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Defense tech has gone from a no-go zone for VCs to a hot investment sector. However, dual use — meaning that the technology must also have civilian applications — is still a requirement for most of them, including the NATO Innovation Fund.  Estonian VC firm Darkstar breaks from this trend by investing in purely military applications, with the goal of helping rearm Europe using combat-proven solutions emerging from Ukraine. “This is very critical, not only today but for the next 10 years,” said its cofounder and general partner Ragnar Sass (second from the left in the picture). The firm takes…

Vaccines Respiratory viruses Children’s health Federal agencies See all topics Facebook Tweet Email Link Medical associations representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, medical professionals and scientists in the United States are suing the leaders of US health agencies for limiting who can get Covid-19 vaccines and for undermining overall vaccine confidence. The lawsuit, filed Monday in US District Court in Massachusetts, was brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association D/B/A the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance, the Society for Maternal-Fetal…

Hugging Face is ready for developers to start tinkering and testing its latest robotics release. The AI development platform announced Wednesday that it’s now accepting orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots. The company initially unveiled the prototypes of these devices back in May, alongside a larger humanoid robot named HopeJR. Hugging Face said it plans to release two versions of the Reachy Mini. The first, called the Reachy Mini Wireless, is wireless and costs $449 and runs on a Raspberry 5 mini computer. The second version is the Reachy Mini Lite, which needs to be connected to a computing…

Hong Kong CNN  —  More than 200 kindergarten students in northwestern China were found to have abnormal blood lead levels after kitchen staff used paint as food coloring, authorities said, in a case that’s stoked outrage in a country long plagued by food safety scandals. Eight people, including the principal of the private kindergarten that the children attended, have been detained “on suspicion of producing toxic and harmful food,” according to a report released Tuesday by Tianshui city government, as cited by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. The principal and a financial backer of the school had allowed kitchen staff at…

Facebook Tweet Email Link The Trump administration’s broadsides against scientific research have caused unprecedented upheaval at the National Cancer Institute, the storied federal government research hub that has spearheaded advances against the disease for decades. NCI, which has long benefited from enthusiastic bipartisan support, now faces an exodus of clinicians, scientists, and other staffers, some fired, others leaving in exasperation. After years of accelerating progress that has reduced cancer deaths by a third since the 1990s, the institute has terminated funds nationwide for research to fight the disease, expand care, and train new oncologists. “We use the word ‘drone attack’…

CNN  —  Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of its invasion, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, just hours after US President Donald Trump pledged more military support for Kyiv and accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of throwing “bullsh*t” over peace talks. The massive aerial assault involved 728 drones and 13 missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said, eclipsing the previous record number of 539 drones, set on July 4, by hundreds – but it was largely repelled, with the damage limited and no immediate reports of deaths. “This is a demonstrative attack, and it comes at a…

AI can help your team move faster — but only if your team knows how to move together. Join Jeff Chow, chief product and technology officer at Miro, for a roundtable sessions at TechCrunch All Stage on July 15 in Boston’s SoWa Power Station, where he’ll break down how product-led innovation can supercharge collaborative problem-solving. This session is titled “Building Team Intelligence: How Product-Led Innovation Transforms Collaborative Problem-Solving” and is built for founders, product leaders, and startup teams looking to work smarter in the age of AI. From startups to scale-ups, how your team thinks together may be more important…

The chairman of U.K. retail giant Marks & Spencer declined to tell a panel of lawmakers whether the company paid a hacking group following a ransomware attack earlier this year.   “We’ve said that we are not discussing any of the details of our interaction with the threat actor,” said chairman Archie Norman, referring to the ransom payment. “We don’t think it’s in the public interest to go into that subject partly because it is a matter of law enforcement.” Norman said that “nobody” at Marks & Spencer interacted directly with the cybercriminals, which he attributed to the ransomware gang DragonForce.…

CNN  —  (CNN) – The bow of a US Navy cruiser damaged in a World War II battle in the Pacific has shone new light on one of the most remarkable stories in the service’s history. More than 80 years ago, the crew of the USS New Orleans, having been hit by a Japanese torpedo and losing scores of sailors, performed hasty repairs with coconut logs, before an 1,800-mile voyage across the Pacific in reverse. The front of the ship, or the bow, had sunk to the sea floor. But over the weekend, the Nautilus Live expedition from the Ocean…

The team at Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based AI video-generation startup, doesn’t think you can prompt your way to making a movie. That’s why the company on Tuesday opened up its “3D-aware” model to the public, promising a “hybrid” approach that gives filmmakers more control than other standard text-to-video models.  Moonvalley first launched its model, named Marey, in beta in March and has now released it as a monthly credits-based subscription. Users can pay $14.99 for 100 credits, $34.99 for 250 credits, and $149.99 for 1,000 credits. Users can generate clips up to five seconds long, which is in line with…