Author: nick

[ad_1] The Shrinking World of Joe Biden [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Crypto and blockchain experts say this week’s moves show the two established finance companies are increasingly competing for control of the infrastructure behind digital payments. Two of the world’s biggest payment networks made major blockchain moves this week, highlighting what some have described as a growing competition between the two to control the infrastructure behind tokenized payments. Swift said Tuesday it would expand a blockchain-based settlement network after completing pilot work with 17 global banks, and is now working with more than 40 financial institutions. Stripe followed immediately after with an unsolicited $53 billion bid for PayPal, a deal that would combine one of…

[ad_1] I just learned about this Large Libel Models case from China (to add to the nine U.S. cases I’ve seen, plus others from Norway and Germany); an excerpt from Mengchun Zhang (China IP Case Updates) of JunZeJun Law Offices on May 24, 2026, reporting on a Mar. 12, 2026 decision: Nanjing Intermediate Court: False AI-Generated Statement that a Lawyer Was Sentenced to Three Years’ Imprisonment Constituted Defamation … The court distinguished between ordinary search suggestions and AI-generated answers. While search suggestions such as “related searches” were not found infringing, the court found that the relevant “AI Smart Answer” content…

[ad_1] US officials said that President Donald Trump decided to hold off on ordering an escalation in the war against Iran.  Last week, The New York Post and Axios reported that President Donald Trump was closing in on a decision to authorize a major attack on Iran. It is unclear what the operation would involve, with some speculation it would include strikes on Pickaxe Mountain and sending US troops into Iran to capture Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.  On Friday, Trump met with top advisers about ordering new operations against Iran. Top military officials, including the chairman of the Joint…

[ad_1] Trump announces his “Liberation Day” tariffs. April 2025. (CNP/AdMedia/Newscom)   I have previously written about how Trump’s new Section 301 tariffs are illegal and harmful. The same goes for his earlier IEEPA tariffs (invalidated by the Supreme Court in a case I helped litigate), and Section 122 tariffs (struck down by the US Court of International Trade in May, though litigation continues). In an insightful recent article, economist David Hebert highlights an underappreciated type of harm caused by Trump’s tariff policies that cannot be fully remedied by court decisions: [T]here’s a far worse outcome from this that cannot be undone…

[ad_1] Kathy Gannon Substack X.com White House The White House Correspondents should take a moment to be ashamed. Independent journalism is the cornerstone, or certainly a pillar of democracy and while our independence has been on a steady downhill slide, this annual dinner shames us all. The White House Correspondents’ glitzy annual dinner celebrates a cozy relationship between reporters and the politically powerful people they are meant to hold accountable, seriously undermining journalistic independence and, in my view, our dignity. It also suggests they don’t understand the damage these public displays of opulent schmoozing with the very folks we…

[ad_1] DARPA is looking to model just about every aspect of human health, biology, and physiology to advance military medicine with its proposed Multiscale Reasoning for Human Physiology program. On Monday, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put out a request for information (RFI) for its planned Multiscale Reasoning For Human Physiology program. For the military and operational medicine applications, DARPA is looking to leverage multi-scale modeling solutions for just about every injury, illness or ailment that soldiers face, including: Combat casualty care Exposure to acute chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosives, including acute toxic industrial chemical and materials Hemorrhage and shock Traumatic brain injury…

[ad_1] Scourge of the Spin Machine War has always drawn in confident prophets. But if you wanted to design the worst possible system for discussing war, you would build one that rewards confidence over caution and attention over accuracy. In many respects, this is today’s media. Carl von Clausewitz observed: “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.” Yet for more than four years, many of the biggest names commenting on the Russia–Ukraine war have offered one confident forecast after another.…

[ad_1] Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Trump’s war on dissent. Republican-controlled House committee subpoenas BreakThrough News in effort to force outlet to turn over financial records. The Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News in an effort to force the outlet to turn over financial records and records of internal communications. BreakThrough News, a nonprofit media and educational organization aligned with grassroots social movements throughout the world, said, “For years, Republican lawmakers have painted a target on our backs, falsely claiming that our political views and reporting are part of some foreign plot.” “Make no mistake, this is a…

[ad_1] From Gavin Newsom in California to Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, the debate over Medicare for All continues to expose the tension between campaign promises, corporate influence, and the political power of the health insurance industry. Joshua Scheer Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary is increasingly becoming a referendum on who really shapes the party’s agenda: voters or the powerful corporate interests that finance modern campaigns. With David Sirota reporting examines why Whitmer’s endorsement cannot be viewed as just another political calculation. Instead, he places it within the broader struggle over Medicare for All and the political influence of the health…