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Blurb:

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson voiced skepticism Tuesday on President Donald Trump’s move to temporarily cap credit card interest rates.

“I think that would probably deprive an awful lot of people of access to credit around the country,” Thune told reporters. “Credit cards would probably become debit cards.”

“That’s not something I’m out there advocating for — let’s put it that way,” he added.

Thune’s comments come after Trump posted on Truth Social that he was calling for a one-year cap of 10 percent interest on credit cards starting Jan. 20.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump announced Monday, January 12, that Iran’s primary trading partners will be met with 25 percent tariffs on most goods. The announcement comes amid several days of sustained unrest across the country, which has left dozens of anti-regime protesters dead, according to figures from several human rights organizations.

The measure targets nations such as China, India, Turkey, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, which are among Iran’s primary trading partners. The White House stated that this policy applies to any goods imported into the United States from those countries, potentially increasing costs for American businesses and consumers.

“Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America. This Order is final and conclusive,” the president posted on Truth Social.

Blurb:

ExxonMobil may see itself shut out of Venezuela.

President Trump hinted that ExxonMobil may find itself blocked from making investments in Venezuela after the CEO claimed the country was “inevitable.”

On Friday, the CEO of ExxonMobil, while at the White House, expressed doubts about whether investing in Venezuela will yield good returns for his company due to the current laws in the country.

In response to the CEO’s comments, Trump said Exxon Mobil is “playing cute.”

Blurb:

President Trump has made lowering prescription drug prices a clear priority, repeatedly arguing that Americans should not be forced to pay more for medicine than patients in other developed countries. Drugmakers have publicly welcomed that message. But their actions tell a more complicated story.

First reported by Reuters this week, pharmaceutical companies are raising list prices on more than 350 drugs for 2026. Many of the increases were small, but others were not, including sharp hikes on certain hospital-administered and specialty medicines that patients and providers rely on every day.

Blurb:

The U.S. labor market ended 2025 on a soft note, with job creation in December less than expected, according to a report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 50,000 for the month, lower than the downwardly revised 56,000 in November and short of the Dow Jones estimate for 73,000.

At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, compared to the forecast for 4.5%.

The report presented a muddy view of the labor market, with companies reporting a low level of hiring but households showing employment gains.

In addition, revisions brought totals down for the prior months. The November total saw a slight downward revision of 8,000 to the payrolls number, while October’s loss was even more than originally reported, now at 173,000 compared to the prior estimate of 105,000.

Blurb:

President Masoud Pezeshkian strikes conciliatory tone in interview broadcast on state TV but accuses US and Israel of fuelling unrest that has killed dozens.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has pledged to overhaul Iran’s struggling economy, saying his government is “ready to listen to its people” after two weeks of increasingly violent nationwide demonstrations.

Pezeshkian adopted a conciliatory approach during a televised interview on state television on Sunday, saying his embattled administration was determined to resolve the country’s economic problems while accusing the United States and Israel of fomenting deadly unrest.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his administration is moving to ban major investors from buying up single-family homes in the U.S. in an attempt to lower housing prices.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that former President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have caused “record high inflation,” which has caused the “American Dream” to become “increasingly out of reach for far too many people.”

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Trump wrote in the social media post. “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.”

“People live in homes, not corporations,” the president emphasized.

Blurb:

President Trump said on Truth Social Wednesday that Venezuela will use the money that it draws from a recent oil sale deal with the U.S. on “ONLY American Made Products.”

Those purchases could include agricultural products, medicines, medical devices and equipment needed to fix the country’s beleaguered electrical grid, Mr. Trump wrote.

“In other words, Venezuela is committing to doing business with the United States of America as their principal partner – A wise choice, and a very good thing for the people of Venezuela, and the United States,” the president continued.

Since Maduro’s capture, Mr. Trump has focused on Venezuela’s oil industry, pressing U.S. companies to enter the country — a move he has suggested could help rebuild the oil-rich nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

Blurb:

 

As Venezuelan detainee Diógenes Angulo left a prison in San Francisco de Yare after a year and five months behind bars, his family appeared to be in shock.

He was detained two days before the 2024 presidential election after he posted a video of an opposition demonstration in Barinas, the home state of the late President Hugo Chávez.

As he emerged from the jail in San Francisco de Yare, approximately an hour’s drive south of the capital Caracas, he learned that former President Nicolás Maduro had been captured by U.S. forces Jan. 3 in a nighttime raid in the capital.

Angulo told The Associated Press that his faith gave him the strength to keep going during his detention.

Blurb:

The UK government says X limiting Grok AI image edits to users who pay a monthly fee is “insulting” to victims of misogyny and sexual violence.

It follows backlash after Elon Musk’s AI engine digitally changed images of people by undressing them – something it says it now can only do for those who pay a monthly instalment.

The BBC’s technology editor Zoe Kleinman explains what’s happened and why.

Blurb:

The UK government “wants any excuse for censorship”, Elon Musk has said, amid a growing backlash over deepfake sexual images produced by his social media site X’s artificial intelligence tool.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said X needed “to get a grip of” its AI chatbot Grok, and he had asked media regulator Ofcom for “all options to be on the table”.

Blurb:

This week, President Trump sent shockwaves through Wall Street when he announced via Truth Social his plan to ban large corporations and foreign entities from purchasing single-family homes. The proposal targets institutional investors like Blackstone and other real estate investment trusts that have been buying up American homes by the hundreds of thousands —  driving up prices and locking out first-time buyers.

Political support came swiftly from both sides of the aisle. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, announced that he would introduce legislation to codify the ban, saying, “Millions of young Americans have been locked out of the American Dream.” Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.V., called it “huge,” while Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., signaled support. Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she’s been advocating for years to limit Wall Street from buying up America’s homes.

The market reaction was severe. Invitation Homes tumbled 6 percent. Blackstone fell 9 percent. American Homes 4 Rent dropped 6.3 percent. And Wall Street understood completely: Trump means business. But for Main Street families, this proposal offers real hope.

Blurb:

The Department of Health and Human Services will be freezing funding for childcare services in five blue states, the Trump administration announced on Monday.

The New York Post reported that over $10 billion in childcare funding would be paused for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York after funds were being funneled to illegal immigrants. Further, all 50 states will be required to provide increased data before releasing funds for childcare.

HHS further announced that it would close a Biden-era loophole that allowed for payouts without verifying attendance. Under the new guidelines, states can require payouts to be granted by attendance rather than enrollment and upfront payouts are no longer required.

“Paying providers upfront based on paper enrollment instead of actual attendance invites abuse,” Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement. “In Minnesota, we’ve seen credible and widespread allegations of fraudulent daycare providers who were not caring for children at all. The reforms we are enacting will make fraud harder to perpetrate.”

Blurb:

The U.S. strike on Venezuela has renewed focus on the country’s oil sector, which includes some of the richest crude reserves in the world.

“We’re going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars, it will be paid for by the oil companies directly. And we’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be,” President Trump said in a public address on Saturday following the attack, in which the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Here’s what to know about Venezuela’s oil industry.

Blurb:

Artificial intelligence is easily the most deceptive technological innovation of the 21st century. Its ease of use and the lightning-fast reflexes with which it spits out responses belie its enormous appetite for water and energy.ChatGPT took the world by storm when it launched in late 2023, signalling an era of intelligence demand marked by seamless, conversational interactions between user and machine But behind every smooth exchange lies a complex physical process. Modern AI is built on vast neural networks trained on trillions of words, images, and numbers. This training, to help models learn to predict the next word or recognise a pattern, involves processing colossal datasets repeatedly through graphics processing units, or GPUs. These chips, originally designed for rendering video game graphics, have become AI workhorses because they can perform thousands of mathematical operations simultaneously. But this speed comes at a price: intense heat.