Author: Press Room

The scheme would violate international law and trigger legal and market risks, the depository’s CEO has said European Union plans to move frozen Russian sovereign assets into riskier investments would amount to expropriation, the Belgium-based settlement house Euroclear has warned.In an interview with the Financial Times published Wednesday, Euroclear Chief Executive Valerie Urbain said such a move could expose the EU’s financial system to both legal and systemic risks.Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the US and EU have frozen more than $300 billion in Russian state assets. In May, the EU approved a plan to channel…

Credit: Michelle Obama YouTube Screenshot Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle jointly broke their silence regarding rumors over the state of their marriage in an interview. As The Daily Mail reported, Barack appeared as a guest on his wife’s podcast IMO taped for Wednesday, which she co-hosts with her brother Craig Robinson.a While on the show, he and Michelle attempted to use humor in a desperate attempt to put a happy face on their relationship. And Michelle’s brother was more than happy to play along. “Wait, you guys like each other?” Robinson asked in mock astonishment. “Oh yeah,…

A fresh volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula overnight spread with a second fissure opening up on Wednesday, with the famous blue Lagoon spa and local settlements evacuated by police. A second, longer fissure opened in the ground near Grindavík on the Reykjanes Peninsula, some 25 miles south-west from the Icelandic capital Reykjavík opened on Wednesday. Measuring approximately 1.5 miles in length, reports Fréttastofa RÚV, the Icelandic national broadcaster’s news service, the second is considerably larger than the 1/3 mile long first fissure that opened last night and prompted a series of evacuations of tourists and locals. The world-famous Blue Lagoon spa and the…

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that the newly constructed immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” needed to be “shut the hell down.” Host Jake Tapper said, “Over the weekend, you and a delegation of lawmakers toured the immigration detention center that Governor DeSantis calls Alligator Alcatraz. Immediately after you toured it, you called for it to be shut down. What did you see?” Wasserman Schultz said, “Well, what we saw were humans caged. I mean, 32 detainees per cage, eight cages inside a tent, wall to wall people. But, you know, like,…

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said he expects votes on all three cryptocurrency bills that Republicans are pushing to go to the House floor Wednesday, though leadership is still weighing how to sequence or combine them. “We’re bringing all of them,” Scalise said in a brief interview. “We’re back on track. And exactly what the combination will be, we’re talking through that, but all three bills will be encompassed in the work we do today.” The slate of crypto bills includes a sweeping market structure measure known as the CLARITY Act, Senate-passed stablecoin legislation called the GENIUS Act and a…

The ruling concerns the late opposition leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was accused of misuse of funds The EU General Court in Luxembourg has ordered Marine Le Pen and her two sisters to repay more than €300,000 (over $350,000) to the EU. The funds were “considered to have been wrongly received” by their father, the late opposition leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, during his time as a member of the European Parliament, the court said in a statement on Wednesday.The legislative body claimed in 2024 that Le Pen “had improperly invoiced personal expenses” and demanded repayment. The latter, however, sought to…

Credit: Gage Skidmore Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have co-sponsored a discharge petition to bypass House leadership and compel a full vote on releasing the complete Jeffrey Epstein files. The proposed resolution — which Massie submitted alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — is titled the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” and would require the Department of Justice to declassify and release all Epstein-related documents, including investigative records, communications, flight logs, visitor lists, sealed agreements, and any information involving known or suspected co-conspirators. “We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how…

Have you ever heard of Aeva Technologies? The company is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Mountain View, California. It specializes in developing LiDAR sensors for self-driving cars and robotics. Aeva uses something called frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) technology. This can measure both distance and velocity simultaneously. It is referred to as 4D LiDAR. We think 4D LiDAR sounds pretty neat. Speculators do too. Over the last 12 months, and even with a recent selloff, Aeva’s share price is up 1,000 percent. The only problem is Aeva doesn’t make money. It consumes it. Last year the company reported…

Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found. A ProPublica investigation has uncovered that Microsoft is relying on engineers based in China to help maintain sensitive computer systems for the U.S. Department of Defense, with only minimal oversight from U.S. personnel. This arrangement, which Microsoft deems critical to winning the Pentagon’s cloud computing business, could potentially expose some of the country’s most sensitive data to…

United Nations “Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories” Francesca Albanese made a public appearance on Tuesday in Bogotá, Colombia, following the State Department announcing sanctions on her for years of pro-Hamas, antisemitic rhetoric, delivering a speech calling for the destruction of Israel’s economy. Albanese holds a unique role at the U.N. in which she is tasked with documenting potential human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank, under the authority of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which has struggled for years to overcome the influence of the nefarious dictatorships that make up its membership. As of October, the Council…