Firm does not specify amount but seeks reimbursement after supreme court ruled against president last week FedEx sued the US government on Monday, seeking a refund for the tariffs imposed by Donald Tr

An article explains why America faces recurring government shutdowns, attributing them to a failure to pass spending bills rather than a lack of money, and how India avoids similar financial crises.

Under immense pressure from the US government, Venezuela has reportedly begun severing close security ties with Cuba and withdrawing advisors from the Caribbean island, as announced on Saturday.

Due to a US government shutdown, programs like TSA PreCheck and Global Entry are being suspended, leading to slower air travel and dissatisfaction among airlines and Democrats.

American corporations like Walmart, Amazon, General Motors, and Ford are reportedly considering demanding up to $175 billion in tariff refunds from the US government.

Donald Trump has stated he will seek the release of files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs, citing significant public interest.

The US government is reportedly planning to launch a website, freedom.gov, to display content banned by foreign governments, including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda. This initiative, led by Undersecretary Sarah Rogers, could strain relations with European allies and be perceived as an attempt to undermine national laws, despite past US efforts to promote free information access globally.

The U.S. government is investing $1.6 billion in USA Rare Earth, prompting analysis on the stock's potential as a buy.

The Virginia Sports Hall of Fame museum is searching for a new location after its previous government-subsidized building closed in 2017.

A limited US government shutdown is anticipated to continue for at least ten days as Congress enters a break, affecting 13% of the federal civilian workforce while the DHS remains funded.

US ambassadors from Singapore to Japan have received instructions from the White House to raise private donations for the 250th anniversary celebrations, drawing criticism that it could make the US government susceptible to influence.

The US government is attempting to implement measures to rein in the rising costs associated with Medicare Advantage plans, a move critical for managing healthcare expenses for retirees.

At the time of writing, the first meeting of President Donald Trump’s new Board of Peace has not yet concluded, so I cannot comment on its outcome. As I argued last week, the Cyprus government faced a difficult decision: whether to accept President Trump’s invitation to join the board. In the event, President Christodoulides displayed […]

Safe Pro Group (NASDAQ: SPAI) Awarded Subcontract Under $1M US Government Program  The Globe and Mail

The US government is offering $200 million to enhance the American smartphone industry's presence and competitiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.

Stranger Things’ Joe Keery is joined by a stellar cast battling an outbreak of virulent brain spores, but the film doesn’t offer much more than endless wisecracks and a splatterhouse grossfest ‘Pay attention! This shit is real!” screams an on-screen warning at the start of this overstuffed horror-comedy-action outing. As much as the deadly fungus it foists on Earth, an outbreak of sardonic attitude runs rampant here. It falls to two bantering storage facility workers, played by Stranger Things’ Joe Keery and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell, to contain a potential apocalypse event – with intermittent high-grade thespian help from Lesley Manville, Vanessa Redgrave and old faithful Liam Neeson. (Somebody clearly called in a few favours here.) Things kick off as the Skylab space station falls out of orbit in 1979 – one of its research containers winds up in the Australian outback. Fast-forward to the early 00s and a team of bioterror operatives, including Robert (Neeson) and Trini (Manville), wipe out the virulent fungus that escapes – though not before it turns one of them into a human smoothie. But the Kansas facility where they stow a sample is later decommissioned, and the ground floor converted into storage lockers. Before you can say “heinous government negligence”, night-shifters Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) are itching to check out the random alarm sounding somewhere behind the walls. Continue reading...

An article explores investment strategies for the horse market, looking ahead to 2026 and incorporating a feng shui approach.

Billionaires threaten to leave the state to avoid paying a tax that would replace the US government's cuts to Medicaid.

“Why did you start driving inDrive?” It’s my go-to icebreaker with drivers in Pakistan. Lately, the answers have been unsettlingly similar. “I used to work in the development sector,” one man told me. “Then I lost my job.” I’ve heard that line — or a version of it — too many times to dismiss as coincidence. Since the United States pulled the plug on its aid apparatus, the fallout has been immediate. On the surface, the shutdown of USAID is being framed as just another abrupt policy reversal — a bureaucratic casualty in an era of disruption. But look closer, and it reveals something far more profound: the cumulative weight of domestic and international tensions that have been simmering, both within and beyond the US for decades. Cycles of aid, cycles of distrust The first source of strain lies beyond US borders. From its inception as a Cold War instrument, American foreign aid has been shaped by an enduring tension between its declared objectives of development and altruism and its underlying strategic and political calculations. This duality has long been apparent to the recipient elites and the broader public alike. During the Cold War, many governments acquiesced, in part because Western donors faced little competition and alternative sources of assistance were scarce. That landscape has since changed. As non-traditional donors, most notably China and the Gulf states, have expanded their presence, and as domestic political incentives within recipient countries have shifted, scepticism toward USAID has become more explicit and politically salient. In countries such as Pakistan, where mistrust of American intentions runs deep, US assistance is often perceived less as generosity than as intrusion. What is now framed as a backlash against American aid is better understood as the culmination of a long-simmering tension and a legacy of mutual misperceptions between donor and recipient. Pakistan’s experience with US foreign aid agency illustrates this dynamic with particular clarity. American assistance to Pakistan has never been linear or predictable; instead, it has unfolded in cycles closely attuned to Washington’s shifting strategic priorities. During the Cold War, aid was channelled primarily through a security-alliance framework aimed at containing the Soviet bloc, with economic assistance tightly coupled to military cooperation. These flows declined sharply after the 1965 war, reinforcing perceptions of US aid as conditional, transactional, and reversible. Another peak in this equation followed in the 1980s, when General Ziaul Haq aligned Pakistan with the US in opposing Soviet expansion in Afghanistan. Yet with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent imposition of US sanctions on Pakistan’s nuclear programme under the Pressler Amendment, assistance once again contracted. It was only after 9/11 that the aid surged anew, this time framed around counterterrorism and stabilisation. Even at its height, however, much of this assistance remained shaped by security imperatives, short funding horizons, and heavy reliance on contractors, rather than long-term institution-building. For many Pakistanis, therefore, the shutdown of USAID feels less like an abrupt rupture than the latest turn in a familiar cycle of engagement and disengagement. The second factor is bureaucratic pathologisation. Like many large organisations, aid agencies are susceptible to institutional dysfunction, and USAID has been no exception. In practice, particularly in contexts such as Pakistan, as commissioner on the Afghanistan War Commission Andrew Wilder has noted, its programmes increasingly came to be structured through a security lens rather than a development one. Key decisions were made in Washington, filtered through multiple layers of contractors, and ultimately deployed on the ground with limited scope for local input. At the same time, bureaucratic incentives privileged projects with easily quantifiable indicators, favouring what could be measured over what was substantively effective. These patterns were neither accidental nor new, nor are they unique to the US. Over time, however, they eroded both the legitimacy and the perceived effectiveness of USAID, among recipients abroad and critics at home. These institutional dynamics had tangible consequences on the ground. In Pakistan, USAID funding became heavily concentrated in sectors aligned with stabilisation and security objectives — such as service delivery in so-called “fragile” districts or rapid-impact infrastructure — often at the expense of slower, politically unglamorous investments in local institutional capacity. NGOs and development professionals structured entire career paths around USAID project cycles, only to see those opportunities vanish when priorities shifted or funding was abruptly frozen. The result was a hollowing out of local expertise and institutional memory. When aid was withdrawn, it left behind far fewer durable institutions than its scale and visibility might have led one to expect. The mismatch between stated development objectives and the underlying security logic was further compounded by an overreliance on quantifiable metrics to demonstrate impact. This tendency was reinforced by a development ecosystem shaped by the overproduction of economists and political scientists trained as methodological specialists rather than regional experts. Programmes designed in Washington often prioritised what could be easily counted — number of schools built, clinics refurbished, trainings delivered, or kilometres of roads completed — over whether such interventions meaningfully strengthened local institutions. In Pakistan, this logic was especially evident in sectors such as education, health, and local governance, where projects were assessed primarily through output indicators rather than sustainability or local ownership. Multiple layers of contractors further diluted accountability and blurred responsibility once funding cycles ended. Over time, this produced a paradox: USAID became both omnipresent and poorly understood — associated with large budgets and extensive reporting, but yielding limited and uneven institutional impact. That credibility gap left the agency especially exposed when domestic political support in the US began to erode. The third major factor behind the dismantling of the aid lies in the domestic backlash within the US against international cooperation. Opposition to foreign aid, multilateralism, and international institutions long predates Donald Trump, reflecting decades of polarisation over globalisation and America’s role in the world. By the time Trump entered office, hostility toward international engagement was already deeply embedded in US politics. In this context, shuttering a highly visible aid agency became a potent domestic signal; it becomes a way to demonstrate responsiveness to voters who view global commitments as costly, wasteful, or illegitimate. Dismantling USAID was therefore less a recalibration of foreign policy than an act of domestic political theatre. The US government’s official justification for shutting down USAID frames the move as a response to “China’s exploitative aid model” and a means of advancing American “strategic interests in key regions around the world”. It is true that China has dramatically expanded its development footprint and largely operates outside the traditional Western aid framework. But that explanation doesn’t hold up to deeper scrutiny. If Washington were genuinely seeking to compete with Beijing in the development arena, the more coherent response would have been reform and reinvestment, not withdrawal. Moreover, Chinese and US aid are not direct substitutes. They target different sectors, rely on distinct instruments, and frequently operate alongside one another in the same countries — Pakistan among them — without displacing each other. In Pakistan, Chinese assistance has concentrated on large-scale infrastructure and energy projects, while USAID has focused primarily on education and health. Chinese aid typically flows through bilateral, government-to-government channels, whereas US assistance has often bypassed the Pakistani state, working instead through NGOs and contractors. China’s rise may well be sharpening anxieties in Washington, but it does not, on its own, explain why the US would choose to erode its own institutional capacity in response. A looming domino effect The shutdown of USAID, then, should not be understood as a one-off policy blunder or an idiosyncratic choice tied to a single administration. Rather, it reflects the convergence of long-accumulating tensions: between the professed ideals and strategic deployment of aid abroad; between development objectives and bureaucratic practices within aid agencies; between international commitments and domestic political incentives at home. USAID’s collapse is best understood not as the cause of these pressures, but as their most visible manifestation. The consequences of this decision extend well beyond the fate of a single agency. They reveal the fragility of the broader international aid regime, which ultimately depends on the willingness of a small number of leading powers to absorb the political and financial costs of institutionalised cooperation. When that willingness erodes, institutions lose both credibility and purpose and eventually collapse. Signs of this erosion are already evident, as other major donors, including the United Kingdom and Germany, begin to scale back their own aid commitments. What is at stake, then, is not merely the dismantling of USAID, but the gradual unravelling of an international aid regime built on mutual trust and a sustained commitment to lifting the world’s poorest out of poverty.

The US government is implementing a 'secret tax' that is projected to reduce Social Security checks starting in 2026, urging individuals to prepare for the change.

Pop superstar Taylor Swift's legal team has requested the US government to block a 'Swift Home' trademark. They argue that a bedding firm's designs bear similarities to her existing trademarked signature.

Four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Guzy highlights the importance of photojournalism in documenting the brutal anti-immigration crusade by the US government, focusing on its impact on families.

The US government is not expected to impose additional tariffs on Iceland's main export products beyond the existing 15%, though the situation remains subject to US authorities' discretion.

The leaders of the Spanish hacker group Anonymous Fénix have been arrested in Madrid for allegedly carrying out cyberattacks against various government bodies, political parties, and public institutions.

Safe Pro Group (NASDAQ: SPAI) Awarded Subcontract Under $1M US Government Program  The Globe and Mail

A historic decision by former President Trump regarding unexplained phenomena and Area 51 has sparked speculation about impending revelations concerning UFOs and secrets the US government may have hidden.

Trump says he will seek release of files on extraterrestrials, "based on the tremendous interest shown".

The US government has launched Freedom.gov, a website administered by the Department of Homeland Security, to allow Europeans to view content that is otherwise blocked.

Tarique Rahman has been sworn in as Bangladesh's new Prime Minister after leading the largest opposition party to a landslide victory in the December 12 general election, following the collapse of the previous government due to student protests. He faces high expectations to tackle corruption and create jobs, particularly among the younger generation.

Barack Obama caused frenzy after saying aliens were real on a podcast - and was forced to clarify he had not seen any evidence of them in a statement posted to Instagram over the weekend. There is a long-running conspiracy theory claiming that the US government is hiding extraterrestrials at Area 51, a highly classified air force site in Nevada. Lucy Hough speaks to host of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, Madeleine Finlay Continue reading...

The US government sold $701 billion in Treasury securities this week, highlighting the impact of ballooning deficits on bond markets.