Posts by Amelia Frost
No Signs Of US Recession, Treasury Secretary Says
There are currently no signs that the United States has entered a recession despite the world’s largest economy recording a contraction in the first quarter, the US Treasury Secretary said Tuesday. “I believe in data, and there is nothing in the data that shows that we are in a recession,” Scott Bessent told lawmakers during…
Read MoreUS Trade Deficit Hit Fresh Record Before New Trump Tariffs
US President Donald Trump introduced sweeping tariffs in April 2025 AFP The US trade deficit reached a new record in March, according to fresh government data published Tuesday, as imports surged ahead of President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff rollout. The overall trade gap of the world’s largest economy jumped 14.0 percent to $140.5 billion…
Read MoreThe Stakes for OpenAI’s Plan B
OpenAI backtracks OpenAI’s decision to scale back its ambitious corporate reorganization has drawn lots of scrutiny, including what the plan means for artificial intelligence safety, potential profits for investors and an ongoing fight with Elon Musk. What’s emerging is that in some ways, how OpenAI operates isn’t changing much. But there are still plenty of…
Read MoreTrump Administration Freezes Future Federal Research Grants To Harvard
The U.S. Department of Education has informed Harvard University that it will freeze billions of dollars in future research grants and other forms of federal aid until the institution complies with a series of demands set forth by the Trump administration. A senior department official revealed the decision on Monday, marking a dramatic escalation in…
Read MoreEU To Lay Out Plan To Cut Last Russian Gas Supplies
The EU on Tuesday is due to unveil a keenly anticipated plan to phase out its remaining gas ties to Moscow, a challenge given Europe’s longstanding dependence on Russian fossil fuels. EU energy chief Dan Jorgensen will set out the measures, which were delayed as Brussels waited to see whether talks between Russia and the…
Read MoreTrump’s Return to Power Elevates Ever Fringier Conspiracy Theories
People who question whether the Earth is round — a fact understood by the ancient Greeks and taught to American children in elementary school — might have been political pariahs a decade ago. Now, they’re running local Republican parties in Georgia and Minnesota and seeking public office in Alabama. A prominent far-right activist who has…
Read MorePutin Gears Up For ‘Grandest’ Victory Day Amid Ukraine Conflict
Russian President Vladimir Putin will address the “grandest” ever annual Victory Day parade in Moscow on Friday, evoking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II to rally support for his troops fighting in Ukraine. Russia marks the event more than three years into its offensive, and after pummelling Ukraine with a…
Read MoreHamas Says No Point In Further Gaza Truce Talks
A senior Hamas official said Tuesday the group was no longer interested in truce talks with Israel and urged the international community to halt Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza. “There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza…
Read MoreGetting Humans Out of the Observability Loop with Causely
Causely is a new player in modern DevOps. Their pitch is simple: your observability systems are too noisy. It takes too much time to identify root causes among all of the alerts and dashboards. And these issues are being exacerbated by the rise of AI. Their founder, Shmuel Kliger, has been thinking about IT Operations…
Read MoreTariffs Could Wreck What Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Have Gained
It was always going to be a hard year for Bangladesh. Last summer, amid an economic collapse, protesters toppled a tyrant and pushed the country to the brink of chaos. Then a month ago, as a new government was still working to steady Bangladesh’s economy, came the devastating news that the United States was placing…
Read MoreHow Trump’s Closing a Tariff Loophole Will Hurt UPS and FedEx
Less than a year ago, executives from FedEx and UPS were talking about how they were handling a flood of packages from China to American consumers. “Explosive” is how Carol Tomé, UPS’s chief executive, in July described the volume of shipments from e-commerce companies selling Chinese goods in the United States. And FedEx’s chief customer…
Read MoreWait For Vatican White Smoke Fires Up Social Media
Hype has been building on social media around the Catholic Church’s secretive, centuries-old tradition of conclaves to elect a new pope, animating users from the White House on down. US President Donald Trump on Saturday posted an apparently AI-generated image of himself wearing papal vestments and sitting on a throne, one finger directed to the…
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