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Ron DeSantis continues to defend newly approved curriculum guidelines in Florida instructing students to learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that could be “applied for personal benefit”. “That means they developed skills in spite of slavery, not because of slavery,” the governor told NBC News in a recent interview that aired on 7 August. “It was them showing resourcefulness and then using those skills once slavery ended,” he added. Mr DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024, has dismissed criticism from Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic and Republican members of Congress urging Florida officials to amend the state’s African American history standards and reflect an honest history of race and racism in school curricula. The vice president has also rejected an invitation from Mr DeSantis to “discuss” the standards, telling a crowd in Orlando earlier this month that “there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery.” Mr DeSantis had previously stated he “wasn’t involved” with the guidelines approved by the state’s appointed Board of Education. He said the standards are “probably going to show some of the folks” – enslaved people – “that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” The development of such “skills” would not have benefited the millions of enslaved people in the US in the decades before slavery’s abolition. Another controversial guideline instructs high schoolers to be taught that a massacre in the state led by white supremacists against Black residents to stop them from voting in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” “Adults know what slavery really was. It involved rape, it involved torture, it involved taking a baby from their mother, it involved some of the worst examples of depriving humanity of people in our world,” Ms Harris said in her remarks in Jacksonville last month. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, echoed Ms Harris in his criticism of the standards, stressing that slavery was defined by “separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives”. “It was just devastating,” said Mr Scott, who is also seeking the 2024 Republican nomination. “So I would hope that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that.” Mr DeSantis told NBC in response: “Don’t take that side of Kamala Harris against the state of Florida. Don’t indulge those lies.” The new standards join the governor’s overhaul of public education and a “parents’ rights” agenda that targets honest lessons on race and racism and gender and sexuality, which the governor told NBC amounts to “indoctrination”. “Those standards were not political at all,” he added. “The legislature didn’t dictate any of that. [The] governor’s office didn’t dictate anything of that.” Last week, before thousands of high school students enrolled in advanced placement courses begin classes for the 2023-2024 school year, the DeSantis administration criticised the College Board’s warning that Florida education officials had “effectively banned” AP Psychology courses in the state under the Parental Rights in Education Act, what opponents have derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Read More Ron DeSantis admits ‘of course’ Donald Trump lost the election DeSantis blasted for ‘un-American’ restrictions on AP psychology course under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law Why Florida’s new curriculum on slavery is becoming a political headache for Ron DeSantis

Zoom Video Communications Inc., a one-time darling of the work-from-home era, is calling workers back to the office.

PayPal Holdings Inc. is rolling out a stablecoin, the first by a large financial company and a potentially

Apple is expected to release its next-generation iPhone 15 smartphone on 22 September despite rumoured shortages, according to reports. The release date will follow an unveiling event for the iPhone 15 on 12 September or 13 September, Bloomberg reported, which will also see other Apple hardware announced. A separate report from 9to5Mac suggests the launch will take place on Wednesday, 13 September, as mobile carriers have requested that workers not to take that day off due to a major smartphone announcement. Most iPhone launches typically take place on the second Tuesday of September, with the official release taking place later in the month, however last year the unveiling took place on a Wednesday. The switch came amid significant supply disruptions that forced Apple to delay sales of its iPhone 14 Plus to October. Previous rumours surrounding Apple’s 2023 iPhone event suggested at least one of the iPhone 15 models will be delayed due to “severe shortages”. The supply issues relate to a new screen design that is expected to be introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, according to The Information. The premium models will feature a much narrower bezel – the border around the device’s screen – but require a new manufacturing process that Apple has struggled with. Other updates expected for the iPhone 15 include a mysterious button on its side, which could function as a customisable ‘action button’ to allow owners to programme it to perform a variety of tasks. The possible customisations will be camera, flashlight, focus, magnifier, translate, accessibility, shortcuts, silent mode and voice memos, according to Macrumours. Sales of iPhones have dipped this year, Apple’s latest financial results revealed, with analysts blaming “waning growth in the smartphone market”. The Independent has reached out to Apple for comment on the latest reports, though the US tech giant does not typically comment on leaks and rumours relating to unreleased products. Read More Apple iPhone 15 rumours: Pro and Pro Max release date, price, cameras, specs and more

Nvidia Corp. has soared more than 200% this year, and if that’s used as a proxy for the

JPMorgan Chase & Co. made waves in May when it announced it would purchase $200 million of carbon

A top climate adviser to US President Joe Biden signaled the administration could phase in some requirements for

Listen to The Big Take podcast on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Terminal. Three months into the writers’ and

Scientists have achieved a net energy gain in nuclear fusion for the second time, marking major progress towards realising the potential of the near-limitless energy source. A team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who first achieved the feat last December, claimed to have passed a new milestone with fusion ignition by producing even greater energy output than the original experiment. The nuclear fusion process has been described as the “holy grail” of clean energy, as it requires no fossil fuels and leaves behind no hazardous waste. Instead it mimics the natural reactions that occur within the Sun, though harnessing its potential has puzzled scientists since the 1950s. Achieving nuclear fusion ignition is a crucial step towards building commercial power stations, though the technology needs to be significantly scaled up from the current experiments for it to be a viable energy source. The first ever successful fusion energy gain experiment on 5 December, 2022, used lasers to fuse two light atoms into a single one, releasing 3.15 megajoules of energy from 2.05 megajoules of input. Researchers described the milestone as “one of the most significant scientific challenges ever undertaken by humanity” that would “enable the next steps toward clean fusion energy for the future”. Scientists that were not involved in the fusion experiments said the advance had profound implications for the future of the planet. “We are witnessing a moment in history: controlling the power source of the stars is the greatest technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken,” said physicist Arthur Turrell. “This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion – at a time when we’ve never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more.” A spokesperson for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said the final results of the latest experiment are still being analysed. The lab plans to present the results at upcoming scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Several companies are already investing heavily in nuclear fusion, with Microsoft making the world’s first purchase agreement earlier this year. The US tech giant made the deal with Helion Energy, which aims to set up a nuclear fusion power plant within the next five years despite the challenges remaining to make it commercially viable. Helion chief executive David Kirtley said at the time: “We still have a lot of work to do, but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.” Read More Superconductor breakthrough could represent ‘biggest physics discovery of a lifetime’ – but scientists urge caution Microsoft makes world first nuclear fusion energy deal Zuckerberg says he is ‘ready today’ but ‘not holding breath’ for cage fight with Musk Musk pledges to fund legal bills of X users ‘unfairly treated’ by employers for posts Scientists want to hack the planet to cool it down. The consequences could be extreme

Amazon.com Inc.’s web services division is offering $20 million in cybersecurity grants to K-12 schools as part of

Extreme heat is returning to southern Europe this week, with the potential for record temperatures in parts of

Christopher Nolan has explained the muffled dialogue in his movies is an 'artistic choice' because he would rather use the initial performance given on camera instead of getting the actors back to record portions of dialogue that can't be heard clearly