Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Amid China’s persistently sluggish economy, Zhejiang Province, a major production and industrial base in eastern China, is seeing a decline in trade orders as private enterprises struggle to stay afloat, according to industry professionals who spoke with The Epoch Times.

As the “hollowing out” of the private sector economy in mainland China intensifies, profit margins for industrial enterprises in Zhejiang have been under pressure since 2024, local industry insiders say.

The coastal province bordering the megacity of Shanghai is an economic powerhouse for China. It ranked fourth nationwide in gross domestic product last year, with its capital city of Hangzhou being the primary economic driver, along with other well-known commercial cities in the province such as Ningbo and Wenzhou, according to official data.

However, a large number of family-run export enterprises, which had previously served as pillars of the local county-level economies within the provinces, have had to cease operations in the face of shifting supply chains and shrinking orders over the past few years, according to Huang, an insider in Zhejiang’s textile industry who gave only her last name out of fear of reprisal from the Chinese regime.

“Profits have now dwindled to below 3 percent,” she told The Epoch Times. “Most garment factories are either operating at a loss or have gone under.”

The situation in Zhejiang has changed, Huang said.

“It is no longer the profitable place it once was,“ she said. ”For many enterprises, the issue isn’t merely low profit margins—they are actually reaching their breaking point.

“Private enterprises in the Jiangsu–Zhejiang region have long been regarded as a barometer of the economy.

“If even these firms in this region can no longer hold out and begin shutting down en masse, it signals that the problems facing the entire Chinese economy have become extremely severe.”

Inflated Economic Data

Although Zhejiang’s GDP growth rate appears relatively stable, “the reality is that fabricated data mask the grim operational realities faced by businesses on the ground,” Liu Mao, a businessman in Wenzhou who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times.

“Foreign-invested enterprises in China face an operating environment constrained by hostility from authorities. Meanwhile, private domestic enterprises are subjected to tax audits and heavy fines. Under such layers of systematic exploitation, it is nearly impossible for any business—regardless of its nature—to survive.”

In recent years, the business environment in China has continued to deteriorate because of the Chinese regime’s inconsistent policies and tightened controls, as well as geopolitical tensions and increasing trade frictions between China and the West that have led to supply chain diversification. As a result, a significant number of foreign companies, and even some Chinese companies, have been moving their factories from China to Southeast Asian countries.

According to official data released by Hangzhou Customs, the total value of goods trade imports and exports in Zhejiang Province reached 1.38 trillion yuan (about $201.83 billion) in the first quarter of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 7.1 percent, marking the fourth consecutive quarter in which both imports and exports have registered positive growth.

However, Liu noted that the province’s export trade figures are heavily inflated.

“According to internal data I obtained from friends within the system, this year’s export volume actually declined compared to last year,“ he said. ”It certainly did not grow by 7.1 percent.

“My friends told me that the public export data reported by various localities is rife with fraud. Some regions engage in double-reporting or filing false tax returns to swindle government subsidies, while those in higher positions turn a blind eye. This country is beyond saving.”

Layoffs and Lowered Wages

As businesses continue to struggle, workers are facing layoffs along with increasing difficulties in finding other jobs, according to local industry professionals.

An Zhiqiang, who works in the electronics business in Hangzhou, told The Epoch Times that local private enterprises are all downsizing and laying off staff.

“Locals are unable to find work, making it even more difficult for people from other provinces,” he said.

“Since the spring, many of our local factories have had to halt production due to a lack of orders, and quite a few foreign-funded enterprises have pulled out as well.

“For instance, a Scandinavian company here that manufactures feed processing equipment has downsized its workforce from 80 employees to just 29, and further layoffs are expected.”

Amid the economic downturn characterized by reduced consumption and diminished purchasing power, the livestock industry’s demand for feed is also declining, resulting in sluggish sales for related equipment, according to An.

“Right now, industries across the board are downsizing,“ he said. ”The only places still hiring are essentially large foreign-funded enterprises—for instance, Japanese companies in Hangzhou. But they only recruit new staff to replace those who retire; consequently, only young applicants who aren’t afraid of hard work stand a chance.”

Currently, temporary workers are being paid 13 yuan ($1.91) per hour, whereas the government-mandated rate is 25 yuan ($3.66) per hour, he said.

“Although in the suburban districts of Tonglu and Chun’an, hourly rates of 22 yuan [$3.22] can still be found,” he said.

According to the latest official standards released in February, the minimum hourly wage in Hangzhou is 25 yuan ($3.66).

The current issue is not merely a shortage of jobs in Hangzhou, Liu said, “but rather that [all of] mainland China is undergoing a phase of accelerating economic downturn.”

Wang Yibo contributed to this report.

By Philip Marey, senior US strategist at Rabobank

Summary

• As widely expected, the FOMC remained on hold. Governor Miran dissented again because he wanted a rate cut.
• However, there were also three dissenters (Hammack, Kashkari and Logan) who wanted to remove the bias toward cutting from the statement.
• On balance, Powell said that the center of the Committee was moving toward a more neutral place in thinking about cuts versus hikes.
• Powell announced that this was his last press conference as Chair, but he would stay on as a Governor until he thinks it’s appropriate to leave, because of the legal attacks on the Fed.
• Our baseline forecast is still two rate cuts this year, one in September and one in December. Once Warsh becomes the new Chair, he will try to convince the Committee to make more than the single cut in their most recent projections. However, given the developments in the Middle East, we think that in the coming months we are more likely to drop a rate cut from our forecast than add one.

Introduction

As widely expected, the FOMC decided to keep the target range for the federal funds rate unchanged at 3.50-3.75% this month. Governor Miran repeated his dissent, preferring a ¼ percentage point rate cut at this meeting.

However, there were also three dissents (by Hammack, Kashkari and Logan) because they “did not support inclusion of an easing bias in the statement at this time.” This easing bias is currently expressed in the statement “In considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate…”. Since the last three adjustments were rate cuts, this sentence would suggest that the FOMC is still biased toward cutting.

In its assessment of the economy, the statement replaced “The implications of the developments in the Middle East for the U.S. economy are uncertain” by “Developments in the Middle East are contributing to a high level of uncertainty about the economic outlook”, not a major change content-wise. However, inflation is now explicitly linked to global energy prices and described as elevated rather than somewhat elevated. “Inflation is elevated, in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices” instead of “Inflation remains somewhat elevated” This is a clear nod to the rise in CPI inflation to 3.3% in March from 2.4% in February.

Press conference

In his prepared speech, Powell reiterated the economic assessment in the FOMC statement, including that economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace. However, after announcing that this was his last press conference as Chair, he said he would stay on as a Governor. He was encouraged by the recent developments, meaning the suspension of the criminal inquiry against him – which in a Senate Banking Committee vote earlier today was sufficient for Senator Tillis to support advancing Warsh’s nomination to the Senate floor – but he was clearly not entirely persuaded yet. Nevertheless, he promised to maintain a low profile as a Governor.

The two main topics during the Q&A were Powell’s decision to stay on as Governor and the dissents on the easing bias.

When asked why he wanted to stay on as a Governor, Powell said it was because of the legal attacks on the Fed. He added this had nothing to do with the verbal attacks. He said he will leave when he thinks it’s appropriate to do so. Powell said he was staying because of the actions that have been taken (by the administration), and he actually had planned to retire. But first he wants to see things calming down. Comparing the Fed’s independence now to when he started, he said “I think it’s at risk because of legal assaults.” When asked what he exactly needed from the DOJ, he said “for the investigation to be well and truly over with finality and transparency.” Powell did not answer the question what message he was sending to the President by staying on and said he’ll stand by what he said earlier. In response to the question whether he was going to act as a Shadow Chair, he said that was something he would never do. He intends to be a constructive (FOMC) participant out of respect for the office of the Chair.

Regarding the easing bias, Powell said that the majority in the Committee – including himself – thought there was no rush to change this language. However, Powell said that the center (of the Committee) was moving toward a more neutral place in thinking about cuts versus hikes. He also said there were non-voters who favored changing the easing bias. He stressed that monetary policy was in a good place and if necessary the FOMC could hike or cut, but nobody was calling for a hike right now. In response to a question whether he was handing over a divided Fed to Warsh, Powell said that this was an unusually difficult situation with 4 supply shocks in 5-6 years, referring to the pandemic, Ukraine, tariffs and Iran. So it’s only natural that you have a range of views.

Conclusion

Our baseline forecast is still two rate cuts this year, one in September and one in December. Once Warsh becomes the new Chair, he will try to convince the Committee to make more than the single cut in their most recent projections. However, given the developments in the Middle East, we think that in the coming months we are more likely to drop a rate cut from our forecast than add one.

Finally, the attempts of the Trump administration to influence the Fed through legal attacks seems to have backfired, because Powell would have left on his own volition. Instead, he now intends to stay on until the legal attacks have ceased. This means that President Trump will have to delay his plan to nominate a Governor to replace Powell, which would give the Trump-loyalists a majority in the Board of Governors.

Canada is losing its collective mind.  During a recent debate in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, Education Minister Brendan Maguire (Progressive Conservative MLA for Halifax Atlantic) responded angrily to concerns about school policies on gender transitioning (without parental notification in many cases) and provincial funding for gender-related medical interventions for minors. 

His argument?  Parental rights are not a factor and, essentially, do not exist in the eyes of the Canadian government.

The debate was sparked by concerns raised by another MLA about provincial funding for gender-reassignment surgeries for minors, school policies on social transitioning without parental notification, and reporting by groups like the Citizens’ Alliance of Nova Scotia (CANS).  Since 2014, Canada has instituted an ever expanding far-left initiative to encourage gender ideology in public schools and prevent parents from knowing about or interfering with this indoctrination.  

Parents “absolutely don’t” deserve to have rights over their children, Nova Scotia Education Minister Brandan Maguire says, as he voices support for secret gender transitions at schools and taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries. pic.twitter.com/qs5yxjqCyJ

— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) April 27, 2026

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand here and listen to someone say that the parents deserve rights over a child. No, they don’t. They absolutely don’t…”

The assertion is a common one among woke political adherents who believe that children have the ability to “consent” to life changing psychological and chemical transitioning as well as sexualized LGBT propaganda programs.  These are, of course, the same kinds of people who ran rampant in the US during the Biden Administration, promoting gender reassignment for minors and exposing elementary school kids to drag queens. 

Maguire goes off the rails, asserting that because his parents abandoned him at a young age, this is a rationale for why parents in general do not deserve the right to dictate the decisions of their vulnerable kids.  But his logic is incredibly flawed.  The mistakes of deadbeat parents do not negate the overall need for good parents to protect their children from malicious indoctrination. 

Child consent concepts are so central to the woke left’s ideology because they normalize state control of children and remove the greatest obstacle to progressive control:  The nuclear family. Leftists often appeal to “empathy” and “human rights”, but what they are really doing is promoting moral relativism and destructive degeneracy in the name of “civil liberties”.  At bottom it should be common sense – Children are not mentally mature enough to consent.    

Nova Scotia has used the “Guidelines for Supporting Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Students” as policy since 2014, and like most Canadian provinces, has resisted any efforts by parents or conservatives to change the rules. 

For grades 7–12, if a student “has the capacity to consent” for using preferred pronouns and gender identity, parental consent is not required. Schools must get the student’s permission before disclosing their transgender/gender-nonconforming identity to their parents. 

Canadian authorities claim this prioritizes student self-identification and confidentiality “to protect the child” from potential harm at home. A planned update was abandoned in late 2025, with the province instead incorporating related expectations into a broader school code of conduct.  Citizens do not get a vote on these policies, they are implemented unilaterally by the education bureaucracy.  

Nova Scotia’s policies against parental rights also extend to gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. These are publicly funded treatments with no hard age minimums. Eligibility starts after the onset of puberty (typically around ages 8–14).  Parents do not have to be told that these treatments are taking place, and schools can hide the information.   

Canada is what happens when leftists are allowed free rein to do as they please.  The kinds of horrific social and political revisions that take place can disrupt or destroy a nation for generations to come.  In such an environment, something as fundamental as parental rights can be flipped on its head and turned into a crime.  

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

Combat operations against Iran have cost the U.S. military about $25 billion in two months, a top Pentagon accounting official told House Armed Services Committee members on April 29.

The Wednesday hearing marked the first time Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine have testified publicly to Congress since U.S. and Israeli forces commenced attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged fire for about five and a half weeks before the parties entered into a ceasefire agreement on April 8.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member on the committee, asked the Pentagon to account for the costs of U.S. munitions expended as well as for equipment destroyed in the course of the fighting.

Jules Hurst, the acting War Department comptroller, estimated those costs at about $25 billion.

Hurst said munitions accounted for most of it, but said he also factored in operations and maintenance and equipment replacement costs. Hurst joined Hegseth and Caine at the hearing, as Congress weighs military funding requests for fiscal year 2027.

The Trump administration has been working on submitting a supplemental funding request to Congress to cover the war’s costs, but has yet to finalize it or settle on an exact figure.

“We will formulate a supplemental through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict,” Hurst said.

The Pentagon is already seeking a $1.5 trillion military and defense spending budget for fiscal year 2027. The request amounts to a 42 percent increase over fiscal year 2026 military spending, which totaled approximately $1.03 trillion.

Among other items, the Trump administration’s 2027 military budget request seeks $52.9 billion to boost procurement for 12 weapons systems that the Pentagon has classified as critical munitions.

In March, President Donald Trump announced he had met with the CEOs of BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon parent RTX Corp., Boeing, Honeywell, and L3Harris Technologies to discuss boosting their munitions production levels. Weapons produced by the companies—including the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense systems and offensive weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile—have featured heavily in the Iran war.

Beyond the immediate material costs to replace weapons and equipment, the Iran war has also disrupted global oil and gas flows out of the Middle East, leading to rising prices for consumers.

Compass Datacenters is abandoning a massive data center project in Northern Virginia after what Bloomberg described as “intense pushback from local residents.”

The retreat comes as local opposition to data center buildouts accelerates nationwide, with residents increasingly furious over surging power demand, soaring electricity bills, land-use battles, and transmission lines cutting through neighborhoods and farmland.

We were the first to describe the epicenter of the data center buildout revolt in the Mid-Atlantic area, all the way back in the summer of 2024. This is happening as the AI infrastructure boom collides with local resistance.

Many Marylanders were upset about transmission lines and rising power bills, some of which were not necessarily due to data centers, but rather failed “green” policies by the far-left regime in Annapolis.

The Brookfield-backed data center company told Bloomberg, “Compass has reached the unfortunate conclusion that we cannot move forward. While we still believe this project offered significant benefits for the region and our neighbors, recent legal actions and compounding regulatory hurdles have effectively closed a viable path forward.”

Compass Datacenters was planning to develop more than 800 acres in Prince William County as part of the proposed 2,100-acre Digital Gateway corridor.

The project, along with a neighboring QTS development backed by Blackstone, would have created one of the world’s largest data center hubs to expand Northern Virginia’s global data dominance.

Earlier this month, Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital and co-host of the All-In Podcast, warned on X that polling data shows data centers are more disliked than ICE by the American people.

Palihapitiya posted the polling data:

He warned that local opposition is growing against data centers:

Meanwhile, our most recent report shows that nearly half of U.S. data centers scheduled to break ground this year are at risk of being canceled or delayed.

The great data center land rush is no longer a story about chip stacks and power. It is becoming a localized fight over power bills against tech bros.

With less than three weeks to go the Trump-Xi summit in China, the scramble for leverage and superiority – whether in terms of the Iran war or the just as important supply chain of rare earths – is on. That explains why the Pentagon’s push to get its hands on the rarest of the rare-earth elements leads all the way to this small port city in Malaysia.

As the WSJ reports, Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths has begun pumping out heavy rare earths, the elusive kind that China dominates. 

“No one had made a separated heavy rare earth outside of China in 20 years,” said Amanda Lacaze, Lynas’s chief executive. The company’s chief operating officer, Pol Le Roux, said it had actually been 30 years.

When China cut off exports of heavy rare-earth elements during trade tensions last year, automobile factories in the US and Europe were forced to stop production. Now, Lynas is at the vanguard of an effort by the US and allies to prevent Beijing from using its monopoly power to squeeze the rest of the world.

To minimize China’s monopoly on rare earth supply, the Pentagon has been opening its wallet in unusual ways to ensure supplies. In March 2026, Lynas announced a preliminary $96 million deal in which the Pentagon would purchase Lynas’s rare earths.

Others are in hot pursuit of the Pentagon’s money: Las Vegas-headquartered MP Materials, backed by billions of dollars in U.S. government support, is planning its own refinery for heavy rare earths that is set to come online later this year. And last week, USA Rare Earth announced a “transformative” $2.8 billion acquisition of Brazil’s Serra Verde Group, owner of the Pela Ema rare earth mine and processing plant in Goiás, Brazil, which is a “one-of-a-kind asset and the only producer outside Asia capable of supplying all four magnetic rare earths at scale, together with other vital REEs, such as Yttrium.”

Last month, Lynas began producing samarium oxide, a difficult-to-source rare earth in high military demand that is used in heat-resistant magnets for jet fighters and missiles.

“There is no doubt that 2025 was the wake-up call the United States needed to undertake bold industrial policy,” said Gracelin Baskaran, who leads the critical minerals program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Rare-earth minerals are actually not that rare when it comes to mining: it is the refining – usually a very toxic process – that is the bottleneck, which is why China which has zero environmental regulation, has become a global leader in their producftion. As the WSJ notes, rare earth minerals are already mined outside of China, including Lynas’s, which come from Western Australia. But to gain independence from Chinese supplies, “the hard part is building refining capacity. It often requires hundreds of stages to separate the rare earths using industrial acids.”

For more than a decade, Lynas has had a refinery here in Kuantan, a Malaysian chemical-industry center. But it only produced light rare earths, which tend to be more common, while it sold heavy rare earths to China for processing. Last year, as the U.S.-China trade war was at its peak, Lynas finished a new heavy rare-earths processor in Kuantan.

Eliminating China from the supply chain looks as follows: machinery whirs loudly as a rare-earth mixture is bathed in hydrochloric acid and gradually separated into pure oxides that can be shipped to customers. Terbium, used in powerful magnets, comes out a deep, rich brown. Dysprosium appears as a whitish powder.

Because of their small quantities, the heavy rare earths are fitted into knee-high 55-pound cans that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars, while less-valuable rare earths such as cerium are stuffed into 1800 pound sacks. 

Heavy rare-earth elements are sprinkled in magnets so they can function at higher temperatures. That is important in cars and planes whose engines run hot.

Lynas and MP Materials are two of the leading Western rare-earths producers, and Washington wants more suppliers. In February, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. extended $565 million in loans to Serra Verde, which operates a mine in Brazil with significant reserves of heavy rare earths. Then, as noted above, last week USA Rare Earth, the Stillwater, Okla., company that has recently commissioned equipment to make rare-earth magnets, said it would acquire Serra Verde in a deal valued at about $2.8 billion, part of an arrangement that will ensure a steady supply of heavy rare earths to the U.S.

Not everything has gone smoothly with U.S. efforts. Lynas has said there is “significant uncertainty” on whether it will go ahead with an effort to build a rare earth processing facility in Texas, which was allocated $258 million in Pentagon grant funding in 2023. The estimated project costs ballooned because of challenges in handling wastewater. Instead, Lynas is building out a second, larger heavy rare-earth processing facility in Kuantan, expected to be completed in 2028. Needless to say, environmental regulations are more “lax” in Malaysia.

The big break hit last month, when Lynas achieved commercial production of samarium. The mineral had been refined almost exclusively in China, causing a scramble among defense suppliers last year when China cut off exports in April. A report from the U.S. Geological Survey last year found samarium was the highest-risk mineral for disruption, with shortages potentially costing U.S. industry billions of dollars.

As the clock counts down to the Trump-Xi summit, where China still retains sole supplier monopoly across most rare earths, another clock is also counting down: American defense companies face a 2027 government deadline to ensure that no rare earths in their supply chain for magnets come from China. Lacaze said Lynas were supplying its non-Chinese rare earths to Japanese magnet makers that in turn supply the U.S. defense industry.

Still, Lacaze expressed concern that Western nations weren’t doing enough to ensure adequate demand. Military demand for rare earths is relatively small, so she advocated tax credits to induce larger commercial buyers—such as makers of cars and electronics—to choose non-Chinese rare-earth magnets.  

Baskaran, the critical-minerals specialist, told the WSJ that the effort to achieve rare-earth independence was still in its early stages. “While momentum is real, translating these announcements into production takes years,” she said.

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via Bitcoin Magazine,

Speaking on the Nakamoto Stage, Tim Draper told attendees that bitcoin has entered the financial mainstream and that governments now roll out “the red carpet” for the industry. He said the community is “starting to feel like something is happening” as adoption grows, and he cast that shift as the early phase of a larger transition in the money system.

In his view, people will move in stages: first from dollars to stablecoins, then from stablecoins to bitcoin as the final store of value and unit of account.

Draper praised Satoshi Nakamoto’s design of BTC as a system with no government control, no middleman banks, and no traditional account records. He described his own early journey with the asset, including buying large amounts of BTC, then losing those holdings amid front-running and failures at Mt. Gox. That episode led him to question whether the experiment was worth the risk until he watched crypto usage spread in markets around the world and decided to buy again.

To illustrate the fragility of fiat money, Draper told a personal story about a “one–million–dollar bill” that his father gave him when he was young. The bill turned out to be a Confederate note with no value, which he held up as a warning that government currencies can fail, leaving savers with worthless paper.

He connected that story to his decision to purchase bitcoin from the U.S. government in an auction of seized coins, where he paid above market because he viewed bitcoin as a superior long-term asset.

Draper: You should be scared if you don’t own bitcoin

Draper outlined a scenario in which retailers begin by accepting bitcoin alongside other payment methods and then transition to accepting only bitcoin.

In that world, he said, consumers would rush to banks to pull out their money and convert into BTC as trust in national currencies declines. He told the audience that anyone who manages a family “ought to have about six months’ worth of bitcoin” as protection against such a breakdown.

He extended that warning to sovereigns facing inflation or fiscal stress. If a government encounters hyperinflation and holds no BTC on its balance sheet, Draper argued, its currency and the wealth of its officials could become worthless in real terms.

“You should be scared if you don’t own bitcoin,” Draper said he is telling people these days, adding that those without exposure “should be very, very worried.”

Draper closed with a call to action aimed at the entire BTC ecosystem around him. He said that “those of us who have bitcoin are gonna help steer the world” as legacy currencies lose value, and he told attendees to go home and tell their families to buy bitcoin, their governments to buy bitcoin, and their friends to buy BTC.

Addressing founders and builders, he urged entrepreneurs to “push it as hard as you can,” saying that broad BTC ownership is both a hedge against currency risk and a path to a new monetary standard.

KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms, is winding down its federal government audit business after losing a $64 million-a-year U.S. Army audit contract, a major setback as the Department of War under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moves to bring in another accounting firm.

According to the Financial Times, the Army’s shift to a new auditor comes as pressure intensifies on Hegseth to gain control of the DoW’s finances after nearly a decade of failed independent audits.

The DoW, which oversees an annual budget of roughly $840 billion, has not passed an independent audit in eight years, and Washington lawmakers have set a deadline for the department to do so by 2028.

“We’re ending the wasteful process of agency-by-agency opinions and slashing the number of disjointed separate audits by two-thirds,” Hegseth said. “The mission is simple: break down bureaucratic barriers to get you, the taxpayer, concrete results.”

FT sources said the Army was KPMG’s largest federal audit client, and 450 U.S. staff who oversaw the federal audit work will be transitioning to other roles.

“Over the past few years, KPMG has prioritized advisory services for the federal government,” KPMG said, adding, “We are transitioning out of federal audit roles through an orderly, multiyear process, meeting all client and regulatory obligations. As demand continues to grow across both audit and advisory, we will be redeploying our talented federal audit professionals across the firm to meet client needs.”

Meanwhile, EY remains the prime auditor for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. The Marines are the only military branch to have received an unqualified audit opinion.

The DoW says the new consolidated audit strategy will streamline the process toward full audit compliance by 2028.

Last month, Platte Moring, the Pentagon’s inspector general, stated, “This new composite approach to auditing and its implementation reflect meaningful progress toward compliance with the statutory mandate for the department to achieve a clean audit opinion by 2028.”

We have previously reported that DOGE has placed more than 400,000 DoW contracts under scrutiny, while Goldman has been bearish on government IT services for the same reason: the Trump administration is trying to clean up the financial mess inside the DoW.

The problem is that entrenched bureaucracy and swamp-like career DoW personnel appear more focused on preserving the status quo than fixing the department.

Whether Hegseth can fix the DoW remains an open question.

Authored by Jijo Malayil via Interesting Engineering,

Humanoid robots will soon assist ground crews in Tokyo as Japan Airlines launches a trial to address growing labor shortages.

Starting in May, the Chinese-made machines will assist with moving baggage and cargo on the tarmac at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, working alongside human handlers.

The initiative, run with GMO Internet Group, comes as Japan faces rising tourism and a shrinking workforce. The trial will continue through 2028, with hopes of easing workloads and paving the way for permanent deployment.

Last month, researchers in Tokyo developed a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi chip resisting extreme radiation, enabling untethered robot operations in hazardous sites like Fukushima.

Smart baggage handling

During a recent media demonstration, a compact humanoid robot carefully pushed cargo onto a conveyor belt beside a Japan Airlines aircraft and gestured toward a nearby worker, highlighting early-stage coordination in real airport conditions, reports the Guardian.

Japan Airlines officials said deploying robots for physically demanding tasks could significantly reduce strain on workers and improve overall working conditions. However, the airline emphasized that critical responsibilities such as safety management will remain under human control.

As seen in the footage, the humanoid model, known as G1, stands about 1.32 meters tall and weighs 77 pounds (35 kilograms), with a foldable design for compact storage. It features 23 degrees of freedom, enabling stable and coordinated movement. Equipped with 3D LiDAR, a depth camera, and voice input systems, the robot can navigate and interact effectively. Powered by a 9,000 mAh battery, it operates for up to two hours and can move at speeds of up to 4.5 mph (7.2 km/h).

The Unitree G1 demonstrates an expanded range of motion, highlighting significant gains in flexibility, coordination, and adaptability in humanoid robotics. According to Unitree, its development begins in a virtual setting using Nvidia Isaac Simulator, where the robot is trained to perform complex behaviors.

Engineers create a digital twin of the G1 using motion capture and video data to replicate human actions. These movements are refined through reinforcement learning, allowing the system to improve through repeated simulation. The learned skills are then transferred to the real robot using the Sim2Real approach, enabling smooth execution in physical environments.

“By combining cutting-edge AI technology with the unique flexibility of humanoid forms, the project aims to realize a sustainable operational structure through labor savings and workload reduction,” said Japan Airlines in a statement.

Ground crew augmentation

Airport ground operations still rely heavily on manual labor, with workers managing baggage, cargo, and equipment in tight, high-pressure environments. The physically demanding nature of the job, combined with Japan’s shrinking working-age population, has created a growing labor gap across the aviation sector.

The challenge is intensifying as inbound tourism continues to rise. More than 7 million visitors arrived in the first two months of 2026, following a record 42.7 million the previous year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. At the same time, demographic trends suggest Japan may require over 6.5 million foreign workers by 2040 to sustain economic growth, even as political pressure mounts to limit immigration, reports The Guardian.

Attempts to automate airport tasks have so far been constrained by the limitations of conventional robots, which struggle in dynamic, unpredictable environments. Humanoid robots are now being considered as a more adaptable solution, as their human-like design allows them to function within existing airport infrastructure without extensive modifications.

The rollout will proceed in stages, starting with detailed observation of operations to identify suitable use cases, followed by testing in simulated real-world conditions. The long-term objective is to integrate robots alongside human workers, assigning them repetitive and physically intensive tasks to reduce strain and improve efficiency. Continuous evaluation will guide development, focusing on safety, performance, and practical deployment, reports Aero Time.

Barclays is out with a report on nuclear and how the industry is progressing from conviction to construction. The report highlights year-to-date regulatory developments, demand and execution signals and market pricing across the industry. 

Last year, Barclays argued three core points regarding nuclear energy:

• A nuclear renaissance is underway driven by energy security, decarbonization, and AI power demand
• The nuclear fuel cycle is likely to be an upstream bottleneck that requires reshoring
• As the theme matures, practical hurdles will take center stage, such as speed to power, labor, permitting, and unit economics

Given the run up in their broad global nuclear ecosystem index (BCGLNUCL +19%) this year, there is undoubtedly a continued interest in the nuclear theme. This also correlates with “a broad rotation from capital-light to capital-heavy (HALO) sectors”.

The market seems to be distinguishing between the themes within the nuclear renaissance, with companies in the nuclear fuel chain (BCNUCLUR +30%) providing higher returns YTD than the broader nuclear ecosystem…

The bar is being set higher by investors lately, though, with money being “less willing to fund nuclear on narrative alone, instead increasingly rewarding delivery of existing megawatts, visible permitting progress or at least a credible bridge from concept to contracted project”. 

As we detailed long before most others started realizing it, Barclays also notes how the Iran war has accentuated national energy security concerns. It has not gone unnoticed how countries like France have had little to care about with the dramatic energy market price swings, while countries like Germany and other Asian nations have suffered. 

The Iran war has also led to a plus for nuclear energy adoption in Europe based on the broader concept of the strategic autonomy agenda at the EU.

As it should be well understood by our readers at this point, the underwriting of nuclear development by hyperscalers has given significant confidence to the adoption of nuclear energy in the US. Massive energy deals from Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all highlighted the significant role to be played by a power source that’s actually clean and reliable. 

While Barclays notes there are plenty of bottlenecks that remain throughout the nuclear industry, “progress has become more visible in areas that matter most for build out”. Issues are being worked on in concrete ways throughout the fuel cycle, licensing, and component supply areas. 

The report emphasizes that the clearest evidence of progress is in the fuel cycle. Progress is turning into production at US uranium mines and major projects are progressing through development in Canada. 

Other award programs from the U.S Department of Energy are also boosting the front end of the fuel chain, specifically the $2.7 billion for enrichment capacity. 

Significant progress has also been made on the regulation front with improvements to new licensing pathways and high speed programs for iteration and demonstration of new reactor technology. 

With site-specific planning ongoing, along with early component ordering, “the industry is beginning to bridge the gap between design ambition and concrete delivery”. 

Calling back to their previous point of the labor bottleneck, this challenge is starting to work its way to be the leading issue. Unlike a lot of the supply chain issues, which are mostly solved with more money, “workforce constraints remain deeply structural and are likely to take longer to ease”. 

And then there is the issue of where the US gets 300,000 engineers to build all this missing power supply by 2030 https://t.co/a18crhqZ4v pic.twitter.com/tinW8SHDwM

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 14, 2025

At Barclay’s recent NextGen Energy Conference in New York, the participants reportedly highlighted labor as a critical and growing execution constraint on both the data center construction and power generation construction areas. Data centers and reactor plants will find themselves competing for the same limited pool of electricians, engineers, and experienced construction labor. 

This leads to Barclays making the closing statement that “labour is now emerging as perhaps the most important residual hurdle to the pace of the nuclear renaissance, with progress in this area likely to play a key role in determining whether improving policy support and hyperscaler demand can translate into build-out at scale”.