A New Pancreatic Cancer Drug, AI Procurement Rules and Teen Safety
This briefing covers a newly approved RAS inhibitor for metastatic pancreatic cancer, a court ruling on the Pentagon's Anthropic blacklist, mandatory safeguards for teenage social-media users, disputed evidence of stronger El Niño variability, an FBI disruption of router-based hacking tools, and the first data from a deep-underground dark-matter experiment.
Stories in this briefing
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A RAS-Targeted Pancreatic Cancer Drug Wins FDA Approval
The FDA has approved daraxonrasib for defined groups of adults with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma. In a 500-person trial, median survival reached 13.2 months, compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy. The once-daily tablet blocks active RAS proteins, a long-difficult cancer target. It is not a cure, applies to advanced disease after prior treatment or when multi-drug therapy is unsuitable, carries serious risks, and has a list price near $39,800 for 30 days.
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A Judge Rejects the Pentagon's Anthropic Blacklist
A federal judge ruled that the Pentagon unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic by designating it a national-security supply-chain risk after a dispute over military AI use. The decision requires the government to undo the challenged measures and reinforces due-process protections for technology suppliers. It does not guarantee Anthropic government contracts or settle the rules for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The Pentagon may appeal, and a separate case involving civilian federal contracts remains pending.
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Meta Settlements Add Time Limits for Teen Accounts
Court-approved settlements with nearly all U.S. states will require new restrictions for under-18 users of Instagram and Facebook. Teen accounts will face a two-hour daily limit unless a parent allows more, overnight blocking, fewer school-hour notifications, and stronger age checks. Meta will pay about $12.7 billion, with further payments contingent on rivals adopting comparable protections. Recommendation systems and targeted advertising remain, and the settlement's value depends on accurate age detection, audits, and enforcement.
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Coral Records Point to Stronger El Niño Swings
A reconstruction built from living and fossil Galápagos corals suggests eastern Pacific El Niño variability is about 36.5% greater than during the preindustrial period. The chemical record reaches back roughly 900 years, far beyond modern instruments, and climate simulations linked the recent rise more closely to human-driven warming than natural forces alone. But the record is patchy, and outside researchers argue the corals may partly capture background ocean warming rather than El Niño itself.
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The FBI Disrupts Hacking Tools Hidden Behind Routers
U.S. authorities seized three domains and disabled QScan and QTRouter, platforms allegedly used by China-linked operators to scan for vulnerable systems and conceal attacks behind compromised routers and other devices. The tools reportedly targeted government agencies and critical infrastructure, while an FBI affidavit says QScan processed more than two million tasks on one day in 2024. The operation disabled infrastructure, not its operators, and public records do not show that every named target was breached.
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A Deep-Underground Dark Matter Search Starts Taking Data
SuperCDMS SNOLAB has started collecting scientific data from ultra-cold silicon and germanium crystals more than a mile underground in Canada. The detector looks for tiny vibrations and electrical signals that hypothetical light dark-matter particles might create in a crystal. Rock and layered shielding suppress cosmic rays and natural radioactivity. This early run is also a commissioning phase, not a detection, and the experiment will be optimized before a year-long search at full sensitivity in 2027.
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