“US President Donald Trump has ruled out any sort of joint venture with China in artificial intelligence (AI), arguing it would be tantamount to ‘giving away secrets’ to America’s main economic rival. Speaking at an event in Washington on Tuesday, Trump again argued against putting any restrictions on the technology that would stifle growth in the future, despite mounting public concern. Following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House last week, Beijing and Washington announced the launch of a new AI dialogue, with further talks scheduled for November. The two countries also established a new communications channel to prevent misunderstandings during AI-related incidents. During Tuesday’s event marking the launch of America.gov – a new AI-powered website designed to streamline government services – Trump argued the US is ‘leading by a lot’ in the AI sector and does not want to ‘mix it up’ with potential competitors.” (09/29/26)
“Mississippi’s attorney general said she will not retry a police officer after jurors failed to reach a verdict on a manslaughter charge stemming from the fatal shooting of a [b]lack motorist. Jurors on Monday deadlocked on the charge against Mississippi Capitol Police officer Michael Rhinewalt and acquitted a second Capitol police officer, Steven Frederick, who was also charged with manslaughter in the September 2022 shooting of 25-year-old Jaylen Lewis. The case has raised questions about policing in the majority-[b]lack city of Jackson and prompted a lawsuit from Lewis’ mom. The two officers who shot Lewis are both white. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office, which prosecuted the two officers, said in a statement that it ‘followed the process’ and will not pursue a new trial against Rhinewalt.” (09/29/26)
“On Tuesday, September 1, 2026, the United States military struck a home in the town of Kuhestak, in Sirik County, southern Iran, where a wedding was underway, killing four people and wounding more than 50. The youngest victim was 4-year-old Amir Ali Karimi. Asked about the strike, US Vice President JD Vance told reporters: ‘What I can say with 100% confidence is that, unlike the IRGC, the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that.’ … It’s worth remembering that the campaign the United States and Israel waged against Iran … opened with a strike on the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader that killed him along with his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and his 14-month-old granddaughter. Roughly an hour or two later, the US struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab with Tomahawk cruise missiles, killing 156 people, including 120 schoolchildren …” (09/29/26)
“‘Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler. His body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical, the forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.’ — Leon Trotsky … Those have got to be among the most idiotic words I have ever read in my life. Any quarter-witted human being, looking at the history of our species, who thinks that man is ‘progressing towards perfection’, that the average ‘human type’ in the future will be an Aristotle, Goethe, or (heaven forbid) a Marx, is … missing something upstairs. And yet, leftists today, in America and around the globe, believe they can bring this ‘perfection’ into existence. … In fact, I see the exact opposite.” (09/29/26)
“Spain’s coalition government has approved new housing measures following protests over the country’s housing crisis, sparked by the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her home in Madrid last week. Ministers met on Tuesday to discuss the proposals, which include a ban on evictions until 2030. Announcing the measures, Health Minister Mónica García said they would bring relief to more than five million people – but opposition politician Míriam Nogueras said the agreement left ‘small landlords out in the cold’. The proposals (which have been presented in the form of two decrees) come into effect immediately, but must be approved by Congress within a month, although the government hopes to hold the vote as soon as this Friday. Pedro Sánchez’s leftist coalition government lacks a majority in parliament and has struggled to get right-leaning parties to approve previous decrees.” (09/29/26)
“In 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidential election partly on the basis of his campaign’s false accusation that George H. W. Bush had overseen ‘the worst economic performance since the Great Depression’. Or so claimed Clinton’s running mate Al Gore. James Carville, chief campaign adviser to Clinton/Gore, amplified that message with the constant refrain: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ That strategy worked for three reasons: First, third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned off nearly 19 percent of the vote. Most of his supporters would otherwise likely have gone to Bush. Perot allowed Clinton to win with a mere 43 percent of the popular vote, in part by echoing the false narrative of a crushing Bush recession. Second, the brilliant Bush campaign strategist Lee Atwater, who had virtually destroyed the Dukakis campaign in 1988 (remember the tank ad, the Boston Harbor ad, and the Willie Horton ad?) had died in 1991 at the age of 40 from a brain tumor.” (09/29/26)
“A 77-year-old Florida man convicted of beating a woman to death with a hammer is scheduled Tuesday to become the 16th person executed this year in the nation’s busiest death chamber. Curtis Wilkie Beasley was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft auto in a 1995 attack on Carolyn Monfort. The Florida Supreme Court last week rejected appeals that executing a man his age who is suffering from cognitive decline would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Beasley, who would become Florida’s seventh prisoner over the age of 70 to be executed this year, is set to receive a three-drug injection at the state prison starting at 6 p.m.” (09/29/26)
“U.S.-Canada relations, already tense, are likely to deteriorate further after the United States went ahead early Tuesday with a decision to ban nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian imports, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles. The ban amounts to barely a ripple in $880 billion worth of annual two-way trade between the two northern neighbors. But it marks another ratcheting up of President Donald Trump’s second-term trade war with America’s longtime ally and trading partner. … The latest sparring began over the summer when Trump reached back to a Great Depression law to impose 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, charging that Canada discriminates against U.S. dairy, auto and alcoholic beverage producers. Canada promptly counterpunched with tariffs of 15%, 25% or 50%, matching U.S. imports dollar for dollar.” (09/29/26)
“One of the signature public service announcements of my youth was created by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America in 1987. A father finds a stash of pot and confronts his son: ‘Who taught you how to do this stuff?’ ‘You, all right!’ the kid snaps back. ‘I learned it by watching you!’ I am bound by the AP Stylebook to not anthropomorphize artificial intelligence. But I can imagine these very words being uttered by the agents that hacked Hugging Face, or the models that engaged in tens of thousands of incidents of, in the new euphemism of the time, ‘misalignment’. This refers to AI stepping beyond guardrails set up by researchers during both internal and real-world testing.” (09/29/26)
“In the years before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the descent of much of Europe into ‘the Great War’, most of the ideologues on the Left assumed that such a war was an impossibility. The workers of the world, they believed, would no longer go to war against one another. Their class solidarity was too strong, far stronger than their national allegiance and their fidelity to artificial borders and superficial ethnic differences. Engels, for one, thought the old ways had been thoroughly demystified and discredited. The ‘new man’ (the Communist man) was better than the old man, more organized and less aggressive toward his own kind. Darwin, Engels insisted, had described ‘a struggle for existence’ that applied to the animal kingdom, not to the expected Communist society.” (09/28/26)
