“Continued inflation, hawkish regional bank presidents, and 11 of 12 monetary policy rules suggest the Fed should raise rates. The price of the Fed’s ‘patience’ could be paid economy wide.” (06/16/26)
“Italian police have arrested seven people accused of belonging to an anarchist militant network and carrying out sabotage on a high-speed railway line during the Winter Olympics in February. In a statement on Tuesday, police said a judge had ordered five suspects to be held in prison and two placed under house arrest. The charges include terrorist association and subversion of the democratic order. Police said two of those arrested were accused of taking part in a February 14 attack on the Rome-Florence high-speed rail line. According to investigators, the sabotage was carried out using improvised explosive devices, causing severe damage to infrastructure estimated at €455,000 ($528,000). The attack led to train delays of more than an hour during the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, which ran from February 6 to 22.” (06/16/26)
“Marc Miller spread misinformation about unmarked graves and supports the criminal prosecution of residential-school ‘denialists.’ Why would Mark Carney use him to front his new plan for regulating online content?” (06/16/26)
“SpaceX has agreed to buy AI coding start-up Cursor for $60bn (£45bn) just days after its bumper initial public offering (IPO). Elon Musk’s rocket company will take over Anysphere, which makes the artificial intelligence coding agent. The move comes after SpaceX joined New York’s tech-focused Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday in the biggest ever listing, valuing it at more than $2tn and raising $85.7bn. … Like OpenAI and Anthropic, Cursor’s technology uses AI to automate the process of writing code, one of the most prominent current uses for artificial intelligence.” (06/16/26)
“Economic liberalization has often been assumed to have environmental tradeoffs. But decades of data show the incentives of prosperity and preservation are aligned.” (06/16/26)
“A U.N.-backed court in the Central African Republic on Tuesday opened the trial of former President François Bozizé, who is accused of crimes against humanity for abuses committed by members of his security forces between 2009 and 2013. The trial is the sixth held by the Special Criminal Court, a tribunal created in 2015 with U.N. support to prosecute serious crimes committed during the country’s conflicts. …Prosecutors accuse Bozizé of being responsible as a military commander for crimes committed by members of his presidential guard and other security forces, including ‘murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other inhumane acts.’ Bozizé, 79, is being tried in absentia. He has been living in exile in Guinea-Bissau since 2023, and authorities there have refused to extradite him despite an international arrest warrant issued by the court in 2024.” (06/16/26)