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SpaceX plans expansion near Brownsville port through 444-acre acquisition

HARLINGEN, Texas (ValleyCentral) — SpaceX is one step closer to expanding operations near the Port of Brownsville after the Brownsville City Commission approved a first reading of an ordinance disannexing hundreds of acres of land in Cameron County.

SpaceX representatives have told the city of Brownsville that the land will not be used for rocket launches or testing.

“I think they want to have some proximity to the port,” said Brownsville City Manager Alan Guard. “It’s also going to be next to a property that’s being developed by Lindy Corporation, which produces gases that SpaceX use. So, there may be some collaboration with one of their suppliers. But that’s what we know.”

AI Safety Index Grades 9 Labsnot One Scored Above A C+

The grades themselves are not the sharpest part of this AI safety index. Reviewers flagged that Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta, the four highest-scoring labs, have all weakened or quietly dropped earlier public pledges to pause development if their systems approached defined risk thresholds, a shift the panel described as moving the goalposts, according to TechTimes’ reporting. Existential safety was the weakest domain across every single lab graded, with no company scoring above C-and Anthropic’s D+ representing the best result in that category industry-wide. See our analysis where we explain why the EU AI Act’s enforcement teeth arrived right as containment failures piled up this summer.

Enterprise buyers and policy teams should treat published safety frameworks as marketing.— AI Weekly, analysis of the Summer 2026 AI Safety Index

⚠ Fiction — illustrative scenario: A procurement team shortlists two AI vendors for a sensitive workload, checking that both publish a safety framework and treating the existence of one as sufficient diligence. A closer read of the published pause-pledge language reveals it now contains a competitor-contingent clause, meaning the commitment only holds if rivals make the same promise. The framework exists. What it actually guarantees turned out to be much thinner than the procurement checklist assumed.

JWST spots a bizarre “black hole star” 100 billion times brighter than a star

Astronomers may have uncovered an entirely new cosmic object: a gigantic “black hole star” that could explain the mysterious red dots filling the early universe. Astronomers from MIT and other institutions have identified an exceptionally bright red object dating back to the early universe. At first glance, it resembles an enormous star with dimensions comparable to our solar system. Its energy output, however, is extraordinary. The object is producing roughly 100 billion times more energy than any known star could physically generate, putting its power much closer to the levels associated with black holes.

That unusual combination has led researchers to propose that the red object represents an entirely new kind of astrophysical source. They are calling it a “black hole star.”

A study published on August 12 in Nature describes the object and the team’s analysis of observations made with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The telescope detected the bright red dot in the very early universe, only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

AI agents struggle to perform original scientific research

Among the many predictions about the future of artificial intelligence is that models will one day be able to conduct scientific research on their own, leaving humans out of the equation. Already, they can write code, run experiments and search scientific literature, but carrying out open-ended research would require a significant leap in ability.

In a paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, researchers tested AI’s ability to conduct open-ended research and found that it came up short.

Putting AI to the test The study authors gave frontier agents (cutting-edge, state-of-the-art AI tools designed to carry out complex, multistep tasks autonomously) six days to conduct research and write papers based on two then-unpublished AI conference submissions. This ensured they couldn’t just find the answers online.

EXCLUSIVE: The AI founders who walked away from Bezosbacked Prometheus to model the universe

A research duo, once pitched to lead the Jeff Bezos-backed Project Prometheus, unveiled what they’ve built on their own: an AI model that can take in and produce information so vast that a lone computer might not handle it.

Developing a genetic toolkit for manipulating abundant intestinal microbes

Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have developed a set of molecular tools to regulate the activity of specific genes in one of the most common classes of intestinal bacteria. The ability to genetically manipulate these microbes could lead to a better understanding of the role they play in human physiology and disease.

In healthy individuals, species of Clostridia comprise half of the bacteria found in the gut. Many produce metabolites that are likely beneficial for human health and immune regulation. However, some are associated with disease—from botulism and inflammatory intestinal conditions to metabolic disorders such as diabetes or even cancer.

Exactly how Clostridia contribute to disease onset or progression is not well understood. For example, do the bacteria produce a specific toxin or disease-affecting metabolite? Or could changes in their abundance alter other gut bacteria and influence health or disease?

Blocking cellular ‘freecycling’ may slow bone marrow scarring in myelofibrosis

In a new study published in Nature Communications, Boston Children’s Hospital researchers identified a new target responsible for scar formation in the bone marrow of patients with a type of blood cancer known as myelofibrosis. Combining traditional myelofibrosis therapy with drugs that block scar formation may be a more effective treatment for patients with the disease.

“The current gold standard treatment for myelofibrosis targets the symptoms but is not curative,” says Joseph Italiano Jr., Ph.D., principal investigator in the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s. “Based on our findings, we believe that if we can delay scarring, it may give people more time and improve lives.”

Gamma-ray signal could be long awaited evidence for WIMPs

Dark matter is known to make up roughly 85% of all mass in the universe, as evidenced by the way galaxies spin and how galaxy clusters are held together under gravity. Yet despite decades of searching, physicists have never managed to detect the elusive substance directly.

In new research published in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Yi-Zhong Fan at the Chinese Academy of Sciences claims to have spotted a strong gamma-ray signal coming from a group of galaxy clusters, which could be among the most compelling evidence yet for a leading dark matter candidate known as WIMPs.

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