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President Donald Trump said Saturday he was nominating U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce to become the next deputy representative to the United Nations.  "I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Tammy Bruce, a Great Patriot, Television Personality, and Bestselling Author, as our next Deputy Representative of the United States to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador," the president wrote on social media. "Since the beginning of my Second Term, Tammy has been serving with distinction as Spokesperson of the State Department, where she did a fantastic job. Tammy Bruce will represent our Country brilliantly at the United Nations. Congratulations Tammy!" Bruce has defended the Trump administration's immigration policies and its position on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.  SENATE DRIVES OFF FOR RECESS, LEAVING TRUMP'S 150+ STALLED CONFIRMATIONS IN ITS WAKE Last week, she warned Russia on Fox News that it needs to take Trump "s...

Kevin Roose / New York Times : Hands-on with Alexa+: fun to talk to and good at handling multistep requests, but it is buggy, unreliable, and worse at some basic tasks than the original Alexa   —  Alexa+ processes language in a more fluid way.  Users can speak to it as they would to a human.Graham Dickie/The New York Times

FBI Director Kash Patel took to social media on Saturday to celebrate the bureau's successes in the first 200 days of the Trump administration.  "200 Days of Trump Admin, From Jan 20 to Present: FBI has arrested over 1,600 people for violent crimes against children, to include 270 arrests for human trafficking," Patel wrote on his official X account. Patel added that 1,500 kilos of fentanyl – "enough lethal doses to kill 113,850,000 Americans" – has also been seized in that time, which he said was a 25% increase from the same time last year, and the "most ever." KASH PATEL TORCHES ‘CONSPIRACY THEORIES’ ABOUT BONDI FEUD AMID MAGA FUROR OVER EPSTEIN FILES He added, "We look forward to working with our @SecDef and DoD partners to getting after it even more, thanks @realDonaldTrump for the new authorities."  In a third post, Patel said the FBI had identified and located 4,000 child victims.  "FBI investigations targeting Foreign Terro...

New York Times : A look at Changpeng Zhao's efforts to get a pardon from Trump for his money-laundering charges, including via lobbying and a business deal with the Trump family   —  A sophisticated operation is pushing President Trump to forgive Changpeng Zhao, which would boost the chances for his company, Binance, to break into the U.S. market.

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch : Google is testing an AI-powered Google Finance website in the US, letting users ask questions, access advanced charting tools, view a live news feed, and more   —  Google announced on Friday that it's giving Google Finance, its tool that provides financial information and business news, an AI update.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson warns that finances in the nation's third most populous city have "reached a point of no return." The mayor said this week that the city will need to take steps to deal with looming budget shortfalls and that key systems that Chicago provides, including education, housing, health care and transportation, are "woefully underfunded." Eight-hundred miles to the east, there are concerns in the nation's most populous city that if democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani wins the election in November as New York City's next mayor, the city could be headed for a fiscal abyss similar to the crisis half a century ago, when it came close to bankruptcy. CHICAGO TRIBUNE WARNS 'HALLOWEEN COMES EARLY ' AS CITY FACES SHORTFALLS Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the 2025 race for New York City's Democratic Party mayor nomination and who is running for re-election as an independent, struck a deal with the city coun...

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat : OpenAI highlights GPT-5 scores on math, coding, and health benchmarks: 94.6% on AIME 2025 without tools, 74.9% on SWE-bench Verified, 46.2% on HealthBench Hard   —  After literally years of hype and speculation, OpenAI has officially launched a new lineup of large language models (LLMs) …

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog : GPT-5 hands-on: it exudes competence but doesn't feel like a dramatic leap ahead of other LLMs, and the pricing is aggressively competitive with other providers   —  I've had preview access to the new GPT-5 model family for the past two weeks, and have been using GPT-5 as my daily-driver.

Laura Benitez / Bloomberg : Apollo Global agrees to acquire a majority stake in Stream Data Centers, which builds, leases, and operates data center campuses, in its first such acquisition   —  Takeaways by Bloomberg AI  —  Hide … Tell us how AI is shaping your news experience.  Share your feedback

Former President Barack Obama , accused Texas Republicans — who are pushing to pass redistricting legislation in the Lone Star State legislature — of engaging in gerrymandering, which involves redrawing district lines to benefit a particular political party. Texas Republicans trying to pass redistricting legislation during a special session have been stymied by state House Democratic lawmakers fleeing the state in order to deny the quorum required for votes. "We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy," Obama declared in social media posts . TEXAS DEMS RIPPED FOR ‘CARTOONISHLY DUMB’ STRATEGY TO FLEE TO BLUE STATE NOTORIOUS FOR GERRYMANDERING "Dems only call it ‘gerrymandering’ when it’s in a Republican state," GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah remarked when retweeting Obama's post on X. ...

David Shepardson / Reuters : The NHTSA certifies Amazon's Zoox self-driving vehicles for demonstration use and closes a probe from 2022 into whether they complied with federal requirements   —  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Wednesday it has certified Amazon.com's (AMZN.O) self-driving unit Zoox vehicles …

The chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pledges that his party is "not going to roll over" in its redistricting duel with President Donald Trump and Republicans. "This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfathers, which would bring a pencil to knife fight. This is a new Democratic Party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we’re going to fight fire with fire," DNC Chair Ken Martin said on Tuesday, as he teamed up with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Texas Democratic state lawmakers who fled to the heavily blue Midwestern state. The move by the Texas Democrats is preventing the Republican-dominated state legislature from voting on new GOP-crafted congressional maps in the red state that would create five more right-leaning congressional districts at Trump's urging. SCHWARZENEGGER PUSHES BACK AGAINST NEWSOM IN REDISTRICTING FIGHT Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has called for those lawmakers to be arrested and prosecuted upon their retur...

Abner Li / 9to5Google : The Gemini mobile app now lets users create “personalized, illustrated storybooks complete with read-aloud narration” that can incorporate uploaded photos   —  The latest Gemini app feature lets you create “personalized, illustrated storybooks complete with read-aloud narration.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, is cheering on the Texas state lawmakers who fled the state in a bid to delay a vote on new congressional maps that would give Republicans a significant edge in 2026. Crockett railed against the Republican effort and its backers, including President Donald Trump , who she called a "ridiculous tyrant" in a five-minute message to supporters on her Instagram page on Sunday night. "My colleagues, my former colleagues in the state house, they say, 'Deuces! We out. We don't like what you doing.' So I'm really excited. And I am so thankful because this is the type of fight that the American people need to see," Crockett said.  "We understand that this ridiculous tyrant is trying to do everything that he can to break our democracy. But there are democracy defenders that believe in absolutely standing up for the people. They understand the assignment." FAR-LEFT FIREBRAND SAYS SHE 'NEVER HAD A CONCERN' ABOU...

Ian Carlos Campbell / Engadget : OpenAI says ChatGPT now offers “gentle reminders” to take breaks during long sessions, and it is building tools to better detect signs of emotional distress   —  OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will now remind users to take breaks if they're in a particularly long chat with AI.

Bloomberg : Asian financial hubs are updating stablecoin regulations and companies like Ant Group plan to become issuers, driven by US' embrace of dollar-pegged stablecoins   —  Asian markets are hurriedly updating their stablecoin rules as President Donald Trump's embrace of US dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies instills …

Noah Smith / Noahpinion : A look at why the AI data center building boom could spark a financial crisis akin to 2008, including the rising use of debt financing via private credit funds   —  This time let's think about a financial crisis before it happens.  —  The U.S. economic data for the last few months is looking decidedly meh.

As lawmakers depart Washington for a month-long recess, more than 150 of President Donald Trump's nominees remain in limbo, awaiting Senate confirmation or further action amid stalled proceedings and deepening partisan gridlock.  Key positions across Trump's administration remain unfilled, with the judiciary and diplomatic posts bearing the brunt of the backlog. THUNE VOWS TO 'GRIND DOWN' DEMOCRATS AS TRUMP'S NOMINEES FACE 'UNPRECEDENTED' SENATE OBSTRUCTION Former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is still awaiting Senate confirmation for his nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Likewise, Andrew Puzder has yet to be confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union , an especially significant post given that the EU is one of America's largest trading partners. At the Department of Justice, Stanley Woodward is nominated to serve as associate attorney general, while Patrick Davis awaits confirmation as assistant attorney general fo...

Jessica Roy / The Information : A look at newsletter platform Beehiiv, which has hit $30M in ARR and fees starting at $43/month for 1,000 subscribers, unlike Substack, which takes a 10% cut   —  Last August, when CNN's Oliver Darcy decided he wanted to leave the network and launch Status, an email newsletter focused on the media industry …