Saturday, August 23
Headlines
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The US now owns 10% of Intel. It’s official: The government has taken the highly unusual step of owning a piece of the beleaguered chipmaker. President Trump said the deal came out of his meeting with the company’s CEO, whom he’d previously called on to step down over his ties to China. “They’ve agreed to do it, and I think it’s a great deal for them,” Trump told reporters yesterday before Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the deal was done. The move comes as the latest intervention by Trump’s government into the private sector, after taking a “golden share” in the US-Nippon Steel merger and taking a cut of sales to China by other semiconductor makers.
FBI raids home and office of former National Security Advisor John Bolton. The search of the Maryland home and Washington office of the former Trump administration national security advisor, who is an outspoken critic of the president, reportedly came as part of an investigation into whether he broke the law by mishandling classified documents. It’s one of several investigations into people who have spoken out against President Trump during his current term, but the pair also clashed during his first term. Trump fired Bolton in 2019, and he subsequently published a scathing book about Trump, which the president claimed at the time included classified information. Trump said yesterday he did not have prior knowledge of the FBI’s search.
Canada drops retaliatory tariffs on billions’ worth of US products. It’s August, so there’s finally something thawing in Canada: Prime Minister Mark Carney said the country would drop its recently imposed 25% tariffs on goods covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact as of Sept. 1, bringing them more in line with what the US has put on Canadian goods. The move to drop import duties on ~$21 billion worth of American goods came a day after Carney spoke to President Trump and was widely interpreted as a gesture of goodwill to try to lay the groundwork for future trade talks. But it’s not all as friendly as Canada is reputed to be—Carney noted that high tariffs would remain for now on US steel, aluminum, and automobiles.—AR
At A Glance
Bookkeeping
> 55: Most rollercoasters ridden in one week, achieved by this adrenaline junkie.
> 29 minutes, 3 seconds: How long a Croatian freediver held his breath underwater, beating the last world record by nearly five minutes and about doubling the time managed by bottlenose dolphins.
Browse
> Twin giant panda cubs, Leni and Lotti, celebrate their first birthday.
> Photos show 2,000-year-old artifacts from sunken Egyptian city.
> Ketchup was once prescribed as a remedy for diarrhea.
> The cost of five years of daycare today.
> The rise of the "coolcation."
> ... and destinations where tourists outnumber locals.
Listen
> Why parents are opting out of public schools.
> Australia has its own Area 51.
Watch
> Can saunas make you live longer?
> Professional chefs blind taste test 27 salsas.
> ... and why seedless fruits are a disaster in the making.
Long Read
> How everything we do is authenticated, stored, and scored.
> America is setting its mouth on fire.
> These 14 empty nesters are reimagining their lives.
Most Clicked This Week: The controversial rise of grandma showers.
Historybook: Actor River Phoenix born (1970); Salad Bowl strike begins; largest farmworker strike in US history (1970); Kobe Bryant born (1978); 12-time Olympic swimming medalist Natalie Coughlin born (1982); India becomes fourth country to successfully land on the moon (2023).
In The NEWS
Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> The 2025 college football season kicks off tomorrow with a limited slate of Week 0 games, including No. 17 Kansas State taking on No. 22 Iowa State (12 pm ET, ESPN) from Dublin, Ireland (More)
> Rapper Lil Nas X is arrested and hospitalized after walking in Los Angeles in only underwear, allegedly punching an officer twice in the face (More)
> The 2025 US Open tennis championships begin this weekend in New York City (More) | See complete women's bracket (More) | ... and men's bracket (More)
Science & Technology
> CT scans and 3D mapping of an ancient child's bones discovered in modern-day Israel suggest humans and Neanderthals interacted 100,000 years earlier than previously believed (More)
> Giraffe genetic data reveals Africa is home to four distinct species, not just one as long assumed; new taxonomy will enable more nuanced understandings of population threats and targeted conservation efforts (More)
> Light pollution is interfering with songbirds' biological clocks, causing them to chirp an average of 50 minutes longer per day—18 minutes earlier in the morning and 32 minutes later in the evening (More)
Business & Markets
> US stock markets close down (S&P 500 -0.4%, Dow -0.3%, Nasdaq -0.3%) ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's annual policy speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, today (More) | Why do stock markets matter? (More)
> US existing home sales rise 2% month over month in July; median home price of $422,400 is up 0.2% from a year ago, representing smallest annual increase since June 2023 but still the highest median home price for any July on record (More) | How do mortgages work? (1440 Topics)
> Cracker Barrel shares close down 7% following pushback on its new simplified logo—part of a larger brand refresh (More)
Politics & World Affairs
> Supreme Court clears the Trump administration to cut $783M in National Institutes of Health grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives while a lawsuit over the cuts continues (More) | California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signs legislation sending redrawn congressional map to voters for approval (More)
> Erik Menendez is denied parole 36 years after murdering his parents in Los Angeles, will next be eligible in three years; brother Lyle goes before the parole board today (More) | See previous write-up (More)
> Influential evangelical leader James Dobson dies at age 89; the conservative activist served as an adviser to President Donald Trump and former presidents including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush (More)
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
Our Old House
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It is no secret that living in the SOUTH is way cheaper than living in the NORTH... not to mention the people living in the south are way more friendly that the people living in the north.
However, that is about to change as more and more northerners are moving down into the south to live because of the lower cost of living but they are also bring their negative personalities and behaviors.
For my family, we benefited from this relocation by selling our house for more than $12,000 over asking price because a northern family had money to burn after selling their house.
As far as the new owners of our house are concerned, it the over two years that they have owned it, they have let the house and yard deteriorate to the point that it looks like several illegal immigrant families are living there now.
We notice this because we just moved around the corner to a smaller house, but we are angled in such a way that we can still see our old house and in order to get to our new house, you must pass by our old house first, depending upon the direction from which you are driving.
Personally, I don't care how the new owners treat my old house because it is no longer my house, but my wife gets upset because of all the time she spent trying to make it have curbside appeal.
The profit we made on selling our old house not only paid for the renovations to our new house but provided us with enough cash to buy a new car, after selling our old car of ten years without having to borrow any money.
What I have learned from my almost 8 decades of life is NEVER LOOK BACK... life moves forward only briefly resting in the present.
An Archaeology Student Found a Medieval Gold Artifact During Her First Dig
The gold object measures just four centimeters, or 1.5 inches, long. Newcastle University
Just an hour and a half into her first ever excavation, an American archaeology student has struck gold in Britain. Dating back to the ninth century, the small, ornate artifact she unearthed may have had a ceremonial purpose.
Florida-native Yara Souza, an undergraduate at Newcastle University in northern England, was digging alongside other students at Redesdale in Northumberland when she discovered the gold piece. According to a statement from the university, the 1.5-inch piece has a decorative finial at one end, and it appears to be from Britain’s early medieval period.
“I couldn’t believe I’d found something so quickly into my first ever excavation,” Souza says in the statement. “It was actually quite overwhelming.”
The dig’s location in Redesdale, a valley in Northumberland National Park, is near Dere Street, which was once a “major Roman road,” per the statement. Britain was part of the western Roman Empire for more than 350 years, from 43 C.E. until the early fifth century, when the declining empire fell. Roman soldiers laid Dere Street, also known as the “Great North Road,” between 79 and 81 C.E. They used it to colonize northern Britain: The path runs from modern-day York, England, to Firth of Forth, Scotland, which is today an over 200-mile drive.
Friday, August 22
Headlines
John Lamparski/Getty Images
NY appeals court throws out $500 million fraud penalty against Trump. President Trump will no longer have to pay the half-billion-dollar judgment from his civil business fraud trial after a New York court tossed the massive fine. “While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the State,” Justice Peter Moulton wrote in a decision that sharply divided the court. Trump immediately took to social media to declare “TOTAL VICTORY.” Though it threw out the huge financial penalty, the court upheld the fraud ruling, which found last year that the president had inflated his net worth in order to secure better loan terms.
The US and EU reveal some details of their trade agreement. A month after announcing a preliminary trade deal that was devoid of specifics, the US and EU laid out the framework of their arrangement. Under the deal, which is still only a verbal agreement and not yet a legally binding contract, the US will put a 15% tariff on most goods coming from European Union member countries. The exception is cars, which will be slapped with a much higher 27.5% tariff until the EU introduces legislation to lower levies on American products—at which point the auto tariff will drop to 15%, too. A White House official told the New York Times that this could be addressed “in a matter of weeks.”
Meta reportedly freezes its AI hiring. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Facebook and Instagram parent company is ending its AI spending spree (for now) and putting a hold on hiring for its artificial intelligence division. Meta has invested untold billions in waging a talent war over the industry’s top AI minds as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s quest to develop “superintelligence,” or smarter-than-human intelligence. Earlier this year, Meta spent $14 billion for a stake in Scale AI to secure the services of its co-founder, Alexandr Wang. But analysts and investors are beginning to worry about the sky-high spending. Meta downplayed the hiring freeze as “basic organizational planning.”—AE
Robert Reich
How to stop him
Friends,
I’m writing to you from Houston, Texas, where I’m flogging Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America to every Texan who might be interested. So far I think I’ve sold two copies.
Just kidding. Last night, in fact, I met hundreds of Texans who seemed interested.
Texas wasn’t always the bastion of right-wing extremism it seems today. Remember Ann Richards? She was the progressive firebrand governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995. I recall her keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta when she said of then-President George H.W. Bush, “Poor George, he can’t help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Today, the progressive torch is being carried in Texas by people like Beto O’Rourke, Rep. Greg Casar (from Texas’s 35th congressional district), and State Rep. Nicole Collier.
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