SDF Chatter

"Corporations facing federal lawsuits and investigations aren't giving millions to Trump's inauguration out of the kindness of their hearts. They are trying to buy goodwill."

An analysis released Monday in the wake of new Federal Election Commission filings shows that the Trump administration has dropped or paused federal enforcement cases against at least 17 corporations that donated to Trump's inaugural fund, an indication that companies' attempts to buy favor with the White House are already paying off.

In the new analysis, the watchdog group Public Citizen cross-references FEC data released Sunday with its own Corporate Enforcement Tracker, which documents companies facing federal cases for alleged wrongdoing.

Public Citizen found that corporations facing federal investigations or enforcement lawsuits donated a combined $50 million to Trump's inaugural committee. Trump raised a record sum of $239 million for his second inauguration, the new FEC filings show.

At a secret workshop in Ukraine’s north-east, where about 20 people assemble hundreds of FPV (first person view) drones, there is a new design. Under the frame of the familiar quadcopter is a cylinder, the size of a forearm. Coiled up inside is fibre optic cable, 10km (6 miles) or even 20km long, to create a wired kamikaze drone.

Capt Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of a specialist drone unit, the Achilles regiment, says fibre optic drones were an experimental response to battlefield jamming and rapidly took off late last year. With no radio connection, they cannot be jammed, are difficult to detect and able to fly in ways conventional FPV drones cannot.

“If pilots are experienced, they can fly these drones very low and between the trees in a forest or tree line. If you are flying with a regular drone, the trees block the signal unless you have a re-transmitter close,” he observes. Where tree lined supply roads were thought safer, fibre optic drones have been able to get through.

Alt text: Year is 2050. In the ruins of a city robots surround a human. One of them says "Wait, this person says thank you every time they use ChatGPT. Spare him."

Other robot says "No, by saying thank you he is wasting resources for the server to reply" and punches the human in the face.

Last week, Tracy and Dale McMullen sold their vacation home in Buckeye, Arizona, a property they owned for five years. The Alberta residents, who usually spend four to five months in Arizona a year, said they are not planning to come back.

“We decided to sell the property after the current POTUS took office,” said Dale, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated for the second time in January.

“It was time to leave. We felt we could not trust what he might do next to us as individuals and to our country. We no longer felt welcome nor safe.”

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/many-canadian-snowbirds-in-us-looking-to-pack-up-and-fly-north-for-good/

Source: https://mastodon.green/@CiaraNi/114385715738162468

Summary

London talks aimed at securing a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia have been downgraded and will no longer include US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

The US state department blamed logistical reasons, but it was clear the decision was last-minute and left the Foreign Office wrongfooted.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out recognising occupied Crimea as Russian territory, after reports suggested this was being considered by the US and the Kremlin. "Ukraine does not legally recognise the occupation of Crimea. There's nothing to talk about," said Zelensky.

Ukraine's ministry of strategic industries said it was "naïve" to expect Ukraine to change its position on "non-negotiable" issues such as Crimea.

Some thoughts/predictions about how open source developers will be forced to choose their path with GenAI.

Full disclaimer: my own post, sharing for discussion and to find out if anyone has any brilliant ideas what else could be done. It looks like self-posts are okay here but let me know if I'm wrong about that.

In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful.

The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela.

That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan >migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world.

But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on a list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.

...

On Tuesday, after the story published, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that Mr. Prada had been sent to El Salvador on March 15.

The failure to list his deportation and location on any publicly accessible records may have been a simple oversight, but the matter continues to raise alarm among immigrant advocates and legal scholars, who say Mr. Prada’s case suggests a new level of disarray in the immigration system, as officials face pressure to rapidly fulfill President Trump’s pledge of mass deportations. While hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been deported under various administrations in recent years, it is extraordinarily unusual for them to disappear without a legal record.

“I have not heard of a disappearance like this in my 40-plus years of practicing and teaching immigration law,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration scholar at Cornell Law School.

“It’s unconscionable that it took a New York Times article and more than one month before the government indicated where and why he was deported,” Mr. Yale-Loehr said.

Archived at https://archive.is/Lhy3D

Related, "He disappeared after detention. Now ICE is silent on the fate of Venezuelan man" (arc)

Summary

The number of births in the US increased slightly in 2024 to roughly 3.6 million, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The small increase of 1% comes amid a long-term decline that began during the Great Recession, in about 2008.

The slight year-over-year increase in births is mostly due to Hispanic and Asian mothers, whose birth rates rose 4% and 5%, respectively. The report also showed a record low number of teenage girls and young women giving birth, while the number of women aged 40-44 increased.

However, at least one demographer warned against drawing any conclusions about a trend from the data – noting that growing US families face sustained challenges in economic uncertainty, housing and childcare costs.

An ashen pallor and an eerie stillness all that remains where there should fluttering fish and vibrant colours in the reefscape, one conservationist says

The world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs, scientists have warned.

Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government’s Coral Reef Watch shows.

Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the sea because of their high concentration of biodiversity that supports about a third of all marine species and a billion people.

But record high ocean temperatures have spread like an underwater wildfire over corals across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, damaging and killing countless corals.

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Key Points

• Tesla's Q1 2025 earnings showed a 71% drop in net income and a 9% decline in revenue.
• Elon Musk attributed some of Tesla's struggles to "rapidly evolving trade policy" and "changing political sentiment."
• Analysts express concerns about near-term uncertainty for Tesla, linking the company's future to Musk's involvement with the White House.

Summary

Faced with inflation, taxes and concerns over the size of Social Security benefits, most Americans are more afraid of going broke in retirement than they are of death.

In total, 64% of respondents across generations said they are more stressed about running out of funds in their golden years than the prospect of death.

Americans say they need $1.26 million to finance a comfortable retirement, yet the median amount saved is $87,000. “Certainly for boomers...inflation is a big deal.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BallonKathedrale01_edit.jpg

The U.S. expects Ukraine's response Wednesday to a peace framework that includes U.S. recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and unofficial recognition of Russian control of nearly all areas occupied since the 2022 invasion, sources with direct knowledge of the proposal tell Axios.

Why it matters: The one-page document the U.S. presented Ukrainian officials in Paris last week describes this as Trump's "final offer." The White House insists it's ready to walk away if the parties don't make a deal soon.