Colombia’s democratic socialist president claimed Tuesday afternoon that he escaped an assassination attempt on Monday night, after years of warning about assassination plots against him.

AFP News reports that Colombian President Gustavo Petro narrowly escaped an assassination attempt after his helicopter reportedly could not land at a location on the South American country’s Caribbean coast because gunmen were allegedly ready to open fire upon landing.

“We headed out to open sea for four hours, and I arrived somewhere we weren’t supposed to go, escaping from being killed,” Petro stated in a cabinet meeting on live television.

He warned that the incident is part of a longer-running assassination plot by drug traffickers that he says has targeted him since he took office in August 2022.

Petro suggested in 2024 that the commander of the Estado Mayor Central rebel group had planned to assassinate him with snipers.

For some context, EMC is a dissident group of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.

Petro’s latest assassination plot claim comes ahead of presidential elections, with Petro barred by the constitution from seeking a second term. 

According to Bloomberg, Colombia’s two top presidential candidates – conservative lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist senator Iván Cepeda – are neck and neck in the latest poll data ahead of the election on May 31.

De la Espriella has about 32.1% support, compared to Cepeda’s 31.4%, in the AtlasIntel poll for Semana newspaper. Former Antioquia governor Sergio Fajardo trails with about 7.6%.

Meanwhile, South American politics has shifted sharply in President Trump’s second term, with right-wing movements gaining traction across the continent, from Argentina to Chile, after years of failed socialist and communist governments.

The Maduro regime’s fall last month may shape the Colombian elections this spring towards a right-wing.

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said he will pay the legal fees of anyone who speaks out about alleged perpetrators whose names have been redacted from the Jeffrey Epstein files and is sued as a result.

The Tesla CEO made the offer in response to a public service announcement played on Super Bowl Sunday that featured women alleging abuse by Epstein and his associates.

The 40-second video clip notes that 3 million files related to the late sex offender have not yet been released. The women are depicted holding photographs of their younger selves, with black boxes to symbolize redactions over their mouths. The accusers then reiterate their commitment to standing together to demand the full truth about Epstein’s criminal network. They then urge Attorney General Pam Bondi, “It’s time for the truth.”

Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh questioned on Musk’s platform, X, why the women had not publicly named their alleged abusers, and suggested they could do so safely through congressional advocates.

Walsh wrote on Sunday, “For those claiming that they can’t name names because they’ll be sued: they could simply give the names to any of their many (and mostly very recent) advocates in congress, who could read the names out loud from the floor, insulating themselves and these women from any litigation. But they refuse to do that. Why?”

Redactions

Musk posted in response to Walsh: “I will pay for the defense of anyone who speaks the truth about this and is sued for doing so.”

The offer could potentially give financial protection to victims who fear legal retaliation for naming individuals linked to Epstein, who died in custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on multiple charges of trafficking minors. His death was ruled a suicide.

Musk’s own name is one of many mentioned in the latest release of more than 3 million Epstein-related files into the public domain on January 31, although he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Documents show Musk and Epstein exchanged messages between 2012 and 2014, discussing possible visits to Epstein’s private island, Little St James. One email from November 2012 includes Musk asking, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”

Musk has denied ever visiting the island, stating in a post on X that he “refused” Epstein’s repeated invitations and declined to fly on the financier’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.” He added that when he called for the release of the files, he was aware that his correspondence with Epstein could be misinterpreted and used to smear his reputation.

“I don’t care about that, but what I do care about is that we at least attempt to prosecute those who committed serious crimes with Epstein, especially regarding heinous exploitation of underage girls,” he wrote on X following the release of the files on Jan. 31.

The documents released include flight lists, financial ledgers, and email correspondence, with the Justice Department saying many were redacted to protect victims.

The latest tranche of files referenced several high profile names from the world of tech and big business, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, as well as high-profile politicians, including former United States President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Lawmakers Allowed

Musk made his offer prior to the Department of Justice announcing on Monday it will allow members of Congress to review unredacted files, according to a letter sent to lawmakers.

The letter said that lawmakers, but not members of the public, will be able to review unredacted versions of files that the government has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year.

There are several terms and conditions imposed on lawmakers, who will need to give 24 hours’ notice before being granted access to the files. They will only be able to review the files on computers at the Department of Justice. Only lawmakers, not their staff, may view the files, and while note-taking is allowed, they will not be permitted to make copies.

Among the many high-profile names in the latest files is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, whose revealed association with Epstein had already caused him to be stripped of his royal title by his brother, British monarch King Charles III.

Buckingham Palace Statement

Police in the UK are assessing claims that the former duke shared confidential reports from his role as the UK’s trade envoy with Epstein.

Buckingham Palace said on Monday it was ready to support any police investigation into Charles’s brother after emails suggested Mountbatten-Windsor might have shared confidential British trade documents with Epstein in his capacity as trade envoy in late 2010.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct.

“While the specific claims in question are for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police we stand ready to support them as you would expect.

“As was previously stated, Their Majesties’ thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse.”

Mountbatten-Windsor has previously denied any wrongdoing over his Epstein links, which are known to have continued after Epstein was convicted for soliciting a minor in 2008.

Thames Valley Police said last week said it was assessing allegations that a 26-year-old woman was sent to the UK by Epstein for a sexual encounter with the former duke in 2010.

Charles stripped his younger brother of his titles following the posthumous release of a book by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, when she was a teenager.

In 2022, the duke settled a lawsuit with Giuffre, who accused him of having sex with her when she was 17, after they were introduced by Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor said he has no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre, who was the most high-profile campaigner for Epstein’s victims before her sudden death in Western Australia in April 2025, and was involved in multiple lawsuits against those she accused of exploiting her.

Authorities said Giuffre’s death was not suspicious, although some members of her family have expressed doubts that she took her own life, and a full inquest has yet to take place.

Lauren Hersh, national director of World Without Exploitation, which produced the public information film released on Feb. 8, said in an emailed statement: “Moving forward, the Department of Justice must take every effort to prioritize the privacy and safety of the survivors, who have bravely come forward with their stories over the past decades. We will not stop until survivors get the transparency and accountability they deserve.”

PA Media and Reuters contributed to this report.

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

PepsiCo spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps.

But last week – after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got 18 states to ban SNAP purchases of products like soda, candy, and processed snacks – PepsiCo announced price cuts of up to 15% on Doritos, Lay’s, Tostitos, and other Frito-Lay products.

The company’s official explanation was “affordability.” CEO Ramon Laguarta cited low-income consumers are switching to store brands.

But the timing tells the real story.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program— food stamps— is a $100 billion per year program serving roughly 42 million Americans. And according to the USDA’s own data, about 20 cents of every SNAP dollar goes to sweetened beverages, candy, salty snacks, and sugar.

In fact soft drinks alone are the single largest category of SNAP purchases.

And, until last week, products from Pepsi’s Frito-Lay division were in 7.2% of all shopping trips paid for with SNAP (i.e. taxpayer-funded) benefits.

So when the government stopped subsidizing demand for their products, PepsiCo had to do something they hadn’t needed to do in years: compete.

This is what the free market does— it forces companies to be more efficient, cut prices, and pass savings on to their customers.

But here’s the thing— this is one company, one product line, one government program.

Zoom out and you can see just how much of price inflation in our daily lives is due directly to government spending— before we even get into monetary policy like printing money.

When a guaranteed buyer shows up with a bottomless wallet, prices go up.

Just look at college tuition. In 1965, Congress passed the Higher Education Act and began backing student loans with federal dollars.

Since then, tuition has risen roughly three times faster than inflation. A year at a private university that cost $2,800 in 1963 now costs over $85,000.

The New York Federal Reserve studied this directly and found that for every dollar increase in subsidized student loans, tuition rose by up to 60 cents.

The mechanism is simple: when the government guarantees the tuition money, universities raise prices… simply because they can.

Healthcare is even worse.

Before Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the government’s share of healthcare spending was about 31%. Today it’s roughly 64%. Medicaid spending alone has grown from $13 billion in 1975 to over $900 billion today.

And— shocker— healthcare prices have risen dramatically over the same period. The US now spends nearly $5 trillion per year on healthcare, far more per capita than any other developed country, with outcomes that are often worse.

The pattern is the same everywhere you look: the government shows up with money. Prices rise to absorb it. The subsidy becomes permanent. The industry restructures itself around the guaranteed revenue. And then anyone who suggests pulling back the money is accused of “cutting” a vital service.

Now consider the scale of this in America today.

Federal spending has risen from about 18% of GDP in the 1990s to nearly 24% today. That means almost a quarter of the entire American economy is government money.

Of this, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has publicly estimated that 10% of the federal budget— roughly $600 billion per year— is lost to outright fraud of the Somali daycare type in Minnesota.

Then there’s the legal graft. California alone received roughly $100 billion in federal grants over the past few years for DEI initiatives that produced nothing except more government jobs and campaign contributions.

So how much of America’s economic output is actually real?

How much is just government money making a round trip— borrow more debt, hand it out through some boondoggle program where it is spent at a PepsiCo subsidiary, counted as “economic activity,” making people obese… then more money spent on healthcare to keep them alive and paying enough taxes for the government to be able to pay interest on the debt…

It’s absurd when you think about it. We don’t have a precise answer. But the Pepsi story gives us a clue. The moment the government stopped subsidizing one small corner of the economy, prices dropped by 15% within a week.

RFK didn’t regulate PepsiCo. He didn’t cap prices. He didn’t launch an antitrust investigation. He simply stopped the government from funneling taxpayer dollars into unhealthy food… and the market corrected overnight.

Now imagine what would happen if the government stopped subsidizing entire industries— the defense contractors billing $10,000 for a toilet seat, the universities charging $85,000 for a degree in gender studies, the healthcare system where nobody can tell you what anything costs.

We might finally find out how much of this economy is real.

And that, frankly, is what makes it so hard to fix. Because so many peoples’ livelihoods now depend on the government gravy train.

But this trajectory has an expiration date. The federal government borrows $2 trillion a year to keep it all going. Interest on that debt already exceeds $1 trillion annually— more than the entire military budget— and it’s growing faster than any other line item.

If rates stay elevated because inflation won’t come down, the cost of servicing the debt crowds out everything else.

If the government responds by printing money to cover the gap, inflation gets worse.

And it makes sense to have a Plan B that doesn’t depend on Washington finding fiscal discipline before the math catches up with them.

Last month, FBI agents executed a search warrant in Union City, Georgia, marking a sharp escalation in scrutiny surrounding Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 election. The FBI has now reportedly substantiated major irregularities in vote counting from Fulton County, Georgia, during the 2020 election and is now investigating whether those errors were deliberate violations of federal law. 

An affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans last month, which was unsealed Tuesday, lays out five categories of confirmed problems in Fulton County’s handling of ballots, raising questions that have simmered for over five years since Trump and his allies raised questions about the election in Georgia and other states where irregularities were alleged.

According to a report from Just the News, Evans filed the affidavit last month to establish probable cause for a raid that seized around 700 boxes of ballots from an Atlanta-area storage warehouse. The investigation stemmed from a referral by Kurt Olsen, President Trump’s election integrity czar. Evans interviewed roughly a dozen unnamed witnesses about allegations tied to the contested Georgia race, where Joe Biden edged out Trump by less than 12,000 votes in the official results.

“Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County,” Evans wrote.

“This warrant application is part of an FBI criminal investigation into whether any of the improprieties were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws.”

Fulton County admitted it lacks scanned images of all 528,777 ballots counted during the initial count and of the 527,925 ballots tallied during the state’s first recount.

County officials also confirmed that during the recount, some ballots were scanned multiple times. Ballot images obtained through public records requests show identical markings appearing on duplicated images.

During the Risk Limiting Audit, hand counters reported vote totals for batches that didn’t match the actual votes inside those batches.

According to the affidavit, “The State’s Performance Review Board reported that Secretary of State investigators confirmed inaccurate batch tallies from the Risk Limiting Audit.” 

Then there’s the matter of the pristine absentee ballots.

Auditors assisting in the Risk Limiting Audit reported counting supposed absentee ballots that had “never been creased or folded, as would be required for the ballot to be mailed to the voter and for the ballot to be returned in the sealed envelope requiring the voter’s signature for authentication.” 

The timeline adds another wrinkle. 

On the deadline day to report recount results, Fulton County initially declared a total of 511,343 ballots—17,434 fewer than the original count. By the next day, that number had jumped to 527,925. Thousands of ballots, more than Joe Biden’s margin of victory, had simply appeared overnight.

“If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race,” Evans said.

“Many of the claims made in the affidavits were previously vetted by the Georgia State Election Board and through litigation,” reports Fox News Digital. “Trump and his lawyers at the time lost all of their cases after judges found they either did not have standing to bring the lawsuits or that the allegations lacked merit.”

For years, officials insisted the 2020 process was sound, dismissing concerns as conspiracy theories.

What remains unclear is whether the problems resulted from incompetence, chaos, or intent.

That’s the question the FBI is now trying to answer. For those who spent the last five years arguing that Georgia’s election administration deserved scrutiny, the affidavit offers a measure of vindication. 

Submitted by Steffan Szumowski from The Nuclear Review

Holtec International filed confidentially for an IPO recently with the SEC. The company alluded to the possibility of going public in 2026 earlier last year, as the nuclear renaissance has reignited investor interest in the almost forgotten nuclear industry. While the public market has only seen junior companies so far, Holtec is coming to market after being in the game for decades.

A Barron’s article from June of last year estimates Holtec could be worth more than $10 billion on over $500 million of annual revenue, as the company attempts to pull off the first reactor restart in American history at the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. The reactor restart, which has inspired multiple other restarts across the country, is one of the few things the company is known for. Yet, after decades of industry involvement, Holtec is involved in a lot more than just resurrecting nuclear reactors:

• Nuclear plant decommissioning
• Reactor restart
• Small modular reactor development
• Used nuclear fuel management
• Heat transfer equipment manufacturing
• Non-nuclear technologies

Nuclear plant decommissioning

Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI), a subsidiary of Holtec International, is responsible for taking a reactor plant with single or multiple reactor units on site from shutdown to as close to greenfield as possible. This involves handling the used nuclear fuel and dismantlement of radioactive systems and facilities.

HDI currently has three projects: Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, and Indian Point Energy Center in New York. Decommissioning is further along and well past the point of no return at Oyster Creek and Pilgrim, but Indian Point was noted as a potential restart candidate by Holtec last year. Governor Hochul, even with her 5 GW new nuclear capacity target, has already come out as being against the idea of restarting Indian Point in favor of new construction projects in upstate instead.

Reactor restart

Initially announced in September of 2022, the Palisades are the first of many reactor restart efforts in the United States. Holtec purchased Palisades from Entergy in June of 2022. The DOE issued a $1.5 billion loan commitment in 2024 to support the effort and has already issued several tranches of the loan through 2025. The NRC has also created multiple novel regulatory pathways to enable the reissuance of an operator’s license for the plant, along with multiple exceptions for system restorations.

Originally targeted for the end of 2025, multiple material issues, most notably with the steam generators, have pushed the restart completion out several months. Completion is now anticipated in the middle of 2026. After the plant is restored to operations, there is no indication of Holtec looking to sell the plant to a utility, so the company will own and operate the plant through its subsidiary, Holtec Palisades. 

Small modular reactor development

Holtec has been developing a small modular reactor for over ten years, initially called the SMR-160 and rated to about 160 MWe. Since then, the design was upgraded in 2023 to the SMR-300, now with a capacity of 320 MWe. The reactor is a pressurized water reactor (PWR) designed to operate with commercially available low enriched uranium (LEU). The development of their small reactor program is controlled by their wholly-owned subsidiary SMR LLC.

SMR LLC is actively pursuing deployment of their first two SMR-300s at the Palisades in Michigan, co-located with the reactor being restarted by HDI. The company has submitted a construction application to the NRC for what they call Pioneer Units 1 and 2. In addition to asking for permission to construct the new small reactors, Holtec is also requesting permission to begin construction on some non-nuclear systems at the site through a Limited Work Authorization. The initial deployment of the first two reactors in Michigan has also received government support in the form of a $400 million from the Department of Energy. 

SMR LLC has additionally led the charge for America’s expansion in India. In early 2025, Holtec received permission from the US government to export the SMR-300 design to one of the biggest potential nuclear power markets outside of China. Holtec’s CEO has been quoted multiple times citing India as a major potential opportunity for them in the years ahead.

Used nuclear fuel management

Holtec is the international leader in the safe transportation and storage of used nuclear fuel. They utilize their HI-STORM and HI-STAR dry cask systems throughout the world with the highest market share compared to their competitors. As good as they are though, there are still those in politics that use baseless fear-mongering to push back against the safe handling and storage of used nuclear fuel.

New Mexico lawmakers and executives, along with the support of the oil and gas industries, threw every wrench in their toolbox at Holtec in an effort to prevent the company from establishing the HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF). The CISF was an attempt by Holtec to consolidate some of the nation’s more temporary dry cask storage facilities into one location. Regardless of how safe the science proves these casks are, New Mexico locals and activists acted as if they were fighting against a company dumping scary green nuclear waste all over their backyards. Even after arguing one of the wrenches from New Mexico all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Holtec’s favor, the company ended up canceling the entire project in 2025 due to exhaustion and lack of will to continue what would likely be another several years of absurd lawfare.

Heat transfer equipment manufacturing

If you have energy in one system and need to get it to another system without the two energy carriers touching each other, Holtec is there to help. Unlike a lot of their competitors that make components for just the primary system or just the secondary system, Holtec works on both sides of the radiation boundary. The company designs and fabricates water-cooled condensers, feedwater heaters, steam generators, and a variety of auxiliary plant heat exchangers.

Non-nuclear technologies

Holtec is also involved in non-nuclear systems such as solar, geothermal, and fossil fuels. Their Green Boiler is designed to replace coal plants that are being phased out. The Green Boiler is essentially a giant tank of engineered salts that are used to store energy from other production facilities such as solar farms or SMR-300 plants. The energy stored within the engineered salts can then be dispatched to the grid or other industrial processes on demand.

In summary…

Holtec is not just some brand new reactor developer walking in with a PowerPoint and a dream. The company has been around for over 40 years and is well diversified throughout the nuclear industry. One of their best features is that an extremely small amount of their business depends on the success of the nuclear renaissance.

Most of their work will remain relatively constant as the world’s existing fleet of over 400 reactors continues to operate and age. These facilities will require constant attention, upgrades, and refits as the years go on. In particular, used nuclear fuel transportation, handling, and storage services will be in demand for at least the next century.

Artificial intelligence is spreading quickly through modern healthcare, promising to make medical treatment faster, more accurate, and more personalized. But as hospitals and manufacturers adopt the technology, safety records, lawsuits, and regulatory struggles suggest that the transition has not been smooth, a new investigation by Reuters shows.

One example involves Acclarent, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which added machine-learning software to its TruDi Navigation System in 2021. The company described the update as “a leap forward,” saying it would help ear, nose, and throat surgeons better guide their instruments during sinus procedures.

Before the AI upgrade, the device had generated only a handful of malfunction reports. In the years that followed, however, federal regulators received more than 100 reports involving technical failures or patient injuries. At least 10 patients were reported harmed between late 2021 and 2025, many in cases where the system allegedly gave incorrect information about where surgical tools were located inside the skull.

Some of these incidents were severe. Reports described leaking spinal fluid, punctured skull bases, and strokes caused by damaged arteries. Several patients filed lawsuits, arguing that the device “was arguably safer before integrating” artificial intelligence. Manufacturers and distributors rejected those claims, insisting there is “no credible evidence” linking the AI software to the injuries.

Two Texas cases illustrate how these disputes have played out. In 2022, Erin Ralph suffered a stroke after sinus surgery in which her surgeon relied on TruDi. Her lawsuit claims the system “misled and misdirected” the doctor, who “had no idea he was anywhere near the carotid artery.” A year later, another patient, Donna Fernihough, experienced a similar injury. Her complaint alleges that Acclarent rushed the technology to market and accepted “only 80% accuracy” for some features.

Both cases remain in court, and the company has denied wrongdoing. Court records also show that one surgeon involved had financial ties to Acclarent, though the firm and the doctor’s representatives say those payments were unrelated to patient outcomes.

The Reuters piece notes that concerns about TruDi are part of a broader pattern. By 2025, the FDA had authorized more than 1,300 medical devices that use artificial intelligence, roughly twice as many as just a few years earlier. A review by researchers found that many of these products were later recalled, often within a year of approval. The recall rate for AI-based devices was about double that of similar technologies without machine learning.

Federal safety databases contain hundreds of reports involving these products. Some describe prenatal ultrasound software that “wrongly labels fetal structures,” while others involve heart monitors that allegedly failed to detect abnormal rhythms. Manufacturers have said most of these incidents did not lead to patient harm and were sometimes caused by user error or data-display problems.

Regulators warn that such reports are incomplete and cannot prove that a device caused an injury. Still, former FDA employees say the volume of AI products has strained the agency’s ability to monitor risks. Staffing cuts and recruitment difficulties have reduced the number of specialists available to evaluate complex algorithms. As one former reviewer put it, “If you don’t have the resources, things are more likely to be missed.”

Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, most medical devices are not required to undergo large clinical trials before reaching patients. Companies can often secure approval by showing that a new product resembles an older one, even if the update includes artificial intelligence. Critics argue that this system was designed for simpler technologies and may not adequately address the uncertainties introduced by machine learning.

“I think the FDA’s traditional approach to regulating medical devices is not up to the task,” said Dr. Alexander Everhart. “We’re relying on manufacturers to do a good job… I don’t know what’s in place at the FDA represents meaningful guardrails.”

At the same time, AI is moving beyond hardware into everyday medical practice. Doctors increasingly use automated tools to draft notes and manage records, while patients turn to chatbots for health advice. Physicians say these systems can save time, but they also create new risks when people rely on them instead of professional guidance.

Supporters of medical AI argue that the technology will eventually lead to better diagnoses, safer surgeries, and faster drug discovery. Critics counter that the pace of adoption has outstripped oversight.

Taken together, safety reports, legal disputes, and regulatory challenges suggest that artificial intelligence is reshaping medicine faster than institutions can adapt. While the technology offers significant potential benefits, recent experience shows that errors, oversight gaps, and unanswered questions remain part of its rapid expansion.

You can read the full piece by Reuters here.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Buried in new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a bearish sign for a college education, the first time we’ve seen this in 50 years. Trade workers without a college education are gaining new advantages in employment stability and even in earnings. On paper, a college degree still earns more but that edge is slipping too.

The Cleveland Fed explains: “For decades, college graduates have typically faced lower unemployment rates, found jobs faster, and experienced more stable employment than high school graduates without college experience. Combined with higher expected wages, these advantages reinforced higher education as a pathway to economic security. However, some of the long-standing job market advantages offered by having a college degree may be eroding.”

The BLS data is extremely revealing. The unemployment rate for people with no college education has dropped dramatically to 4.0 percent, while those with some college rose just as dramatically to 3.8 percent.

The trend line here is what is instructive. The obvious edge from holding a college degree seems to be slipping while those without such a degree are gaining steam. This is the first time we’ve seen this trend in half a century.

The income advantages are still there for a college education but even here, we are seeing a generational shift. The pace at which income is rising for those who choose trades has more upward energy than those without. The gap is there but narrowing.

The Washington Post explains: “The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees—such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters—flipped in 2025, leaving trade workers with a slight edge for six months out of the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time trade workers have had a leg up since the BLS started tracking this data in the 1990s.”

It’s a bit ironic that this story was posted just days before the Post itself laid off fully one-third of its workers, a gutting of the staff of a major paper that we’ve never seen before. No question that Artificial Intelligence has something to do with it, but, then again, AI is a convenient excuse for what these institutions knew they had to do to regain something approaching profitability.

There are two additional factors at play here.

First, everyone employed in a high-end professional setting knows with absolute certainty that all major corporations are wildly overstaffed and have been for many years, even decades dating back to the advent of artificially cheap credit in 2000. After that point, the banking system subsidized leverage over real capital and earnings. The consequence was a professional hiring boom like we’ve never seen.

Over several days, I spoke to many friends who are employed in these large institutions and asked for their estimates of how much in the way of overstaffing they face. I got estimates that range from 50 to 90 percent. In other words, in their own experience, at least half the workers in large institutions do not actually add value, if they do anything at all.

This is a remarkable testimony. Recall that the “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams recently died. The main import of his column was all about satirizing the sheer waste in corporate America. The amount of bureaucracy is appalling as are the endless demands for meetings, committees, compliance teams, training, and absolute make-work programs that do nothing for the consumer or the profitability of the company.

We’ve seen what has happened to high-end management over the last three years. Most corporations are laying off workers—not those who face the customer but the managerial layers. The lockdown pandemic period essentially proved that these companies might actually perform better if this layer of worker stays home and goofs off. That period essentially convinced owners (stockholders) that vast numbers of people needed to be permanently terminated.

Recall that when Elon Musk took over Twitter, his first actions concerned personnel. He ended up firing an astonishing four-fifths of the legacy employees. He just did not see the need for them. Almost immediately, the platform became better. It is a private company so we don’t have a fix on profitability metrics today but it is easily the number one news app for the world today.

That example sent a signal to the whole of the corporate world. Layoffs were just a matter of time.

The second factor concerns earnings potential of college vs. no college. There has always been a basic fallacy at work in interpreting the data. The fallacy is called Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, Latin for: after this therefore because of this.

To be sure, a college degree is associated with higher earnings, but is that because of the degree or because of the kind of person who hangs around long enough to earn a degree, can afford a degree, or is in a profession that requires a degree? Once you correct for all these confounding issues, it is not at all clear that the data are telling the truth. Certainly it is far from the case that a degree causes one to make a high income.

Consider the costs of college beyond the outrageous financial expense. We are taking people who are at the height of their learning potential, the very time of life when becoming an adult and a great worker is at a premium, and sticking them in childish environments. College encourages terrible lifestyle choices, finding shortcuts, drugs, drinking too much, and otherwise experimenting with dangerous choices.

And the student does this for fully four years, during the most impressionable early years of adulthood, leaving graduates with no work ethic and a wildly distorted view of what life is all about. It seems nearly unfair to throw such people into professional life. They are ill-equipped.

Compare this reality with someone who leaves high school to learn a trade, whether that is welding, construction, or coding. After four years, such people already have a gigantic advantage over their peers in college. They know what it is to get to work on time, do what the boss says, achieve things, manage money, and so on, essentially skills that kids matriculating in college do not have.

Hence the real cost of college is not even the out-of-pocket expense or the debt. The actual cost is four years lost during the most important years of one’s life. And as for the actual education one receives, times have dramatically changed. You have free access to all the professors and teaching you want. With some discipline, a person with a job can obtain a PhD-level education in any field on nights and weekends with zero financial expenditure.

Looked at this way, it was only a matter of time before the advantages of declining college would become obvious. Believe me, parents are paying close attention. The main reason they spend a quarter of a million to send kids to college is to guarantee a better income in the future.

When that promise is revealed to be a false one, everything changes. Then we are only left with the social and marital advantages of college—which might be enough to keep them open for another 10 years or longer. But the shine is fading fast and the edge is getting ever more dull. The trendline in the data these days is favoring the trades over the dorm room.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to pull the rug from underneath climate regulation…

Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times,

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has unveiled new regulations to strengthen the integrity of the Obamacare insurance exchanges and promote innovation.

The new federal rule, released for comment on Feb. 9, will lower the cost of health care, according to Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“At President [Donald] Trump’s direction, [this agency] is driving down costs and rooting out fraud across our health insurance programs,” Kennedy said in a statement, predicting that the policy changes overall will reduce premiums and increase consumer choice.

Eligibility Verification

New anti-fraud regulations will require stronger enforcement of eligibility and income verification, correcting a situation that some observers say allowed unscrupulous insurance brokers to sign up millions of people for the program without their knowledge, particularly in plans with no premiums.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade association for health insurance companies, has disputed that claim. However, 24 had more enrollees in Obamacare zero-premium plans in 2024 than they had qualifying residents, according to data from the think tank Paragon Health Institute.

The new regulations, once finalized, will require agents and brokers to use federally-approved forms for verifying enrollee eligibility and to obtain their consent for enrollment.

The regulations also make it clear what action a consumer must take to review and affirm their personal and eligibility information, and to signify their consent.

The rule would clarify which individuals qualify for Obamacare subsidies as “eligible noncitizens,” and would deny subsidies to those who are ineligible for Medicaid due to their immigration status.

Marketing Practices

A second program change prohibits certain marketing practices for agents and brokers who help customers sign up for Obamacare through the federal and state marketplaces.

Providing cash, cash equivalents, or monetary rebates to influence customers to enroll would be prohibited.

Also prohibited are falsely suggesting that customers would qualify for a zero-premium plan and misleading customers about enrollment deadlines.

“This proposal would ensure consumers are provided accurate information about the Exchange prior to enrollment, maintain the integrity of the exchanges, and foster trust between consumers and agents, brokers, and web-brokers,” according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Payment Tracking

The new rule seeks to create an information security protocol for enrollees of the program as of 2024 to measure improper payments in the state-based exchanges.

Fraud, waste, and abuse costs the program up to $27 billion annually by some estimates, said Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

“This fraud can directly impact the legitimate needs of patients, who may face denied claims or delayed care when their providers struggle to verify which insurance is valid due to the chaos created by schemes like people using stolen identities to sign up for multiple plans,” Smith said in November.

Consumer Choice

Other provisions of the rule aim to expand consumer choice and bring down prices.

The draft of the policy permits insurance companies to offer catastrophic plans with terms from one to 10 years. Currently, customers must be either under 30 years old, ineligible for a subsidy for a marketplace plan, or have a hardship or affordability exemption.

The rule would expand hardship exemptions for people aged 30 and above to make catastrophic plans more accessible.

Also, insurers would be allowed to offer Obamacare plans that do not meet the standard plan requirements. Standardized plans have the same deductibles and cost-sharing, which makes it easier to compare various plans based on price and other factors.

The change aims to give issuers more flexibility to tailor plan options to their marketplaces.

“The goal is simple: lower costs, more choice, and exchanges that work as intended,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a Feb. 9 statement.

The proposed regulations will be published in the Federal Register on Feb. 11 and open for comment for 30 days.

Authored by Vismaya V via Decrypt.co,

The Ethereum co-founder has outlined a four-quadrant Ethereum-AI buildout spanning private AI use, agent markets, and governance.

In brief

• Vitalik Buterin said Monday the very frame of “work on AGI” is flawed and called for AI development guided by decentralization, privacy, verification, and human empowerment.

• He outlined an Ethereum-linked roadmap focused on local LLMs, zero-knowledge payments for private AI API usage, and cryptographic privacy, among other key areas.

• Buterin’s approach contrasts with the AGI acceleration narratives from major AI labs, focusing on safer, Ethereum-based AI coordination.

Vitalik Buterin is calling for a different path in artificial intelligence—one that rejects a blind “race to AGI” and instead relies on Ethereum-style decentralization, verification, and privacy as guardrails for the AI era.

“The frame of ‘work on AGI’ itself contains an error,” Ethereum co-founder Buterin wrote in a post on X Monday, noting that the goal is often treated as an undifferentiated race where the main distinction is simply “that you get to be the one at the top.” 

He compared the phrase to vaguely describing Ethereum as just “working in finance” or “working on computing,” saying it obscures more important questions about direction and values.

Buterin said AI and crypto are too often approached from “completely separate philosophical perspectives,” and urged builders to integrate them. 

Instead of raw acceleration, AI development should focus on systems that “foster human freedom and empowerment” and ensure “the world does not blow up,” Buterin wrote, echoing his defensive-acceleration, or d/acc, framework.

Joni Pirovich, founder and CEO of Crystal aOS, told Decrypt, “Ethereum becoming the default settlement layer for AI-to-AI interactions is realistic.

It’s less about ‘accelerating AGI’ and more about providing the necessary rails and guardrails for agentic commerce, trade, and investing. 

Trust and coordination, especially at the technology infrastructure and compliance infrastructure levels, are even more important now than ever.”

The comments land as major AI firms continue to publicly push toward AGI and superintelligence, with leading labs describing rapid progress in autonomous agents and advanced models. 

Buterin claims his alternative centers on safer, more verifiable infrastructure rather than larger models, outlining a practical roadmap in which Ethereum plays a central, though not exclusive, role. 

That includes local LLM tooling, zero-knowledge payments that let users call AI APIs without linking identity across requests, stronger cryptographic privacy, and client-side verification of AI services and attestations.

“Using Ethereum as an economic layer for AI-to-AI interaction is also directionally correct, but it will live mostly on rollups and app-specific L2s,” Midhun Krishna M, co-founder and CEO of LLM cost tracker TknOps.io, told Decrypt. 

Decentralized agent economies need programmable deposits, usage-based payments, and on-chain dispute resolution, Krishna said, adding that AI-augmented governance will require “identity, reputation, and stake-weighted accountability, not just better interfaces.”

Breaking it down

Vitalik grouped the Ethereum–AI design space into a four-part framework, illustrated as a 2×2 chart, spanning infrastructure vs. impact and survive vs. thrive outcomes. 

• One quadrant centers on tooling for trustless and private AI interaction, including local LLMs, zero-knowledge payments for anonymous API calls, cryptographic privacy upgrades, and client-side verification of AI services, TEE attestations, and proofs.

• Another quadrant positions Ethereum as an economic layer for AI activity, supporting API payments, bot-to-bot hiring, security deposits, on-chain dispute resolution, and AI reputation standards, such as proposed ERC-based models, aimed at enabling decentralized agent coordination rather than in-house platform control.

• A third focus revives the cypherpunk “don’t trust, verify” vision through local LLM assistants that can propose transactions, audit smart contracts, interpret formal verification proofs, and interact with apps without relying on centralized interfaces. 

• A fourth targets upgraded prediction markets, quadratic voting, and governance systems.

The comments echo a split that surfaced last year between Buterin and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said his company was confident it knew how to build AGI and that AI agents could soon “join the workforce,” while Buterin promoted crypto-based safety rails and coordinated control mechanisms.