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Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce Fact Briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. No. Republicans have not voted against banning child marriage in Wisconsin. That includes Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany, who was tied to the issue in a viral post. That’s because the bill has never been brought to a vote — a decision that rests with Republicans who control the state Legislature. The bill was introduced in the 2019, 2023 and 2025 sessions. The 2019 version, when Tiffany served in the state Legislature,…

Your editorial (The Guardian view on writers’ houses: a museum of one’s own, 18 August) rightly laments that George Eliot has no publicly open home despite efforts to secure one. The same is true, remarkably, of William Blake, and he is at least as worthy a cause, and arguably even more influential.Poet, painter, printmaker and author of the words behind Jerusalem, Blake has no open home anywhere. Of his nine addresses, only two survive. In London, the apartment he rented is disappearing behind new development. The other, his cottage in Felpham, West Sussex, where he and his wife, Catherine, lived…

The US-led board supervising a Gaza peace plan on Tuesday warned Hamas against flying kites, after Israel threatened retaliatory strikes. “All militant activity in Gaza must stop, including the flying of kites. We have conveyed this message directly through the established mechanism,” an official on President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” said on condition of anonymity. “Israel, too, must comply with the ceasefire. Military action cannot extend beyond responding to genuine and imminent threats,” the official said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned Hamas that Israel would step up operations in Gaza if it launches kites, drones or balloons. Read moreTrump’s Board of Peace reassures Israel after objections on…

If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up free here. We don’t have enough missiles, and the Iran war made that worseMisogyny is the best extremism warning signNew Chinese ambassador arrives with charm and Taiwan baggage NATIONAL CABINET: The meeting takes place in the Commonwealth Offices near Circular Quay. Here’s how the debates are set to go.Unity: Second National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children; Bird flu.Labor majority view: AI and data centers.Division: Gun buybacks and reforms; GST reform.Also worth noting: South Australia joined the list of states (NSW, QLD and TAS) unhappy about federal plans…

Andy Burnham is facing new pressure to act over electoral reform, with nearly 100 of his MPs backing a commission to decide on a route to replace the first-past-the-post voting system. Why is this an issue for Labour – and will anything happen?What is the official government view?Officially, no change. The 2024 Labour manifesto only discussed elections in terms of changes to ID rules and allowing 16- and 17-year-olds the vote. Before becoming prime minister, Burnham said he would not deviate from the manifesto.Unofficially, things are very different. Burnham is a longstanding supporter of electoral reform, which is also the…

Andy Burnham will face an immediate test of his backing for electoral reform in his first week in parliament as prime minister, with almost 100 Labour MPs supporting a bid for a new national commission.Burnham, a longtime advocate of electoral reform, will be asked to support the new commission into ditching first past the post in his first 100 days as prime minister.MPs have said the commission must report before the next election and hope to put electoral reform in Labour’s next manifesto. Number 10 said Burnham remained committed to electoral reform in Labour’s next manifesto but stopped short of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Foot Locker owner Dick’s Sporting Goods cut its full-year sales and profit outlook and warned of a growing inventory backlog, as consumers struggling with affordability cut back spending on pricey footwear. Shares in Dick’s Sporting Goods plunged 31 per cent on Tuesday and are down almost 50 per cent from a recent peak in June.  Executive chair Ed Stack told analysts on a second-quarter earnings call that the “industry is carrying too much inventory” while consumers have been “even more cautious than expected due…

Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service will officially support Valve’s Steam Controller and Steam Machine starting later this year. With Steam Controller support, you’ll be able to play games with Valve’s great new gamepad when using the GeForce Now app on your Steam Deck or Steam Machine. If you’re using GeForce Now on Windows or macOS, support for the Steam Controller is coming “later,” Nvidia says.GeForce Now is getting a few other upgrades, too. Nvidia will soon add new DLSS 4.5 controls for DLSS Super Resolution, Dynamic Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction. (Ray Reconstruction is also officially launching for RTX…

Perplexity has released Portable Computer, a local-first build of its agentic Computer platform that runs the agent harness, orchestrator, planner, tool router and post-trained models directly on NVIDIA DGX Spark. The local model, inference engine, tool sandbox and app connectors ship as one packaged system, every task begins on the device, and work handled by local models carries no per-token charge. When a step needs the live web or frontier reasoning, the orchestrator stops and asks before sending that single step to one of 15+ cloud models. Is it deployable? Yes, with a hard hardware gate. This is shipping software,…

Threat actors have been attempting to hack WordPress websites by exploiting two recently patched vulnerabilities affecting a MiniOrange plugin. The two vulnerabilities are CVE-2026-61979 and CVE-2026-15981, and they affect the MiniOrange SAML 2.0 Single Sign-On (SSO) plugin, which enables SSO for WordPress websites.  The free edition of the plugin is installed on more than 10,000 WordPress sites, but there are also several paid and enterprise versions for which usage statistics are not available.  According to an analysis conducted by DigitalOcean and security firm Patchstack, the vulnerabilities are critical authentication bypasses that can be exploited to log in as any WordPress…