Business/Economy (News/Activism)
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Greece is set to sign a 3.1 billion euro defence agreement with Israel in Tel Aviv, marking the largest single defence export deal in Israeli history and equipping Athens with its first fully integrated, multi-layered air defence system. A Greek delegation will formalise the contract with the Israeli Defence Ministry, concluding three years of negotiations. The systems, known collectively in Greece as Achilles’ Shield, will be delivered in stages and are scheduled to reach full operational readiness within 35 months. Most of the funding will flow to Rafael Advanced Defence Systems for David’s Sling batteries capable of intercepting heavy rockets...
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Here are the four takeaways. 1. Fish trumps it all For those outside Iceland, it was tempting to analyse the referendum through a geopolitical lens: Russia's war on Ukraine, China's unfair competition and, of course, Donald Trump and his punitive tariffs and threats to annex Greenland. But the key driver of the vote was none other than fish. The country jealously protects its fishing rights. Between 1958 and 1976, Iceland and the United Kingdom were engaged in a series of confrontations dubbed the "Cod Wars", concluding with Reykjavík's victory over London. 2. A stark urban-rural divide The urban-rural divide in...
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Thank God, no, we aren't going bust as a nation, despite our gargantuan $40 trillion national debt. The rapid pileup of debt under Republicans and Democrats alike is certainly a disgrace and worrisome. When I came to Washington in the mid-1980s, our debt hit $1 trillion for the first time. It seemed like a tidal wave of red ink. Forty years later, we're at $40 trillion. That's a big and scary number. But our national wealth is roughly $180 trillion. So our debt-to-asset ratio, which has been rising, is still less than 25%, and much lower than at the end...
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President Trump’s investment accounts continued to actively trade individual stocks in June, revealing they made more than 1,000 transactions, according to his latest government disclosure. The White House said Saturday that the president has no role in the trading, which it said is handled by independent managers that use computer models that automatically replicate stock indexes. There were more than 550 purchases and more than 450 sales revealed in the latest filing released Saturday. Among the largest stock trades were purchases of at least $1 million worth of each Berkshire Hathaway, Visa and Mastercard. These are all companies that the...
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Chevron Corp. (CVX) and other U.S. energy companies are reportedly moving closer to deals that could bring billions of dollars of investment into Venezuela's oil fields. While Chevron is nearing an agreement to expand its operations in the country, Halliburton Co. (HAL) is reportedly in talks to provide equipment to Venezuelan oil producers, as the Trump administration pushes U.S. companies to help build the nation's oil industry. Chevron, Halliburton Eye Venezuela Opportunities Chevron could add two heavy-oil fields to its Venezuelan portfolio under the potential agreement, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The oil major...
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The Trump administration has proposed a fee of more than $100,000 for most H-1B visas. The usual suspects have come out with the usual reactions. Doug Brand, a senior immigration official in the Biden administration, called the move “catastrophic,” and the libertarian Cato Institute has warned of “devastating” consequences. In lieu of abolishing the program altogether – my preference, but something only Congress can do – such a fee is long overdue. It’s chump change compared to the added value a truly exceptional foreign worker could generate, and at the same time would make the program less attractive as a...
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Tenant complaints have surged 25% this year compared to last year in New York City, .. socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s twisted war to squeeze landlords — and seize private property — is escalating. ... The city put us in a situation where they’re just slowly beating us to death and blaming us,” said Lincoln Eccles, who owns a 15-unit building in Crown Heights. “The apparatus of the government is geared to squeeze us.” ... All of this tenant organizing is part of a long term project to take wealth away from people and redistribute it,” said Stu Smith, an investigative...
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Drive from Buffalo into Genesee County and you will pass fields that have grown corn and soybeans for generations. Soon, thousands of those acres will be covered by steel and glass. New York state is forcing industrial-scale solar plants onto rural communities that never asked for them, and the people who live there are discovering just how little their voice counts when a governor decides differently. The Mandate Behind The Mess.. New York is tearing up rural communities, wiping out wildlife sanctuaries, and burying prime agricultural soil under solar installation in the name of green energy. The root of this...
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Florida Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar did a quick about-face on President Trump’s massive Venezuela oil deal Saturday — deleting a social media post blasting the pact before returning to declare it was “a great deal” for America and the Venezuelan people Salazar, who has been outspoken of communist Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, took to X to declare that the pact would come to an end once President Trump’s term ends. “Any oil “deal” with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House,” Salazar wrote on the site. She later deleted the English...
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On Dec. 13 last year, a stranger in a Brown University bathroom noticed a man dressed head to toe in black, wrong for the weather, mere hours before that same man opened fire on Brown University’s campus, killing two and wounding eight before vanishing. Investigators had almost nothing: no name, no plate, just a tip describing a gray Nissan with Florida plates. But that was enough: Providence police ran it through a network of more than 70 Flock Safety cameras, which reached back through 30 days of history, and found the car had passed 14 times since Dec. 1. “We...
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More than 100 companies have signed onto an open letter calling for greater cooperation and preparation of cyber defenses across governments and other institutions. The signatories include tech giants like OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, along with financial institutions, telecoms and more. The call comes as the growing capabilities of AI models lower the barrier for hackers to be able to cause disruption with critical infrastructure, important organizations and companies."In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter says. "The companies and public services our communities...
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Some things never seem to change. The Mercatus Institute recently released a study about American moving trends, and the overall gist isn’t surprising: those in blue states are still picking up and heading to red ones.States like New York, ranked number one for outbound movers, have long counted their own people as their number one export. Electing socialists like Zohran Mamdani, who are hostile to businesses and taxpayers, probably doesn’t help.According to Mercatus, the number one destination for relocating Americans is the proudly Republican state of Idaho. And as Chris Cargill writes, “Washington was Idaho’s single largest source of newcomers,...
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I reported on Thursday that there was a massive deal in the offing to acquire an interest in Venezuela's oil fields that could help guarantee our energy security. Now, both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have weighed in, saying they pulled it off and the deal is official. Trump said in a Truth Social post that they'd secured "majority control" over 65 billion barrels; it "more than doubles" our reserves and will "substantially lower gas prices." 🚨 BREAKING NEWS pic.twitter.com/vkRV9oOetV— Department of State (@StateDept) August 28, 2026BREAKING NEWS: The United States of America has just entered...
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What would Karl Marx think of his latter-day disciples in the Democratic Socialists of America? No doubt he would find their politics largely agreeable, but they would present him with a class conundrum. DSA is not a movement of workers but of people with intellectual credentials: some 80 percent of its members have college degrees and 35 percent have advanced degrees. Those credentials are all granted by the institutions that capitalists sustain – it’s not bricklayers who endow Harvard University. State colleges and universities depend on government funding, but government itself, under capitalism, is simply an instrument of business interests....
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It’s all about how and where. It seems that everyone is talking about data centers these days; they’ve taken over the Internet with memes and conspiracy theories. As a computer professor, I decided to apply an academic research regimen to the situation and cut through the exaggeration and emotion that often accompany these current polarizing issues. Two important points to begin with: AI’s water and power usage. As I have demonstrated in my previous article, data centers use about 0.02% of the water supply in the US according to recent sources, and most future data centers are already planned to...
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Young adults between 18 and 21, who are legally barred from most gambling in the US, have traded an estimated $5.4 billion so far this year on the Kalshi prediction market, according to a new CNN analysis. On prediction sites, which have exploded in popularity this year, users can wager on everything from sports to elections, culture and the weather. Because prediction sites are federally regulated as financial markets, they’re available to anyone 18 and over, unlike most state-regulated casinos and sportsbooks, which are 21+. But lawmakers, consumer advocates and addiction experts increasingly see this as a loophole that could...
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The Global Government Affairs team over at X dropped a bombshell Thursday night, revealing that the X Safety team had uncovered proof positive of a foreign influence campaign targeting the build out of AI and data centers in the United States. It turns out that, after launching an investigation, the team uncovered a massive bot farm consisting of roughly 200,000 "suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts," including hundreds that appear to have been trying to manipulate debate in the U.S. over artificial intelligence, data centers, and the associated energy costs. ... According to X, about 200 accounts within the bot farm network...
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We reported earlier on 14 recent wins that are going to help the country, from immigration actions to economic actions. But now there's a new report from two U.S. officials about a deal that's in the offing. "Calling this deal huge would be an understatement," one of the officials said. "It is massive."The Trump administration is in talks with Venezuela's interim government about taking an ownership stake in the South American country's enormous oil resources, two U.S. officials tell Axios.Why it matters: The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the...
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So close, and yet so far. Only last week, Canada and the US were finally on the cusp of reaching a long awaited trade deal. Already Trump had announced the joyous news on Truth Social, already Canadian prime minister Mark Carney had celebrated securing the “best terms” for Canada and called for provinces to lift the ban on US alcohol. Then, somehow, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. Late last Friday, Carney told Canadian negotiators to walk away, saying Washington was offering “a bad deal.” Trump promptly reimposed the 50 percent tariffs on goods imported from Canada that...
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On Thursday, Florida became the first state to bar recipients of the Temporary Cash Assistance program (TCA) from using those funds on purchases like tattoos and body piercings, theme park tickets, video games, vaping products, and other items that are not considered "basic needs." It is a move that the Trump administration hopes other states will adopt. TCA is a program funded through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, separate from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. However, individuals can be recipients of both programs. The Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and...
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