title: "Flagstaff's minimum wage to go up on New Year's Day: here's why" url: "https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/flagstaffs-minimum-wage-go-up-new-years-day-heres-why" author: "Kenneth Wong"

Officials with the City of Flagstaff say the city's minimum wage will go up in a few months.

What we know:

Per a statement released on Sept. 11, the Northern Arizona city's minimum will rise to $18.95 per hour on Jan. 1, 2027.

According to the city's minimum wage website, 2026's minimum wage was set at $18.35 per hour.

Dig deeper:

Officials said the increase was the result of Proposition 414, which was approved by voters in the 2016 general election.

"This law covers all individuals who work or are expected to work 25 hours or more in any given calendar year within the city limit. All covered individuals are to be paid or to earn no less than the current hourly minimum wage," read a portion of the city's website.

Under the law, the city's minimum wage is required to rise in accordance with cost-of-living increase, starting from 2023.

Big picture view:

Flagstaff's minimum wage is above the state's. Per a poster released by the Industrial Commission of Arizona, the state's minimum wage is $15.15 per hour in 2026.

The Source: Information for this article was gathered from a statement released by the City of Flagstaff, with supplemental information gathered from the Industrial Commission of Arizona.

title: "Amid record heat, 24 Arizona prison units still lack air conditioning. A lawmaker has questions." url: "https://azmirror.com/2026/09/11/amid-record-heat-24-arizona-prison-units-still-lack-air-conditioning-a-lawmaker-has-questions/" author: "Kiera Riley"

Cooling systems in Arizona state prisons failed this summer as temperatures hit triple digits.

Now, the reported outages have caught the attention of a state legislator who is demanding that leaders at the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry answer questions about it. To that end, Rep. Walt Blackman, a Republican from Snowflake, issued a subpoena for the agency to provide information on extreme heat in Arizona prisons, related medical incidents and the age and viability of existing cooling infrastructure.

Air conditioning is not a given in Arizona prisons in the first place.

Many units rely on swamp coolers, fans and Styrofoam coolers filled with ice to combat the summer heat.

And it’s been a hot summer.

Phoenix and Yuma experienced the second-hottest meteorological summer on record, according to the U.S. National Weather Service Phoenix. In Yuma, temperatures remained in the triple digits for 142 consecutive days, while the count surpassed 100 days in Phoenix.

And though ADCRR created a heat mitigation plan to ensure an adequate living environment when temperatures rise above 85 degrees, incarcerated people and advocates say extreme heat still gets through.

Three years ago, the state Legislature allocated $47.6 million to convert prisons to heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in fiscal year 2023. The following year, the state budget included $66.8 million to continue the work, with a three-year spending plan putting $29.8 million toward HVAC in fiscal year 2025 and $23.7 million in 2026.

But the plan was cut short when the Legislature slashed the appropriation by $57 million in the 2025 budget, leaving the department with $9.8 million and a dead end in converting the remaining units to air conditioning.

As a result, a total of 24 units — 20 of which are occupied by incarcerated people — still run on swamp coolers.

Thomas Steres lives in one of them.

Steres sleeps on a top bunk at the end of the hallway in the Barchey Unit at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Buckeye. The sun beats down on the wall next to his bed for most of the day, and it doesn’t cool until around 11 p.m.

He points a fan at his face and takes showers, but he still sweats through the night.

“I am unable to have a nice night’s sleep,” Steres said.

Some rooms in Barchey are air-conditioned. Cold air flows through the guard offices, classrooms and library, which sit empty most of the time.

The window to the guard office fogs up as cold glass meets high temperatures and humidity — the heat undeterred by the swamp coolers whirring in the unit.

“I’m not hating on the fact that guards have A/C. They shouldn’t have to work in swamp cooler temps during humid 113-degree weather,” Steres said. “But on the same token, I shouldn’t have to live in those conditions, either.”

Across the state prison system and in units like Barchey, the Corrections Department deploys an Extreme Heat Safety and Relief Strategy.

In work and housing areas not equipped with air conditioning, the department brings in portable cooling equipment and ice machines, provides incarcerated people with free ice and ice water — though some reported receiving moldy ice earlier this summer — runs misting systems, sets up temporary cooling stations, allows increased access to showers and relaxes its standards on how incarcerated people dress.

As part of the plan, the department also takes ambient temperature readings between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., with one check before noon and another after 4 p.m.

Temperature readings are not publicly reported, but some studies have come close to painting a picture of conditions inside prisons.

In a 2024 study, Ufuoma Ovienmhada, then a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and now a Baker Endowed Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Climate Change and Human Resiliency at the University of Arizona, used air temperature data and atmospheric modeling to record summer temperatures at 1,614 prisons across the U.S. between 1990 and 2023.

“The type of research that’s been emerging just gives a different window into what’s happening, that has been, up to now, very invisible and held in the bodies of incarcerated people,” Ovienmhada said.

Facilities exposed to the most heat were, by and large, located in the Southwest.

Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis recorded the fifth-highest temperature overall at nearly 114 degrees. Fourteen more state-owned and contracted prisons followed closely behind, including Phoenix West, Perryville, Phoenix, Yuma, La Palma, Red Rock, Central Arizona Correctional Facility and Eyman.

“It just starts to give us a picture of how to characterize the exposure, the risk, the hazard that people incarcerated are facing,” Ovienmhada said. “It’s not rocket science to then bridge if the outdoor temperature is regularly 100 degrees at this prison, and they don’t have air conditioning. The people inside are probably experiencing that temperature, if not worse.”

Ovienmhada also looked at how factors in the construction and operation of prisons can make incarcerated populations more vulnerable to extreme heat, including materials such as metal, brick and concrete; overcrowding; understaffing; and an inadequate health care system.

As the summer rolled on, so did litigation against ADCRR over its constitutionally deficient health care system, leading to a receivership, recently cleared to at least initially go into effect by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nothing in the court order explicitly addresses heat-related illness, but Corene Kendrick, an attorney litigating the case and deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, said housing populations more vulnerable to extreme heat — namely older incarcerated people and those diagnosed with mental illness — appeared to have taken priority when the department started converting units to air conditioning.

But heat still takes a toll on the general population, and studies show incarcerated people are at higher risk of heat-related morbidity and mortality because of confinement.

Lawsuits in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri have sought to argue that extreme heat exposure constitutes cruel and unusual punishment or violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, citing exacerbated health conditions and fatalities.

In May 2025, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Western Texas initially ruled that extreme heat in prisons was “plainly unconstitutional,” but he did not decide whether to order the Texas prison system to install air conditioning.

Texas corrections officials put the cost at more than $1 billion, and Pitman is now considering whether to mandate air conditioning installation.

Rio Scharf, a staff attorney at the University of California, Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law and Justice Center who studies extreme heat in carceral settings, noted that litigation can be crucial to prompting change in extreme heat conditions.

“Because these have a decent price tag on them, and because they benefit a population that has very little political representation and attention, our assessment is that it’s very unlikely that state legislatures will appropriate sufficient funding to address this issue without the pressure of litigation and/or a really active social movement,” Scharf said.

Cooling system failures and units without air conditioning could come back before the Arizona Legislature soon, though..

In an Aug. 31 email to Corrections Department leaders, Blackman asked for information on cooling system failures, heat-related medical incidents among incarcerated people and staff, heat complaints, compliance with the department’s cooling strategy and logs of indoor temperatures. He also asked them to provide a rundown of funding and legislative needs.

“My purpose in requesting this information is not to presume the cause of these problems or assign responsibility before the facts are known,” Blackman wrote. “My office wants to determine whether the challenges facing these facilities are primarily the result of aging infrastructure, routine maintenance and repair issues, equipment reliability, funding limitations, or some combination of these factors.”

Blackman set a deadline of Sept. 11 for the agency to respond.

An ADCRR spokesperson acknowledged Blackman’s request and said in a statement that “ADCRR fulfills all official public records requests in compliance with Arizona public records law.”

title: "Hit-and-run driver sought in Phoenix crash that killed man" url: "https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/hit-and-run-driver-sought-phoenix-crash-killed-man" author: "Brent Corrado"

A man is dead after being hit by an SUV while crossing the street in Phoenix, and police say they are now looking for the alleged hit-and-run driver.

What we know:

At 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 8, Phoenix police say 57-year-old DeWaynbe Lewis was crossing Indian School Road near 5th Avenue when he was hit by a white SUV heading eastbound.

First responders found Lewis lying in the road. He was taken to a hospital where he later died. Police say the driver of the SUV fled the scene before officers arrived.

Map of where the crash happened:

The Source: The Phoenix Police Department

title: "Car crashes into Mexican restaurant in Flagstaff" url: "https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/car-crashes-mexican-restaurant-flagstaff-033820887.html" author: "Kolby Marting"

Courtesy of Flagstaff Fire Department

• One person was taken to the hospital after a vehicle crashed into a Mexican restaurant in Flagstaff, with the individual being pinned between a vehicle and a counter before being freed by firefighters.

One person was taken to the hospital after a vehicle crashed into a Mexican restaurant in Flagstaff, authorities say.

According to the Flagstaff Fire Department, they were called to a crash at Ralbertos in the Woodlands Village area.

>> Download the 12News app for the latest local breaking news straight to your phone.

When they arrived, they found one person pinned between a vehicle and a counter. Firefighters freed the person, who was taken to the hospital in stable condition.

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In the post on the Flagstaff Fire Department Facebook page, the department sent a message to the restaurant, saying, "This happens to be one of our favorite local spots for burritos. We hope to see them back open and serving the Flagstaff community again soon!"

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title: "Another Jaywalker Killed on Phoenix Roadway" url: "https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2026/09/06/another-jaywalker-killed-on-phoenix-roadway/" author: "ADI Staff Reporter, 14625 Articles"

PHOENIX – Two jaywalkers were killed on Phoenix roadways two days in a row.

According to the Phoenix Police Department, on September 5th, 2026, at approximately 4:00 a.m., Phoenix Police and Phoenix Fire responded to reports of a vehicle-pedestrian collision near 33rd Drive and Deer Valley Road. Upon arrival, Phoenix Fire located the 39-year-old male pedestrian and pronounced him deceased.

The driver of the involved vehicle remained on-scene.

Detectives believe that the pedestrian was crossing Deer Valley Road mid-block and not in a crosswalk when he was struck by the vehicle.

The driver of the involved vehicle did not exhibit any signs of impairment. Speed is not believed to be a factor in this collision.

The day before, on September 4th, 2026, at approximately 2:00 a.m., Phoenix Police and Phoenix Fire responded to reports of a vehicle-pedestrian collision near 7th Avenue and Indian School Road. Upon arrival, Phoenix Fire transported the 44-year-old male pedestrian to the hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.

The driver of the involved vehicle initially left the scene, but returned a short time later.

Detectives believe that the pedestrian was crossing 7th Avenue mid-block and not in a crosswalk when he was struck by the vehicle.

The driver of the vehicle did not exhibit any signs of impairment. The driver was not arrested.

title: "First Friday Art Walk returning to Phoenix under new private property pilot program" url: "https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/first-friday-art-walk-returning-phoenix-under-new-private-property-pilot-program" author: "Taylor Wirtz"

First Fridays coming back? Phoenix agrees on pilot program to safely bring back vendors

A major change is coming to downtown Phoenix's iconic First Friday Art Walk. FOX 10's Taylor Wirtz learns more about the new path forward to safely bring back vendors.

A major change is coming to downtown Phoenix’s iconic First Friday Art Walk. After safety concerns halted street closures and vendor markets earlier this year, city leaders just approved a new path forward.

The backstory:

Those who remember the earlier days of the First Friday Art Walk look upon them fondly.

"It’s really like evolved into, like, a staple of downtown," said Connor Moore, a Phoenix resident.

Safety Concerns:

But in the past few years, a big spike in its popularity led to crowd control and public safety issues.

"Just fist fighting, and then, screams and yells, and then the police show up. Pepper spray starts flying everywhere. And then the next month, two people got shot here right on the corner, right by our shop," said Donny Ades, co-owner of RoRo Dogs downtown.

"It has gotten out of control," added Chris Campbell the other co-owner of RoRo Dogs.

This led organizers to end street closures and halt the vendor market last spring.

Pilot Program:

But on Sept. 9, the Phoenix City Council voted to pass a resolution to launch a pilot program to safely bring back certain vendors by moving the action off of public streets and onto private property.

"[The change] helps strengthen the arts-centered spirit of the event while ensuring it continues to grow safely and sustainably," said Vice Mayor Kesha Hodge Washington during the discussion, who represents District 8 for the City of Phoenix.

The program will allow property and business owners in the downtown area to apply for special permits to host the vendors, instead of the city closing down streets.

"It was just escalating violence, and I’m glad the city had the mind to pull back and say ‘hey, this isn’t safe for the public. We need to pull back,’" Ades said. "It allows the city to reassess and say we need a different First Friday, let’s bring it back to how it was with just the artists."

Restoring the Phoenix Focus:

The goal is to bring the focus back to locally made art and food, something locals and business owners say they would appreciate.

"It was a lot of food vendors and a lot of second-rate stuff that people didn't create, that they were just reselling here," Ades said.

"I’d like to see some type of first Friday back with vendors and more artists," Campbell said.

What they're saying:

"After listening closely to our neighbors, artists and city partners, we’re ready to launch this artist and business-focused pilot program," said Cindy Dach, Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation board member and small business owner. "It’s an opportunity to nurture creativity, strengthen community ties, and shape a livable, vibrant future as our city evolves."

"Decades of First Fridays have turned Roosevelt Row into a destination, bringing people through the doors of the businesses and creative spaces that call it home," said Devney Majerle, President and CEO of Downtown Phoenix Inc. "In partnership with the city of Phoenix, this pilot program builds on that legacy, giving artists, property owners and small businesses new tools to succeed and thrive."

"Artists are the heart of First Fridays. We commend the City of Phoenix for creating a permit pathway that supports local creatives and neighborhood businesses as part of this beloved art walk tradition," said Catrina Kahler, Artlink President & CEO. "This is an opportunity to strengthen the welcoming, community-driven spirit of Roosevelt Row while keeping the arts at the forefront of First Fridays throughout Central Phoenix."

What's next:

The city plans for the program to kick off in October and last one year, with officials gathering feedback to see if it is something to continue long term. There will be a workshop regarding permits on Sept. 14.

The Source: Information in this report was gathered from Connor Moore, a Phoenix resident; Donny Ades, co-owner of RoRo Dogs; Chris Campbell, co-owner of RoRo Dogs; and the Phoenix City Council.

title: "Microsoft's Record-Setting Patch Tuesday Update Fixes Nearly 1,000 Flaws" url: "https://lifehacker.com/tech/microsofts-record-setting-patch-tuesday-update-fixes-nearly-1000-flaws" author: "Emily Long"

Credit: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

1. Microsoft just released fixes for nearly 1,000 bugs, which is approaching double the number of flaws patched in July.
2. Two of the vulnerabilities addressed this month are zero-days that have been exploited in the wild.
3. AI is making it easier for bad actors to develop tools to exploit vulnerabilities as well as allowing developers to fix them more quickly.
4. It's always been important to install security updates as soon as they're available, but it's even more critical now with a larger number of flaws open to exploitation.

Security updates have been trending larger, and Microsoft's Patch Tuesday for September is no exception. The company just released fixes for nearly 1,000 bugs, which is approaching double the number of flaws patched in July (the previous record). Two of the vulnerabilities addressed this month are zero-days that have been exploited in the wild.

This massive jump is in large part due to AI, which is making it easier for bad actors to develop tools to exploit vulnerabilities while also allowing developers to find and fix them more quickly. This means we're likely to continue seeing sizeable updates on shorter release cycles, ideally reducing the time hackers have to take advantage of these flaws. Microsoft has typically pushed Patch Tuesday fixes around 10 a.m. PT on the second Tuesday of every month.

It's always been important to install security updates as soon as they're available, but it's even more critical now with a larger number of flaws open to exploitation. PC users should receive Patch Tuesday updates automatically, but you can check the status via Start > Settings > Windows Update > Check for Windows updates.

September's Patch Tuesday addresses 966 flaws with two zero-days

As BleepingComputer reports, the 966 flaws fixed this month are broken down across the following categories: 438 elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities, 19 security feature bypass vulnerabilities, 258 remote-code-execution vulnerabilities, 173 information disclosure vulnerabilities, 16 spoofing vulnerabilities, and 56 denial-of-service vulnerabilities. These figures do not include other vulnerabilities (204 in total across other Microsoft products) patched earlier this month.

One of the zero-days addressed in September is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Update Stack. CVE-2026-81963 allows attackers to gain SYSTEM privileges via improper link resolution before file access. The bug discovery has been attributed to Romain Deperne and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Centre.

What do you think so far? Be the first to post a comment.

The other zero-day is also an elevation of privilege vulnerability. CVE-2026-85880 is a flaw in the Windows Advanced Local Procedure—an attacker could execute code in a low-privilege AppContainer, and the vulnerability could escape the sandbox and gain SYSTEM privileges locally. The bug was discovered by Volexity, as well as Mark Kelly, David Galazin, and Jeremy Hedges with Proofpoint.

Both zero-days have been actively exploited in the wild, though Microsoft has not provided any details as to how.

Emily Long

Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City.

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February 11, 2026 Add as a preferred source on Google

Credit: Daniel Chetroni / Shutterstock.com

Key Takeaways

1. The latest "Patch Tuesday" fixes 58 vulnerabilities in total, six of which are zero-day flaws.
2. Three of the six actively exploited zero-days fixed in February are security feature bypass vulnerabilities.
3. Machines receive updates automatically, but you can check your settings to be sure.

Microsoft's February security update is a big one. This latest "Patch Tuesday" fixes 58 vulnerabilities in total, six of which are zero-day flaws. As a reminder, a zero-day is a vulnerability that has been either actively exploited in the wild or publicly disclosed before an official fix is released by the developer.

As BleepingComputer reports, security flaws were found in the following categories: 25 elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities, five security feature bypass vulnerabilities, 12 remote code-execution vulnerabilities, six information disclosure vulnerabilities, three denial of service vulnerabilities, and seven spoofing vulnerabilities. Three of the elevation of privilege vulnerabilities and two of the information disclosure vulnerabilities are considered "critical." (These numbers do not include the three Microsoft Edge vulnerabilities patched earlier in February.)

Patch Tuesday updates are typically released around 10 am PT on the second Tuesday of every month, and your device should receive them automatically. BleepingComputer reports that this month's release also includes Secure Boot certificate updates for 2011 certificates that are expiring in June.

Six zero-days patched in February

Three of the six actively exploited zero-days fixed in February are security feature bypass vulnerabilities:

• CVE-2026-21510: This is a flaw the Windows Shell that allows an attacker to execute content without warning or gaining user consent, though the user does need to open a malicious link or shortcut file.

• CVE-2026-21513: This MSHTML Framework vulnerability allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network. Microsoft has not released details on how this flaw was exploited.

• CVE-2026-21514: This vulnerability in Microsoft Word allows an attacker to bypasses OLE mitigations in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office once a user has opened a malicious Office file.

All three of the above flaws have been attributed to Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), Office Product Group Security Team, and Google Threat Intelligence Group along with an anonymous researcher for CVE-2026-21510 and CVE-2026-21514.

What do you think so far? Be the first to post a comment.

Two of the zero-days are elevation of privilege vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-21519 is a Desktop Windows Manager flaw that allows an attacker to gain SYSTEM privileges, while CVE-2026-21533 is a Windows Remote Desktop Services flaw that allows an attacker to elevate privileges locally. The former has been attributed to MSTIC and MSRC, while the latter was discovered by the Advanced Research Team at CrowdStrike.

Finally, CVE-2026-21525 is a denial of service vulnerability in the Windows Remote Access Connection Manager that allows an unauthorized attacker to deny service locally. This flaw was discovered by the ACROS Security team with 0patch—it was reportedly found in a public malware repository in December 2025.

Emily Long

Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City.

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title: "Man stabbed during fight at Mesa park: PD" url: "https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/man-stabbed-during-fight-mesa-park-pd" author: "Brent Corrado"

A man is in the hospital after being stabbed on Sept. 8 at Skyline Park in Mesa.

A man is in the hospital following a Tuesday night stabbing at a park in the East Valley.

What we know:

Mesa police say officers were called to Skyline Park near Crismon Road and Coralbell Avenue at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 8 for reports of a fight involving multiple people.

One at the scene, officers found a man with what appeared to be stab or cut wounds. The man was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

A man is in the hospital after being stabbed on Sept. 8 at Skyline Park in Mesa.

What we don't know:

The victim wasn't identified. No other details on what led up to the fight or stabbing were released by police. It's also unknown if any suspects are in custody.

Map of Skyline Park:

The Source: The Mesa Police Department

APACHE JUNCTION, AZ (AZFamily) — Two people, including an Apache Junction police officer, are recovering in the hospital after a crash late Tuesday morning.

The collision was reported near Apache Trail and Delaware Drive around 10:45 a.m. Investigators say the officer was going through the intersection on a green light when another vehicle ran a red light, crashing into the officer.

Both the officer and the driver were taken to a nearby hospital and are in stable condition.

Video shared by the department shows a door ripped off of the officer’s patrol SUV and debris scattered across the intersection. The sedan had extensive damage to its front end, including a bent hood and exposed engine.

title: "AI may have just solved a million-dollar math problem. The field will never be the same" url: "https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-may-have-just-solved-a-million-dollar-math-problem-the-field-will-never-be-the-same/" author: "Joseph Howlett"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations

A mathematician compared the feat to the history-making chess competition in which IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov in 1997

By edited by &

Yuichiro Chino via Getty Images

Today may go down as the biggest day in math in at least two decades, if not far longer.

In a development that crystallizes an existential shift in humankind’s oldest intellectual discipline, artificial intelligence has reportedly solved one of the six open “million-dollar” problems in mathematics. The achievement proves that the equations that govern the motion of fluids are fundamentally flawed.

“This is a Deep Blue–Kasparov moment,” wrote mathematician Tristan Buckmaster, referring to the sea change in thinking about machine intelligence that occurred when a supercomputer beat world champion Garry Kasparov at chess in the 1990s, in a statement released late on Monday. “The community needs to have serious and unhurried discussion about where to go from here.”

But according to Buckmaster, the proof’s origins may be murkier than they seem. In the same statement, he wrote that he and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician and an Anthropic employee, made significant progress toward the problem last month. But before the pair could publish, Buckmaster alleged in the statement, rumors of their method reached OpenAI, where researchers used the company’s large language model (LLM) to finish the job with a single prompt. The prompt “had been sent in the past few days, after information about our work had reached OpenAI,” Buckmaster alleged.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The mathematical problem concerns the Navier-Stokes equations, which govern the flow of fluids—from the whirlpool circling your bathtub’s drain to the turbulent winds El Niño hurls across the North American continent. After two centuries of study, mathematicians haven’t been able to figure out whether these equations perfectly describe reality in every situation or if they sometimes admit aberrant mathematical blips that could never happen in a real fluid. Answering this quandary has been viewed as so beyond the reach of existing mathematics that the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered $1 million to anyone who does it.

Over the past few years, two mathematicians, Diego Córdoba and Luis Martínez-Zoroa, worked out a potential trick to break the equations—or “blow them up,” as such an achievement is described in math. They called the method “forcing.” It focuses on a part of the equations, as written in the Clay problem, that mathematicians previously deemed inconsequential. In fact, most experts typically write the problem without this term, assuming that any blowup should be the same with or without it. But Córdoba and Martínez-Zoroa realized there might be a way to break the equations solely by using this often overlooked piece.

About a year ago, Buckmaster took up Córdoba and Martínez-Zoroa’s approach, working with Alpöge and using LLMs from OpenAI’s rival company Anthropic to parse through the mathematical possibilities. Progress was slow, according to Buckmaster’s statement, until August 15, when he and Alpöge used the method to prove that the Navier-Stokes equations’ simpler, frictionless cousins, the Euler equations, did in fact blow up.

This finding, on its own, is a monumental mathematical achievement that is worthy of any award in math and a key step toward solving the Navier-Stokes problem. Buckmaster and Alpöge were able to verify that the proof was correct using the programming language Lean, but the English-language explanation the LLMs produced was barely readable, according to Buckmaster. The pair started trying to make sense of the mathematical steps one by one and wrote them in a way other researchers would be able to digest.

According to Buckmaster, rumors of their work reached OpenAI at some point in the past week, and the company apparently had a team that was already working on the problem. But after becoming aware of the pair’s work, he alleged, OpenAI focused its attention on “forcing”—the often-ignored piece of the Clay problem. In a major effort over last weekend, the OpenAI team apparently used an internal model to take the result further, blowing up the full Navier-Stokes equations, according to Buckmaster.

Buckmaster wrote in his statement that he spoke on the phone on Sunday with Sébastien Bubeck, who leads OpenAI’s math team, and another unnamed OpenAI employee. Buckmaster alleged that the call became contentious, with OpenAI offering him sole authorship for the Navier-Stokes result in a paper that would acknowledge that the company’s internal model had solved it. Bubeck allegedly wanted to exclude Alpöge, an employee of OpenAI’s competitor, according to Buckmaster. He asserted that he threatened to inform the media and alleged that “the reply was ‘Why would you ruin your career?’” according to the statement.

At 11:58 P.M. EDT on Monday, Buckmaster posted his and Alpöge’s results, along with the statement laying out his account of events. According to the statement, he does not know how the OpenAI team so quickly reconstructed the details of its approach. Buckmaster wrote that he asked Bubeck if the OpenAI LLM was given access to his personal prompts to the company’s model Codex, which he and Alpöge were using throughout the process and thought were private. Bubeck told him no but wouldn’t answer whether the model’s training involved user data, which might have included Buckmaster and Alpöge’s private prompts, Buckmaster alleged.

Beyond the jockeying for credit among the AI vanguard and the implications for the future of mathematics as a human vocation, there’s a mathematical issue. The Clay problem, as written, is solved. But the Clay problem, as many experts imagine it, lacks the piece that the forcing method relies on. Moreover, because this element is so crucial to the method, it’s not clear whether there’s any way to extend the proof to blow up the Navier-Stokes equations without it. Some in the community may say that the problem hasn’t really been solved or that this has only been achieved through a loophole. That leaves the Clay Institute, and the field of mathematics, in a bit of a quandary. In any case, Buckmaster is emphatic that the key ideas be credited to Martínez-Zoroa and Córdoba. “I believe Luis Martínez-Zoroa deserves a Fields Medal,” he wrote in his statement.

Ultimately, math may never be the same. AI companies have fixated on using their technology to solve math problems for more than a year. Because the field’s focus on objectivity aligns with these companies’ goal of developing superhuman intelligence, they’ve been pushing their models to do math that no human can faster than any human can. It appears they’ve succeeded.

“There is a far bigger story here than the one in my statement: the sheer magnitude of what frontier models can now do, and what that means for us all,” Buckmaster wrote on Mastodon a little before 6 A.M. EDT on Tuesday. “I hope the labs can see this and set the petty posturing aside.”

Editor’s Note (9/8/26): This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

because it seems like the most likely place to recieve them
also https://azdeq.gov/drinking-water-public-notices

title: "Candidates Are Learning They Don’t Have to Debate" url: "https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2026/09/05/candidates-are-learning-they-dont-have-to-debate/" author: "David W. Falls, 1 Article"

Katie Hobbs speaking with attendees at an event hosted by Arizona Talks at Greenwood Brewing in Phoenix, in 2022. [Photo by Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons]

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs should debate her Republican opponent, Andy Biggs.

I also understand why she won’t.

Four years ago, Hobbs refused to debate Republican Kari Lake during their race for governor. She took plenty of criticism for it. Reporters repeatedly pressed her to reconsider. Hobbs argued that appearing onstage with Lake would produce a spectacle rather than a useful discussion of the issues.

Then Hobbs won.

The lesson was hard to miss: refusing to debate might generate some bad headlines, but voters may not care enough to punish you for it.

Now Hobbs is running for reelection, and her campaign has announced that she will not debate Biggs. Her campaign says face-to-face interaction with Arizonans is more useful than participating in a forum built around short soundbites and political theater.

There is an awkward wrinkle.

Before the Republican primary was over, Hobbs’s political operation criticized Biggs for skipping a Republican-organized primary debate. At the time, Hobbs herself would not commit to debating the eventual Republican nominee.

That is difficult to square. If Biggs owed Republican voters a debate during the primary, why does Hobbs not owe Arizona voters one during the general election?

But the more important issue is not Hobbs. It is the incentive her decision exposes.

Why debate if voters do not care whether they do?

Politicians respond to incentives, and increasingly those incentives favor staying off the debate stage.

Donald Trump made essentially the same decision during the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. He was the dominant candidate and skipped every debate. His opponents stood onstage arguing with one another while the candidate leading them all decided there was little reason to participate.

He went on to win the Republican nomination easily.

The calculation is simple. A strong debate performance may help a little, an average one may change nothing, and a terrible one can damage a campaign overnight.

The upside is limited. The downside can be enormous.

So why take the risk?

That may sound cynical, but campaign professionals are paid to win elections, not to preserve political traditions.

There is evidence that debates have been disappearing for years. A Brookings Institution analysis of the five most competitive U.S. Senate races found 17 debates in 2010. By 2020, there were seven. In 2022, only six had been held or scheduled when the analysis was published.

If campaigns conclude that debates offer little reward and plenty of risk, fewer debates will happen.

Which raises a harder question: If we really believe debates are important, why do we make refusing them so easy?

We routinely say debates are important. Editorial boards say it. Political opponents say it. Voters say it. Then a candidate refuses, the election arrives, and many of us vote exactly as we would have voted if the debate had taken place.

Campaigns notice.

No one should be expected to vote for a candidate they strongly oppose simply because that candidate agreed to debate. Few voters are going to abandon their views on taxes, abortion, immigration or education over a debate invitation.

But refusing to debate should carry some political cost.

Supporters can object. Editorial boards can make the refusal part of their evaluation. Reporters can keep asking why a candidate seeking public office will not stand next to an opponent and answer the same questions. There has to be something more than a day or two of bad press that everyone knows will soon disappear.

Without that pressure, debates stop being an expected part of running for office and become just another campaign tactic: participate when the potential reward outweighs the risk and decline when it does not.

That is bad for voters.

Campaign appearances are controlled. Advertisements are scripted. Social media posts are polished. Politicians can choose friendly settings and spend much of a campaign talking about the subjects they would prefer to discuss.

A debate takes some of that control away.

For an hour or two, the opponents have to occupy the same space. One can challenge something the other just said. A moderator can press for an answer. Voters can compare not only their policies but how they respond when someone disagrees with them.

Debates are hardly perfect. They can become theatrical. Candidates dodge questions. Moderators sometimes focus on moments that generate attention rather than illuminate policy.

Hobbs made essentially that argument in 2022 when she said a debate with Lake would become a circus.

Perhaps she was right about Lake.

But that cannot become a blanket excuse to decide that an opponent is too theatrical, too dishonest, too extreme or simply not worth debating. If everyone running for office gets to make that decision, the tradition will not survive for long.

No one is entitled to a debate stage.

Voters deserve the chance to see the people asking for their votes challenged in public.

Katie Hobbs should debate Andy Biggs. But if she refuses, I understand the political calculation. She tried it four years ago, and she won.

The uncomfortable truth is that politicians may keep refusing debates for as long as voters keep showing them that they can.

David Falls is a retired Microsoft engineering program manager. His commentary has appeared in the Washington Examiner, RealClearScience, The Space Review, The Humanist, and other publications.