Author: potus

On Monday, a team at IBM that is contracted to manage human resources data for more than 500,000 federal employees received an unusual request to provide “read-only” access for the HR records for all 14,000 employees of the General Services Administration, according to a source familiar with the contract.  The email was from IBM’s regular contact at the GSA, the agency that manages federal property. But the request was odd since the agency already had “read and write” access to the data.  The request and the questions it raised were one example of the suspicion and speculation in Washington as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk conduct an unprecedented effort to shrink the…

A federal judge will consider Friday whether to block Elon Musk’s team from accessing systems at the Labor Department, which has investigated SpaceX and Tesla. Three unions asked Judge John Bates, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, to keep DOGE workers out of systems that also contain sensitive information about workers who have filed complaints and about Musk’s corporate rivals.“DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans,” wrote labor…

United States President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that bans transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports in schools and other educational settings. The directive, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”, is the latest addition to a series of new executive actions that have shone a focus on gender debates within the US. After signing the order in the White House’s East Room on Wednesday, Trump declared that “the war on women’s sports is over”. What does Trump’s order say? The order instructs the Department of Justice to oversee a ban on transgender girls or…

Reserve Bank of India announces first rate cut in nearly five years as world’s most populous nation faces slowdown.India’s central bank has cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in nearly five years as officials try to reverse slowing economic growth in the world’s most populous country. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Friday that it had lowered the repo rate, which the central bank lends to commercial banks, by 0.25 percent to 6.25 percent. The RBI last cut the key interest rate in May 2020, after which it rolled out a series of hikes aimed…

New Delhi, India – Kulvinder Kaur had tried and tried again to call her husband in the United States. After two weeks of the connection not going through, she was consumed by anxiety, she said from her home in Hoshiarpur, in the northern Indian state of Punjab. “I was really afraid about what might have happened to him – if he was robbed or killed there. He is father of my children and I was afraid if I would ever see him again,” Kaur said. Then, she saw a news telecast: President Donald Trump’s administration was deporting batches of illegal…

De pie en la rotonda del Capitolio, la primera ministra italiana, Giorgia Meloni, fue una invitada privilegiada en la toma de posesión del presidente Donald Trump.Meloni, la única dirigente europea que asistió al acto el mes pasado, comparte muchos de los impulsos conservadores y nacionalistas de Trump. Se lleva bien con su asesor multimillonario Elon Musk. Muchos de sus partidarios esperan que la especial relación de la dirigente italiana con el mandatario estadounidense refuerce la posición de Italia, y la suya propia.Pero incluso cuando Meloni se unió a la ovación de pie para el nuevo presidente estadounidense, Trump no tardó…

Bangkok, Thailand – At the end of January, Cambodia’s Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance was unexpectedly informed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that all funding for its tuberculosis programme had been put on hold for 90 days. KHANA, as the NGO is more commonly known, detects about 10,000 tuberculosis (TB) cases each year, providing preventive treatment to some 10,000 close contacts and medical care for some 300 rural patients, according to executive director, Choub Sok Chamreun. With funding drying up, many rural Cambodians will soon lose care, Chamreun said. “Within the suspension period, these people will have a…

(The Center Square) – State lawmakers are forwarding a bill that would change how medical debt impacts Washingtonians’ credit scores.Senate Bill 5480 doesn’t erase medical debt completely but “Declares a medical debt void and unenforceable if it is reported to a consumer credit reporting agency or credit bureau,” according to a Senate Bill Report.The report goes on to say the bill “Prohibits specific entities from reporting medical debts to a consumer credit reporting agency or credit bureau, on pain of committing a violation of the Consumer Protection Act.According to an Economic Opportunity Institute article from the summer of 2024, approximately 95%…

The European Union spent last year drawing up secret plans for what the bloc would do if President Trump made good on his threats of imposing higher tariffs on European goods and services.Now, as those threats go from hypothetical to potentially imminent, its plans are coming into broad focus.Hit specific, politically sensitive sectors — like products made in Republican states — with targeted tariffs meant to inflict maximum pain. Don’t escalate into a tit-for-tat competition if it’s avoidable. Do move quickly and decisively, potentially using new tactics that could hit service providers like big Silicon Valley technology firms.It’s a rough…

La afirmación del presidente Donald Trump de que China controla el canal de Panamá ha puesto a un magnate de Hong Kong y a su conglomerado en el centro de un enfrentamiento entre Estados Unidos y China.Esa enorme empresa, CK Hutchison Holdings, es una de las más valiosas de Hong Kong que cotizan en bolsa y cuenta con algunos de los mayores inversores del mundo entre sus accionistas. Una de sus filiales, Hutchison Ports, ha estado involucrada en el canal de Panamá desde 1997.De los cinco puertos de Panamá, los de Hutchison —uno en cada extremo del canal— son los…