Hard Pass

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Jared Leto and Adam Sandler are among the celebrities who declined invites to Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event

Several A-list celebrities invited to Donald Trump’s UFC cage fight on the White House lawn later this month have no plans to show up, according to a new report, becoming the latest group to snub a presidential celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.

Comedian Adam Sandler, actor and former professional wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, actor and musician Jared Leto and television host Mario Lopez are among the names that UFC President and CEO Dana White told Time were invited to the event on Trump’s birthday, June 14. But representatives for the stars, and one person close to Johnson, told Vanity Fair that none of them plan to attend.

It’s the latest group of high-profile figures to decline an invite to a Trump-linked event in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. Last month, the administration was dealt a blow when several musicians pulled out of performances at the Great American State Fair after learning the event was sponsored by Freedom 250, a Trump-affiliated group.

The injured teenage survivor of a January 2025 shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee high school recently sued the manufacturer of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the handgun that left two dead, including the shooter.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Davidson County court last month, the security company Omnilert either knew or should have known that there were “significant operational limitations in its gun detection system that could result in detection failures during actual emergencies, including limitations based on camera placement, proximity of the weapon to camera sensors, camera angle, lighting, and weapon visibility.”

Omnilert cofounder Ara Bagdasarian declined Ars’ invitation to answer questions about the lawsuit. System Integrations, the other defendant in the case, which resold the Omnilert system, also did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Gotham is characterised as a ‘decision-making platform for AI-enabled operations’ designed to centralise heterogenous datasets ranging from intelligence reports to sensor detections into a homogenous operating picture.

Former GOP Rep. Stephen Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2023 for trades made while working as a consultant and lobbyist.

Donald Trump has issued a pardon to Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who served nearly two years in prison for making illegal stock trades based on inside information after he left office.

Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2023 for trades made while working as a consultant and lobbyist. He was ordered to forfeit more than $350,000, representing the amount of the illegal gains, and pay a $10,000 fine. He was released in 2025.

The Supreme Court in May rejected Buyer’s appeal without comment or noted dissent.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8709264

The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles

With the approval of the government, a renowned sexologist ran a dangerous program. How could this happen?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/47630834

Since October 1, 2025, the US has accepted 6,668 refugees. Of those, 6,665 were white South Africans. Three—admitted last November—were from Afghanistan. No other refugees were admitted.

That data is backed up by the US Refugee Admissions Program, a federal public-private interagency collaboration program that works on refugee resettlement.> ...

A presidential memo from September announced Trump’s intentions: that the refugees accepted “shall primarily be among Afrikaners from South Africa” and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.”

The Trump administration sees Afrikaners, an South African ethnic group descended primarily from European settlers, as victims of white “genocide”—a racist conspiracy theory promoted by many on the far right, notably Elon Musk.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1179380/waking-up-to-72-virgins-be-like

Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores.

Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/61459793

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45599660

Has any artist in history rode a hit single longer than Greenwood? There are more people that know Greenwood personally than their are people who can name two songs he sings.

So, we're living in a time that might be remembered as one of the biggest bubbles in history. And that's because in the next few weeks, your retirement account and your 401k is going to be buying shares in some of the biggest IPOs in human history, even though you might not want to. Okay, how's that going to happen? It's going to happen because the rules of the financial system were just rewritten to make sure that your money is going to be buying it automatically.