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Federal officials are scrambling after a powerful new artificial intelligence (AI) model demonstrated the ability to hack virtually every major operating system and web browser, triggering urgent warnings from top government and financial leaders.
AI giant Anthropic’s new system, known as “Mythos,” is being kept under tight restrictions.
However, insiders say the threat is already serious enough that the U.S. government is racing to understand it before it’s too late.
Treasury Rushes to Access High-Risk AI
According to reports, the U.S. Treasury Department is urgently seeking access to Anthropic’s restricted model
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PHALABORWA, South Africa — Two enormous sandlike dunes at an old chemical processing plant in South Africa are at the center of an exploratory U.S.-backed project to extract highly sought-after rare earth elements from industrial mining waste.
The Phalaborwa Rare Earths Project has U.S. support through a $50 million equity investment by the government’s International Development Finance Corporation and is part of accelerated U.S. efforts to reduce reliance on economic rival China for the minerals crucial for making electronic devices, robotics, defense systems, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
Countries have identified dozens of minerals, including copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel, as critical because they are essential for new technologies. The 17 rare earth elements are a subset of them.
President Donald Trump has made expanding U.S. access to critical minerals, including rare earth elements, a central policy to counter China. The Trump administration said this year it will deploy nearly $12 billion to create its own strategic reserve.
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Big data, artificial intelligence and advanced pricing algorithms make it easier than ever for companies to fine-tune prices for individual products to closely reflect their unique value and cost. The conventional wisdom is straightforward: better data, better algorithms and sharper segmentation should produce better profits. But new research suggests that the most profitable answer isn’t always more fine-grained pricing across a product line. In fact, it is fewer, better-chosen price points.
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The decision will make it more difficult to take businesses to court that had contracts with the federal government.
The Supreme Court on Friday sent a lawsuit seeking to hold oil and gas companies liable for damage to the Louisiana coast back to the federal courts (SCOTUSblog).
The plaintiff bar took a big loss at the Supreme Court on Friday, which means a win for the economy and rule of law. In a unanimous decision (Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish), Justices made it harder to raid businesses by holding that federal contractors can’t be hauled into state courts for claims relating to their government work (Wall Street Journal).
Justice Alito didn’t participate because he has stock in one of the companies involved in the dispute. At the center of the case was whether or not Chevron could move their case from state courts to federal courts via the “federal officer removal statute.” Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, said indeed they can: Held: Chevron has plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged crude-oil production and the performance of its federal avgas refining duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one—and has therefore satisfied the “relating to” requirement of the federal officer removal statute (Supreme Court).
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The capabilities of leading AI models continue to accelerate, and the largest AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are hurtling toward IPOs later this year. Yet resentment toward AI continues to simmer, and in some cases has boiled over, especially in the United States, where local governments are beginning to embrace restrictions or outright bans on new data center development.
It’s a lot to keep track of, but the 2026 edition of the AI Index from Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence center pulls it off. The report, which comes in at over 400 pages, includes dozens of data points and graphs that approach the topic from multiple angles, from benchmark scores to investment and public perception.
As in prior years (see our coverage from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025), we’ve read the report and identified the trends that encapsulate the state of AI in 2026.
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On an AstroTurf lawn in Berkeley, California, one recent Friday, content creators used to making videos about romance novels, climate change and tech tips got advice on covering a more theoretical topic: How to spread the message that rogue artificial intelligence could wipe out humankind.
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- Oil prices jump after U.S. seizes Iranian vessel, imperiling ceasefire The Washington Post
- Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Sends Mixed Signals on Talks After U.S. Seizes Ship The New York Times
- U.S. seizes Iranian-flagged ship, Warsh’s big week, Cursor funding and more in Morning Squawk CNBC
- Live updates: Pakistan prepares for upcoming peace talks despite US seizure of Iranian cargo ship AP News
- Oil and Gas Prices Surge After U.S. Navy Seizes Iranian-Flagged Cargo Ship Democracy Now!
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The U.N. Navy is aggressively enforcing the blockade against Iran, according to a U.S. official who said two oil tankers attempting to leave Iran were intercepted and turned back by an American destroyer on Tuesday.
The unnamed U.S. official told Reuters that two tankers departed from Iran’s port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, only to be intercepted by a U.S. Navy destroyer that instructed them by radio to turn around. Both ships complied with the order.
Chabahar is a port city on the southeastern coast of Iran. It was originally constructed in 1983, to give Iran alternatives to shipping through the Persian Gulf during the long and bloody Iran-Iraq War.
In recent years, the Indian government made about $500 million in investments to expand the two major port complexes at Chabahar, giving them more deep-water berths for large cargo vessels.
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We told you that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would be bad, and the democrat socialist has proven to be as terrible or perhaps even worse than we warned.
He’s continued his antisemitic rhetoric and demeaning of police, wants to tax the wealthy out of existence (or at least, out of the state), and is striving to make DEI great again — just what nobody needs.
On Sunday, he announced that the city’s first city-run grocery store will open in East Harlem, and it will cost $30 million to build and take over a year to complete.
Trump could probably build a dozen of these for $30 million. Why so much? Union wages play a part, but that doesn’t explain it all, considering Mamdani had earlier promised five stores for a mere $70 million:
Even assuming New York City’s priciest union-driven construction costs, a standard-sized 25,000-square-foot grocery store should only be about $15 million to build, said Adam Lehodey, an expert at the Manhattan Institute.
“Thirty million dollars for one store is exceptionally high, considering land prices are a significant part of the capital costs of new construction, and the city has announced that rents will be waived,” he said.
The ghosts of the old Soviet Union leaders are beaming with pride when they watch this video:
Muslim Democrat NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is planning to open the first of his “Free” city-owned grocery stores in East Harlem next year.
The communist takeover of NYC is in full swing pic.twitter.com/yeCH6lW5oY
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 13, 2026
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Don’t look now, but Big Oil is making big moves to secure positions in the expanding Venezuelan oil industry as part of the Trump Administration’s plans to revitalize the country’s economy.
On Monday, Chevron officials signed a pair of deals to expand the company’s footprint in the prolific Orinoco Belt as Shell prepares to ink a major deal of its own later this week.
Make no mistake: These deals didn’t happen in a vacuum. They are the direct result of the Trump administration’s bold decision to remove Nicolás Maduro in January, launch a $100 billion reconstruction plan for the country’s shattered energy sector, and push through sweeping reforms to Venezuela’s hydrocarbon law. After years of socialist mismanagement that turned one of the world’s richest oil nations into an economic basket case, sanity is finally returning.
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Nearly every week, the headlines about AI are dominated by the news of the latest model. A few days ago, Meta announced its newest model called Muse Spark – its first under its revamped AI division. According to their internal benchmarking tests, the new model is competitive with leading rivals across several tasks.