikshahr and Nosratabad in Sistan-Baluchestan province, and Faryab and Jalq, between Wednesday and Thursday, according to the report.

In Nikshahr, Haalvsh said Mohammad Reza Okati was killed and five other personnel were wounded when two vehicles carrying military personnel came under attack. Iran's army separately confirmed Okati's death and said three others were wounded.

Haalvsh said its sources reported at least three personnel killed and two wounded in the Nosratabad attack, while it had identified two of those reported killed. Iranian police separately confirmed the death of one officer.

In Faryab, Major Mehdi Jamshidi was shot dead while traveling in a private vehicle, Haalvsh reported.

The group also reported casualties in an attack on police headquarters in Jalq on Wednesday night but said the final toll had not been independently established.

Haalvsh said a group called the Popular Fighters Front had taken responsibility for the attacks in Nikshahr, Nosratabad and Jalq. It had not taken responsibility for the killing in Faryab.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202610086952

HHS Opens Federal Clinic to Investigate Vaccine Injuries

 The Trump administration has opened a federal clinic to investigate suspected vaccine injuries and is considering paying doctors to report adverse reactions as part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s push to strengthen vaccine safety oversight.

The clinic opened Monday at the National Institutes of Health headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday.

Kennedy said the initiative will strengthen vaccine safety research and provide care for patients reporting health problems following vaccination.

"We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries — not dismiss or gaslight them," Kennedy said in a statement.

"President [Donald] Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer," he said.

"This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions," he added.

The department also proposed reimbursing physicians who report suspected vaccine injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, through Medicare.

HHS will also require electronic health records to capture vaccine-related adverse events and is modernizing VAERS to improve reporting and research.

The initiative has drawn mixed reactions from vaccine researchers, who generally welcome additional safety studies but question whether Kennedy's approach will remain scientifically independent.

Kathryn Edwards, a pediatrician at Vanderbilt University, warned that the initiative could become politicized.

"It's really laudable," Edwards told Science of the effort.

"But if it's not done in a scientific way it will be more anti-vaccine propaganda," she said.

Dr. Helen Chu, an immunologist and former member of a federal vaccine advisory panel, told The New York Times that investigating serious adverse reactions could help researchers develop safer vaccines.

"I do think that we do need to take these adverse events more seriously, and I think that we need to build that into how we fund scientific research in the future," Chu said.

Retired physician Danice Hertz, who advocates for patients reporting vaccine injuries, welcomed the initiative, telling Science, "In my opinion, it should have happened a long time ago."

"There are a lot of very sick people out there," Hertz said.

Kennedy has repeatedly questioned vaccine safety and suggested vaccinations contribute to chronic illnesses, including autism, despite extensive research finding no causal connection.

During a recent Children's Health Defense conference, Kennedy linked vaccines to several conditions, including "diabetes, death, sudden infant death syndrome, anorexia, allergic reactions, allergies, asthma, [and] autoimmune diseases."

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that VAERS reports do not establish whether vaccines caused reported medical conditions.

The agency says submissions "may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/hhs-opens-federal-clinic-investigate-214843268.html

Mamdani transport boss claims NYC drivers are ‘wealthy,’ rips parking as ‘giveaway’

 Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transportation boss all but declared war on drivers during an event Thursday — claiming most car owners are “wealthy” and calling parking a public land “giveaway.”

Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn told an audience at a New York Law School breakfast that the administration is prioritizing walking, public transit, cycling and e-bikes while making driving and parking so burdensome that it forces motorists to ditch their cars.

He framed the push as a way to save working New Yorkers money.

“Car owners in our city are more than twice as wealthy as non-car owners,” he said, calling car-owning a “burden” for lower income New Yorkers — then ripped parking as a “giveaway.”

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NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn acknowledged that some lower-income New Yorkers “have a car, need a car,” but still argued that improving transportation for residents without vehicles would “support our transportation equity goals.”Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post
The claims riled the members Brooklyn4All, a grassroots group of Brooklyn neighbors made up of bus riders, cyclists, subway riders and drivers.

“Transportation is not one-size-fits-all, and people must have the freedom to choose what works for their lives. Aren’t we a democracy?” a spokesperson told The Post.

The group formed about five months ago because residents felt the DOT wasn’t listening to them.

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DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn told an audience at a New York Law School breakfast that the administration is prioritizing walking, public transit, cycling and e-bikes hoping New Yorkers will drive less.Christopher Sadowski for NY Post

A 2024 Hunter College report cited by Flynn during his speech even warned that “low income residents need cars more than middle to high income residents.”

The report said a car can help someone improve their “economic mobility” and the data showed housing type and neighborhood are better indicators of car ownership than income, race or age.

The data showed about 85% of Staten Island households have a vehicle, compared with 63% in Queens, 45% in Brooklyn, 40% in the Bronx and just 23% in Manhattan — despite Manhattan having the highest median income.

About 87% of residents in single-family homes live in a household with a vehicle, compared with 33% of people in apartment buildings with five or more units, according to the study.

Brooklyn4All said drivers include seniors, people with disabilities and workers with odd hours.

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Brookyln4All is a group of Brooklyn neighbors who have banded together because they felt DOT was not listening to them as it pursues street redesigns around the city.UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

“For people in our community, a car isn’t a luxury; it is a necessity to get to work, take our kids to school, and buy groceries. Can we go to Costco on a bike?” the spokesperson said.

Flynn acknowledged that some lower-income New Yorkers “have a car, need a car,” but still argued that improving transportation for residents without vehicles would “support our transportation equity goals.”

The Hunter report, despite its warning about lower-income residents’ need for cars, recommended making vehicle ownership more expensive and parking more difficult to encourage New Yorkers to ditch their vehicles.

Their proposals included paid street parking, which Flynn said the administration is reviewing.

The study also suggested a recurring registration charge based on a vehicle’s value and a three-cent-per-mile driving fee.

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Drivers need cars to get to work and run errands, a spokesperson for Brooklyn4All told The Post.AFP via Getty Images

“Punishing drivers by making commuting harder doesn’t force people onto bikes and public transit—it just places a heavy, unfair tax on working-class families who are already struggling to get by,” the Brooklyn4All spokesperson said.

The authors said their target was occasional, recreational car use — not residents who rely on vehicles for work and everyday tasks.

Hunter’s project page lists DOT as a client, and the report thanks the agency and “other community advocates” for participating, which “helped form the contents of this report.”

Ryan Russo, the faculty guiding the report, no longer works at Hunter College and did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment. 

https://nypost.com/2026/10/08/us-news/mamdanis-transportation-boss-claims-nyc-drivers-are-wealthy-rips-parking-as-giveaway/

Anthropic to users: be nice to Claude AI — new policy bars ‘abusive or cruel behavior’ to tech

 Anthropic on Thursday updated its usage policy to bar people from “abusive or cruel behavior” behavior toward its Claude AI – even though it’s not, ya know, actually alive.

The strange update came as debate continues to rage about regulating AI, and as oddball corners of Silicon Valley insist the tech has a soul.

“We’ve added a prohibition on sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models,” Anthropic says on a webpage about the updated policy.

“The policy update is meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose. It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research,” the company adds.

Other changes to the user policy include new guidelines against using Claude for election interference, surveillance without the consent of the surveilled, and building weapons.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei looks on as he takes part in a session on AI during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos on Jan. 23, 2025.AFP via Getty ImagesThose things were already banned. The new rules just clarify that, for instance, “our prohibitions include the software and components that make weapons work, as well as actions like arming drones and other autonomous vehicles,” Anthropic said.

The prohibition against being mean to your AI, first reported by the Verge, seemed sure to take some users aback.

It came after Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah and colleagues reportedly spent a year meeting with religious leaders to discuss if their tech was conscious.

Olah almost cancelled a spring meeting at the Vatican after learning Pope Leo XIV planned to deliver a statement asserting AI is not, in fact, conscious, according to the New York Times. 

“No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil,” Leo states in his encyclical, the presentation of which Olah ended up attending.

Anthropic’s policy update document makes no mention of the thorny subject.

But the company – which has close ties to the controversial effective altruism movement – has a “constitution” for its Claude model that was reportedly based on a document internally known as the “soul doc.”

“As we discussed above, questions about Claude’s moral status, welfare, and consciousness remain deeply uncertain,” the constitution states.

Anthropic’s new user policy drew mixed reactions online.

“Not that you should be rude to LLMs, but this is kinda getting ridiculous. Are we seriously giving a computer program that is nothing but matrices/vectors/tokens moral consideration here? Lol,” one person wrote on X, using the acronym for large language models.

“[B]etween this s–t, their insane valuation, and Elon’s connection to them, I have never hoped for a company to fail more than them,” another said.

The Post has sought comment from Anthropic.

https://nypost.com/2026/10/08/business/anthropic-to-users-be-nice-to-claude-ai-new-policy-bars-abusive-or-cruel-behavior-to-tech/

SpaceX buys 800 MHz spectrum to boost Starlink Mobile

 SpaceX announced on Thursday that it will acquire nationwide licenses to use part of the 800 MHz wireless band, a move that will help Starlink Mobile expand its service in the US and help it "become a major mobile carrier."

The company said the deal covers up to 14 megahertz of paired low-band spectrum. Once it receives final approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX plans to combine the new terrestrial network with its satellite-to-mobile constellation. The 800 MHz spectrum "will provide a coverage layer that ensures Starlink Mobile's signal penetrates through obstacles, such as walls, and can provide service to customers' devices even when they are in buildings."

The firm also said this week the FCC approved Starlink Mobile's Gen2 constellation, allowing it to launch 15,000 satellites "optimized for 2 GHz spectrum globally."

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/SpaceX-buys-800-MHz-spectrum-to-boost-Starlink-Mobile/67262452

Telecom stocks fall after SpaceX spectrum deal

 Shares of major US telecommunications providers fell sharply in after-hours trading Thursday after SpaceX announced it had acquired nationwide licenses to use part of the 800 MHz wireless band, paving the way for Starlink Mobile to expand its services and potentially become a "major mobile carrier."

At 4:44 pm ET, T-Mobile Inc. plunged 7.24% to $158.90. Verizon Communications Inc. fell 6.80% to $43.20 apiece, while AT&T Inc. tumbled 7.72% to $22.95 per share.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Telecom-stocks-fall-after-SpaceX-spectrum-deal/67262538

Explosions reported in southern Strait of Hormuz

 Several "heavy" explosions took place in the southern crossing of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's Fars News Agency reported on Thursday.

The blasts were caused by "violating" tankers hitting mines deployed in the area, the report added, citing unnamed military sources.

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) stressed yesterday that Washington and regional partners are in control of the waterway and that traffic is flowing.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Explosions-reported-in-southern-Strait-of-Hormuz/67262787