Author: potus

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the primary U.S. nonprofit fighting child sexual exploitation, said Friday that it is removing all references to transgender people from its public materials.The move is in accordance with an executive order President Trump signed last week, which bars federal funding that goes to “gender ideology” and makes it the official policy of the federal government not to recognize their gender identity.“Earlier this week, like many federally funded non-profits, NCMEC was directed by DOJ to comply with Executive Order 14168,” a NCMEC spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We are responding to…

BEIJING (AP) — China on Friday lashed out at what it called U.S. “coercion” after Panama declined to renew a key infrastructure agreement with Beijing following Washington’s threat to take back the Panama Canal. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a briefing that China “firmly opposes the U.S. smearing and undermining the Belt and Road cooperation through means of pressure and coercion.” The Belt and Road Initiative is President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign police drive to bind China closer to countries in the region and beyond by building roads, railways, airports, power plants and other infrastructure. The program has…

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary will take legal action to eliminate non-governmental organizations and media outlets operating in the country that receive funding from the United States and other international sources, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday. Orbán, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, said in statements on state radio that his government was going “line by line” through organizations operating in Hungary that have received financial assistance from the United States. He praised Trump’s decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas, claiming such aid had been used…

In an exclusive interview with NBC News on Thursday, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said his country and the United States “don’t have a timeline” on when Guatemala will begin receiving non-Guatemalan nationals who are deported by the Trump administration. Arevalo met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week as Rubio visited five countries across Latin America for his first trip since taking office. In a press conference in Guatemala City on Wednesday, the pair announced that Guatemala had not only offered to ramp up deportation flights from the U.S. by 40% but also agreed to receive third-country nationals as they make their way back to their home countries. “It’s very important for us in terms of the migratory situation that we’re facing,” Rubio…

Transgender girls and women will no longer compete in female events at most college sporting events in the United States after a governing body’s decision to bar athletes who were born male. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, the main governing body for college sport in the US, said on Thursday that it would limit competition in girls’ and women’s sport to female-born athletes only. The NCAA’s announcement comes after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order the previous day to deny funding to educational institutes that allow trans girls and women to compete in female sport. “The NCAA is…

Verily headquarters in San Bruno, California.Courtesy: VerilyVerily is selling its stop-loss insurance subsidiary, Granular Insurance Company, to the insurance provider Elevance Health, the Alphabet health tech company confirmed to CNBC on Thursday.Verily is one of Google’s sister companies and operates within Alphabet’s “Other Bets” category. The Granular sale is the latest in a series of sweeping changes at the precision health company, which has slashed its workforce, restructured its business and overhauled its executive leadership in recent years.The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Verily launched Granular, initially called Coefficient Insurance Company, in 2020 with financial backing from the commercial…

CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on Jan. 20, 2025.Saul Loeb | Via ReutersThe strengthening dollar is posing challenges for the biggest U.S. tech companies, which have become increasingly reliant on overseas revenue. With other currencies weakening, money made elsewhere is worth less when converted into dollars.Amazon should suffer less than its megacap peers as the e-commerce giant generates…

The courts are slamming the brakes on some of President Donald Trump’s efforts to quickly trim and transform the federal government.In his first weeks in office, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders aimed at reshaping the government, from targeting birthright citizenship to changing how transgender inmates are housed. Government agencies have also used the orders to try to freeze federal funding nationwide and offer buyouts to the bulk of government employees.The flood of orders has led to over two dozen lawsuits to date and a number of court decisions halting — at least temporarily — some of Trump’s…

We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. Less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, he, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have halted the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid programs around the world. In so doing, they have imperiled millions of lives, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence — all while authoritarians and extremists celebrate their luck.I am shocked by the gleeful assault perpetrated by our own…

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during a keynote address at AWS re:Invent 2024, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, at The Venetian Las Vegas on December 3, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Noah Berger | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty ImagesAmazon said Thursday it plans to boost its capital expenditures to $100 billion in 2025, as it continues its investments in artificial intelligence.The capex figure exceeds last year’s spending of roughly $83 billion. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had predicted in October that the company’s 2025 capex would surpass last year’s figure, primarily driven by growth in generative AI.”We spent $26.3…