Besides administering standardized pre-college tests, America's nonprofit College Board designs college-level classes that high school students can take. But now they're also crafting courses "not just with higher education at the table, but industry partners such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the technology giant IBM," reports Education Week.

"The organization hopes the effort will make high school content more meaningful to students by connecting it to in-demand job skills." It believes the approach may entice a new kind of AP student: those who may not be immediately college-bound.... The first two classes developed through this career-driven model — dubbed AP Career Kickstart — focus on cybersecurity and business principles/personal finance, two fast-growing areas in the workforce." Students who enroll in the courses and excel on a capstone assessment could earn college credit in high school, just as they have for years with traditional AP courses in subjects like chemistry and literature. However, the College Board also believes that students could use success in the courses as a selling point with potential employers... Both the business and cybersecurity courses could also help fulfill state high school graduation requirements for computer science education...

The cybersecurity course is being piloted in 200 schools this school year and is expected to expand to 800 schools next school year... [T]he College Board is planning to invest heavily in training K-12 teachers to lead the cybersecurity course.
IBM's director of technology, data and AI called the effort "a really good way for corporations and companies to help shape the curriculum and the future workforce" while "letting them know what we're looking for." In the article the associate superintendent for teaching at a Chicago-area high school district calls the College Board's move a clear signal that "career-focused learning is rigorous, it's valuable, and it deserves the same recognition as traditional academic pathways."

Also interesting is why the College Board says they're doing it: The effort may also help the College Board — founded more than a century ago — maintain AP's prominence as artificial intelligence tools that can already ace nearly every existing AP test on an ever-greater share of job tasks once performed by humans. "High schools had a crisis of relevance far before AI," David Coleman, the CEO of the College Board, said in a wide-ranging interview with EdWeek last month. "How do we make high school relevant, engaging, and purposeful? Bluntly, it takes [the] next generation of coursework. We are reconsidering the kinds of courses we offer...."

"It's not a pivot because it's not to the exclusion of higher ed," Coleman said. "What we are doing is giving employers an equal voice."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

"I intend to sue the National Archives," said Joseph diGenova, an 80-year-old former Trump campaign lawyer (and a U.S. Attorney from 1983 to 1988). While releasing 63,000 unredacted pages about the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the U.S. government erroneously "made public the Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information of potentially hundreds of former congressional staffers and other people," reports USA Today. ("It is virtually impossible to tell the scope of the breach because the National Archives put them online without a way to search them by keyword, some JFK files experts and victims of the information release told USA TODAY...")

Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who represented current and former spies and other officials in cases against the government, told USA Today that he "saw a few names I know and I informed them of the breach... Hundreds were doxxed but of that number I don't know how many are still living." Zaid, who has fought for decades for the JFK records to be made public, said many of the thousands of investigative documents had been made public long ago with everything declassified and unredacted except for the personal information. Releasing that information now, he told USA TODAY, poses significant threats to those whose information is now public, including dates and places of birth, but especially their Social Security numbers. "The purpose of the release was to inform the public about the JFK assassination, not to help permit identity theft of those who actually investigated the events of that day," Zaid said. The Associated Press reported Thursday afternoon that government officials "said they are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released." One of the newly unredacted documents... discloses the Social Security numbers of more than two dozen people seeking security clearances in the 1990s to review JFK-related documents for the Assassination Records Review Board.

Two "groundbreaking research reports" on open source security were announced this week by the Linux Foundation in partnership with the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and Linux Foundation Europe. The reports specifically address the EU's Cyber Resilience Act (or CRA) and "highlight knowledge gaps and best practices for CRA compliance."

"Unaware and Uncertain: The Stark Realities of CRA-Readiness in Open Source" includes a survey which found that when it comes to CRA requirements, 62% of respondents were either "not familiar at all" (36%) or "slightly familiar" (26%) — while 51% weren't sure about its deadlines. ("Only 28% correctly identified 2027 as the target year for full compliance," according to one infographic, which adds that CRA "is expected to drive a 6% average price increase, though 53% of manufacturers are still assessing pricing impacts.") Manufacturers, who bear primary responsibility, lack readiness — many [46%] passively rely on upstream security fixes, and only a small portion produce Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs). The report recommends that manufacturers take a more active role in open source security, that more funding and legal support is needed to support security practices, and that clear regulatory guidance is essential to prevent unintended negative impacts on open source development.
The research also provides "an in-depth analysis of how open collaboration can strengthen software security and innovation across global markets," with another report that "examines how three Linux Foundation projects are meeting the CRA's minimum compliance requirements" and "provides insight on the elements needed to ensure leadership in cybersecurity best practices." (It also includes CRA-related resources.)

"These two reports offer actionable conclusions for open source stakeholders to ready themselves for 2027, when the CRA comes into force," according to a Linux Foundation reserach executive cited in the announcement. "We hope that these reports catalyze higher levels of collaboration across the open source community."

The U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions watchdog removed cryptocurrency mixing tool Tornado Cash from its global blacklist on Friday, following a federal appeals court ruling last November that the Office of Foreign Asset Control couldn't sanction its smart contracts. Despite the delisting of over 100 Ethereum addresses from the Specially Designated Nationals list, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emphasized continuing concerns about North Korea's digital asset theft operations.

"We remain deeply concerned about the significant state-sponsored hacking and money laundering campaign aimed at stealing, acquiring, and deploying digital assets for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Treasury stated. Roman Storm, Tornado Cash co-founder, still faces a July criminal trial for his alleged development role. A Treasury court filing Monday had warned that completely lifting sanctions could have "significantly disruptive consequences for national security."

President Trump signed a long-expected executive action on Thursday calling on U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities." From a report: "We're going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs," Trump said. "And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it's a common sense thing to do, and it's going to work, absolutely."

The move has been expected since early February, when the White House revealed its intentions but withheld the action until after McMahon's Senate confirmation. It now arrives more than a week after the Trump administration has already begun sweeping layoffs at the Education Department. According to the administration's own numbers, Trump inherited a department with 4,133 employees. Nearly 600 workers have since chosen to leave, by resigning or retiring. And last week, 1,300 workers were told they would lose their jobs as part of a reduction in force. That leaves 2,183 staff at the department -- roughly half the size it was just a few weeks ago.

The order instructs McMahon to act "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law," an acknowledgement that the department and its signature responsibilities were created by Congress and cannot legally be ended without congressional approval. That would almost certainly require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

Over the past two decades, school districts have spent billions equipping classrooms with laptops, yet students have fallen further behind on essential skills, Michael Bloomberg argues. With about 90% of schools now providing these devices, test scores hover near historic lows -- only 28% of eighth graders proficient in math and 30% in reading.

Bloomberg notes technology's classroom push came from technologists and government officials who envisioned tailored curricula. Computer manufacturers, despite good intentions, had financial interests and profited substantially. The Google executive who questioned why children should learn equations when they could Google answers might now ask why they should write essays when chatbots can do it for them.

Studies confirm traditional methods -- reading and writing on paper -- remain superior to screen-based approaches. Devices distract students, with research showing up to 20 minutes needed to refocus after nonacademic activities. As some districts ban smartphones during school hours, Bloomberg suggests reconsidering classroom computer policies, recommending locked carts for more purposeful use and greater transparency for parents about screen time. Technology's promise has failed while imposing significant costs on children and taxpayers, he writes. Bloomberg calls for a return to books and pens over laptops and tablets.

The credit-card market has quietly split in two, Atlantic argues in a new story: one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor. Credit-card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, with serious delinquency rates climbing to their highest point since the Great Recession.

"Transactors" pay off balances monthly and earn valuable rewards worth up to $3,000 annually in taxable income equivalent, while "revolvers" carry balances at a brutal 21.5% average APR. The poor subsidize the rich through two mechanisms: swipe fees that drive up retail prices by $1,700 annually for the average family, and late fees and interest charges that finance rewards programs. Interest revenue for credit-card companies has ballooned from $76 billion in 2020 to $170 billion in 2024.

The economy now appears to be slowing down. High-income families are increasingly resembling working-class families in credit data, with three in five households earning over $80,000 annually carrying balances for more than a year. Card companies are now offering fewer cards to subprime borrowers, creating a troubling dilemma - while expensive credit cards are harmful, having no credit access might be worse. Bipartisan legislation now aims to cap interest rates and lower swipe fees.

The National Archives has released thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From a report: The records were posted to the National Archives' website, joining recently released records posted in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017-2018.

"This release consists of approximately 80,000 pages of previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions," said the announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Additional documents withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and records subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, must be unsealed before release."

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 23 directing the release of all remaining records related to the assassination, saying it was in the "public interest" to do so. Tuesday's initial release contained 1,123 records comprising 32,000 pages. A subsequent release on Tuesday night contained 1,059 records comprising 31,400 additional pages.
See Also: U.S. Release of Unredacted JFK Files 'Doxxed' Officials, Including Social Security Numbers.

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organization. From a report: The WMO's report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

The report lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali.

Record rains in Italy led to floods, landslides and electricity blackouts; torrents destroyed thousands of homes in Senegal; and flash floods in Pakistan and Brazil caused major crop losses.

Storms were also supercharged by global heating in 2024, with an unprecedented six typhoons in under a month hitting the Philippines. Hurricane Helene was the strongest ever recorded to strike the Big Bend region of Florida in the US, while Vietnam was hit by Super Typhoon Yagi, affecting 3.6 million people. Many more unprecedented events will have passed unrecorded.

Italian newspaper Il Foglio claims to have published the world's first entirely AI-generated edition as part of a month-long experiment to explore AI's impact on journalism. The special four-page supplement, available in print and online, features AI-written articles, headlines, and reader letters. The only thing the human journalists provided were prompts. The Guardian reports: The front page of the first edition of Il Foglio AI carries a story referring to the US president, Donald Trump, describing the "paradox of Italian Trumpians" and how they rail against "cancel culture" yet either turn a blind eye, or worse, "celebrate" when "their idol in the US behaves like the despot of a banana republic." The front page also features a column headlined "Putin, the 10 betrayals," with the article highlighting "20 years of broken promises, torn-up agreements and words betrayed" by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

In a rare upbeat story about the Italian economy, another article points to the latest report from Istat, the national statistics agency, on the redistribution of income, which shows the country "is changing, and not for the worse" with salary increases for about 750,000 workers being among the positive effects of income tax reforms. On page 2 is a story about "situationships" and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships. The articles were structured, straightforward and clear, with no obvious grammatical errors. However, none of the articles published in the news pages directly quote any human beings.

The final page runs AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans "useless" in the future. "AI is a great innovation, but it doesn't yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong," reads the AI-generated response.

The Federal Trade Commission has removed over 300 business guidance blogs published during former President Biden's term, including consumer protection information on AI and privacy lawsuits against Amazon and Microsoft, WIRED reported Tuesday, citing current and former FTC employees.

Deleted posts included guidance about Amazon's alleged use of Ring camera data to train algorithms, Microsoft's $20 million settlement over Xbox children's data collection, and compliance standards for AI chatbots. New FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has pledged to pursue tech companies but with focus on alleged conservative censorship rather than data collection practices.

The Dutch parliament approved motions urging the government to reduce reliance on U.S. software companies by developing a sovereign cloud platform and reconsidering contracts with American firms. Reuters reports: While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency. "The question we as Europeans must ask ourselves is: do we feel comfortable with people like Trump, (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg and (X owner Elon) Musk ruling over our data?" said Marieke Koekkoek of the pro-European Volt party, who authored one of the eight motions, in an email to Reuters.

In addition to launching a sovereign cloud services platform, the motions called on the government to re-examine a decision to use Amazon's web services for the Netherlands' internet domain hosting, and to develop alternatives to U.S. software and preferential treatment for European firms in public tenders. [...] Bert Hubert, a Dutch technology expert who has advocated for reducing dependency on the U.S., said: "This is only the first step in potentially doing something." But he said one important outcome would be forcing agencies to publicly report on risks related to their reliance on U.S. cloud firms. "With the advent of Trump 2.0, it has become clear that this is not something you can harmlessly sign off on," he said.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance denounced decades of globalization for hampering American innovation in a speech to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on Tuesday, arguing that offshoring has eroded U.S. technological leadership. "Our workers have been failed by the government of the last 40 years," Vance told the American Dynamism Summit, criticizing two "conceits" of globalization: that nations manufacturing products wouldn't eventually design them too, and that cheap foreign labor benefits innovation.

"As they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching up on the higher end. We were squeezed from both ends," Vance said, adding that "cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch" that inhibits technological advancement. The Trump administration recently rolled back Biden-era AI regulations, with Vance emphasizing their goal to "incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own workers and our own innovation." Vance, a former venture capitalist, dismissed fears about AI eliminating jobs, comparing it to ATMs which ultimately created more financial sector roles.

Harvard University on Monday announced that tuition will be free for students from families with annual incomes of $200,000 or less starting in the 2025-26 academic year. From a report: "Putting Harvard within financial reach for more individuals widens the array of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that all of our students encounter, fostering their intellectual and personal growth," Harvard University President Alan M. Garber said in a statement. "By bringing people of outstanding promise together to learn with and from one another, we truly realize the tremendous potential of the University."

The new plan will enable about 86% of U.S. families to qualify for Harvard financial aid and expand the Ivy League college's commitment to providing all undergrads the resources they need to enroll and graduate, according to Garber.

Abstract of a paper published on National Bureau of Economic Research: This paper investigates self-reported wedges between how much people work and how much they want to work, at their current wage. More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked -- actual hours exceed desired hours. We combine this evidence with a simple model of labor supply to assess the welfare consequences of tighter weekly hours limits via willingness-to-pay calculations. According to counterfactuals, the optimal length of the workweek in Germany is 37 hours. Introducing such a cap would raise welfare by .8-1.6% of GDP. The gains from a shortened workweek are largest for workers who are married, female, white collar, middle aged, and high income. An extended analysis integrates a non-constant wage-hours relationship, falling capital returns, and a shrinking tax base.