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Category: Associated Press

  • Pentagon accepts $130 million donation to help pay the military during the government shutdown

    Pentagon accepts $130 million donation to help pay the military during the government shutdown

    WASHINGTON — The Pentagon confirmed Friday that it has accepted an anonymous $130 million gift to help pay members of the military during the government shutdown, raising ethical questions after President Donald Trump had announced that a friend had offered the gift to defray any shortfalls.

    While large and unusual, the gift amounts to a small contribution toward the billions needed to cover service member paychecks. The Trump administration told Congress last week that it used $6.5 billion to make payroll. The next payday is coming within the week, and it is unclear if the administration will again move money around to ensure the military does not go without compensation.

    “That’s what I call a patriot,” Trump said during a White House event Thursday when he disclosed the payment from the donor.

    The president declined to name the person, whom he called “a friend of mine,” saying the man didn’t want the recognition.

    The Pentagon confirmed it had accepted the donation on Thursday “under its general gift acceptance authority.”

    “The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits,” said Sean Parnell, chief spokesman for the Pentagon. “We are grateful for this donor’s assistance after Democrats opted to withhold pay from troops.”

    Congress is at a stalemate over the government shutdown, now on track to become one of the longest federal closures ever, in its 24th day. Neither Republicans, who have control of the House and Senate, nor Democrats, in the minority, are willing to budge in their broader standoff over health care funding.

    Payment for service members is a key concern among lawmakers of both parties as well as a point of political leverage. The Trump administration shifted $8 billion from military research and development funds to make payroll last week, ensuring that military compensation did not lapse.

    But it is unclear if the Trump administration will be willing — or able — to shift money again next week as tensions rise over the protracted shutdown.

    While the $130 million is a hefty sum, it would cover just a fraction of the billions needed for military paychecks. Trump said the donation was to cover any “shortfall.”

    What’s unclear, however, is the regulations around such a donation.

    “That’s crazy,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization focused on the federal government.

    “It’s treating the payment of our uniformed services as if someone’s picking up your bar tab.”

    He questioned the legality of the donation and called for more transparency around it.

    Pentagon policy says authorities “must consult with their appropriate Ethics Official before accepting such a gift valued in excess of $10,000 to determine whether the donor is involved in any claims, procurement actions, litigation, or other particular matters involving the Department that must be considered prior to gift acceptance.”

  • Social Security recipients get a 2.8% cost-of-living boost in 2026, average of $56 per month

    Social Security recipients get a 2.8% cost-of-living boost in 2026, average of $56 per month

    WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration’s annual cost-of-living adjustment will go up by 2.8% in 2026, translating to an average increase of more than $56 for retirees every month, agency officials said Friday.

    The benefits increase for nearly 71 million Social Security recipients will go into effect beginning in January. And increased payments to nearly 7.5 million people receiving Supplemental Security Income will begin on Dec. 31.

    Friday’s announcement was meant to be made last week but was delayed because of the federal government shutdown.

    From June: DOGE cuts have made it hard for Philly seniors to get Social Security offices on the phone

    The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for retirees and disabled beneficiaries is financed by payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers, up to a certain annual salary, which is slated to increase to $184,500 in 2026, from $176,100 in 2025.

    Recipients received a 2.5% cost-of-living boost in 2025 and a 3.2% increase in their benefits in 2024, after a historically large 8.7% benefit increase in 2023, brought on by record 40-year-high inflation.

    The smaller increase for 2026 reflects moderating inflation. The agency will notify recipients of their new benefit amount by mail in early December.

    From May: How will switch to all-digital Social Security payments affect Pennsylvanians?

    Some seniors say the increase isn’t enough

    Some seniors say the cost-of-living adjustment won’t help much in their ability to pay for their daily expenses. Linda Deas, an 80-year-old Florence, South Carolina, resident said “it does not match the affordability crisis we are having right now.”

    Deas, a retired information systems network operations specialist, moved to South Carolina from New York in 2022 to be closer to family. She says her monthly rent has increased by $400 in the past two years.

    She listed other items that have become more expensive for her in the past two years, including auto insurance and food. “If you have been into the supermarkets lately you will notice how prices are going up, not down,” she said.

    Deas is not alone in feeling that costs are getting out of control. Polling from the AARP shows that older Americans are increasingly struggling to keep up in today’s economy. The poll states that only 22% of Americans over age 50 agree that a COLA of right around 3% for Social Security recipients is enough to keep up with rising prices, while 77% disagree. That sentiment is consistent across political party affiliations, according to the AARP.

    In Deas’ case, the MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates that an adult living alone in Florence, South Carolina, would spend per year $10,184 for housing, $3,053 for medical expenses and $3,839 for food.

    AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said the COLA is “a lifeline of independence and dignity, for tens of millions of older Americans,” but even with the annual inflation-gauged boost in income, “older adults still face challenges covering basic expenses.”

    Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano said in a statement Friday that the annual cost-of-living adjustment “is one way we are working to make sure benefits reflect today’s economic realities and continue to provide a foundation of security.”

    Emerson Sprick, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s director of retirement and labor policy, said in a statement that cost-of-living increases “can’t solve all the financial challenges households face or all the shortcomings of the program.”

    The agency has been in turmoil in recent months

    The latest COLA announcement comes as the Social Security Administration has been navigating almost a year of turmoil, including the termination of thousands of workers as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce. Trump administration officials have also made statements they later walked back that raised concerns about the future of the program.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in July that the Republican administration was committed to protecting Social Security hours after he said in an interview that a new children’s savings program President Donald Trump signed into law “is a back door for privatizing Social Security.”

    And in September, Bisignano had to walk back comments that the agency is considering raising the retirement age to shore up Social Security. “Raising the retirement age is not under consideration at this time by the Administration,” Bisignano said at the time in an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press.

    “I think everything’s being considered, will be considered,” Bisignano said in the statement when asked whether raising the retirement age was a possibility to maintain the old age program’s solvency.

    Efforts to boost benefits for seniors

    In addition, the Social Security Administration faces a looming bankruptcy date if it is not addressed by Congress. The June 2025 Social Security and Medicare trustees’ report states that Social Security’s trust funds, which cover old age and disability recipients, will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034. Then, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.

    Social Security benefits were last reformed roughly 40 years ago, when the federal government raised the eligibility age for the program from 65 to 67.

    While a permanent solution for shoring up the benefits program has not been passed into law, both the Trump and Biden administrations have recently signed into law new benefits for retirees, which are expected to boost their finances.

    The Trump administration, as part of Republicans’ tax and spending bill, gave tax relief to many seniors through a temporary tax deduction for seniors aged 65 and over, which applies to all income — not just Social Security. However, those who won’t be able to claim the deduction include the lowest-income seniors who already don’t pay taxes on Social Security, those who choose to claim their benefits before they reach age 65 and those above a defined income threshold.

    Additionally, former President Joe Biden in 2024 repealed two federal policies — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — that previously limited Social Security payouts for roughly 2.8 million people, including largely former public workers.

    These measures have accelerated the insolvency of the old-age benefits program.

    Sprick at the Bipartisan Policy Center said “there have been longstanding questions about whether benefits are adequate for low-income seniors, which should inspire urgency among policymakers to work toward broader reforms instead of ignoring Social Security’s long-term solvency.”

  • NBA head coach and player charged in sprawling sports betting and Mafia-backed poker schemes

    NBA head coach and player charged in sprawling sports betting and Mafia-backed poker schemes

    NEW YORK — The head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and a player for the Miami Heat were arrested Thursday along with more than 30 other people in a takedown of two sprawling gambling operations that authorities said leaked inside information about NBA athletes and rigged poker games backed by Mafia families.

    Portland coach Chauncey Billups was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games tied to La Cosa Nostra organized crime families that cheated unsuspecting gamblers out of at least $7 million. Heat guard Terry Rozier was accused in a separate scheme of exploiting private information about players to win bets on NBA games.

    The two indictments unsealed in New York create a massive cloud for the NBA — which opened its season this week — and show how certain types of wagers are vulnerable to massive fraud in the growing, multibillion-dollar legal sports-betting industry. Joseph Nocella, the top federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York, called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

    “My message to the defendants who’ve been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended,” Nocella said. “Your luck has run out.”

    Both men face money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy charges. Also charged was former NBA assistant coach and player Damon Jones, who stands accused of participating in both schemes.

    “The fraud is mind boggling,” FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters. “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multiyear investigation.”

    The alleged fraud, however, paled in comparison to the riches the athletes earned on the court. Billups, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, had about $106 million in earnings over his 17-year career. Rozier made about $160 million in his stops in Boston, Miami and Charlotte.

    Billups and Rozier have been placed on leave from their teams, according to the NBA, which said it is cooperating with authorities.

    “We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the NBA said in a statement.

    Hours after his arrest, Rozier appeared in a federal court in Orlando, Florida, wearing a Charlotte Hornets sweatshirt, handcuffs and shackles. Billups appeared before a judge in Portland, Oregon. Both men were ordered released from custody on certain conditions.

    Billups’ attorney, Chris Heywood, issued a statement Thursday evening denying the allegations, calling his client a “man of integrity.” “To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his Hall-of-Fame legacy, his reputation and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game,” Heywood said.

    Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement that his client is “not a gambler” and “looks forward to winning this fight.” Trusty criticized authorities for not allowing his client to surrender on his own and accused officials of wanting “the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk.”

    Messages were left Thursday at a phone number and email address listed in public records for Jones.

    Roughly 20 other defendants appeared in federal court in Brooklyn, where most of them pleaded not guilty. Many of those charged with violent crimes or with lengthy criminal records and ties to organized crime were detained.

    Mafia families profited off gambling scheme, officials say

    The poker scheme lured unwitting players into rigged games with the chance to compete against former professional basketball players like Billups and Jones. The games were fixed using sophisticated cheating technology, such as altered card-shuffling machines, hidden cameras in poker chip trays, special sunglasses and even X-ray equipment built into the table to read cards, authorities allege.

    The scheme often made use of illegal poker games run by New York crime families that required them to share a portion of their proceeds with the Gambino, Genovese and Bonnano crime families, according to court papers. Members of those families, in turn, also helped commit violent acts, including assault, extortion and robbery, to ensure repayment of debts and the continued success of the operation, officials said in court documents.

    Athletes accused of leaving games early

    In the sports betting scheme, Rozier and other defendants are accused of accessing private information from NBA players or coaches that could affect a player’s performance and giving that information to others so they could place wagers. Players sometimes altered their performance or took themselves out of games early to rig prop bets — a type of wager that allows gamblers to bet on whether a player will exceed a certain statistic, such as a total number of points, rebounds or assists, according to the indictment.

    In one instance, Rozier, while playing for the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, told people he was planning to leave the game early with a supposed injury, allowing gamblers to place wagers earning them tens of thousands of dollars, authorities said. That game against the New Orleans Pelicans raised eyebrows at the time. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of the game before leaving, citing a foot issue. He did not play again that season.

    Posts still online from March 23, 2023, show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return to the game after the first quarter, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had happened regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

    The indictments contain the descriptions of several unnamed NBA players whose injury status and availability for certain games were the source of betting activity. Those players are not accused of any wrongdoing, and there is no indication that they would have even known what was being said about their status for those games.

    Those players include LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard. Their identities are clear based on a review of corresponding injury reports surrounding games mentioned in the indictment. The indictments show that certain defendants shared information about the availability of those players in a game on March 24, 2023, involving the Portland Trail Blazers, and two games in 2023 and 2024 involving the Los Angeles Lakers.

    The NBA had investigated Rozier previously. He was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic on Wednesday in Orlando, Florida, in the season opener for both teams, though he did not play in the game.

  • Vance criticizes Israel’s parliament vote on West Bank annexation, says the move was an ‘insult’

    Vance criticizes Israel’s parliament vote on West Bank annexation, says the move was an ‘insult’

    JERUSALEM — U.S. Vice President JD Vance criticized on Thursday a symbolic vote in Israel’s parliament the previous day about annexing the occupied West Bank, saying it amounted to an “insult” and went against the Trump administration policies.

    Hard-liners in the Israeli parliament had narrowly passed a preliminary vote in support of annexing parts of the West Bank — an apparent attempt to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Vance was still in the country.

    The bill, which required only a simple majority of lawmakers present in the house on Wednesday, passed with a 25-24 vote. But it was unlikely to pass multiple rounds of voting to become law or win a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Netanyahu, who is opposed to it, also has tools to delay or defeat it.

    Before departing Israel, Vance also unveiled new details about U.S. plans for Gaza, saying he expected reconstruction to begin soon in some “Hamas-free” areas of the territory. But he warned that rebuilding the territory after a devastating two-year war could take years.

    “The hope is to rebuild Rafah over the next two to three years and theoretically you could have half a million people live (there),” he said, speaking of the strip’s southernmost city.

    That would account for about a quarter of Gaza’s population of roughly 2 million, 90% of whom were displaced from their homes during the war. Out of every 10 buildings that stood in Gaza prewar, eight are either damaged or flattened. An estimated cost of rebuilding Gaza is about $53 billion, according to the World Bank, the U.N. and the European Union.

    Trump’s choice: Let Israel adopt his ‘Gaza Riviera plan’ and expel Palestinians, or press Netanyahu for a ceasefire | Trudy Rubin

    Vance says the vote was an ‘insult’

    The Israeli parliament’s vote has stirred widespread condemnation, with over a dozen countries — including Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — rebuking it in a joint statement that called all Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law.

    Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the “vote on annexation was a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord.”

    Netanyahu is struggling to stave off early elections as cracks grow more apparent between factions in Israel’s right-wing parties, some of whom were upset over the ceasefire and the security sacrifices it required of Israel.

    Vance said that if the Knesset’s vote was a “political stunt, then it is a very stupid political stunt.”

    “I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”

    Vance expresses optimism about the ceasefire in Gaza while noting ‘very hard’ work to come

    The deputy Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that Palestinians “appreciate the clear message” the Trump administration has sent in opposition to annexation.

    While many members of Netanyahu’s coalition, including his Likud Party, support annexation, they have backed off those calls since U.S. President Donald Trump said last month that he opposes such a move.

    The Palestinians seek the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future independent state. Israeli annexation of the West Bank would all but bury hopes for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians — the outcome supported by most of the world.

    Analysts like Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, say that a “de-facto annexation of very large parts” of the West Bank is already underway, referring to the growing number of Israelis living in settlements in the Palestinian territory — even without any law supporting annexation.

    Intense U.S. push toward peace

    Earlier this week, Vance announced the opening of a civilian military coordination center in southern Israel where some 200 U.S. troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries planning the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza.

    The United States is seeking support from other allies, especially Gulf Arab nations, to create an international stabilization force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian force.

    “We’d like to see Palestinian police forces in Gaza that are not Hamas and that are going to do a good job, but those still have to be trained and equipped,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said ahead of his trip to Israel.

    Rubio, who was meeting with Netanyahu on Thursday evening, has also criticized Israeli far-right lawmakers’ effort to push for the annexation of the West Bank.

    Israeli media referred to the nonstop parade of American officials visiting to ensure Israel holds up its side of the fragile ceasefire as “Bibi-sitting.” The term, utilizing Netanyahu’s nickname of Bibi, refers to an old campaign ad when Netanyahu positioned himself as the “Bibi-sitter” whom voters could trust with their kids.

    Gaza’s dire need for medical care and aid

    In the first medical evacuation since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday the group has evacuated 41 critical patients and 145 companions out of the Gaza Strip.

    In a statement posted to X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on nations to show solidarity and help some 15,000 patients who are still waiting for approval to receive medical care outside Gaza.

    His calls were echoed by an official with the U.N. Population Fund who on Wednesday described the “sheer devastation” that he witnessed on his most recent travel to Gaza, saying that there is no such thing as a “normal birth in Gaza now.”

    Andrew Saberton, an executive director at UNFPA, told reporters how difficult the agency’s work has become due to the lack of functioning or even standing health care facilities.

    Another major challenge since the ceasefire began has been getting enough aid into Gaza — and distributed — to the meet the huge demand.

    “We expected Gaza to be flooded with aid the moment the ceasefire began. But that’s not what we’re seeing,” said Bushra Khalidi, who oversees the Palestinian territories division at Oxfam, a nonprofit focused on global poverty.

    More crossings into Gaza need to be opened in order to allow in more trucks, said Antoine Renard, head of the World Food Program in the Palestinian territories.

    “With only two crossings that are open, you are facing clearly congestion,” he said.

    The WFP has 36 distribution centers operating in Gaza, and aims to increase that to 145. Since Oct 11, the U.N. tracking system has recorded 949 aid trucks that were offloaded in Gaza.

  • Trump backs off planned surge of federal agents into San Francisco after talking to the mayor

    Trump backs off planned surge of federal agents into San Francisco after talking to the mayor

    ALAMEDA, Calif. — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s backing off a planned surge of federal agents into San Francisco to quell crime after speaking to the mayor and several prominent business leaders who said they’re working hard to clean up the city.

    Trump had been threatening to send the National Guard to San Francisco, a move Mayor Daniel Lurie and Gov. Gavin Newsom said was unnecessary because crime is on the decline. Separately, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents began arriving at a Coast Guard base in the region earlier Thursday for a possible ramp up of immigration enforcement, a move that drew several hundred protesters.

    It was not clear if the president was canceling a National Guard deployment or calling off immigration enforcement by CBP agents. At his news conference, Lurie said he could not clarify and could only repeat what the president had told him. Lurie said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “reaffirmed” Trump’s commitment on Thursday morning. DHS oversees CBP agents as well as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    “The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge,” Trump posted on social media. “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”

    Specifically, Trump said he heard from Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. He said the federal government could handle crime better than city leaders, and he indicated he could still send agents in the future.

    At an afternoon news conference, Lurie said he welcomes the city’s “continued partnership” with the Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal authorities to get illegal narcotics off the streets and contribute to San Francisco’s falling crime rates.

    “But having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” the mayor said. Trump’s assertions of out-of-control crime in the city of roughly 830,000 have baffled local and state leaders, who point to statistics showing that many crimes are at record lows.

    Newsom’s office said on X: “Trump has finally, for once, listened to reason — and heard what we have been saying from the beginning. The Bay Area is a shining example of what makes California so special, and any attempt to erode our progress would damage the work we’ve done.”

    Protesters assembled just after dawn at Coast Guard Island in Alameda, California, where CBP agents were arriving before Trump made his remarks. Several hundred people stood outside the facility, with many singing hymns and carrying signs saying, “Protect our neighbors” and “No ICE or troops in the Bay.”

    Police used at least one flash-bang grenade to clear a handful of demonstrators from the entrance as CBP vehicles drove onto the base. Organizers urged protesters to remain peaceful, as a line of Coast Guard officers in helmets watched from just outside the entrance.

    Protester Gala King participated in an interfaith vigil against the federal crackdown and in support of immigrants.

    “The Bay Area is a beautiful place full of diversity, and we are here to protect that,” King said. “Our faith traditions, our interfaith traditions, call on us to stand on the side of justice, to stand on the side of those that are most marginalized, that are most targeted right now.”

    Coast Guard Island is an artificial island formed in 1913, and the Coast Guard first established a base there in 1926. The island is owned by the federal government and is not open to the general public, so escorts or specific government ID cards are required for visitors. The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

    Trump has deployed the Guard to Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee, to help fight what he says is rampant crime. Los Angeles was the first city where Trump deployed the Guard, arguing it was necessary to protect federal buildings and agents as protesters fought back against immigration arrests.

    He has also said they are needed in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. Lawsuits from Democratic officials in both cities have so far blocked troops from going onto city streets.

  • Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, high-profile cryptocurrency figure

    Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, high-profile cryptocurrency figure

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and served prison time for failing to stop criminals from using the platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.

    The pardon caps a monthslong effort by Zhao, a billionaire commonly known as CZ in the crypto world and one of the biggest names in the industry. He and Binance have been key supporters of some of the Trump family’s crypto enterprises.

    “Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice,” Zhao said on social media Thursday.

    Zhao served four months in prison after reaching a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at Binance. But, in explaining the pardon, Trump said of Zhao, “He was recommended by a lot of people.”

    From May: Your guide to Cryptogate, Trump’s $4 billion corruption scandal that’s 10 times bigger than Watergate | Will Bunch

    “A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump said. “He served four months in jail and they say that he was not guilty of anything.”

    The president added that he didn’t believe he’d ever met Zhao personally, but had “been told” he “had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime.” He said Zhao had been “persecuted by the Biden administration.”

    “I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,” Trump said.

    It’s the latest move by a president who has flexed his executive power to bestow clemency on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of crimes.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the pardon in a statement and later told reporters in a briefing that the White House counsel’s office “thoroughly reviewed” the request. She said the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden pursued “an egregious oversentencing” in the case, was “very hostile to the cryptocurrency industry” and Trump “wants to correct this overreach.”

    The crypto industry has also long complained it was subject to a “regulation by enforcement” ethos under the Biden administration.

    Trump’s pardon of Zhao fits into a broad pattern of his taking a hands-off approach to an industry that spent heavily to help him win the election in 2024. His administration has dropped several enforcement actions against crypto companies that began during Biden’s term and disbanded the crypto-related enforcement team at the Justice Department.

    Former federal prosecutor Mark Bini said Zhao went to prison for what “sounds like a regulatory offense, or at worst its kissing cousin.”

    “So this pardon, while it involves the biggest name in crypto, is not very surprising,” said Bini, a white collar defense lawyer who handles crypto issues at Reed Smith.

    Zhao was released from prison last year after being sentenced for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. He was the first person ever sentenced to prison time for such violations of that law, which requires U.S. financial institutions to know who their customers are, to monitor transactions and to file reports of suspicious activity. Prosecutors said no one had ever violated the regulations to the extent Zhao did.

    The judge in the case said he was troubled by Zhao’s decision to ignore U.S. banking requirements that would have slowed the company’s explosive growth.

    “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” was what Zhao told his employees about the company’s approach to U.S. law, prosecutors said. Binance allowed more than 1.5 million virtual currency trades, totaling nearly $900 million, that violated U.S. sanctions, including ones involving Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, al-Qaida and Iran, prosecutors said.

    “I failed here,” Zhao told the court last year during sentencing. “I deeply regret my failure, and I am sorry.”

    Zhao had a remarkable path to becoming a crypto billionaire. He grew up in rural China and his family immigrated to Canada after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. As a teenager, he worked at a McDonald’s and became enamored with the tech industry in college. He founded Binance in 2017.

    In addition to taking pro-crypto enforcement and regulatory positions, the president and his family have plunged headfirst into making money in crypto.

    A stablecoin launched by World Liberty Financial, a crypto project founded by Trump and sons Donald Jr. and Eric, received early support and credibility thanks to an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates using $2 billion worth of World Liberty’s stablecoin to purchase a stake in Binance. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that are typically tied to the value of the U.S. dollar.

    A separate World Liberty Finance token saw a huge spike in price on Thursday shortly after news of the pardon was made public, with gains that far outpaced any other major cryptocurrency, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

    Zhao said earlier this year that his lawyers had requested a pardon.

    It is not immediately clear what impact Trump’s pardon of Zhao may have on operations at Binance and Binance.US, a separate arm of the main exchange offering more limited trading options to U.S. residents.

  • OpenAI launches Atlas web browser to compete with Google Chrome

    OpenAI launches Atlas web browser to compete with Google Chrome

    OpenAI introduced its own web browser, Atlas, on Tuesday, putting the ChatGPT maker in direct competition with Google as more internet users rely on artificial intelligence to answer their questions.

    Making its popular AI chatbot a gateway to online searches could allow OpenAI, the world’s most valuable startup, to pull in more internet traffic and the revenue made from digital advertising. It could also further cut off the lifeblood of online publishers if ChatGPT so effectively feeds people summarized information that they stop exploring the internet and clicking on traditional web links.

    Six ways small businesses are using AI in Philly and beyond

    OpenAI has said ChatGPT already has more than 800 million users but many of them get it for free. The San Francisco-based company also sells paid subscriptions but is losing more money than it makes and has been looking for ways to turn a profit.

    OpenAI said Atlas launches Tuesday on Apple laptops and will later come to Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s iOS phone operating system and Google’s Android phone system.

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it a “rare, once-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be about and how to use one.”

    But analyst Paddy Harrington of market research group Forrester said it will be a big challenge “competing with a giant who has ridiculous market share.”

    OpenAI’s browser is coming out just a few months after one of its executives testified that the company would be interested in buying Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser if a federal judge had required it to be sold to prevent the abuses that resulted in Google’s ubiquitous search engine being declared an illegal monopoly.

    But U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last month issued a decision that rejected the Chrome sale sought by the U.S. Justice Department in the monopoly case, partly because he believed advances in the AI industry already are reshaping the competitive landscape.

    OpenAI’s browser will face a daunting challenge against Chrome, which has amassed about 3 billion worldwide users and has been adding some AI features from Google’s Gemini technology.

    Chrome’s immense success could provide a blueprint for OpenAI as it enters the browser market. When Google released Chrome in 2008, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was so dominant that few observers believed a new browser could mount a formidable threat.

    But Chrome quickly won over legions of admirers by loading webpages more quickly than Internet Explorer while offering other advantages that enabled it to upend the market. Microsoft ended up abandoning Explorer and introducing its Edge browser, which operates similarly to Chrome and holds a distant third place in market share behind Apple’s Safari.

    Perplexity, another smaller AI startup, rolled out its own Comet browser earlier this year. It also expressed interest in buying Chrome and eventually submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer for the browser that hit a dead end when Mehta decided against a Google breakup.

    Altman said he expects a chatbot interface to replace a traditional browser’s URL bar as the center of how he hopes people will use the internet in the future.

    “Tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of browser innovation since then,” he said on a video presentation aired Tuesday.

    A premium feature of the ChatGPT Atlas browser is an “agent mode” that accesses the laptop and effectively clicks around the internet on the person’s behalf, armed with a users’ browser history and what they are seeking to learn and explaining its process as it searches.

    “It’s using the internet for you,” Altman said.

    Harrington, the Forrester analyst, says another way of thinking about that is it’s “taking personality away from you.”

    “Your profile will be personally attuned to you based on all the information sucked up about you. OK, scary,” Harrington said. “But is it really you, really what you’re thinking, or what that engine decides it’s going to do? … And will it add in preferred solutions based on ads?”

    About 60% of Americans overall — and 74% of those under 30 — use AI to find information at least some of the time, making online searches one of the most popular uses of AI technology, according to findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll taken over the summer.

    Google since last year has automatically provided AI-generated responses that attempt to answer a person’s search query, appearing at the top of results.

    Reliance on AI chatbots to summarize information they collect online has raised a number of concerns, including the technology’s propensity to confidently spout false information, a problem known as hallucination.

    The way that chatbots trained on online content spout new writings has been particularly troubling to the news industry, leading The New York Times and other outlets to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement and others, including The Associated Press, to sign licensing deals.

    A study of four top AI assistants including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini released Wednesday showed nearly half their responses were flawed and fell short of the standards of “high-quality” journalism.

    The research from the European Broadcasting Union, a group of public broadcasters in 56 countries, compiled the results of more than 3,000 responses to news-related questions to help ascertain quality responses and identify problems to fix.

  • What to know about the Amazon cloud outage

    What to know about the Amazon cloud outage

    A massive internet outage stemming from errors in Amazon cloud services on Monday demonstrated just how many people rely on the corporate behemoth’s computational infrastructure every day — and laid bare the vulnerabilities of an increasingly concentrated system.

    But despite its omnipresence, most users don’t know what — or where — the cloud is.

    Here is what to know about the data centers in Northern Virginia where the outage originated, and what the malfunction reveals about a rapidly evolving industry.

    Renting internet infrastructure

    Cloud computing is a technology that allows companies to remotely access massive computing equipment and services without having to purchase and maintain physical infrastructure.

    In other words, businesses ranging from Snapchat to McDonald’s essentially rent Amazon’s physical infrastructure located in places all around the world to operate their own websites. Instead of building expensive computing systems in-house, companies rely on Amazon to store data, develop and test software, and deliver applications.

    Amazon is the leading provider of cloud infrastructure and platform services, constituting over 41% of the market, according to market research group Gartner. Google and Microsoft are the next biggest competitors.

    Biggest and oldest hub

    Although the cloud sounds like an abstract, formless entity, its physical location matters: Proximity to cloud data centers determines how quickly users can access internet platforms.

    Amazon Web Services has just four cloud computing hubs in the United States, according to their website. Those are strategically spread out in California, Ohio, Virginia, and Oregon to deliver fast services to users across the country.

    A user’s distance from the hub affects how quickly they can access platforms.

    “If you’re waiting a minute to use an application, you’re not going to use it again,” said Amro Al-Said Ahmad, a lecturer in computer science at Keele University in England.

    The region in Northern Virginia where Monday’s problems originated is the biggest and oldest cloud hub in the country.

    In fact, the Virginia cluster known as US-East-1 region is responsible for “orders of magnitude” more data than its nearest cluster in Ohio, or even its big West Coast hubs, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. The idea of a big cloud provider like Amazon is that organizations can split their workloads across multiple regions, so it doesn’t matter as much if one fails, but “the reality is it’s all very concentrated,” Madory said.

    “For a lot of people, if you’re going to use AWS, you’re going to use US-East-1 regardless of where you are on Planet Earth,” Madory said. “We have this incredible concentration of IT services that are hosted out of one region by one cloud provider, for the world, and that presents a fragility for modern society and the modern economy.”

    More than 100 warehouses

    The servers aren’t located in just one building.

    Amazon has “well over 100” of the sprawling computing warehouses in Virginia, mostly in the exurbs at the edge of the Washington metropolitan area, said Gartner analyst Lydia Leong.

    Leong said one reason why it’s Amazon’s “single-most popular region” is that it is increasingly becoming a hub for handling artificial intelligence workloads. The growing usage of chatbots, image generators, and other generative AI tools has spiked demand for computing power and led to a construction boom of new data center complexes around the U.S. and world.

    A report Monday from TD Cowen said that the leading cloud computing providers leased a “staggering” amount of U.S. data center capacity in the third fiscal quarter of this year, amounting to more than 7.4 gigawatts of energy, more than all of last year combined.

    Cloud service perils

    The outage, which some analysts are calling Amazon’s worst since 2021, reminded the world of the perils of depending on a handful of cloud companies to deliver crucial computing and internet services. Outages like Monday’s strike at a core premise of the cloud: that a centralized operation full of sharp engineers will keep servers running better and more efficiently than individual companies’ own staff.

    The breakdown occurred at a challenging moment for the Amazon Web Services cloud unit, which has long touted reliability and accountability as a core piece of its pitch to customers. Sales growth has slowed, and AWS has struggled to keep up as its two biggest rivals, Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, grab new business selling artificial intelligence tools.

    AWS remains the world’s largest cloud provider and is hardly the first to suffer an outage. Moreover, it’s not easy for customers to jump ship, especially given the current capacity crunch at data centers. Still, in recent years, some companies have sought to reduce their reliance on a single cloud provider.

    “The outage will likely fuel customers wanting to spread their infrastructure between multiple clouds, which could be a positive for smaller vendors like Google,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana. Still, he said, it’s unlikely to result in any meaningful market share loss for Amazon due to the difficulty of shifting work between clouds and industrywide capacity constraints.

    Bloomberg contributed to this article.

  • Trump hosts Senate Republicans at renovated White House as the shutdown drags into fourth week

    Trump hosts Senate Republicans at renovated White House as the shutdown drags into fourth week

    WASHINGTON — Head Start programs for preschoolers are scrambling for federal funds. The federal agency tasked with overseeing the U.S. nuclear stockpile has begun furloughing its 1,400 employees. Thousands more federal workers are going without paychecks.

    But as President Donald Trump welcomed Republican senators for lunch in the newly renovated Rose Garden Club — with the boom-boom of construction underway on the new White House ballroom — he portrayed a different vision of America, as a unified GOP refuses to yield to Democratic demands for healthcare funds, and the government shutdown drags on.

    “We have the hottest country anywhere in the world, which tells you about leadership,” Trump said in opening remarks, extolling the renovations underway as senators took their seats in the newly paved over garden-turned-patio.

    Medicare coverage for telehealth suspended as result of government shutdown

    It was a festive atmosphere under crisp, but sunny autumn skies as senators settled in for cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolates, and Trump’s favored songs — “YMCA” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — played over the new sound system.

    And while Trump said the shutdown must come to an end — and suggested maybe Smithsonian museums could reopen — he signaled no quick compromise with Democrats over the expiring healthcare funds.

    Later at another White House event, Trump said he’s happy to talk with Democrats about healthcare once the shutdown is over. “The government has to be open,” he said.

    Some Philly federal workers are working through the shutdown. It’s ‘awful’ and ‘depressing.’

    Shutdown drags into record books

    As the government shutdown enters its fourth week — on track to become one of the longest in U.S. history — millions of Americans are bracing for healthcare sticker shock, while others are feeling the financial impact. Economists have warned that the federal closure, with many of the nearly 2.3 million employees working without pay, will shave economic growth by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points per week.

    The Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries had outreached to the White House on Tuesday, seeking a meeting with Trump before the president departs for his next overseas trip, to Asia.

    “We said we’ll set up an appointment with him anytime, anyplace before he leaves,” Schumer said.

    With Republicans in control of Congress, the Democrats have few options. They are planning to keep the Senate in session late into the night Wednesday in protest. The House has been closed for weeks.

    The Republican senators, departing the White House lunch with gifts of Trump caps and medallions, said there is nothing to negotiate with Democrats over the healthcare funds until the government reopens.

    “People keep saying ‘negotiate’ — negotiate what?” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said after the hour-long meeting. He said Republicans and the president are willing to consider discussions over healthcare, “but open up the government first.”

    Federal shutdown may bring a halt to food assistance for half a million Philadelphians

    Missed paychecks and programs running out of money

    While Capitol Hill remains at a standstill, the effects of the shutdown are worsening.

    Federal workers are set to miss additional paychecks amid total uncertainty about when they might eventually get paid. Government services like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, and Head Start preschool programs that serve needy families are facing potential cutoffs in funding. On Monday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the National Nuclear Security Administration is furloughing its federal workers. The Federal Aviation Administration has reported air traffic controller shortages and flight delays in cities across the United States.

    At the same time, economists, including Goldman Sachs and the nonpartisan CBO, have warned that the federal government’s closure will ripple through the economy. More recently, Oxford Economics said a shutdown reduces economic growth by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points per week.

    The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted that the Small Business Administration supports loans totaling about $860 million a week for 1,600 small businesses. Those programs will close to new loans during the shutdown. The shutdown also has halted the issuance and renewal of flood insurance policies, delaying mortgage closings and real estate transactions.

    Trump and his budget chief are making this a government shutdown unlike any other

    Rising healthcare costs

    And without action, future health costs are expected to skyrocket for millions of Americans as the enhanced federal subsidies that help people buy private insurance under the Affordable Care Act, come to an end.

    Those subsidies, in the form of tax credits that were bolstered during the COVID-19 crisis, expire Dec. 31, and insurance companies are sending out information ahead of open enrollment periods about the new rates for the coming year.

    Most U.S. adults are worried about healthcare becoming more expensive, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, as they make decisions about next year’s health coverage.

    Members of both parties acknowledge that time is running out to fix the looming health insurance price hikes, even as talks are quietly underway over possible extensions or changes to the ACA funding.

    Democrats are focused on Nov. 1, when next year’s enrollment period for the ACA coverage begins and millions of people will sign up for their coverage without the expanded subsidy help. Once those sign-ups begin, they say, it would be much harder to restore the subsidies even if they did have a bipartisan compromise.

    What about Trump?

    Tuesday’s White House meeting offered a chance for Republican senators to engage with the president on the shutdown after he had been more involved in foreign policy and other issues.

    But senators left the meeting, some saying it was more of a luncheon than a substantial conversation. They said they could hear, but not see, the ballroom construction nearby.

    Trump had previously indicated early on during the shutdown that he may be willing to discuss the healthcare issue, and Democrats have been counting on turning the president’s attention their way. But the president later clarified that he would only do so once the government reopens.

  • Trump-Putin summit planned for Budapest is on hold after Rubio spoke with Lavrov, U.S. official says

    Trump-Putin summit planned for Budapest is on hold after Rubio spoke with Lavrov, U.S. official says

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s plan for a swift meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin is on hold, a U.S. official said Tuesday, the latest twist in his stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine.

    The meeting was announced last week and was supposed to take place in Budapest, Hungary, in the near future. However, the idea was paused after a call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The decision to hold off on a meeting between Trump and Putin will likely relieve European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield.

    Trump says he’s doubtful Ukraine can win the war with Russia as he prepares for Putin meeting

    The leaders — including the British prime minister, French president and German chancellor — said they opposed any push to make Ukraine surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for peace, as Trump has occasionally suggested.

    They also plan to push forward with plans to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s war efforts, despite some misgivings about the legality and consequences of such a step.

    Trump has not yet commented publicly about the change in plans for his meeting with Putin. They previously met in Alaska in August, but the encounter did not advance Trump’s stalled attempts to end a war that began almost four years ago.

    The Kremlin didn’t seem to be in a rush to get Trump and Putin together again either. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “preparation is needed, serious preparation” before a meeting.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position by seeking long-range Tomahawk missiles from the U.S., although Trump has waffled on whether he would provide them.

    “We need to end this war, and only pressure will lead to peace,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday in a Telegram post.

    He noted that Putin returned to diplomacy and called Trump last week when it looked like Tomahawk missiles were a possibility. But “as soon as the pressure eased a little, the Russians began to try to drop diplomacy, postpone the dialogue,” Zelenskyy said.

    Trump’s stance on the war has shifted throughout the year. He initially focused on pressuring Ukraine to make concessions, but then grew frustrated with Putin’s intransigence. Trump often complains that he thought his good relationship with his Russian counterpart would have made it easier to end the war.

    Last month, Trump reversed his long-held position that Ukraine would have to give up land and suggested it could win back all the territory it has lost to Russia. But after a phone call with Putin last week and a subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump shifted his position again and called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” in the more than three-year war.

    On Sunday, Trump said the industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.

    Trump said Monday that while he thinks it is possible that Ukraine can ultimately defeat Russia, he’s now doubtful it will happen.

    Ukrainian and European leaders are trying hard to keep Trump on their side.

    “We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the leaders’ statement said. “We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction.”

    Russia occupies about one fifth of Ukraine, but carving up their country in return for peace is unacceptable to Kyiv officials.

    Also, a conflict frozen on the current front line could fester, with occupied areas of Ukraine offering Moscow a springboard for new attacks in the future, Ukrainian and European officials fear.

    The statement by the leaders of Ukraine, the U.K., Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Denmark and EU officials came early in what Zelenskyy said Monday would be a week that is “very active in diplomacy.”

    More international economic sanctions on Russia are likely to be discussed at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.

    “We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry, until Putin is ready to make peace,” Tuesday’s statement said.

    On Friday, a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing — a group of 35 countries who support Ukraine — is due to take place in London.