Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Capital One says it closed Trump Organization’s accounts after anti-money laundering probe

Capital One says it closed Trump Organization’s accounts after anti-money laundering probe

Reuters reports: Capital One Financial, hit back on Friday against a lawsuit over its decision to close ‌the Trump Organization’s bank accounts years ago, stating that it did so after a review by anti-money laundering experts. The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business. Capital One is seeking to dismiss ​the case by casting doubt on claims of illegally debanking — or denying services on religious or…

Read More Read More

Trump defectors join forces to launch a new political ‘movement’

Trump defectors join forces to launch a new political ‘movement’

The Daily Beast reports: More trouble is brewing for Republicans in the midterm elections as a crew of high-profile Donald Trump defectors announced they’re joining forces to launch a new political “movement” to oppose the current president and his supporters. Trump “betrayed us all,” former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted on X Saturday, alongside a photo of the newly organized Trump opposition team meeting in Tucker Carlson’s hunting lodge-like Maine home. “We said no more foreign wars and we…

Read More Read More

Data center companies discover that secrecy doesn’t set the stage for public support

Data center companies discover that secrecy doesn’t set the stage for public support

Politico reports: The companies that build and run data centers are on the losing end of a populist backlash — and they’re struggling to respond. Fears that the server-packed data hubs will drive up electricity prices, deplete water supplies and gobble farmland have prompted people across the country to pack meetings of zoning boards and county commissions to oppose the projects, while fueling calls from leaders in both parties for state or national moratoriums. That opposition has become a rising…

Read More Read More

Britain could face food shortages as drought continues, farmers warn

Britain could face food shortages as drought continues, farmers warn

The Guardian reports: Britain could face shortages of certain foods after punishing drought in parts of England, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned as a heatwave was forecast to continue into next week. The UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued heat health alerts for eight regions of England, with temperatures set to rise above 30C in parts of the country. UKHSA said rising temperatures may increase health risks, particularly for vulnerable groups. Farms across the country were affected…

Read More Read More

The Ceuta incident has, predictably, been exploited by boosters of the far right

The Ceuta incident has, predictably, been exploited by boosters of the far right

Anne Applebaum writes: Mostly young, mostly male Moroccans crawling onto beaches, climbing hills, scaling walls, jumping over fences, surging past police in order to get into Europe: The photographs and videos that emerged from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, on July 29 and 30 looked very much like migrant-terror videos, deliberately designed to be broadcast by the international far right. So closely did this incident resemble the “invasion” that MAGA and its European friends have long said is…

Read More Read More

GOP staffers say the party has a ‘groyper’ problem — ‘a generation of rabid, incompetent idiots’

GOP staffers say the party has a ‘groyper’ problem — ‘a generation of rabid, incompetent idiots’

Politico reports: The grownups are worried. In group chats and at happy hours, some GOP veterans fret about the rising generation of young staffers in their party. The recurring complaint: The pipeline that feeds young conservative talent into government jobs is defective — if not broken. This isn’t just the standard middle-aged lament that the kids aren’t all right. It’s a criticism aimed at institutions like the Heritage Foundation that purport to identify and train the party’s future governing class….

Read More Read More

As an instigator of global disorder, Trump is leading the U.S. to strategic defeat in Iran, allies fear

As an instigator of global disorder, Trump is leading the U.S. to strategic defeat in Iran, allies fear

Steven Erlanger writes: To America’s allies, President Trump’s war in Iran, now in its sixth month, seems headed for a strategic defeat. They worry that the inability of the United States to turn military superiority into a sustainably changed Iran has displayed a vulnerability that Russia and China will welcome. In addition, Mr. Trump’s goals remain unmet, and the U.S. military is running short on key armaments that it needs for global reach. For the moment, Iran is seemingly resolute…

Read More Read More

Scope of hacks on U.S. water supply widens as evidence points to Iran, but Trump blames Minnesota

Scope of hacks on U.S. water supply widens as evidence points to Iran, but Trump blames Minnesota

The New York Times reports: The scope of cyberattacks on U.S. water systems has grown to include at least seven states and may be far wider, officials and experts warned, as the authorities raced to safeguard the nation’s water supply against an assault that increasingly appeared to be the work of Iran. While there were no indications that any water supply had been altered or made unsafe to drink, state and local officials throughout the country were on high alert…

Read More Read More

Israel bombards Gaza, days after Trump announced deal with Hamas to advance cease-fire

Israel bombards Gaza, days after Trump announced deal with Hamas to advance cease-fire

The New York Times reports: Israeli strikes in Gaza on Saturday killed at least two people and damaged warehouses for medical supplies, Palestinian officials said, despite a recent deal between President Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas to advance the Gaza cease-fire. One of the strikes destroyed and damaged the warehouses at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza before dawn on Saturday, said Khalil Dagran, a hospital spokesman. The outpatient clinic was also damaged, he added, though there were…

Read More Read More

In dropping Reflecting Pool case, Pirro provokes Trump’s wrath

In dropping Reflecting Pool case, Pirro provokes Trump’s wrath

The New York Times reports: Jeanine Pirro faced the cameras on July 2 with characteristic self-assurance to announce the indictment of the 67-year-old ex-Olympian David Hearn for trashing “sacred” government property, President Trump’s highly prized but shoddily renovated Reflecting Pool. “This is not only a priority for the president, but for myself,” said Ms. Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, disclosing felony vandalism charges against Mr. Hearn for touching the lining of the pool in front of…

Read More Read More

The Americans ignored by Trump: ‘Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn’t be able to handle it’

The Americans ignored by Trump: ‘Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn’t be able to handle it’

Nicholas Kristof writes: After a 1,000-mile road trip across a swath of America, I can’t get one person out of my mind: Trinity Goodman, a cheerful, chatty woman in Oklahoma City who had a bandage on her arm. The reason for the bandage? Goodman, 44, survives by selling blood plasma twice a week. She had $3.78 in her checking account, one cent in her savings account to keep it open, and six pennies in her piggy bank. “That’s my full…

Read More Read More

Origin of human eyes traced to 560-million-year-old one-eyed marine ‘cyclops’

Origin of human eyes traced to 560-million-year-old one-eyed marine ‘cyclops’

ZME Science reports: Deep inside the human brain, a small gland in the middle of the forehead helps keep time. As darkness arrives, the pineal gland helps set the body’s nightly rhythm. But some creatures use the pineal gland as a sort of “third eye”, helping them detect light and shadow, though the organ doesn’t form pictures. Our human lineage lost this ancestral ability millions of years ago. But a new evolutionary hypothesis suggests that this unassuming organ is the…

Read More Read More

How Larry Ellison went from being the richest person in the world to the most vulnerable player in AI

How Larry Ellison went from being the richest person in the world to the most vulnerable player in AI

The New York Times reports: [Larry Ellison’s] big bet on A.I. was built on an astronomical amount of debt in every imaginable form — bonds, letters of credit, asset-backed securities — available in seemingly unlimited quantities, because the more you spent building A.I. infrastructure, the more you would earn, or so the logic went. Computer theorists called it the scaling hypothesis. It held that advancements in A.I. were directly tied to the generation of unprecedented amounts of computing power to…

Read More Read More

How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days

How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days

CNBC reports: Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner argued he was one of few people in the world who saw the future clearly. In a sprawling, 165-page essay that became required reading in Silicon Valley, the former OpenAI researcher positioned himself as a kind of prophet for the coming age of artificial super intelligence. But this week, the limits of Aschenbrenner’s vision were on display when the AI-themed hedge fund he runs — named Situational Awareness, also the title of his…

Read More Read More