Author: potus

A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday dissolved his temporary freeze on the Trump administration’s unprecedented offer for millions of federal workers to resign, allowing the controversial “fork in the road” program to proceed.U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. had temporarily halted the administration’s offer of mass buyouts to millions of federal workers last week, just hours before the Thursday deadline for employees to accept the offer. That order came after labor unions representing government workers filed suit alleging that the administration did not have the legal authority to offer such buyouts.In his ruling Wednesday, O’Toole found that the unions…

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai speaks during the tech titan’s annual I/O developers conference on May 14, 2024, in Mountain View, California. Glenn Chapman | Afp | Getty ImagesGoogle will start using artificial intelligence to determine whether users are age appropriate for its products, the company said Wednesday.Google announced the new technique for determining users’ ages as part of a blog focused on “New digital protections for kids, teens and parents.” The automation will be used across Google products, including YouTube, a spokesperson confirmed. Google has billions of users across its properties and users designated as under the age of 18 have…

Adam Foroughi, CEO of AppLovin.CNBCAppLovin shares soared almost 30% in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported earnings and revenue that sailed past analysts’ estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance.Here’s how the company performed compared with analysts’ expectations, according to LSEG:Earnings per share: $1.73 vs. $1.24 expectedRevenue: $1.37 billion vs. $1.26 billion expectedNet income in the quarter more than tripled to $599.2 million, or $1.73 per share, from $172.3 million, or 51 cents per share, a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Revenue jumped 43% from $953.3 million a year earlier. AppLovin was the best-performing U.S. tech stock…

Montreal, Canada – Even before he formally re-entered the White House last month to begin his second term as president of the United States, Donald Trump had repeatedly taken aim at an unlikely target: Canada. Trump argued his country’s northern neighbour had failed to stem irregular migration and drug trafficking at its border with the US, and he threatened to impose steep tariffs on Canadian imports. To stave off those measures, which experts say would devastate the Canadian economy, the Republican leader then presented an idea: Canada can — and should — become the 51st US state. “I think Canada…

The Trump administration is considering tapping into Department of Defense funding to hire contractors, a move that would vastly expand the scale and scope of immigrant arrests and deportations in the U.S., according to three sources familiar with the matter. The defense contracts would allow civilian-run companies to quickly and rapidly expand temporary detention facilities, such as those that house migrants in tents, as well as to staff those facilities and provide transportation between arrest locations and detention areas. Such a move could also increase the number of airplanes available used to deport immigrants and staff for those flights, the sources…

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.Gerry Miller | CNBCCisco shares climbed about 6% in extended trading on Wednesday after the networking hardware maker reported fiscal second-quarter results and guidance that topped Wall Street’s expectations.Here’s how the company did against LSEG consensus:Earnings per share: 94 cents adjusted vs. 91 cents expectedRevenue: $13.99 billion vs. $13.87 billion expectedRevenue increased 9% in the quarter, which ended on Jan. 25, from $12.79 billion a year earlier, according to a statement. The growth follows four quarters of revenue declines. The…

Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, speaks during the WSJ Tech Live conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal at the Montage Laguna Beach in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2024.Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty ImagesReddit shares fell more than 15% on Wednesday after the company reported weaker-than-expected user numbers in its fourth-quarter earnings.Here’s how the company did compared with LSEG estimates:Earnings per share: 36 cents vs. 25 cents expectedRevenue: $428 million vs. $405 million expectedGlobal daily active uniques, or DAUq, rose 39% from a year earlier to an average of 101.7 million for the fourth quarter. That trailed Wall…

Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation to serve as the director of national intelligence once seemed in doubt. Republican senators voiced private skepticism about her qualifications, and her stances on Russia and Syria were at odds with the party’s old positions. But, on a party-line vote on Wednesday, the Senate approved Ms. Gabbard to serve in the senior intelligence post.After all of the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed her nomination, her confirmation was all but assured. Those private worries of Republican lawmakers never became significant public opposition. Elon Musk, President Trump’s billionaire ally, took to task one Republican whose vote was…

The New Jersey governor’s race is providing an early test for Democrats trying to navigate the thorny issues of immigration and border security following Donald Trump’s victory, and those issues are already dividing the party’s candidates. “Those national issues are going to loom large in this gubernatorial race,” N.J. Democratic Party Chairman LeRoy Jones said. “It already has.”A crowded field of Democrats, including mayors, members of Congress and a former state Senate leader, are competing to replace the term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, and the primary could be an early testing ground for the party as it regroups from the 2024…

Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, has released an American prisoner and two others from jail, an exiled opposition group said on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the autocratic Belarusian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was looking for ways to improve frozen relations with the West.The releases, announced by an opposition group led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania, a neighbor of Belarus, followed what Western diplomats said was a secret visit on Wednesday to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, by a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, Christopher W. Smith. The group did not identify the American who was freed.The State Department did…