Three West African juntas have turned to Russia. The US has declared a stark policy shift towards three West African countries which are battling Islamist insurgents and whose military governments have broken defence ties with France and turned towards Russia. The state department announced that Nick Checker, head of its Bureau of African Affairs, would visit Mali's capital Bamako to convey the United States' respect for Mali's sovereignty and chart a new course in relations, moving past policy missteps. It adds that the US also looks forward to co-operating with Mali's allies, neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, on shared security and economic interests. Absent from the agenda is the longstanding American concern for democracy and human rights.

By rolling back auto industry fuel efficiency goals, US president Donald Trump hopes to make new cars cheaper. But prices won't drop for years, and consumers will spend more on gas in the meantime. The Trump administration says its proposal to roll back vehicle fuel economy standards, announced officially in the Oval Office on Wednesday, is an attempt to shave dollars off the ballooning cost of new cars in the US. But the intended price drops likely won't show up on dealership lots and showroom floors for months if not years, given the length of automakers' product planning schedule. It would also likely force Americans to pay more, long-term, at another place they tend to visit more frequently: the pump.

Biden administration's diplomatic dispute led to U.S. expulsion from Niger, eliminating drone surveillance capabilities needed to combat Sahel region terrorism.

After serving a federal prison sentence for violating anti-money-laundering laws and US sanctions, former crypto exchange CEO Changpeng Zhao has been pardoned by US president Donald Trump. US president Donald Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance. Zhao, widely known as CZ, pled guilty in November 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws and US sanctions. The plea formed part of a sweeping deal with the US Department of Justice, under which Binance was required to pay a record-breaking $4.3 billion penalty. Zhao ultimately spent four months in federal prison.

Alan Estevez was sitting at his dining room table wearing a t-shirt when Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called on Zoom to ask if he wanted to be the Biden administration's top export control official. "You're going to have to sell me on this," Estevez recalls telling her. It was 2021, and the outspoken New Jersey native thought he had finally left public service behind. After more than three decades at the Pentagon, he had left and taken a job in consulting. He wasn't sure if he was ready to go back.

At a computer security conference in Arlington, Virginia, last October, a few dozen AI researchers took part in a first-of-its-kind exercise in "red teaming," or stress-testing a cutting-edge language model and other artificial intelligence systems. Over the course of two days, the teams identified 139 novel ways to get the systems to misbehave including by generating misinformation or leaking personal data. More importantly, they showed shortcomings in a new US government standard designed to help companies test AI systems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) didn't publish a report detailing the exercise, which was finished toward the end of the Biden administration. The document might have helped companies assess their own AI systems, but sources familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say it was one of several AI documents from NIST that were not published for fear of clashing with the incoming administration.

The below article first appeared in David Corn's newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just 5 a month--but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. There are only a few potential existential threats to human society, as far as we know. Nuclear weapons are the most obvious.

Former Israeli Amb. to the U.S. Michael Oren discusses Iran's nuclear capabilities and negotiations with Hamas to release more hostages on'Fox Report.' The idea that Middle East peace cannot and should not advance without a formal agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is outdated and demonstrably untrue. Indeed, it has done little but exacerbate conflict over the last 30 years and undermine U.S. interests in the region. They provide a new paradigm for peace between Israel and all of its neighbors, including the Palestinians. President Donald Trump obviously deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for breaking with the failed Oslo peace process paradigm still sanctified by legacy media and a bipartisan community of foreign policy elites, and for building new bridges of mutually-beneficial cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Nonprofits are trying to preserve a US effort to modernize greenhouse-gas measurements, amid growing fears that the Trump administration's dismantling of federal programs will obscure the nation's contributions to climate change. The Data Foundation, a Washington, DC, nonprofit, is fundraising for an initiative that will coordinate efforts among nonprofits, technical experts, and companies to improve the accuracy and accessibility of climate emissions information. It will build on an effort to improve the collection of emissions data that former president Joe Biden launched in 2023--and which President Trump nullified on his first day in office. The new greenhouse-gas coalition is one of a growing number of nonprofit and academic groups that have spun up or shifted focus to keep essential climate monitoring and research efforts going amid the Trump administration's assault on environmental funding, staffing, and regulations. America's AI watchdog is losing its bite Most Americans encounter the Federal Trade Commission only if they've been scammed: It handles identity theft, fraud, and stolen data.

Donald Trump's AI summit in Washington this week was a fanfare-filled event catered to the tech elite. The president took the stage on Wednesday evening, as the song God Bless the USA piped over the loudspeakers, and then he decreed: "America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape, so they can't move, so they can't breathe." The message was clear – the tech regulatory environment that was once the focus of federal lawmakers is no longer. "I've been watching for many years," Trump continued. I've been a victim of regulation."