Prendo spunto dall’intervista rilasciata ad Affaritaliani.it dal ministro della Difesa Guido Crosetto sul tema dell’eventuale ingresso dell’Ucraina nell’Unione Europea.

Crosetto individua correttamente uno dei problemi più evidenti che una simile scelta comporterebbe: l’impatto sul settore agricolo europeo. L’Ucraina è infatti storicamente uno dei maggiori produttori agricoli del continente e dispone di una superficie territoriale superiore a quella della Francia. È quindi difficile immaginare che l’ingresso di un gigante agricolo di tali dimensioni possa avvenire senza provocare profonde tensioni competitive all’interno del mercato unico, aggravando ulteriormente le difficoltà che già oggi interessano milioni di agricoltori europei.

Si tratta di una considerazione del tutto condivisibile. Tuttavia, il problema è molto più profondo e non riguarda soltanto l’agricoltura. Riguarda la natura stessa dell’Unione Europea.

L’Europa comunitaria è nata come un progetto di integrazione economica. Il mercato unico, la libera circolazione di merci, servizi, capitali e persone e, successivamente, l’introduzione della moneta unica sono stati costruiti attorno a un principio fondamentale: l’appartenenza all’Unione presuppone il rispetto di precisi requisiti economici, istituzionali e normativi.

Per decenni ai cittadini europei è stato spiegato che l’ingresso di nuovi Paesi non poteva essere il risultato di una scelta politica discrezionale, ma rappresentava il punto di arrivo di un lungo percorso di convergenza. Proprio per questo motivo le procedure di adesione sono complesse, richiedono anni di negoziati e impongono l’adeguamento a criteri rigorosi che riguardano l’economia, la finanza pubblica, l’ordinamento giuridico, la capacità amministrativa e il funzionamento delle istituzioni.

In altre parole, l’Unione Europea non è mai stata presentata come un’organizzazione alla quale si aderisce per ragioni di opportunità politica, bensì come una comunità fondata su regole comuni e parametri condivisi.

Nel caso dell’Ucraina, invece, il dibattito sembra essersi progressivamente spostato su un piano completamente diverso.

Nessuno sostiene seriamente che Kiev sia oggi in possesso delle caratteristiche economiche, finanziarie e istituzionali che tradizionalmente sono state richieste agli altri Paesi candidati. L’argomento principale utilizzato a favore dell’adesione è infatti di natura geopolitica: sostenere l’Ucraina nel confronto con la Russia, consolidare la presenza europea nell’Europa orientale e rafforzare il ruolo strategico dell’Unione nello scenario internazionale.

Si tratta di motivazioni politicamente legittime. Ma proprio perché si tratta di motivazioni politiche, esse impongono una riflessione che va ben oltre il caso specifico dell’Ucraina.

Se un Paese può essere ammesso nell’Unione Europea principalmente per ragioni strategiche e geopolitiche, allora significa che i criteri economici e istituzionali non costituiscono più il fondamento esclusivo del processo di allargamento.

E se tali criteri cessano di essere determinanti quando si decide chi può entrare nell’Unione, diventa inevitabile chiedersi perché continuino a essere considerati inderogabili quando si tratta di giudicare gli Stati che ne fanno già parte.

Questa è la vera questione. Da anni Bruxelles richiama costantemente gli Stati membri al rispetto di parametri, obiettivi quantitativi, procedure e vincoli sempre più dettagliati. Intere politiche economiche nazionali vengono valutate sulla base di scostamenti minimi rispetto ai valori fissati dalle istituzioni europee. I governi vengono sottoposti a procedure di infrazione, richiami e monitoraggi continui. Il messaggio è sempre stato chiaro: le regole vengono prima della politica.

Eppure, nel caso dell’Ucraina, sembra affermarsi il principio opposto.

Come si può mantenere un Paese sotto pressione per differenze marginali rispetto agli obiettivi di bilancio e, contemporaneamente, sostenere l’ingresso di uno Stato che, per ragioni del tutto comprensibili legate alla guerra e alla successiva ricostruzione, non potrà realisticamente soddisfare per molti anni — forse per decenni — gli standard economici e istituzionali che l’Unione ha sempre considerato indispensabili?

Non si tratta di una questione contingente.

L’Ucraina è un Paese devastato da un conflitto che ha compromesso infrastrutture, reti energetiche, impianti industriali, collegamenti logistici e capacità produttiva. La sfida che attende Kiev non consiste semplicemente nel tornare ai livelli precedenti alla guerra, ma nel ricostruire un sistema economico e infrastrutturale compatibile con gli standard richiesti dall’Unione Europea.

Nessuno è oggi in grado di quantificare con precisione il costo complessivo di un simile processo. Ciò che appare certo è che la sua portata sarà enorme e che richiederà tempi lunghissimi.

Tuttavia, nemmeno questo è il punto centrale.

Il vero problema è che l’adesione viene discussa indipendentemente dal completamento di quel percorso di convergenza che in passato veniva considerato indispensabile.

Da qui nasce una seconda conseguenza, altrettanto importante.

Se il criterio determinante diventa quello geopolitico, quale principio oggettivo consentirà in futuro di distinguere tra candidature accettabili e candidature non accettabili? Per quale ragione il medesimo ragionamento non dovrebbe essere applicato ad altri Paesi considerati strategicamente rilevanti? Con quale coerenza si potrebbero invocare criteri economici e istituzionali per respingere altre richieste di adesione dopo aver sostenuto che, in circostanze particolari, tali criteri possono essere superati da valutazioni politiche?

Una volta affermato il principio secondo cui l’opportunità geopolitica prevale sulla convergenza economica e istituzionale, il confine dell’Unione Europea diventa inevitabilmente il risultato di una decisione politica discrezionale e non più l’applicazione di parametri verificabili e uguali per tutti.

L’Europa ha naturalmente il diritto di compiere una simile scelta. Ciò che non può fare è fingere che nulla cambi.

Può continuare a definirsi una comunità fondata sulla convergenza economica, sulla disciplina condivisa, sulla compatibilità istituzionale e sul rispetto di criteri comuni. Oppure può trasformarsi in un soggetto prevalentemente geopolitico nel quale le valutazioni strategiche prevalgono sui parametri che hanno caratterizzato il processo di integrazione degli ultimi decenni.

Entrambe le opzioni sono legittime.

Ciò che appare difficilmente sostenibile è la pretesa di mantenere contemporaneamente entrambe le impostazioni: rigore assoluto quando si tratta di imporre obblighi agli Stati membri e flessibilità straordinaria quando si tratta di decidere l’allargamento dell’Unione.

In definitiva, la questione non riguarda l’Ucraina. Riguarda l’Europa. Se l’Unione Europea ritiene che ragioni politiche, strategiche o solidaristiche debbano prevalere sui criteri economici e istituzionali che hanno guidato il processo di integrazione negli ultimi decenni, ha tutto il diritto di compiere questa scelta. Ma allora abbia anche il coraggio di dirlo apertamente.

Lo dichiari ai cittadini europei. Modifichi i Trattati. Ridefinisca formalmente la propria missione. Spieghi che l’Unione non è più principalmente una comunità fondata sulla convergenza economica e sulla disciplina condivisa, ma una struttura nella quale le valutazioni politiche possono prevalere sui criteri che fino a ieri venivano considerati inderogabili.

Perché se il criterio politico prevale quando si decide chi entra nell’Unione, diventa sempre più difficile pretendere che il criterio tecnico sia assoluto quando si giudicano coloro che ne fanno già parte.

In quel caso Bruxelles non potrà più chiedere ai governi europei di considerare sacri determinati parametri economici, perché sarà stata la stessa Unione a dimostrare che, quando lo ritiene opportuno, quei parametri possono essere subordinati ad altre esigenze.

La credibilità di un’istituzione non dipende dalla severità delle regole che impone, ma dalla coerenza con cui le applica. Se l’Europa vuole cambiare natura, lo faccia. Ma lo dica chiaramente. Perché il problema non è cambiare le regole. Il problema è continuare a pretendere che siano inviolabili per alcuni e derogabili per altri.

Ucraina nella UE? No, grazie.

Antonio Marina Rinaldi

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SEGUICI

https://scenarieconomici.it/ucraina-nella-ue-no-grazie/

Stati Uniti, Cina e ora, con rinnovato vigore, la Corea del Sud, stanno accelerando drasticamente i tempi per la commercializzazione della fusione nucleare, spostando l’orizzonte temporale dal lontano 2050 ai ben più prossimi anni ’30 di questo secolo. Conosciamo bene quello che sta facendo Commonwealth Fusion, ma oggi vogliamo considerare un’altra parte del mondo.

Il protagonista di questa accelerazione asiatica è il reattore KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research), affettuosamente e ambiziosamente ribattezzato il “sole artificiale” coreano. L’obiettivo dichiarato dal Korea Fusion Energy Research Institute (KFE) è chiaro: mantenere un plasma a 100 milioni di gradi centigradi per 300 secondi. Non si tratta di un semplice record da esibire, ma della soglia critica necessaria per dimostrare che la fusione può passare da esperimento di laboratorio a base per centrali elettriche commerciali.

Lo stato dell’arte: una corsa a tre

Per comprendere la portata della sfida sudcoreana, è utile inquadrare gli attuali record globali, che dimostrano come la ricerca si stia muovendo su binari paralleli ma convergenti verso il medesimo fine:

Come Seoul intende vincere la sfida tecnica

Il salto dai 48 secondi attuali ai 300 secondi richiesti per la stabilità commerciale non è banale. Il problema principale a queste temperature infernali non è solo generare il calore, ma contenerlo senza distruggere la macchina che lo ospita.

La Corea del Sud sta puntando su una modifica strutturale e sull’intelligenza artificiale. KSTAR sta affrontando operazioni di lunga durata in un ambiente dotato di un divertore in tungsteno. Il tungsteno ha il vantaggio di resistere a temperature estreme, ma presenta un rischio letale per la reazione: se particelle di questo metallo si staccano ed entrano nel plasma, lo raffreddano istantaneamente, spegnendo il “sole”.

KStar

È qui che entra in gioco la vera innovazione su cui punta Seoul. Come spiegato da Yoon Siwoo, vicedirettore del KFE, la soluzione passa per il controllo attivo della forma del plasma tramite Intelligenza Artificiale. Algoritmi avanzati, capaci di reagire in millisecondi, modificheranno i campi magnetici per mantenere il plasma stabile e lontano dalle pareti, impedendo la contaminazione da tungsteno. È l’unione tra forza bruta (calore estremo) e controllo algoritmico millimetrico.

Avremo presto la fusione commerciale?

La strategia sudcoreana va letta in un’ottica macroeconomica ben precisa. Istituti di ricerca statali stanno mutando pelle: da enti di supporto alla ricerca di base a vere e proprie “piattaforme strategiche nazionali”. Investire massicciamente oggi per accaparrarsi i brevetti della fusione significa garantirsi l’indipendenza energetica assoluta domani, e la possibilità di esportare la tecnologia più preziosa del pianeta.

Avremo davvero la fusione commerciale negli anni ’30? È un traguardo tremendamente ambizioso, ma l’immissione di enormi capitali pubblici, unita alla flessibilità e velocità di esecuzione asiatica, rende questa data non più un miraggio ascrivibile alla fantascienza, ma un target industriale concreto. Per ora c’è solo Commonwealth Fusion che afferma di essere in grado di attivare il prossimo anno il proprio reattore dimostrativo a fusione nucleare commerciale con guadagno di potenza. Gli altri progetti hanno tempi più lontani.

Nel frattempo, per non farsi trovare impreparata, la Corea del Sud sta scommettendo pesantemente anche sui Reattori Modulari Piccoli (SMR). Il Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) ha già ottenuto l’approvazione per il design del suo SMR ‘SMART’. Questa tecnologia funge da ponte: garantisce energia baseload stabile, a zero emissioni e a costi prevedibili fin da subito, preparando il terreno industriale e infrastrutturale per il giorno in cui il primo sole artificiale commerciale sarà acceso in modo permanente.  L’autonomia energetica è, alla fine, soprattutto una questione di programmazione e di coretti investimenti di capitali, e smbra che la Corea abbia intrapreso la strada giusta.

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SEGUICI

https://scenarieconomici.it/corsa-alla-fusione-nucleare-la-corea-del-sud-lancia-la-sfida-dei-100-milioni-di-gradi-per-300-secondi/

Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

(This is why the average lifespan back then was so low. It wasn’t that people didn’t live past their 30s; if they survived childhood, they largely did. It’s just that so, so many small children died that they dragged the average way down.)

When smallpox epidemics broke out in London and Boston in 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Cotton Mather initiated inoculation campaigns in their respective cities. Inoculation involved taking pus from a pock of someone with a not-very-severe case of smallpox, making a cut in the arm of the person to be inoculated, and rubbing the pus into the cut.

There was an immediate backlash. It was morally wrong, some claimed, to interfere with the divine ordination of who would sicken and die and who would not. Only God had that ability, and to thwart it was to defy God’s will. It was hubris and blasphemy. Levenson highlights how the subtext of this attitude was that contracting a highly infectious disease was divine punishment for sin and that the only way to avoid disease was to live a virtuous life.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/grifters-cynics-and-true-believers-the-family-tree-of-vaccine-opponents/

Cassel has been working on protecting communities from coal ash pollution for 15 years and said rain and hurricanes amplified by climate change have exacerbated these threats. And those who live near coal ash dumps, she said, continue to discover cancer at a rate that makes them think, “This cannot be normal.”

“EPA, you know the record,” Cassel said. “You made the record.”

Kristina Zierold, a professor at the University of Mississippi, said she has found that children exposed to coal ash are more likely to suffer from depression and have poorer school performance than children who aren’t exposed.

Zierold said she has been researching the health impacts of coal ash on children since 2011 and was awarded a National Institutes of Health grant in 2015 to investigate coal ash and neurobiological health in children 6 to 14 years old.

She and her research team utilized air pollution and dust sampling in the homes of children to collect coal ash and tested children for neurobehavioral and mental health conditions in multiple ways.

If a child performs poorly in school, that can have cascading effects through adulthood, Zierold said. Depression in children can lead to poor social interaction, lack of learning, and in some cases suicide, she said.

“Do you want your children playing on coal ash in parks and playgrounds?” Zierold asked. “Do you want them breathing it in and ingesting it? I don’t.”

Brianna Knisley, the director of public power campaigns at Appalachian Voices, said the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill was one of the worst industrial disasters in US history. It’s an example of what happens when the EPA leaves coal ash management up to state regulators and utilities, she said.

The 900 workers who cleaned up the spill were denied protective gear and told the coal ash they were working to remove was clean enough to eat. Hundreds of workers became sick and dozens are dead, Knisley said.

Aerial view of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Cumberland Fossil Plant in Cumberland City, Tenn.

Angie Mummaw, an organizer with Appalachian Voices who lives near the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Tennessee, said she’s tired of communities like hers being treated as sacrifice zones while the coal industry asks for permanent loopholes instead of cleaning up the messes they’ve created.

Knisley has worked with communities where coal ash was used to fill children’s ball fields and seen Tennessee Valley Authority waste piles of the toxic ash piled up behind a public playground, open to the wind. The Tennessee Valley Authority did not immediately respond to questions from Inside Climate News.

“This is coal ash management without strong federal regulation and enforcement,” Knisley said. “States and utilities are not going to keep communities safe.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/environmentalists-turn-out-in-force-to-oppose-trump-coal-ash-rollbacks/

Grants meet the culture war

The document makes clear what sorts of things might be considered administration priorities and national interest—and they’re largely a war on woke. For example, the Trump administration canceled PEPFAR, a program meant to limit the spread of HIV in Africa; it’s a step that is estimated to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. But to the OMB, that’s a good thing, because the alternative was woke: “Far-left activists hijacked the critical work done by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established to respond to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Due to wasteful spending, PEPFAR became a left-wing foreign aid entitlement that attempted to promote abortion and gender ideology.”

(Its cited source for that is an editorial from the Heritage Foundation, a far-right-wing think tank.)

While it demands “viewpoint neutral” behavior from everyone receiving money, it has no issues with engaging in viewpoint discrimination itself. For example, it outright bans any funding for “theories of disparate-impact liability,” the idea that apparently race-neutral rules might have impacts that differ based on the race of the people involved. Also banned: any attempts to compensate for the historic discrimination that has kept women and minorities from having equal opportunities in society. That’s considered DEI, and thus forbidden.

Also out: funding for what it terms “gender ideology,” which it defines as an effort to “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.” Apparently, studying human chromosomal disorders, which can result in unusual combinations of X and Y chromosomes, is no longer welcome in the US. “Ending government-sponsored promotion of divisive gender ideology is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, and trust in government,” the OMB asserts, based on no evidence whatsoever.

There’s also a political litmus test for funding that harkens back to the McCarthy era, when those with “un-American” ideas were ostracized. “OMB proposes a new provision that agencies may consider an applicant’s affiliations with organizations engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government,” the document notes.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/

The Trump administration is refusing to repatriate Americans exposed to Ebola amid the outbreak still raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the plan to send US citizens to Kenya has hit a snag, and officials are still scrambling to find other countries that might take them.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that the administration had devised a plan to establish a makeshift quarantine and treatment facility in Kenya—instead of bringing its citizens home for high-quality care at specialized facilities built for this purpose. According to the initial plans, the US facility would be in Laikipia, about 120 miles north of Nairobi, where the US has an air base. Initially, the plan was to set up a 50-bed quarantine facility that was expected to be operational today, May 29. Then, in a second state, officials would set up isolation and biocontainment units to house Americans infected with the virus.

But after a series of events on Thursday and Friday, that plan has now been stalled. The Katiba Institute, which advocates for Kenyans’ constitutional rights, filed the petition on Thursday to challenge the establishment of the quarantine and treatment facility.

“The secretive, unilateral establishment of an Ebola quarantine facility raises grave constitutional concerns regarding the rights to life, health, fair administrative action, public participation, and parliamentary oversight,” Katiba said in a statement posted on social media.

Katiba is seeking the government’s preparedness plan to prevent or respond to the potential spread of the Ebola virus, which is not present in Kenya. The institute is also seeking disclosure of the terms of any agreement between Kenya and the US regarding the facility. “At its core, the case is about preserving constitutional accountability, protecting public health, and ensuring that no government may place expediency above the lives and safety of the people of Kenya,” Katiba said.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/05/kenyan-court-blocks-trump-admin-from-dumping-ebola-exposed-americans-there/

Authorities in the Netherlands said they dismantled a botnet that comprised more than 17 million devices and were managed by 200 servers in a joint operation by the police and the National Cyber Security Center.

The action, announced Thursday, came about after a security researcher reported the sprawling network to authorities. The host infrastructure was located in the Netherlands.

Used for criminal purposes

“The police then seized several botnet servers from a hosting provider for investigation,” the NCSC said. “The botnet was taken offline by the provider because it was used for criminal purposes.”

According to a report Thursday by the NL Times, the botnet was linked to ASOCKS, a Russia-based company that provides residential proxy services. These services cater to people and organizations who want to obscure their locations or identities by proxying their Internet traffic through third-party devices. Proxy services are often used for illicit or unethical purposes such as performing DDoS attacks, running botnet command-and-control servers, operating phishing operations, and scraping website content.

Ars was unable to independently confirm the NL Times report, but the claim checks out. Thursday’s NCSC post linked to a separate post that the nonprofit organization published a day earlier. That post, in turn, was updated to add a link to Thursday’s post. Wednesday’s post, headlined “Residential proxies and their major impact on digital security in the Netherlands,” warned: “Residential proxies are used to maintain anonymity and circumvent geographical restrictions. In this way, a Dutch organization can be attacked with Dutch proxies that have similarities with ‘regular’ traffic, making cybercrime mitigation more difficult.”

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled/

Outcomes

Only six of the 54 hospitalized patients had an underlying medical condition that may have put them at higher risk. None of the 54 hospitalized patients were immunocompromised.

Of the 54 hospitalized, 47 (87 percent) developed a complication of measles, including 39 (72 percent) who developed pneumonia, 25 (46 percent) had dehydration, and 21 (39 percent) developed diarrhea. Seventeen (31.5 percent) patients developed co-infections with other pathogens, a known risk with measles, and 28 (52 percent) were treated with antibiotics.

Thirty-eight (70.4 percent) patients required supplemental oxygen to breathe. Thirty-seven (68.5 percent) experienced hypoxia, which is insufficient oxygen levels to support the body. Four of the hospitalized patients, all children, required treatment in an intensive care unit. Three had dehydration. Two required intubation and mechanical ventilation. One child died.

(There was a second child death in the Texas outbreak, but it occurred after the timeframe of the study and was not included.)

Of the five adults, four were pregnant women. Two of them gave birth during their hospitalizations and their two infants were diagnosed with active measles cases. One infant went on to experience symptoms suggestive of acute measles meningoencephalitis and was hospitalized weeks later, outside the timeframe of the study.

With all this, the authors concluded that “although many cases of measles are mild, approximately one in five persons with confirmed measles in this outbreak required hospitalization for pneumonia, dehydration, or other complications, including rare cases of serious illness or death. Measles vaccination remains a critical tool in both routine and outbreak settings for the prevention of measles infections, severe disease, and hospitalizations.”

In 2025, the US recorded 2,288 measles cases overall, the highest total since 1991. Not yet six months into 2026, and the country is already close to reaching that number; as of May 28, the US has reported 1,983 confirmed measles cases across 40 jurisdictions. There have been 30 new outbreaks since the start of the year. Overall, the country is on track to lose its measles elimination status.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/05/analysis-of-texas-measles-outbreak-shows-just-how-dangerous-virus-is/

Some viewers were disappointed that the second season of House of the Dragon ended not with a bang, but a whimper. But the big battle sequence that season 2 set up will open season 3 with a bang, judging by the latest trailer, which has all the dragons, fire, and blood Westeros is known for.

(Spoilers for first two seasons below.)

As previously reported, the series is set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when dragons were still a fixture of Westeros, and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen’s reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

The second season had plenty of politicking and conniving subterfuge, but we didn’t get to see the spectacularly brutal Battle of the Gullet, because HBO trimmed S2’s episode count from 10 to eight. Still, the S2 finale teed it up perfectly, as Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) finally declared outright dragon war following Aemond’s (Ewan Mitchell) reckless destruction of Sharp Point. As for Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), after his brother took over the throne—which, remember, Aegon usurped from the rightful named heir, Rhaenyra—he went into hiding in Braavos, intending to wait out the war.

Much of the main cast—those whose characters survived S2—are returning, including D’Arcy, Glynn-Carney, and Mitchell. Also returning: Olivia Cooke Alicent; Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower; and Matt Smith as Daemon. Also returning: Steve Toussaint as Corlys; Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria; Fabien Frankel as Criston Cole; Matthew Needham as Larys; Jefferson Hall as Jason and Tyland Lannister; Harry Collett as Jacaerys; Bethany Antonia as Baela; Phoebe Campbell as Rhaena; Phia Saban as Helaena; Kurt Egyiawan as Orwyle; Kieran Bew as Hugh Hammer; Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull; Clinton Liberty as Addam of Hull; Tom Bennett as Ulf White; Freddie Fox as Gwayne Hightower; and Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers.

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/05/house-of-the-dragon-s3-trailer-revels-in-dragons-fire-and-blood/

ABC: FCC order “has no legitimate purpose”

ABC submitted individual filings for WABC-TV in New York; WPVI-TV in Philadelphia; WTVD in Durham, North Carolina; WLS-TV in Chicago; KGO-TV in San Francisco; KFSN-TV in Fresno, California; KTRK-TV in Houston; and KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

The station “submits this license renewal application under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional Order issued on April 28, 2026, by the Media Bureau,” ABC’s filings said. “The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The Order has no legitimate purpose.”

ABC said it was filing the applications without waiving any rights and called on the FCC to rescind the order.

“There is no information that the application will reveal that the Commission could not obtain through other means,” ABC wrote. “The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment. Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail.”

Carr calls Disney responses “disingenuous”

Carr wrote in an X post yesterday that the “FCC has been investigating Disney for over a year now after reports surfaced alleging that it had been discriminating against people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws,” and that “Disney only filed these applications to renew their ABC broadcast licenses after the FCC informed the company that their responses to the agency’s investigation had been disingenuous, deficient, and improper.”

ABC said in its filings that the company produced over 11,000 pages of documents in response to a series of FCC requests. ABC said the order to file early license renewals “purports to investigate ‘possible violations’ of the ‘prohibition on unlawful discrimination,’ but never identifies what violation it had in mind.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/trump-fcc-warns-all-broadcasters-to-follow-orders-or-be-punished-like-abc/