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ZDNET's key takeaways Agentic AI technology is marked by a lack of disclosure about risks. Some systems are worse than others. AI developers need to step up and take responsibility. Agentic technology is moving fully into the mainstream of artificial intelligence with the announcement this week that OpenAI has hired Peter Steinberg, the creator of the open-source software framework OpenClaw. The OpenClaw software attracted heavy attention last month not only for its enabling of wild capabilities -- agents that can, for example, send and receive email on your behalf -- but also for its dramatic security flaws, including the ability...

President Donald Trump raged over some disappointing economic news shortly before his Commerce Department delivered it to the public on Friday morning. “The Democrat Shutdown cost the U.S.A. at least two points in GDP. That’s why they are doing it, in mini form, again. No Shutdowns!” declared the president in a 7:50 a.m. Truth Social post. “Also, LOWER INTEREST RATES. ‘Two Late’ Powell is the WORST!!!,” he added. Less than an hour later, his administration announced that the United States’ GDP grew at an annualized rate of 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The 43-day government shutdown last fall...

The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by The New York Times. The women said Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department’s building on Constitution Avenue. One of the incidents, during working hours on the morning of Dec. 18, was recorded on office security cameras, the people said. The video showed Dr. DeRemer giving one of the women an...

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) declared on Thursday that he “WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED” following a report suggesting an aide committed suicide after an alleged affair with the congressman. “I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death. The public should IMMEDIATELY have full access to the Uvalde Police report,” Gonzales wrote on X. The congressman included a message from a lawyer offering a non-disclosure agreement and settlement. I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death. The public should IMMEDIATELY have full access to...

A new report from City Journal‘s Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo takes readers inside all that is alleged about Nick Fuentes’s involvement in the Ali Alexander-underage photos scandal. Fuentes and Alexander, both of whom are far-right activists, have a longstanding relationship, and the latter is perhaps best known for having allegedly solicited nude photos from two underage boys, including a 15-year-old. According to Thorpe and Rufo, Fuentes allegedly knew about Alexander’s proclivities before Milo Yiannopoulos, another far-right activist, publicized them in 2023. From Thorpe and Rufo’s report: On a livestream in 2017, Fuentes said there was “abundant evidence” that Alexander...

The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.Why it matters: A U.S. military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than last month's pinpoint operation in Venezuela, sources say.The sources noted it would likely be a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign that's much broader in scope — and more existential for the regime — than the Israeli-led 12-day war last June, which the U.S. eventually joined to take out Iran's underground nuclear facilities. Such a war would have...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) grilled Trump administration officials in charge of immigration enforcement during a Senate hearing on Thursday. Paul confronted them with a breakdown of the video of Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, asking them if their officers acted professionally in killing a man he claimed did not show any aggression. “Today, we explore the rules of engagement, the rules for the proper use of force, and the rules for the use of force that are proportional to the threat,” Paul said. “My goal with this hearing is not to condemn or to argue to defund ICE; my...

As Elon Musk tries to sweep his Mars ambitions under the rug like an embarrassing teenage phase, he’s now shifting focus to the Moon — with no less eye-brow raising ideas. According to new reporting from the New York Times, Musk told employees at xAI — his AI company recently acquired by SpaceX — that it needs to construct a factory on the Moon to churn out AI satellites. And to launch the satellites into space, he says, it needs to build an enormous electromagnetic catapult. Sci-fi readers already know where this is going: Musk is thinking about building a...

President Donald Trump went off on Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) on Wednesday, branding him a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — who got it all “WRONG” when he claimed the president was only inviting Republican governors to an upcoming annual meeting. Trump’s searing response came after the Associated Press reported the bipartisan meeting was “unraveling” on Monday. Stitt — who chairs the National Governors Association — said the group was ditching the annual meeting because Trump had not invited his Democratic colleagues, who are equal members of the group. Trump posted on Truth Social that he was only...

Representative Jamie Raskin has said unredacted copies of certain documents in the Epstein files appear to contradict President Donald Trump’s longstanding assertion that he barred the late sex offender from his Florida club. *** the Maryland Democrat said one of the documents he reviewed at the Justice Department’s new satellite office in Washington, D.C., was an email from Jeffrey Epstein to his co‑conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. He said the email included details relayed by Epstein’s lawyers about a conversation with Trump’s attorneys around 2009. Raskin*** said Trump was quoted as saying that while Epstein was never a member of his Mar-a-Lago...

The Washington Post Publisher and Chief Executive Will Lewis announced Saturday evening he would depart after just two years at the paper, a tenure marked by controversy and crisis.Lewis called his time "two years of transformation" in his resignation note, but it was defined by turbulence rather than a clear path, and it ended with brutal job cuts. The paper's chief financial officer, Jeff D'Onofrio, will serve as acting CEO. More than a third of the newsroom was laid off Wednesday after Lewis' promises of radical innovations failed to staunch several years of annual losses in the tens of millions...

It’s known as “Don Colossus.” At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Trump, mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf. For more than a year, the golden statue has been at the center of one of the stranger moneymaking ventures of the Trump era. A group of cryptocurrency investors paid $300,000 to have a sculptor create it as a tribute to Mr. Trump, an outspoken crypto proponent. Then they used it to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT....

Attorney General Pam Bondi has admitted that the Justice Department (DOJ) made mistakes in handling the Jeffrey Epstein files, including errors in redacting sensitive information, according to a letter sent to federal judges. The disclosures, detailed in a court filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, come amid mounting scrutiny of the department’s handling of victim privacy and compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Under the bill, which was signed into law on November 19, 2025, the Justice Department was required to release all unclassified records, communications, and investigative materials concerning Epstein within...

Jeannine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, on Monday threatened jail time for anyone who enters the capital with a gun. In remarks on Fox News that could deepen a growing rift between gun owners and the Trump administration, Ms. Pirro declared that if anyone brings “a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else.” Her remarks prompted swift pushback from the Republican Party’s pro-Second Amendment wing, which was thrown...

“You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back.” Pirro said on Fox News Monday in part, adding, “I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else.” D.C. law requires firearm owners to register their weapons with local police and bars residents from registering certain semiautomatic rifles, effectively preventing civilian ownership of those models in the district, Axios reports.

In a new interview, the former Republican congresswoman also suggested that baby boomers are the most "brainwashed generation" Former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused one-time ally President Donald Trump of abandoning the core promises behind his Make America Great Again campaign. “MAGA is, I think, people are realizing, it was all a lie,” she said on The Kim Iverson Show on Wednesday, Jan. 28. “It was a big lie for the people.” Greene, 51, claimed the Trump administration is focused on serving “big, big donors,” including foreign countries. “And if they’re donating to all these things, those are the...

When asked whether Martin still served in the role, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News that he continued on in a separate role, as pardon attorney. Trump loyalist Ed Martin is out as leader of the Justice Department’s “weaponization” effort that is investigating prosecutors who launched past probes into President Donald Trump and his allies, two people familiar with the discussions tell NBC News. When asked whether Martin still served in the role, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News that Martin continued to serve in a separate role, as pardon attorney.“President Trump appointed Ed Martin as Pardon Attorney...

U.S. and European officials are growing increasingly worried as hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. energy assistance previously pledged for Ukraine remain unreleased, even as a bone-cold winter pushes the nation's war‑damaged power grid to the brink, said several sources familiar with the matter. The funds in question were originally slated to be distributed by the U.S. Agency for ​International Development to help Ukraine import liquefied natural gas and rebuild energy infrastructure damaged by Russian strikes, said the sources, who include a U.S. official and a Ukrainian official. But after USAID was effectively shuttered in the ‌opening weeks of...

Democratic lawmakers on Thursday slammed President Trump over comments he made about wanting to “drive housing prices up” for people who own their homes, with one congresswoman telling followers that he “doesn’t care about making your life more affordable.”During a Cabinet meeting earlier Thursday, the president said he wants to keep homeowners “wealthy.”“We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn’t work very hard can buy a home,” he said. “I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes. And they can...

Donald Trump represents everything that the Davos crowd hates – and it is unlikely they are any more well-disposed towards him after being forced to listen to more than an hour of the president’s rambling speech today. He is a protectionist, not a free trader. He thinks the climate crisis is a hoax and is suspicious of multilateral organisations. He prefers power plays to dialogue and he doesn’t have any time for the “woke” capitalism that Davos has been keen to promote, with its focus on gender equality and ethical investment. The shindig’s organisers, the World Economic Forum (WEF), had...