Trump’s election interference is underway

Trump’s election interference is underway

Amanda Carpenter writes: Even though President Trump’s efforts to bend elections to his will have so far largely failed, don’t mistake defeat for retreat. The federal government’s highest power centers are working overtime to tilt the election in the administration’s favor. On Thursday, the Department of Justice sued California, accusing the state of harboring noncitizens on its voter rolls. The suit was filed forty-eight hours after DOJ mailed county election officials a password-protected thumb drive purportedly containing a list of…

Read More Read More

Zelenskyy says Trump is ‘rewarding Putin’ as he waives new Russia sanctions passed by Congress

Zelenskyy says Trump is ‘rewarding Putin’ as he waives new Russia sanctions passed by Congress

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump waived sweeping new sanctions against Russia passed by Congress, arguing in an executive order Friday that the move “is in the national interests of the United States.” Trump had signed the legislation, named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., just last month. The bill took aim at Russia’s largest buyers of oil and gas, allowing the president to impose tariffs on goods from those countries, which may include China and India. Passed with…

Read More Read More

Russia has lost 1,562,970 troops in Ukraine since invasion

Russia has lost 1,562,970 troops in Ukraine since invasion

Kyiv Independent reports: Russia has lost 1,562,970 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on Oct. 17. The number includes 1,950 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day. According to the report, Russia has also lost 12,415 tanks, 25,554 armored combat vehicles, 163,883 vehicles and fuel tanks, 51,266 artillery systems, 2,221 multiple-launch rocket systems, 1,710 air defense systems, 449 aircraft, 356…

Read More Read More

Weak links start to show in AI borrowing

Weak links start to show in AI borrowing

The New York Times reports: Trillions of dollars in borrowed money have powered the A.I. boom. But now there is growing uncertainty around just how easily more money can be obtained — and how much of it will be paid back. Those questions burst into the forefront this week when investors rapidly lost confidence in one debt-laden data center company, CoreWeave. Prices of its bonds — the company has accrued $72 billion in liabilities to operate 51 data centers —…

Read More Read More

Is there an AI bubble?

Is there an AI bubble?

  The gargantuan bet on the future of A.I. is driving the U.S. stock market and economic growth. And the building of data centers is sucking up so many construction resources, it’s crowding out the construction of homes. The multitrillion-dollar question is: Will this bet pay off? Or is it a bubble, destined to burst and pull the economy down with it? Paul Kedrosky is a partner at SK Ventures, a fellow at M.I.T., and the author of a newsletter…

Read More Read More

Voters want more action on the climate crisis. Why are Democrats and Republicans staying silent?

Voters want more action on the climate crisis. Why are Democrats and Republicans staying silent?

The Guardian reports: Most Americans feel unease or alarm about the climate crisis and, in both red and blue states, want to know how political leaders are going to fix it. But in midterm election campaigns across the US, candidates have responded to this desire with near silence. People in the US have this year endured a record hot summer as well as soaring costs, equating to roughly $2,000 per household, in extra energy and mortgage payments, due to the…

Read More Read More

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s lawyers say authorities ignored judge’s restrictions on home search

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s lawyers say authorities ignored judge’s restrictions on home search

The Washington Post reports: Lawyers for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) on Friday accused federal authorities of ignoring key restrictions that a judge placed on the search of the lawmaker’s D.C. residence this week and demanded the immediate return of all property seized from the home. In a letter sent to Justice Department prosecutors, attorneys Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz condemned the investigation into Omar’s immigration history as a politically motivated attack on one of President Donald Trump’s chief critics, saying…

Read More Read More

Trump’s attempt to deport Ilhan Omar sends a hostile message to every foreign-born American

Trump’s attempt to deport Ilhan Omar sends a hostile message to every foreign-born American

Michelle Goldberg writes: In his final speech as president, Ronald Reagan emphasized the essential role of immigration in American greatness. “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world,” he said. Reagan cited a letter he’d received about how one can’t simply move to France and become a Frenchman or move to Japan and become Japanese. “But anyone, from any corner of the Earth,…

Read More Read More

Katie Zacharia ousted, capping off a week of remarkable upheaval inside Trumpworld

Katie Zacharia ousted, capping off a week of remarkable upheaval inside Trumpworld

The New York Times reports: The end was nigh after [Katie Zacharia] appeared on Fox News on Thursday night to be interviewed by the president’s friend Sean Hannity, who asked her a few tough questions and treated her with rare skepticism. The reception she got on Friday morning on “Fox and Friends” wasn’t exactly friendly, either. “Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?” one of the hosts, Lawrence Jones,…

Read More Read More

Inside the FBI firings with former acting director Brian Driscoll

Inside the FBI firings with former acting director Brian Driscoll

Michael Isikoff writes: Just days before the U.S. launched the war in Iran last February, FBI director Kash Patel fired five veteran agents who specialized in countering Iranian threats to the U.S. homeland — a move that the bureau’s former acting director Thursday called an “abomination” that has had a crippling impact on U.S. national security. “It’s absolutely devastating,” Brian Driscoll, a highly regarded senior agent who last year served briefly as the FBI’s acting director, said about the dismissals…

Read More Read More

Judge threatens Trump with sanctions to testify in lawsuit he brought against the BBC

Judge threatens Trump with sanctions to testify in lawsuit he brought against the BBC

Bloomberg reports: A judge threatened to sanction President Donald Trump for failing to sit for a mandatory deposition in the $10 billion defamation suit he filed against the British Broadcasting Corp. “The court has admonished plaintiff for his lack of participation to no avail,” US Magistrate Judge Enjolique A. Lett said in a brief order in Miami. “Going forward, the court expects strict compliance with its order, the failure of which will lead to sanctions.” Lett made the comment in…

Read More Read More

Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in Ukraine

Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in Ukraine

The Telegraph reports: Elon Musk approached Donald Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, The Telegraph can reveal. The billionaire tech entrepreneur approached the US president with the proposal to introduce speed limits on the system, which hampered Ukraine’s drone defences, according to four sources familiar with the discussions. One of the sources said Mr Trump “agreed” with Mr Musk’s suggestion, paving the way for the Pentagon to execute the slowdown on Starshield, the military-grade version of…

Read More Read More

Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and Washington Post photographer in West Bank

Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and Washington Post photographer in West Bank

The Washington Post reports: Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers trying to gather their autumn olive harvest on Friday, setting groves on fire and slinging rocks in a coordinated assault that fits a pattern of accelerating settler violence across the occupied West Bank. Also caught up in the attack was Heidi Levine, a veteran photographer for The Washington Post. Levine, wearing a protective vest clearly marked “PRESS” on front and back, was knocked to the ground, kicked repeatedly…

Read More Read More

Earth’s oldest evidence of life is written in stone – but it’s at risk of disappearing

Earth’s oldest evidence of life is written in stone – but it’s at risk of disappearing

Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay, viewed from the boardwalk. Heidi Allen By Heidi Jane Allen, The University of Melbourne Today, our planet is teeming with life, but it has not always looked the same. Long before forests reached skyward, animals walked on land, and the rise and fall of dinosaurs, our planet was shaped by a much smaller, more unassuming form of life. And we can still find traces of it today. These ancient fossils, the earliest visible evidence…

Read More Read More