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Almost every article youre going to read about Apples just-announced iOS 26 operating system for the iPhone is going to focus on its new Liquid Glass design. And dont get me wrongthat design certainly looks refreshing (and is strangely reminiscent of the wax soda bottle candies I loved as a kid). iOS 26s Liquid Glass interface features transparent and reflective UI elements that allow the content behind buttons, toolbars, and icons to show through. But what Im most excited about, when it comes to iOS 26, is something else. It’s a lot less flashy, but it’s arguably more useful to the 90% of iPhone users out there who couldnt care less about the new look, or artificial intelligence improvements, for that matter. Im talking about the people who still use their iPhone as a phone. You knowto make phone calls. Because iOS 26 includes the most significant upgrades to the actual phone call functions of the iPhone weve seen in yearsand it’s about time. iOS 26s new design is nicebut not waiting on hold is nicer Weve all been there: calling the bank or doctors office or customer service hotline only to be immediately placed on hold, listening to the same background music for what seems like an eternity, waiting for an actual human being to pick up at the other end. If theres one experience that will put even the most patient person in a foul moodthis is it. [Photo: Apple] Thats why a new feature of the Phone app in iOS 26 is my favorite feature out of all the new ones Apple announced today. Called Hold Assist, it solves a real-world problem nearly every iPhone userscratch that, any phone user since the dawn of the telephone erahas faced. With Hold Assist in iOS 26, you never need to wait on hold again. Now, when you call a phone number and are placed on hold, you can tell your iPhone to stay on the line and wait for you instead of having to do it yourself. The iPhone will kill the hold music and allow you to continue using your device as normal, alerting you as soon as a live person comes on the line. Extra bonus: not having to wait on hold for hours means no more hearing that hold music playing in your head at night while trying to fall asleep. Whos calling and why? Let your iPhone worry about that Another drawback of telephones is that anyone with your number can call youincluding cold callers, spammers, and bill collectors. Oftentimes, these people will try to obfuscate their phone numbers, so you need to pick up to see who is on the other end of the line. But thats where another great new feature of the Phone app comes in: Call Screening. [Photo: Apple] In iOS 26, if the phone app receives a call from an unknown caller, it will answer the call itselfyour phone wont even ring. The iPhone will then wait until the caller has shared their name and the reason for their phone call. Only then will it let your iPhone ring. When it does, youll see the name of he person and the reason for their call displayed on your screen, enabling you to decide if you want to pick up the call or give it a miss. This feature takes the anxiety and uncertainty out of answering phone callssomething nearly everyone has felt at some point. Making the phone in smartphone great again In addition to Hold Assist and Call Screening, iOS 26 is also adding several other new features to the Phone app, including the ability to live translate a phone call with someone who speaks another language into the language you speak, and a completely redesigned calls screen that makes it easier to see your recent calls and quickly make a call to your favorite contacts. And, yeah, I get it: being excited about these kinds of features seems a bit baffling. After all, its 2025, and making calls on a phone feels so twentieth-century. Our phones are now internet browsers, cameras, gaming devices, and AI assistants. But companies have focused on innovating those modern features of the smartphone for so long, theyve often neglected trying to improve the main thing our phones were initially designed for. Despite the amazing capabilities of our phones in the twenty-first century, the need to make and receive phone calls has not gone away. Not everyone uses their phone to converse with a chatbot, edit videos, or manage their wallets, but nearly everyone still relies on it to make calls. So, while it may seem like a dull area for innovation, the calling experience remains one of the most universally used aspects of our phones, and therefore anything that improves upon it is something worth picking up for. iOS 26 is now available for developers. The operating system will become available to general users as a free download this fall.
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E-Commerce
In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. Dissent,” he said, is the very essence of science. That commitment is being put to the test. On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the “Bethesda Declaration,” challenging policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe. It says: “We dissent.” In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs, and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letterand their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names. The four-page letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring a Gold Standard of science, not ideological activism. Confronting a “culture of fear” The signers went public in the face of a culture of fear and suppression they say Trump’s administration has spread through the federal civil service. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources, the declaration says. Bhattacharya responded to the declaration by saying it has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months.” Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive, he said in a statement. “We all want the NIH to succeed. Named for the agency’s headquarters location in Maryland, the Bethesda Declaration details upheaval in the worlds premier public health research institution over the course of mere months. It addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants. In one case, an NIH-supported study of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti had to be stopped, ceasing antibiotic treatment midcourse for patients. In a number of cases, trials that were mostly completed were rendered useless without the money to finish and analyze the work, the letter says. Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it says. It wastes $4 million. The mask comes off Jenna Norton, who oversees health disparity research at the agency’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, recently appeared at a forum by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) to talk about what’s happening at the NIH. At the event, she masked to conceal her identity. Now the mask is off. She was a lead organizer of the declaration. I want people to know how bad things are at NIH,” Norton told The Associated Press. The signers said they modeled their indictment after Bhattacharyas “Great Barrington Declaration” in 2020, when he was a professor at Stanford University Medical School. His declaration drew together like-minded infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ostracized by the larger public health community that pushed those policies, including the NIH. He is proud of his statement, and we are proud of ours,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute who signed the Bethesda Declaration. Cancer research is sidelined As chief of the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch, Kobrin provides scientific oversight of researchers across the country who’ve been funded by the cancer institute or want to be. Cuts in personnel and money have shifted her work from improving cancer care research to what she sees as minimizing its destruction. “So much of it is gonemy work, she said. The 21-year NIH veteran said she signed because she didn’t want to be “a collaborator in the political manipulation of biomedical science. Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. We have a saying in basic science, he said. You go and become a physician if you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients. We are doing the research that is going to go and create the cures of the future, he added. But that wont happen, he said, if Trump’s Republican administration prevails with its searing grant cuts. The NIH employees interviewed by the AP emphasized they were speaking for themselves and not for their institutes nor the NIH. Dissenters range across the breadth of NIH Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants. The letter asserts NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety and the agency is shirking commitments to trial participants who braved personal risk to give the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health. The Trump administration has gone at public health research on several fronts, both directly, as part of its broad effort to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion values throughout the bureaucracy, and as part of its drive to starve some universities of federal money. At the White House, Desai said Americans have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago. A blunt axe swings This has forced indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes fr ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science, the declaration says. Some NIH employees have previously come forward in televised protests to air grievances, and many walked out of Bhattacharya’s town hall with staff. The declaration is the first cohesive effort to register agency-wide dismay with the NIH’s direction. The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated ethic that academic freedom must be a linchpin in science. With that in place, he said in a statement in April: NIH scientists can be certain they are afforded the ability to engage in open, academic discourse as part of their official duties and in their personal capacities without risk of official interference, professional disadvantage, or workplace retaliation.” Now it will be seen whether that’s enough to protect those NIH employees challenging the Trump administration and him. There’s a book I read to my kids, and it talks about how you can’t be brave if you’re not scared, said Norton, who has three young children. “I am so scared about doing this, but I am trying to be brave for my kids because it’s only going to get harder to speak up. Maybe I’m putting my kids at risk by doing this,” she added. “And I’m doing it anyway because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. By Calvin Woodward and Nathan Ellgren, Associated Press Associated Press Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
More American CEOs are optimistic about the nation’s economy ahead of July’s major trade deadline than they were in the last few months, following the beginning of President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, according to this month’s CEO Confidence Index survey from the Chief Executive Group. On Monday, the US and China restarted trade talks in London, following talks between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping last week. The U.S. is trying to speed up negotiations before Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs go back into effect on July 9 after a 90-day pause. CEOs and business leaders in the United States are also less likely to say the country is headed toward a recession, according to the survey data. While some 62% of CEOs predicted a recession within 6 months back in April, now less than half of that, or 30%, forecast either a mild or severe recession over the next six months. The latest CEO Confidence Index survey polled 277 U.S. CEOs just last week on June 3 and 4. Other key takeaways: 40% of those CEOs polled expected the U.S. economy to grow; while only 23% held that view back in April. In fact, in June, 51% of those CEOs polled said they expect conditions to continue to improve as trade negotiations settle. The monthly survey first began in 2002, and includes several data points that show how U.S. business leaders view the economy.
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