Officials altered their views on the economy, raising their outlook on inflation for 2026 to 3.6% on headline and 3.3% for core, which excludes food and energy. At the last update in March, committee members anticipated 2.7% rates for both measures. They also slightly lowered their projection for gross domestic product growth to 2.2%, down 0.2 percentage point from March, and cut the unemployment projection to 4.3%, down 0.1 percentage point.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the US will kick off a six-month review of its military presence in Europe as leaders in the region brace for a plan for deep cuts to American support for the continent. President Donald Trump's administration has floated plans to slash military assets the Pentagon would send to defend Europe in case of an attack, raising questions about how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would replace those capabilities. Hegseth's NATO counterparts urged him to at least coordinate the withdrawal with European capitals. "I'm announcing today a six-month Department of War review that will examine America's force posture and basing in Europe," Hegseth said at the start of a meeting of defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, using the administration's designation for the Department of Defense. Read more
For years, the Chinese auto industry has employed a hostile price war to kneecap global competitors. Armed with massive state subsidies, cheap raw materials, and an aggressive "scale-first" business model, Chinese automakers flooded the market with electric vehicles priced so low that legacy manufacturers stood no chance to compete. How did they do it? Simple, they couldn't. They did it anyway. Reports from CarNewsChina show that Chinese automakers have been selling vehicles at a loss until a recent law passed by the Chinese government banned below-cost sales of new vehicles. Read more
Jackson Lahmeyer, a pro-Israel MAGA pastor who inveighs against "Sharia law" and wants Jews to accept Jesus, dropped out of the race for Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District after a Sexting scandal exposed him as the hypocrite and fraud that he is. Dummkopf Trumpf quickly rescinded his support for the phony Christian leader of "Pastors for Trumpf."
America is choc-a-bloc full of phony Christians, child molesters, and sexual deviants. Who knew?
Well-funded and heavily-armed by the hard-working American taxpayer, Amnesty International reports the Israeli Death Forces (IDF) are committing unlawful mass evacuation' orders in Lebanon, displacing and putting 1.4m people into crisis. Since 7 October 2023, the US sent a staggering $22.76bn in support of Israel's Muslim-killing operations in the Middle East and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
The Democratic Party paid a steep, incalculable price on Tuesday 5 Nov 2024
The presidents of the US and Iran have signed an initial peace deal aiming to end the war, allowing it to immediately take effect.
GLAAD reports AI systems are replicating the same anti-LGBTQ bias and misinformation problems that have long plagued social platforms. One example: Meta's updated Llama 4 model recommends conversion "therapy" in response to queries and moderation systems that wrongly suppress legitimate LGBTQ content.
Fight hatred and intolerance
President signs memorandum at Palace of Versailles where Germans were humiliated after losing first world war. The Trump administration declared a "major win" but likewise the Hezbollah chief, Naim Qassem, proclaimed a "great victory" as the text of the 14-point US-Iran memorandum of understanding became public. Iran's chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said: "The agreement is a record of US failure. People will see it and judge." Irna, Iran's official state news agency, released a photograph of Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, holding up a Persian-language document apparently showing his signature alongside that of Trump. According to Reuters, Ghalibaf told state TV: "Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation; it was not even comparable."
President Trump appears to be completely smitten with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, professing his love for the authoritarian leader at the G7 summit in France on Wednesday. "I met him early in the campaign when Crooked Hillary and I were running against each other, right, and I was told that the president of Egypt is here. That was a big deal. It's still a big deal for me to be with the great president of Egypt, but not as big as it used to be before I ran. So he was in a hotel and I met him, and we fell in love. Deeply in love," Trump said, while seated next to the Egyptian leader. We had great chemistry, and I stayed twice as long as I was supposed."
Four years ago, Tennessee became the first state to allow adults to buy the antiparasitic drug ivermectin from a pharmacy without first seeing a doctor. Pharmacies can use a pre-written, blanket prescription to sell to just about anyone who walks through their doors. The drug is now marketed and sold across the state in roadside shops and small-town strip malls with little oversight from health authorities. Highway billboards advertise ivermectin as "Available Without a Prescription in Tennessee!" while dozens of pharmacies offer highly concentrated pills, sometimes at 10 or 20 times the potency of a standard tablet. Some pharmacy websites now offer the drug as a treatment for COVID-19, "long haul vax symptoms," diabetes, or cancer -- despite no evidence of its effectiveness for those purposes -- while the new law largely gives pharmacists immunity from lawsuits or professional sanctions related to ivermectin.
Jesse Welles - 3 hours ago
Because the Trillionaire Thread was closed.
Congress turned down President Donald Trump's request for funding for his modernization efforts at the White House " mainly out of concern that he would tap taxpayer dollars for his proposed ballroom. Now, the president is turning to a pot of money Congress approved last year for the U.S. Secret Service. Records show that the White House Office of Management and Budget last week quietly apportioned $352 million from Trump's tax cuts law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, for "White House Security Measures."
Iran's national team has been subject to travel restrictions since the FIFA tournament kicked off last week which is impacting their match performance. For just one example, after their 2-2 tie with New Zealand in Los Angeles on Monday, Team Melli was forced to fly all the way back to their base camp in Mexico on the very same day. The Iranian team points out FIFA has not advocated enough for them in this long multi-national tournament.
Team Melli honoring Minab school massacre
A hearing in Luigi Mangione's state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was postponed until Wednesday after prosecutors said they failed to inform his jailors that he was needed in court. Read more
When the US Department of Justice approved Paramount Skydance's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday, a DOJ press release said "a rigorous eight-month investigation led by the [Antitrust] Division's career staff" showed that the $111 billion deal would not harm competition or American consumers.
JD Vance's appearance on The View is raising eyebrows -- but not for his heated political debate with Ana Navarro or his admitting to being a "conspiracy theorist" about the Epstein files. Instead, people who tuned into the ABC daytime talk show episode Tuesday to see the vice president discuss his new book, Communion, were shocked by his bold TV makeup. Vance, 41, came on the show appearing to wear eyeliner -- which his wife, Usha Vance, has said in the past is not makeup, but actually his thick eyelashes -- and a heavy amount of orange bronzer. Read more
