Author: potus

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — More than 2 million acres of federal lands would be sold or transferred to states or other entities under a budget proposal from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, reviving a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House.Lee, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, included a mandate for the sales in a draft provision of the GOP’s sweeping tax cut package released Wednesday.Sharp disagreement over such sales has laid bare a split among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that the Pentagon has developed plans to take over Greenland and Panama by force if necessary but refused to answer repeated questions during a hotly combative congressional hearing Thursday about his use of Signal chats to discuss military operations.Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee repeatedly got into heated exchanges with Hegseth, with some of the toughest lines of questioning coming from military veterans as many demanded yes or no answers and he tried to avoid direct responses about his actions as Pentagon chief. In one back-and-forth, Hegseth did…

From about the 1960s to the mid-1980s, the United States was a leader in uranium mining. But domestic production of the mineral, which is primarily used as fuel for nuclear reactors, has since fallen off a cliff. “A lot of this was because it was a government priority. And we strategically used government funding and subsidies to support it. However, what kind of started happening during the 90s is we saw a de-prioritization away from uranium,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Several high-profile nuclear accidents, including the…

(The Center Square) − Lawmakers have passed a bill this week that will overhaul and combine Louisiana’s job training and public assistance programs in a “One Door” model. It now heads to Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk. Breault’s House Bill 624, which was amended by the Senate, passed unanimously on Thursday. It attempts to offer individuals receiving benefits a better opportunity to develop the skills needed to obtain a well-paying job.Lawmakers will integrate social safety net programs with job training services, so recipients can access both benefits and workforce development support through a single case-managed system led in part by the Louisiana…

WASHINGTON (AP) — A teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that’s expected to make it easier for families of children with disabilities to sue schools over access to education.The girl’s family says that her Minnesota school district didn’t do enough to make sure she has the disability accommodations she needs to learn, including failing to provide adequate instruction in the evening when her seizures are less frequent.But lower courts ruled against the family’s claim for damages, despite finding the school had fallen short. That’s because courts in that part of…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a round table discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 11, 2025. Sarah Meyssonnier | ReutersAutonomous vehicles and robotics are going to take off in a big way in the years ahead, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.”This is going to be the decade of AV [autonomous vehicles], robotics, autonomous machines,” Huang told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal Thursday at the Viva Tech conference in Paris.Nvidia plays a significant role in the rollout of driverless vehicles as the U.S. chipmaking giant sells both…

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Atlanta family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI will get a new day in court, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday. The decision revives a lawsuit filed after a predawn 2017 raid in which armed members of an FBI SWAT team smashed in a front door and set off a flashbang grenade, pointing guns at a couple and terrifying a 7-year-old boy before realizing they were in the wrong house. The FBI team quickly apologized and left for the right place, with the team leader later saying that his personal GPS device had…

Gecko Robotics announced on Thursday that it raised $125 million in a Series D funding round, raising the AI and robotics company’s valuation to $1.25 billion.The new round of funding means the Pittsburgh-based company has reached unicorn status, roughly twelve years after it was founded by Jake Loosararian. The company’s previous round of funding, a $173 million Series C in December 2023, valued it at $633 million.To date, the company has raised $347 million from investors including USIT, XN, Founders Fund and Y Combinator. Its latest round was led by new investor Cox Enterprises.Gecko Robotics, the two-time CNBC Disruptor 50…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg departs E. Barrett Prettyman United States Court House on April 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Andrew Harnik | Getty ImagesMeta is suing a company that ran ads on its services to promote an app that lets people create nonconsensual, sexualized images of others using AI technology, the social media company said Thursday. The lawsuit is against Joy Timeline HK Ltd., which develops the app called CrushAI and its variants. The Hong Kong-based company ran ads on Facebook and Instagram to promote CrushAI, an app that uses artificial intelligence to take a photo of someone and create nude…

If the U.S. continues to impose AI semiconductor restrictions on China, then chipmaker Huawei will take advantage of its position in the world’s second-largest economy, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC Thursday.”Our technology is a generation ahead of theirs,” Huang told CNBC at the sidelines of the Viva Technology conference in Paris.However, he warned that: “If the United States doesn’t want to partake, participate in China, Huawei has got China covered, and Huawei has got everybody else covered.”In the face of U.S. export curbs that restrict Chinese firms from buying advanced semiconductors used in the development of AI, Beijing has…