A jet goes blind over the Baltic, and the problem is suddenly much larger than one aircraft. An RAF plane carrying British Defense Secretary John Healey last week lost GPS for a three-hour flight after he visited British troops in Estonia, a fellow NATO ally. . Pilots used another navigation system and officials said it was unclear whether Healey's plane had been deliberately targeted. The plane landed safely -- which is precisely why the episode matters. No missile had been fired, no NATO border had been crossed in the old-fashioned sense.
Yet the alliance still had to decide whether anything serious had happened. NATO's answer to incidents like this has long been calibrated in Washington. It is typically measured, lawyerly, slow to escalate.
Former President Joe Biden filed suit against the Justice Department on Tuesday in an effort to block the release of recordings and transcripts from interviews he gave for his memoir ... read more
Meta is the latest company to trim its workforce as a result of the growing use of AI within the industry. read more
In a splashy move that signals that Taiwan remains irreplaceable to the AI industry's short-term and long-term goals, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced Wednesday that his chip company will invest $150 billion a year to make sure Taiwan remains at the "epicenter" of the "AI revolution." ... But Huang has so far not explained how Nvidia's plans in Taiwan may potentially conflict with Donald Trump's push to make the US the world's AI hub.
CBS News has not renewed the contract of Sharyn Alfonsi, the "60 Minutes" correspondent who clashed with Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss over a December report on a Salvadoran prison, according to an interview published on Wednesday in the New York Times. read more
@#14 ... Gerrymandering for political reasons legal but it's only a problem when Republicans do it. ...
Perhaps the reason is more why the Republicans do it, as opposed to the apparent lame ~both sides do it~ argument.
To wit ...
U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down North Carolina's Voter ID Law (2016)
www.npr.org
...The appeals court noted that the North Carolina Legislature "requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices" -- then, data in hand, "enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans."[emphasis mine]
The changes to the voting process "target African Americans with almost surgical precision," the circuit court wrote, and "impose cures for problems that did not exist."
The appeals court suggested that the motivation was fundamentally political -- a Republican legislature attempting to secure its power by blocking votes from a population likely to vote for Democrats....
Republicans seem to want to return to the shameful Jim Crow era of American politics.
More from the cited article ...
... The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index increased 3.8 percent from a year ago, the Commerce Department said, up from 3.5 percent in March. ...
If you leave out the inflation spike due to COVID, that 3.8% increase may be the largest since the early 1990's.
Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (1959-2026)
www.macrotrends.net
Scroll down a bit for the "annual change" graph.
Another view ...
Key inflation gauge worsens as Americans' income and spending power erodes
apnews.com
... Thursday's inflation report also showed that in addition to gasoline, prices for groceries, clothing and electricity are also on the rise, indicating that inflation may be growing more entrenched.
Inflation is notably above the Federal Reserve's target of 2%, which means Fed policymakers may decide to forego any cuts to their key short-term interest rate this year.
Some officials have signaled that the central bank's most substantial move under new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh could be a rate hike, rather than a cut.
Yet Trump and some his top officials are showing little concern about higher prices and the impact of the Iran war on Americans' financial health. ...
@#218 ... "Better Red than Democrat" is what Republicans voted for. ...
Trump supporters whose Russia shirts went viral: We're not traitors' (2018)
thehill.com
... Two men from Delaware, Ohio, who went viral after wearing custom-made T-shirts reading "I'd Rather Be A Russian Than A Democrat," are pushing back on criticism that they are "traitors."
...
Shortly after photos of the two men wearing the shirts emerged on social media, TV host Bill Maher dubbed the pair "traitors," echoing the sentiments of many others who were critical of their pro-Russia rally attire. ...
@#65 ... Exodus as stars pull out of Trump-linked 'Freedom 250' festival: 'Artists never told' ...
That is an interesting aspect of this Trump UFC debacle ...
"Stars" who were supposedly invited say they were never invited. Is that just yet another f Pres trump publishing something with the hope it may come to be true?
From the article cited in #65 ...