TikTok Faces Backlash, Outages, Competition Following Change In U.S. Ownership 01/27/2026 MediaPost
from news.google.com
06 Market
PARIS: French lawmakers on Monday (Jan 26) were set to vote on draft legislation to ban social media for under-15s, an effort championed by President Emmanuel Macron as a way to protect children from excessive screen time.
The legislation, which also provides for a ban on mobile phones in high schools, follows Australia banning social media for under-16s in December, a world first.
As social media has grown around the world, so has concern that too much screen time is arresting child development and contributing to declining mental health in minors.
“The emotions of our children and teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, either by American platforms or Chinese algorithms,” Macron said in a video broadcast on Saturday.
‘Epoch-making’: Xi Jinping urges home-grown AI breakthroughs – but flags risks South China Morning Post
from news.google.com
The U.S. and Taiwan recently reached a historic trade deal. Taiwanese companies will invest at least $250 billion in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, pledged $100 billion in U.S. investment in 2025. Taipei will provide an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees to Taiwanese companies.
Inflation rose one-tenth of a percentage point to 2.8% for the year ending in November 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday in an update to the personal consumption expenditures index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.
Thursday’s report is the last the Fed will receive before it votes on interest rates next week.
Thursday’s report includes data for both October and November, unusually, because the government shutdown prevented the scheduled release of key economic reports.
Surprise medical bills have bludgeoned most Americans. In fact, about half of insured Americans face unexpected charges every year. In 2020, Congress passed the No Surprises Act, which banned out-of-network billing rates for some services. It also entitled patients who aren’t using health insurance to a “good faith estimate” of out-of-pocket costs before receiving care. But there’s a catch that stacks the deck against patients and taxpayers: final bills within $400 of the original estimate are legally collectible.
After stinging GOP losses in November, health care “affordability” is all the rage. Voters are frustrated that every other medical appointment brings another unexpected charge and an inevitable battle of wills and wits with the billing department. Christopher Jacobs recently opined in these pages that “Republicans should stop playing into Democrats’ hands and start … reducing the underlying cost of health care.”
China’s loans to Africa plummet as Beijing pivots to strategic investments Semafor
from news.google.com
China Rewards Central American Allies With Major Projects While Nicaragua Gets Little La Prensa – Noticias de Nicaragua y el mundo
from news.google.com
Seventeen House Republicans gave California Democrats a late Christmas present this month when they crossed the aisle to vote for extending enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies for another three years.
Not only did they move these massive handouts one step closer to permanent entitlement status, but they failed to advance reforms that would actually lower health care costs, like closing the Intergovernmental Transfer loophole that has cost taxpayers tens of billions over time.
The Senate should stop this bill in its tracks and—in anticipation of pushback from those who have never seen a government expansion they didn’t like—prepare to argue to the public why propping up a broken system won’t reduce health insurance premiums. As I argued in The Hill, these subsidies just mask the true cost of government distortion.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stood before the elite crowd at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday and wasted no time in firing off an opening salvo, taking down globalist orthodoxy.
Water demand for AI expected to surge, new research says Water Finance & Management
from news.google.com
#BoycottWalgreens grows after pharmacy refuses to sell abortion pill in 20 states Mashable
from news.google.com
Elon Musk Seeks $134 Billion in Damages from OpenAI and Microsoft in Legal Battle breitbart.com
from news.google.com
U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.
Trump for months has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”
During an unrelated event at the White House about rural health care, he recounted Friday how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.
Over the past couple of weeks oil—specifically, Venezuelan oil—has been all over the headlines.
It started late on January 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, which they did early the next morning. Last week the country’s interior minister said the action killed 100 people.
Trump Invites China into US Auto Industry During Detroit Speech filmogaz.com
from news.google.com
Trump’s tariffs could be undone by one conservative doctrine: ‘Life or death’ Fox News
from news.google.com
Elon Musk says saving for retirement is unnecessary in an AI-driven future KTLA
from news.google.com
The Senate on Thursday cleared a three-bill spending package that passed the House last week, sending the measure to President Trump for his signature.
from www.washingtontimes.com
AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Yahoo Finance
from news.google.com
Congo offers manganese, copper‑cobalt, and lithium assets to US investors under minerals pact CNBC Africa
from news.google.com
New public records reveal that large volumes of U.S. currency from Mexico entered the Federal Reserve system in 2024 and 2025 through a foreign bank access program operating outside routine U.S. bank supervision.
According to Mexico Business Daily, bank disclosures, regulatory filings, and media reports show that Banco Azteca, a Mexican retail bank that previously lost U.S. correspondent banking relationships, routed bulk U.S. currency through Moneycorp Bank Limited.
Moneycorp is a Gibraltar-based financial institution with direct access to Federal Reserve cash services.
Sales by U.S. retailers rose by much more than expected in November, signaling that the household sector remains resilient and consumer spending continues to support rapid economic growth.
Retail spending rose 0.6 percent in November, exceeding even the most optimistic estimates. Analysts surveyed by Econoday expected sales to rise by around 0.2 percent, with estimates ranging from a decline of 0.5 percent to a gain of 0.4 percent.
Since the start of the year through November, sales are up 3.7 percent compared with the first 11 months of the prior year. During that period, consumer prices rose by around 2.7 percent, implying that real sales were up by one percent.
More and more people have been experiencing psychosis induced by AI chatbot use. This is concerning since chatbot use is so prevalent, especially among young people and those who are in distress and vulnerable (one recent study found that about a quarter of young adults used chatbots specifically for mental health advice).
Reassuringly, psychiatry’s stance is that anyone who experiences this was already “prone to psychosis”—that the chatbot simply triggered delusions that would have been triggered some other way. Yet there is no evidence to support this explanation, and the case reports of those who have experienced AI psychosis tell a different story.
One of the biggest problems — of many — that President Donald Trump identified under his predecessor’s regime involved the soaring cost of living to which many Americans were subjected.
By that same token, Trump also appears cognizant that one of the initiatives he supports, the investment in and proliferation of artificial intelligence, could very well lead to Americans feeling the same sort of squeeze they felt under former President Joe Biden.
Aware of that, the president took to Truth Social to issue a mandate to tech companies, saying they will not be allowed to jack up American utility bills.
Donald J. Trump Truth Social Post 06:38 PM EST 01.12.26 pic.twitter.com/kKlX348syO
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) January 12, 2026
The following content is sponsored by Americans for Limited Government.
After years of Washington politicians lining the pockets of insurance companies and anointing them “essential partners,” President Trump has called out the insurance monopoly for what it is. “Let the money go not to the big fat cats and the insurance companies that made 1,700 percent over a short period of time,” President Trump said.
“Let the money go directly to the people, where they can buy their own health care.”
The big health insurance companies that have gorged themselves at the Obamacare trough are finally being put under the spotlight and held to account. While these companies have grown richer, patients have been left paying ever-increasing premiums and deductibles with steadily decreasing care in return.
Eleven House Democrats jumped party lines to vote with their Republican counterparts in a bid to overturn regulations pushed during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.
According to Fox News, the House of Representatives voted 226-197 to overturn Biden-era regulations effectively aimed at restricting how strong shower heads could be.
Federal law already caps how much water a shower head is allowed to emit.
During the Biden administration, regulators took a broader view of that rule. They concluded that showers equipped with multiple nozzles had to be treated as a single unit, meaning the total water flow across all heads could not exceed the legal maximum.
NEW YORK — Up until this week, Wall Street has generally benefited from the Trump administration’s policies and has been supportive of the president. That relationship has suddenly soured.
When President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law in July, it pushed another significant round of tax cuts and also cut the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, at times the banking industry’s nemesis, by nearly half. Trump’s bank regulators have also been pushing a deregulatory agenda that both banks and large corporations have embraced.
But now the president has proposed a one-year, 10% cap on the interest rate on credit cards, a lucrative business for many financial institutions, and his Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that many say threatens the institution that is supposed to set interest rates free of political interference.
Former President Bill Clinton defied a House Republican committee’s subpoena Tuesday in an escalating battle over Congress’s handling of an investigation of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer threatened the former president with a contempt prosecution, while Clinton accused the Republican of mounting a partisan campaign to hide, rather than reveal, the truth about Epstein and his powerful connections.
Clinton failed to appear at a deposition for Comer’s panel Tuesday. Instead, the former president posted a letter to the chairman on social media denouncing his investigation and condemning him for resisting successful legislation to force disclosure of Justice Department files on Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
“If the government didn’t do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, for whatever reason, that should be the focus of your work – to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again. There is no evidence that you are doing so,” Clinton wrote in a letter co-signed by his wife, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has also been subpoenaed by the panel.