The work of Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn has long been controversial. Until Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became US health policy chief, most vaccine scientists tended to ignore it. In 1996, Guinea-Bissau seemed like an ideal research post for budding pediatrician Lone Graff Stensballe. Her supervisor, a fellow Dane named Peter Aaby, had spent nearly two decades collecting data on 100,000 people living in the mud brick homes of the West African country's capital. Aaby and his partner, Christine Stabell Benn, believed that the years of research in the impoverished country had yielded a major discovery about vaccines--and what they described as "non-specific effects": The measles and tuberculosis vaccines, which were derived from live, weakened viruses and bacteria, they said, boosted child survival beyond protecting against those particular pathogens. But, the scientists said, shots made from deactivated whole germs, or pieces of them, such as the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) shot, caused more deaths--especially in little girls--than getting no vaccine at all.

These free debt calculators help you set up payment plans to get back in the black. Apps for budgeting and personal finance do a good job of tracking your money as you earn and spend it. Some also have excellent debt calculators that help you figure out how to pay off your debts. Each debt calculator is a little different. Some suggest a specific method for paying down debt, while others are simulators that let you see how your total amount paid will decrease if you increase your monthly payment.

The discovery from the Trinity nuclear test site shows how extreme conditions can result in materials never before seen in nature or in the lab. The new material is a clathrate made of calcium, copper, and silicon . During the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert--the world's very first test of an atomic bomb --a new material spontaneously formed. It was discovered only recently, by an international research team coordinated by geologist Luca Bindi at the University of Florence, which identified the novel clathrate based on calcium, copper, and silicon. It's a material never before observed either in nature or as an artificial compound created in the laboratory.

Go fully hands-free with these tips for Android and iOS. With the arrival of digital assistant apps like Gemini and Siri, most of us have grown used to talking to our phones. But conversing with your Android or iOS device can go way beyond interacting with AI. You can also use your voice to launch apps, fill out text fields, and do just about everything that was previously only possible with your fingers and thumbs. Of course, the traditional touchscreen input will often be the way to go.

Plus: Instructure's Canvas ransomware debacle comes to a close, an alleged dark net market kingpin gets arrested, OpenAI workers fall victim to a supply chain attack, and more. The worst part of your iPhone getting stolen may not be the theft itself. Instead, it's the phishing attacks waged against people in your contacts. New research this week shows that there's a thriving ecosystem for tools that let criminals unlock iPhones and target the phone numbers they find inside. Foxconn, the electronics manufacturing giant known for its role in building iPhones, revealed this week that it recently "suffered a cyberattack."

Ford and GM are backing away from electric vehicles and moving into the battery storage business. And it all comes back to AI. Automakers make cars--it's in the name. But lately, politics, current events, and Wall Street's latest preoccupation, artificial intelligence, have them looking a lot more like energy companies. The pivot, analysts say, could give US auto manufacturers struggling through a transition to electric vehicles an easier path over the next few years. Whether it works will come down to the same technology that automakers once promised would power the majority of their lineups: batteries .

"I've got one hand on the keyboard, one hand down below," an artist who role-plays with their chatbot tells WIRED. But some asexual advocates aren't thrilled about the association. Kor "got really addicted" to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year. The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a two-month period spending "eight to 10 hours a day" creating elaborate fantasies with SpicyChat, a relationship role-playing platform . Sometimes inputting 3,000-word mini essays into the program, Kor and the AI spun narratives featuring a rotating cast of suitors often based on characters from the Marvel comic book universe.

Companies Keep Slashing Employees' Benefits for the Worst Reasons Workers are getting worse health care, parental leave, and retirement benefits, showing once and for all that your job doesn't love you back. Employee benefits are in the spotlight this week, and that's because of three recent stories about US companies cutting back on non-wage compensations for workers. A Texas tech consulting firm with a forgettable name--TTEC--suddenly became a lot more memorable when it suspended its discretionary 401(k) match program for 16,000 employees through at least the end of 2026. According to Business Insider, which viewed an internal TTEC memo, the company plans to invest in AI certifications, AI tools and training, and automation, among other things. The auditing and consulting giant Deloitte is also reportedly slashing benefits for some workers starting next year.

A Woman Was in the US Legally. María de Jesús Estrada Juárez was applying for her green card and thought she was doing everything right. Instead, she was arrested and deported to Mexico. María de Jesús Estrada Juárez came to the US from Mexico in 1998 at 15 years old. Later, she was a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the policy meant to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors from deportation .

CFTC chairman Michael Selig sat down with WIRED to discuss how the agency scours Polymarket and other prediction markets for illegal activity. For most of the past year, it looked like prediction markets had kicked off a new golden age of fraud. On Polymarket, traders raked in fortunes from suspiciously timed bets on geopolitical events like the raid on Venezuela and the Iran War. It wasn't clear whether the US government would bother pursuing some of the most flagrant bad actors, since Polymarket's crypto-based platform was technically offshore and not regulated or licensed within the country. Now, however, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets, wants you to know that it's watching very, very closely.